SA2's Green hill - stage remake. (You won't need 180 emblems to play this stage!)

[InfernoMelon]

I'm pretty much on a roll right now, I did more progress on the title screen stage, and now you can reach the top from all the way down and vice-versa. And of course added more decorations, because I love to decorate stages. :3 I also want to implement a wide stage image, because they seem cool and they show more detail instead of a pixelated 100x160 mess... ​

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View attachment 154967
Am I going too hard for a bonus stage that maybe 25% of people will unlock? Or maybe won't even realize that it's there in the first place? Either way, I'm actually feeling fulfillment from mapping again, and I genuinely can't wait to finish this stage. :3​

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I also made a concept for how you would beat this stage:
View attachment 154966
So I'm not really sure if this stage will have a capsule, it will depend on how difficult will be the process of adding a rising capsule, and if it will be worth to use it over that lil' system I made there. I had a plan for the goal sign to be in the middle of the stage at the spawn point, yet it only will be activated when all enemies are beaten, but I feel like it will be kinda confusing. Or it may also rise from the ground. I feel like that would be a cooler way of doing it honestly, and less confusing too. And there also will be either a sound cue or just a hard cut of the signpost rising from the middle island.​

Honestly, it would be cool instead of using the regular SA2 Green Hill theme for the bonus stage to use the Sonic Battle's version since it's fits more for a "smash all badniks" type of stage tbh

 

[Aquavine]

Honestly, it would be cool instead of using the regular SA2 Green Hill theme for the bonus stage to use the Sonic Battle's version since it's fits more for a "smash all badniks" type of stage tbh

I was looking through a playlists of all the GHZ themes from all Sonic games. And how about green grove from Sonic 3D blast? (Genesis version by the way, either act 1 or 2.) Like you know, the Sonic game in which you destroy all of the badniks in the stage to all save the trapped flickies and finish the stage? I still may use something different, but it's still not that bad of an idea, especially looking how it's technically GHZ and how good the source game fits this stage's idea.

Or I even might make this stage take place at sunset and be able to use some different type of music for it, but I'll still have to think about it. :P

 

[Maverick Finn]

Or I even might make this stage take place at sunset and be able to use some different type of music for it, but I'll still have to think about it. :P

If you make it sunset, I think Jahn Davis' GHZ Sunset mix for Sonic Studio would fit well!

 

[Aquavine]

If you make it sunset, I think Jahn Davis' GHZ Sunset mix for Sonic Studio would fit well!

Yeah, it would sound really good honestly, it really sounds like a sunset and also like green hill. :> But I also have a suggestion... for myself. :P I also could use this jazz-fusion (I love jazz-fusion) remix of neo green hill zone, mainly with the sunset theme though. (Fun-fact, this song was at one point meant to be the theme for the first act of NEO Emerald Coast wowowowo. Also please listen to the rest of remixes he has they're really good.)

And I might as well showcase my little doohickey that makes the goal sign appear out of the ground:

I decided that the goal sign will be at the spawn after all, but so nobody will be confused why the sign post doesn't work I decided to make both the trigger and the sign appear after you defeat all the enemies in the stage. :> (The "button" trigger is a placeholder by the way.) And sadly I made nothing new beyond that. :C

 

[Dapple Dualies]

gren hall

 

[Aquavine]

gren hall

The hall is indeed gren. Thank you for bringing this to my light. This will forever alter the development of this addon...

 

[Maverick Finn]

I also have a suggestion... for myself. :P I also could use this jazz-fusion (I love jazz-fusion) remix of neo green hill zone, mainly with the sunset theme though.

Well, the song is actually very good, and even tho it does fit "sunset" a lot, it doesn't fit "green hill" at all.

(Fun-fact, this song was at one point meant to be the theme for the first act of NEO Emerald Coast wowowowo. Also please listen to the rest of remixes he has they're really good.)

Even tho it doesn't fit "green hill", it does fit "emerald coast". I see why you would consider that song for Neo ECZ

I decided that the goal sign will be at the spawn after all, but so nobody will be confused why the sign post doesn't work I decided to make both the trigger and the sign appear after you defeat all the enemies in the stage. :> (The "button" trigger is a placeholder by the way.) And sadly I made nothing new beyond that. :C

I think it will still be a bit confusing... like, how will I know I need to come back to the start in order to find the sign?
Maybe a message on-screen will work? like, "you freed all animals! now go back to the start to flip the sign!"

