Sonic 3 & Knuckles "newgame+ ring-attack" by Evil_3D, TheYogWog & kaan55



Sonic point of view encode

Tails point of view encode

Camhack + Rings locations encode


Introduction

The thing about ring attack TASes is, in a traditional TAS, the idea is to go from beginning to end of a level or game as quickly as possible - but, in a ring attack, it is to go from one ring or set of rings to the next, in such a way that results in the overall level or game completion with the most rings in the shortest time.
Hopefully that gives some perspective on the extraordinary amount of work that ring attack TASes require.
And not to diminish other forms of TASes, which already in their own right require tremendous effort and expertise. It was in fact one such TAS - a traditional Sonic TAS, by SprintGod - which caught my eye in 2012. This was my introduction to TASes as a thing, and it blew my mind and inspired me to get into the TASing scene.
Around that time, new discoveries by the likes of MarzoJr, Nitsuja, Aglar, and others, of game-breaking bugs were resulting in Sonic 3 & Knuckles TASes that were faster and more impressive than ever before. However, there was a growing concensus within the community that such runs, for all their glory, deprived the viewer of the kind of intensive gameplay that makes TASes so attractive in the first place - for which Sonic games of old are ideal, by their fast-paced nature.
Yet, there seemed to be no solution to this dilemma given TASvideos' rightfully strict guidelines governing submissions. And yet again, in spite of this, in 2013 I began work on my own personal vision of what that solution could look like. And hence in 2014 I submitted my Knuckles ring attack TAS of S3K. It was well-received, luckily, and I said then that I hoped that one day a TAS just exactly like this one might eventually emerge.
And now it has.
And it's all thanks to the enterprising Evil_3D, who founded the project, and his inventive co-author Kaan55, who joined some time later, after offering several new strategies to get even more rings; whereas my own participation was primarily planning-related.
I would like to think that my TAS had the same impact on Evil_3D and Kaan55 as SprintGod's had on me. It was a pleasure working with them and getting to know them, albeit in the limited capacity that I did.
And I give them credit for staying true to my original vision of what a ring attack TAS could, and I daresay, should, be. (Could or should be, at least, for now... I can't deny that it would be fun to see Super or Hyper characters zooming around, collecting rings someday, now that this current milestone has been reached.)
I hope that you the viewer, find as much enjoyment as I do in watching this run, and as I and others on the forums did, in watching its development.

-The Yogwog


Emulator and Tools used

  • This movie starts from a savestate: Gens-11b Savestate to replay this movie (You can use marzojr & aglar newgame+ savestates too, both works)
  • Gens Re-Recording 11b + Camera hack + Solidity and Terrain dysplay
  • Sonic TAS tools
  • Rings locations script by Selicre
  • Rings unloaded notifier script by WST
  • Sonic Zone 0: This site contains very useful informations about classic Sonic games, it was used as the main fount of information of the levels and did the route planning process less tedious.

Movie objectives

  • Aims for fastest in-game time
  • Collects every possible rings, monitor rings and giant rings
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses deaths to save time (all of them by Tails, poor foxy)
  • Abuses programming errors and glitches
  • Manipulates luck and enemy positions
  • Uses 2 Players
  • Starts from a savestate
  • Contains speed entertaiment/trade-offs
  • Disallow hyper transformation
    • This is for make the gameplay more natural, show an never seen before use of the elemental shields and less nocive for the audience, seeing the levels has 2~5 mins of duration the abuse of hyper flash can really damage people suseptible to seizures, and the invulnerability music can ruins the levels atmosphere (and can make you sick, really)

