Was watching this video: [Youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x9O4cQwcQc[/Youtube]
And at the 17:00 mark (approx) it mentions a World Ranking system (similar to Sonic Adventure) planned and partly visible (via cheats) in the code for Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. It also mentions that images and textures relating to it have been found in the game's files.
This includes a pressable menu for it (though it disappears to a black screen and softlocks the game upon entering it), World Rankings visible in the Emblems Results menu, certain things you can make appear in the blank World Rankings menu with four overall rankings;
- Total Ranking
- Time Attack
- Score Attack
- Emblem
Total Ranking and Emblem seem mostly empty, whereas basic listings can be seen for Time Attack and Score Attack.
It includes another menu accessible from these pages to the online network, and 24 windows relating to the database can be found in the files here too.
All of the announcers have voices relating to World Rankings already, country flags for the online rankings are still included, as are several menu options (as images by the looks of it) relating to searches, ordering and commenting on rankings.
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My guess is the likelihood of the World Rankings making a fan-rebuilt appearance are near-enough none. While most of, if not all, the base components exist inside the game files, it would appear that fixing this feature would require the source code of the game (Which I highly doubt has left SEGA/Sonic Team to reach us).
This community has worked many miracles before, however. I know SA2's online features have been in the works for some time, though I don't know if the person/team doing so knows of this feature. If you guys have, forgive me on that.
Would be awesome to get this into the game and basically enhance SA2's online features with assets already available, but I'm aware of code challenges being quite different to network challenges. If the connectivity of this feature is it's main stumbling block, then perhaps it is possible for the right networking code to fix it - however it looks as though much was left on the cutting room floor and would require new code to exist in the game itself.
But if someone with more knowledge than me could let me know, that'd be grand. In the meantime I'll get back to fixing MSR's website like a good boy lol