Sonic Chaos Quest

So, here is my new hack:



This hack has next features:

-Changed title screen.

-Two playable characters - Sonic and Mighty, which are selectable by pressing B (for Sonic) or C (for Mighty) button on title screen. (This code made by me, based on one quide from Sonic Retro)

-Sonic can do spin dash and peelout (codes by vladikcomper), Mighty can do double jump (code by Sonic 2010). Also Sonic and Mighty could do "victory poses" like S3K (my code)

-All zones are changed graphically and have new layout.

-New bosses

-A lot of badniks modified, three badniks (Buzz bomber, Orbinaut and Catterkillar) use different art in different zones

-A lot of sprites are changed.

Screenshots:

  

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/38v09hp2od5d9o9/Sonic+Chaos+Quest.bin

Download link for version 0.50: http://www.mediafire.com/download/c0whep4bdf9kv2o/Sonic+Chaos+Quest+v0.50.bin

Download link fo version 1.1: http://www.mediafire.com/download/4cdj4ntpgqu3045/Sonic+Chaos+Quest+v1.1.bin

 

Good job, Narcologer! This hack have some beautiful graphics, the style is like Sonic Trash hack, new bosses is also a great part of this hack and can't wait for your next relases and projects.  :good:

 

This is looking good, Nick!

Genocide City scared me. KC 32x Bad Ending Music and the background... 

But the rest is looking cool. A new hack to record!

 

KC 32x Bad Ending is awesome for me! This music added some atmosfere to this zone. My favourite zone from this hack is Hydrostation zone... So beautiful tile art!

 

I'm no expert on giving feedback to hacks, but meh, i'll give it a shot. Warning, wall of text.

The first time I loaded this hack, I got a checksum error. Not a good sign there.

Loaded up the first zone. Eh, so far so good. First oddity I see:



Why is that bridge there? It serves zero purpose. There is solid ground underneath it, you don't need a bridge.

About 10 seconds later..



A spring smack in the middle of a long area. This just kills flow. It also isn't clear where it leads to at all.

Now to where it leads to...



Why is this rock here? It doesn't blend with the dirt at all because it's designed to be placed on grass.

About 10 seconds later...



Don't put checkpoints in the middle of loops. Also, this checkpoint is kinda floating.



If you look closely at this rock, you'll see the grass pattern at the bottom doesn't match with the tiles themselves. The rock is also too far into the ground.

Ah, that's enough of that zone. Next, please!



I don't know what it is about this one, but it looks awesome. The palette is nice to look at and the background is unique.

Didn't get much of this one, simply because I couldn't find anything odd about it. Pumped me up a bit. Next?



This is a bit of a visual clusterfuck. It's also kinda tricky to get around, not that that's a bad thing.



That Yadrin art looks kiiiiinda familiar. Not exactly sure, but I think it might be from Sonic Zoom.

I then ragequit due to multiple accounts of glitchcrush.

This hack has potential, you've just gotta improve on design and smooth the edges a bit.

 

It looks very similar to the Noro-Noro from Sonic CD.



It just has added wheels and claws.

Edit: I just realized that the art used in hack is just a Yadrin with the top replaced with a Noro-Noro. I'm surprised to see how well the art blends together but it's kind of noticeable.

 

Huh. Could've sworn it was from Sonic Zoom, guess i was wrong.

 

This sprite of yadrin was made by me from original yadrin and noro-noro badnik. It was first used in Sonic Damacy.

 

*starts*

OK, seems pretty decent!

*gets to act 2*

*hears Chai Kingdom*

.......

NOPE

I'M FUCKING DONE

I'M OUTTA HERE

*jumps off stage*

 

It's a nice start, but there's a few things that could be fixed.

The sprites you've used are nice but it seems that you don't know how to edit the mappings and instead worked around them by skewering the sprites, which is most noticeable on the rotated running and walking frames. This set of guides on Sonic Retro can help you learn the basics of using SonMapEd, once you've gotten the basics you could move to the newer program flex 

One other thing that is kinda annoying is the placement of the enemies. Badniks just seem to be placed in annoying places where the player is going to be unlikely to react in time, the most obvious example being the gang of Buzz Bombers near a red spring just before the signpost.

It's a bit rough, but it's a nice little hack for the most part.

 

Look at my profile.

