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Sonic Redux

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by InvisibleUp, Nov 20, 2017.

  1. InvisibleUp

    InvisibleUp

    friendly internet ghost Member
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    Get now!

    Sonic Redux is the first extensive hack of Sonic R, one of the more obscure entries in the series. The goal of Redux is to be a "Sonic R 2" of sorts, with new planned characters and courses with a focus on making sure the game is balanced and fun.


    Features

    Widescreen Support
    Now you can play Sonic R in HD (720p, 1080p, you name it)! See those Saturn-era polygons in detail you never thought necessary. But even more importantly, you can play in 16:9 widescreen, giving you a wider view of the racetrack and a less terrible aspect ratio if played fullscreen.

    Improved handling and physics
    Various tweaks have been done to make the controls and handling a little bit better. For instance, you can now walk backwards by holding the down key. Turning is also quicker, slopes have more effect on you, and the characters feel like have more weight to them.

    Rings in Times Trial Mode
    Ever wanted to plan your racing strategies with the ring gates and accelerators in mind? With a few tweaks here and there, rings are now enabled in time attack mode.

    Randomized characters in GP mode
    Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman. They're ALWAYS who you race against in Sonic R. Every single time. ...no more! Because the characters are better balanced, it's now possible to shuffle who appears on the starting line. Every race will be different!

    Jumping and Action button
    Every single character can now jump. Amy's slow noisy car is no more! Instead, the special abilities have been mapped to a new button, the "Action button". See the Characters section for more details.

    Special Meter
    Many character's special abilities are shown on the new Special Meter. This can show how much time you have left in the air, or how much longer you need to wait to use your ability, or it can help you with timing tricky moves. It also shows the number of balloons or Sonic Tokens you've collected. See the Characters section for more details.

    Characters
    Sonic Redux comes with 8 brand new racers, complete with custom models and special abilities.

    Sonic the Hedgehog
    The fearless hedgehog, always up for some competition.

    Pressing Action while running he can roll into a ball and zoom down hills at breakneck speed.
    Holding Action from a standstill will charge up his Super Sonic Spindash, launching him from 0 to super sonic speeds in no time at all.

    Miles "Tails" Prower
    Sonic's best pal, always at his side on his adventures.

    Press Jump in mid-air to fly through the air for a short period of time, as indicated on the Special Meter.
    Tails will slowly descend as he flies, but if you hold Action he will rise instead.
    When the Special Meter is empty Tails will fall!

    Knuckles the Echidna
    The sole guardian of the Master Emerald on the floating Angel Island.

    Press Jump while in mid-air to have Knuckles glide, slowly descending until he lands.

    Amy Rose
    Sonic's not-so-secret admirer. Subtlety never works, she claims.

    Jump and press Action to start swinging her hammer. This will reset and start draining the special meter.
    If she lands while the special meter is not empty, she will bounce off the ground. If you're careful, you can even bounce off of water!
    Land on ground while meter if full to bounce forwards and gain speed.
    Land on ground while meter is near empty to bounce upwards and gain height.

    Fang the Sniper
    Lead member of the mercenary group Team Hooligan. His real name is Nack the Weasel, but he thinks that name's not cool enough for him.

    Get at least 10 rings to fill the boost meter.
    Press Action when Special Meter is full to fire the cork gun. This will stop others dead in their tracks and cause them to drop 20 rings. This costs 10 rings.

    Metal Sonic
    Formerly Dr. Robotnik's most menacing threat. Recovered from the aftermath of the Little Planet incident, he's since reprogammed by Tails for training purposes.

    Don't hold Action to move slowly, but with great control.
    Hold Action to move very fast with almost no steering.

    Blaze the Cat
    Princess from another dimension. Sometimes she comes over for birthday parties and races, when not busy dealing with her own matters.

    Hold Action to use her Boost to speed past others. Steering will be more difficult when boosting.
    When the Special Meter is empty Blaze will be unable to boost!
    Collect rings and complete laps to refill the Special Meter.

    Silver the Hedgehog
    He hails from the distant future, but with the power of the elusive Chaos Emeralds he can travel through time. He's a bit of a dweeb, even if he doesn't want to admit it.

    Hold Action to activate his Psychic Powers. This will preserve his speed, but he will be unable to move. He will still bounce off of walls, however.
    Hold Action in mid-air or walk off a cliff while your psychic powers are active to hover. Silver will stay at exactly the height he's at. This will drain your Special Meter, but it will be replenished when not hovering.
     
  2. CheatFreak

    CheatFreak

    Catgirl expert. Member
    This is really cool, I hope to see it fully ported to the Sonic R Mod Loader at some point, especially with my Sonic R updater just being made, people probably are going to be migrating from the 1998 port over to that en masse.

    Regardless, always great to see Sonic R getting some love. :thumbsup:
     
  3. Spanner

    Spanner

    The Tool Member
    Indeed, do hope this happens for next year. If you get that done it'll get more attention and even a few trophies at next year's Hacking Contest too.
     
  4. InvisibleUp

    InvisibleUp

    friendly internet ghost Member
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    It seems that the #1 comment I've gotten is "your models are pretty bad". I'm curious to hear what I could do to improve them. I suspect a lot of the criticism comes from the shading being missing and the animations being recycled from Sonic R, but it could be that the models themselves need some serious work. For the record, I was explicitly aiming for more Rush or Adventure style proportions, about 3 heads high and with more humanoid-shaped bodies. I also wanted to keep the low-poly look, to match the game's animation capabilities.

    Here's an imgur album with some better renders of all the characters and some earlier variants still using the Sonic R style proportions. If there's anything you think looks off, please don't hesitate to let me know.
     
  5. Chimpo

    Chimpo

    Why is Tekken 6 afraid of Tekken 7? Member
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    Aiming for Genbu!
    These look best

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    The others do not. I'm not trying to be a "Classic Purist" here, but proportions you're aiming for does not fit the classic character designs you're trying to push. Stick with the Sonic and Amy template and you should be fine.
     
  6. SpaceyBat

    SpaceyBat

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    Freedom Planet 2
    Something else too that's probably throwing people off is that while the modern characters have more humanoid proportions with longer limbs, they're still using running animations that were designed with classic proportions in mind. If you wanted to retain the new proportions and still have it feel decent, they'd probably need a less wobbly run to match.
     
  7. Shaddy the guy

    Shaddy the guy

    Professional Internet asshole Member
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    Honestly I think it would have been better to try to make the new models match the originals than edit the originals and make new models by some new and inconsistent artstyle.
     
  8. InvisibleUp

    InvisibleUp

    friendly internet ghost Member
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    I know this is incredibly belated, but here's the source code. I was purposefully waiting until the hype was dead because I didn't want anyone basing a hack off of this. I was going to wait until I ported this to the 2004 version, but I was burnt out from all the Sonic R stuff, so I'm releasing this as-is. I tried to clean it up as best I could, but with the hackish way I went about doing this it's far from perfect.

    https://github.com/InvisibleUp/SonicReduxSHC2017/