[Open Assets] Bonus Stage - Proof of Concept (sc_bonusstage.wad)

So, after making KeepStatus.lua as a warmup, I decided to take it a lot further and see what Lua could really do. What I ended up with is this: A functioning Sonic 3 style bonus stage warp. It is designed to work with any starpost in any level, including custom WADs.

Here's how it works:

First, collect 50 rings, then run through a starpost. Once you've done that, you'll see a ring of sparkles appear over the starpost. Jump into the sparkles and you'll disappear, then you'll be sent to the bonus stage.

The bonus stage is basically just a long hall with the waterslide special effect, but without the water. The stage uses gumballs similar to the ones in Sonic 3's bonus stages. In fact, they're all just recolors of Sonic 3's sprites. All you have to do is touch them to get them.

Blue B gives you Force Shield
White B gives you Whirlwind Shield
Yellow B gives you Attraction Shield
Green B gives you Elemental Shield
Black B gives you Armageddon Shield
Ring gumball gives you 10 Rings
Purple 1UP gives you an extra life

Once you've finished the bonus stage, you'll be sent back to the starpost you came from, with all the rings, shields, and 1UPs you collected from it.

UPDATE: Bonus Stage should now work in Co-op!

This is incredibly neat and I hope you expand (or someone else expands) on it someday. Welcome to Releases.

I think there's a bit of a missed opportunity here considering we now have slopes (I feel like I'm the only one here who actually LIKED Sonic 2's special stages), but this is an awesome display of what 2.1 and the engine as a whole is capable of now.

Well, slopes aren't in the main 2.1.14 build yet, so I didn't want to do anything that would break compatibility with that. Plus, the bonus stage itself was mainly just something I whipped up pretty quick; the Lua script was the real meat of this project.

Very cool and refresing to see. Great work!

Very impressed by this! I like how the powerups are different every time. Bravo.

SeventhSentinel said:

Very impressed by this! I like how the powerups are different every time. Bravo.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the powerups are randomized by three different object types I placed around the map. They basically drop powerups according to three levels:

Level 1:
-- 30% Force Shield
-- 30% Whirlwind Shield
-- 40% Super Ring

Level 2:
-- 20% Force Shield
-- 20% Whirlwind Shield
-- 20% Attraction Shield
-- 20% Elemental Shield
-- 20% Super Ring

Level 3:
-- 10% Force Shield
-- 10% Whirlwind Shield
-- 20% Attraction Shield
-- 20% Elemental Shield
-- 20% Armageddon Shield
-- 20% Extra Life

Level 1 drops are in easy to reach places that often involve little risk. They also tend to be closer to the beginning of the bonus stage.

Level 2 drops are in moderately difficult places to reach, and tend to be more common in the later part of the stage.

Level 3 drops are in hard or risky places to reach, and tend to be more common in the later part of the stage.

This is an interesting concept. Having something like this in vanilla would be cool, and it would make collecting rings more rewarding. Maybe having it so there's multiple kinds of Bonus Stages that the Star Posts transport you to would be good (like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles).

Also, you should probably remove the "B" from the shield orbs, as that represents "Bubble Shield". I would just add symbols or letters that actually represent the shields in SRB2, or just leave the orbs blank with the color indicators.

MetalKnux101 said:

Also, you should probably remove the "B" from the shield orbs, as that represents "Bubble Shield".

Click to expand...

In S3&K, if I remember correctly, all of the shield orbs were labeled "B," probably for "Barrier."

MetalKnux101 said:

This is an interesting concept. Having something like this in vanilla would be cool, and it would make collecting rings more rewarding. Maybe having it so there's multiple kinds of Bonus Stages that the Star Posts transport you to would be good (like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles).

Click to expand...

That would be really cool, but I'm not sure if it would be possible to use the ones from Sonic 3 & Knuckles- I'd say the Gumball-Machine style one would be the easiest to code in...

MetalKnux101 said:

Also, you should probably remove the "B" from the shield orbs, as that represents "Bubble Shield". I would just add symbols or letters that actually represent the shields in SRB2, or just leave the orbs blank with the color indicators.

Click to expand...

742mph said:

In S3&K, if I remember correctly, all of the shield orbs were labeled "B," probably for "Barrier."

Click to expand...

Yup, all the Shield Orbs had "B"s on them, so I'd say either leave it, or you could add different letters to represent the other shields, if you want. In S3&K, there were also clear orbs that you'd pass through with no item, and the Black orbs bounced Sonic off, so maybe those could be added as well.

Oh, I forgot they were all labeled B. I thought it was just the Bubble Shield.

Literally was thinking of a concept on how Bonus Stages would work in SRB2 the other day. Glad to see someone has made a good concept. :)

NO PITY SHIELD?! The Pity Shield is the most simple and common shield of the game!

The pity shield is not supposed to be accessible in Single Player, and exists solely to balance ringslinger gametypes - thus making a pickup of it kinda useless.

Adding in the Pity Shield could possibly add a challenge. Like it's a powerless shield you have to avoid getting.

MetalKnux101 said:

Adding in the Pity Shield could possibly add a challenge. Like it's a powerless shield you have to avoid getting.

Click to expand...

Well, if it went that route, I'd rather there be objects like the GOAL spaces in 1 & 3, where they just boot you out.

This is a very interesting addition, I'll have to give it a try later.

EDIT: So after giving it a go in single player, something odd happened. In GFZ2, I acquired the Special Stage Token, touched a Checkpoint, and jumped into the resulting portal.
It takes to the Special Stage instead of the Bonus Stage, which I can clear for a Chaos Emerald. Afterwards it takes you to the Bonus stage without any rings/shields, and after that, you're warped back to the beginning of GFZ2.

Other than that hiccup, it works pretty well. I'd like to see more maps like these get made some day, including walls that instantly send you back to the main stage so you have more of an incentive not to hit any walls.

Update: The bonus stage should now work properly in co-op mode. There are still a few bugs I haven't been able to fix, like emerald tokens redirecting you to special stages, but other than that it seems to work as well as the singleplayer version did.

Found an issue: Shadow can break the Bouns Stage! (I think that happens with Silver as well, so i never tried out this with him.)

Murilo said:

Found an issue: Shadow can break the Bouns Stage! (I think that happens with Silver as well, so i never tried out this with him.)

Click to expand...

The only broken thing I see with Shadow is that he becomes visible again after jumping into the sparkles. This doesn't affect Silver, or any other character as far as I can tell.

The only problem I saw with Silver was a warning that appeared when I loaded into the bonus stage:

WARNING: ./Characters/Silver.wad|LUA_SSIN:189: attempt to compare number with nil

My Silver.wad was last updated on May 11th, so I'm not sure whether I have the latest version or not.

Regardless, these seem more like character issues than issues with the Bonus Stage. If you could give me more details about what problems you're seeing, I might be able to help more.