Wow, I didn't expect that tiny post would get you the inspiration going!
Well, for a response to my response, here goes.
The reason I thought of the rings is the speedy nature of most Sonic games (I'm looking at you, Sonic Labyrinth), which can't be very accurately emulated in a single screen, so I went for the closest I could think of. Can't say thinking of Mario Bros.' bonus stages and Bomb Jack didn't help.
Also, my idea of badniks wasn't survival, so the harm they might pose is hardly what I was going for. They'd drop quite a lot of points (or other bonuses... y'know, like more rings.) but they'd be spawning strategetically far away from the rings, so it'd be that other matter of skill - to defeat the badniks and still get the best time.
Uh, so, you're gonna make a fangame that's single-screened?
This post has been edited by Can of Nothing: 21 September 2012 - 04:42 PM
Regarding a single-screen game, no. I seem to have confused the whole thread with that from the first post. :/
Regarding badniks for points, ah. So to rephrase, your idea focusses the gameplay on perfecting motion, and not much else.
What I mean by that is that the score attack drives what the player is doing, same as with Mario Bros., and the same as with a rings-only goal, but it does not define what the player is doing. In Mario Bros. the score attack provides reason for the headbutting play and the jumping-on-top play, while survival motivates the dodging play.
But if badniks are just there for points and their threat is seen as negligible, then they again are only motivating the manage-your-motion play that the rings are already doing. They're just another shape with a different value for their reward.
So I think they need to affect how the player plays in a different way. Since the gameplay of score attacking is a generic thing (it comes after the play, it can't create compulsion by itself as it needs other score attacks to compete with, etc.), it's not an aspect of the design I would focus on while I'm still working out the very basics. It could definitely come in later and work well, but personally I doubt I would support score attacking at all in a Sonic fan game if I were to complete one.
In what other ways can badniks create enough of an effect on the player to compel another aspect of gameplay? As we mentioned, threat is one.
Perhaps strategising is another. That could be milked from badniks, giving the player the joy of quickly forming plans, executing them, and seeing how well they pay off. I can think of two ways to bring that into it that are Soniccy. One is something you mentioned anyway, which is new bonuses. Not score rewards though, but bonuses that have a strategic effect such as powerups that don't increase your score but increase your abilities. For example, imagine the shields from Sonic 3 come with a timer. A badnik appears with an indication that killing him will grant you a lightning shield, which, in this rings game you suggested would be a little bit of god mode. The player could choose to wait until the rings start getting harder to reach before he kills this badnik. Well, that's a really simple example, my brain is too tired to think of something that's more involved right now.. 2 hours of sleep. Combo 5 badniks for a bonus stage perhaps, etc. The point is that now the player is playing 2 things: trying to maintain their motion as best as possible, and also forming and executing strategies on the fly. In this case both pieces of play are still motivated by the score attack, not survival, but that doesn't matter.
Oh yeah, and the second way to push strategy with badniks is just the obvious: use them as stepping stones. If 2 badniks hover around an area the player might recognise that as a makeshift bridge that he will be able to use later, and thus avoid them currently for the sake of getting out of what could be otherwise a real pain in the arse jump later.
The strategy aspect needs a bit more thought I think, in terms of full-game application. But yeah... brain wants sleep...
To leave the question lingering since maybe there's more that can be said on it, I'll just copy and paste:
In what other ways can badniks create enough of an effect on the player to compel another aspect of gameplay?
Edit: Oh boy writing so badly too.. apologies.. but meh.
_
This post has been edited by Deef: 21 September 2012 - 10:38 PM
A single screen Sonic game is an interesting idea.
You could go for a Sonic Spinball/Casino Night Zone or a Sonic X-treme approach.
For Sonic X-Treme, the fish eye lense could make the level seem like a cylinder. This gives the screen more room and could be based off of a lap system. Some levels in Sonic unleashed would have you circle the level 3 times with different enemy, spring, and ring placement each time.
