According to Gamefamstudios they have partnered with Sega to create a “Sonic Speed Simulator” with Sega. https://twitter.com/gamefamstudios/status/1514280013201297408?s=21 Hopefully I’m not jumping the gun by making this thread but this appears to be legit. Polygon has already put out an article on the game: https://www.polygon.com/23016682/roblox-sonic-the-hedgehog-speed-simulator-game-chao The game will be free to play on April 14th.
Looks pretty cool, and it's awesome sega is partnering with a roblox developer of all things. Sonic doesn't seem to control very well, to be fair though it's roblox, you can't expect the same level of movement as the hedgehog engine.
The developers of Sonic Onset Adventure (a roblox Sonic Adventure fangame) were contracted to work on this. That's significant because it's pretty much the most accurate recreation of Sonic Adventure's physics ever. It's possibly just the animations not really matching with an adventure-like control scheme, assuming the underlying gameplay is based off Sonic Onset Adventure's. (which it does look like it is - I even noted that before it was actually announced those devs were involved.) It could also just be how the level system thingy works. I do expect it to control a lot better than most other things with similar premises. Definitely better than the official Sonic the Hedgehog 2 obby in the nick-verse roblox game. at least.
I just installed Roblox on Xbox One but it isn't showing up yet... anyone know yet when this launches? I thought it was today but I guess that's just for beta, and not sure how to access that.
It seems they initially revealed the wrong release date. It is shocking how poorly they are marketing this. I get that they didn’t want Frontiers to be marketed at the same time as the movie but a free roblox game would appeal to the movie’s exact target audience without overshadowing the film. Instead hardly anyone knows this exists... or at the very least few folks care in these parts and I believe that is a mistake as... ...this roblox game could honestly be a sign of good things to come not due to the specific of this game but due to who’s developing this game. I mean when Taxman made the 2011 Sonic CD port I don’t think many folks predicted that he’d get to make an original game like Mania 6 years later. Sega will eventually want to pander to the gameplay tastes of Adventure fans and the fact that they are building a relationship with fans who understand what made that gameplay style work is good news.
I'm not shocked with how it's being "marketed". outside of the small possibility of an announcement by official Sonic channels, SEGA's probably not going to take any time promoting the event. it's almost like a mobile game collaboration. They were a similar way with the Minecraft pack and all of the servers that had Sonic events. On Gamefam Studios' side of things, Roblox is a very different ecosystem, so I imagine there's been "something" happening in terms of advertising, just not something that's immediately obvious if you aren't a Roblox player.
I downloaded Roblox on my phone just to try out Onset Adventure. Sonic controls surprisingly well. I had fun moving him around the test map. I hate to be all "SEGA hire this man" but I am gonna be a bit disappointed if Frontiers somehow ends up having worse movement than the damn Roblox fan-game.
You'd be surprised how much freedom you have with custom scripting in Roblox. Onset Adventure has pretty robust Adventure physics, and I've seen snippets of Unleashed and Generations in projects. Looking at online footage of people starting from scratch in this "Sonic Speed Simulator", the speed cap is incredibly low at base level, and you have to haul ass to build up EXP to get through loops.
I’d seen videos of Onset Adventure but I never actually played it... until now. WOW it feels good. Very close to Adventure. I’ll say it again, the fact that Sega now has a relationship with these devs, even if it’s through an intermediary, is good news!
Wow, I'm really impressed by Onset Adventure. Sonic turning his head before his body adds so much when in his run and fall state. It's really astounding what people are doing in Roblox.
The level of movement and control of Sonic in Forces was horrific and severely limited to the say the least and just judging off the bit of Onset I tried this shouldn’t even be a fair fight if Speed Simulator controls similarly.
It's not as if the Hedgehog Engine games had great movement either, and the Hedgehog Engine is just a graphics engine anyway.
This controls better than anything Sega has put out since SA2. I had 0 hopes for this since I have no experience with Roblox (I assumed it was just Unity for little kids) but I have been grinning ear-to-ear for the past hour just running around this world. I've rebirthed twice already and it's been a great time. The gameplay loop is a bit F2P-ish grindy and lame (not to mention the Chao gacha), but hey, that's what gets people hooked apparently. I hope this bodes well for what Sega is looking to make with Frontiers.
Sonic isn’t fun to control until level 30 but it doesn’t take long to get there and once you’re there it straight up feels like the Genesis/Adventure physics playground we’ve been wanting for. This is incredible work! My only complaint is that the bounce ability from Onset Adventure isn’t carried over; oh well it ain’t a deal breaker. Agreed, this is the best Sonic has controlled since SA2. I don’t mean to be a nay sayer but I would not be surprised if Sonic is better to control here than in Frontiers. That said the lil mission rooms with simple platforming challenges reminded me about how the cyberspace stages were described in the confirmed Rangers/Frontiers leaks. It will be interesting to see how much inspiration was taken from Frontiers and how involved Sega was in this game.
I had an edit partially written out but closed my laptop to get in bed before submitting it. Having played more, I have a few critiques I’d like to add. Grinding is unfortunately pretty bad at every level. It fails to carry momentum properly and the lack of a crouch hurts it even more. If this control scheme were ever to be in a real game, level 50 and 75 is probably the sweet spot for game-feel. Probably closer the higher end of that range, but I think that after level 100, an inexperienced player would find more frustration than joy. Characters have a bit too much mobility in the air. While you can accomplish some pretty cool feats utilising it properly, the way you can easily affect your jump trajectory would likely have a negative impact on players. Maybe it’s just more apparent to me at a higher level and it wasn’t as bad below 150, but I think it’s too far removed from the core Sonic experience. As stated, not having a bounce or air-cancel is annoying. If this were a more strict adaptation of 2D Sonic’s momentum style, such as Utopia, I’d say it wasn’t necessary. However, with the high degree of midair control offered to the player, not giving an option for dropping straight down will lead to twitchy moments like trying to aim yourself for the rings in 06’s opening mission. Overall, definitely a cool little experience. I’d like to see it refined and the team given the chance to make some real levels. Cool projects like this lessen the sting of apparently losing the Mania team.
