Homebrew Sonic CD Port Released

[sonictopfan]

Thank you for the port


I want to report a softlock bug, in Metallic Madness Act 3 it seems if you die and restart the level, music and sfx won’t work, and if you try to restart or exit it’ll softlock the 3DS and you have to hold the power button to force shut it.


While I’m at it I’ll throw in a suggestion... until the FMV cutscenes are supported (if ever) maybe use Tails’ ending credits screen for Sonic?

 

[Isegrim]

It's a shame that it doesn't work on the Old 3DS, I won't be able to test it, but it's nice to see that the 3DS scene is still very active.

I think anyone here understands that the 3DS is not strong enough to run certain things, I don't think it's an excuse to be an asshole.

A never ending story.

 

[HiSaturnV]

This question will obviously be very stupid.
But already having Sonic 1,2,3, N & CD, could someone make a level editor that combines all these games?

As in, a Sonic Delta-like mod? It's probably possible, but out of the scope of the port. It'd also involve porting over everything from 3&K, which I'd imagine is no small endeavor.

Through normal means.

That's odd. Main focus is the HW renderer right now, however, I'll keep an eye on it and see if I can replicate it.

Thank you for the port


I want to report a softlock bug, in Metallic Madness Act 3 it seems if you die and restart the level, music and sfx won’t work, and if you try to restart or exit it’ll softlock the 3DS and you have to hold the power button to force shut it.


While I’m at it I’ll throw in a suggestion... until the FMV cutscenes are supported (if ever) maybe use Tails’ ending credits screen for Sonic?

With regards to the music, this is a known issue; I initially thought it was just an issue with how the 3DS's sound worked, however, it turns out this is an issue with the Reader not being thread-safe. I plan to incorporate the changes from Clownacy's Wii U fork into the 3DS port at some point.

With regards to the cutscenes, while I plan to implement those eventually, those are low-priority at this point in time. It may require manually downscaling the videos to fit the 3DS's resolution, however. Also worth noting is that the PC and mobile ports use different video formats, and the PC version stretches the video out to the entire screen, while the mobile port maintains the original aspect ratio.

Since sites like GameBanana allow users to host restored versions of the videos as mods for the game, I may just link to pre-scaled .ogv files that work with the 3DS port and ask that you extract those to the SD Card.

 

[sonictopfan]

With regards to the cutscenes, while I plan to implement those eventually, those are low-priority at this point in time. It may require manually downscaling the videos to fit the 3DS's resolution, however. Also worth noting is that the PC and mobile ports use different video formats, and the PC version stretches the video out to the entire screen, while the mobile port maintains the original aspect ratio.

Since sites like GameBanana allow users to host restored versions of the videos as mods for the game, I may just link to pre-scaled .ogv files that work with the 3DS port and ask that you extract those to the SD Card.

I was going to mention that in the earlier post actually, I’m fully aware of the different format as I hacked the vocals back in both the PC and Android versions, with the PS3 version format being alien for me I had no success in that one, but I was gonna suggest using the Android version because they’re just MP4 files, I can help you editing the videos if you wanna change the aspect ratio or edit the vocals or something.

A couple more suggestions, when you hit restart it takes away a life which afaik doesn’t happen in Sonic 1&2, it also prevents you from restarting a special stage, maybe can change this behavior?

Another is adding a proper level select after completing a save file similar to Sonic 1&2 because the way Taxman did it broke the game that you can no longer go back after the missing time stones in a complete file like in the original, forcing you to delete your save file and start over if you want the good ending.

 

[HiSaturnV]

I was going to mention that in the earlier post actually, I’m fully aware of the different format as I hacked the vocals back in both the PC and Android versions, with the PS3 version format being alien for me I had no success in that one, but I was gonna suggest using the Android version because they’re just MP4 files, I can help you editing the videos if you wanna change the aspect ratio or edit the vocals or something.

A couple more suggestions, when you hit restart it takes away a life which afaik doesn’t happen in Sonic 1&2, it also prevents you from restarting a special stage, maybe can change this behavior?

Another is adding a proper level select after completing a save file similar to Sonic 1&2 because the way Taxman did it broke the game that you can no longer go back after the missing time stones in a complete file like in the original, forcing you to delete your save file and start over if you want the good ending.

AFAIK, a lot of these suggestions would involve modifications to the game's scripts, as opposed to the engine itself. Those would probably work as mods; while the 3DS CD port currently doesn't have mod support, it is planned and already in the 1&2 ports.

As for the video files, the decompilation currently uses libtheora for playing video, so it would be better to stick to the ogv format instead of rewriting everything for mp4.

 

[sonictopfan]

AFAIK, a lot of these suggestions would involve modifications to the game's scripts, as opposed to the engine itself. Those would probably work as mods; while the 3DS CD port currently doesn't have mod support, it is planned and already in the 1&2 ports.

As for the video files, the decompilation currently uses libtheora for playing video, so it would be better to stick to the ogv format instead of rewriting everything for mp4.

Editing the OGV files to restore the audio was a pain and a half so my apologies but I don’t have the skills to edit those files like change aspect ratio and such, better look for someone with enough skill to do it, I’d be happy to share my files though if you want with vocals restoration.

 

[HiSaturnV]

Editing the OGV files to restore the audio was a pain and a half so my apologies but I don’t have the skills to edit those files like change aspect ratio and such, better look for someone with enough skill to do it, I’d be happy to share my files though if you want with vocals restoration.

