Sonic And The Curse Of The Dream Machine Released!

Well I don't know how bad this is gonna go but here it is!

Introducing Sonic And The Curse Of The Dream Machine. My very first Sonic romhack!

But before you tromp forwards into this mess I should tell you a few issues and show a few screenshots

The issues are that the cheats are disabled, The spike bug isn't removed, The background of Dreamy Plains Act 3 is broken, The floor to the boss of Gold Casino Zone won't load if you lose a life, the first pit of Nightmare factory won't kill you but instead trap you with no way out, and finally The lava won't hurt you (But the lava not hurting you is intentional)

Now for some screenshots!
Dreamy Plains
Castle Ruins
Gold Casino

Play it if you want a good time or a bad time (depends on your prespective)

http://www.mediafire.com/download/kgegyzhtdyqee3e/Sonic+And+The+Curse+Of+The+Dream+Machine.zip

 

Gold Casino have a nice palette, but I can't say that about the rest palettes - for me they looking... wrong... I think the colors doesn't fit together. About level layout - it's ok for me. Overall it's just basic palette/level layout hack, we have many hacks like this in our community and after first time I played this - I'm tired. It's just my opinion so you can disagree with me. I hope next time you'll back with more advanced hack.

 

I'll try to be better at this... Trust me! Once I learn how to use dissasembilies I will make a better hack than this!

 

Can I make a suggestion:

Perhaps the "gold" like palette can be like this.

Or this. I don't think making everything yellowish is good for the eyes and seems like a lazy palette in my opinion.

 

In my opinion, making it yellow doesn't make it "gold".

 

I think the hud should remain yellow. and the GHZ palettes is unique but not that good on the eyes. My opinion based on the screenshots is that you could improve on your palettes

 

So I did a full play through, here are all the things I found (with Screenshots and explanations).

First are two instances where the player can get stuck after the signpost stops spinning, because Sonic doesn't move fast enough and he can't jump when the controls are locked, he will get stuck and the player will have to reset the game.

On the left I am not sure why you still have this part here. When coming from above or going through the walls it can result to the player having to die. Also on the left the screen moves up and it results in a death, and makes the level not passable.

Might want to do something about the scroll data here, another instance is during the MZ boss.
Then this happened...

There is a signpost somewhere which results in art overwriting itself.

Next are 2 crashes that happen in all emulators, that are so bad they cant be skipped. First was at the end of act 1 of LZ, and second was before the cutscene to go to act 3 of SBZ.

Now are examples of bad object placement. So on the left you have badnik fish out of the water which doesn't make much sense, in the center is you forgot to get rid of the lift, and on the right is you placed too many objects by each other which resulted in a sprite limit overload, still happens without the stars.

Now examples of badly placed chunks. On the left this doesnt look right, or make sense, and on the right, there is a hill that you can spin down before the boss, but if you go too fast you can fall of this ledge.
Finally my thoughts on it as a whole, its not too bad, a little rough around the edges. The palettes on the other hand need some intense work, they clash a lot and use too much of the same colors and it seems kind of lazy. With a lot of work this could become a nice little project. Good Luck!

 

I swear, every GHZ palette swap turns it into Blue Hill Zone. We already have one blue thing on-screen: Sonic, and it was easy to see him before, but not when he's lost in a sea of other blue things like that!

 

Well Does anybody Have a rom of
Sonic the Hedgehog (W) (REV XB)?

 

From what I've seen, there isn't a ROM of that version on the internet anywhere. Why do you need this specific version? Are you trying to get a disassembly to work?

 

I have that exact revision on my computer, but why exactly do you need it? (It's part of the Good Gen ROM Set for those wondering.) Also like everyone else said, your palettes need a lot more work. I haven't tried the hack out myself yet, but from the screenshots posted it's alright for a small project, just rough around the edges.

 

I need the revision so I can have a base to start the restarting the hack so I can start over

 

If you're going to use a disassembly, you would need REV00 for Hivebrain, since that disassembly only supports REV00 (using REV01 and REV XB won't work, since pointers in those versions are different for some data and whatnot). You can port over the REV01 effects and the spike bug fix.

That, or you can use the GitHub disassembly, which is pre-split, and includes support for REV00 and REV01 (no REV XB). People have said that they've had problems with it, but it's really all up to you if you prefer this disassembly or not.

 

This is a mockup but tell me how it is (It is a mock up on Ms paint and will diffrer from the final thing!)
(This is not Green Hill btw)

 

I recommend switching to a disasm asap even if you don't plan on doing any programming yet, because it prevents a lot of issues down the line when it comes to backing up your hack and fixing it if something goes wrong (like if you break one level in your hack you would most likely have to start over completely, while in a disasm you can replace the broken files with stock S1 files and you won't lose anything else)

Github S1: https://github.com/sonicretro/s1disasm_git/archive/master.zip

Well this is what's more up to date but is slightly hard to use. (at least in my own opinion, I do believe you should give it a shot)

Hivebrain S1: http://info.sonicretro.org/images/5/5f/Sonic_1_(Split_and_Text_by_Hivebrain)_(ASM68K).zip

This disasm is the more commonly used one and has a ton of guides for it. (I personally use this one)

Now both of those use the assembler asm68k which only works on windows IIRC

If your not on windows then I recommend using the AS compiler instead:

Github S1 with AS: https://github.com/sonicretro/s1disasm_git/archive/AS.zip

Hivebrain with AS: http://info.sonicretro.org/images/9/91/S1hive2005_AS.zip

For a ton of helpful guides you should check here: http://info.sonicretro.org/SCHG_How-to:Guide and here http://sonicresearch.org/community/index.php?forums/tutorials.60/

Anything you don't find there ask in the general question thread here: http://sonicresearch.org/community/index.php?threads/basic-questions-and-answers-thread.1155/

Make sure to casually look through it to make sure nobody else asked the same question before you.

As for tools to use for various stuff:

Level Editing: I personally recommend Sonlvl: http://info.sonicretro.org/SCHG_How-to:Set_Up_SonLVL

It has all kinds of features (including a palette editor and even the ability to import art)

Object Art and mappings: I use SonMapEd: http://info.sonicretro.org/SonMapEd

It's a bit hard to get use to but once you do you will be able to edit object art (like sonic) very easily. (I sometimes hear good things about FLEX: http://snk.digibase.ca/flex/ but personally it never worked for me)

Editing ASM files: The .asm files you see are just regular good ol' text files. Which means you can edit them in any text editor like notepad (pro tip: Don't use notepad)

I use Sublime Text 2: http://www.sublimetext.com/2

This is a really neat text editor that has all the featuers you need to do easy code editing. Like multiple tabs, asm68k highlighter. The only thing is that it will occasionally have a small window pop up asking if you want to buy it. Clicking no will have it continue on like normal and won't pop up again until you close and reopen the window.

Music: MID2SMPS: http://forums.sonicretro.org/?showtopic=25337

Not much to say about this. Just protip: Don't thow any midi file into it expecting it to come out as a master piece. You are going to have to edit midi files in order to get them to sound good.

That's all I can think of atm if I forgot anything just let me know.

Edit: oh and I don't recommend using paint for art. I recommend paint.net: getpaint.net

It's free and has all the plugins you can possibly imagine.

 

I actually took the time to play the whole thing on stream, and this screenshot sums up how I feel about your hack:

 

It looks ok for your first hack. You should change some pallets and some other things. I liked the colors of Speedy Street through.