E3 2005 prototype

This is a sub-page of Proto:Shadow the Hedgehog.

StagesStage-by-stage differences and early geometry. ObjectsWeapons, vehicles, and interactive objects. Enemies and BossesEnemy changes and missing bosses.

Debug Features#

Level Select#

By setting the "ROM" field in nukkoro.inf to either "DEVELOP", "ALPHA" "BETA", or "FINAL", the game will boot into a developer level select menu, allowing you to select any stage from the game. Notably, the Story Route screen on the pause menu will get enabled when doing this. When the player finishes a stage, loses all lives or exits the game, they will be brought back to this menu. When waiting for few seconds on this menu, the E3 Trailer will play on the bottom-right corner.

DEBUGWHO#

This field in nukkoro.inf enables various debug features. As this game was developed on Subversion version control, this was presumably to allow programmers to have their own set of debug features without needing to mess with compiler flags.

"Test Level" indicates whether the game boots into the test level. Flag values can be found at 8042fbf4; these are tuples of (char* namePtr, i32 bitflag).

Technical Differences#

• The game uses a different ID from the final version, being the same ID as the Japanese GameCube version of Sonic Heroes.

• nukkoro.inf contains stage spawn positions and rank parameters, which are normally stored in nukkoro2.inf in later builds.

General Differences#

• Neither the Sega or the Sonic Team logos appear when booting up the game, instead booting up to the title screen automatically.
• Instead of the opening cinematic, the E3 trailer is instead seen when waiting on the title screen for long enough. It can be found in the files as trailer.sfd.
• Pressing Start will take the player to the stage select screen.
• The game doesn't react to the reset button at all in this build.

Gameplay#

• Firing any weapon causes Shadow to recoil, slowing down movement. Fast-firing weapons slows you down to walking speed.
• The Homing Attack locks all controls until the player either hits the ground or performs another homing attack.
• The Spin Dash is extremely weak.
• Switching Rails does not account for travel speed and always occurs at a fixed speed.
• Rails have a speed cap, unlike the final version.
• You can still use the Light Speed Dash while skydiving.
• There is no Checkpoint warping functionality.
• The Checkpoints are not activated when respawning at them.
• Collecting 100 rings grants an extra life and the ring counter resets back to 0.
• Shadow won't drop any weapons when dying.

The pause menu has many differences compared to the final:

E3 2005	Final

• Pausing the game doesn't cancel any sound effects.
• The screen doesn't fade in when pausing the game.
• Due to a layering issue, the "change mission" text along with the arrows don't appear in this demo.
• The "restart" button doesn't disappear when the player has zero lives.
• The Story Route screen seen on the pause menu shows the Hero missions going up and the Dark missions going down on the map, which is the opposite to how it is in the final version.

E3 2005	Final

• Partner models are loaded during gameplay and cause lag spikes (up to half a second) when this occurs. They may be loaded synchronously rather than asynchronously.
• When encountering any Partner characters for the first time, the game doesn't hide the HUD.
• Additionally, Shadow doesn't get unloaded during those cutscenes.

E3 2005	Final

• The Result screen still shows the HUD.
• The Result screen runs at 60 FPS in this build, whereas later builds would lock it to 30 FPS.
• The Partner characters don't pose alongside Shadow on the Result screen.

E3 2005	Final

• All weapons have excessive amounts of ammo.
• Using Chaos Control to get past mission characters will despawn them very quickly, as opposed to showing them for a longer duration.

Graphical Differences#

Title Screen#

E3 2005	Final

There's no "Corporation" and "Licensed by NINTENDO" in the copyright text.

Title Cards#

E3 2005	Final

• The background is a solid gray color in this version in comparison to the dark gradient background of the final.
• There's no "loading" text.
• The stage' title card is slightly smaller compared to the final.
• The Black Arms' symbol is slightly larger than it is in the final.
• The "stage" text along with the number, aren't shown in the demo.

X and Y Buttons#

Both of the GameCube's X and Y button prompts use placeholder graphics that resemble the Xbox's X and Y button prompts.

