I was initially disappointed with the decision to forgo the option for a permanent homing attack. I personally believe it vastly improved the gameplay ever since I played a hack that added it to the original version of 3D Blast. So I decided to port that hack to this version of 3D Blast along with a few palette tweaks for those interested.
Note that I haven't tested out the whole game yet but I assume everything works fine from what I have tested.
SonicDX Homing Attack (Original Pal)
First I have the original game with the homing attack added and no changes to the palette.
This means the golden shield is still present and simply acts like a normal shield.
SonicDX Homing Attack (New Pal)
Second I have the same hack with a many changes to how the game looks palette wise. I personally thinks it looks better but feel free to choose the original if you prefer it. The golden shield is still present and once again acts like a normal shield.
SonicDX Homing Attack (New Pal Alt)
Finally I have a hack with the same palette changes as the one above except this one includes changes that makes all yellow shields blue. This sadly affects some other palettes (like certain badniks and the pink flicky for example) but I tried to make them still look ok overall. It still looks a little odd but if you can tolerate less variety in palette then use this version.
Note that none of these hacks are updated the newest version of DX yet so expect some of the bugs from the earlier version.
All three versions of this hack can be downloaded here! They're all delta patch files and can be patched the same way you patch the normal version of DX.
Credits
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Showin (ported homing attack hack and made pal changes)
Jon (for obvious reasons)
Ham (made the homing attack hack for the original 3d blast)
I did get permission from to upload this from both Jon and Ham.
@Awlocke
I used a hex editor (I prefer HxD) to edit the palettes and HivePal (on a non patched rom) as a quick way to see what the hex code was for the original palletes I planned on changing. It may be confusing to those who don't know the basics of using a hex editor. I would just recommend Hivepal on its own (as its very easy to work with) but it is incompatible with DX though I assume if you used Hivepal on an unmodified rom and then patched it with DX you should retain most of your pallete changes. You cannot replace everything without a hex editor because DX will overwrite some of your palletes / add new ones that you'll have to change.
It's currently on the first released version of the beta. I plan on updating it to the newest beta soon.
Can I just ask, what do you use to change the palettes? It might be fun to play around with.
As for the homing attack hack, which version of the beta is it based on?
Further updates may include some sprite improvements such as this one.