v0.6.4: Widescreen and campaign fixes

Sonic 3 family v0.6.4

This update improves widescreen presentation, imported campaigns, bonus stages, saves and HUD graphics. It reuses original game data and existing project assets; no new replacement artwork is included.

Updating Sonic 1 stage packs

Rebuild/reimport your Sonic 1 stages from your owned source ROM with the updated conversion tools to receive the Marble Zone window and Spring Yard color corrections. Existing packs still load, but their earlier conversion already lost distinct colors, so updating the executable alone cannot restore them. See the bundled docs/STAGE_PACKS.md for the conversion and independent-pack steps.

The S1 checkpoint alignment, LZ water/slide and imported boss-music fixes also work with existing packs. Preserve native .srm saves, their campaign-progress companions/backups and your settings when upgrading. Checkpoint validation covers ordinary in-game saving, death and retry; quickstates, rewind and netplay remain unavailable with experimental campaign/character mods.

Qualified fixes

• Title and save-select scenery retain the intended widescreen composition through the tested title, demo, save, stage and special-stage entry fades. Actors, portraits and interface elements keep their native proportions. Competition menus retain consistent width and the original submenu brightness.
• Animated Sonic 3 stage previews use matching original stage art, blocks and colors. Imported Sonic 1 parallax stays stable at the tested Green Hill and Labyrinth left boundaries.
• AIZ2 heat deformation no longer adds the reproduced horizontal actor jitter, including standalone Sonic 3. The Flying Battery chase now preserves the ship, bombs and ground composition, and foreground trees correctly obscure Eggman during the tested overlap.
• Knuckles is visible on his ledge before the native AIZ-to-HCZ actor is allocated. The preview reuses the original pose and colors, stays anchored to the displayed scenery, and hands over continuously without advancing the cutscene.
• The slot-machine bonus controller completes its spin and releases the player. Slot and gumball bonus stages have clean widescreen margins; their separate machine-art reports remain deferred below.
• Imported S1 Labyrinth transfers its complete underwater palette at late waterlines, removing the reproduced orange/brown flicker without moving the water split. The LZ2 waterfall-slide join preserves its placement flips.
• Imported S1 checkpoints align their feet with the original placement and retain correct activation, spinning, checkpoint saving and retry. Native S3 and imported S2 checkpoint placement stays unchanged.
• Reconverted Marble Zone windows retain their original black and neutral gray details. Reconverted Spring Yard scenery and level objects retain their original colors independently of Sonic, Super Sonic, Shadow and Mighty.
• Imported S1 bosses retain boss music when invincibility expires; ordinary-stage expiry still restores the level theme.
• Imported native CLEAR saves keep their cleared status, emeralds and lives instead of automatically starting an unplayed addon campaign. Selecting a replay stage remains available.
• Shadow's HUD head, compact name lettering and multiplication glyph reuse the verified Megamix donor graphics and preserve live life-count digits.
• Sonic CD HUD/tally labels keep consistent yellow text and dark outlines through the tested Amy scenes. Palmtree Panic life digits use neutral colors, and the time-period badge sits beside the life display.
• CD signposts stand grounded before the actual crossing and then spin into the native tally. PPZ3 displays ACT 3 using the existing numeral asset; its Good/Bad Future boss-arena waterfalls reproduce the original palette animation. The PPZ red diagonal-spring cap keeps its intended red shades.
• Launcher sample-rate choices persist and reach the audio device. Runtime options-menu navigation suppresses local gameplay input while preserving held/released input across closing the menu.

Deferred or unqualified reports

• The owner deferred full Blue Spheres gameplay widescreen to a separate renderer task. Keeping its entry fade wide does not add side content or change its projection.
• The owner deferred asset-dependent LZ current tumbling, Shadow's Blue Spheres poses, PPZ2 spinning/balancing poses, Shadow save-select icon replacements and the low-priority PPZ 3D-ramp poses. Their requested artwork/animation changes are not part of this update.
• Slot-machine artwork corruption, the suspected red life-text tint and the exact gumball inner-ball/player corruption phase remain unresolved. The sampled native/wide comparisons do not establish original-cartridge artwork or tint equivalence.
• Bounded captures did not reproduce the reported AIZ1 left-edge black lines or brief GHZ2 title-card corruption. Four-tick sampling and the tested settings do not qualify every transient or the owner's exact all-mod configuration.
• Conveyor failure with the supplied saves, imported spring/slope jitter, the reported life-counter route, MZ push speed/sound, missing AIZ objects, HCZ's specific bar-grab glitch, CPZ drowning and Sonic 2 spring flicker retain their individual bounded or unverified dispositions. No speculative fix is claimed for these reports.

A complete replay of the owner's original all-mod route has not been qualified. The feedback tracker retains each report's tested scope and remaining gaps.

Diagnostics remain enabled by default. Feedback recordings stay local; nothing uploads automatically. After a recurring problem, quit normally and retain the feedback replay with its save/configuration/mod sidecars, as described in the bundled docs/PLAYER_FEEDBACK.md.