I think the bosses should be a bit less resistant, at least the final ones. I mean, the Silver Sonic fighting makes you hit him about 25 times in order to defeat him. Otherwise, 12 hits in a common boss is kinda balanced, nothing against. The gameplay is unique, I loved that wall kick skill and the "tornado spin" attack. The game is well complete, but it is still a demo, according to what I've read. I wonder what things you guys will put into the game around the next year.
Hm, you do have a point on that. Wonder if Thorn and DNX are thinking on implementing a life system in the game.
It's not actually more challenging though, it just takes more time. It's a kind of artificial difficulty: the boss never changes its pattern so the player is forced to repeat the same motions so many times that it is no longer difficult, just time consuming. I realize this version isn't final, but I'd suggest adding another attack pattern after 12 or so hits if you want to make it both more challenging and more interesting. Even then, I still think 25 is a bit excessive, especially when there's no life bar or hit counter. Maybe 18 or so would be better since it would be the same regular boss to final boss hit count ratio as Sonic 2.
Here are two new screenies of the now-named Hydro Palace. The level overall is becoming a mixture of the other water levels from Sonic 1-3.
Aside from the BG and the FG being the same color, it looks nice. It really is hard to tell what's in the foreground and vice versa though, I'd work on that.
Oh wow. That's really nice. Just change the BG color as Dude said, I can't tell the difference and it's kind of disorienting.
Pretty much this. The level tiles would be perfect if you made the background darker, or the foreground darker, in order to contrast them.
Water stage. COOL! Labyrinth + Aquatic Ruin + Hydrocity = Damn challenging stage to come. And then the fifth stage is coming to us.
So, this would be your underwater Call of Duty level, then. troll aside, wow, I love the Hydrocity art there!
That is an amazing water level! Like everyone else said, however, the amount of brown makes all the objects blend in to a degree. If it were up to me, I'd use a cold green palette for the large background wall and the main brick path in the foreground. I recall seeing old S2RR footage of Aquatic Ruin while it was still a work in progress, and the dim green-and-cool-gray palette that was used in that zone looked really nice back then. [EDIT] Here, I whipped up an example. Something like this: Something along these lines would be neat. Just make it feel as cold and gloomy as your old Aquatic Ruin design, and it'll look swell.
I prefer the official concept, but as numerous others have said, the background and foreground browns are too similar in colour.
@Thorn Can I make a request to have a sound option in Retro Remix? I really like the edits that you have put in and from time to time I like to listen to them. Not only that but also an option to choose which music you want for the levels, like an option to select from either 2009, 2010 or 2011 music selection. Some of the music from the 2009 edition I prefer and would love to have an option to listen to those again on the updated levels.
What? Unless you've got 10 minute songs, they should only be peaking at 2KB. I've never peaked above 2MB in Sonic Thrash with the amount of music I had stuck in, and a good chunk of that was level art and DAC samples.
I think he's talking about the number of music slots, not the file size. In any case, we've pretty much got that sorted out, as we've opened up slots $81 to $FF for music. I'm still not making archival music, though... who knows how many of those slots will be needed for new material. I kept telling myself to get things done to have something to show around Christmas, but, y'know... life.~ I did make progress on plenty of things, but I've got nothing substantial to show off. If it seems like I'm making no progress, there's two possibilities as to what I'm doing: - Nothing - Designing SMPS music, the bane of my existence Right now I've done a bit of the latter. Here's a ZIP file with three tunes I'm working on. The Act 2 songs are for moving the existing Act 2 levels to Act 3 and inserting a new act. Frosty Peak 2 is still at the MIDI stage, as I had to fix it from a game rip that doesn't convert to MIDI perfectly. Casino Night 2's tune is from Sonic Colors' Tropical Resort 1, Death Egg 1's tune is from Sonic Colors' Starlight Carnival 1, and Frosty Peak 2's tune is from Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games' Giant Slalom. They all have crappy instrumentation, but the notes are all in place and good voices should finish them off. None of these are finished, but I'm off to work and too rushed/lazy to do any clean-up before presenting them. I also made a strange Casino Night level that loops horizontally and has 400 rings in it -- maybe I'll add a countdown timer and make it some sort of bonus level where you collect them all.
Right, so I have some eye candy to give you. Warning: The background is a very early WIP, so don't say it's horrible if I haven't gone that far. >.> Aside from that, the level's name is Fun Factory. Thorn was a bit iffed by the lack of an acronym in names for at least one level (and some of the other levels were named already), so I decided to go with this one to keep his need fulfilled. :p I don't know why I keep telling myself to stop multi-level editing, and I still do, but there's another level in progress as well. I won't spoil the surprise but I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of raging on this level upon another release (not soon).