Assuming you want to keep a 1983 style, you could have the level change constantly. Slopes and springs would help make Sonic's gameplay more interesting. Maybe Sonic starts off in Green Hill, but Robotnick builds a Death Egg around him. Walls would grow taller and eventually form a half pipe or slope that could lead Sonic to a higher area. A button Sonic can jump on would appear that makes a bridge crumble, making a bottomless pit or a secret passage. Maybe there's areas where you need to spindash against something, sort of like marble garden or sandopolis, to open up a door, then open up a second before the fist closes. You'd have to survive the Death Egg's construction, maiden voyage, destruction, and crash.
Taking this over to a full game might be easiest using secret passage ways. In Emerald Hill Zone, there are some slopes that look like they're just there to look good, but some can be spindashed off of to go backwards through hidden passages. There's one part where stepping on flowers like a button will open an area you need to go backward to access.
Here's another idea for a single screen sonic game... Have 2 gears on the screen. Sonic starts out on the bottom one and needs to fight the enemies on the bottom and top. There's certain areas Sonic can run on to turn the 2 gears. There are some blocks Sonic can't fall through but can jump through, but some blocks won't let him fall nor jump through. Not sure if Sonic would have to fight all the enemies, or get to the animal capsule.
A few other people have tried Sonic with a single screen. There's this one mini game in Sonic Advance 3 where there are 5 buttons on an animal capsule that you have to push or stand on. There's a light on one button that shows that's the one you need to press. It starts out blue where it's worth 3 points, then yellow for 2 points, then red for 1 point. I think the player has 30 seconds to get as many points as he can.
There's also this one game that came with a McDonald's Happy Meal that I'm not sure is a single screen or not. It was a racing game that had two buttons with the screen in the middle. Sonic had to dodge oncoming traffic without getting hit 3 times in a level. The cars would come faster and faster until you beat the game.
It seems like the all the classic Sonic games did something new or interesting. A "prequel" to this should be no different.
This is score-attack specific.
As you mention the possibility of respawning rings, it would make it possible to collect many hundreds of rings before you get to the starpost, and the game can be very unforgiving, after, say 10 minutes of hardcore collecting you may lose everything for a splitsecond error in judgement(I.e. get hit). So, especially in a single-screen or other closed environment (like in Spinball) there may be a "pit stop" where you liquidate all your rings into score. That way you no longer can lose the rings. It may have limited availability, like respawning after a minute, or being there regularly for short periods of time, or have limited number of uses. It also forces Sonic to go out of his way, and possibly waste couple of seconds there. So its a gamble for the timing when you are going to visit the pit-stop, you may be greedy to wait to collect bit more rings, and lose everything to a mistake.
A single screen Sonic game is an interesting idea.You could go for a Sonic Spinball/Casino Night Zone or a Sonic X-treme approach.For Sonic X-Treme, the fish eye lense could make the level seem like a cylinder. This gives the screen more room and could be based off of a lap system.
Not sure how this would bring fun to a full game.
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Some levels in Sonic unleashed would have you circle the level 3 times with different enemy, spring, and ring placement each time. Assuming you want to keep a 1983 style, you could have the level change constantly. Slopes and springs would help make Sonic's gameplay more interesting.
I don't want to keep the 1983 style though. Don't worry, it wasn't just you making this mistake and I've updated the OP to be more clear. Changing geometry/gimmicks is a valid point but has been raised already (well at least the geometry anyway). It's also probably the only thing that does transfer cleanly into a full game.
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Maybe Sonic starts off in Green Hill, but Robotnick builds a Death Egg around him. Walls would grow taller and eventually form a half pipe or slope that could lead Sonic to a higher area. A button Sonic can jump on would appear that makes a bridge crumble, making a bottomless pit or a secret passage. Maybe there's areas where you need to spindash against something, sort of like marble garden or sandopolis, to open up a door, then open up a second before the fist closes. You'd have to survive the Death Egg's construction, maiden voyage, destruction, and crash. Taking this over to a full game...
The focus of this paragraph is confusing; it doesn't seem to be talking about single-screen, in-your-hands gameplay, but rather just stuff to explore. Gradually growing walls is an idea I'll take from it though.
