"Sonic the Hedgehog" Demo

nat · 09/30/2008, 08:23 PM

New Sonic demo for the Turbo. It's an ISO. I haven't tried it yet since I'm out of blank CD-Rs but it looks interesting. Not sure if it has sound or what. Maybe someone here can give it a spin fill us in.

Joe Redifer · 09/30/2008, 08:39 PM

It's only 3MB so I doubt it has music, but I'll download and burn.

EDIT: It DOES have music! It's in the OGG format which hackers/homebrewers love more than life itself. I converted it to WAVE and changed the CUE file to reflect that. Now I'll burn.

Joe Redifer · 09/30/2008, 09:30 PM

OK I am back!

The demo is very interesting. For the most part, the colors and graphics are very well done. The scrolling is kind of odd. There is parallax and I would consider it very well done except for one thing... it is backwards! That means the foreground scrolls slower than the background. If this were reversed the effect would be perfect (maybe try making the tiles animate in the opposite direction). The fading out of the title screen has the same glitchiness on real hardware as most homebrew efforts, no biggie since it is only at the title screen.

The control is decent for the most part. The physics of jumping are a bit weird but it doesn't make it uncontrollable or anything. The goal is to find both Chaos Emeralds and make it to the end of the stage. Paranoia Dragon's music is well arranged. No complaints there! There are sampled sounds from the Genesis when you grab a ring or whatnot.

Overall it's pretty damn good for homebrew, I'd say! Definitely worth downloading and burning. Thanks to whoever made this!

ParanoiaDragon · 10/02/2008, 02:53 AM

Glad you like my arrangements

I did those a couple years ago, when Xavier first started on the project, but, then he, like alot of us, got busy with other things, but, recently reappeared on the Frozen Utopia boards with this demo with my music. Bonknuts/Tomaitheous is now helping him, though I don't know remember the details on that. IIRC though, it's going to be a bi-compatible game, in that, it will run on the PC Engine, but, it'll run even better on the Super Grafx, with more paralax!

He hasn't yet asked me for music for another stage, & I'm not sure how the music is going to work out, when it comes to the music speeding up, or for invincibility, or when speeing up with invincibility. Maybe all of that will run in the adpcm buffer? Not sure. As for my music, on the Green Hill Zone, I've often wondered if I should've used a violin instead of a piano for the main instrument. Ultimately though, I do feel like I captured the song pretty well. Keranu described it as having kind of a Telenet sound to it, but, I'm not sure I agree.

Joe Redifer · 10/02/2008, 04:32 AM

You don't want to make the tune too soft, so I'd nix the violin idea.

Also, I demand to know why more people haven't downloaded this demo. Do we hate the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-CD here at this site?

Turbo D · 10/02/2008, 04:41 AM

I downloaded the demo, but couldn't get the bgm working. I converted the title and ghz oggs to wav with Super, but didn't know how to mess with the cue(which seems to be an ogg aswell? How the hell do I deal with it?) Anyways, the demo kicks ass! I've long awaited the day that Sonic would grace my Duo!

I cannot wait for the finished product!

nat · 10/02/2008, 08:31 AM

In the CUE, just replace any reference to "OGG" to "WAV".

NecroPhile · 10/02/2008, 10:10 AM

I played around with it last night and must say that it's pretty cool, though I didn't get to listen to Paranoia's tunes since Switch apparently forgot how to read .oggs. I played on Magic Engine, and I'm hoping that M.E. is to blame for the extra wonky controls (especially being able to float around by continually jumping in midair). I'm gonna have to give it another shot tonight in Mednafen with the music to get the full experience, or as close as my CDR hating Duo will allow anyway.

On a side note: did anyone else try out Castlevania and Megaman on their Turbos? They're not perfect, but it's great to revisit these classics after so many years.

SignOfZeta · 10/02/2008, 12:43 PM

I'll comment on it when I get around to circumventing this .ogg self-sabotage bullshit.

mobiusclimber · 10/02/2008, 01:48 PM

Sorry for the n00b question but how do I go about burning this to play it on the PC engine CD?

NecroPhile · 10/02/2008, 03:38 PM

Quote from: mobiusclimber on 10/02/2008, 01:48 PMSorry for the n00b question but how do I go about burning this to play it on the PC engine CD?

Convert the .ogg files to .wav, modify the cue sheet to reflect said conversion (.ogg to .wav), load the cue sheet in whatever burning software you use, set the burn speed to as slow as your hardware will allow, burn that sucker and enjoy!

mobiusclimber · 10/02/2008, 05:35 PM

Ok, hopefully when I try to I'll understand what all that means. XD Also... hope I can figure out how to do this on a Mac.

turbofan1 · 10/02/2008, 05:51 PM

I tried out the demo,not to bad.Wouldn't been easier just release this as A bin file?or simply just added the two wav. tracks?.Seems like people are having trouble with this.

Joe Redifer · 10/02/2008, 06:34 PM

They are having problems dealing with the OGG format, not the CUE + ISO. I've found it really is best to have the audio as sperarate tracks before burning, that way everything stays in sync. Just open the CUE with Nero (from the drop down menu, not the GUI) and all is perfect.

Necro, you can continually jump and "float" on real hardware as well.

Keranu · 10/03/2008, 02:57 AM

Yeah I posted my thoughts on this on the Frozen Utopia forums before. I've been keeping up with Xavier's progress on this for the past couple of years now and the latest update has finally been the breaking point of a solid Sonic demo for PCE! It's very impressive and I hope to see more progress! Xavier also had some other neat demos in the works, like a new shooter and a Strider demo, but I don't know what happened to those.

mobiusclimber · 10/10/2008, 07:24 PM

Quote from: guest on 10/02/2008, 03:38 PM
Quote from: mobiusclimber on 10/02/2008, 01:48 PMSorry for the n00b question but how do I go about burning this to play it on the PC engine CD?
Convert the .ogg files to .wav, modify the cue sheet to reflect said conversion (.ogg to .wav), load the cue sheet in whatever burning software you use, set the burn speed to as slow as your hardware will allow, burn that sucker and enjoy!

How do I modify the .cue sheet? It isn't in a format I can open, or I don't know what to open it with.

[edit: NM on that, figured it out, but now I can't figure out how to burn it. Anyone on a Mac know?]

Joe Redifer · 10/10/2008, 09:27 PM

You can't burn CUE + ISO + WAV (or whatever) on a Mac. It is one of the biggest downfalls of being a Mac user. It's not the platform's fault, but nobody has written a program that can do this. The only way around this is to have Windows installed on an Intel Mac and boot into that OS and use Nero or whatever.

mobiusclimber · 10/11/2008, 02:16 AM

I'll just use my back up PC then. It's slow as hell, but it looks like the only way.

Keranu · 10/11/2008, 07:29 AM

If Daemon Tools are a program like it is available for Mac, you can create a "virtual" CD of it to run on your computer to test out it on an emulator. It's extremely useful for burning CDs too so you can see if it works or not.