[yse]

So SM, Upthorn and I were discussing various features on Gens after it was found out that Gens+ isn't all its cracked up to be. Naturally, it moved from there to Sonic, onto SM's long standing idea of a Air-style hack of Sonic 3 and Knuckles. (Air = hack of SMB that was designed to be impossibly hard without knowing every little glitch and how to get it to work.)

Basically, your ideas are required! As there will inevitably be a LOT of traps around the place, ideally with only one very specific way of getting past, and a lot of levels, god forbid we might run out of our own ideas. Here's the basis:

* Emeralds work as in S3&K - 7 Chaos, 7 Super. But just to make things fun, there's only seven Large Rings in each "set" of the game. On each of which it is impossible to obtain perfect - except one. This gives you a much-needed life (explained later)
* You start with one life. The game is engineered such that you have no means of getting a life, except via the aforementioned special stage. You then have to lose this life at some stage due to a time over. [It'll be an autoscroller, of course.]
* Stuff you'd have to be able to utilise would include: shield specials, screen wrapping, other miscellaneous glitches, and Super/Hyper Sonic only-paths. :O

Contribute here. Also if you can do the coding aspect, volunteer here too.

[Bilan]

I wish I knew some crazy style glitches and shiz now D:

But Ill willingly beta test of this gets that far~

[PsyBorg]

If you are going to accept beta testers, I'll also beta-test for the purpose of testing whether this is compatible with the mac genesis emu/seeing how I would approve of it.


If it's something that has/requires gens+ specific features though, then I can't do it.

[Thorn]

This is an excuse for me to learn SonED, keep me updated.  If I can get SonED to read my SONICCD.EXE for once (damn patches), then I'll have experience to boot.

Also I believe there were some masochistic levels in the DIY topic that might provide inspiration.

[magnum12]

* Emeralds work as in S3&K - 7 Chaos, 7 Super. But just to make things fun, there's only seven Large Rings in each "set" of the game. On each of which it is impossible to obtain perfect - except one. This gives you a much-needed life (explained later)
* You start with one life. The game is engineered such that you have no means of getting a life, except via the aforementioned special stage. You then have to lose this life at some stage due to a time over. [It'll be an autoscroller, of course.]
* Stuff you'd have to be able to utilise would include: shield specials, screen wrapping, other miscellaneous glitches, and Super/Hyper Sonic only-paths. :O

-The idea of a super hard Sonic game is great, something I would support. However, I don't agree with the methods to obtain the goal. Section 2's "you have to lose a life because of a time-over sounds like it will reek of bad level design. Clever use of shield techniques is pretty cool, but requiring the abuse of glitches to clear something reeks of even worse level design than method 2.
-My method of making a super hard Sonic game uses the approach of "tough but fair," a method used by a lot of the games I regularly play. What I mean by that is that difficulty should be the result of tough, relentless enemies/bosses, and fun level design that requires fast reflexes and quick thinking, but never (or very rarely) resorts to cheap deaths.

[Crowbar]

Having to use glitches to get through is the whole point.

But forcing deaths by time-over would just be lame, since, yanno, you'd have to wait 10 minutes. At least allow a quick suicide if you must do that.

[General Throatstomper]

If you want to make this hard, I have a few suggestions.

1) Over some bottomless pits, make it appear as though there are floors.
2) Swap the sprites of some vertical springs with spikes and vice versa.
3) Get rid of all the rings in every level. Except for one or two. Which kill you on contact.
4) Make enemies invisible. Though perhaps this is too wicked for even this game.
5) Make touching a lamp post cause death.
6) Cut the drown time to a third of what it is.
7) Set the speed to, say, 10x (or 100x if you want to make everyone frustrated), though remember to adjust the clock so it runs normally.
8) Make all platforms needed to cross a level have alternating spikes on them (like in Metropolis 3).
9) Make all minibosses/bosses take more hits than normally required (a given).
10) After going higher than the lowest route, cause falling into it to trigger death (hedgehogs always land on their spines, snapping them).
11) Make the walls of each level move together slowly, causing a swift death for any unprepared player.
12) Reverse sections of certain levels.

Well, I think I've made life hard enough for anyone attempting to complete this.

[Upthorn]

Okay, it seems some people have misunderstood the concept. Mike would probably have done a better job explaining it if he hadn't made the thread about 5 minutes before he went to bed.

The goal of the hack is not to create a pointlessly difficult game. The idea is that any element of gameplay that can be made to matter should be made to matter. Ideally no reprogramming should be necessary to accomplish this.
Each level should be like a puzzle that you have 10 minutes to solve.
Not all levels will have enemies. Most levels will not have rings.

Examples of gameplay elements that solutions should make use of:
Insta-shield. The fire shield. The water shield. The lightning shield. The flame dash. The bubble bounce. The lightning jump. The delay between breaking a monitor and getting the powerup. The scroll glitch. The ability to pass through sprites under certain circumstances. The ability to use objects to become stuck in walls. Super Sonic. Hyper Sonic. The ability to die and restart from a checkpoint. The ability to collect rings inside a bonus stage. The ability to enter a bonus stage and restart from a checkpoint.

