Odd Nights Into Dreams bug, freezing on Stick Canyon.

[darkman01]

So as the title suggests, Ive noticed this bug when I was playing Nights (we are talking about the PAL release)

Whenever I try to play the Stick Canyon level, the game has the odd habit of crashing randomly, and in some cases in odd ways .   Sometimes it will freeze with the polygons gone (ie, the screen will freeze and you just see the background). What usually happens though is that once I beat the level and boss, the game will simply freeze during the score count with the music looping, and even the reset button or opening the CD tray doesn't respond, meaning I have to switch the system off.

It happens in both 50hz and 60hz (although at 60hz I noticed a bit more graphical glitches), it doesn't happen  in any other level,  it doesn't happen in any other game either so I doubt its the hardware.

What could cause something like that? corrupt save data? Im kind of at a loss.

Thanks in advance.

[darkman01]

Forgot to mention that the disc is physically fine, the usual wear and tear but certainly nothing that would cause issues.

[tempest]

If it's happening at the score save screen, perhaps your memory cart is loose and this causes the system to crash. I've had games do this before.

Something else to consider is whether your Saturn is overheating.

Otherwise, if it's the same level, I would think the issue would be with the disc.

[darkman01]

Well I don't think the cart itself has any issues, as it isn't giving me any issues with any other game, or any other level , What I could do is try and copy the save over to the internal memory and try it there.

The same goes for heat, I can't imagine it only overheating on one level of one game.

As for the disc, its certainly possible, though as I don't have a spare , I could try and make a backup to test things.

[darkman01]

Well the problem was fixed, and the issue itself was quite odd.

A different disc didn't solve the issue, so what I did was transfer the save over to the internal memory and the game worked.

Thing is , I knew for a fact that the cartridge is fine, so I looked closer and found there was that extra "A-Life" save still on the cart.

I simply deleted it and ran the game from the cartridge again , and this time the save worked perfectly , no glitching , no freezing.

I guess that A-Life save was corrupt or was glitched in some way, the normal save seems to work just fine without it.

[tempest]

Glad to hear you sorted it out.

[Sonnington]

Interesting bug. How long were you working on the a-life save for?

[darkman01]

Apr 25, 2018 20:50:08 GMT Sonnington said:

Interesting bug. How long were you working on the a-life save for?

To be honest I wasn't really working on it, as it was a feature of the game I never paid much attention to .

Though thinking about it , I had these saves for about 6 years , my old Nights save was deleted when the memory cart had a corrupt junk save on it and had to be formatted (worked fine since).

You could argue Ive been working on it since, even if I wasn't really paying attention to it.

[The Elite MYT]

What's A-Life? I have Nights and have no idea what that is. Maybe I've just forgotten!

[captainkael]

Apr 28, 2018 6:32:23 GMT The Elite MYT said:

What's A-Life? I have Nights and have no idea what that is. Maybe I've just forgotten!

I second this question. As I have no idea either!

[assman]

A-Life is the artificial life system. You can interact with the Nightopians (little flying cone-headed creatures), affect their mood (which in turn affects the tone of the music), mate them, hatch their eggs and so forth. If I recall correctly, pressing X+Y+Z while paused gives you the Nightopians' current status. It's essentially the precursor to the Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure.

Personally, I've never really bothered with it. Aside from the fact that they're ugly little assholes with a death-wish, you can only interact with them during normal gameplay (as opposed to Sonic Adventure), which obviously means that you need to compromise your run to make them happy.

[captainkael]

May 3, 2018 1:38:14 GMT assman said:

A-Life is the artificial life system. You can interact with the Nightopians (little flying cone-headed creatures), affect their mood (which in turn affects the tone of the music), mate them, hatch their eggs and so forth. If I recall correctly, pressing X+Y+Z while paused gives you the Nightopians' current status. It's essentially the precursor to the Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure.

Personally, I've never really bothered with it. Aside from the fact that they're ugly little assholes with a death-wish, you can only interact with them during normal gameplay (as opposed to Sonic Adventure), which obviously means that you need to compromise your run to make them happy.

Is this something that was commonly known at the time? I obviously didn't have a Saturn during its run so I have no idea if this was a well known thing or a secret hidden feature.

If it is hidden sometimes I wonder how much time devs commit to features that may be cool, but 90% of the players may never know about.

[Sonnington]

May 3, 2018 11:59:19 GMT captainkael said:

May 3, 2018 1:38:14 GMT assman said:

A-Life is the artificial life system. You can interact with the Nightopians (little flying cone-headed creatures), affect their mood (which in turn affects the tone of the music), mate them, hatch their eggs and so forth. If I recall correctly, pressing X+Y+Z while paused gives you the Nightopians' current status. It's essentially the precursor to the Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure.

Personally, I've never really bothered with it. Aside from the fact that they're ugly little assholes with a death-wish, you can only interact with them during normal gameplay (as opposed to Sonic Adventure), which obviously means that you need to compromise your run to make them happy.

Is this something that was commonly known at the time? I obviously didn't have a Saturn during its run so I have no idea if this was a well known thing or a secret hidden feature.

If it is hidden sometimes I wonder how much time devs commit to features that may be cool, but 90% of the players may never know about.

It was advertised that the music was dynamic depending on the mood of the nightopians. Things like the King Pian and the castle weren't advertised.


Xmas NiGHTS gave you the ability to change the music manually. It also shows how many Nightopians you have and what they're doing; some are sleepy, some fly upside down, etc.

One neat mechanic was dashing through enemies. When the enemy is in a ball flying around the screen, if it hits a Nightopian it will fuse with the Nightopian and become a new creature. Those new creatures will breed and create other hybrids.



This is kind of a small picture, but this is what that screen in Xmas NiGHTS looked like. You can see some of them have blue heads. You can see in the picture there, there's one wearing a crown. That was the goal, to create the King Pian. Once you get the King Pian they build a Pian tower in the background of that mare.

This video goes into some detail on the system.

[captainkael]

Thanks for the info Sonnington. Very interesting.

I always thought those little guys were enemies so I always dash through them or make a loop around them

I will have to give this a try on my next Nights binge.