Timetable

LevelIG-TimeNormal RingsMonitor RingsGiant RingsTotalTASed by
Angel Island ACT 11:36'0717370/7100/2343Evil_3D
Angel Island ACT 24:13'2019540/4100/2335kaan55
Hydrocity ACT 12:24'57440140/14100/2680Evil_3D, kaan55
Hydrocity ACT 22:24'0225990/9100/2449kaan55
Marble Garden ACT 13:15'42506130/13400/81036Evil_3D, kaan55
Marble Garden ACT 23:37'1135390/9150/3593kaan55
Carnival Night ACT 12:44'03312260/26300/6872kaan55
Carnival Night ACT 23:13'12261270/27250/5781Evil_3D
Ice Cap ACT 12:18'4718930/3100/2319Evil_3D, kaan55
Ice Cap ACT 22:57'4146250/5150/3662kaan55
Launch Base ACT 13:35'35294150/15150/3594Evil_3D
Launch Base ACT 24:19'27409160/16250/5819kaan55
Mushroom Hill ACT 12:26'27360110/11250/5720kaan55
Mushroom Hill ACT 22:12'3733880/8300/6718kaan55
Flying Battery ACT 12:46'5831730/3100/2447Evil_3D
Flying Battery ACT 22:48'4226020/2100/2380kaan55
Sandopolis ACT 15:10'17383220/22350/7953Evil_3D, kaan55
Sandopolis ACT 22:36'4428480/8200/4564kaan55
Lava Reef ACT 13:01'23331170/17150/3651Evil_3D
Lava Reef ACT 2 + Boss Zone4:48'0733360/6250/5643kaan55, Evil_3D
Hidden Palace Zone0:33'183340/4073Evil_3D
Sky Sanctuary Zone1:51'2917980/80259Evil_3D
Death Egg ACT 12:25'5227890/90368Evil_3D, kaan55
Death Egg ACT 23:18'39198120/120318kaan55, Evil_3D
Doomsday Zone1:35'2219400194Evil_3D
Total1:11:49'5973412580/2583850/7713771kaan_3D, Evil55
  • Ice Cap 2 time is 0:55'15 "igt" + 7346 real time frames. We calculated the in-game time from the start of the level to the frame we beat the Act 2 boss like the game normally would've done.
  • Sonic starts Doomsday Zone with 50 rings, if you want to add it to the total rings would be 13821

General info

What rings didn't we get?

  • We collected 13771 out of 13826 total rings in Sonic and Tails history (99.60%). The difference of 55 rings consists of the following:
    • 42 rings on Angel Island 2 Knuckles area. The death boundary made them impossible to collect.
    • 1 mutually exclusive signpost ring monitor (10) on Launch Base 1 Knuckles boss area.
    • 3 rings in Knuckles final boss. (Impossible to access without cheats)
  • There is currently no known ways for Sonic and Tails to get any of these.

How long did this take to make?

  • 21 months, the run suffered a lot of resynching progress and we redo it from scratch most of the levels due to newer glitches and updating the inputs to a more optimized version.

Why the movie starts from a savestate?

  • The movie starts in a savestate with all emeralds/super emeralds to allow the giant rings collection and unlock the final zone, which contains more rings.

Why using 2 Players?

  • We chose Sonic and Tails for the following:
    • Sonic can avoid the hyper transformation using the elemental shields
    • Sonic can use the elemental shields abilities.
    • Sonic/Tails history has more levels and unlock other zones: Lava Reef 2 boss, Hidden Palace, Sky Sanctuary and Death Egg.
    • Sonic has the true final boss fight, Doomsday Zone. (adding more content)
    • Sonic along with Tails can do amazing combos, like carrying Sonic, and Tails can grab rings off-screen as long as Sonic's camera and Tails are in the same position vertically.
    • Tails can save a lot of time collecting out of the way rings, avoiding annoying backtracking.
    • Tails immortality/respawn is essential in some levels for collect more rings, the most notable use of this is Angel Island 2.
    • And of course, there is already an existing movie of Knuckles which this run was inspired by.

Suggested Screenshots

  • Frames: 72959 / 107856 / 170895 / 290534

Level Comments

Shield symbols under the level name represents the shield(s) used in the level

Angel Island ACT 1

Frame 1200/0:00'00 : The level starts with generating Tails and carrying Sonic when I still do not have control, and I keep Knuckles on the screen as long as possible to prevent the in-game time from starting earlier.
Frame 1960/0:04'00 : You can see that the monitors screens are glitched, but here I collected a ring monitor and speedshoes, the speedshoes are useful to travel the level more faster until the first giant ring.
Frame 2480/0:12'40 : Tails grab 3 rings off screen, at frame 2560/0:14'00 : you can see him grabbing 3 floating ring on the left side.
Frame 2760/0:17'20 : Tails grab a group of 7 floating rings.
Frame 2850/0:18'50 : This is a ring monitor.
Frame 3520/0:30'00 : Using the loop zip and using Tails to grab the 3 ring on the tiny lake this saves a lot of time.
Frame 3875/0:35'55 : This secret room has 3 monitors, 2 rings and 1 invulnerability.
Frame 4125/0:40'05 : This new loop zip was discovered by WST which allows me to skip having to run around in the hollow tree, and thanks to Tails we're also able to grab the 5 rings on the right while doing the zip.
Frame 5168/0:57'00 : Tails supports Sonic breaking this platform so that Sonic falls directly down and proceeds to the next giant ring room, same situation on frame 5673/1:05'13.
Frame 5475/1:02'05 : In the upper right part of the screen you can see Tails picking up a group of 3 rings.
Frame 6155/1:13'12 to 7163/1:29'42 : Here is where the lightning shield comes into action, this part normally without this shield would be very tedious to do since the rings are in very uniform positions, but thanks to his ability to attract this section is easily overcome.
Frame 6957/1:26'17 : Tails grabs 2 rings above Sonic and then the last group of 3 at frame 7165/1:29'43.
Frame 7393/1:33'29 : The boss receive perfect frame hits without the need of the insta-shield.

