Several problems with creating unlockables

I'm trying to create some new unlockables for Tortured Planet, but I have encountered multiple problems.

1. The levels appear to be hidden, but when I force a map change to the levels, it doesn't say "you need to unlock this level first" even though I haven't unlocked them at all.

2. One of the levels (the only one which is Single Player) appears on the Statistics screen, even though it should be hidden and I haven't yet unlocked it in my tests.

3. "Spring Hill" is also on the Statistics screen, and I don't know how to get rid of it.

4. It says there are 56 emblems in the game, but I only made 54. Maybe they're secret emblems. How do I fix that?

Fawfulfan said:

1. The levels appear to be hidden, but when I force a map change to the levels, it doesn't say "you need to unlock this level first" even though I haven't unlocked them at all.

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That is normal behavior. The error message is hardcoded into SRB2. For the other issues, I don't know.

Fawfulfan said:

2. One of the levels (the only one which is Single Player) appears on the Statistics screen, even though it should be hidden and I haven't yet unlocked it in my tests.

3. "Spring Hill" is also on the Statistics screen, and I don't know how to get rid of it.

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The saved data will automatically add any map you end up at to the listing. Try deleting your save data and starting again, and see if that fixes the problem. This kind of thing can happen when you're messing around with the config, as it saved it once and it won't delete it later just because the config no longer tells it to save that information.

Fawfulfan said:

4. It says there are 56 emblems in the game, but I only made 54. Maybe they're secret emblems. How do I fix that?

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It's possible it's still doing what it used to do in 1.X. See what happens when you complete the game and when you complete the game with all emeralds, as those were the extra emblems back in 1.X. The mod code might not have been updated to provide 4 secret emblems instead of 2.

The point is that I don't want there to be ANY secret emblems.

I think this game's capacity for creating custom unlockables is painfully restrictive. There's a fair amount of flexibility in how to unlock your custom secrets, but you can really only create two things: level select and a warp to a secret level. You should be able to add other goodies into mods, like Pandora's Box or a secret character or even lock down some standard features as secret, like Time Attack.

The reason it's restrictive is that when such features were implemented, those were the only kinds of secrets the game even had.

Hell, if you look at 2.0, we still have very little variety in the types of secrets in the game.

Fawfulfan said:

The point is that I don't want there to be ANY secret emblems.

I think this game's capacity for creating custom unlockables is painfully restrictive. There's a fair amount of flexibility in how to unlock your custom secrets, but you can really only create two things: level select and a warp to a secret level. You should be able to add other goodies into mods, like Pandora's Box or a secret character or even lock down some standard features as secret, like Time Attack.

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There's something you could always suggest in the "Suggestions" thread you know.

Also, adding onto this,
Fawful, who all would you add as secret characters to it, and what exactly would they do?

Actually, I wasn't intending to add any secret characters at all. I just think that door should be open to those who want to use it.

The problem with unlockable characters is more how characters are stored. Since they HAVE to be external WAD files from the main file if there are more than one, it's really clear how many characters are included with the mod, and it sorta fails to be "secret" instantly. It would be trivial to just addfile the character WAD to see what it is.

Mystic said:

Since they HAVE to be external WAD files from the main file if there are more than one

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Ahem. No they do not. You can insert as many characters in a wad as you want, provided that:

• Directly after a S_SKIN come the character's sprites in the correct order
• There is at least one lump between one character's last sprite and the next's S_SKIN.

I have done this in the past to condense Tails and Knuckles into the IWAD, and it worked perfectly. Characters get added by order of which S_SKIN comes first.