AutoDemo

This is a sub-page of Proto:Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast).

Stage DifferencesThe old Windy Valley is in this version, along with lots of other interesting changes. Unused ContentGhosts, unused models, and files dating back to 1997.

Demo Sequence#

Watch on YouTubeAs this is the AutoDemo, the game doesn't react to the player's input at all. This means that the introduction movie, as well as the cutscene and gameplay demos, can't be skipped. In the final, they can be skipped by pressing Start. The Sega logo doesn't appear when first loading the game, but shows up normally before the opening movie after that.

The cutscenes and levels chosen to play throughout the demo sequences are different to the ones that play in the final game:

• The second cutscene demo is the Casinopolis cutscene with Sonic and Tails. It's sunset in Station Square in this version, rather than the final game's night, and Tails' theme "Believe In Myself" is playing, instead of Eggman's theme "Theme of Dr. Eggman".
• The third cutscene demo plays Amy and Gamma's prison cutscene. Because this demo replaces Knuckles' cutscene demo, Knuckles' theme "Unknown from M.E." goes unused in the AutoDemo.
• The demos used for Amy and Gamma in the final are swapped in this version. Gamma's demo appears as the fourth demo and Amy's as the fifth.
• Gamma's gameplay demo plays Red Mountain instead of Windy Valley.
• Amy's gameplay demo plays Final Egg instead of Hot Shelter.
• Big's gameplay demo starts in a different location.

Technical Differences#

• While it's mostly unused by the final game, in the AutoDemo there exists a secondary lighting engine titled Ninja that was sourced directly from the Katana SDK. This was one of the first attempts to integrate Bui Tuong Phong's reflection model to the Gouraud-based Dreamcast, as evidenced by one of the flags outright mentioning "'NJD_PHONG_POINT'". These were originally used in the AutoDemo for general lighting (as evidenced by Casinopolis and Mystic Ruins), but the game at this point moved to the Phong-based LANTERN engine, differentiated by LANTERN allowing the programmer to manipulate the colour of the diffuse pass directly. Several models such as the PRACTICE stages and the Chao still have code for Ninja, but as the game points to LANTERN in all instances their colours and lighting do not render. This causes a crash in gargantuan PRACTICE 2¹ and gives PRACTICE 3 a monochromatic tint with no lighting, as they were designed for Ninja first.
• While most of the stages are present on the disc, only a select few are able to be played as the rest crash when attempting to load. This is because most of them were made for older compiles of the game, and as a result, their pointers to 1ST_READ.BIN executable no longer match up. It is possible to get them running through vigorous hacking, however.
• All the music files (ADX) are in one file, BGM.AFS. In the final, they're all separate files, likely since the original was limited to 0x23 tracks.
• All cutscene files are stored in an uncompressed format, EVF08XX.BIN. In the final, they're stored in a compressed format, EV0XXX.PRS.
• Several of the final game's camera types do not exist in the AutoDemo, and others were shuffled around. For instance, camera type C_FOLLOW is ID 0x02 in this build, rather than 0x29.

Graphical Differences#

To do: Cover the introduction animation, which had several changes compared to the final.

Sega Logo#

Proto	Final

The logo is a lot more akin to that of the classic games, being much smaller and lacking the "PRESENTED BY" text that's above it.

Title Screen#

Proto	Final

Aside from adding the "AutoDemo" logo, the title screen's background was completely changed in the final version, and the "Sonic Team Presents" logo is very different as well.

Mission Cards#

The mission cards present in the demo are very different to the ones used in the final game. Even though the game only uses the Japanese versions, there are English versions of the cards in the game's files. Interestingly, E-104's color is a remnant from the Tokyo International Forums build.

Proto	Final

Life Box Icons#

Proto	Final

In the AutoDemo, all Life Box icons face to the right with the exception of Sonic. This was changed in the final, where all the icons face to the left. The Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Big icons' transparency issues were not fixed, though.

HUD#

Proto	Final

The HUD is different in the AutoDemo. The Rings icon is slightly different, and there is a "Level" part that is not used anywhere in the final game. The Life counter was moved slightly upwards in the final.

Proto	Final

Big's HUD lacks the darkened numbers and his weight value is also fixed to 12345g in the AutoDemo. His life counter in the AutoDemo is displayed in the top-right corner in the form of lure icons.

Pause Menu#

The pause menu uses an earlier design than the one in the final, though it can't normally be seen as the pause menu is disabled. It can still be forced to appear by changing the game state address at 8C751608 to 12:

Proto	Final

The only thing that remains of the earlier pause menu in the final is its textures. Interestingly, the AutoDemo's top text translates to "Resume Game", while the final version's is simply "Continue".

Boss Font#

Proto	Final

The boss font saw some changes between this build and the final.

