Sonic 3 Remastered Prototype Download For Free. The character of Sonic was redesigned for the game by Sonic Team artist. Tails shows up with a remastered.
Several months back, it was revealed that the developers behind the mobile ports of the first two Sonic The Hedgehog games. With solid evidence on show that the third entry in the series would look great on the go, fans have started a campaign to get Sega to take note and make this unfinished port a reality. As it stands, and as far as we know, Sega currently has no plans to release Sonic 3 & Knuckles on mobile devices. The very demo on show from Christian Whitehead (Taxman) and Simon Thomley (Stealth) was purely a proof of concept to demonstrate what could be done using the existing engine, along with several other updates and additions - like that of Hidden Palace Zone in Sonic The Hegehog 2.
The newly launched Sonic 3 Remastered website is hoping to raise awareness of Whitehead and Thomley's efforts, all with the aim of getting Sega's attention. While we very much assume the Japanese developer is aware of the prototype, we're of the belief that we need to make a bit of noise and prove that there is indeed a market for Sonic 3 & Knuckles on Android and iOS. Whether or not this campaign will gain traction is up to us. So if you want the 16-bit classic in your pocket, head on over to the campaign's official website and make yourself heard. Danny Boy Sheet Music Free Key Of D. And the original Taxman video. The first time any part of Sonic 3 was running on Retro Engine was when I converted Angel Island Zone Act 1 using a modified version of SonED2.
I actually ended up converting the zone at least three more times, though, in various attempts to get it to work out with the RSDK in relation to tile storage space and the cutscenes. This also involved a few other hackish modifications to SonED2 to allow me to move a few tiles back and forth between data sets so that everything could be strung together cleanly. This is due to two key differences between the way Retro Engine and the original engine for Sonic 3 work - Firstly, the two are modularized in different ways. While Retro Engine works more similarly to Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 in that one full zone contains a single set of tile data, Sonic 3 breaks things down a step farther. This starts with a “page” system, where the basic 8x8 tile set and the two tile mapping steps, 16x16 and 128x128, are broken into multiple parts. For several zones, Angel Island included, each of these sets are broken down into a primary page that contains data that’s common to both act 1 and act 2, and a unique secondary page that corresponds directly with either act 1 or act 2.
Furthermore, a few levels, again including Angel Island, contain extra tile and mapping data that can be loaded in place of other data that has become unnecessary in response to certain level events. In the case of Angel Island, the various sets include tiles used in the intro sequence, the main act 1 set that overwrites it, tiles loaded for the fire sequence, the main act 2 set, and tiles loaded for the pre-boss bombing sequence. Second, Sonic 3 runs from a cartridge, from which new data can be read almost immediately. Combined with a method of streaming that was implemented to spread the task of decompression over the course of several game frames and thus virtually hide the process if the streamed data is never actually required before loading is complete, this means that Sonic 3 could easily load new graphic data at any time. Retro Engine, however, runs on platforms whose storage doesn’t provide immediate access, such as a Hard drive or an SD Card. This means that there will be a noticeable loading period whenever new data has to be loaded, and thus, anything that needs to be used without there being any load time needs to be combined into a single set of data. Although the limitations for Retro Engine are less strict than was necessary on the Genesis/Mega Drive, some considerations had to be made so that it could run on a wide variety of platforms, and the restrictions that were imposed still weren’t quite enough for this massive level.
For that reason, in the current build, Angel Island Zone is actually split into three parts: • The intro cutscene areas • The part of act 1 before everything is set on fire • The rest of act 1 combined with the entirety of act 2 This is still somewhat similar to the original in that the original level data is split as “act 1” containing everything from the intro scenes through the fire, and “act 2” containing everything after the fire clears. They also share the method of using a special flag to determine when to display “act 1” or “act 2” on the Title Card due to the primary “act” setting controlling which section of the level is loaded. One other difference, though, is that the pre-fire area that the player is locked into just before the Fire Breath miniboss appears is actually duplicated in the “act 2” data in the RSDK version. This means that, while the original game actually uses the fire sequence to mask the loading of the “act 2” data, the RSDK version actually performs the new level load before the scene even begins, and the entire sequence takes place while technically in “act 2”. This allows the fire to come and go, and for gameplay to resume without a noticeable pause.
The problem with doing this is that the load still has to occur at some point, so, it was decided that the best course of action would be to cause a “puppet scene” to occur upon entering the area, where the computer would take control of the player character and move him to a specific place, making him look upward as if he were alerted to something. This way, the load could occur between the player looking up and Fire Breath descending onto the screen, causing only a reasonable delay between the two actions and avoiding freezing the game while anything important was in motion. Angel Island is the only zone that is actually split up in a manner other than a straightforward separation between “act 1” and “act 2”, but unlike with its predecessors, all zones in Sonic 3 “chain” directly from act 1 to act 2 without a black fade; it is made to appear that act 1 and act 2 are part of the same level, and no loading has occurred. This is, of course, untrue, and the load occurs while the character is posing and the score tally is being shown. The load itself is masked by the fact that it is done in the background while animation continues, and the end of the act 1 level is duplicated at the beginning of the act 2 level.
