Paraemon's Comprehensive Ripping Project Thread [Expansion Station]

[Paraemon]

Consider my fancy fondled.

I decided to practice a little bit and the results were quite fruitful, for a game so detached from the Overlay implementations. When I get the collection for that Special Stage finished, the sheet shall come like that. Also began doing the same thing for Labyrinth Zone.



And dang, I have no idea why I've kept these hidden away until now. Maybe because I wanted both sets of the palettes before a show and tell, who knows. I last touched these in September and just never got around to working on the Open Air palette versions. Here's the underwater maps for the 510 version of Tidal Tempest Past Zones 1 and 2!

[Ton]

I never noticed how neat those parallax graphics are.

[Paraemon]

I never noticed how neat those parallax graphics are.

I know, right! They're very well considered and implemented.

Though I must admit, the more I look at the parallax structures in CD and 3K, the more I want to customise a highly lucrative, even insane, parallax system on a separate sheet (looking at you, Hydrocity and Mushroom Hill).

I reworked the Sonic 2 Death Egg background sheet and implemented Shadow and Highlight. Really had a lack of interest when having to go into the game to get the base content but it's done now.



Also, I got bored, and this was missing from the Advance 2 page anyway. All I need to do is work out the rotating palettes for the flashing lights on the buildings. EDIT: A couple of fixed errors later...



Other little bits:

Graviton Mobile has been completed!

The Emeralds sheet is now being overhauled to contain the Shadow and Highlight palettes that previously didn't get placed on due to lack of accessibility and/or knowledge of how to implement.

Began working up a new General Sprites sheet to try and de-clutter the misc sections of Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, and acquired the missing palettes for the Giant Rings from the underwater areas of Ice Cap and Launch Base.

Desert Palace just needs to get a Highlight version of the foreground worked up, and then the final, final release will be uploaded.

3D (Blast) has been dropped, at least for the time being, due to its complicated nature.

[Paraemon]

I'm feeling in a good mood after an easy day of work placement and a fun Japanese class. So you guys get to see these!

Started and finished Marble Garden Zone Act 1's background in all of about 90 minutes.



And the ever lovable Death Ball! There's a lot of small animation pieces for the Spike Car dropper, so those shall be stringently worked upon for maximum use. Will include Robotnik in the final.

[Paraemon]

Completed the base content for Death Ball, just the Shadow and Highlight palettes to work on. Border and backdrop colors shall be changed in the final version.

[Paraemon]

As explained on the sheet, I don't like the monitors much anymore...

The original plan was to have to the Special Rings occupy a part of the sheet, but those are now divided into Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles specific sheets, since I don't know how much space will be taken by the monitors. Definitely inclined to give them their own sheet too.

[Paraemon]

The monitor sheet became a bit of a nightmare, as I found that I was basically putting in too much work for something that could be done so simply. I'll get back to it later.

But in other news, here's a WIP for a standalone sheet of the Master Emerald. It's not all that far from being finished, the biggest obstacle being the glowing and flash variations of the Emerald as it appears in Knuckles' final stage, but that itself shouldn't take long.

[Ton]

Very neat! These games have so much to keep track of!

[Paraemon]

Very neat! These games have so much to keep track of!

Thanks! And man, don't I know it! I've got a rough idea of a majority of stuff, but still need to look here and there for the rest of it.

I better say out loud now, instead of leaving it to last minute and just dumping an unknown number of sheets and revisions in the submission queue, that once I have what I feel is a substantial amount of sheets (20+) ready, they'll be uploaded en masse.

I can confirm that the en masse uploading will include the following.
Sheets already completed:
Chaos Emeralds (Sonic 3 version)
Chaos Emeralds (Sonic & Knuckles version that includes leftover Sonic 3 palettes and prototype/S3K content)
Super Emeralds (Sonic & Knuckles only)
0408 Glowing Spheres (to the Sonic & Knuckles page, due to mis-interpretation the sheet already up on the site does not belong on the Sonic 3 page)
Special Ring (Sonic 3's giant ring)
Special & Super Rings (Sonic & Knuckles and S3K's giant rings, sans the alternatives on the Sonic 3 sheet)
Screw Mobile
Graviton Mobile
Hot Mobile
Death Ball