• "Q" was replaced by the Delta symbol "δ".
• "X" was replaced by the Epsilon symbol "ε".
• "q" was replaced by the Zeta symbol "ζ".
• "x" was replaced by the Alpha symbol "α" despite it never being used.
• The symbols for Beta "β" and the kanji for "revised" "改" were added.

Chao Icon#

Proto	Final

The Chao icon for stress was changed in the final. Of note is that the icons for the Chao emotions are colored yellow in the AutoDemo, while the final version is colored in a way that allows the Chao to have custom coloring and shading.

"Chao in Space" Image#

Proto	Final

The billboard advertising "Chao in Space" in the final advertises something completely different in the AutoDemo: "The Man 3". This billboard can be seen in the final, but only during the Egg Walker fight; it was removed entirely in Sonic Adventure DX, due to the map getting re-ported.

Audio Differences#

A total of 29 tracks are present in the build, some of which are used in different levels than the final, or not used in the demo at all.

Changed Tracks#

Many of the tracks in this build have audible differences from the final versions.

Unused Tracks#

The following tracks are on the disc but are never heard in-game:

• Open Your Heart (Main Menu ver.)
• Azure Blue World (Emerald Coast Act 1)
• Windy and Ripply (Emerald Coast Act 2)
• And... Fish Hits! (Big's Fishing)
• Limestone Cave (Icecap Act 2)
• Tricky Maze (Lost World Act 1)
• Danger! Chased by Rock (Lost World Act 2)
• Leading Lights (Lost World Act 3)
• Crank the Heat Up!! (Final Egg Act 2)
• Welcome to Station Square (Station Square)
• Event: Strain (Cutscenes)
• Event: The Past (Cutscenes)
• Unknown from M.E. (Instumental ver.)/Appearance: Knuckles (Cutscenes)
• Lazy Days (Livin' in Paradise) (Instrumental ver.)/Appearance: Big (Cutscenes)

Despite the Chao Garden theme and Speed Highway Act 2 playing in their respective stages, they're technically unused in the demo, as the AutoDemo doesn't visit those levels normally.

Voice Clips#

Some of the game's voice clips are different to the ones in the final game.

Cutscenes#

Sonic#

Tails#

Knuckles#

Big#

Sound Effects#

A couple of sound effects are very different compared to the final.

• A moving sound can be heard when pushing something as Sonic.
• Tails' doesn't make a sound when landing on the ground.
• Knuckles' gliding sound does not fade out and will continue for a short while after landing.
• Amy makes a sound when being locked onto by ZERO.
• Amy's hammer does not make any sounds.
• ZERO makes very different sound effects compared to the final, such as:
  • The "!" symbol and the lock-on cursor both reuse sounds from the main Menu.
  • ZERO's landing sound is the same sound for when the Iron Balls slam into the ground.
• Animals make a ring sound instead of their regular sound when collected.
• The Jump Ramps in Emerald Coast do not make any sounds.
• The spike walls in Emerald Coast make no sounds,
• The fire hydrants in Speed Highway Act 3 don't make any sound when you break them.

General Differences#

• During the gameplay demos, the "Press Start Button" prompt doesn't appear and the HUD isn't shown.

Proto	Final

• The Game Over screen is entirely different from the final. Instead of being taken to a black screen with options on the bottom upon losing all your lives, the "GAME OVER" text simply appears on-screen. Because the screen hastily fades out to black, though, it's only visible for less than a second.

Proto	Final

• The draw distance seems to be different. Notably, Speed Highway Act 3 seems to be smaller than both early images and the final version.
• Likely for demo purposes, if the game is left idle for a minute without any input, the game will send you back to the title screen.
• By beating any stage or getting a Game Over, a "Coming Soon !!" screen will appear before taking you back to the title screen.

Gameplay#

There are numerous gameplay changes in the AutoDemo compared to the final game.

• The player starts with 2 lives instead of 4.
• The camera feels very different to the one in the final. Its rotation controls can sometimes be inverted depending on the current angle.
• It's not possible to enter first-person view by using the D-Pad.
• Completing a level does not cause the level music to stop playing and plays the Chaos Emerald sound over the top of it. There's no results tally either.
• You can still collect rings when dying.
• The level timer does not reset when dying before hitting a checkpoint.
• The ring counter does not reset when falling off of the stage.
• Drowning is very incomplete. The numbers that appear are very large and only appear for a fraction of a second. There's also no drowning animation - the game will just respawn the player.
• The transition from one Act to another doesn't seem to work correctly. The lighting and music will not update until the player either restarts or dies.

Characters#

Several aspects of the characters themselves were changed for the final game.