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Here's another idea for a single screen sonic game... Have 2 gears on the screen. Sonic starts out on the bottom one and needs to fight the enemies on the bottom and top. There's certain areas Sonic can run on to turn the 2 gears. There are some blocks Sonic can't fall through but can jump through, but some blocks won't let him fall nor jump through. Not sure if Sonic would have to fight all the enemies, or get to the animal capsule.
Bit confused. But the gist of what you're saying is "focus on playful gimmicks and happenings external to the character".
winterhell, on 22 September 2012 - 06:47 AM, said:
This is score-attack specific.
As you mention the possibility of respawning rings, it would make it possible to collect many hundreds of rings before you get to the starpost, and the game can be very unforgiving, after, say 10 minutes of hardcore collecting you may lose everything for a splitsecond error in judgement(I.e. get hit). So, especially in a single-screen or other closed environment (like in Spinball) there may be a "pit stop" where you liquidate all your rings into score. That way you no longer can lose the rings.
It may have limited availability, like respawning after a minute, or being there regularly for short periods of time, or have limited number of uses. It also forces Sonic to go out of his way, and possibly waste couple of seconds there. So its a gamble for the timing when you are going to visit the pit-stop, you may be greedy to wait to collect bit more rings, and lose everything to a mistake.Respawning badniks worked in Spinball.
This is already a non-issue in full Sonic games, where ring totals exist for their own reasons and are reset in ways already accepted. From what I interpreted, the merit of the ring collecting single-screen idea was that it focusses gameplay on motion management. I never actually thought "Hey lets put respawning rings in the full game." So thinking about that now... well there might be something fun in it, but apart from the merit of rings just mentioned I'm having trouble making more out of this. But I haven't managed to explain it away entirely so I'm going to let it stew in the back of my mind and see if later I might recognise something relevant to immediate gameplay/the control the player feels purely from the act of respawning items.
Wow the multiquote formatting here is kinda shabby. :|
So yeah not really feeling it there with those posts guys, but thank for the thoughts anyway. Please correct me if I'm missing something you're trying to express about enhancing/purifying the single-screen gameplay of a full game.
If you replaced the boss of Casino Night Zone with a series of enemies (and made thet playfield smaller so that it didn't need to scroll), you'd have a single-screen Sonic the Hedgehog game.
This post has been edited by Black Squirrel: 25 September 2012 - 04:44 AM
You mean, kinda like a single-sceen, 2D, respawning Robot Carnival?
Y'know, in fact, that's not a bad idea, though it doesn't have too much of a Sonic gameplay feel.
Black Squirrel, on 25 September 2012 - 04:43 AM, said:
If you replaced the boss of Casino Night Zone with a series of enemies (and made thet playfield smaller so that it didn't need to scroll), you'd have a single-screen Sonic the Hedgehog game.
So Deef, this point would reinforce the idea that a full game could completely utilize that very aspect of Sonic's physical reaction to the environment. Stages could have more focus upon ground curvatures as well as elements that would help direct (or misdirect) Sonic from them (springs, flippers, etc.). Much of Sonic's playability strength comes from the design of the stage, and how he interacts with it. Therefore, since the ideal single-screen Sonic game would be fully designed around accentuating this factor, a full game could also do so with enough creativity.
Edit: Grammar
This post has been edited by TheInvisibleSun: 25 September 2012 - 09:27 AM
TheInvisibleSun, on 25 September 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:
Black Squirrel, on 25 September 2012 - 04:43 AM, said:
If you replaced the boss of Casino Night Zone with a series of enemies (and made thet playfield smaller so that it didn't need to scroll), you'd have a single-screen Sonic the Hedgehog game.
So Deef, this point would reinforce the idea that a full game could completely utilize that very aspect of Sonic's physical reaction to the environment. Stages could have more focus upon ground curvatures as well as elements that would help direct (or misdirect) Sonic from them (springs, flippers, etc.). Much of Sonic's playability strength comes from the design of the stage, and how he interacts with it. Therefore, since the ideal single-screen Sonic game would be fully designed around accentuating this factor, a full game could also do so with enough creativity.
