Paraemon's Comprehensive Ripping Project Thread [Expansion Station]

[Paraemon]

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

Thanks!

There wasn't a night palette planned as such; during development of Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, Night Mode was designed so that the developers could see if objects were placed on the correct low and high planes by leaving the high objects as regular/lightened palettes, but the low content (mostly backgrounds and foreground backdrops) as shaded over. It somewhat sticks in Sonic & Knuckles stages that are part of the 0408, 0517 and 0525 Prototypes of Sonic 3, but does not exist in Sonic 1, Sonic CD or Sonic 3D (I need to test it in Sonic 2 proper). Interestingly, going into the VDP Viewer during the Get Blue Spheres stages gives free access to Night Mode and brightened palettes, perhaps an oversight by the developers, whereas accessing Night Mode regularly requires Debug and pressing C + Start on a non-GBS stage in level select.

I have a new friend in the Palette Lock Function, which makes getting color-shifting backgrounds like those of Sandopolis Act 2 and any underwater stage a lot easier. I've regained the non-Present backgrounds of Tidal Tempest with this function, toyed around with it to see how one stage's palette shifts up another palette. Messing around with it in Marble Garden Zone Act 2 with the changing sky palette leads to some beautiful changes in several parts of the stage. It also helps with getting the alternative Debug-based palettes of the Badniks as I trialled way way back when; hopefully in the next update I can showcase some of these findings.

And as I've mentioned Sandopolis, here is the five light-to-dark variations of the background, sans torch flames that are yet to be ripped.



Further toying with the Palette Lock is what led me to the new idea for the Glowing Spheres re-rip. Much like the 0408 Prototype, there is actually only 32 animations for the background's shifting squares. The palette count itself comes to 99 variations, which when multiplied with the individual animations, comes to a total of 3168 - the bottom-most set of 15 on the below image is exactly the same as the topmost 15, but included as there are still 100 pillar frames.

[Paraemon]

Re-ripped the outdoors background for Flying Battery Zone, the only thing left to do is Night Mode and then it's to the indoor content.



Finally finished the core background sheet for Hydrocity Zone Act 1; the Night Mode palette content will go on a separate sheet since it'd be a nightmare to put more content on this sheet. Spent way too much time today on it but at least now I can say it's done. I didn't detach the underwater sections at the bottom of the sheet since they aren't affected by parallax.



And current progress on re-ripping Hydrocity Zone Act 2's background. Like Act 1, the Night Mode palette will go on a separate sheet. I'd have finished this before uploading it but that's tomorrow's job.

[Paraemon]

So this is most likely my last forum-side update this side of the Christmas season, as I start my final year at university next week. If I get time to work on stuff and finish any of that, I'll submit it straight to the website. I might lurk on the forums between now and then.

It's not much or exciting, since it was present in the previous update, but it's better than nothing! Fixed and finished proper palette sheet for Hydrocity Zone Act 2.



See y'all soon!

[Ton]

Good luck! I’ll miss the updates! See you in a couple months!

[OverallVG]

Where can I discuss the Game Gear games?

[Paraemon]

Where can I discuss the Game Gear games?

In what context? Ripping?

Edit: better use the posting opportunity to make an update. Currently working on updating and vastly expanding the sheets for Sonic, Tails and Knuckles for Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles - the rips are provided by Triangly, with the palette extents covered by myself. These will be seen in due course.

[OverallVG]

Where can I discuss the Game Gear games?

In what context? Ripping?

Edit: better use the posting opportunity to make an update. Currently working on updating and vastly expanding the sheets for Sonic, Tails and Knuckles for Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles - the rips are provided by Triangly, with the palette extents covered by myself. These will be seen in due course.

A-yep.

[Paraemon]

I'm, well, kinda gonna need some specifics. But let me get right to the point, since I have some idea where the next post will go, based on a comment regarding a lack of content for one such game. Seeing how this is edging into request territory, I'm going to decline, at least for now, for two reasons:

1. As I said about four posts ago, I'm in the midst of a very busy year of university, since it determines what my life will be after July 2019.
2. As such I don't have all the time in the world like I did in the summer break, so when I can work on it, it's restricted to the Genesis games and Sonic CD.