• There are a number of unused animations for fighting combos as Knuckles that were never used in the AutoDemo or the final game, seen on the video to the right.
• Many character textures are higher resolution than the ones in the final game. This includes (but not limited to) Amy's hammer, Big's belt, and Sonic's shoe buckle.
• Sonic has a different action pose. However, the old one is still used in a number of cutscenes in the final:

Watch on YouTube

Proto	Final

• The standing animations for Sonic, Tails, and Big are faster.
• Characters don't have idle animations.
• Except for Sonic and Big, all characters slide very far when dying.
• Sonic can lean left or right when standing on sloped surfaces in this version. In the final, he can only lean forward or backward.
• Sonic doesn't revert to his falling action after getting damaged by an enemy while in the air after few seconds.
• The action/animation list for the characters is different than the final. As an example, Sonic's Free move is 73, whereas in the final it's 83.

Watch on YouTube

• Upgrades are very unfinished - the only implemented upgrades are Sonic's Light Speed Attack and Tails' Rhythm Badge. Knuckles' Shovel Claw, Amy's Warrior Feather and Gamma's Jet Booster abilities are part of their default movesets. The existing upgrades do not attach any extra models to Sonic or Tails like the ones in the final game do.
• The Light Speed Attack's charging animation orbs are brighter than they appear in the final game:

Proto	Final

• The charging time is a bit longer, it takes about 5 seconds to fully charge it, whereas the final instead takes 3.5 seconds.
• The Light Speed Attack works very differently to the final. Instead of automatically attacking the enemies, Sonic will kneel down and you're meant to confirm on every target with any action button. A blue circle will also appear around the next target that you can attack. Pressing A, B or X will attack one enemy at a time and holding either B or X will shoot Sonic towards the enemies in his ball form. If there are any rings nearby, defeating the last enemy will make Sonic do his Light Speed Dash.
• Picking up objects is in a very buggy, early state. Notably, it has difficulty choosing a target among multiple objects.
• Only Big and Sonic have the ability to put down a held object without throwing it.
• You can't shake held objects.
• You can't ascend stairs properly.
• Tails is missing an animation for getting tired while flying.
• Tails and Amy are missing animations for jumping while carrying an object.
• When Knuckles glides into a boundary, particle stars will appear in the same manner when bonking into a wall which doesn't happen in the final.
• Amy does not hold her hammer while running.
• Amy's hammer doesn't produce a blur effect when she attacks with it.
• Amy's dress flies further upwards when she falls.
• Amy can't attack with her hammer more than once in the air.
• Amy doesn't have stars appearing above her head when getting dizzy.
• Big is able to cast his lure within 2-4 meters in the AutoDemo. In the final, trying to cast the lure within 2-4 meters will cause the lure to immediately return to Big.
• The opponent Sonic in Tails' Icecap does not speak.
• Gamma will automatically go into his "holding gun" idle pose if he comes to a stop.

Chao#

Watch on YouTubeThe Chao system is very limited in comparison to the Chao system used in the final. All Chao in the Garden will stay completely still until the player approaches them, when they will then run up to the player continuously. If a Chao gets hurt by the player, they may decide to briefly run away from them instead.

• The Chao make "Chao Chao!" sounds constantly.
• The animals don't affect the Chao's evolution in the same way as the final.
• All the Chao in the Garden are child Chao.
• Chao don't die from abusing them too much.
• The animals will change a Chao's appearance instantly and more potently than the animals in the final.
• The "evolutions" are actually the child Chao morphing beyond the limits that are in the final game, giving the appearance of a different Chao.
• Chao do not recognize water and run around underwater as if they were on land.
• Chao slide very far when thrown.

The only Garden that can be loaded in the AutoDemo is the Station Square one.

Enemies#

Some of the enemies in the game are slightly different to their counterparts in the final version:

• The Rhinotanks are missing their texture file, so they appear with incorrect textures.
• The player can't pick up bombs thrown by Kikis.
• The Kikis that throw bombs with spikes on them will blow themselves up when they're about to throw it.
• Enemies make fewer sounds than the final. For example, Kikis make no sound when throwing bombs and Ice Balls don't make any sounds when moving around.
• Ice Balls don't give animals upon exploding.
• Ice Balls can't freeze Sonic.
• The Leon's tongue attack doesn't hurt the player, and they're entirely invulnerable in this build.
• ZERO has entirely different "?" and "!" symbols. His attack's lock-on target is also more solid compared to the final.
• There is an untextured duck enemy that is present in one part of Final Egg Act 3. It was removed from the final and replaced with an Egg Keeper. It can be seen here.

Objects#

There are few objects in the AutoDemo that look or behave different to their counterparts in the final.