Ok. I'm going to work with this but you'll all have to excuse a bit of a build up while I lay my thoughts out.
So the (1) headbutting, (2) jumping towards a physical point, and (3) surviving are what make Mario Bros. compelling. (I number them so it's clearer when I refer to them). The player wants to know: "Do I have this skill to pinpoint these headbutts to upset the baddie?", "Do I have this skill to jump up and reach these locations before the enemies recover?", and "Do I have this skill to dodge the baddies to keep playing?".
Can I do this to achieve that? Right there in your face, arcadey compulsion.
And these aspects translated well into Super Mario Bros., where the progressive stages still frequently test the player's skill at the things that made them experience compulsion in the original game, while layering on the more long-term play that the arcade approach can't provide.
The suggested Sonic analogy is that compulsion comes from handling motion, influenced by terrain and gimmicks.
The player asks: "Can I exploit the surroundings, to kill the badniks?"
Firstly:
This looks a little bare. Mario had more going on. One aspect to Mario gaming (that I've seen in an interview I believe) is giving the player a simple task, at the same time as another simple task, at the same time as another simple task. The combination of several simple things happening at once, functioning as 1 mission. This combination translates into Super Mario Bros. frequently, as you see yourself still doing the 3 things described above, all in the same piece of play. To be honest maybe it's so easy for Miyamoto to increase the challenge by piling on more simultaneous simple tasks, that he had to hold himself back. Reach the red coins while staying on the moving platform while dodging the lava while shooting the baddies while catching the powerup before the time runs out.
What have you got Sonic?
I'll leave this question open in order to get on with this post.
Secondly:
The terrain or gimmicks would almost definitely have to change; there's no other way about it really. One thing that's a strong focus in any arcade context is that the challenge has to grow. The player will stop feeling any interest as soon as the challenge becomes too hard or too easy. And it's a safe assumption to make that the growing challenge has to apply to the skills that the player feels compelled to play.
In Mario Bros. it was a no-brainer: moar enemies, faster enemies. Headbutting, jumping, and surviving all depend on what Mario's enemies are doing, so pushing the skills being played was simply a matter of making them do more of it. From there it's just a matter of playtesting and balancing.
But how can a game alter and increase the challenge of terrain handling? (Not to be confused with jumping.)
Logically there are only 2 ways to increase the challenge of anything: make the goal harder to achieve, or the tools used to achieve it less effective. In the case of Mario Bros., it's almost entirely the former. Mario's jumping, running, and (usually) headbutting don't get less powerful or more difficult to use, but the things he must do with them become more difficult to achieve.
Sonic can go both ways, first taking the simple approach and simply shrinking badniks, or creating badniks that fire, or a boss that moves fast, or whatever. Looking at that picture I attached, this is something I can imagine would work, quite simply making it more likely that you'll miss your target or hit it badly. The good thing about this approach is that if you can guarantee the targets' increasing difficulty is intuitive, not abstract, you can guarantee the player won't feel like they're being increasingly nerfed.
But could that be enough? Would the player get bored if the terrain never changes, or are we just assuming that because we suck at imagining the targets increasing their difficulty on their own? That is something to really explore imo, because speaking for myself I forget to think hard about just how much you can do with Sonic's badniks. They have literally triple the potential of Mario enemies (elemental attacks, directional protection, ground-to-ground attacks, different character moves), but we honestly never see any of that potential tapped into. So I do think it's worth asking: How much can the challenge grow, while still being fun, before altering the terrain if we really put our minds to it?
I'll leave that question hanging too.
Just a few notes to finish this point though:
· Perhaps no matter what you do with Sonic's enemies, you still have to bring it back to the terrain if the terrain is what the player is going to enjoy, otherwise you're focussing on something other than what you intended to focus on.
· Changing terrain isn't much of an ask anyway, even if we ignore the fact that this is discussion for a full game. Bubble Bobble wouldn't have been so good if the levels didn't change. Meanwhile, simply rotating a Sonic playground is a workable idea.
