The original founder of Traveler's Tales, Jon Burton has been running a YouTube channel for a bit now called GameHut- showing off cool old-school Traveler's Tales game development material. Jon has worked on multiple of these old games as a producer, designer, and programmer; truly a respected fellow, for sure.
Today he's announced a new project as a thank you to the people who have been following and enjoying his content called "Sonic 3D: Director's Cut" which will apparently have a handful of improvements to the original game, along with some restored unused/prototype contents, and will be released to the public when it's complete as a patch for the rom.
It's important to note that this is not an official game release, but a fan-project, made by the original developer, and isn't associated with SEGA or Sonic Team in any way.
The goals for the project are as follows:
- Improved character movement/handling.
- Tweak parts of gameplay to be less frustrating in areas.
- Add Super Sonic. (similar to a particular romhack done a while back)
- Add in the development level editor.
- Bring back the prototype crab enemy in some capacity.
- Password based save game function. (based on SEGANET versions password system?)
- Updated options screen to handle the new features and changes.
Update 1: Gameplay Changes
A video showing off some changes to gameplay has been posted.
Here is a summary of changes shown off in this first update video:
- The title screen now has a bouncing "Director's Cut" text.
- Sonic now has two different handling behaviors.
- Low speed movement has higher friction, allowing for more precise movement and turning while going slow.
- High speed movement has a bit less friction compared to low speed, which should allow for a bit easier control while moving quickly.
- Sonic now has a slightly higher top speed for movement, to make him feel a bit more like Sonic. (Fast!)
- Physics behavior when colliding with walls has been tweaked to keep you moving along the wall, instead of coming to a complete stop.
- The camera now pans smoother, and pans further ahead when moving to hopefully give you more time to react to obstacles.
- Speed shows now move even faster and allow Sonic to slightly outpace the camera. (Think Chemical Plant Zone Act 2!)
- When you have speed shoes, you don't lose rings- instead you just get knocked back, rings in-tact. The purpose for this is to incentivise actually moving quickly while you have the speed shoes.
- Each flicky icon now flashes if they aren't collected, to make you more aware that you are missing them.
- Flickies are no longer dropped unless you are out of rings, preventing you from having to collect them every time you take a hit.
- Flickies now all have a tendency to move toward Sonic when lost, making it harder to lose them in the stage.
- Flickies no longer are dropped when hit by environmental hazards, and actually help protect Sonic from projectiles in some situations.
- The Hunter badniks on Green Grove Zone no longer have a spike ball orbiting around them.
- Bugfix: Shadows now properly appears above the rock formations in Volcano Valley.
- Collision boxes for the big ring, Tails, and Knuckles objects in stage are now larger, making it considerably easier to interact with them.
- A score display has been added to the top right. (The inclusion of this is subject to change if it brings up any problems later on in development)
- It appears the palette for the water in Green Grove Zone was shifted gray ever so slightly, it's is likely because the water used Sonic's palette before. Since Sonic's palette will now need to be dynamic for Super Sonic implementation, it had to be changed to a different palette, so the water doesn't glow yellow like Sonic will as Super Sonic. This may imply a Super Sonic cheatcode will be in the game, since it's ordinarily impossible to have all 7 emeralds in Green Grove zone.
A video showing off some changes involving Super Sonic and some other new things has been posted.
Here is a summary of changes shown off in this second update video:
- Green Grove Zone is now a lot more green.
- Slightly tweaked colors on palm trees to match Sonic 1's palm trees a bit better.
- Slightly tweaked palette for Sonic, to match Sonic 1's colors a bit better.
- Added a level timer underneath the score, it flashes at 9 minutes, and stops counting after 9:59.
- Laser bolts that shoot from turrets are now bright red, making them very easy to see.
- Changed from Update 1: Flicky Icons now bounce up and down when the Flicky isn't collected, which is a bit more pleasant.
- Added a Flicky icon that appears on the edges of the screen to show what direction the nearest flicky is, how fast it will flash is undecided, general perception in the comments seems that the rapid flashing is better.
- Super Sonic has been added, including a neat little transformation animation using existing graphics in the game.
- Super Sonic follows the traditional rules for activation. (7 Chaos Emeralds, 50 Rings or more, No Shield, Jump again in mid-air.)
- Super Sonic is invincible and has super speed, consumes 1 ring per second until you run out of rings. (as expected)
- Super Sonic can collect shields and can smash through objects that usually are broken with a spin dash. Shields collected while Super persist after you lose Super.
- As mentioned last time, some special changes to the water in Green Grove had to be made because many objects (including water) used the same color palette as Sonic, which now need to use some other color, to prevent the Water going Super whenever Sonic does. Some special code was done in the case of Green Grove's water specifically, it is unknown how/if this code applies to other objects using the blues from Sonic's palette are changed.
- New camera behavior was written for Bosses, to try to keep the camera a bit more focused on the boss.
- Collision boxes for Canons and Trap Doors tweaked to be less annoying to interact with.
A video showing off various new features and changes has been posted.
Here is a summary of changes shown off in this third update video:
- New Options on the main menu screen: Level Editor, Director's Cut and a Load Game. The menu ditched the pho-3D rotating thing for a more traditional list sort of menu, maybe to make space for the new stuff.
- Several sounds that were missing from the original sound test have been added. (A6, A7, AA are examples)
- Level editor option brings you to a level select menu where you will be able to pick a stage to begin editing (the level editor level select is not complete yet, in the future, the special stages will not be present as there is no editor for those.)
- The level editor has a few tweaks compared to how it appeared in the footage previously showed off.
- The cursor no longer clips to the nearest terrain when going over non-solid parts of the level, instead flashing.
- The menu for the level editor now has a better auto-repeat for navigating and entering numbers.
- Quit option added to the level editor, used by selecting it and pressing A+B+C buttons together.
- The Prototype Crab badnik added to the game in Rusty Ruin zone, with new behavior to scuttle about, currently uses the red flicky, subject to change.
- The level editor cursor no longer collects rings.
- The level editor has some bugs patched up to fix crashes.
- The game now detects and properly handles uncompressed level data, allowing it to be easier to actually use the level editor for actual level editing if you're so technically inclined.
- Green Grove no longer quite as green- instead the tile colors now more closely match Green Hill Zone's colors.
- Sonic Medals now give points in addition to their use for continues.
- Super Sonic activation now works by pressing Spin Dash in mid air to transform, rather than jump again.
- Super Sonic can now be cancelled by pressing Spin Dash in mid air again while powered up.
- Super Sonic animation now uses another sprite instead of Sonic's death sprite, making it look considerably less silly.
- Sonic's shadow now becomes more solid over floor tiles that would ordinarily make it more difficult to see, helping you judge your position better.
- Balloons shadows are also now solid to make it more obvious of their positions.
- Moving platforms in Gene Gadget (and perhaps other places) slow your movement down to prevent accidental falling off.
- Slight tweaks to Sonic's movement were made to prevent totally breaking the sloped sections in Gene Gadget.
- An (extremely annoying and common) bug has been fixed (!!!) whereby you'd slide down slopes and clip right through moving platforms. This should hopefully make the platforming in these parts a lot less frustrating.
- It seems a decision was struck about the new flicky direction icon flashing speed- that being the rapid flashing was better.
- The clock seems to be moved to below the ring count, and the score that was added last time is now the only thing on the top-right corner.
Last edited by CheatFreak47,
