Idk if it has a chance but that's awesome that it was nominated. As cool as Cuphead is though I'd hardly consider it a platformer, there are like maybe 3 levels with actual platforming.
But why the ban on bug reporting? and why haven't Stealth or Taxman showed themselves here in months? Just seems all soo strange to me, when the mobile remasters came out their wasn't a ban on bug reporting and either Taxman or Stealth were here chatting along with us about the remasters. Mania feels different, like they are barred from coming here or were barred from giving technical feedback about the game. Not like it matters anyways the game has been out for months and I'm sure SEGA is done handling support with bug fixes and improvements.
The remasters were predominantly about repackaging old material, and the creative process involved is more with recreation rather than making new concepts. I could totally see a lawyer thinking that them being able to see original concepts from fans unconnected to SEGA and then letting that influence their subconcious whilst creating new stuff would put them at some sort of liability. The ban on bug reporting feels a little more suspect, though, considering the game's campaign was done at that point.
It's still nice to have a place to reference what other people have found / know about instead of having to dig through the thousands of posts in this thread. A bug thread isn't necessarily just for the team to look at, or even for them at all if they don't want it; it's valuable to know what others have found. This is primarily why Orkal's Sonic 3 glitch videos were so entertaining to watch. Would love an answer to the bug thread thing that doesn't suck. As I recall, before the game came out the excuse was "the game isn't out yet", then it turned into "they're already planning a patch, they don't need repeat bugs reported", but now I don't know what the current excuse is. The bug thread is just as much for us as it is would be for them if they want to look at it. The previous threads were never a promise that things would actually be looked at by the team so I don't know why this would be different. As for the team being quiet, I can think of two possibilities: 1. Sega got mad after Stealth's outburst about the DRM, and reminded the team that they can take legal action as even mentioning they weren't in favor of it is probably covered under NRA. 2. The game did well. We all know the game was good. Either they're getting ready to pitch again, or are already working on something else. I do hope that if they are busy, that they save some materials they haven't been able to talk about yet for when they're not busy, so they don't forget about them. I know a lot of people have wondered about the missing level transitions for example, I'm sure they know the answer but just can't talk about it.
Stealth already went over the level transition thing on his stream, didn't he? Paraphrased, it's something like "sometimes stuff just needs to go to get it out the door". No grand conspiracy or major mark of shame, it's just game development that not everything people want to get done necessarily gets done.
It does suck that support for this game was dropped so fast, was at least hoping Denuvo would be removed from the PC version seeing as it was cracked in the timeframe they allow (if anything it HURT sales on PC), plus with no Denuvo they could do a Mac/Linux port which would've been another userbase to take advantage of, as well as allowed them to do bug fixes in these versions which they could've ported back. But alas, SEGA Giveth SEGA taketh.
Was anyone else surprised that all of the level transitions took control away from you in Mania. Sonic 3 & Knuckles had some automated ones for sure but those usually amounted to cinematic things outside of typical gameplay. But when the transition was just like "run right and go through tunnel of snow" they let the player take care of that. There were at least a few cutscenes that easily could have been player controlled, particularly CPZ 2 > SOZ 1, MSZ 2 > OOZ 1, LRZ 1 > LRZ 2, and Knuckles LRZ 2 > MMZ 1. Wouldn't that have been easier on the developers if they just let the player take care of those scenes?
Likely not, since you'd then have to bugtest and account for players fucking around. Much easier from that perspective to just have the character follow a set path. EDIT: What sort of things are people expecting from potential patches? I've played the game multiple times on PC, PS4 and Switch and haven't really seen any issues other than the slow OS response on Switch (which I think has been fixed?). I've spent a fair amount of time just messing about, but I haven't seen anything like the sort of bugs I'd encounter in a standard playthrough of Sonic 1 or 3. I guess I miss starting off a spindash from a falling platform, but Unleashed PS3 gave me a headache due to the terrible framerate in places, and people around here seem to praise both that game and the way it was supported after release. Does Denuvo create an overhead beyond that of the recommended system specs or does the game just use more resource than expected compared to CD? DOUBLE EDIT: From my quick tests on my own system Mania uses 10% more CPU than average than CD, and RAM is the same if not more efficient.
Most of the bugs I was hoping would be fixed were, and they added a few things like the dedicated Super Sonic button. But the music bugs in some zones still exist (looking at you PGZ 2) and I would have liked a couple of added features, like completed Super Sonic sprites, additional level transition scenes, and the option to use Knuckles + Tails or using different abilities on save files (these two options were remedied via mods and codes though so that's not a huge deal).