Those of you who are still somewhat confused as to the concept should read this, and possibly watch the movie.

[yse]

To give you an idea of how it would look, here's my concept sketch for a section of the first level. As you can tell, it's not complete, and there'll need to be more challenges in that water path, but it's getting places.

[magnum12]

Not bad. The posistioning of items just before a required jump is a good idea. I'd change the posistion of the fire shield since easily getting "trapped" thus making it impossible to complete the stage is a really bad idea from a level design perspective. (Remember, hyper hard but fun and bad level design cannot co-exist.) I'd also suggest (for later designs) completely remove all instances of requiring a glitch to pass through. Having something that's impossible to cross without abusing a bug (the fact that such a bug even exists is a sign of bad programming) reeks of even worse level design than being easy to get permanately stuck.

[General Throatstomper]

Magnum, the point of this isn't to make a game enjoyable for everyone, but rather the S3 elite. I mean, for those just getting into the game, there's always, you know. Sonic 3.

And speaking of Sonic 3, I understand what you're saying now, in which case I don't have much to contribute because it's never really been my best game (I spent more time learning the ins and outs of Kid Chameleon/Bubsy). But I can only imagine what diabolical plans you have for IceCap.

[Upthorn]

I'd also suggest (for later designs) completely remove all instances of requiring a glitch to pass through.

You've missed the point.
To summarize: Any gameplay element in the original game, including those caused by programming errors, that can be made important should be made important. As a result, if we don't have levels that require glitching to get through, there's not going to be a whole lot of material for level designs.

This hack is modeled after a hack of Super Mario Brothers called AIR.
Let me paste the relevant portions of a list of AIR's defining aspects:

• Very unforgiving. Intuition will not work. Mistakes are not allowed. Most paths are one-way.
• In order to complete the game, the player is required to collect some mushrooms, only to lose them soon thereafter.
• In order to complete the game, the player is required to abuse many of the glitches of the game (such as passing through walls in a multitude of different ways).
• There are only a few people in the world who have completed this game. Savestates are invaluable.

[CosmicFalcon]

Wake me up when Sprint has made a TAS of it.

[Bilan]

hmm

Aquatic Nightmare Zone?
Aquatic Abomination?

>_>

[CosmicFalcon]

I'm sure some devilish trap could be constructed using a moving left (and right?) hand wall, like at the start of Hydrocity 2. Or of a rising floor... or falling ceiling? Requiring precise timing, I am sure that you could set it up whereby going too slow or too fast could kill you.

[yse]

Update:

RPG has had experience hacking special stages, and has volunteered to help out in this task. I'm doing designs but I'm not past the testing stage yet. More to come on this front.

Level designs are... well, not coming along so quickly. However they are as always open to your suggestions! Anything in the topic has been noted and could possibly end up in use later on.

[Bilan]

WHAT.

I did not volunteer! You drafted me up!

<_<

[eggFL]

hey guys I have an idea for your game. see attachment

[Bilan]

Dear God.

[Stefan]

How would one possibly pass that? You can't uploop jump into the spikes to pass in, you can't take your forward momentum. You'd probably have to get on top, wouldn't you?

[Blitz]

Or gain serious momentum and jump to skip part of the loop.
Though the on-top sounds better, as I don't think a jump could push you that far.

[Thorn]

How would one possibly pass that? You can't uploop jump into the spikes to pass in, you can't take your forward momentum. You'd probably have to get on top, wouldn't you?

Here's Loops 101, then, for Sonic 2, 3, &K.

The rows of ? are path swappers.  When Sonic comes from either side, he is set to go forward/behind the other side of the loop (depends which side he comes from).  The middle one switches his forward/backward placement as he passes thru (assuming he doesn't switch direction).  Notice that if spikes were planted in the center of the loop, there'd still be two ?s hanging free.  You'd need to loop jump at an angle that passes through them without spearing yourself.

If someone constructed it and pulled it off, then I'd say it's a worthy addition.

[Marth]

Oh! Oh! Oh! I just thought of something! That Robotnik loop reminded me of those old
Mario-style stages my brother used to make. He had a door that led to a Robotnik bonus.
This Robotnik bonus had a picture of Robotnik in the background (looking very happy),
and there were spikes covering the floor. And the door couldn't be opened again.
Obviously, this wouldn't work perfectly in a Sonic game, but maybe you could
make a place with pits that have to be jumped into (and only one right way).
Or one of the bonus stages could be set up to work like this. If that's possible.

Hmm... I don't know. I wonder if there could be a better way of using that.

Another evil trick he used: putting wonderful items (tons of 1ups*) and doorways that look as if
they lead to the final boss, but which get destroyed before they can be reached. Maybe they
could drop into bottomless pits, or into deep spike pits, or get stuck in walls. The original idea
of a Chomp eating them was funnier, but that obviously couldn't be done in a Sonic game.