Command Window Icons#

E3 2005	Final

• Aside from the placeholder X button graphic, the command window icons have a grey stroke rather than dark grey like what's seen in the final.
• The icon for the melee weapons is very basic in the demo, only depicting a stick, whereas the final version depicts a sword instead.

Damage Recover Icon#

E3 2005	Final

Despite it not showing up in any level, the icon for the Damage Recover item looks entirely different than how it does in the final, depicting a medicine box with a red cross on it. In the final game, it instead depicts a sparkling blue raindrop.

1-Up Icon#

E3 2005	Final

The 1-Up icon seen in this build is reused from Sonic Heroes.

Result Screen#

E3 2005	Final

• The Rank icons are colored blue like the E Rank instead of all having a unique color.
• The mission text ends with "clear!" instead of "completed!".

Other#

• Shadow is more black than in the final, where he appears slightly brown.
• The Mission Window's font is slightly different than the final version.
• All of the Partner characters' aura have the same color as Shadow, instead of a corresponding color like in the final version.
• No flame effect on shoes while running, but a white flame effect appears while air attacking (unarmed or with a weapon).
• Textures are much higher resolution.
• Some stages have different vertex colors across geometry, giving different lighting looks than final.
• The local lighting object is not implemented yet, so Shadow stays a static color in all stages.
• The Black Arms create a squirt of violet-red when hurt, compared to the green in the final game.

E3 2005	Final

Text Differences#

Pause Menu#

Most of the mission text seen on the pause menu are different from the ones seen in the final.

Westopolis#

Glyphic Canyon#

All of Glyphic Canyon's text in this demo goes unused, as the pause menu doesn't show any text there.

Sky Troops#

Death Ruins#

Stages#

In all stages except the first Black Bull boss, the partners have notably different scripts than what's used in the final game.

Westopolis#

Sky Troops#

Death Ruins#

Audio Differences#

Music#

By this point in time, the soundtrack's production seems to have progressed far enough for more than two dozen tracks to have been worked on, ranging from being barely started to being practically already finalized.

The table below highlights the significant differences from the final mixes, with another further below listing what exists in this build or what has different mastering but is otherwise identical to the final:

Below are tracks that don't exist and ones that do exist, but with different mastering:

Jingle#

sng_jin_cctrl.adx contains an early version of "Jingle: Awake Dark" (most notably missing the live bass) instead of a version of "Jingle: Chaos Control" that doesn't include Shadow's voice clip at the beginning like in the final game.

Filename Differences#

_sys was added between sng and the number in the final.

Sound Effects#

A couple of sound effects are different compared to the ones heard in the final:

Unused Videos#

• sonic_logo_all_high.sfd - A never-before-seen rendition of the Sonic Team logo, which goes unused, as the used version is grouped with the above trailer.
• sample.sfd - A sample video from the RenderWare SDK that somehow made its way here. The game, as with Sonic Heroes, was developed using RenderWare for its multi-platform releases.

Unused Audio#

Unused Tracks#

Although some tracks do play as intended in the unused stages, the following tracks are present on the disc, but go completely unused in-game:

Shadow Voice Clips#

These are stored in PRS_VOICE_E.AFS. Only two of them are actually used in-game, SE_11_B.adx and SH_06.adx, both used when filling the Hero Gauge and the Dark Gauge, respectively. Both differ from the final game. Those aside, there are many leftovers. While most of them are identical to the final, there's a few that were removed, some of which even contain more severe profanity compared to the final game.

Notably, SH_06.adx ended up being reused in Sonic Riders (and its sequel) as Shadow's pre-race line.

Unused Sound Effects#

There are some unused sound effects that only exist in this build and were later deleted from the final.

Unused Graphics#

While it's not possible to access the main menu in this demo, graphics for the menus themselves still exist, and they differ quite a bit from the final version.

