That layout is really nicely done, love how you've used the 4 platforms and love that Death Egg voice in mini-boss music. Excellent job!
Hacking Contest 2015 Demo Out Now /> Please enjoy and feel free to leave comments and constructive criticism Aquapolis Sunset Vista Bonbon Bonanza Radon Ravine Fury Fortress DOWNLOAD via dropbox
Aquapolis has interesting music, but not the best choices. I don't think that this music fits to the level at all. Bonbon Bonanza's art is delicious. Radon Ravine needs better palette and music. It really needs better music. Well... The music department of this hack is in need of to be very studied. Radon Ravine act 2 has a interesting mix of songs, but the act 1 song is just mediocre. In general, this hack needs lots of improvements. But it's very nice for a first demo. I'm surprised with this. Both positively and negatively. More positively, of course. The level layout design has some dick moves (specially in Radon Ravine) but the art is brilliant (even looking unfinished) and its level layout is really unique. The potential of this hack is incredible! Out of the dick moves and some of the levels needing better contrast between foreground and background (along with better palette edits), the game is really cool. I can't wait to see what the future will show me within this hack.
I never understood the logic of releasing your own SHC entry early before they all go public, but oh well~ :v: You'll hear more of my opinion when the rest are all live.
So I gave this hack a spin, and, well... I was not impressed. I picked Aquaopolis Act 1 and was greeted with what appeared to be an entirely underwater level, which is a point against the hack, as I want to enjoy the level without having to stop every time I get to a bubbling spot and hope I can get bubbles without getting hit by nearby hazards. And then I find out that there's a lot of timed jumps, whether it be into enemies over spikes, dodging projectiles, or moving platforms over pits. I don't like being forced to take my time when I don't have much of it to begin with. After getting hit by an enemy and falling into a death pit, I just exited out of the game entirely, not exactly willing to play the other levels. Put simply, Aquaopolis Act 1 was a really bad first impression for me.
Fun stuff to finally be experiencing this first-hand after 2 years. I decided to give this a playthrough too and.. I really wanted to like this hack, being hyped for quite awhile, there's quite some problems. Most of the level design feels very un-Sonic like. Speed isn't too commonplace, and I'm not a personal fan of level areas where "if you mess up, you have to redo the whole sequence." I had the most fun with the Marble Garden level, but every other level felt tedious. This hack has the potential to be something great, but the level designs really not leaning in its favor unfortunately. If you want more challenging versions of Sonic 3K levels, it'll be right up your alley, but considering the fact the zones got reskinned into all new themes, I was expecting more unique layouts. I'm not sure how to describe it, but a lot of the levels still feel like they're the levels they're reskinned from, not necessarily in the overall map but just their general arrangement and architecture? Dunno.
Pretty decent so far for the first demo release. However, most of the level design is problematic, as there are a lot of bits where it's un-Sonic like platforming and not enough speed, as well as areas where falling means you have to redo the area from the beginning, plus they feel they can go on for too long. The worst offenders of the level designs have to be Radon Ravine and Fury Fortress, which left me frustrated with how tedious and long they are. Radon Ravine also has other problems like mediocre Act 1 music and palette choices. Bonbon Bonanza is, IMO, the best zone in both visuals and level length. It's not very long, and I really like the candy visuals from Robocod and Zool, though the Act 1 boss is not balanced for Knuckles. Aquapolis, besides annoying water sections, isn't so bad, though the background and foreground visuals need some work (Act 2's background is great, but I think added details like gradients would make it look even better), and Act 2 crashes after the last underwater section on real hardware and some emulators such as Regen and BizHawk. Sunset Vista plays and looks good, though also a bit too long. The soundtrack in general is okay, needing work in some compositions and music choices (I like the choice of Lemmings music for Bonbon Bonanza Act 2 though). Overall, not a bad start, and there's still potential for it to be great. Hoping the dick parts of the level designs get sorted out.
I've been waiting for quite sometime to play your hack. The art work still looks great, but I was a bit disappointed by the music honestly... Though I did get a kick out of hearing Enya's "Sail Away" in Aquapolis Act 1. xD This hack definitely has potential, once the music ports are tweaked a bit and the level layouts are fixed then I'd be even more impressed.
Ah Ravenfreak I'm glad you enjoyed that little slice of Enya music, Orinoco Flow is my favourite song by her. I'm looking through at my instrumentation of some songs (Though my remix of mystic cave 2 player will stay as is) I can see definite areas for improvement in . As for the layouts, all I can say is removing small things makes a huge difference in terms of how well the level plays. Thanks for feedback.
Two bugs to point out right now. 1) Glitched continue icon in Special Stage results: 2) In Aquapolis Act 2, after an underwater section, I got to a dry flat stretch with a speed booster mechanism. I use the mechanism to go fast, and... A few frames later, the game just resets. Should mention that I am playing this in Bizhawk's Genplus-gx core.
Hmm thats odd. I haven't used or heard of Bizhawk's Genplus-gx core. Will definitely look into it. The continue issue will be fixed. Thanks for point out the issues
Basically, Genesis Plus is a Genesis/Mega Drive emulator that strives for accuracy. It's open source, so the project was forked into Genesis Plus GX, which is more up-to-date and optimized to work better on multiple platforms. BizHawk is a multi-platform emulator comprised of various emulator "cores" with the goal of extremely high accuracy and the creation of tool-assisted gameplay movies; they were working on their own Genesis core (GenesisHawk) but in the end they abandoned that and just ported Genesis Plus GX to BizHawk as a core. So, that crash bug would extremely likely happen on a real Genesis as well...