*There probably won't be a need for 1ups in this game, so the 1up picture could be edited
to show 100up or Chaos Emeralds or an unlockable character or something instead.
It would really be a regular 1up, but it would be out of reach, anyway.

He might have other evilness I've forgotten about, or maybe I can come up with something.
But probably not.

[stanski]

If you need any help in the design aspects, I'd be happy to help out with input. Are you looking at more free flowing levels, or more of a puzzle element involved? I realize you want this to be hard, so I have a lot of ideas.

Obviously, there should be a few spots where taking damage is required. I'm thinking something like taking damage on a spike bed, then a spindash jump on the spikebed over a gap. Putting in a few platform-falling through objects areas would be cool. Obviously the up-down scroll glitch could be abused in certain areas as well to pass through. There should be some areas that require a huge jump that just barely makes it (obviously, give enough room for error), ala chem plant 2's big shortcut jump at the beginning. If you included tails, a few close call flying areas, like launch base shortcut, would be pretty neat.

I think you should also include some areas where you have to take damage, but you have to keep a ring as well. Say, hitting 3 switches to pass through an area, but every time you hit a switch you take damage, so you must take damage falling to the left in order to keep your one ring. Playing around with underwater timing would also be a good addition, making it very close getting from each air bubble area to the next.

In the autoscroller idea, you should make it so that you have to hit a seemingly impossible to reach checkpoint (i.e. like going below the plane in sky chase, obviously you can come up with another idea here).

Also, you HAVE to have a level where you play around with combos. For example, big jumps down to an item box that propel you, then you have to bounce on a bunch of enemies in a row in order to pass over a gap. Don't make it too ridiculous, and don't make everything too blind, but I think it would be really cool to have to get like a 20 hit combo in order to beat a stage.

Another idea is that maybe you should make people change characters for certain levels? I.e. show mastery of every character in order to pass. Obviously the falling glide can be abused to make it over some ungrabbable wall for knux, and tails could have some perfect flight levels. Sonic could have to use certain shields that are hard to uncover/get to to get past certain parts, and could also do most of the levels.

Manipulating enemies for damage boosts would be pretty cool too.

Sorry my ideas all pretty much come from sonic 2, but I know its quirks better than s3k, and it basically has the same quirks, just multiplied for s3k. I have a ton more ideas that i've thought of, but i'm sure you guys are intelligent and have thought of a lot of the same ones/can work with some of the ideas i gave. Good luck!

[yse]

A few of Upthorn's ideas from a while back.

1
2
3

EDIT:

[20:09:46] <yse> i wonder what you could do with the barrel of doom
[20:09:55] <yse> since everyone knows how to get past it now
[20:10:22] <yse> it'd be interesting if you could put one of those barrels into the boss fight
[20:11:55] <Tails> make it so that the shaft extends too far down to get through it, and have the barrel start partway through the shaft
[20:12:25] <Tails> so you still have to U-D-U-D, but jump off when it gets sufficiently high and immediately spindash through the gap before it heads back down
[20:13:00] <Tails> alternately change the level order so you have to transform to super and have it go up through you during the transformation
[20:13:15] <yse> have you actually done that before?
[20:13:43] <Quartz> Heh
[20:13:53] <Tails> after hearing of it, I tried and managed to get it

[yse]

Moved here where it can attract more attention (hopefully from people capable of the actual hacking process).

[EGGMAN]

where is the game???

[Stefan]

wow, a thread necromancy notice.

Anyway, I was just trying to say I'm surprised nobody's implemented mike's and upth's ideas yet. this would still be cool to see.

[Aitamen]

if Knux is included, give me a ring.

perhaps character-specific routes, requiring different strats and mastery of certain characters?

Superglide ftw?

[yse]

So here's what I'm thinking.

I have this idea for Carnival Night 1. I'm not going to draw it up cause it would take forever, but I'll give you the gist of it.

Basically, you walk in and are immediately confronted with multiple layers of antigrav platforms. At certain points you'll be able to join with a higher layer and move up onto it. But there are some instances where you wouldn't want to!

At other points, it might be necessary to move lower.. at which point you have to lure a bat across and fall through, and then find something safe to land on!

The boss of act 1 is exactly the same, except that you only get one platform to stand on... in the right corner. If you lose that platform, you're screwed, because Sonic can't survive after the boss dies.

Also linking two ideas into one: Upthorn had investigated the possibility of porting the character-switch boxes from Chaotix... this would be great for making Tails/Knuckles puzzles as well. (It might be a more impressive, and ambitious, plan to actually make separate routes for the three of them as per the original S3&K... but we'll have enough trouble coming up with enough puzzles for one game, let alone three.) I think the best place to put these boxes would be at the end of act 1s, in the signpost game. One Sonic, one Tails, one Knuckles. Maybe leave some sort of hint in the level as to which character they should take... or maybe let them go in blind. :D