I used SonMapEd to edit sprites. Those rotating sprites look so because I rotated walking/running sprites in MS Paint. If you found them looking odd... ok, I will try to find better graphical editor that can rotate images better. Anyway, thanks for guides!

 

In that case you could use RotSprite, it does the job nicely. 

 

Wow, thanks! This program is really useful!

 

Well, let's get right to the review, shall we? I structure the review chronologically by zone, so keep that in mind.

GENERAL:

On the title screen, I pressed C. The jumping sound played. Then I pressed B. The game promptly crashed. WTF? I haven't even started playing yet 0.e. Pressing B again somewhat fixes things, but it's a really jarring and obvious problem.

Sonic and Mighty have slightly different movesets. That's neat. What isn't is the fact that Mighty has a weak double jump, while Sonic has the Spindash and Super peelout. Mighty needs at least one good move to gain momentum (I've learned from experience that a simple jumpdash can replace the spindash quite well).

ABERDEEN LAND ZONE:

The art for the loops and ground is really repetitive and boring, and blends into itself. The original GHZ used shading and little square indentation art that pushed into the walls to circumvent this; I recommend doing something similar.

The music is nice. It's a little slow, but it's fairly nice for a first level.

The Badnik art is really nice. I like how you carefully incorporated art from other games alongside your other edits, they all blend very well.

Newtrons should only be placed inside walls. I see that one is placed before an S-loop in midair; the whole point to the badnik is that it starts clinging to a wall...

Act 2 has a deathpit at the beginning. Just a rule of thumb when hacking Sonic games; no death pits in zone 1! Your much better off having these holes go to easier, but less rewarding routes; that way, the player is punished, but not immediately killed.

You really need to fix up some of the wall shading; walls don't just end, the shading needs to go on for as far as the player can see.

Spindashing right next to a monitor does nothing.

Act 3 has some glaringly obvious GHZ leftovers.

I like the bosses music port.

OMG FINALLY A GHZ BOSS WITH SOME ORIGINALLITY! Okay, there's been a few other recent examples of this, but I'm glad to see it. The boss is challenging, and still of course the same boss, but the lack of platforms and speeding up of the ball makes it a nice fun challenge. Good job!

DANGEROUS PIT ZONE:

Act 1 starts with a disfunctional water flow pathway. These look and feel really bad and ugly without the water flow effect. If you can't edit how the water flows work, your best off removing them.

That's as far as aI got before quiting. It's got a lot of potential, but it needs a lot of work before I could consider playing it through. I'll keep an eye out for future releases...

 

I didn't see any problems with character select. Maybe you used glitchy emulator?
If you press C, you will hear jumping sound, if you will press B you will hear rolling sound.

 

I used Regen, often used by many as a testing emulator, as it is more accurate then Fusion in several ways, the most important of which being its' ability to emulate a common problem with hacks; writing word or longword values to odd numbered addresses. I think that might be the issue here. I wouldn't be surprised if the same issue occurred on an actual genesis.

 

Ok, I will try to fix it.

 

If your hack doesn't run on Regen, then it is typically a problem with your code, not the emulator. Please don't ask people to use specific emulators just to play your hack, unless there is a specific reason (such as Sonic VR, and it's audio).

That being said, I attempted to download this hack from your mediafire link, and was hit with a very aggressive pop-up, that bypassed my security settings (before I had even clicked a potential download link). Everything is OK now, and I know this is not your fault, but I am not willing to try again. Sorry.

 

Pressing B on title screen produces an address error on hardware. Outputs are the program counter location of $322E and an access location of $FFFFFF8B. Looks like an odd address access, probably using a word or longword. The error is most likely the instruction there or an instruction before that. Pressing B again shortly after the error can continue the program and play the sound. Amusing error handling, but it seriously needs to be fixed. Tested this on my Nomad, and I am sure that my main setup and mod setups will output the same results.

 

Here is new version!

Features:

-Mighty can do jumpdash (B+B)

-Aberdeen land's foreground art is changed.

-Mechanograd's pallet and foreground art are changed.

-Genocide city is renamed to to Infernopolis, has new background and its music is changed.

-Walking/running sprites of Sonic and Mighty are fixed.

-Underwater palletes in Dangerous pit and Hydrostation act 3 are changed

-Character select bug which lead to game crush is fixed.

-Some changes in level desigh.

-Level order is changed.

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/c0whep4bdf9kv2o/Sonic+Chaos+Quest+v0.50.bin