Sonic Winter Adventures

[vladikcomper 4]

THE FIRST PUBLIC RELEASE

The day has finally come: the day I am finally releasing a full-fledged, full on hack that I have been working on for quite a long time. I can't believe it's finally happening! What an exciting moment for myself!

I must say, a lot, and I mean a lot of work is still needed until I feel this hack is complete. To my regret, SWA still doesn't boast a wide variety of levels, so don't expect too much from the hack. In any case, I was able to make this release as a playable and enjoyable as possible, so I'm extremely happy about this release.

So, proceed!

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The release trailer. Totally necessary to watch. I can't describe how thankful am I to mr. MB for creating this amazing sight!

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So, what's new about this hack?

• Blast Processing. Who says Sega can't do what Super Nintendo does?
  
• Russian and English languages. Sonic Winter Adventures also has two language settings, English and Russian. The two languages ​​are represented in one menu. You can change the language in the Options menu.
  
• High-speed gameplay! Like the best features of its predecessor, Sonic Quick Winter Adventures, SWA brings new tricks to the table that add even more speed and drive to the game play. Some of the moves include the Homing Attack, Jump Dash, Super Peel Out, and of course, the good old Spin Dash.
  
• New bosses. Making bosses is usually a very complex process that requires a lot of effort. Not to mention, it can be difficult sometimes to come up with the idea of a good boss, but as you can see from my past projects, I have a special fondness for bosses! Therefore, one of the key elements of Sonic Winter Adventures is the bosses. In this hack, I paid particular attention to the development of bosses, which means lots of time and effort had been poured in.
  
• Unlockables. Even after you finished all the levels, the game is far from over! As you go, you will open some previously hidden features and modes, so be on the lookout.
  
  

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  Of course, Sonic Winter Adventures would not be possible without the help and support of many wonderful people!
  

  • Jet - a great musician and a good friend. He has made many invaluable contributions to the project. He not only created the music for the hack in zingy quality, made ​​technically sophisticated ports, but also gave valuable tips and expressed interesting ideas. Not to mention the fact that he strongly encouraged me to develop. It is unlikely that this project would have been further developed without his support.
    
  • S_T_D - another first-class musician who has recently expressed a desire to make some music ports for hacking. The quality of his work took my fancy, I took his songs, no questions asked.
    
  • Deoxys Kyogre - offered some amazing ideas for the act of the first zone, which gave me a second wind in the improvement of the levels. He created a few chunks, but they later helped me realize a lot of interesting solutions and new ways in the first zone.
    
  • PsychoRFG - has an incredible ability to push every button combination that will cause the game to behave in unexpected ways. Also has X-ray vision and can see the bug, even if it occurs in one case in a million.
    
  • SonicVaan - another beta tester, who, like PsychoRFG, revealed a lot of bugs and flaws. Thanks to him the game was fixed many small and medium-sized bugs and flaws in the placement of objects in the levels.
    
  • MarkeyJester - special thanks for the testing of some components of the hack on real hardware.
    
  • MainMemory - advised me on the English localization.
    
  • Sienduk - tested one of the pre-final prototypes the on March 30th on real hardware. Watching his passing has helped me to bring out the many weaknesses in the structure of the levels and some shortcomings.
    
  • mr. MB - provided the flash cartridge, making and testing took place Sonic Winter Adventures in Tula on March 30 ;) He also created a stunning Launch Trailer for the hack, for which I am eternally grateful to him.
    

  Also express my gratitude to the Sonic Retro Tech Members and Sonic SCANF!

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  DOWNLOAD

[Fwiss 29]

Great gameplay so far. The first boss was very original. I can't seem to get sound support working on my current emulator/setup (KEGA Fusion on Gentoo); do you have a link to the soundtrack?

[♥ Nero 0]

It was awesome! Especially the third boss.

_{Also it was pleasant that the soundtrack was used from Megaman The Wily Wars.}

[vladikcomper 4]

Great gameplay so far. The first boss was very original. I can't seem to get sound support working on my current emulator/setup (KEGA Fusion on Gentoo); do you have a link to the soundtrack?

