There are time attacks about maxing the score in Tetris and Tetris Attack. What about some time attacks to get most rings in Sonic games?
In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, I could get (and finish the zone) with more than 800 rings (no speedrunning, playing at real console or at emulator). This is easier to do at Marble Garden Zone, which has lots of rings, plus lots of big rings (once you got all emeralds, each one gives you 50 rings).
In S3&K, it will be very easy to get tons of rings, by entering that "glowing balls" special stage. Due to some bug in programming, every time you grab a ring ball/item, you receive more and more rings. If someone could manipulate luck to get only ring items in that stage, that would be awesome, and would easily get more than 500 or 1000 rings. (I would like to see that...) I don't know how many rings can the HUD display.
It would be also possible to enter that casino special stage and manipulate luck there, to get only jackpots (150 rings each). Of course, a lot more boring and less-action than previous special stage.
I probably can also be done in S&K.
In Sonic 3, it will be harder, since we don't have these stages.
In Sonic 1 and 2, we can't get more rings than those available on level. (although all-rings speedrun could be interesting)
However, as I read in another thread, in S2&K you don't lose rings after returning from special stage. This would allow someone to grab lots of rings, enter a special stage, return from it and grab more rings (if all ring objects are respawned when returning, like it happens with S2).
For other Sonic games, I don't know, since I don't play them. But could also be a good idea.
Joined: 8/8/2005
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Bah, using S3&K's bonus stages wouldn't make it any fun to watch at all...
The HUD can only display 999 without going into Debug mode - I've achieved this on Marble Garden 1 with Sonic.
The only game where this would be useful is Sonic 2, which gives you Perfect bonuses at the end of each level. There are a few levels which you can't get Perfect on though (Aquatic Ruin 2, Mystic Cave 2, Oil Ocean 2, and all acts of Metropolis).
Come to think of it, Metropolis 3 might be possible after all - only one way to find out.
Yeah...once, many years ago, thanks to the glowing ball bonus stage, I beat Sandopolis 2 with 800 rings, despite having been hyper for most of the level. Fun times... XD
The high-value ring gumballs are a bug? o_O Interesting...I always thought they'd intentionally programmed them to be worth more as you went higher up in the bonus stage...
I tried this with one level of Sonic 3D Blast once, with the help of savestates.
Got all the rings in Green Grove 1, gave them all to Tails and went to a special stage, got all the rings in the special stage, got all the rings in GG1 again, gave them all to Knux this time and went to his special stage, got all the rings in that special stage as well, then got all the rings in GG1 a third time, and exited.
78000 points' worth of rings at the level's end, despite a time bonus of 0 for "Too Long". LOL =P
Well, I don't know if that's a bug or not. The "normal" behavior of ring item is to give you 10 rings. If it gives you more, I feel like it is a bug.
/me digs up the S&K manual...
Well, the manual says nothing about items in special stages. (I guess Sonic 3 manual says something, but I won't get it now) The "bubble gum machine" special stage gives you 10 rings per ring bubble, no matter how hard you are trying to keep it "up". That glowing balls stage is the only one different, so I think it is a bug. It could also be a feature, like you said.
Yeah, nice. :) Sonic 3D blast was strange... Maybe the levels were too complicated and with little speed that they did not impose the 10-minute time limit.
I think it's intentional because sometimes the top three balls are 1ups and sometimes they're an obscene abount of rings (80-100), which is effectively a 1up.
I'm working on a short series of perfect/speed runs in Sonic 2. To keep things interesting, they're not strictly time attack, but rather a hybrid set of rules based around the route for each level. The best levels for rings I think are CP1, CP2, AR1, MC1, and Wing Fortress so I am trying to compile a list of tricks for those maps.
CPZ1 (335 rings in 2:47)http://sonic.tcpmusic.com/content/CPZ_01_Rings.avi (H.264 AVI @ 35MB)
http://sonic.tcpmusic.com/content/cpz1rings.gmv (GENS movie)
AIMS FOR THIS RUN (in order of priority):
- grab all rings
- exploit switching points between ramp/loop layers
- minimize backtracking
- preserve momentum (instead of always using spindash)
- fastest time
I'm on Gentoo Linux, with latest stable mplayer (version 1.0.20060415), and I could not reproduce this video. The sound worked, but it showed "no video". The same with Xine (although it complained about some error).
I'm used to play all other videos from this site, and all of them work nice. This is the only one which does not work. (now I must restart X in 16 bit color to run modified gens under wine to be able to watch the video)
Sorry about that! It appears that mplayer only supports the VSS H.264 codec on Windows. Not to mention the .dll's are not even included in their primary codec pack.
This encode using a different codec should work:
http://sonic.tcpmusic.com/content/CP1.avi
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Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
it seems the thread died because the guys are dead
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Bisqwit wrote:
I hold all the rings records for Sonic 1 on The Sonic Center, here. Some of the levels have interesting tricks to get all the rings (172 on Scrap Brain 2 in particular) but they're perhaps more interesting to someone who's already tried to get them all. For others watching, they might not appreciate how difficult or unusual your techniques were as much as they would for a speedrun. Still, a rings run would probably be interesting to anyone with a reasonable familiarity with Sonic games.
Ditto. Sounds like an interesting "side-quest" to take up for a TAS. But then, I might be the only one of the few that thinks so.
Two questions:
#1. Is there a Perfect Bonus for Sonic 1 as well?
#2. Why isn't it possible to get Perfects on the second acts of AR, MC, OO, and all acts of Metropolis?
I would be interested in a run like this, but not in it's current form. It doesn't seem optimized... :/
I don't think it was meant to be optimized. Actually, I saw that same video posted at TSC, where you're only supposed to submit things that were done without tool assistance...
Anon wrote:
Is there a Perfect Bonus for Sonic 1 as well?
Only Sonic 2 has that bonus. (And S2&K).
Anon wrote:
Why isn't it possible to get Perfects on the second acts of AR, MC, OO, and all acts of Metropolis?
Most likely the level designers placed some rings where Sonic can't reach them. It's conceivable that some of those could be gotten in a TAS despite seeming impossible to reach. It is possible to get all rings in Sky Chase (including 3 that are invisible), but that level has no ending screen with which to award any bonuses.
Considering one of the major reasons the recent all emerald run im Sonic 1 was rejected was due to it being too similar to the run by JXQ, including all rings would likley mean an 100% run would be accepted.
Im guessing the answer is yes, but in Sonic 2 if all rings in a level are collected, but rings are used due to transformation into a super form, is the perfect bonus still awarded?
Considering one of the major reasons the recent all emerald run im Sonic 1 was rejected was due to it being too similar to the run by JXQ, including all rings would likley mean an 100% run would be accepted.
But Sonic 1 is so slow, why even bother doing that?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Im guessing the answer is yes, but in Sonic 2 if all rings in a level are collected, but rings are used due to transformation into a super form, is the perfect bonus still awarded?
The game only checks that all of the "out in the open" rings have been collected. You can skip all of the ring monitors and lose every single ring from taking damage and still get a perfect bonus.