That's fine; keep in mind the videos are low-priority at this point, as my main focus is getting the HW renderer running well, so I figure I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

 

[HiSaturnV]

UPDATE: Progress on the HW renderer is slower than I would've liked, but I've finally gotten it to the point where the game is somewhat playable. A lot is unfinished at this point, however; stuff like blended sprites, sprite rotation, palette cycling, special stages, water effects, parallax, and the pause menu either don't work properly or aren't implemented at all.

However, I figure O3DS users will want to test out this build, so I'm dropping a .3dsx of the latest commit here. Didn't want to make a release for this, as the HW/SW renderer preprocessor split is still there and there's no reason for N3DS owners to use this at the moment.

(uploaded to anonfiles because 3dsx apparently isn't a supported file type)
https://anonfiles.com/p9X8Ha62q6/SonicCD_3dsx

Let me know how it runs; it seems to run decently at 268MHz on my N3DS, however, I want to confirm with O3DS users.

 

[fmkid]

UPDATE: Progress on the HW renderer is slower than I would've liked, but I've finally gotten it to the point where the game is somewhat playable. A lot is unfinished at this point, however; stuff like blended sprites, sprite rotation, palette cycling, special stages, water effects, parallax, and the pause menu either don't work properly or aren't implemented at all.

However, I figure O3DS users will want to test out this build, so I'm dropping a .3dsx of the latest commit here. Didn't want to make a release for this, as the HW/SW renderer preprocessor split is still there and there's no reason for N3DS owners to use this at the moment.

(uploaded to anonfiles because 3dsx apparently isn't a supported file type)
https://anonfiles.com/p9X8Ha62q6/SonicCD_3dsx

Let me know how it runs; it seems to run decently at 268MHz on my N3DS, however, I want to confirm with O3DS users.

Well. I'm an O3DS owner and actually try with this special release and I have to say: Amazing! It runs pretty well (very playable at good speed). I didn't notice an important slowdown (I believe)

Buuuuuut for now there are a lot of graphical glitches on all the menus: basically, different menu options and backgrounds aren't displayed (however, on the game stages itself graphics seems to be ok).

 

[HiSaturnV]

Well. I'm an O3DS owner and actually try with this special release and I have to say: Amazing! It runs pretty well (very playable at good speed). I didn't notice an important slowdown (I believe)

Buuuuuut for now there are a lot of graphical glitches on all the menus: basically, different menu options and backgrounds aren't displayed (however, on the game stages itself graphics seems to be ok).

Thanks. And yeah, the menus are currently a mess, presumably due to a bunch of unimplemented draw calls. Part of the reason I didn't put it into a full release.

 

[fmkid]

Thanks. And yeah, the menus are currently a mess, presumably due to a bunch of unimplemented draw calls. Part of the reason I didn't put it into a full release.

Thanks to you for your amazing job and the improvements (and love) for O3DS owners! Keep up with the good work!

 

[CallumOC]

I keep getting the 'An exception occurred' screen. I am running it on a 2DS, I'm not sure if that could be a problem.

edit: I think I know what I did wrong, I will try and fix it now.

 

[MastorLichi]

it keeps crashing for me, and I have a N3DS. Any help? I can send the crash picture if needed

 

[HiSaturnV]

it keeps crashing for me, and I have a N3DS. Any help? I can send the crash picture if needed

Were you using the recent HW (3dsx) build linked in the thread, or the SW (cia) build that's on GitHub? Does the game crash when booting, or is it at a specific point?

Also, just to be sure, do you have the Data.rsdk file extracted to /3ds/SonicCD?

 

[MastorLichi]

Were you using the recent HW (3dsx) build linked in the thread, or the SW (cia) build that's on GitHub? Does the game crash when booting, or is it at a specific point?

Also, just to be sure, do you have the Data.rsdk file extracted to /3ds/SonicCD?

I was using the .cia version. It crashed directly after the 3DS logo appeared, so yes, it was booting. I actually do not have the Data.rsdk file extracted to my /3ds/SonicCD. I may have missed that step.

 

[HiSaturnV]

I was using the .cia version. It crashed directly after the 3DS logo appeared, so yes, it was booting. I actually do not have the Data.rsdk file extracted to my /3ds/SonicCD. I may have missed that step.

Ah, OK, that should explain it. I thought I had implemented a basic error handler in case the rsdk file was missing, though I don't believe I bothered to test that part on actual hardware; I'll try to fix that for future releases.

 

[Computer_Freak_2004]

The new build works already pretty good on my Old3DS. Game runs pretty much always at 60FPS. The framerate drops sometimes and also when you are invincible! There are still many graphical glitches in the menu and special stages.
Great work so far!

 

[CarlosEFML]

Thank you for the port!!

 

[HiSaturnV]

Minor update on HW rendering: implemented a few extra drawing calls since the last upload, meaning that menus should show more or less correctly (sans the main menu background, which relies on 3D drawing calls). Also, fixed the issue with positioning that rotated sprites had, so stuff like running through loops, Tails's tails, and the final boss should show correctly now.

Special Stages still don't work, however.

Link: https://anonfiles.com/r6d7H5h7r1/SonicCD_3dsx

 

[depaul]

GREAT! Any chance this could be ported to Wii U ?

With regards to the music, this is a known issue; I initially thought it was just an issue with how the 3DS's sound worked, however, it turns out this is an issue with the Reader not being thread-safe. I plan to incorporate the changes from Clownacy's Wii U fork into the 3DS port at some point.

Hi SaturnV. Does this mean there is already a Wii U port released? Thanks!