· "Terrain" can be anything that the player uses as an aid to their movement, even badniks themselves, however whatever the new terrain is it would have to be reliable, which badniks are not.
· This image might first appear as rather claustrophobic for a Sonic player, but it is bigger than the space given to many single-screen arcade ventures. Or imagine this image filling the height of the screen you're reading on now. (Filling a widescreen would involve a little more complexity in design, to keep things interesting in horizontal travel where gravity isn't in play.)
Thirdly:
This all is missing one big aspect of the gameplay experience too: tension. It's one thing to say "The goals are harder to achieve." It's another thing to say "You are closer to losing the game." The terrain play that we have discussed so far does not talk about the latter, and if the tension isn't there it's not going to work as a game. Ok that's all pretty obvious, but I bring it up because I think it's possible to insert tension in the wrong way.
I think it's important that the tension being applied pushes the player to focus on the things that are being used to compel their play. In Sonic's case, the motion/terrain/etc.
To clarify what I'm on about, back to Mario.
Mario Bros. applies tension rather simply (dammit Mario, getting everything right through simplicity). As the challenge of the goals/the three tasks/the most compelling play/whatever increases, so does the likelihood of losing the game. Get hit, you're dead, and all three of those Mario skills apply to managing that tension of not dying. Headbutt dudes; you temporarily stop them from being a threat. Kick 'em away; now they're gone for good. Dodge stuff; well then you've stopped yourself from dying in that instance. There's a timer too, like every arcade game, just in case the player starts to think of turtling. No pun intended.
So, to show what I mean about inserting tension in the wrong way, here are a couple of ideas:
a) - What if Mario Bros. applied tension purely with the timer?
b) - What if Mario Bros. applied tension without the timer, but with lives and number of steps (so after X steps, you can't move anymore)?
Example a) means that the third of those 3 playable skills is completely out the window. Dodging is no longer part of the game, because tension was applied badly.
A better example is b) however. All 3 skills are still in play; the player is still pushing all those things to avoid the tension of getting hit and killed, but now instead of doing it quickly we've got the player doing it conservatively. Sure, the player is going to get better at those three skills but now it's more by coincidence than sharp focus. A bit like Paul Atreides in a knife fight; he eventually won but only because all his training with a shield coincidentally, and luckily, made him just good enough without.
So still on example b), instead of getting better at chasing down a headbutt, the player waits for enemies to do all the walking. Instead of launching himself all over the place to kick upended baddies, the player uses a strategy to have them all vulnerable on the lowest platform. Instead of dodging like a turkey in the middle of thanksgiving, the player just camps the safest spots. Heck, the map would even have to be reshaped. In short, it's all buggered. The skills are still in play but the whole thing is a soggy mess just because tension was applied in the wrong way.
So now it makes sense as to why I just made such a big deal out of it. Back to Sonic.
What tension pushes the Sonic player to focus on the skills being used to compel their play?
· Should it be a timer? It could work. The player will work on their flow because they have to keep it going to save time. Problem? It becomes a time attack. A good player will start playing, stuff up in the first 5 seconds, and already know that they won't recover from it.
· Should it be lives? This is a problem, because now it's a game of survival again. Is the player meant to deal with dodging for his life, or playing with flow? If it's going to be a matter of lives, then really we want the player to lose lives when they are performing badly at the compelling skills. NOT because they're bad at dodging, but because they're bad at using the level to keep flowing. So... how?
I got a good idea. :D
Many oldschool arcade titles use the combination of a timer with an omnipotent, menacing enemy. I always loved that... you get too slack and the game wakes up and kicks your arse. Blue's Journey was one that especially freaked me out as a kid.
Then think of the lightning shield in Sonic 3; rings chasing you around.
What if tension was simply applied by something like that? Something that chases you like elastic, obviously with more ease than Sonic 3's rings. It could be a series of things; really it's an idea that could use a bit of twisting, but for example... there's a trail of things following you. As they catch up with you, they disappear. If they all disappear, you're dead. You could implement rests from their pursuit, bonus additions to the length of the trail, and blah blah blah blah blah.
