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Is there a 'Sonic Maker' or equivalent?

Discussion in 'Fangaming Discussion' started by 1337rooster, Sep 13, 2015.

  1. Mr Lange

    Mr Lange

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    On which side of the line are you placing Unity? Just because some morons made a crap demo out of butchered lifted assets doesn't make Unity bad. It just means bad devs (if you can even call them devs) happened to use Unity to create their shit show. Unity is actually quite powerful and versatile, and capable of producing great games in the right hands. It gets a bad rap because its low barrier of entry means a flood of amateurs producing lousy content with it. This is a problem with the users, not the tool.
     
  2. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    Indeed. Unity is great precisely because of both of these things.

    Even if you're completely useless, you can knock up something shitty in Unity in ten minutes and make it playable.

    On the other hand, you can also do this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r4Bn1Cls-o


    This is a sign of a good tool, not a bad tool.
     
  3. TimmiT

    TimmiT

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    Never forget:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHKD14XfOe8
     
  4. Clownacy

    Clownacy

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    This is like every ReadySonic/BOOM disassembly discussion ever. Basically, fuck lazy people, they didn't write their own code/they didn't make their own engine/they wrote it in Java/they didn't make their own language/they didn't make their own hardware/they didn't make their own science.

    It's not exactly a recent thing, though. I mean, the DOOM and Build engines were used by a whole bunch of people back in the day. Still, having taken up 68k ASM and C, I only laugh at my Game Maker 7 days. Oh wait, with C I use SDL, and with 68k ASM I use Sonic Team's Sonic engine. Does that make me a hypocrite?

    I don't know who's side I'm on. Truth be told, I was actually pretty annoyed that Freedom Planet was built on the same pre-made thing as Five Nights at Freddy's. In fact I'm still annoyed at how, even after all that time and especially money, even the latest FNaF fad-fest is still using that thing. It screams 'lazy' to me, saying 'screw it' to stability, or any kind of optimisation, and going with something purely because it's easier for you, the developer. That old version of Freedom Planet did have a rendering problem, IIRC, and I know for a fact FNaF is riddled with display issues. I also know that a well-designed version of FNaF could run on my Xperia Play with no problems, but, no, brush me aside and give me a laggy mess because you can't be arsed.

    Thanks a lot, enjoy your money. You earned it.
     
  5. TimmiT

    TimmiT

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    Yes, those people who only know how to do the art, music, design etc. of a video game and can't do programming are indeed incredibly lazy.

    Seriously though, if you think that the main thing to making a video game is knowing how engines and programming languages work, then really you probably don't know much about what goes into making them.
     
  6. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    I think everyone should learn some basic programming - it really helps to understand what an engine is doing when you're using it.

    But there's nothing wrong with using a pre-existing engine. Why do work that's already been done? What does that achieve, other than the aforementioned understanding?

    I'm using Unity for my own projects. I'm also not using much of Unity's engine features because they're crap and inefficient compared to what I can do when coding for my specific purposes. But that's my choice; I feel the game would be worse using Unity's features in these cases - if they weren't, I'd be "lazy" and just do it the easy way.

    The end result is what matters.
     
  7. Jayextee

    Jayextee

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    I DONE MAKED GAMES.
    Quoted both for the motherfucking truth here. Little more I can add to it, especially with regards TimmiT's point about people who can cover in every area except programming; there's a really big barrier to entry on that front for a lot of people, for various reasons (dyslexia, dyscalculia, different learning styles, the fact that programming is a very logic-centric mindset versus the more lateral nature of the creative side) and removing these barriers so they too can make games is only ever going to be a good thing IMHO.

    In before "find a programmer to team up with": before this can happen, a non-programming creative really ought to get a feel for the kind of focus needed for gamedev so they work better together. Ergo, game-making utilities.

    There is literally no good reason to be against them in principle, and cherry-picking terrible examples isn't going to change this. So FNaF is a badly-optimised broken piece of work? It broke new ground for a while, and was initially fresh while it lasted (enough to give a few YouTube personalities a shot in the arm, mainly thinking of Markiplier here). It succeeded for these reasons, something which can't be denied.

    Re-quote, because this should be any game creator's mantra:

     
  8. Lilly

    Lilly

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    While I agree with that myself, I have to say that better optimized games, on PC at least, are still good for accessibility if you can manage it. (Especially now that it's so popular to own a laptop instead a desktop for most people.) If a game struggles to maintain a consistent frame rate even on a mid-end PC, a lot of people might only get to experience it through Let's Plays. Some buy the game itself and find it didn't like their computers, or can't get very far because it stutters or lags too much for them; there's no helping Intel GPUs playing modern 3D stuff badly, though.

    This isn't so bad for simple titles like Undertale or Five Nights at Freddy's; even my laptop never struggled to run Freedom Planet, a game that's likely much more demanding than either of them. Freedom Planet is also a rare case where the benefits of a compiled language really shines, because of how demanding a platformer of its kind is. (It slimmed performance needs down to a fourth of what it used to be on MMF2.)

    There's also the matter of console player standards too. Lots of popular N64 and PS2 games have atrocious frame-rates, but that never stopped any of them from gaining world acclaim, did it? As long as it runs properly, looks pretty, and doesn't crash, the average person playing games doesn't get too worked up over it like most of us with an interest in these things do.
     