Current WIP sheets:
Master Emerald (Sonic & Knuckles only)
Great Eggman Robo
Monitors (a bit more work than the standard is required for this; will get game-specific versions thanks to underwater being Sonic 3 only)
The Doomsday Sub-Boss (to get its own sheet to account on palettes)
The Doomsday Boss (like above)
General Sprites (to massively expand upon Dolphman's current sheet, accounting for missing palettes; will get game-specific versions)
Title Cards
HUDs
Fonts
Desert Palace Zone (missing the map with highlight overlay)
The Doomsday Zone backgrounds (separate sheets for final and prototype palettes; see below)

Now, the update! To begin with, I'm taking a crack at the animals of Sonic 2. I've laid out the main Sonic palettes (Knuckles' and the Supers are pending), and I'll work on Shadow and Highlights when I get back to it, as well as the rest of the animals. Reckon it'd take no more than 90 minutes of extraction and color playing, but first I just need to motivation to go back to Sonic 2. 



Just to clarify, this sheet is not finished, but is not too far away from it. I'll need to do a bit of toying around with the layout, as I have to get the Doomsday Zone's flash cycle (more than the Sky Sanctuary version at the end) added for that version of the Master Emerald.



And I've finally taken a fresh crack at the Doomsday Zone's background. I've split the final version (left) into its own sheet, and created a new one for the prototype palette. Once I've got the meteors and rings' shadow and highlight overlays covered, I'll copy them over to the prototype sheet. When it comes to uploading, I'll submit the prototype version as a fresh one titled something like "The Doomsday Zone (Prototype Background)". I could include the prototype on the final version's sheet but I'm trying to avoid needless empty space and super-tall images. I'm employing this logic in my rips for Sonic CD's prototype and final versions to account for palette differences in the stages.

[Ton]

Holy cow. I can't wait til these can start going up!

[Paraemon]

Holy cow. I can't wait til these can start going up!

Dude, I can assure you, it's going to be a manic day or two, haha.

I can add Flame Tank to the list, I got that done fairly swiftly, and the Master Emerald sheet has the missing content added. 

[Paraemon]

Today's update is a bit of a deviation from the norm. We'll be discussing palettes! (Text below Image)



As I've worked on the Doomsday Zone's Master Emerald flash palettes, I noticed something that I perceived to be abnormal in relation to my perception of the Flash Cycle palettes. The truth turned out that I didn't accurately account for possible differences between the two flash cycles, but they're now logged.

In the VDP, the top line of the palette relates to the playable characters, Robotnik and Egg-Robo, among other things like monitors and star-posts. As we know, the green seen in Sonic/Tails and Knuckles' palettes refers to Super/Hyper Sonic's green eyes and the Echidna's socks, and I've left it in place on the left row simply for the sake of future reference and development.

As the flash cycle is a main purpose for this update, I decided to show-case the color shifts in the named stages as above. Though it is simple work for the cycles seen in Launch Base, Mushroom Hill and Lava Reef Zones, I am incredibly inclined to point out how disastrously god-awful it was to get the accurate variations in the seventh-to-tenth shifts for the Doomsday Zone, without Super forms being involved and having a safe place (debug-placed monitors) to place the characters. Not to mention, the fact that there was also the issue of trying to ensure the sub-boss was defeated well within a few seconds of the character being depowered. But, it's done now, and I'm never, ever doing that again.

The second row of the palette in the VDP is dedicated to enemies/bosses and rings (including Cutscene!Knuckles). Though obviously the Jet Mobile's palette is on the image above, I have purposely excluded the cutscene version of Knuckles' palettes, as it requires experimentation to develop a relevant and similar set of palettes to work in any Flash cycle.

The remaining rows of the palette are dedicated to the stage and any other object not defaulted to the player character line. I included Mushroom Hill Zone as a prime example for it, as I basically had a theory I wanted to test: "can the Autumn and Summer palettes be effected by destroying the Jet Mobile's weather manipulator?" As you can see, they can! Just debug past the trigger points to prevent the shift to brown and/or grey, and when you get to the boss, the flash will happen anyway regardless of it being Summer, Autumn or Winter. Sadly though, the ninth and following shifts of the palette will always be the Summer palette.

Can I formulate variations in line with the flash cycle to give Mushroom Hill Zone's Autumn and Winter palettes?
Maybe, but I shall not try at this juncture to find out. It requires back and forth testing and RGB value checking, itself a lengthy process.

With this knowledge in mind, can I formulate flash cycles and overlap the ones that exist with other stages that also or do not have a flash cycle?
Same answer as above.

