Windy Valley Beta Restoration

Ever since the beta of Windy Valley was found in the AutoDemo, people have been wanting to play it. It doesn't load in the AutoDemo and much of the data is missing (2 camera files are missing, as well as all of the textures). Fortunately the texture lists were there and tons of screenshots, so restoration work has been possible. Here's the latest!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLO-LaytkAg

No release date yet but I'm working as fast as I can on it!

 

Hah, that's awesome! Also, is it just me, or am I seeing similarities towards Red Mountain?

That third section looks really fun to play actually...

 

It's finally done! You can now play the fully restored, polished and refined beta Windy Valley in SADXPC. Alot of love went into making this feel as close to what you would expect from the final game as possible - it is a full restoration, not just a copy and paste.

 

Non-Steam I believe. I've heard people say there's no love for hacking the Steam version.

Excellent work as always. Was the level geometry already present within the game or have you had to create it all yourself just using references from media? Watching that video, I don't know why that level was scrapped in favour of the final Windy Valley. It looks a lot more detailed and fun than what we got stuck with. The Air section always felt like something tacked on because they couldn't be bothered to finish it properly, or due to time. The level design was poor and unimaginative, whereas this restoration looks like a lot of effort was originally put into the zone.

 

^This. When I first saw the Beta re-creation, I seriously wondered why Sonic Team didn't use it for the final build. As it stands, the offical Windy Valley is pretty flat, and boring to traverse, especially as Tails. The beta looks a lot more interesting, and it looks more like it belongs in a Sonic game.

 

Not steam friendly. The safest assumption is that there will never be modding for the steam version.

The level geometry was present in the game, as well as all of the object models. However, the video is very misleading about how complete the level was - I spent a good deal of time adding details and decorations, as well as fixing errors in the original mesh and layouts. There were no cameras to speak of in the second 2 acts, and the third act's object layout was just a skeleton layout - some rings, springs and some wind. That's it.