Why is it that developers didn't remove things like unused sprites and pictures from games? It just seems lazy and a waste of cartridge space.
I'd imagine you can't really do that sort of thing nowadays after the Hot Coffe fiasco.
Altering files has a potentional to break a game near the end of development.
In final crunch mode, you only change/touch what needs to be changed.
If they truly do need the space it will be deleted.
And it shouldn't matter since you need special tools to access the content. Developers shouldn't have to remove something because somebody is going to use an unlicensed device to get to it. That would make as much sense as having a movie's deleted scenes on a DVD have it retroactively re-rated (spoiler: this never happens)
Plus if developers had to waste time deleting unused data we would have never had this found in Halo 2's data:
Why is it that developers didn't remove things like unused sprites and pictures from games? It just seems lazy and a waste of cartridge space.
Because with cartridges it's not a matter of erasing a few files, it's a matter of taking a large image filled with hundreds of sprite pieces and manually painting out the ones you don't need. Oh, you want to actually save space? Now you need to move all the remaining pieces together, then go to the routines that access those and fix them all, because the pieces moved. It's a ridiculous amount of work for something that only hackers will ever access anyway.
Everything I see about Sonic Xtreme makes it look like a really unfun game to actually play. Maybe it's just the fish lens but it just doesn't look fun.
Everything I see about Sonic Xtreme makes it look like a really unfun game to actually play. Maybe it's just the fish lens but it just doesn't look fun.
Well yeah, it was a Sonic game...
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited December 2009
What the hell, did I miss something? What happened TSR?
What the hell, did I miss something? What happened TSR?
The sega yakuza hitmen must be on to him. As for Sonic xtremem it kind of looks like it would have made an awesome Warioware minigame. Like the Mario boss in twisted.
Everything I see about Sonic Xtreme makes it look like a really unfun game to actually play. Maybe it's just the fish lens but it just doesn't look fun.
Yeah, same here. It doesn't seem like you would ever get any real speed in that game.
Basically someone released all of the textures, sprites, etc. that this game had but with no engine to be seen, just a viewer that can analyze the levels.
So hey guys, sorry to Necrobump such an old thread, but I got some news. A while back I posted this theory of mine on another board:
Now don't get me wrong, this is a pretty unfounded theory, but it's one I've always believed - I think Sonic 1 on the Sega master System/Game Gear (hereto referred to as Sonic SMS) was supposed to be a straight port of Sonic 1 Megadrive (hereto referred to as Sonic MD) for a while. What I mean is that, at one point, I think the games were supposed to have the same zones, and that all the levels in Sonic SMS were supposed to be the same as Sonic 1 Genesis. Further more, I believe that Sonic SMS is based off an older version of Sonic MD (I.e. before some things got switched around late in development).
More specifically, I think that Bridge Zone was at one point Marble Zone, Sky Base Zone was at one point Star light Zone, and the Special Stage was at one point Spring Yard Zone.
I base this off a few observations:
First - Bridge Zone contains the Yadorin badnik. We know that this badnik was originally supposed to be in Marble Zone. Similarly, Sky Base Zone contains both Bomb, and the special version of Unidus from Labryinth Zone which does not shoot it's spikes - both enemies from Star Light Zone. Now, the special stage in Sonic SMS doesn't contain any badniks, but Spring Yard Zone in Sonic MD recycles most of it's badniks save for Arma.
Second - The Special Stage in Sonic SMS is largely useless. It exists only to give continues. In Sonic MD, the special stage is there to give you chaos emeralds, but since there are emeralds in the stages in Sonic SMS, it renders the Special Stage unnecessary. Now, the Special Stage contains a lot of unique gimmicks which are similar to Spring Yard Zone - most noticeably the bumpers. These appear only in the special stages in Sonic SMS. My personal belief is that they were originally coded for spring yard zone, and reused later for unknown reasons.
Third - the art of the zones are very similar to existing zones, as are their tropes. Bridge Zone obviously is the most different, but a simple change in the palette makes the zone look a lot like Marble Zone:
Yes, my theory is that the water in Bridge Zone was originally lava. I think it was changed to blue for palette issues (it shares palette with the sky), but if the water is red, you can see it features a lot of the characteristics of Marble Zone. Noticably, they both have the same type of trees in the background, as well as the mountains. Even the clouds look slightly similar IMO. They even have similar gimmicks -there are several times in Sonic MD where you're forced forward (by lava in Act 2, or when you stand on the floating blocks) and the entire act 2 in Sonic SMS is forward scrolling.
