Paraemon's Comprehensive Ripping Project Thread [Expansion Station]

[Paraemon]

Today's update: four sheets, three games.

Sonic 3

First up is the background make-up for Desert Palace in Sonic 3's Competition Mode. This was the simplest since it just meant dividing the two layers. No Heat Haze, no palette rotations, a simple task. May cut down to half or quarter size since it's just the same chunk of 256x128 blocks.



And the breakdown for the snowboarding background in Ice Cap. Just need to add notes and it's complete.



Sonic 3D (SD)

I ran into issues with the ripping for Green Grove Zone, as part of the map contorts around the ramp that leads to the warp ring near the breakable wall leading to the cannon. So I took a dig at the other GGZ of 3D, Gene Gadget. Decidedly a bit more fun.



Sonic CD


The full rotation of the background palettes for the D.A. Garden. Granted, it just switches back in reverse to get to daylight from the full night, may fix this later, but would be easier to keep as is so as to coordinate the palettes for the Little Planet. 

[Puterboy1]

Good work. Keep it up.

[Paraemon]

That's the plan!

Today's update has only two things, but finally something from Sonic 2 for the first time in a while. I honestly struggle wanting to do anything with that game, and I don't know why.



I decided on Death Egg Zone's background since I had want to know out of nowhere if the background consisted of the brown metal background and the skies of the planet, or just the skies of the planet on their own. Turns out it was the latter, which is now stripped down into its auto-scrolling sections with additional information after analysing the star palette rotations.



And from Sonic CD once again, the full dissected parallax sections for Zone 3 of Metallic Madness. According to Divine Insect's sheet there's more content on and below the bottom section, which I cannot find/access in game, especially since some of those content pieces appear to possibly contradict the parallax for that section. So I'm leaving it as I've ripped it.

[Ton]

Awesome! Are you getting close to checking anything else off the list?

[Paraemon]

I can get Desert Palace finished tonight or tomorrow and maybe Azure Lake finished by tomorrow night.    Anything more complicated would be the end of next week at the earliest.

[Ton]

Wow, that's amazing!

[Paraemon]

Thanks man!

Alrighty, quick update time. It's like 2:55 in the morning and I need to get some sleep lest I be woken up by the weekly fire alarm test. #downsideofstudentaccommodation

After some consultation, I've switched from the Raw palette to Full with S/H palette to try and make the sheets' content more accurate to that of the games. This has been fulfilled with Desert Palace (which will be updated further once I get Azure Lake and a mystery third Sonic 3 Competition stage finished), and I've adapted the previous work on Metallic Madness and the Glowing Spheres prototype (which is half complete thanks to some light reading in-between rip compiling). Six of the seven animations (Intro, Endings, Credits, Epilogues) from Sonic CD have also been re-ripped, but for some reason the Pencil Test always crashes so I don't know what to do about that.

I figured it was also time to get around to reworking the Doomsday Zone background and object sheet to give better clarity to the flash palette switches once the first boss is defeated. The 517 Prototype version is completed at 10 different color schemes before returning to the first and true palette of the stage, which leaves just the final version and the meteors left to sift through.

[Dolphman]

But RAW palette is the accurate one. With Full, the white is at 255 RGB, making the sprites useless on white backgrounds.

[Paraemon]

But RAW palette is the accurate one. With Full, the white is at 255 RGB, making the sprites useless on white backgrounds.

>Sigh.

First of all, I've said it before: I don't know what the true damned palette is. All I have is verbal testimony which I'm taking on blind faith - I did it with you after all too, so forgive me for switching it out after I consulted with someone who seemed to have a lot more to explain regarding the palettes, which is why I inquired with them to begin with. Why don't you seek out the person I consulted and debate with them about it - I'm not in the business of naming names, but they have some interaction on one of my releases, so they're not hard to find.

Second, I said Full with S/H - Shadow and Highlight. From what I've found with it, the white is 238 RGB, not 255 RGB like it is with Full standalone. And in the short amount of time I've worked with it, I have found that the Full with S/H palette is accurate to the Sonic & Knuckles PC Collection. So yeah, it's likely I'll be going that way with the palettes, but if you want me to make a set of Raw releases just for you, then I shall do.

[Dolphman]

Sorry. I was just a bit concerned because a lot of Genesis rips have inconsistent palettes, and RAW was what I've always went with because the other rips used it.
And it's even present in the remakes by Christian Whitehead when I first looked at them for ripping purposes.

[Paraemon]

Sorry. I was just a bit concerned because a lot of Genesis rips have inconsistent palettes, and RAW was what I've always went with because the other rips used it.
And it's even present in the remakes by Christian Whitehead when I first looked at them for ripping purposes.

Hey man, it's cool! The palette inconsistency is one of the reasons why I started this whole project to begin with.

[Dolphman]

No worries.
I'm still enjoying your work as it's really well researched.

[Paraemon]

No worries.
I'm still enjoying your work as it's really well researched.

Thank you!   

I was mulling over the exchange earlier and came to the conclusion that maybe the colors are Raw when setting up the sprites, objects etc, but that the output as we're meant to see it is perhaps intended to be Full with S/H.

News: The Doomsday is approximately 95% done but there's a couple of things I want to check before resubmitting.

[Paraemon]

So the bad news is that the progress on the Doomsday Zone is back to square one, since there was a screw up in the flash grabs, so the re-release has been delayed. The sixth Special Stage for Sonic CD has also caught me out, as when I re-ripped the animation frames for its background, there were suddenly a few more before the main animation. I no longer know at this time what the number of frames are, and have 6000+ frames to sift through for a loop point.

The good news is:
1. I've initiated expansion on the Metallic Madness Zone 3 background due to the flashing during the final skirmish against the three Hotaru Badniks.

2. Both of Sandopolis Zone's backgrounds are now on standby to compile.

3. Some investigation has been undertaken on Lava Reef Zone's backgrounds (there's at least one palette set that's never meant to be seen).

4. Mushroom Hill Zone's background variations are finished, complete with Sonic 3's Night Mode (0517 Prototype), all I have left to do on that sheet is add the notes.



And even if I tried to write it up here, there is simply no way in hell I could describe what I have planned for the Sonic & Knuckles version of Glowing Spheres, though I admit that I am pretty disappointed I didn't come up with it sooner.

[Ton]

Looking good! I had no idea there was a night palette planned.