Opening Logos#

E3 2005	Final

Despite the fact that the demo boots into the title screen on startup, graphics for both the Sega and Sonic Team logos still exist in Logo.gncp, interestingly, both logos have a white background instead of being black like the final, and the Sega logo is missing the "PRESENTED BY" text that's above it.

Options#

• The background is missing the black stripe on the top right corner and some of its visual layers toned down.
• The option icons are entirely different than how they look in the final, looking more like the Command Window icons seen during gameplay.
• The PlayStation 2 button prompts are slightly wider and the ✕ button is purple instead of blue.

E3 2005	Final

Select Mode#

• The background has a lighter tint and the arrows are inverted compared to the final.
• The UI has a less thicker outline.
• There are no D or E Ranks.
• The Rank icons are stylized like the rank icons seen on the result screen, whereas in the final they're given unique icons instead.
• There's button prompts and texts saying "select" and "exit" whereas in the final they're loaded by another texture file.
• There's no "BOSS" text.
• Almost all of the stage graphics are entirely missing and they instead contain a placeholder image showing a crudely drawn red text that says the stage’s internal ID.

On that note, the stage graphics that are present have some slight differences.

• Westopolis' image was made brighter in the final.
• Glyphic Canyon's image depicts the beginning of the stage instead of a view of the second temple like in the final.
• Sky Troops' image has a crudely drawn red text over the image despite the image not changing in the final.
• Death Ruins' image depicts the beginning of the stage instead of the anicent canal area.

E3 2005	Final

Story Mode#

The background in Story_Library.gncp has a lighter tint compared to the final and the close-up of Shadow is missing.

E3 2005	Final

Synopsis Images#

In Synopsis.gncp exists early versions of the Synopsis images for Westopolis, Death Ruins and Sky Troops that look completely different from the final.

E3 2005	Final	Notes
|		The E3 build's screenshot of Westopolis depicts Shadow at the beginning of the stage before the skydiving section instead of the area afterwards like in the final version.
		The rest of the stage's screenshots are occupied by an early screenshot of Shadow in Glyphic Canyon that's very different from the screenshot used in the final version, as the image depicts Shadow in the area after the first checkpoint instead of the bottom pathway before the first tornado.
		The only difference present in Sky Troops' screenshot is that the border was stretched vertically in the final.
		The E3 build's screenshot of Death Ruins depicts Shadow in his dark form shooting the GUN soliders, instead of a view of the anicent canal area like in the final. Interestingly, while not the same image, the E3 build's screenshot would go on to be eventually get used in the final version as the background for the battle mode menu. Note that this stage's image is at a different aspect ratio than the other images seen in this build and the final.

Story Route#

• The background has a lighter tint compared to the final.
• The arrows and the circle look less refined than they are in the final.

E3 2005	Final

Radar#

Rader.gncp contains assets for a radar HUD element, that was only previously seen in an early mockup.

Unused Text#

This build includes files for English, Japanese and Korean text. The Korean text option appears to have been scrapped fairly early on (the final game was released on PS2 in Korea without one), as only advertise_KO.fnt and stg00_KO.fnt contain any Korean text. They are also based on the English text.

Advertise#

The "Advertise" (which contains menu-related text in the final) .fnt files contain rather... questionable text in all three languages.

stg00#

stg00 appears to exclusively contain placeholder text, with one amusing string exclusive to the Japanese file.

RenderWare IP Config#

rwsipcfg.txt contains 204.155.74.188, likely a RenderWare server IP. The IP address geolocates to Sega of America's headquarters in Irvine, California.

Unused Partners#

The only partners used in this build are:

• Sonic
• Doom's Eye
• Egg Monitor

However, two completely unused partners can be accessible via hacking:

Other partners cannot be accessed, even if their assets are added, because the code to activate them is missing.

Useful Code#

This code is useful for exploring unfinished stages, as they are devoid of objects and thus difficult to progress through.

$Shadow E3 Moonjump [Sewer56]
2847A7CE FFDF0020
045BCEB0 43a00000
e2000001 80008000
2A47A7CE FFDF0020
045BCEB0 c3a00000
e2000001 80008000