pico sonic v7.0 release changelog

It has almost been 8 months since the last update. Today, I’m releasing the last big update I had in mind for pico sonic with v7.0 (actually v6.3 + immediate patch -> v7.0). Just like the previous ones, it mostly consists of cosmetic changes, but while the start cinematic and stage intro were original additions, the new stuff today is mostly adaptation of famous screens and sequences of the original games.

And we start with possibly the most emblematic one:

SEGA-style splashscreen

I’ve been looking forward to adding it for a long time, and finally got my hands on it! The animation is based on Sonic 2. Since the game is also an entry for the Sega Amateur Games Expo, I modified the brand logo accordingly.

But don’t just look at the GIF: play the game to hear the choir, powered by PICO-8’s PCM audio system!

New title logo

At first I though it’d be too hard to draw a full Sonic sprite for the title logo so I went for a text-only version. Turns out that converting a big sprite is not too difficult, although it needed the right amount of manual adjustment. For this one, I went with Sonic 1 since Sonic 2’s logo features Tails, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles go with a pre-rendered 3D look.

Revamped menu credits

Maybe not so exciting, but I added a background to the menu credits similar to Sonic 2’s options. You can also scroll since there are now more entries (to detail tools), and it’s a bit more spaced out.

Try again screen

The famous Sonic 1 try again screen! For a game that’s all about collecting emeralds, I found it important to feedback emerald gathering result with cool screens. As a bonus, you can switch between two juggling styles with the left/right buttons. Try it in the build!

By the way, if you get all the emeralds, instead of seeing Eggman nervously jumping on the END message, you will see the…

Ending credits

I thought the ending after getting all the emeralds was a bit anticlimactic, so I added proper Sonic 3-style staff roll if you complete the game! Since I noticed Sonic 3 uses a pretty big font for the staff name, I took this opportunity to try PICO-8’s custom font system for the first time. It turns out fine, but it needs a good amount of setup, esp. to make spacing work correctly. I may write a post on PICO-8 forum about this later.

Anyway, a GIF won’t do justice to the ending credits, so if you haven’t collected all emeralds yet, now is a good time to try!

Misc improvements:

• Press O or X to skip stage result screen
• Fix red pixels on stage result screen

Project future

As stated in the last devlog (v6.2), this is the last big update I really wanted to work on.

After this, I may add a few more cosmetic changes like adding a BGM to the menu credits, but it depends on the resources available to me.

I’m also considering small UX improvements such as ordering the top-left picked emeralds indicator on the HUD to match the order in which emeralds appear in the stage, from left to right.

I’m considering a tilemap overhaul using PicoMap so I can reduce token count and make the game work with a single cartridge on a proper vanilla PICO-8 (unpatched), but I fear I will have to redraw the whole stage manually.

Anyway, I am working on the project with a much lower frequency than before, being busy with new ones (platformer or not). So the next patch may also be released in 6-8 months from today. But if you don’t see me working on pico sonic, you can expect other games coming in!