Things I would have liked to see in a potential patch: Something to replace the bonus stage when you get all gold medals, as it ends up being redundant. It would be nice if the S3K bonus stages could replace it (which they coded for the Sonic 3 remastered prototype). But if that's too complicated, it could be something simple such as getting a random shield when touching the lamppost stars. Getting more shields would certainly improve the experience of exploring as Sonic, which is harder due to his limited abilities. In S3K you could easily hop into a bonus stage to pick up a shield to fix this, but in Mania you have to rely on finding one in the Zone. Zone transitions (Especially FBZ -> Press Garden and Hyrdo -> Mirage Salon) Option to play as Knuckles with Tails following (and maybe even ST&K at once, with K being able to smash walls to let S&T access K's routes). Easier Tails air light when using shields. 2P mode for all stages. Some of the character specific Zones seemed to have been skipped (e.g. to avoid playing as Sonic in Knuckles' Mirage Salon), but it would be nice if the 2P mode just forced the player to select the required character rather than omitting the Zone. Bosses in 2P mode (I believe that unlike the Mega Drive games, the 2P mode just scales the game, so there isn't the cost of making custom tiles). Of course, I know that there's very little chance of this happening. Plus I admit that I don't have a clue about game development. These things seem simple to me, but I imagine there's all sorts of approvals, testing and patch hosting costs that make releasing patches an expensive process and so a lot of this probably isn't economically viable.
Some of these have been remedied on the PC via mods. There's a blue spheres randomizer mod that creates random blue spheres zones upon reaching a checkpoint (although it would have been nice if you could have kept the rings you collected in the stage or maybe if some of the spheres were various items). Knuckles and Tails mode is possible via the mod loader, and someone was working on a STK mod I believe. There's also a code that allows Sonic and Tails to smash through walls. The boss thing got me thinking though. It would have been nice to see a Boss time attack mode ala Robotnik's Revenge or even the scrapped Egg Gauntlet zone from Sonic 2 iOS. Strange you can't time attack them at all in the game (And maybe it'd have been an excuse to put Death Egg Zone in the game :v.
I haven't tried the mod loader, but there's also that trick with Competition mode and the dev menu you can do to get ANY character pairing. I had fun going through the game as Sonic & Sonic, with the partner Sonic mimicking my Drop Dashes and actually keeping up pretty well (and floating back to me in a majestic figure-8 run when he fell too far behind).
I wonder why the bug topic was never reopened. Even if it's too late for any potential patch, having a place to document bugs, glitches, and potential exploits could be cool, instead of having flood the main discussion topic.
I vote NO for manual level transitions. I remember way back when in Carnival Night when we got to the canon as a kid and not knowing what the hell to do. I kept shooting the canon upward for at least twenty minutes as my brothers and I scratched our heads on what to fucking do. On the adding of level transitions in general, we live in an age where game updating exists. Sega could by all means commission them to add the missing level transitions at any time but I think the stinger of such a thing would be doing so on multiple consoles. If it was just Steam then it would be significantly easier but Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have their fees and approval process. Only realistic possibility would be Taxman and/or Stealth doing something in their spare time but I doubt that. Second possibility would be someone else doing it for them unofficially.
Denuvo is not an obstacle to Mac/Linux support. That was another lie people have been spreading as a fake reason to get it removed. I have only played the PC version on macOS via WINE, multiple times through. I have never actually played it under Windows. The obstacle to multi-platform support is that Sega has never done it before with a Sonic title and doesn't want to, despite the fact that CW has ported Retro Engine to macOS in the past so some of the work is already done. The reason it should be removed is because the game eats around 15% CPU time for me when it should be eating up about 2%. It sucks because I tried playing it on my laptop on a plane ride once and it used up about 10% of my battery in under 30 minutes, when I normally can watch an entire 90 minute film and only drop about 8% of my battery life.
People are mistaking a "bug fix" patch with a "features/update" patch. Adding a Super Sonic button or other level transitions isn't a "bug fix".
I always felt Flying Battery > Press Garden was the easiest one to imagine without a transition. Since Flying Battery can fly anywhere, it almost speaks for itself. I think Stardust Speedway > Hydrocity is the biggest one for me. It would have been great to see a transition of Sonic seeing Titanic Monarch in the distance and getting ready to gun straight to it, only to be Ruby warped off Little Planet by Heavy King or something. Unrelated, but did Tax/Stealth ever give a reason for Angel Island being down on the ocean again at the beginning?
That would've been a great concept, and easily sell the plot much better. It's a shame things didn't fall into place to make it happen. Re Angel Island - Stealth's advice on the stream was "if you don't understand something, the Ruby did it". Which isn't necessarily helpful, but at least it fills in all those plotholes.
