Paraemon's Comprehensive Ripping Project Thread [Expansion Station]

[Paraemon]

Looking good! I had no idea there was a night palette planned.

Thanks!

There wasn't a night palette planned as such; during development of Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, Night Mode was designed so that the developers could see if objects were placed on the correct low and high planes by leaving the high objects as regular/lightened palettes, but the low content (mostly backgrounds and foreground backdrops) as shaded over. It somewhat sticks in Sonic & Knuckles stages that are part of the 0408, 0517 and 0525 Prototypes of Sonic 3, but does not exist in Sonic 1, Sonic CD or Sonic 3D (I need to test it in Sonic 2 proper). Interestingly, going into the VDP Viewer during the Get Blue Spheres stages gives free access to Night Mode and brightened palettes, perhaps an oversight by the developers, whereas accessing Night Mode regularly requires Debug and pressing C + Start on a non-GBS stage in level select.

I have a new friend in the Palette Lock Function, which makes getting color-shifting backgrounds like those of Sandopolis Act 2 and any underwater stage a lot easier. I've regained the non-Present backgrounds of Tidal Tempest with this function, toyed around with it to see how one stage's palette shifts up another palette. Messing around with it in Marble Garden Zone Act 2 with the changing sky palette leads to some beautiful changes in several parts of the stage. It also helps with getting the alternative Debug-based palettes of the Badniks as I trialled way way back when; hopefully in the next update I can showcase some of these findings.

And as I've mentioned Sandopolis, here is the five light-to-dark variations of the background, sans torch flames that are yet to be ripped.



Further toying with the Palette Lock is what led me to the new idea for the Glowing Spheres re-rip. Much like the 0408 Prototype, there is actually only 32 animations for the background's shifting squares. The palette count itself comes to 99 variations, which when multiplied with the individual animations, comes to a total of 3168 - the bottom-most set of 15 on the below image is exactly the same as the topmost 15, but included as there are still 100 pillar frames.