I didn't think of releasing the soundtrack before, since the music is mostly ported from other Genesis games, which means it sounds nearly the same, apart from few improvements, usually with adding high DAC samples with Mega PCM, although the hack has got some original remixes, like Title screen theme and boss theme #3 (technically, the hardest composition in the hack). But quite a few people have asked me of this recently, so yeah, I'll do it soon.

And here is a small example of the said music improvement:

http://bit.ly/14PoWiu (original version)

http://bit.ly/101jyAJ (SWA's version)

[Shadow 43]

Pretty way past cool job.

I'm not too much into hacking myself but I know some things about it from MegaGWolf at youtube :P

The concept is pretty neat too, especially since ice/snow levels are my favourite themed stages in gaming history.

I'm looking forward this game :)

[vladikcomper 4]

FIRST PUBLIC RELEASE SOUNDTRACK

DOWNLOAD

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I didn't plan to release a soundtrack before, since the game borrows a lot from the other Genesis games; while this kind of porting can be times harder and more time-consuming, it all sounds quite similar after all, apart from several quality improvements and tweaks. To my surprise, quite a few people have asked me to release the game's soundtrack already. I was happy to hear a lot of people actually loved the game's music. I'm sure, Jet and S_T_D, who were behind the most awesome compositions, are even happier about this! Thank you! We'll try to please you with even more original tracks in the future and show what SMD is truly capable of in terms of sound quality.

For those of you who would like to enjoy listening hack's music in your music players, I've recorded the soundtrack of the Sonic Winter Adventure's First Public Release, featuring the most significant music in the hack. To make it more interesting, this release also includes several bonus tracks that weren't present in the game. All of them are original remixes made by Jet, with several ones being prepared specially for this release.

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Tracks list:

1 - The Frozen Hill - Act 1 (Jet) ... from Megaman Zero 3

2 - The Frozen Hill - Act 2 (Jet) ... from Sonic Advance

3 - The Frozen Hill - Act 3 (Jet) ... from Cool-Spot

4 - The Ancient Castle (Jet) ... from Battletoads and Double Dragon

5 - The Final Factory - Act 1 (Jet) ... from Megaman 2

6 - The Final Factory - Act 2 (vladikcomper) ... from Dangerous Seed

7 - The Final Factory - Act 3 (S_T_D) ... from Journey To Silius

8 - Robotnik's Park (vladikcomper) ... from Magical Hat no Buttobi Turbo! Daibouken

9 - The Big Boss (Jet) ... A Remix of The Adventures of Batman & Robin

10 - The Big Boss - Extneded Verison [bonus Track] (Jet) ... A Remix of The Adventures of Batman & Robin

11 - Credits (vladikcomper) ... from Dangerous Seed

12 - Title Screen (Jet) ... A Remix of Megaman: The Wily Wars

13 - Title Screen - Alternative Version (vladikcomper) ... from Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad

14 - Menu Theme #1 (vladikcomper) ... from Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad

15 - Menu Theme #1 - Remix (Jet) ... A Remix of Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad

16 - Menu Theme #2 (vladikcomper) ... from Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad

17 - Menu Theme #3 (Jet) ... from Sparkster

18 - Theme of Winter (vladikcomper) ... from Mega Turrican

19 - Theme of Power (vladikcomper) ... from Mega Turrican

20 - Theme of Happiness (vladikcomper) ... from Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad

21 - A Tribute to Tempo [bonus Track] (Jet) ... A Remix of Tempo

22 - A Tribute to Sonic CD (S_T_D) ... from Sonic CD

23 - A Tribute to Megaman [bonus Track] (Jet) ... from Megaman X

24 - A Tribute to Mr. Nutz [bonus Track] (Jet) ... A Remix of Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad

The highlighted ones are original remixes and bonus tracks. To my mind, the track is worth listening at least for them -- Jet has done a marvelous job once again! He'll appreciate it if you give it a listen.

[TheOnyxGuy 1]

That's cool work! Vlad, you're the BEST ROM-hacker in Russia!

