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January 25, 2003: First release! Purple Hills Act 1 complete, display changed (doesn't something about it look "beta-ish"?), and title screen, Sega, & Level Select palettes complete. Sonic in my opinion looks better now.
March 12, 2003: Purple Hills Zone Complete! Yes, it did take a while, but check out the results! Gaslight font ditched, and better sprite placement. ESE got an upgrade and now I'm able to actually see what I'm doing (a lot of the sprites were shown as a question mark before, mainly level specifics). Title Cards have finally been changed (although I had to change several level names, mainly those with J, Q, V, W, or X in them). Several palettes have been loaded, mainly Atlantis Lake, Emerald Casino, and Robotropolis Act 1 (as well as the ending sequence!). I have also updated Sonic's palette in the Special Stage, Continue Screen, and Ending Sequence to match his in-game palette. Check out the screen you get if you lose a Special Stage with no emeralds: I've made it say "Emerald Land"! (although, for reasons unknown, the A and L in "Emerald" are too close together. I'm working on a way to fix that.)
April 3, 2003: First off, I renamed this to Sonic 4, since Ultima Sonic began to sound idiotic after awhile (consequently, future hacks will become Sonic 5, etc.). Atlantis Lake Zone Act 1 finished! I decreased the ring count in the Purple Hills, as I found that too many rings causes sprite errors and slowdown. A couple of Sonic's sprites have been edited thanks to Sonik Sprite, as well as the numbers in the HUD display. I would have had this released sooner, but I tried editing more sprites than changed here and ended up regretting it. Hopefully, in the next version, Sonik Sprite WON'T chop off the top half of Sonic's moving sprites once edited.
June 20, 2003: Huff... puff... dang you beach and school and what not... now to the point. Yes, it's been a long time, but here's some good news! Atlantis Lake Act 2 is finally complete, making Sonic 4 the first hack EVER to have a "looping" level (meaning you start at the end, but the end sign is blocked off, so you have to go in a big circle to find the button that opens the door). Also, Magma Hills Zone's pallette is about 80% complete! HOORAY!
Also, I am no longer including stealth patch in the zip files. This is to save file size.
August 5, 2003: YES!!!! All pallettes have been updated and Atlantis Lake is complete, making Sonic 4 the most progressed Sonic 1 hack EVER! I've recently got the latest version of E.S.E., so I'll be able to edit levels at about TRIPLE the speed I was with SonED. Thank you SOOOO much, Tile Extractor.
This version would have been released sooner, but my Internet broke down and fixing it took a while. Expect updates to be cranking out slightly faster after this.
August 13, 2003: See what I mean about faster updates? Well, anyways, first things first. I've given the Purple Hills Zone a MAJOR tune-up, mainly to decrease the ring count drastically and make it so that the sprite-constructed walls don't look so sloppy. Magma Hills 1 complete, and I'm hoping to get the SSRG (Sonic Stuff Research Group) to host the Sonic 4 website after this release.
I've also added a Progress page, so you can know how far along the levels are.
August 16, 2003: My right index finger was disabled in a freak accident the day Version 1.2 Beta was released, but, as you can see, that didn't stop me! Magma Hills 2 complete! That's all there is as far as level updates are concerned, but here's some news that should keep you on the edge of your seat! The latest version of E.S.E. has a Sonic 1 Special Stage Editor! It's still in development, though (you can view and edit the Special Stages, but it is currently impossible to save your work to the ROM). I'm hoping that E.S.E. 2.40 will allow you to actually save the edited Special Stages. If it does, expect Sonic 4 to be the first Sonic 1 hack known to man to have edited Special Stages in the ROM!
I have also added an e-mail link to the Credits Page.
August 20, 2003: *sings* Whoooooaaa! We're halfway there! That's right! With the finish of Magma Hills 3, Sonic 4 is at the halfway point on the road to completion! Sonic 4 is the second Sonic Hack EVER to have reached this point in completion (with the genius Sonic 2 Ultima being the first)!
But with good news comes bad. For some strange reason, the level pointers got screwed up, and for causes unknown, Emerald Casino and Cosmic City have switched positions. So, from this version on, Emerald Casino will come after Magma Hills (instead of Cosmic City, as planned). Like I said, WHY Magma Hills goes to Emerald Casino instead of Cosmic City is beyond me. I've tried countless other levels to come after Magma Hills, and all of those work fine. It's only when I select Cosmic City 1 to come after Magma Hills 3 that this bug happens. Oh well.
August 25, 2003: Yes, I have been receiving word that the Purple Hills Zone is WAY too easy. So, to make up for it, in this release I have revamped the boss so that it is SUPER HARD. Emerald Casino 1 complete, and that's all, folks.
September 13, 2003: Ladies and gentlemen, remember waaaaaaay beack in Sonic 4 history, when it had the Gaslight Font? Well, it's back, and this time it's properly implemented (explaining why this version took so goddam long to finish)! So Atlantis Lake, Magma Hills, and Cosmic City have been changed to Aqua Caverns, Lava Lake, and Cosmic Speedway. Also, because of this, I will now be putting the Rom into the zip files, NOT the patch. So no longer do you need S. Patch to run Sonic 4. All you need to get by yourself now is a trusty Genesis emulator (Gens personally recommended for playing Sonic 4) All other zones have remained the same. Emerald Casino 2 has been updated (I know the one-way floors are a bit buggy, but do what the sign says and cope. This is not a bug I can fix), and that's all for Sonic 4.
But, let me inform you that I have slightly begun work on my next work of art, Sonic 5. Not much has been done at the moment, but let me tell you this: expect great things. Things that have NEVER been seen before in an ordinary Sonic 2 hack. ALL lost zones will be revived and revamped (Wood Zone, Hidden Palace, Dust Hill, and even the legendary Genocide City and Winter Hill Zones, which nobody has laid eyes upon before until now), S2Beta Music is implemented, and expect a wonderful greeting from our new Casino Night....
Props go out to Esrael L.G. Neto for Sonic 2 Delta II version 0.8, which I am basing Sonic 5 from.
June 11, 2004: Well, it's been almost a full year since my last update. I know you're probably pissed and all, but please understand, it was for some other... important distractions (school and whatnot). But now that I'm on summer break, I should be able to bring to you new versions of Sonic 4 once again!
First off, I am pleased to announce that Sonic 4 is the first Sonic 1 hack EVER to have edited Special Stages inside the rom (thanks to the new ESE II, a faster, more efficient, and overall better version of ESE, which also has the working Special Stage Editor!)! However, it's still in testing, and for some reason, stage 4 isn't working anymore (I've updated stages 1 and 2, and for some reason, if you don't edit them all, the stage two after the last one you edited becomes corrupt. So don't try any Special Stages until I'm done editing them.) Next, I've FINALLY completed Emerald Casino Act 3! It's amazing that after all this, I've completed two full versions. Next off, SonicWhammy Productions has been changed to MegaRock Games (if you're a hard-core fan of a certain kid in blue armor, you should immediately get the pun). Finally, if you haven't noticed already, thanks to a new version of Geocities PageBuilder, I have been able to give a much more efficient design to the site!
Enjoy!
P.S. Look in some of the other zones, and you'll find that I've made a couple of tune-ups to them as well. |
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