 

[Aquavine]

I did a small update on the main stage side, to be exact I got rid of the visible hitboxes for triggers, finished adding enemies, made zoom tubes darker, made re-colored brick sprites for the chao box and made a thumbnail for the main stage in record attack and level select.​

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I'm multi tasking a lot at the moment so the updates might go slower now. :C​

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I think it will still be a bit confusing... like, how will I know I need to come back to the start in order to find the sign?
Maybe a message on-screen will work? like, "you freed all animals! now go back to the start to flip the sign!"​

I might either do a sound cue, or a hard camera cut showing the sign appearing from the ground. But a message sounds neat too. I just need to learn how to do it.

 

[FlamingFire]

ADVENTURE STYLES JUST CAME OUT SO THIS WILL ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE!

 

[*GOOFYRAT!*]

I did a small update on the main stage side, to be exact I got rid of the visible hitboxes for triggers, finished adding enemies, made zoom tubes darker, made re-colored brick sprites for the chao box and made a thumbnail for the main stage in record attack and level select.​

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View attachment 155745View attachment 155761
View attachment 155748View attachment 155760
I'm multi tasking a lot at the moment so the updates might go slower now. :C​

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I might either do a sound cue, or a hard camera cut showing the sign appearing from the ground. But a message sounds neat too. I just need to learn how to do it.

THAT LOOKS SO CEWL AAAAAAAA-

 

[The Unknown Watcher]

I did a small update on the main stage side, to be exact I got rid of the visible hitboxes for triggers, finished adding enemies, made zoom tubes darker, made re-colored brick sprites for the chao box and made a thumbnail for the main stage in record attack and level select.​

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View attachment 155745View attachment 155761
View attachment 155748View attachment 155760
I'm multi tasking a lot at the moment so the updates might go slower now. :C​

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I might either do a sound cue, or a hard camera cut showing the sign appearing from the ground. But a message sounds neat too. I just need to learn how to do it.

We're about to be eating this up once this drops.

 

[Maverick Finn]

I'm multi tasking a lot at the moment so the updates might go slower now. :C​

s'cool.

 

[Aquavine]

s'cool.

s’cool? More like school which will keep me chained down for like one more week due to many projects and tests. :’D

And there’s one more reason that will slow down my activity, I already announced it somewhere else, but now I’m on a break from this forums (maybe at least, I still was inactive for some days, but I may try being like 25% more active here again.) but mainly I’m on a break from mapping, it doesn’t look hard... and it pretty much isn’t honestly... but mapping is really resource heavy, at least for me. Like I can make a map really easily even now, but making it actually good requires a lot of time and thinking, and on top of that my mind probably should focus on school instead, so there’s that.

So in short. I’m on a break due to school and due to me overworking myself on a thought heavy activity, a.k.a level designing and replying to messages in a language which isn’t my mother one. :C (And because I’m an introvert too... and my brain melted due to my comical amount of social interactions...)

 

[InfernoMelon]

s’cool? More like school which will keep me chained down for like one more week due to many projects and tests. :’D

And there’s one more reason that will slow down my activity, I already announced it somewhere else, but now I’m on a break from this forums (maybe at least, I still was inactive for some days, but I may try being like 25% more active here again.) but mainly I’m on a break from mapping, it doesn’t look hard... and it pretty much isn’t honestly... but mapping is really resource heavy, at least for me. Like I can make a map really easily even now, but making it actually good requires a lot of time and thinking, and on top of that my mind probably should focus on school instead, so there’s that.

So in short. I’m on a break due to school and due to me overworking myself on a thought heavy activity, a.k.a level designing and replying to messages in a language which isn’t my mother one. :C (And because I’m an introvert too... and my brain melted due to my comical amount of social interactions...)

Honestly, you deserve it, working on two maps and doing schoolwork at the same time gotta be tiring for you... but good luck on your break!!!
(I know, I already said this, I just want to say this again :3)

 

[Aquavine]

This may be the longest break from updates I ever had on this thread... But that doesn't mean that I have nothing new done. >:3

So throughout my inactivity here I was working on the bonus green hill map... which could or could have not been in a small dev-hell at one point... -.-" So the deal was that the map was crashing in random spots for no actual reason, and due to it being purely RNG made it kinda hard to even fix in the first place, but now this map is... stable? I think? And because of the crashes I decided to fully recreate the map hoping it would fix the crashing (It didn't... but it probably was because of a feature I added to this stage that actually was pretty resource heavy on the game probably... So I got rid of it and I think the map is stable again... and I made some polish to the raw map throughout the recreating process too.)