Though I have considered other console games previously, such as the Advance games, it would just mangle what is already a pretty difficult project that suffers from certain external influences, and the limits to the extent of which I'm ripping the content are still unknown. There's really no practical reason at this current juncture for me to add more to the pile.

[Paraemon]

Oh hey! I have an update! I felt this was quite important enough considering what I've found out and didn't particularly want to wait around until Christmas to explain it.

In the midst of setting up the Knuckles sheet that I'm working on with Triangly, I decided to take a look at the already-acquired flash palette variations for Sonic and Knuckles.



Since I've been working with the Full with S/H version of the palette, I never checked before today about the colors and how they operate; every 17 positions across the shadow and highlight overlays, but every 34 for the regular palette.

Looking at the above cycles for the flash (as seen in Launch Base, Mushroom Hill and Lava Reef), as I said, (at least mostly) each color shifts by 34, but never goes further then 238 (in Paint), which, as seen in the eighth frame, is the light grey. So this got me thinking, what happens if I apply this logic to the issue I've faced with trying to get the glowing Master Emerald to correlate with the flash palette?

So I had a play about, and it turned out to be at least fairly accurate! Well, for the second row, at least (the first row is the non-effected palette). See, in the regular gameplay during the final fight against Super Mecha Sonic, the third and fourth stages of the flash wind up causing the Master Emerald to have a messed up palette set that doesn't conform to the rest of the lightening shift as seen in the stage and on the characters. Trying to get the game equivalents for the third and fourth rows didn't work because, as I mentioned in a previous post, there were more (still an unknown amount of) palettes than there should've been considering there are only seven glow frames, and the "glows" at in that attempt were darker than standard.

Though this was done with an FwS/H style palette, I feel that this was what the developers were intending on originally but never finished implementing, for whatever reason. Of course, to see how far I could take this, relative to the Sonic and Knuckles flash variations above, I gave an extra four rows to account for how it'd look like if this version of the Master Emerald's glow was exposed to the full flash cycle as seen in LBZ, MHZ and LRZ (I'll work out the final six frames later).




As such, it came to an odd conclusion unlike that seen with rad red and the speedy one. The green seen in the first and fourth glows on the eighth row is logically unable to be made grey with the rest of the Emerald when taking into account the jump-in-increments-of-34 between each color on each row. I simply perceive this to be the Master Emerald being superior to whatever's causing the flash, but find it interesting that this is the only thing left over that isn't bound to the common rule of the entire sprite becoming grey. I shall have another test later to see if such an instant would actually come to pass.

I should also mention that the glowing palettes for the main trio's super/hyper forms also neglect to overly conform with the flash cycles and have some odd palettes. As seen here with Super Sonic, the lower four palettes appear during the height of the flash cycle, and don't have a nominal place in comparison to what I currently have charted out. In honesty, I believe that it would be a nightmare to actually try and grab all the proper palettes since it'd require multiple stage restarts and timings to get everything accurate - that's not just the palettes we normally see with the super and hyper forms, but also that of the few light blue colors that Sonic has before actually attaining the super yellow color, so for now I won't be adding these palette extents to the character sheets but edited versions in line with what I've found (these will be noted on sheet).

[Paraemon]

Update number two, while I still got a small amount of free time!



Respect where it's due, I felt as though that SupaChao's standalone sheet was missing something. So I decided to re-rip it and include in the bomb-drop/reload frames, as well as some water that I might need to rework. Instead of compiling every possible combination myself, I've stripped down the individual parts to people can simply put together the Screw Mobile as and how they desire.

[Dolphman]

While I ripped all the parts and put them in their own sheet, you're doing a better job with the preassembled Eggman boss sprites than the current ones we have.
You should do the same for the preassembled STH2 Eggman boss sheets.

