The final Act. Soon, the final boss. This is happening. #Sonic8BitAdvance

After analyzing memory values in the RAM, I decided to find the disassembly code that decides when a falling block falls. It took me a while, and the lack of relevant comments didn't help, but I did find it and implement it. While looking for it, I also ID'd HEX codes of all objects in map layouts.

Sonic 2's final zone is taunting me by reminding me of my failure to analyze one of the objects from the game's first zone. Crystal Egg Zone's falling blocks seem to behave not unlike the falling spikes from Under Ground Zone. Fine. I'll spend the time I need, but I'll figure both of you out.

The Silver Sonic fight suits the Game Boy Advance screen size quite well :) #Sonic8BitAdvance

A good decision I made early in the development of #Sonic8BitAdvance is to display Rings with a tile layer and not sprites. The Game Boy Advance being able to handle 128 sprites at once at most, I would've probably been screwed in Sonic 1's Special Stage 4/8 and Sonic 2's Scrambled Egg Zone Act 2.

There are always ways to make Scrambled Egg Zone even worse... #Sonic8BitAdvance

News of Comcept shutting down reminded me of a mistake I once made.

Another day, another random note about Sonic 2 8-bit. The real background color in Scrambled Egg Zone isn't black - it's the light blue from inside the tubes, black's just part of background/foreground tiles. It helps make the tubes look good and helps Sonic's sprite not spill out when he's inside.

I've been playing Sonic 2 8-bit since the '90s and I only learned you could do this to the Gimmick Mountain Zone boss this week while reverse-engineering it for #Sonic8BitAdvance. I don't know what makes less sense: making rocks fall by hitting Sonic or by hitting the edge of the screen 😅

One last thing to share, and then I'm going back to writing code. A smart bit of optimization in Sonic 2 8-Bit: when a bomb badnik explodes, it shoots four blinking bullets. But they aren't really blinking and they aren't really four: it's actually two bullets that go back and forth every frame.

Does the bomb badnik really only have a downwards collision sensor on the right side? It feels like it, look how far left it can go! Yeah, I'm not reproducing this, this definitely feels unintentional.

Another fun fact about Sonic 2 8-bit's Gimmick Mountain Zone: as I've mentioned before, the flywheels usually have yellow centers, shown as sprites. But after going all the way up and falling back down, the center of the first flywheel can fail to respawn, in which case the flywheel won't work.(1/3)

I made myself a PHP/GD script (I tried Python, but I couldn't get PIL to work with 0 tolerance) that takes a directory with screenshots and a set of coordinates, and generates a CSV file with RAM values from different screenshots. Really helps with retro-engineering complex or numerous objects.

I'm think this is the first time I'm noticing this and I'm fixing this in #Sonic8BitAdvance: In Sonic 2 8-bit's Gimmick Mountain Zone all treadmills are animated as if they were going right, even those that go left. With limited VRAM and inability to mirror tiles, I guess they did what they could.

Random observation about Sonic 2 8-bit: the flywheels in Gimmick Mountain Zone have a yellow/white center. The flywheels are technically parts of the background but the centers are sprites. Hide the sprite layer and you reveal another graphic for the center, less colorful but IMHO much better drawn.

Green Hills Zone was indeed a breeze. I was putting the finishing touches on the third boss two days ago and tonight I'm already starting work on the fourth. That's what happens when a Zone has no new gimmicks or badniks. On this the content of part 2 of #Sonic8BitAdvance is more than halfway done.

I think this is the first time I feel like I'm wasting my time on #Sonic8BitAdvance. This boss is a pushover: wait until it starts inflating a balloon, jump on it, repeat 5 times, done. It can throw stuff and juggle Sonic like a ball too, but I bet most players never give it the chance to even try.

Me: I just want to be done with Aqua Lake Zone Act 2, I don't want to implement the Power Sneakers boost, there's so much testing involved... Power Sneakers in Sonic 2 8-Bit: [don't actually do anything] Me: Thank you! (source: TCRF, confirmed by me)

With my two and a half break from work nearing this end, I'm happy it happened just when I had the most stuff to figure out for the second half of #Sonic8BitAdvance. Barring some water physics quirks and the infamous tubes, most of the gimmicks I was dreading to implement are in. (1/2)

Aqua Lake Zone Act 2 must be the most resource heavy level of the entire project. On top of being rather big (comparable to Labyrinth Zone 1 or 2) and having the palette changing effect which is heavy on the GBA's CPU, it has LOADS of objects and 426 RINGS!!! I think I handled it all, but damn!

As I was saying.... Effect reused. After I spent months trying to figure it out (and, frankly, struggling with low motivation for figuring it out) for Labyrinth Zone, I managed to port the water "shader" effect to Aqua Lake Zone in one evening. #Sonic8BitAdvance

Screw it, I'm reimplementing the loop from scratch. I'm having way too many problems.

Loops were one of the first things I implemented when laying the basics for what would eventually become #Sonic8BitAdvance. As my random project evolved into a double remake, I put accuracy ahead of following the Sonic Physics Guide, not to mention not used loops at all in the Sonic 1 part... (1/4)

Is it me, or is the Spanish-speaking Pokémon fangame community kinda kickass? So many good-looking projects, I just can't. Of all things that have a chance to make me go back to studying Spanish, this might be it :) . Maybe after I'm done with my project...

Whlie working on the Sky High boss, I realized the end of its neck was visible, even though it's supposed to be cloaked in clouds. I thought I was messing up its Y movements, so I checked with the original game and...huh Guess I was too busy dodging its attacks to pay attention. #Sonic8BitAdvance

Absolutely nobody's favorite gimmick is implemented in #Sonic8BitAdvance. It wasn't as complex as I thought it would be, but two things took a lot of looking at screenshots and tracing values in RAM: -the Y speed at which the hang glider ascends on pressing left -the X speed after letting go

Took a break from polishing the Sonic 2 8-bit engine for #Sonic8BitAdvance by working on the content. But now the first zone (Under Ground Zone) is done, and I have to work on a mechanic I kinda dreaded: scattered rings when Sonic gets hurt. I have to figure out how they're supposed to move.