Once the load occurs, the camera and all objects are shifted so that they are at the beginning of the new level, but it appears that they’ve never moved anywhere. For this to work in our version, another difference between Retro Engine and the original game engine had to be overcome. To keep up with active level objects, the original games use what is called a “Sprite Status Table”, which was so-named and patented by Yuji Naka himself. At its most basic, the SST is an area of RAM set aside for holding the data associated with objects that are either within a certain range of the screen, or meant to stay “always active”. Objects are streamed into this region from the object layout data as the screen scrolls across the level, and so not all objects within a level are “active” all at once, and any change in the currently-referenced object layout data doesn’t immediately affect any objects that are already active within the SST.
In the case of Retro Engine, however, the entire object layout is loaded all at once, but in a similar manner, not all objects are processed all of the time, which is still an important factor in performance. This does mean, though, that the loading of a new object layout, such as happens when a new level is loaded, will eradicate any existing active objects. For previous games, this wasn’t an issue since a black fade would occur and all existing objects would become irrelevant anyway, but for act-to-act transitions in Sonic 3 and the Angel Island fire cutscene, Taxman altered the engine to include a backup object area to which important objects could be stored before an act load, and from which they could be read back after loading had finished.
This allows the character and all of his status, the signpost, any hidden monitors that had been exposed, and any other relevant object to be preserved, and to maintain the illusion that it’s all still part of the same level. This object backup area also became important in light of the fact that the level’s object layout state needs to be preserved when the player enters a Bonus Stage or a Special Stage in the middle of a level. The level’s objects are written to the backup area before the Bonus/Special Stage is loaded so that the primary object storage area can be used without destroying them, and they’re reloaded from the backup when the level starts if it has been flagged to do so. In the original game, this is accomplished using an engine feature that is tied heavily to the use of the SST - a “persistence table”. This table actually contains one byte for each of the objects stored in the level’s object layout, seven of whose bits are used individually or in various combinations to flag that the object is in certain states, including having been destroyed, and whose eighth bit is used to flag whether or not the object is already active within the SST. This is because objects that are not meant to be processed at any given time are removed from the SST to save space, and so their states would otherwise be lost.
It is this table that is backed up upon Bonus/Special Stage entry in the original Sonic 3. Special Stage The 3D effect of the globe in the original version of the Sonic 3 Special Stage is achieved primarily through the use of palette animation.
The two-color checkered pattern actually uses 8 palette entries, 4 of which are set to one color and the other 4 another, which are cycled as the player moves forward or backward to create the illusion that the globe is spinning. This means that, during forward and backward motion, the globe graphic that is displayed is never changed; only the colors with which it is drawn are changed. For turning, however, there are seven additional globe frames that are swapped out in sequence, depending on the direction of the turn. The palette animation stops, and is resumed when the turn is complete. The rate at which the colors are cycled is scaled directly with the speed value that is used to control the player’s position within the stage.
At the stage’s initial movement speed, one cycle occurs once for every second game frame, while at its fastest, this occurs once for every game frame. One reason that this particular cycling rate was used is that the Genesis/Mega Drive uses 4bpp graphics, meaning that any one tile is limited to a palette of 16 colors. Because the first entry in each of the four 16-color palettes is always “transparent”, only 15 actual colors may be used, so 8 is the next lowest number that’s well-suited for the math. In the Retro Engine version, the globe works pretty much the same way; it’s drawn as tiles on a background layer and uses a pattern of successive palette indexes to simulate rotation by means of palette animation. Given the wide screen aspect, however, it had to be re-created to account for areas that were previously “hidden” outside of the screen’s edges. Taxman did this using 3DS Max by first creating a 32x32 checkered grid to correspond with the size of a full Special Stage map, and then applying deformations to it until it matched the shape of the original. What do you mean that's not fascinating?
Most Japanese companies have a unique structure, where the subsidiaries tend to be independent. If we target Sega Japan, there's a good chance they'll just pass on it, as Sega Networks were responsible for the past remakes. However, this campaign will run in multiple stages. If Sega Networks don't respond, we'll target Sega Japan in a few months. Also, we are targeting Haruki Satomi, CEO of Sega Networks. He is also director of the main Sega cooperation and so wields a lot of power in all the Sega companies.
Many online campaigns rely on electronic signatures or Tweets. These don't carry much weight among the majority of video game companies, as electronic messages are too easy to send and so lack commitment. We are asking people to send a letter to Japan and include an (optional) cheque.
This requires a lot more effort than an online signature and so is more meaningful. The letter is addressed directly to the CEO of Sega Networks. In Japan, they tend to hold reverence for printed mail.
Even if a secretary opens the letter, they will still pass on the information to the CEO. Hence, our campaign has a excellent chance of making an impact on the powers that can make a decision about releasing the game. The Sonic series has aged very badly. The original games look very shallow today, and it's clear the extent Sega hoped flashy graphic effects would distract us from the fact it made no real advances in gameplay, unlike Mario.