The point is, the tension is being applied in a way that slaps the player right in the face with the very skill we're trying to milk.
Balloons could be an excellent example... they pop when they touch Sonic's spines. Meanwhile, they also affect his decent, perhaps converting falling to something more like bungee-falling. The fewer you have, the more abrupt your falls, or whatever. Just throwing it around.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there for a full game, but the ideas were flowing so I went with it.
SUMMARY:
1. Can we think of more than terrain handling for what makes playing Sonic compelling before exploring a whole stage?
2. Can we push the player's skill to grow without actually changing the terrain? Just curious really, because changing the terrain is already easy.
3. Whaddayareckon of my tension implementation? Ok, really, the question is what's a good way to connect tension to terrain handling in a full game? Cos I'm not sure that my idea is so good, for that situation.
I added this video just for its reminder of that arcadey (not necessarily Soniccy) feel. The music is a big part of this, I think.
Curiously, the Master System games were stripped of a lot of Sonic's key features. It was a case of having to turn around a problem with the 8-bits instead of evolving to 16-bits, such was the case of Mario. This is what leads us to a lot of differences that might actually give you the answer you're looking for.
I'll use Sonic 1 for Master System as an example and as a paradigm.
So you are looking into the fundamentals that made Mario's gameplay, well, playable. But, first, let us see what exactly we are taking out when we nullify the elements you spoke of.
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What would happen if we took Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, or Super Mario World and then removed:
· the well balanced life system
A priori, you would take from the player the very notion of failure and success. The life system is the primary indication of what's "hazard" and what's "bonus", since the most basic sign of frustrating failure is not dying or getting a game over in itself, but having to go through all that you've already gone through without anything you've collected so far. So if the gameplay is reduced to going ahead x standing still, you're not actually playing, since the experience can be basically the same.
However, the line between the "no lives" system and an "infinite lives" system is blurry. Take Braid, for example. There is no such thing as "dying" and that makes the game, at first easy in that aspect. If it was a purely platforming game instead of a puzzle one, it would be rather bland.
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· the well balanced power ups system
This would make the game rely too much on its own principles, which would make of the game more of a showcase than a game. This would also completely deny us the possibility to enhance the gaming experience with risk vs. reward features, since the power-ups generally make your playthrough easier, but you normally have to go out of your way or overcome an obstacle to get them. Thus, you wouldn't have much more than an A to B system. It would be more of an algorithm than a full-time game.
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· the strategically positioned, completely non-mandatory, rewarding collectibles (coins)
Same as above, but with the plus of destroying the benefit of curiosity. See, it would make the game much more of an algorithm. Getting the coins has no value in itself. The game, I mean, Mario sees no purpose in getting them. The experience of reward which comes with the coins is exclusively on the player's end of the equation. You cannot be curious about what's not there. Think of the coins as sidequests.
Now, see, I am going to use the metaphor of the paper.
Consider a game as a sheet of paper. The obstacles and hazards are painted in black, whereas the ways you can actually go through remain unpainted. every single game is a puzzle within this metaphor, since every obstacle can be simplified as a dot, a line or whatever. In this context, the coins are not black nor they are white - they mean something to you, but, to the game, they mean nothing. It doesn't make a difference. So you could say the coins are something very, very unique - the gray spots. If you take away the gray from the sheet of paper, the gameplay becomes rather predictable for every player - there is only achievement vs. non-achievement (roadblocks). But, with them, gameplay becomes more based on what the players want and their desires, individidually.
In Sonic, we have that in speedruns and time attacks. The game sees no difference between completing a stage in 0'29" or 0'28" - but you do.
So here is the catch - if you take away from Sonic the life system, the rings that fuel this life system, the HUD that shows your score and every notion of risk and reward, what do we have?
Complete freedom.