So with that out of the way, here's all the progress I did on this map as of now:

And my question is... is it fun? I had an idea to make a sort of a ring reward system where you could earn shields by collecting enough rings, but I probably implemented it in such way that it may caused SRB2 to choke a bit (still not sure If I managed to fix the crashes though, I might risk re-adding it in it's original form if everything goes well.) So the original way of working was that you would collect rings, and you would instantly get the shield, but now I probably should rework it so you will have to go to the spawn to earn the shield because before that the game checked your ring count... 3 times... every, single, frame... So yeah... And the shields would mainly help you with combat like the magnet shield, bubble shield and maybe even the fire flower if there's a way to combine the fire flower effect with shields via the map itself without overwriting the shield.

(And I honestly recommend playing this stage with the first person sinper addon because it's a lot of fun to just snipe all the badniks down in rapid successions or even from across the whole map... :3)​

 

[InfernoMelon]

View attachment 158805
And my question is... is it fun? I had an idea to make a sort of a ring reward system where you could earn shields by collecting enough rings, but I probably implemented it in such way that it may caused SRB2 to choke a bit (still not sure If I managed to fix the crashes though, I might risk re-adding it in it's original form if everything goes well.) So the original way of working was that you would collect rings, and you would instantly get the shield, but now I probably should rework it so you will have to go to the spawn to earn the shield because before that the game checked your ring count... 3 times... every, single, frame... So yeah... And the shields would mainly help you with combat like the magnet shield, bubble shield and maybe even the fire flower if there's a way to combine the fire flower effect with shields via the map itself without overwriting the shield.

(And I honestly recommend playing this stage with the first person sinper addon because it's a lot of fun to just snipe all the badniks down in rapid successions or even from across the whole map... :3)​

Honestly, I think it's fun (for speedrunning at least) but causal, ehhh, I still think it's fun I guess... also, If the original way doesn't work in the end, getting the shields at spawn is still fine and I think having an choice if you don't want to get an shield is pretty neat as well

 

[*GOOFYRAT!*]

This may be the longest break from updates I ever had on this thread... But that doesn't mean that I have nothing new done. >:3

So throughout my inactivity here I was working on the bonus green hill map... which could or could have not been in a small dev-hell at one point... -.-" So the deal was that the map was crashing in random spots for no actual reason, and due to it being purely RNG made it kinda hard to even fix in the first place, but now this map is... stable? I think? And because of the crashes I decided to fully recreate the map hoping it would fix the crashing (It didn't... but it probably was because of a feature I added to this stage that actually was pretty resource heavy on the game probably... So I got rid of it and I think the map is stable again... and I made some polish to the raw map throughout the recreating process too.)

So with that out of the way, here's all the progress I did on this map as of now:
View attachment 158805
And my question is... is it fun? I had an idea to make a sort of a ring reward system where you could earn shields by collecting enough rings, but I probably implemented it in such way that it may caused SRB2 to choke a bit (still not sure If I managed to fix the crashes though, I might risk re-adding it in it's original form if everything goes well.) So the original way of working was that you would collect rings, and you would instantly get the shield, but now I probably should rework it so you will have to go to the spawn to earn the shield because before that the game checked your ring count... 3 times... every, single, frame... So yeah... And the shields would mainly help you with combat like the magnet shield, bubble shield and maybe even the fire flower if there's a way to combine the fire flower effect with shields via the map itself without overwriting the shield.

(And I honestly recommend playing this stage with the first person sinper addon because it's a lot of fun to just snipe all the badniks down in rapid successions or even from across the whole map... :3)​

Nice!
(I also am a sniper enjoyer -w-)

 

[Aquavine]

Honestly, I think it's fun (for speedrunning at least) but causal, ehhh, I still think it's fun I guess...

I actually feel like this stage is more casual than speedrunny due to it being pretty repetitive and slow kinda? It's like an odd variant of a collectathon where you destroy badniks instead of collecting stuff, but the idea is pretty much the same, destroy badniks (collect "X") to progress. (I just learned that collectathon as a word came from a mixture of "collection marathon"...)