[System1500 0]

Vladikcomper, I beat your hack Sonic Winter Adventures, I beat the game, completed all 6 challenges, unlocked a familiar transformation, a.k.a, I got 100%, and I have to say, this is my favourite hack now. I love your creative boss fights, My favourite one has to be Ancient Castle's act 1 escape where your being chased by rising lava. I love the textures, the remixes, the challenges ,everything. You've just created a masterpiece of a Sonic hack! Congrats! I will definitely try out newer versions if you are still supporting this hack. Once again, congrats on creating a amazing hack! I look forward to seeing more updates and seeing new and more features and changes. You rock!

[Fwiss 29]

Is this release the same release as the Hacking Contest 2013 version?

[vladikcomper 4]

Generally speaking, yes. I didn't have enough time to finish and add some new content there. Apart from few visual improvements and CD-Audio support, levels and bosses are pretty much the same.

Just realized I've forgot to post an update here. So if you wonder, here goes the original post:

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HACKING CONTEST 2013 SPECIAL

It's a been a little while since the last release -- it was on April 28. Originally, my plans weren't to release the next update too soon, apparently some people were asking me if there would be a SWA release on the hacking contest, and I actually thought this would be a wonderful idea. I quickly changed my plans then to get the next version ready by the this year's Hacking Contest.

Sorry to disappoint those who has played the first release already, but there isn't new levels in this special edition. This is the reason I'm not calling it a proper release, but just an edition. Unfortunately, there weren't enough time to add new content without holding the quality bar I set in the first release. However, if you would like another play through a little upgraded and improved version of the game, then be my guest!

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As you might notice from the recently shown video...

... one of the biggest additions in this version is the CD-music playback. Many of you wondered since if I really went for porting the whole hack to Sega CD.

Well, partially. I've been indeed thinking of moving to the Sega CD platform recently, so by this small update, I'm setting a little experiment here. It all depends on you, my dear players! If many of you prefer CD-music to old-school chiptunes, I may really consider a full porting to the Sega CD platform.

So what platform Sonic Winter Adventures is now on? Both!

Sonic Winter Adventures is present in a form of a ROM, that can work on plain Sega Mega-Drive platform, as well as using Sega Mega-CD addon. In other words, you still can play it as your ordinary Mega-Drive ROM in any emulator, but once you active the Sega CD emulation, the game is able to use this platform's extended features for CD-Audio playback. If you were to put this on real hardware, it would look like so: you plug a cartridge in your Mega-Drive, append it with Mega-CD addon, insert CD-Audio disk in your Sega CD and play. This is so-called Mode 1: booting Sega CD from a cartridge (as opposed to Mode 2: booting from a disc).

I would like to hugely thank Tristanseifert, LazloPsylus and MarkeyJester. This won't happen without the help of this awesome guys! Thank you for providing me hardware initialization code, support, testing it on real hardware, and specially for answering my dumb Sega CD hardware questions, as I even didn't have enough time to read through the pile of docs (yeah, the decision was really taken too late).

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How to use

Booting with the Sega CD addon (highly recommended!)

• Run SWA.BAT to open the game in a specially configured emulator.
  
• To connect a CD-image and boot Sega CD, just drag&drop SWA.CUE file onto the emulator's window with SWA running. The game will reboot and a notification message will appear if success.
  
  Booting as an ordinary SMD ROM

  • Run SWA.GEN in your favorite emulator.
    

  For more info and configuration guidelines (if case you would like to configure your own emulator manually), see ReadMe.txt.

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[BlurryDawgo 26]

Try adding a story like as to why the world is frozen, like:

[This takes place after the original Sonic the Hedgehog]

After running strong through six lands of challenges, Sonic has defeated the villainous Dr. Robotnik and saved the beautiful South Island from his tyranny! Everything is happy! The adorable little animals are throwing a party for the true blue hero, and there are no more badniks or traps to fear!

Or so it seems…

Dr. Robotnik is still alive! And he almost immediately recaptures all the liberated animals to power his badniks and uses his Egg Chiller to freeze South Island to give our hero a bigger challenge! But Sonic won't stop now! With his new Homing Attack and Super Peel Out, Sonic's ready to do it to it!

EDIT: Hello? Anyone there?

Edited 7 Sep 2013 by BlueBlur62391