Sonic CD Breakout: Special Stages & Future Dev

Sonic CD Breakout: Special Stages & Future Dev

 

    Way back in 2014, we showed a preview of what was in the works for Demo #3 release of the Sonic CD Breakout fangame, including Desert Dazzle Zone, Quartz Quadrant Zone, and the training special stage. Although in that post we predicted having a release of Demo #3 for Act 2 of SAGE 2014, that did not happen, since we decided to hold off on doing so after we completed both of those zones and of the special stages. Not only did we do that, but we also added dynamic background images depending on each level's time zone. Since that post, we have finished Desert Dazzle Zone, Quartz Quadrant Zone, and also the Special Stages for all of the existing zones! (Desert Dazzle Zone does not have a special stage, as that would create 8 Time Stones, and is not exactly a "cannon" level in Sonic CD.)

Special Stages

   All of the special stages (except Quartz Quadrant Zone and Desert Dazzle Zone) are completed now. The special stage levels are accessible by hitting a silver ring monitor. In the special stages, the players must traverse various level layers (similar to the fan game's Time Zone system) by either moving up or down between by hitting certain up/down arrow blocks (instantaneously, instead of with a wait delay as with the time signposts), in order to find and collect the Time Stone. Certain blocks can be destroyed after up to 4 hits, some cannot be destroyed, and there is a slot machine system which could earn you rings and other prizes. The player must also avoid spike balls, which can cause damage. The layer system is intelligent, graying out and shrinking sprites as layer blocks appear in up to 3 farther layers. However, there are more to just these levels than these features; the players have only 4 "attempts" to get the time stone, as their ring count is set to 90 rings and counts down to zero (no overflow of rings with reset back to zero occurs). If the ring count reaches zero, the player dies, the rings reset to 90 rings, and an attempt is removed. Collecting rings in the stage naturally counteracts the ring countdown. After all attempts are removed, the player is kicked out of the level without the Time Stone! Collecting all 7 Time Stones will allow the player to fight the Final Boss in Final Fever Zone at the end of the game.

Video

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Future development

    However, in the process of making these levels and these further edits, a development roadblock was discovered; apparently, the BreakGOLD Level Editor seems to have some type of maximum, hard, internal limit of producing .bgl level packs upto 3.87 MB. Attempting to make any level pack greater than this (by adding more content) causes the saving of the level pack to fail. We are using the BreakGOLD Level Editor v2.0 that came with the full version of the v2.0 BreakGOLD game, which was acquired on an Breakout collection of games from an eGames Software CD-ROM called "Break!" from Big n' Small Lots (now Big Lots) back in 2004. It is unknown whether the latest, paid, PC, full version of the game has an updated Level Editor that fixes these (and other) known bugs with the v2.0 editor.

  If this bug is not fixed in a possible newer version of the Level Editor, we shall either try to create a small, personal assembly patch for the Level Editor to fix the issue, or just simply breakup the fan game into two parts: Part 1 (up to Quartz Quadrant Zone), and Part 2 (Quartz Quadrant Zone Special Stage up to end of game). If this split needs to occur, Part 2 shall start the player with a "perfect game" from Part 1 (5 Good futures, 3 Time Stones), and start the player with Quartz Quadrant Zone's special stage (it could not fit in the current level pack, due to the hard 3.87 MB limit). We have pushed the engine to its limits with this total conversion for the fan game!

  Regardless of which direction the Sonic CD Breakout fan game will be going with regards to possibly splitting up the project, before we make an executive decision, we are going to release a Demo #3 of what we have "very soon", with a potential patch to transplant the game to the Android port of the BreakGOLD engine!

Stay tuned!