And I feel like this stage wouldn't be fun to speedrun honestly, it would probably get old after 3 runs due to it probably taking 5 minutes per run where most of it is just running around the stage...

also, If the original way doesn't work in the end, getting the shields at spawn is still fine and I think having an choice if you don't want to get an shield is pretty neat as well

I still have to re-add this feature to see if the stage is still stable, but I agree with the choice part. Especially seeing how at higher tiers you have a choice between keeping your magnet shield (Actual homing attack...) or getting a fire flower. (Vanilla first person sniper...) And the fire flower can stack with shields, but probably only via collecting it physically instead of receiving it via the stage itself... (And I genuinely didn't notice your post, I checked this thread at like 5 a.m when I had my random wake up thingy and I was too eepy and I thought you just Cool!'ed the post... )

Nice!
(I also am a sniper enjoyer -w-)

(I agree, it makes this game 2x better... And I also finally can test my aim without turning into a FPS player... the horrors...)

 

[Aquavine]

I kinda finished the most of this stage without even realizing this actually... So now all the decorations and enemies/objects are placed and every layer is full of enemies to defeat, now all I have left to do is finishing touches and I'll be done with it. And I also reworked the ring reward system a bit to make it more team-work'ey and just better perhaps? I hope at least... o_o

So for first, here's the showcase of how the ring reward system works now:

And now here's how the whole stage looks AND plays like:

And I have a small sad info, I think I managed to fix the crashes in the bonus stage, but I instead found out that the crashes are also present in the main stage, the SRB2 RPT file points to the reason the game crashes is the action A_CrushstaceanWalk. The crash happened a few days ago, but it's because I couldn't replicate it now, yet the crash was still happening in the main stage.​

Error occurred on Thursday, February 27, 2025 at 12:03:47.

srb2win.exe caused a Stack Overflow at location 00ED1863 in module srb2win.exe.

Registers:
eax=0000131c ebx=095cde74 ecx=01c029ac edx=00000000 esi=00064000 edi=00000a96
eip=00ed1863 esp=01c179a0 ebp=fff9c000 iopl=0         nv up ei pl nz na po nc
cs=0023  ss=002b  ds=002b  es=002b  fs=0053  gs=002b             efl=00010206

AddrPC   Params
00ED1863 095CDE74 00064000 00000A96  srb2win.exe!zcfree
00D304BE 095CDE74 00000A96 FFF9C000  srb2win.exe!P_SetMobjState
00CF43E3 095CDE74 00000000 0000A978  srb2win.exe!A_CrushstaceanWalk
00D305D2 00000000 0000A978 00000000  srb2win.exe!P_SetMobjState
095CDE74 0000A978 00000000 01C17A20

And this thing still happens in OPENGL, not sure if I mentioned it before here, but it seems that 2.2.15 broke the way horizon effect renders in OPENGL, making the effect disappear when behind a thok barrier. and not using a thok barrier (because you can't actually) will cause the geometry to pierce through the effect creating... this...

I also made a bug-report post containing more context.
I'm kinda tired of having to baby-sit this addon because it's too unstable to even play comfortably.
Can we all just quietly come back to playing v2.2.13 please?​

 

[InfernoMelon]

I kinda finished the most of this stage without even realizing this actually... So now all the decorations and enemies/objects are placed and every layer is full of enemies to defeat, now all I have left to do is finishing touches and I'll be done with it. And I also reworked the ring reward system a bit to make it more team-work'ey and just better perhaps? I hope at least... o_o

So for first, here's the showcase of how the ring reward system works now:
View attachment 159096
And now here's how the whole stage looks AND plays like:
View attachment 159153​

This is truly an moment...
But fr tho, nice to see my idea being used also I think be nice if the sound effect plays when you reach the reward goal(?) instead of playing only when you go back towards the starting area

And I have a small sad info, I think I managed to fix the crashes in the bonus stage, but I instead found out that the crashes are also present in the main stage, the SRB2 RPT file points to the reason the game crashes is the action A_CrushstaceanWalk. The crash happened a few days ago, but it's because I couldn't replicate it now, yet the crash was still happening in the main stage.

And this thing still happens in OPENGL, not sure if I mentioned it before here, but it seems that 2.2.15 broke the way horizon effect renders in OPENGL, making the effect disappear when behind a thok barrier. and not using a thok barrier (because you can't actually) will cause the geometry to pierce through the effect creating... this...
View attachment 159161
I also made a bug-report post containing more context.​

Tbh, this effect is heavily reminds of that flickering that happens in CEZ2 sometimes (mainly during the beginning part) I think it's because of too many moving objects??? or something else idk, this only happens in software, not OPENGL, maybe this is related that somehow?

I'm kinda tired of having to baby-sit this addon because it's too unstable to even play comfortably.
Can we all just quietly come back to playing v2.2.13 please?​

maybe, put a disclaimer to only play this in software mode in the release page???
also, 2.2.13 doesn't have the new sprites, so...