Within the given framework, all you have to do (but also all you can do) is to set A and B and get from one point to another. From that point, you are building a game. Super Mario Bros could have a lot of elements in the screenshot you posted. The possibilities were absolutely endless. Such is the case with Sonic. Since the 8-bit systems hindered Sonic's gameplay in such a way that they didn't have at hand the systems that rewarded the player for having more than 99 rings (one life is, in terms of score, 5000 points; 99 rings is worth 9900), they were also given the chance to build completely different paradigms from scratch, using as a base only Sonic's core gameplay. The sketch you made? There is an entire level based on that: Jungle, Act 2.
People may claim it's un-Sonic-y. I say hell, no - this is a side of Sonic we could and should see more often. Having less tools to explore the levels' geometry to stimulate or prohibit building speed, they had to rely on more platforming - but still using what was core to Sonic. That's what amazes me about the level design in Sonic 1 and 2 for the Master System. That was also what made them harder, probably.
EDIT: Oh, about tension. That's where badniks come for, mostly. The timer also does that, but what I think you are on about are self-sulfilling prophecies. Mistakes that the player wouldn't commit if the danger was not there in the first place.
So, let's take Green Hill, Act 1. It's the first self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of tension we have in that game.
Look, the crab's own presence says "you are closer to losing the game". That much, the player does not want, so s/he gets careful around it. However, waiting to see what it does is exactly what makes it more dangerous - it won't spit those balls of doom unless you wait for it to release them. So, in fact, it's the player that puts him/herself into more danger. With time and experience, you'll just jump over it/kill it and realize you were never in danger at all. This applies for every section in which building momentum is required, but some kind of hazard (spikes) makes you fear making a mistake and, because of such fear, you end up making a mistake anyway.
This post has been edited by Palas: 28 September 2012 - 10:12 AM
Oh, to clarify about removing the "well balanced life system", I was really meaning the "well balanced" part of it. As in, a hit in Mario Bros. kills you dead. While Super Mario Bros. combines life and powerups in a way that works superbly for the game that it is. So I was really just saying "Imagine Super Mario Bros. 3 where 1 hit kills you, always."
On that note, Rayman Origins is a good example of a team trying to pull off infinite lives in a platformer. It almost works, but really doesn't, but the game wouldn't have survived well any other way either.
...... You know, these are all rhetorical questions! I used them to point to Mario Bros. 1983, to highlight how there are Mario elements in play even before those other design features existed.
Anyway, regarding your Jungle Act 2 example, you said "Still uses what is core to Sonic."
Well, what is core in that case? His motion play is gone. The rings play didn't exist. I believe there aren't even any enemies there upon which to exert his omni-directional attack. In other words, what's the uniquely Soniccy part? Because Mario's got most of that scenario covered already.
Or perhaps that's what you're saying. "Sonic is a platformer too." Well that's true, but in the most traditional terms (which are all this scenario can present) Sonic platforming is just outright not as tight as Mario platforming. Going back into 16-bit, there is such little platforming in the Sonics where you don't have plenty of landing room. Whereas Mario is presenting platforms 1 body-width wide by the start of the 2nd level.
So I guess what I'm saying is Yes you could do anything with Sonic, but if there aren't any uniquely Sonic parts to it, then you're just producing Generic Game 437 with a blue guy jumping that's not Mario. It could be fun too, but if it's not focussing on what's Soniccy then it's really not extracting anything that makes Sonic in particular compelling, and that's what I'm trying to extract in this topic.
I did really like Jungle. I'm confused though how you say Jungle is like my sketch above; it seems the complete opposite to me. My image is meant to be highlighting just how much reach Sonic has with only a few curves. The only similarity is that they're both a big space making up their own rules, but one is not very Soniccy.
Meanwhile the freedom you mention, well a lot of that is still there even with the rings, the powerups, and the lives all in play. We can still create a level drowning in original platforming ideas after getting things Soniccy.
So identifying the Soniccy elements is the start of my question. And then I would pull apart gameplay ideas. Just stalled on how you say Jungle 2 was using what's core to Sonic.
Tension:
Gotta take a disagreeing angle again. Good description of self fulfilling prophecies, but no I'm sure I was seeking tension for the sake of something to punish the player for not actively playing. The badniks in the classics do often fit your description, with Sandhiphopopopolis' ghosts being a good exception.
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