And so to TAS it properly, much more time would have to be devoted to lag management than to actual gameplay.
And therein lies the issue.
Isn't there a lot of managing lag in Super Mario World as well? That didn't stop anybody.
SMW lags occasionally at the end of levels. For comparison, Sonic Genesis will often lag while Sonic is standing still, and there are no moving objects on screen.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
I don't get it, I thought the original would just be direct port, since they can't have lost the original source code unless Yuji Naka nicked it before he left, since the orginal source code is needed to trade mark the game. I was was expecting the aniversary mode to be like the Sonic Jam version, same thing except it uses the Sonic 2 engine. Anyway I quite liked Nitsjua's Green Hill 3 strat.
Actually, according to Sega, they lost the source code some time after making Sonic Jam.
Which is why Sonic Mega Collection is actually a collection of ROMs using a modified version of Gens which was ported to gamecube and PS2.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
nitsuja wrote:
...
Sonic jumps higher
jumping no longer reduces your speed at all
...
jumping out of a roll leaves you in full control of movement during the jump
you don't stop moving when you land after taking damage
...
if you press in the direction you're already moving while running backwards, you instantly stop
...
you can jump into and out of lava or fire without taking damage
...
Is it just me or does it seems Sonic now has control in the Matrix?
I tried the game. The physics and music made me cry. The only thing I do love about this game is that 1 in-game second seems an eternity.
Wait, no I don't.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
As crummy as this game is, I bet it would be pretty interesting to TAS. There has to be a plethora of new glitches to find now.
Yeah, there are a whole plethora of new glitches, and the physics are interesting, and would be fun to play around with.
But then there's the constant, mind-numbing, lag.
And, because the lag can be reduced, it would have to be managed.
And so to TAS it properly, much more time would have to be devoted to lag management than to actual gameplay.
And therein lies the issue.
So, someone in S2Beta, a Sonic hacking community forum, ported most of the changed physics back to the Genesis Sonic 1 game engine.
This results in a game that plays like Sonic: Genesis, but without the constant lag.
I'm thinking about doing a TAS of that.
Here is a list of what has been ported from S1 GBA
Spindash which gives a constant speed, regardless of revs (accurate to S1GBA)
Momentum preservation when jumping past obstacles
Holding the jump button lowers gravity, instead of your speed being capped when it's released
speed shoes double acceleration, but don't affect max speed
Sonic jumps higher
jumping no longer reduces your speed at all
jumping out of a roll leaves you in full control of movement during the jump
you don't stop moving when you land after taking damage
damage always knocks in the direction you're not facing
you can't bounce high off of item monitors or enemies
bosses don't reverse your speed when you hit them, instead it matters where you hit them
bosses push you away when you hit them even if they're still invincible
Sonic won't brake when movng backward
if you press in the direction you're already moving while running backwards, you instantly stop
in general, when moving at a high speed, the only effective way to slow down is to press forward (the direction you're running)
Extra time bonus bracket
ability to skip score tabulation at the end of levels
Things which have not been ported:
Slope not affecting jump height much
Being able to land on lava or fire and jump the same frame to avoid damage
Zipping not working
inability to push blocks while in air
inability to pass through landscape corners when jumping
inability to jump on same frame as releasing spindash
Constant lag
Bad music
Bad sound effects
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Seriously, I don't understand why they had to screw up this game. It's like they only did it because they felt like they should change it somehow to make it different.
upthorns genesis TAS was still quite interesting though. funny glitch after beating the first robotnic :)
Seriously, I don't understand why they had to screw up this game. It's like they only did it because they felt like they should change it somehow to make it different.
upthorns genesis TAS was still quite interesting though. funny glitch after beating the first robotnic :)
Sonic Team lost the source code for Sonic 1 a while after Sonic Jam came out.
Losing the source code is still no excuse. Any hacker worth their salt would be able to disassemble the ROM, figure out the programming, and then port the Genesis ASM instructions to GBA ASM. In a week.
I'm not sure I understand why anyone would want to play (or TAS) a bad hack of a bad conversion of what was once an okay game.
Because these are Sonic fans we're talking about. Anything Sega does is the One Truth, and any deviations from is are regarded as heresy. Except when Sega does it, then it becomes the new truth and these people retcon everything that deviates from it accordingly.
Losing the source code is still no excuse. Any hacker worth their salt would be able to disassemble the ROM, figure out the programming, and then port the Genesis ASM instructions to GBA ASM. In a week.
If you've ever played Phantasy Star Online on the US servers, you'd know how incredibly lazy Sonic Team is. (Didn't even get half the crap the JP players got on Blue Burst)
I'm not sure I understand why anyone would want to play (or TAS) a bad hack of a bad conversion of what was once an okay game.