Angel Island ACT 2

Frame 8995/0:02'36 : By jumping at the right spot Tails is able to clip through the ground using the breakable rock. This allows him to go into Knuckles' area to grab some rings. This was also done in a few more areas.
Frame 9088/0:04'09 : For some reason the Act transition raises the death boundary a little which prevents Tails from being able to grab the rings in Knuckles' area. I have to go past a certain point to lower it back down. I purposefully get stopped as soon as I can in order to get sent back quickly.

Hydrocity ACT 1

This level is relatively played normal, however the most important things here to explain are Tails ring grabs.
Frame 25645/0:03'40 : Tails collects 10 floating rings off-screen here.
Frame 26273/0:14'08 : Tails takes the lower path to collect the ramp and loop rings
Frame 26719/0:21'34 : This lightning shield is needed for grab a 6 rings group at Frame 26979/0:25'54, then Tails grab them at Frame 27079/0:27'34 to prevent them from disappearing
Frame 26775/0:22'30 : Tails grab 3 rings down here, then he grab another 3 at Frame 27045/0:27'00
Frame 27405/0:33'00 to Frame 27646/0:37'00 : This section requires a very tight coordination between both characters, the image below is pretty self explanatory about what happen here
Frame 28535/0:51'50 to Frame 29473/1:07'27 : Same explanation as above, the image shows whats happen
Frame 30054/1:16'37 : This lightning shield is needed to grab the secret rings cloud at Frame 30477/1:23'40
Frame 30106/1:17'29 : Tails grab the loop rings and another 3 off-screen at Frame 30291/1:20'34
Frame 31166/1:33'39 : Tails grab 2 rings off-screen here, then he kill the badniks at Frame 31502/1:39'15 - 31609/1:40'59 to break the bridges quicky here
Frame 32840/2:01'29 : Tails grab 4 rings above this loop, the rest of the level is played normally
Frame 34046/2:21'10 : The boss received perfect frame hits with bubble shield bounces meanwhile Tails carries Sonic off-screen, you can appreciate this watching the camhack/Tails encode
Frame 34846/end level : This bubble bounce is for delay the score table a bit to get a perfect objects sync on HCZ 2, without this trick we'll lost an unnecessary amount of in-game time

...In progress...

Special Thanks to

  • TheYogWog: For his Knuckles ring-attack and his S + T 2015 test runs that made me interested in this project
  • marzojr: For his help and technical knowledge about this game
  • WST: For providing useful .lua scripts, the artwork and sharing the new AIZ1 zip
  • Selicre: For providing useful .lua scripts and develop the Atlas encode
  • DMTM: For sharing the first half of the new MHZ 2 boss strat
  • SID': For the amazing artwork!
  • Everyone who followed the project from its roots via forum thread/youtube and observing its growth and offering his support in these 2 years, I want to say thank you.

Submission text is still on development, be patient.

