Badniks & Bosses

I still think they're wasted opportunities (your second idea doesn't sound bad to me either). But like I said, it's not my project, so I'll just accept it. I wish I could have put my views in the Feedback thread instead, but it's too late for that now.

 

You can't destroy the Flasher when it's flashing while invincible? That's new to me, probably because I never tried, but that sounds retarded. That's something I would actually change, I mean, it makes more sense like that. Besides, isn't the point of being invincible to get around enemy attacks to kill them anyway?

And aren't you adding Knuckles (and I would assume Tails) with all his signature moves? How is that less game-breaking than these little tweaks? I'm not taking sides, I would just really like to know what the logic behind that is.

 

Sonic 2 & Knuckles

 

Extra modes and additions are something to be discussed at a later date, right now we are focused on the Alpha, and the mechanics will not change drastically from the original. Let's get back on topic.

Here is the shaded spiker.



For fun, here he is with the animated knight rider light. The reason it won't ultimately be used is because it doesn't fit with the theme of the level.

 

Very nice. The shading slightly bothers me though, bit too dark

Unless my eyes are perceiving me, this has better shading than the first one. Sans knight rider this could be perfect in my opinion.
Also I hope that spike is not final :P

 

This is looking great CN. It's great to see progress on the art from the staff.

I agree with Relick on the shading. The first mockup looks grainy. The second one looks great.

 

The shading on both it exactly the same, any slight variations are most likely due to jpeg compression. And no, that spike is not final.

 

Are you sure the shading is the exact same, the two images appear quite different? The yellow ticks denote noticeable differences.

 

Yeah, that's just a frame from the animation, so the legs are in slightly different positions. The ghora is a completely different subject, so don't worry about that for now.

Edit: The only place I did change the shading a little you also missed . Let's not nitpick the unimportant things unless they add value, it's counterproductive.

 

I really love how that's shaping up.

 

The choice of colors looks less like the style to me, they're a bit dark and the ghora is a bit light. It looks strange.

 

Less like the what style, our art direction? If so, this fits perfectly with the rest of our art. The colors on the bottom are meant to be darker than the Ghora. If everything had the same tone, it wouldn't look very appealing, just bland.

Anyhow, time for the shaded Rexon. I took a few of the suggestions where I saw fit, and fixed him up a little bit.

 

nerdgasm!
But shouldn't there be a bit of occlusive shadowing on the bottom of the spheres? Only where they touch though, I know that the lava lights rest of the bottom of each sphere.

 

You don't think you overdid it with the glow from the lava. I mean you gotta keep in mind that Sonic isn't going to get the same treatment as far as I know. But I guess maybe it wouldn't be so noticeable since Sonic of course isn't a metallic object. But then you have the boss also.

 

Great Job! Would it look better if the ball-neck sections were overlapping in a manner such that the bottom of the ball on top, covered the top of the ball underneath? That is how the head is positioned, and the effect is that they are connected. Currently it is the opposite. Just a thought.

 

Seeing as this HD project gives opportunities to add more detail than what the MD could do. I was hoping that the neck sections would have some collars between the balls like the one that's between the head and the first ball and in the same style of the official art picture of Rexon. At the moment it looks incomplete even though it's the same as the MD version. Sorry if I sound harsh as it is looking great. But it's something that I was having high hopes for.

 

Awesome and faithful to the original style. Brilliant work.

 

I'm sorry if everyone that had such high hopes have had them dashed, but changing something doesn't always make it better. There are times to do it, and times not to. For having the collar on all of the balls, they move around and are not actually attached to one another, so when they aren't overlapping it would just look odd. There was a reason why they were left of the original sprite. Also, the order of them will be changed as needed when he is put into the game, since they animated by the program, not me.

As for having too much lava glow...he is sitting in lava. If anything there's too little glow. Like you said, Sonic is not made of metal, and would not reflect lava so drastically. We might even have some tricks up our sleeves on that front anyhow though. I have made every decision I did on this for a reason, it's not like I just threw whatever I though would look cool on to him.

Thanks again!

 

I suppose you could either have a specific Sonic pallette that comes into effect when you cross a threshold near the lava. Similar to that of the sprite swapping in Vectorman when going in/out of caves. You can either do that or have a gradient glow that comes from the lava that is a top layer and effects all sprites underneath it and if that was the case, which could look very cool; you would need to tone down the glow on your sprite because then it would be overbearing.

Also having it animated would be very cool as it kind of flickers maybe have patches of shadow in their to signify floating rock and such in the lava.

Edit: Forget 'be very cool', I say having animated lava glow is a must. I just don't know how exactly it would work with objects in the world because then you are introducing lighting and lack of shadows may look strange. And then there is how you would deal with depth. Obviously that wouldn't work with a layer plopped on top. Also I'd imaging with sprite filters such as underwater being built into the engine (I think, need clarification). I would also make sense to add a waving blur above the lava displacing the sprites in its radius.

 

Isn't that a good thing?