Bridge Zone and Marble Zone also share similar objects, such as this platform:
and this weight:
Perhaps more obvious is the similarities between the special stage and spring yard zone:
Obviously the Special Stage features what is largely considered the defining feature of Spring Yard Zone - the bumpers. But at first glance it seems to share little else in common with the final Spring Yard Zone. The background is completely different, especially... until you compare it to sparkling zone:
Suddenly the two zones look remarkably similar, especially the background, which features the same dark shade of blue and sparkling stars.
Lastly, we have Sky Base Zone, which borrows a lot from Star Light Zone's industrial highway motif. First, you'll notice that SLZ's yellow-and-black caution color scheme is copied a lot:
That yellow-on-black design is used quite a bit in both stages. The main pattern in the level - industrial squares with lots of rebarbs sticking out, is also used in both zones:
It's a bit harder to see because of the flashing palette in act 1 of Sky Base Zone, but the structures are incredibly similar. Even random objects in the background are similar, like these glowing lights and cones:
Even the actual floor part of the zone looks familiar, with similar ovals underneath a long, smooth, grey piece:
Now, even though it's included, I've always felt that labyrinth Zone's background in Sonic SMS was similar to Labyrinth Zone's background in the Sonic beta, with lots of black and smoothly blended sections of background:
Fouth - Sonic sings in the ending, and the title screen is black. This is the most obvious similarity, since we know both were a staple of early versions of the game. Magazine scans have shown that early versions of Sonic MD had a title screen similar to Sonic SMS:
and, more interesting, we know that at one point very late in development, Sonic MD had a robust sound test mode featuring a fully animated band. Concept art shows that Sonic was the singer, and we know this was removed extremely late in development to make room for the "sega" soundbyte:
Sonic SMS's ending shows Sonic, fully animated, "singing" the end theme song. I've said many times, I believe this is the last remaining piece of that soundtest mode:
In closing, I see it often said that the SMS and MD versions of Sonic are very different, but I'm inclined to believe otherwise. I know most of this is circumstantial evidence, and not entirely provable, but it's a theory I've held for years. We know the SMS games have had odd connections to other Sonic games in the past (You can do anything being in both Green Hills Zone in Sonic 2 SMS and the theme song for Sonic CD JPN), so maybe this is just another connection. The fact that we know that Zones underwent name changes late in development (sparkling zone->Spring yard zone, Clock(w)ork Zone->Scrap Brain Zone) might be the reason why Bridge Zone and Sky Base Zone are named such. The only real kink in my theory is Jungle Zone, which I can't place. Admittedly, it background seems similar to the final Spring Yard Zone (as does it's platform design) but I'm not willing to bet it has any connection.
tl;dr: Sonic 1 SMS. It's p. cool bro.
Just stating a theory I've always held. Opinions?
Well today I got a message from the dude who releases all the Sonic prototypes telling me that this is likely true and he might be able to provide proof here soon. A little while after he said this, he released this first of a new batch of Sonic protos, a Sonic Spinball proto. Which means he might have a Sonic 1 genesis prototype, which would be huge.
Does the spinball prototype have the illegal use of the Sonic theme?
well it likely would, as there are a few legitimate copies with the Sonic theme, but it's unknown. See, only 65% of the proto is available, with several large gaps, making it unplayable. But some graphics might be extracted, which could be interesting.
Anywho, the guy clarified, and explained we might be getting a Sonic 1 SMS prototype. Which is still really cool.
Anywho, the guy clarified, and explained we might be getting a Sonic 1 SMS prototype. Which is still really cool.
I've been reading about such things, and as I recall the HOLY GRAIL is a Sonic 1 (Genesis) prototype, right?
I was also saw a mention of the SMS and Genesis versions being developed mostly concurrently, so how "pretty cool" is the SMS prototype?
yeah, now that we have everything ever from Sonic Xtreme, the only really huge stuff left is Sonic 1 protos. We have almost the entire build cycle for Sonic 2, Sonic 3, and Knuckles Chaotix, including several super early protos with lots of different stuff. However we have no Sonic 1 protos, only the final version. Every single 2D sonic game was built off of Sonic 1. To finding a non-finished Sonic 1 could show a bunch of shit that was never seen ever again. Also a lot of the code for Sonic 1 features duplicate routines and a bunch of unfinished code. Who knows what an earlier version would yield.