What about the Super and Hyper forms of the player characters?
Well, since it's in development for their sheets already, it's not impossible! My only obstacle is ensuring that the shifts between lines 9-14 (LBZ, MHZ & LRZ) or lines 7-10 (TDZ) would be as relatively accurate as possible.

What about their underwater palettes, will these get flash cycle variations?
I shall admit, I've tried; it's harder as at no point in any stage does a flash cycle overlap with a character being underwater. I'm not especially pleased at the outcome of those, so refer to the answer for question 1.

Considering Mecha Sonic triggers the Sky Sanctuary's flash cycle, will I be giving him the relevant palette adjustments?
It'd be a fallacy not to, especially since its easy to formulate as it doesn't cross a "full-white" frame.

There's something that's kind of always been missing, considering that I'm doing work on alternative in-game palettes. The fade-out and fade-in palettes seen between stages or returning to the last checkpoint after a death. Can I grab those palettes and them formulate them relative to underwater and super forms and flash cycles?
Am I going to do this? I can't say no faster. Trying to do this for Angel Island Zone Act 2 on its own would be nothing less than a night terror. When one considers that several stages have palette cycling because of flashing lights, not to mention a stage with flash cycles involved, it would require terribly precise timing to capture these and then to ensure everything affected by fade-outs and fade-ins are collected. As much as I would love to do it, it would just be far too painful and time-consuming.

Wait, are there flash cycles in other games? Will those be collected too?
Yes - the epilogue of Sonic 1 (good ending) and Sonic CD (at the very least, Wacky Workbench's boss). I intend to get them, when I get around to them. In the case of the former example, I'll only limit it to the ending; even if takes place in Green Hill Zone, I don't want to have to affect a whole set of rips based on something that doesn't happen in the stage itself.

----------------

Can anyone tell me, besides the flash (which may or not be ripped based on the answer to the question above) that occurs as Sonic exits the Death Egg at the end of Sonic 2, if there are flash cycles in any other part of that game? I don't really remember.

[Paraemon]

So, after a few weeks of annoyance and not knowing how to actually work the sheet up, I can finally display the current work in progress for the Sonic 3 version of the Monitors sheet.



It's still a nightmare, but fortunately the Sonic 3 version is much easier compile than that of the Sonic & Knuckles version. I've left everything from the VDP as it was so I can get back to it later on. I think my biggest obstacle, for this version, will be trying to tackle the Open Air Sonic 1-Ups. I have no idea how I'm going to tackle the Doomsday Zone's flash cycle with the Super/Hyper palettes in mind. 

Below are a rough list of contents that'll be on the sheets.

Sonic 3 sheet contents:
Pretty much anything marked out on the sheet already or pending to be marked up.
Other missing ring palettes that are very obscure but do exist - I'm currently taking a looksee at as many different palette change points as possible. Did you know there are about 12 different palettes for enemies, the HUD and rings across Angel Island Zone, and 9 for Hydrocity Zone?

Sonic & Knuckles' sheet contents:
No underwater palettes because there are no underwater sections in the game.
Knuckles' 1-Up screens, with Super/Hyper palettes and prototype underwater palettes
Hyper Sonic's palettes (because of S3K)
Super Tails' palettes (because of S3K)
Any other ring palette affectations not documented, such as the Super Ring rotating palettes.
The Doomsday Zone Flash Cycle.

[Ton]

I never imagined there would be so much variance in a monitor sheet.

[Paraemon]

I never imagined there would be so much variance in a monitor sheet.

I thought the same when I started it. I only started uncovering more and more about it when testing things out of curiosity.

That being said, though, I've slightly contradicted my own declaration on ignoring the fade-in and -out palettes. The reason being, Sandopolis Zone's inter-act transitions do something different - it only leaves behind the palette line for enemies, rings and the HUD active while everything darkens as the player character enters the pyramid, and then re-lightens for Act 2's ready. Effectively, these fades function differently because it doesn't drag the entire palette with it.

In addition to that, the fade-in and -out functions between the Sandopolis Zone acts can also be observed through frame-by-frame dissection unlike the zone transitions, which un-pause the game and resume it at the proper speed. This makes the shift between the acts fall under the effective category of gameplay, and therefore have been extracted. The total for these variations number 42, without the Overlays applied, and shall be included - eventually - on the Sonic & Knuckles sheet.