Otherwise we'll crush you with all the rings collected in the run

feos: Let's get crushed with the rings and judge this.
feos: Setting to delayed as we hope that the atlas workflow is done first, so everyone could enjoy the hell out of this movie when it's published.
feos: We're back on track.
feos: The ring has been attacked, the game+ has been newed, the submission text has been in development, and I have watched both the atlas and the Tails camhack encodes to pretend I understand what's going on. The movie is indeed remarkable, and presence of Tails makes it rather crazy in some places, also the whole thing quite boldly stands out from existing runs... of the whole series I should say. The audience fully agreed, accepting to Moons, will watch the rating regarding starring.
Dacicus: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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Experienced player (914)
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This is one of the best TASes I've seen to date - I think it's Stars worthy.
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I'm not going to spoil anything, I'm just going to say that everyone needs to watch this. Congratulations on a monumental achievement!
WST
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Easy Yes from me of course :)
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
upthorn
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Posts: 1802
Finally found the time to watch this incredibly ambitious run. Amazing performance. This is the first new Sonic TAS in years that I've actually enjoyed watching.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Skilled player (1456)
Joined: 11/26/2011
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Location: RU
Every individual minute of this TAS contain crazy amount of entertainment actions. And we can enjoy almost 1,5 hours of such madness!!! This TAS is absolutely incredible. True masterpiece.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
Zakatos
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Lava Reef 2: "Bah, I'm sick of this damn rings, gonna reach Eggman straight at once." ..."just kidding, fellas."
The eyes of a machine are wonderful, but there's nothing like the the eyes of the heart – Old Cid, Cybercop
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Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam
What's with all the backtracking in Angel Island 2? I'm sure there's a reason but would like more info on that :)
Lil_Gecko
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Radiant wrote:
What's with all the backtracking in Angel Island 2? I'm sure there's a reason but would like more info on that :)
If you look at the Tails POV Encode, he collects some rings everytime before getting sent back to Sonic. I think that's the part you mean, even though I have no knowledge about this game.
JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
The Angel Island 2 backtracking is to set up many trips for Tails to zoom through the floor with some version of the slope glitch (I think) to collect rings one-by-one in Knuckles' section near the stage's death barrier (i.e. the horizontal line that the game interprets as "you fell into a pit and died"). The death barrier is higher than it would be when actually playing through as Knuckles, so Sonic can't go down there himself without dying, and most rings are close enough to the death barrier that Tails has to simultaneously collect one while dying, so many trips are necessary. (Some rings here are so far below the death barrier that even Tails can't reach them.) This early-stages atlas encode of the act may help shed some light on it, too: Link to video
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Zakatos
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Location: Brazil, Sao Paulo, Campinas
Obvious yes vote, by the way. No need to argue. :) I wonder how Doomsday Zone was planned? Is it possible to indefinitely grow your ring counter by collecting more rings than they run out, I guess? But that would mean never finishing the game, since all rings respawn, and 999 isn't the real limit (as seen in Marble Garden 1), so the second phase of the zone had the primary and secondary aims swapped (time over rings) while still collecting the higher possible amount, is that so?
The eyes of a machine are wonderful, but there's nothing like the the eyes of the heart – Old Cid, Cybercop
Zakatos
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Joined: 7/26/2004
Posts: 90
Location: Brazil, Sao Paulo, Campinas
Lil_Gecko wrote:
If you look at the Tails POV Encode, he collects some rings everytime before getting sent back to Sonic. I think that's the part you mean, even though I have no knowledge about this game.
I thought it would be the case, since the ring counter increases little by little at this point. I'm watching the encode by Tails' focusing now. Too bad the modification has so much abrupt screen changing, it pesters my sight. Nonetheless it would be nice if we had an encode showing both points of view, possibly with Tails' screen flattened on the right bottom of main screen.
The eyes of a machine are wonderful, but there's nothing like the the eyes of the heart – Old Cid, Cybercop
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Zakatos wrote:
Obvious yes vote, by the way. No need to argue. :) I wonder how Doomsday Zone was planned? Is it possible to indefinitely grow your ring counter by collecting more rings than they run out, I guess?
Correct, the last phase of the final boss has a infinite-loop path and the rings gets restart and restar and never ends. But in general doomsday zone has 194 normal rings to collect during the level, if you check the "camhack + ring locations encode" you can see that the rings respawn just before the final hit. But we won't collected these rings because these was duplicated and we don't want to collect rings until reach the timelimit.
Zakatos wrote:
Nonetheless it would be nice if we had an encode showing both points of view, possibly with Tails' screen flattened on the right bottom of main screen.
Selicre is working on an Atlas encode of this movie that will fix this little issue, but it will take a while, but we going to post it here when it gets available.
You can see more TASes on my youtube channel
