In S&K, this was changed so that stationary capsules are also spawned by the boss, which unfortunately led to this bug where the capsule in Hydrocity Zone 2 is not properly aligned with the screen lock:
Why the developers changed this is a mystery; perhaps they were trying to remove any possibility that the player might somehow miss the screen lock and proceed to the next stage without fighting the boss, as can be seen here.
Surprisingly, such a minor detail can actually give us insight on an unrelated aspect of the game's development. It turns out, the object layout for Flying Battery Zone 2 contains one such stationary capsule, at coordinates $3210, $660.
FBZ2_Sprites: dc.w $80, $80, 0, $3130, $86D8, $B400, $3210, $8660, $C600
dc.w $FFFF, 0, 0
The reason this is interesting is because the S3A placement of the capsule is a stone's throw away from its final resting place in Sonic & Knuckles. This suggests that by the time it was removed from S3A, the level layout for Flying Battery 2 was already quite similar to its final layout in Sonic & Knuckles.
Astute readers will notice the second object present in the layout placed slightly to the left of the capsule at coordinates $3130, $6D8. Foreshadowing: the sign of a quality blog.
Did you mean to type $86D8 instead of $6D8 at the very end?
ReplyDeleteHere's something else: in S3A, the capsule doesn't lock the screen if you skip the boss first, so you can go back and THEN fight the boss... not that doing so helps progress any. In fact, that makes drowning your only means of escape that isn't resetting the console, and even that's negated if you have the Aqua Barrier.
And that's before Super Sonic gets sucked up into semi-Super Sonic by the HCZ2 boss.
> Did you mean to type $86D8 instead of $6D8 at the very end?
DeleteNo. The high bit of an object's Y coordinate in the object layout is a special flag which instructs the object to spawn regardless of the player's own Y coordinate.
OK, I thought that was a typo because the X coordinates were the same. Thank you.
DeleteIs there any reason why Sonic's sprite is sunk 1px into the Capsule button, in the S&K pic?
ReplyDeleteWow, extremely good catch. I didn't notice it myself until I had the two shots side-by-side.
DeleteApparently that's just what happens if Sonic goes into his victory animation right when he lands. I've replaced the screenshots to avoid any confusion.
A bit unrelated, but what do you use to take .gifs?
ReplyDeleteFusion's screenshot feature, Photoshop, and a little something called Microsoft Gif Animator.
Delete