This mod is the conclusion of an event I ran in DevTools (a modding tool for Sonic Frontiers that I maintain) in the week leading up to Sonic's birthday of 2024. The event celebrates the members of the HEMS modding discord server, Sonic Frontiers modding and Sonic's birthday all at once, and also demonstrates what could at that time be done with my reverse engineered Sonic Frontiers SDK rangers-sdk.

The event started out with a secret easter egg that was snuck into the normal version of DevTools and slowly replaced more and more Koco on Kronos with Pou characters. By the end of the week all Koco on the island were replaced with these characters, and their object names were set to the usernames of HEMS users. Pou somehow ended up being the unofficial mascot of the HEMS modding discord, so it seemed like a fun idea to represent the users of the server with this character. The HEMS users are essentially immortalized as a Pou in this mod. All modder role users have a fixed Koco/Pou, and remaining Koco are distributed randomly among non-modder role users.

In this finale of the event, which was released on Sonic's birthday, the easter egg transforms into a minigame where you collect the HEMS members. After collecting at least 33 of them you are rewarded with a unique audiovisual experience celebrating Sonic Frontiers modding.

I intentionally wanted to make the Pou look otherworldly and eerie. Eerie, but not creepy. The depressed looking Pou model fits this goal very well. The idea was for the slowly growing number of Pou to feel like an alien invasion, but they're not malicious aliens, they're just here to watch the fireworks. The Pou are always staring at the tutorial island, as they are waiting for the show to start. This also helps build the eerie feeling, and it was meant to be a clue in the lead up to the event.

None of the files included in the mod overwrite existing files. The mod dynamically loads new object layers into the existing stage and replaces any Koco that would normally spawn. The show itself is built on a set of custom ingame objects: one controller object, and many different responder objects. The mod also includes a custom ResMidiFile resource type, which contains the instructions for the lights and fireworks. The controller object reads MIDI messages from the MIDI file and translates this to equivalent in-engine messages, which are sent to the responder objects. For the final scene the mod dynamically adjusts the textures of the model instances, so that each instance can have a different texture.

How to play:

Simply load into Kronos. Any save file will do. Go to the places where Koco are normally located to find the HEMS members. After you have collected 33, you can start the show by walking into the blue ring next to the large climbable tower (where all the big Pou are).