And I haven't noticed anyone getting excited about any of the 3D-era Sonic games whatsoever, unlike the Mario series. There have been a lot of them as well - so you'd have thought they'd have come up with something decent at least once, just by chance. So the series is probably best forgotten about at this point, I can't help but feel. The Sonic series has aged very badly. The original games look very shallow today, and it's clear the extent Sega hoped flashy graphic effects would distract us from the fact it made no real advances in gameplay, unlike Mario.
What more complex aspects of Mario and other platform games would you have liked the Sonic series to have adopted? A control system using more than one button?
Levels based around one specific gimmick? Overworld maps that let you choose which order to tackle the levels? The Sonic series' main innovation in the platform genre was probably the fact its landscapes were curved rather than gridlike, combined with that let its main character travel over those curves smoothly, and let variations in momentum over those slopes affect jump angles. I regard that as a significant change that made the Sonic series feel pretty different from all the pre-1991 platform games that I know of.
(I'm curious to know if anyone can point to any earlier examples of platform games experimenting with that.) However, I can see the argument that this was an innovation that only affected the control system in a flashy way - making the game instantly fun to play, but not adding much long-term replay value. And its true that it doesn't feel like it's adding complexity and puzzle depth, in the same way that things like maze-like maps, gadget-filled inventory systems, or time-rewinding mechanics do. But I don't think that means that the gameplay is shallow: if you're into time attacking, the way that Sonic's motion is so strongly affected by very subtle changes in speed and jump timing results in a huge amount of scope for improvement on even the simplest levels. (I'm aware that this is not something that appeals to everyone.) As for level design: I think the games' level design is good for what I want out of them. There are some examples of impressively intricate design: Sonic 3 & Knuckles' character-specific paths, and Sonic CD's multiple time periods.
The games feature that you might miss, if you're the sort of person for whom going past an an out-of-reach item automatically makes them wonder 'now, how would I be able to get to that?' And, as with speedrunning, there's. It's a shame that the Sonic games don't have many really essential or unique rewards for exploring.
They experimented with different optional ways of rewarding it (Emerald hunting in the 8-bit games, generators and opportunities for time travel in Sonic CD, hidden Big Rings in S3&K), but it wasn't until the spin-off Sonic 3D that exploration was made absolutely essential (and it wasn't much fun). It's also a shame that the series has absolutely no emphasis on puzzles (being really charitable, mmmmaybe you could count the Carnival Night Barrel, that bit with the button and the door in 8-bit Scrap Brain Zone, and the bit where you have to fill a gap with sand so you can push a block across in Knuckles' Sandopolis Act 2). As much as a love Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles in particular, I admit that Sega could have used the Sonic series to support a much wider range of gameplay than they did: you only have to look at fan games like to see how capable the engine was of supporting some really creative and difficult platforming challenge rooms, and Sonic: The One Ring to see how much more emphasis they could have put on exploration in exactly the same level maps. Anne was just trolling, Nick. But thanks for the lengthy explanation I couldn't be arsed typing for the nth time. I could genuinely see those that weren't around 16but era 'not getting it' though, they wouldn't be turned off just by the age of the games or the point/fun of 2D platforming and the perception of Mario having no competition in that regard in the way to make a 2D platformer, but also the modern perception/word of mouth that 'it was always shit'. SEGA not being in the best of states in recent years doesn't spread good thoughts either.
Frankly for a mostly UK forum I tend to be surprised by the lack of hedgehog love. (Not that there's much to love about titles like Boom) Started to figure a lot of the posters are either outside the UK or grew up post-16 bit era. (Probably PS/PS2) The Nintendo comparisons just wouldn't happen. The amount of times explaining the differences/quality of platforming wouldn't happen. Better to be laughed at (and laugh along, sometimes!) but still enjoy what you play/report news on, I guess.
Very rarely does the negativity get to me when it comes to talking about SEGA/Sonic stuff, if it wasn't evident enough already. The reward for exploration is speed btw, you could say. Learning paths ain't all that easy.
Intro Before I start, I’ll first say that I’m speaking as an individual, and not on behalf of any other party, team, business entity, etc. As such, I will speak only for and of myself, without regard to other parties who may want to remain uninvolved With the exception of the from October, I’ve remained relatively silent on the subject of remastering Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Naturally, this is expected of me as someone who has already contracted with SEGA, would be a part of the Sonic 3 remastering project, and would potentially perform work under contract for SEGA again in the future, however, I no longer feel that it’s appropriate to maintain near-complete silence in contrast to my own personal feelings as an individual and as a fan of classic Sonic the Hedgehog Fans and Bringing Back Sonic 3 I’m writing this to openly demonstrate my support for the / initiative. The initiative has been in its infancy since shortly after the October presentation, but appears to finally be gaining traction. I think it’s important to make my own personal position on this clear - I wanted to create the Sonic 3 remaster, I pushed for doing it, I began and participated in developing a prototype for the purpose of pitching the project, the pitch was made, and I’m still just as disappointed as anyone else that it wasn’t picked up.