Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Violet CLM - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Metal Man88, on 09 April 2012 - 10:50 PM, said:

I never said anything to that effect.

Metal Man88, on 08 April 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

This is an unfair comparison. Later zones are almost always more gimmick-filled than earlier zones (contrast, e.g. Green Hill with Scrap Brain); you're comparing the final zone of one game to the first or second of another. The same goes for technological zones vs. nature zones. Let's try comparing White Park to Ice Cap, because they actually share a theme, even if Ice Cap is nearer to the end of its game. I'll also leave out stuff that's in every zone, because that's meaningless.

White Park: Pushing snowballs around, snowboarding sections, snow you have to plow through.
Ice Cap: Pushing ice platforms around, a snowboarding section, platforms that you run really fast onto so that they'll go up, platforms you jump on so they'll send you up.

Advantage Ice Cap, by one... until you remember that we're only familiar with one third of White Park, and the other two acts could have absolutely anything in them.

That said, the Ice Cap gimmicks are by and large better, because they're more interactive. But you were only citing numbers, and the zone you chose doesn't support that very well.

jasonchrist, on 07 April 2012 - 06:14 PM, said:

But aren't there three separate acts, each with its own unique theme? As I understand it, the White Park act seen in all the videos is the one that's focused around snow. There's another one that's focused around water, and a third focused around the more carnival-like aspects, appearing to be set (at least partially) on a rollercoaster.

I feel the music hasn't been getting enough attention in this thread, because everything sounds so much fuller than the original tunes it's based on. Definitely a treat to the ears. The graphics work much better in motion than they ever did in screenshots, but there were a few parts that bugged me:

• I can't even tell what shape the base of the diagonal springs is supposed to be.
  
• The shaded effect on Sonic when he's in cave areas is just ridiculous. It's either all on or all off, which looks silly when you're standing on the edge of a cave area, and there's no real reason it should exist in the first place since the grass and everything else don't seem to be affected by the reduced lighting in any way.
  
• The falling-after-using-a-spring sprite is nice, but it could seriously stand to be animated. Right now it looks really stiff.
  
• The boss still looks like it's from a flash game. Smooth gradients everywhere.

I never really expected this game to get this far, and such minor details aside, it really does look and sound incredible. Good job and thank you.

I feel your discussion of routes emphasizes their distinctness at the cost of deemphasizing their interconnectedness. In GHZ1, for instance, the bottom (pink) route begins at the first pit, so it feels like it's an offshoot of the red route from the first pit. However, after the second pit, the pink route is descended from both the red route (circa the second pit) and the pink route (prior to the second pit). This brings up the matter of how branching occurs, which is something you don't much touch on. I can think of a few fundamental possibilities:

• Lack of skill results in changing routes. This is what you usually see on the upper routes: there are a lot of opportunities to go to a different route, literally by falling into it after missing some floating platform or other.
  
• Sufficient skill results in changing routes. More available for lower routes: if you go into a quarterpipe with enough speed, or notice some subtle floating platforms, or something like that, you can find your way into somewhere a little easier, most basically by going up.
  
• A simple choice. I can think of fewer examples of this off the top of my head, but there are cases where the level design can honestly give you a clear choice between two (or more) possible ways to go, with neither option requiring more skill to access at the onset. (One may take more skill than the other later on, but the choice itself can be fairly equal.)
  
• Randomized. This happens in Chemical Plant Zone with some of the pipes, which take you in different directions depending on whether the second you enter them is even or odd. This isn't too common, and I can't say I really mind that.

It's also tempting to combine the first two possibilities into one, specifically "one route for those with enough skill, another route for other people." This, though, arguably comes at the cost of losing the description of routes as wholes, as you do in your images: instead a route would only last the interval between one branch and the next. The high/low/middle route distinction would be replaced with a high/low/middle area distinction: some areas are easier, some areas are harder, and different routes snake in and out of those different areas and may fork off into other routes in the same areas or else in different ones.