Because these are Sonic fans we're talking about. Anything Sega does is the One Truth, and any deviations from is are regarded as heresy. Except when Sega does it, then it becomes the new truth and these people retcon everything that deviates from it accordingly.
Are you referring to all Sonic fans, or just the ones that fap to every new Sonic title just because the Blue Blur is in yet another game with (decreasingly) horrible physics and level design bad enough to make whiny emo kids everywhere slit their wrists?
I'm a Sonic fan as well, but I don't take in everything that Sega craps out and treasures it like it's gold. Some of us actually want good games, not the half-assed pieces of shit that we've been getting since 2004. (And this is excluding Advance 1 & 3, mind you.) Hell, if I could, I would burn every copy that of Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog — the latter not because I've played, but the plot alone is horrendous enough to warrant it.
Oh, and because of "All Hail Shadow".
Macman wrote:
If you've ever played Phantasy Star Online on the US servers, you'd know how incredibly lazy Sonic Team is.
Of course Sonic Team is lazy. Why do you think Sonic 3 got split into two games? :V
Hell, if I could, I would burn every copy that of Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog — the latter not because I've played, but the plot alone is horrendous enough to warrant it.
Actually, Sonic Heroes was rated consistently good across the gaming websites, from 6.9 to 8.0 about (compare to Shadow the Hedgehog in the 4 to 5 range). Furthermore, all three console versions ended up on the best seller discount lists for their respective consoles.
Why, oh, why do I even <i>try</i> to understand my own species?
Say what you will about Heroes' ratings, it still sucked. I actually played that one — not exactly a full night's rental, but more than enough to wash away all the high hopes I had about the game.
Shadow the Hedgehog also got best seller status. What does that tell you about it?
I own Heroes, and I've been trying to get all the A ranks I lost from a corrupt save file (long story)
Playing through again, if there was just a way to turn off certain sets of voice overs this game wouldn't be so bad. (Dammit I'm at the end of the game already, I KNOW who to use here!)
Haha. Yeah, seems that Sega has the annoying tendency to want to hold your hand throughout the entire game now. At least with Omachao you could opt to blow him up and have him whine at you — or if that failed, pick him up and throw him off a cliff. :D
But I disgress. Back to the horrendousness that his Sonic Genesis!
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
RM_Trev wrote:
Losing the source code is still no excuse. Any hacker worth their salt would be able to disassemble the ROM, figure out the programming, and then port the Genesis ASM instructions to GBA ASM. In a week.
No, ASM doesn't work that way. ASM is 1-to-1 with machine code. You could translate generic memory access, sure; but none of the graphics, sound, input, or hardware interrupt related instructions will be even remotely translatable. The sound chips on the Genesis and GBA have entirely different abilities. Even if translating the instructions were possible you'd have to translate the sound data too. The Genesis outputs to 320x224 and the GBA has a resolution of 240x160. Good luck with the graphics instructions. I don't think the sprite loading/blit code is at all similar. You'd have to rewrite both that and the background layer stuff.
----
But even if Sonic Team didn't lose the source then they'd still have a hard job porting this game to the GBA. The physics were probably tweaked for the game's resolution. For example, a well designed side-scrolling platformer should probably have a character who is 1/6th of the screen height who can move horizontally at the rate of maybe 1 screen per 3 seconds. (Sonic and Mario both agree!) However, Sonic has a much higher top speed and acceleration than Mario and Sonic's levels incorporate the y-axis alot more. (Compared to SMB3.) I think Sonic can sprint at 1 screen per second once he gets going! If I'm right then Sonic's top speed would have to change from 320 pixels/s to 240 p/s. But if that change is made then the enemies have to change and certain levels might need to change unless every level is scaled 75% horizonally as well. So one way you have broken physics that don't look right on a GBA screen and the other way you have a complete rewrite.
Didn't the Sonic Advance series not suck? Why couldn't they have designed some levels for the Sonic Advance engine that were screen-by-screen replicas of the original StH? It wouldn't have been a perfect recreation of the orignal StH but it would've been playable and lag free.
Well of course you'd have to understand the hardware of both the Genesis and GBA, that goes without saying. I was referring to the program's logic anyway since if the game has that much lag there has to be some unnecessary processes in the programming.
And as for the problem with the screen sizes, just scale down the graphics. It would be a pretty good idea anyway since to have such large sprites on a small screen in a sonic game the player would have an extremely small amount of time to react to things.
Actually, that game should make an epic TAS. It's so badly programmed so sometimes it can be very speedy. I have the WR on Green Hill Zone Act 1
Link to video
You think I should make a real full TAS?
Current:
Rayman 3 maybe? idk xD
Paused:
N64 Rayman 2 (with Funnyhair)
GBA SMA 4 : E Reader (With TehSeven)
TASVideos is like a quicksand, you get in, but you cannot quit the sand
