Wednesday, July 5, 2017

The naked boss flash

In Sonic 2, the Egg Mobile was rendered using the enemy palette and flashed along with the rest of the boss whenever it took damage. In Sonic 3, the Egg Mobile was changed to instead use Sonic's palette, freeing up most of the colors in the enemy palette to be used by each boss as they see fit.

As a result, the Egg Mobile no longer flashes, even when the boss only adds a few appendages, as in Hydrocity Zone.


This creates a problem for the Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 bosses in Sky Sanctuary Zone. These bosses feature a naked Egg Mobile by design, but they have to flash something when you hit them, so they just flash Sonic's palette.

Flashing Sonic's palette has the downside of also flashing Sonic, Tails, and their lives icons, which just looks weird.


Presumably, the developers realized this, and so the Egg Mobile doesn't flash when hitting it doesn't matter, such as at the end of Launch Base Zone 1, or when Knuckles hits it during the Hidden Palace Zone cutscene. Bizarrely though, it does flash when you try hitting it later in the same scene.


Finally, you might have noticed that the dark red color above is actually flashing black. Turns out, the Egg Mobile boss flash actually suffers from the same bug as the LRZ1 boss. Here's what it's actually supposed to look like:

4 comments:

  1. Any reason they couldn't just use the enemy palette for the "naked" Egg Mobile?

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    1. Making the Egg Mobile use Sonic's palette frees up the enemy palette to be freely used by the rest of the boss, allowing bosses to be a lot more colorful and varied. Contrast the bosses in Sonic 3 with the ones from Sonic 1 and Sonic 2.

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  2. I meant in the "naked Egg Mobile" instances. Although now I think about it, I assume in the case of Mecha Sonic, the enemy palette must have been used by Mecha Sonic, the wrecking ball and the Mecha Sonic orbs? That still wouldn't explain the instances in which it was piloted by Eggman, though.

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    1. That is exactly what happens, yes!

      The enemy palette is already claimed by cutscene Knuckles during the Hidden Palace sequence. I don't know of any reason why it couldn't be used at the end of Death Egg, though.

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