Do you plan to discuss avoiding Tails getting stuck in passageways or getting stuck in traps by activating a Star Post or entering a Special Stage as quickly as possible?Brainulator9 is talking about a passage that appears in page 27 of the US Sonic 3 manual, directly before the infamous "diabolical traps" line. Here's what it reads:
In the IceCap Zone and throughout the game, avoid having Tails get stuck in passageways or get caught in traps. Have Tails activate Starposts or enter into a Special Stage as quickly as possible.What could this oddly specific phrasing be referring to? If the "diabolical traps" thing is any indication, this is likely a bug acknowledgment and its suggested workaround.
Well, there is indeed an S3A-exclusive bug regarding Tails in Icecap Zone, which occurs roughly 100% of the time. You see, Icecap Zone 1 is normally a vertically-wrapping level. However, when you first start the level as Tails, the level size is modified in order to have Tails fall from the top of the screen.
Evidently, the developers never bothered playing past this sequence, because at no point is the level size ever restored back to its regular state. As a result, when Tails reaches the point where the level should wrap upon itself, he's instantly killed by a mysterious, unseen force.
The workaround? Well, the level size is only supposed to change when Tails first enters the stage, so the relevant code only runs if the Last_star_post_hit variable is zero. The variable is set to a non-zero value when the player activates a star post or enters a special stage, so doing either will prevent the bug from reoccurring after the player respawns.
I imagine it would have been a problem if Knuckles suffered from this, but it's more likely they just caught the error before release but when it was too late to fix it.
ReplyDeleteif you were to port Knuckles into S3A, he would suffer from this due to the code that checks for tails checking if the player mode is higher or equal rather than only equal to 2
DeleteOooh, Tails week? Fun little thing I've been at least a little curious about (and got to thinking about it because of the recent posts on Big Arm / LBZ's end sequence) -- for some reason there's a regression with Tails's tails not getting removed at the end of the stage when the Death Egg falls, specifically in Tails alone mode in S3K.
ReplyDeleteThis bug required me to double-check because it's so weird. At the very least you'd think it would have happened as a result of re-introducing Tails into the Beam Rocket boss area in Sonic and Tails mode, rather than showing up in Tails alone (where it wasn't an issue in Sonic 3).