Many years ago, the legendary GoldS demonstrated that if you manage to avoid breaking the capsule, then the ghosts appear as soon as you touch a star post. It makes sense: there are no star posts prior to the capsule, so this is a good way to ensure the ghosts are present throughout the rest of the stage, even after you die or enter a bonus stage.
However, it's actually simpler than that. All the ghosts do is wait for Last_star_post_hit to have a non-zero value. When the capsule breaks, it triggers a fake star post with the same X/Y position as the regular act 2 start coords. As a result, if you lose a life after breaking the capsule but before touching the first star post, you'll respawn back at the start of the stage, except with the ghosts already out and a non-zero timer.
You should have delayed this article by another week.
ReplyDeleteI suspected the last fake star post was related to the ghosts. Ain't no other levels with early-stage shenanigans like this.
Makes sense. How about with Knux, do they drop the fake starpost as soon as the stage begins, or do the ghosts bypass the starpost check entirely?
ReplyDeleteVery good question. Knuckles bypasses the star post check completely. I will come back to this at some point.
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