SonicBoom


 * For other subjects with the same name, see Sonic Boom (disambiguation).

SonicBoom is name of the official level editor and the level engine that was used to create levels for the cancelled Sega Saturn game, Sonic X-treme. It was developed by Ofer Alon, one of the lead programmers of the game, and was scrapped when Sega of Japan demanded that the entire game will be developed from the boss engine. It was found by Jollyroger in November 2014, and supports NVidia NV1 video card & SDK & Windows 95 to work, so he is converting it to render in OpenGL and work on modern Windows. It will be the first official level editor of a game to be released.

The two versions of the editor Jollyroger found are SonicBoom v37, the earliest editor that was already ported to OpenGL and SonicBoom v53, the latest level editor for the latest build of Sonic X-treme.

The editor
SonicBoom has two modes, the first one, "Edit Mode", lets you navigate the level with the mouse and you can edit the level, one block at a time or by strips of blocks. The second mode is activated by pressing the "Run" button. In this mode, Sonic is playable. Sonic can jump, run up and down slopes and Spin Dash onto walls, thus changing the direction of gravity and the rotation of the level itself. In the first mode, the player can also lock the camera to place blocks. By pressing the right button in the mouse, the player can go to a menu, where he can change between modes, or place blocks using tools like "Pen", "Continues", "Line", "Rect" or "Box". The player can also undo/redo actions, and activate an isometric map that helps him to edit the level. The player can change the size to see more of the level, and also its view (from isometric to side view) and color, and can also zoom it in and out. There's also an option for fullscreen mode and 3D View, which enables/disables fisheye lens when ticked/unticked.

The engine
As mentioned above, Jollyroger found most of the game's code in November 2014, and he is converting it to render in OpenGL and work on modern Windows. The two versions of the engine he has are v37, that doesn't have fisheye and has the "World Rotation", and the player cannot collect Rings or interact with enemies. The second version, v40, for both PC and Sega Saturn is the same as v37 but has fisheye, lacks the "World Rotation" and supports multiple resolutions. The Saturn version has only two frames of animation for each sprite, and was ported by Point of View Inc.