A technical dive (😉) into Sonic 3's water palette swapping!

If you're wondering why Hydrocity uses the Sonic 1 method... turns out the devs seemed to intend on HCZ using the gradual method. However, when I enabled the gradual method, the game ran fine for a bit, but then it suddenly froze. Will be investigating more.

1:23 so is that why samples also shit themselves if you keep getting in and out of the water a lot

Yup. There's even an example of this at the very end of the video.

do you know if that would have anything to do with how water tends to fuck up psg sound effects in the prototype?

I will never not be impressed by how developers circumvented technical limitations of hardware to pull things like this.

Me when there's new Sonic 3 technical deep dives at the function:

I had been long been wondering about the Z80 halting when I snooped through the disassembly and noticed the line. Great to finally get an answer!

The Mega Drive can be so bizarre.

Maybe this is a bit spammy, but I think it adds and expands the context of the original clip. A few days ago I released a small tool to design “pseudo copper” color effects on the Mega Drive:

Love me same CRAM dots in my water

This is a fantastic content! I Wil save it! Keep it up! Greettings from Brazil!

Required reading

what’s the track that plays when the code shows up

Very cool

H-Blank? What about V-Blank?

Amazing!

Love these kinds of videos