• The rocket platform are sloped in the final, so the player can walk onto them instead of needing to jump onto them like in the AutoDemo:

Proto	Final

• The jump panels were changed considerably for the final release. They have a flatter appearance in the final:

Proto	Final

• A star jumppanel is used in the AutoDemo as the final landing point for the jump panels. It was removed in the final, but can still be found in the game's files.
• The Jump Ramps in Emerald Coast usually fail to launch you to the correct point.
• The spike walls in Emerald Coast fall deeper into the ground than they do in the final.
• The homing attack can't lock onto every spring in the AutoDemo.
• The homing attack is able to lock onto the switches in the AutoDemo.
• There is only type of spring used in the AutoDemo - the large variation. In the final, a smaller variation is used as well.
• Checkpoints are not activated after respawning at them.
• Item Boxes have a green tint at the bottom that isn't in the final.
• Capsules do not release animals.
• The capsules don't take the player's control while being nearly on top of them.
• The cars in Speed Highway Act 3 behave the same as the Station Square ones. They stop at a further distance than the final and can't hurt the player.
• Tikal's "This way!" is not voiced.
• When a Random Rings box is broken, the "?" icon is displayed to the player. In the final, the Random Ring boxes will display the icon corresponding to the amount of rings given to the player. For that matter, only the icons for 5-ring and 10-ring boxes exist in the game.
• The Speed Shoes don't play any unique music, so the stage's music continues to play.
• The Bomb, Invincibility, Shield and the Magnetic Shield item boxes do not exist in the AutoDemo.
• The ice block switches in Icecap Act 2 do not cause ice blocks to appear.

Developer Tools#

Level Select#

Proto	Final

Like in the initial Japanese release and the US release, a level select menu can be accessed.

To access it from the title screen, set the byte at 0x8C794C90 to 0D and the level select will load. Using the level select menu here will display the HUD properly in-game and allow you to control the character in Action Stages.

To access the level select during cutscenes, demos, and gameplay, change the byte at 0x8C768B38 to 02. This method does not work on the title screen of this version, and will not give you control of the character unless you already had control from loading a level from the title screen's level select. It is prone to incorrectly loading levels and textures if done this way.

In addition, the level select saw some changes between this build and the final:

• The character select here was meant to use icons instead of names, as the game looks for several texture files (sel_s.pvr, sel_t.pvr, sel_k.pvr, sel_b.pvr, sel_a.pvr and sel_e.pvr). However, the textures themseleves are not on the disc and the game just loads from whatever textures are still in memory instead.
• Hot Shelter is missing entirely from the level select along with Egg Walker (EGGMOBILE2), the Knuckles fight with Chaos 6 (also listed separately in the final game's developer level select because of the changes to the arena in Knuckles' fight), the first battle with E-101, and ZERO (EGGMANROBO).
• The Mystic Ruins areas are labelled as "MR A" to "MR D" in this build.

In the final version:

• "PRACTICE 2" and "PRACTICE 3" were removed from the list.
• "CHAOS 7" was renamed to "CHAOS 7 1".
• The Mystic Ruins areas were properly labelled as "STATION" "ISLAND" "JUNGLE" and "BASE" for the Station area, the Angel Island area, the Jungle area and the Final Egg base respectively.

SPR Task#

The address 0x8C18EC94 activates a debug feature with three displays showing various in-game information.

Proto	Final

The AutoDemo version has an ADX feature which is removed from the final releases, It'll always appear at the bottom of the screen. ADX is the name of CRI's audio streaming middleware, which is used in this game.

SetEdit#

Watch on YouTubeBoth Sonic Adventure DX: Preview and the May 7, 2001 prototype of Sonic Adventure 2 feature a full object editor accessible through button combinations or enabling a certain flag. As it turns out, this feature is also still present here, albeit unreferenced. It functions identically to both with the following controls:

• - X + A: Enter editor.
• - Start + Analog: Rotate camera.
• - Start + L/R: Zoom camera.
• - Start + X: Snap cursor to floor.
• - D-Pad: Move on horizontal plane.
• - L/R: Move up and down.
• - A + X: Cycle the coordinate editor between position, rotation and scale.
• - X/Y/B + D-Pad: Edit respective coordinates corresponding with the held button.
• - A + D-Pad: Navigate item list.
• - A + B: Cycle ACT MODE between Place, Multi, and System.
• - A + L/R: Change movement speed (Once per press).

In PLACE mode:

• Start + A: Grab the closest object from the current DATA TYPE.
• Start + B: Place object.

In MULTI mode:

• Start + A: Increase number of objects held.
• Start + B: Decrease number of objects held.

In SYSTEM mode:

• X: Cycle DATA TYPE between "COMMON SET" and "PLAYER DEPENDENT SET"
• A + X: Exit editor.

To play around with it, download Controllable Autodemo & Research Mods and use PkR's Dreamcast Image Builder to patch the disc.

References#