  9. Mr Lange

    Mr Lange

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    This is more or less my philosophy. I think the best way to do things is to have the knowledge and skill to do things more raw if necessary, have a foundation of programming knowledge and understand how games work, and then use time saver tools if you want to, because then you're sure to know what you're doing, you'll be beyond the scope of the tools' regular simplicity and capable of using it on an advanced level while having a good understanding of how best to use it. I consider this both the most practical and most noble approach. The real folly of using these tools are in those who go straight to them while inexperienced or at square one. It's like having high end power tools and heavy machinery when you don't know the first thing about construction, in that case they won't really help much at all. Consider Playtonic Games in their use of Unity for Yooka Laylee. They're all very experienced developers, and have a very strong foundation in 3d graphics and programming. They're using Unity because it saves them a lot of time and toil with boilerplate that is ultimately not necessary to recreate on their own. Going into this knowing exactly what they're doing and how everything works is what will give them the power to create a great product.
     
  10. TimmiT

    TimmiT

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    Well yeah, but we're not saying that badly optimized games aren't a bad thing. Just that if a game maker doesn't know how to program or uses easier to use tools, that that doesn't make him/her lazy.
     
  11. Jayextee

    Jayextee

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    I DONE MAKED GAMES.
    And it's all straying off the point about an equivalent Sonic maker, innit?

    I dare say, for that purpose whatever works for the user will do. If (and this is just an example) it's MMF2 and only a few people can run the thing, the end goal of "make some Sonic, have people play it" is nonetheless met -- we're only ever going to be talking a niche hobbyist scene in this case so comparisons of compiled engines versus canned tools are completely academic. Utterly moot.

    Whatever works, works. Some are simpler than others; and for the love of fuck I'm gonna be trying out that Construct 2 Sonic behaviour personally at some point; but to that end suiting the person actually creating the levels is better than trying to use the marketing scattergun on some imaginary demographic for this kind of thing.
     
  12. Lilly

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    Yeah. That's why I added "if you can manage it". Even with "easy" game making tools, it's possible to speed things up if you know the in's and out's of the program. I've learned so much about Game Maker over the past ten years that most of my 2D projects don't go past 15-20% CPU usage; they're fairly light. (Compiled languages are still way, way faster, though.)

    Of course, most creatives won't have years of experience with a programming language, so they'll do what works the first time, and that's okay. Computers are only becoming more powerful with time anyway.

    A highly creative game can also always be remade into some special edition, cleverly ported to another language, (Freedom Planet.) or ported to a game console by another party. (Such as the C++ port of Minecraft to XBOX/PS3 by another studio. Runs smooth as silk.)

    Minecraft is probably the only game I don't excuse for still running on Java. Mojang has made more money than we have any right to know about from Minecraft, and Notch has long since left the company. There's no reason for it to not move to C++, and it apparently did for the Windows 10 Edition.
     
  13. Overlord

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    One probable reason is to avoid a usage fracture from the modding community, who likely won't update their Minecraft instances without the modding API that Mojang keeps dragging their heels over implementing.
     
  14. ELS

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    I wouldn't want it until Sega proved they can make Sonic 1-3 style physics again.

    Not even Generations got there.
     
  15. Atendega

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    Claiming they can't is just silly. They obviously CAN, they just haven't. Honestly, if a "Sonic Maker" ever ended up existing (and I doubt it will) I think they would probably base it on the Retro Engine.
     
  16. winterhell

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    Actually they obviously CAN'T. The people responsible for the gameplay, design and programming of the classics havent worked for the company for decade(s).
    Gone are also the people/supervisors/managers that LET the team go wild and do as they please and not force them to make another Super Mario-esque clone like Capcom and the world were doing at the time.
    Your argument sounds like its a matter of choice if they want to make, for example, a good game. If they cant release a proper game regardless of the physics, then for sure they cant make a good game with specific physics.

    And seriously, Classic Sonic in Generations was supposed to control like a classic Sonic but is lightyears away.
     
  17. *points to Sonic Advance series*
    You were saying? It's not impossible for them to do, and in all honesty isn't that difficult to reproduce to an extent. 1:1? Probably not. They just choose not to because reasons.
     
  18. Atendega

    Atendega

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    People in this very community have shown that it doesn't take a professional programmer to make a 1:1 recreation of the classic Sonic physics. They choose not to make one because, believe it or not, this community is nothing but a vocal minority. They make the games they think people want to play.

    Also, saying that they can't release a proper game regardless of physics is just your opinion. I personally thought Unleashed and Generations were stellar.
     
  19. TimmiT

    TimmiT

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    It's not like only the original designers can do good physics in a Sonic game. They don't even have to be accurate to what they were like in the classics, just good. I believe that they could do a new classic Sonic game with decent physics. They just couldn't with the current gameplay engine.

    I mean, if fans can do it, then why not Sonic Team?
     
  20. Lilly

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    I think the Sonic Advance games prove you don't have to have 1:1 physics to make a fun Sonic game. (Even some member of this community will admit Sonic Advance is the closest to a real Sonic 4 we'll ever get.) And some threads here have recently revealed just how inaccurate the originals' physics were; they seriously cut corners with angles to make it work on a 6MHz CPU.

    Clearly, we don't so much need 1:1; we need an improvement on what was already good. MrLange can spin yarns about all the ways that can be done.