It will never not be weird to me that the devs of Sonic 2 8-bit reused Sonic's spritesheet from the first game almost as-is but redrew Eggman completely. I would say I prefer the Sonic 2 sprite if only Eggman wasn't shrunk to Sonic's size in the process. (screenshots from World of Longplays)

For a lot of players, Sonic 2 8-bit might as well end like this. If you know, you know 🙃 #Sonic8BitAdvance

I've been curious about double-screen emulation consoles for a while, especially since the chances of most DS and 3DS games being reissued in the future are slim to none, considering the format. I managed to get the Anbernic one today. It's not bad, but nothing spectacular. It does the job. (1/3)

It's always a bit of a rush to add these secret boxes to acts in #Sonic8BitAdvance, especially if I find room to add actual small, well, rooms for them. And especially since I've polished engines for both games to feel as close to the original as possible. It makes me almost feel like a romhacker 🙃

Work on the Sonic 2 part of #Sonic8BitAdvance has been going pretty well, but I've hit my first roadblock. I can't figure out what triggers these falling spikes. Speed is a factor, but I can't figure out the formula. Also, while most spikes shake 4 times before they fall, some shake 3 times...what?

I shared a build of the Sonic 1 part of #Sonic8BitAdvance with friends and got back a curious piece of feedback: The first sound in the screenshot plays when Sonic falls down in GHZ Act 2. The second one is when Sonic is launched off a ramp. Both sounds are almost identical... (1/3)

As of this Christmas (merry Christmas, BTW :) ), I consider the Sonic 1 part of #Sonic8BitAdvance completely done and polished. It was quite a process, but I'm really happy with the end result. Now the work on the Sonic 2 part can start in earnest.

Figured out the Wile E. Coyote bug in #Sonic8BitAdvance (see GIF: the first time Sonic falls as he should, the second time... yeah). It's related to the way the original game seems to handle different jump heights: if the button is held, the gravity doesn't apply for up to 17 frames. (1/2)

I'm really almost done with the Sonic 1 engine for #Sonic8BitAdvance, but now I'm getting a weird bug I can't reliably reproduce. Sometimes when Sonic walks off certain platforms, he can go into Wile E. Coyote mode, walking on air for half a second before falling. I hate when this happens.

All these talks of hardware becoming more expensive due to RAM shortages got to me and made me paranoid enough to buy a Switch 2 earlier than planned. I ordered some exclusive games while I was at it. The new Donkey Kong looks fun and I can't turn down a Hyrule Warriors game.

I got the DVDs for another show I haven't seen in at least five years: the TV series adaptation of From Dusk Till Dawn. It's a bit sluggish at first, picks up the pace in episode 4 and, all in all, it's even better than I remembered. And it's helmed by Robert Rodriguez who directed the original.

As an avid YouTube watcher, I don't think there's a single AI feature on there that I like. AI dubs are lifeless and sometimes activated by default. Translated AI titles and subtitles are hit-and-miss at best, and AI titles are inconsistently forced on me. I wish there was an option to disable AI.

Got a full DVD set of a show that completely went under my radar when it first came out: Veronica Mars. Great stuff, I marathoned the whole thing (+ movie, + revival). I guess if I was a longtime fan, invested in it for decades, I would've been furious at the ending too, but I thought it was solid.

This is what happens when two collision routines...erm... collide :) #Sonic8BitAdvance

And in the final hours of the following weekend, the bug has finally been resolved. My previous Eureka moment turned out to be bogus, by the way.

This is the last huge bug I need to fix before completing the Sonic 1 part of #Sonic8BitAdvance: something about slopes put against walls makes Sonic bounce back. For a while I had no idea what caused it, I just got the Eureka moment. Of course it had to happen in the final hours of the weekend...

The Steam Machine looks good, but I'm still curious to see how well it will fare against the competition Valve themselves helped create: PCs with Bazzite. Or whether it will come up with something unique to offer. I'm optimistic though. Valve knows what they're doing and the Steam Deck still rocks.

Man, I wish UT2004 got some love (and an OK from Epic to distribute it) too. But the original UT is still a great time too.

Randomly thought about that time when I reported a bug with Sonic Origins only to be told that, no, it was a bug with Sonic 3K that was fixed in Origins. But I can't help thinking that the original "bugged" behavior makes more sense than the "fixed" one. Sometimes keeping bugs in is a good thing.

While playtesting #Sonic8BitAdvance, I made a jump in Jungle Zone I thought was impossible. So I launched the original game to see how badly I messed up. To my surprise, this jump turned out to be, granted, harder to make but entirely possible. My own remake taught me something about the original.

Coins won't be a thing anymore in #Sonic8BitAdvance. I had plans for them that, while interesting to me, could end up becoming too intrusive and cumbersome. I had an idea of a shop of sorts where after winning, losing or quitting either game, the player would get a certain number of coins... (1/11)

I'm still amazed with the C++ framework for the GBA, Butano, that I'm using for Sonic 8-Bit Advance. They finally added the question "Is there any way to donate to Butano?" to their FAQ and the answer basically is... no. Bummer, I'd like to send them a few bucks though 😅.

As huge a Pokémon fan as I am, I'm still rooting for Palworld to win and for their victory to set a precedent. Nintendo makes great games, but as a company IMHO they do need a big slap in the face. I've played Palworld in early access and enjoyed it quite a lot. Now waiting for a stable release.