You're right about Sonic 1 for the SMS and Genesis being developed concurrently. The theory is that the two teams likely met early in the project and exchanged ideas and then went separate ways to develop the games, meeting only again at set periods. The SMS/GG game likely had a smaller staff, and a smaller budget, which meant a quicker developed game. Which likely means they stopped meeting with the Genesis team long before the game was done, hence the changes between the two (like Sonic singing in the SMS ending). Sega just sat on the game and waited for the Genesis version to release before releasing the SMS version.
An early SMS proto might show some changes. DRx (the dude who holds the proto) said my theory was likely correct and it'd provide proof, which could mean a version of Sonic 1 SMS with spring yard zone (likely named Sparkling Zone), a Starlight Zone, and a marble zone. Also, we only have a few screenshots of early title cards, and of the few we have, the zones have different names. Scrap Brain Zone was once Clockwork Zone, and Spring Yard Zone was once Sparkling Zone. The SMS proto might tell us beta names of the Sonic 1 zones, and also provide info on how the levels looked early in development.
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I'd imagine you can't really do that sort of thing nowadays after the Hot Coffe fiasco.
Altering files has a potentional to break a game near the end of development.
In final crunch mode, you only change/touch what needs to be changed.
If they truly do need the space it will be deleted.
And it shouldn't matter since you need special tools to access the content. Developers shouldn't have to remove something because somebody is going to use an unlicensed device to get to it. That would make as much sense as having a movie's deleted scenes on a DVD have it retroactively re-rated (spoiler: this never happens)
Plus if developers had to waste time deleting unused data we would have never had this found in Halo 2's data:
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Flood_Juggernaut
I can't wait to try it, specially on Linux.
I never asked for this!
Well yeah, it was a Sonic game...
The sega yakuza hitmen must be on to him. As for Sonic xtremem it kind of looks like it would have made an awesome Warioware minigame. Like the Mario boss in twisted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv_tMqHjWZ0
Check this thread: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=18538
Images:
Basically someone released all of the textures, sprites, etc. that this game had but with no engine to be seen, just a viewer that can analyze the levels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4QVeVXyFMM
Well today I got a message from the dude who releases all the Sonic prototypes telling me that this is likely true and he might be able to provide proof here soon. A little while after he said this, he released this first of a new batch of Sonic protos, a Sonic Spinball proto. Which means he might have a Sonic 1 genesis prototype, which would be huge.
We'll see if anything comes out of this...
well it likely would, as there are a few legitimate copies with the Sonic theme, but it's unknown. See, only 65% of the proto is available, with several large gaps, making it unplayable. But some graphics might be extracted, which could be interesting.
Anywho, the guy clarified, and explained we might be getting a Sonic 1 SMS prototype. Which is still really cool.
I've been reading about such things, and as I recall the HOLY GRAIL is a Sonic 1 (Genesis) prototype, right?
I was also saw a mention of the SMS and Genesis versions being developed mostly concurrently, so how "pretty cool" is the SMS prototype?
yeah, now that we have everything ever from Sonic Xtreme, the only really huge stuff left is Sonic 1 protos. We have almost the entire build cycle for Sonic 2, Sonic 3, and Knuckles Chaotix, including several super early protos with lots of different stuff. However we have no Sonic 1 protos, only the final version. Every single 2D sonic game was built off of Sonic 1. To finding a non-finished Sonic 1 could show a bunch of shit that was never seen ever again. Also a lot of the code for Sonic 1 features duplicate routines and a bunch of unfinished code. Who knows what an earlier version would yield.
You're right about Sonic 1 for the SMS and Genesis being developed concurrently. The theory is that the two teams likely met early in the project and exchanged ideas and then went separate ways to develop the games, meeting only again at set periods. The SMS/GG game likely had a smaller staff, and a smaller budget, which meant a quicker developed game. Which likely means they stopped meeting with the Genesis team long before the game was done, hence the changes between the two (like Sonic singing in the SMS ending). Sega just sat on the game and waited for the Genesis version to release before releasing the SMS version.
An early SMS proto might show some changes. DRx (the dude who holds the proto) said my theory was likely correct and it'd provide proof, which could mean a version of Sonic 1 SMS with spring yard zone (likely named Sparkling Zone), a Starlight Zone, and a marble zone. Also, we only have a few screenshots of early title cards, and of the few we have, the zones have different names. Scrap Brain Zone was once Clockwork Zone, and Spring Yard Zone was once Sparkling Zone. The SMS proto might tell us beta names of the Sonic 1 zones, and also provide info on how the levels looked early in development.