Progress on the engine has been non-existant during the past month due to exams period, so we probably wont meet the February deadline for showing off the next zone. However, now that I have some free time, I'm going to work hard on make progress on the engine, so...
No intention of being disrespectful to Merc's design here, but I'm gonna ask: Any chance of the non-controllable rolling jumps making it back in?
The alteration of rolling fall rebound heights doesn't bother me, I enjoy that either way, but I really missed that feeling of roll = jump out of control. I know it's waaay early to be asking for such things, but any chance of an option or hidden activation button or something for Sonic 1 jumping, if Sonic CD jumping remains the default? Sorry Merc, you know I still loved your work.
Personally more eager to see the motion updates than the level updates heh, but that's just me. On that note, is EHZ getting any work done in terms of items and such?
This post has been edited by Deef: 04 February 2011 - 09:56 AM
The alteration of rolling fall rebound heights doesn't bother me, I enjoy that either way, but I really missed that feeling of roll = jump out of control. I know it's waaay early to be asking for such things, but any chance of an option or hidden activation button or something for Sonic 1 jumping, if Sonic CD jumping remains the default? Sorry Merc, you know I still loved your work.
Hey, that's fine. If I'd known there were fans of the Sonic 1 style I would have made it an option at the time.
The first was to copy the rolling jumps of Sonic CD. Sonic 1/2/3/K's rolling jumps remove horizontal control. Sonic CD's do not.
The second change was to the height of Sonic's rebound when he fell, airborn yet rolling, onto an item or enemy. This one is different to all the classics, where dropping onto a badnik from an airborn roll does not have a variable rebound height. The rebound is always maximum and isn't affected by the jump button. Merc changed this in SFR so that rebounding from a rolling fall behaves the same as rebounding from a jumping fall, ie, you need to hold jump for full height.
This situation only occurs when you roll off terrain, typically quarter-pipes. There's a water shield in Hydrocity that's all about this scenario, next to a big underwater quarter-pipe that comes between a speed-building twisty tube and some spinning platforms high in the air leading to a special stage entrance. After being flung that high then falling all the way down again, the monitor's rebound happily sends you back up to the spinning platforms even if you aren't holding jump.
Here's a good example too:
All these bounces are at max height, but Solaris never had to hold jump because he became airborn by rolling, not jumping.
It's a little change and there must be like 3 people in the world who even noticed. The argument for and against is pretty much the same as the Sonic CD rolling jump alteration - more control to the player, vs losing that feeling of fun chaos when rolling. But unlike rolling-jumping, rolling-falling occurs so rarely that the change really can't give that impression of being too strong a buff. Some might even say it's almost a punishment, as in, "Where's my free rebound?" It is fun in the classics when you unexpectedly crack something and go soaring away crazily. I enjoy the alteration either way. I think I'm a bit of a purist myself with controls so I wouldn't mind this change being optional either, but eh, it's so rare and arguably an improvement.
Probably wasn't necessary to spell it out that much. :/
This post has been edited by Deef: 05 February 2011 - 07:21 PM
Progress on the engine has been non-existant during the past month due to exams period, so we probably wont meet the February deadline for showing off the next zone. However, now that I have some free time, I'm going to work hard on make progress on the engine, so...
Stay tuned for progress on the following weeks
You missed a self-imposed deadline because of real life things! How dare you!
The engine basics are complete so far (I've been working hard on the engine's backend mostly), plus a couple more features that were missing at the other demo (moving and rotating platforms). I've had a hard time deciding on the design of the classes and data structures, but I think I have it sorted out with a system that allows me to add interactive objects, states and effects easily.
So all that's left is to add up details and level specific gimmicks. Hopefully the new engine will be up to you guys' standards
QUOTE (Deef)
The alteration of rolling fall rebound heights doesn't bother me, I enjoy that either way, but I really missed that feeling of roll = jump out of control. I know it's waaay early to be asking for such things, but any chance of an option or hidden activation button or something for Sonic 1 jumping, if Sonic CD jumping remains the default? Sorry Merc, you know I still loved your work.
Right now my implementation uses Mercury's behaviour, but I could just make an option for Sonic 1 roll jump (as it would be a small change anyway).
QUOTE (Slingerland)
You missed a self-imposed deadline because of real life things! How dare you!
Imma write you up in an article, Mister.
D: You wouldn't...!
This post has been edited by Damizean: 09 February 2011 - 05:44 PM
Having finished some fine tunes to the platforms and rails management, I've delivered the recent changes to the project back to pelikan. Badniks are back in, and hopefully with the same behaviour as Mercury's original implementation (thanks to his code the porting process was way easier ).
Also, I have noticed that there was a big bottleneck when too many scripted badniks (like the MotoBug, in contrast to the animation controlled ones) were active at once, so I implemented a similar badnik deactivation system like on the original games: if the badnik is too far away from screen, it's position will reset back to the initial, as long as that point isn't currently being seen by the camera. Hopefully this will lower the processor usage on those who had problems running the game. Now I get up to 110 FPS @ 1024x768, fastest settings with EHZ, 60 FPS with fantastic ones.
Now I'm going to focus on doing progress on the GUI and other misc. parts of the engine while pelikan makes progress on the next level. I'll probably be adding buttons and other gimmicks to aid him by making easier the design progress and giving more options for the levels.
Just a picture of EHZ running on the new Sonic engine
That looks every bit as beautiful as the original (I don't have a comparison pic right next to it, so I could be wrong!) and it doesn't have that blue tint everyone was bitching about. Sweet!