Zakatos
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Evil_3D wrote:
Correct, the last phase of the final boss has a infinite-loop path and the rings gets restart and restar and never ends. But in general doomsday zone has 194 normal rings to collect during the level, if you check the "camhack + ring locations encode" you can see that the rings respawn just before the final hit. But we won't collected these rings because these was duplicated and we don't want to collect rings until reach the timelimit.
So there was no need to change the aim priority for that level, since you defined as "collected" the written objects of the memory game. Great choice, with no inconsistency criteria.
The eyes of a machine are wonderful, but there's nothing like the the eyes of the heart – Old Cid, Cybercop
BigBoct
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Can't wait for the completion of the submission text. In the meantime, have the easiest Yes vote in the history of TASVideos. This movie shouldn't just be a Star, it should be a Quasar.
Previous Name: boct1584
GamesFan2000
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We're not even one month into 2019 and we already have our second TAS of the year contender! Not only was this entertaining and an excellent follow-up to the Knuckles ring-attack, it's one of those rare classic Sonic TASes that does stay true to the spirit of the games, that being the exploration of the stages. I'm also amazed at the fact that 99.6% of the rings in the entire game wound up in Sonic's wallet, and the only ones that didn't were mutually exclusive to Knuckles. The only step left would be to mix the ring-attack with the 100% category for a sort of "Max%" run, starting from a new save and getting all of the emeralds in addition to all of the rings, but that might be too arbitrary. This run gets a definite yes vote from me.
GamesFan2000
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boct1584 wrote:
Can't wait for the completion of the submission text. In the meantime, have the easiest Yes vote in the history of TASVideos. This movie shouldn't just be a Star, it should be a Quasar.
I couldn't have said it better myself. If I had set up my account before the Mario Kart 64 TAS was submitted, I might've said something similar to this.
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Easy yes vote from me. Rare case when I vote yes without even watching :D
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JXQ wrote:
The Angel Island 2 backtracking is to set up many trips for Tails to zoom through the floor with some version of the slope glitch (I think) to collect rings one-by-one in Knuckles' section near the stage's death barrier (i.e. the horizontal line that the game interprets as "you fell into a pit and died"). The death barrier is higher than it would be when actually playing through as Knuckles, so Sonic can't go down there himself without dying, and most rings are close enough to the death barrier that Tails has to simultaneously collect one while dying, so many trips are necessary. (Some rings here are so far below the death barrier that even Tails can't reach them.)
Voting yes based on this explanation.
Joined: 6/6/2004
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The objectives say "Disallow hyper transformation" under the guise of making the gameplay more natural, but besides the unavoidable extra boss, you use it anyway at the end of Lava Reef 1 and, in the ultimate taunt to your metallic lookalike, Sky Sanctuary as well. Rather, I believe there's an unspoken subtext here, one that's *gasp* financially motivated: staying in hyper form makes you lose rings, of course, and it's simply that in these cases you can end the level within 1 second so the rings never start getting deducted. Someone clearly ought to launch an SEC investigation to find out if this trail of clues into a potential money-laundering operation and cover-up leads any deeper.
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oh, uh.. yeah, I don't considered this last reason relevant because it would come into conflict with DDZ. Apart from that, people asked me for doing some "1 second transformations" in some boss battles for entertaiment (this can be subjetive nevertheless). But if you want to know now, the transformation in Lava Reef 1 saved a couple of frames avoiding Sonic getting damaged. Edit: I would like to ask the judges who want to take this run in their hands to wait for us to finish the level comments, this will be useful to understand what is happening (if you're not familiarise with the game)
You can see more TASes on my youtube channel
Techokami
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Still watching this, but if you want to watch both the main and the Tails POV encodes side-by-side, you can use this: https://viewsync.net/watch?v=YvtI4gFMwlo&t=0&v=vU6J2e--hhg&t=0
Taralyn
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HECK I still have no idea what the heck I'm looking at, even seeing the Sonic AND Tails encodes, but that's only because my brain exploded halfway through Hydrocity 1. All of my Yes vote.
GJTASer2018
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Evil_3D wrote:
I would like to ask the judges who want to take this run in their hands to wait for us to finish the level comments, this will be useful to understand what is happening (if you're not familiarise with the game)
Ummm... this isn't going to take like 3 months is it? Even though I'm sure it's a slam-dunk judgement, why keep everyone waiting that long for it?
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
GoddessMaria
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GJTASer2018 wrote:
Evil_3D wrote:
I would like to ask the judges who want to take this run in their hands to wait for us to finish the level comments, this will be useful to understand what is happening (if you're not familiarise with the game)
Ummm... this isn't going to take like 3 months is it? Even though I'm sure it's a slam-dunk judgement, why keep everyone waiting that long for it?
Does this really matter? If an author(s) want the submission to be more complete by having it delayed for the sake of adding all the notes for anyone unfamiliar, I don't see the problem in waiting.
Current projects: failing at life