It's also interesting that this boss strangely changes the chalky black in Sonic's palette into a solid black.

[Superjustinbros]

This is going to be a great sheet, I wish you luck in finishing it.

[Ton]

That palette stuff is awesome. Can't wait to see where it leads!

[Paraemon]

While I ripped all the parts and put them in their own sheet, you're doing a better job with the preassembled Eggman boss sprites than the current ones we have.
You should do the same for the preassembled STH2 Eggman boss sheets.

It's also interesting that this boss strangely changes the chalky black in Sonic's palette into a solid black.

Thank you! Though functionally the idea I have in mind is breaking the boss machines into "pieces", I probably ought to have clarified what might've already been evident on the WIP sheet. Each animated part of the boss is given an highlighted box as to what to put where, so it's simultaneously pieces and pre-assembled, so to speak. If that makes any sense?

But yeah, shall get onto the Sonic 2 bosses at some point. I still just don't feel any interest for that game and don't know why.

Agreed, it is interesting! What is more interesting, however, is that by using Gens GS r7's Palette Lock during the boss battle, the solid black reverts back to the chalky black.

This is going to be a great sheet, I wish you luck in finishing it.

Thank you! I can actually confirm that the Screw Mobile sheet is complete, but want to upload it with the rest of the bosses, once I've got them complete.

That palette stuff is awesome. Can't wait to see where it leads!

Thanks man!

I actually realised I missed a color adjustment on the Master Emerald flash work, so there's one row more than there should be; there are never more than 7 color adjustments until the full sprite reaches R:238, G:238, B:238 across all parts of its palette. But it's now fixed, and I just need to figure out frames 9 to 14!

Mid-November Update!

As I completed Screw Mobile, I turned my attention towards the Graviton Mobile. I should state now that I haven't touched this in a couple of weeks; between university classes, job searching and other commitments, back to the backburner has the project gone. I hopefully should have time around the holiday period, but likely once January 4th is here all bets are off and my time for the half-month after that is focused on finishing assignments.

But in the meantime, here's the WIP!



While I'm still typing, I can now state something large scale for the project - just bare with me for the next bit! After looking over a comment made on the summer release of Hidden Palace Zone, I did a little bit of testing a couple of weeks ago and learnt how to apply the Shadow overlay without needing to directly rip it from the 0408/0517/0525 Prototypes. That was the good part. The utterly stupid part was that it took me until about 40 minutes ago to realise how to apply the Highlight overlay - it was just simple maths.

So, the Full with S/H palette's highest possible value without Shadow or Highlight overlay activated with Debug Mode is R:238, G:238, B:238 - the lightest grey on the gloves/socks/eyes/plain metal etc or that is otherwise most shines. With Shadow overlay applied, the values become R:119, G:119, B:119; half that of the original - R: 34, G: 34, B: 34, the lowest that isn't all zeroes in value, becomes the lowest possible in Shadow overlay - R:17, G:17, B:17.

Now, as I kind of explained in my previous post, the two overlays integrate every 17th value between the following: 0, 34, 68, 102, 136, 170, 204 & 238. The Shadow overlay goes no higher than R:119, G:119, B:119, whereas the Highlight overlay goes no lower than R:136, G:136, B:136. In essence, the 17 times table is used.

This brings me onto how the Highlight overlay functions! Half of 0 is still 0, so that solid black isn't getting changed anytime soon. As the aforementioned comment stated, the Highlight overlay adds #8 onto the color values. Take off the hash, and it just becomes 8. Then multiply 17 by 8, and it becomes 136. If the value of 136 is added onto a value that is 119 or higher, it becomes 255 regardless.

Hopefully that explanation made sense! But to simplify, the Shadow and Highlight overlays can now be applied to sheets which would otherwise lack it, such as Data Select or the Title Screen, including those of Sonic 1, CD or 3D origins. Doesn't that fondle your fancy?

[Ton]

Consider my fancy fondled.