He's still working on it?! Dear lord.... Last time I saw it, I thought it was fine. Though maybe we could have two character modelers? It might help Jeztac believe his model is fine with another modelers opinion.
<!--id1--><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sA4i9tDZ4l0&playnext_from=TL&videos=z2Nz90y_CFM&feature=sub&"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sA4i9tDZ4l0&playnext_from=TL&videos=z2Nz90y_CFM&feature=sub&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><!--id2--> Model by Jeztac. Animations are still in progress.
If I can be honest, the control mapping looks discouraging. Do you have to turn by moving the mouse and the left and right keys only make you strafe?
There will be several input setups. One way is the default showing of "WASD + Mouse". The second setup is "arrow keys + WASD", the third is "WASD + arrow keys", the fourth is "arrow keys + Mouse", and then there's a gamepad option. However you can set it completely up to your liking in the options menu, anywho. Trust me though, besides gamepad (which I haven't tried yet but sounds great), WASD + Mouse is definitely the way to go. It feels very smooth and comfortable.
Alright but that doesn't answer my other question. How do you turn, do the left and right keys make you walk left and right or strafe left and right and does the down key make you walk backwards or turn around and walk? There's another 3D Sonic game around that has the controls to where the character and the camera are synced and whichever way the camera faces, the character also faces, and you turned the character with the mouse and made them walk forward and strafe with the directional keys. This drove me mad because platformers aren't supposed to steer like FPS games and it made platforming feel unnatural and difficult (not to mention no way to turn the camera and look at the character from other angles) but if it can't be helped on a computer I guess it can't be helped on a computer...
You move like full Adventure-style movement. Pressing left and right makes you go left or go right, and pressing down makes you run towards the camera (which we'll soon code to turn around when you do that for long enough). And you can turn the camera and look at the character from all angles.
Oh, good, because then it will look / feel less broken. Something about the model looks odd to me in the game. Is he always looking up?
It's how Sonic's posed when standing still. He made it where it was like the Blitzsonic standing pose, where he seems to be constantly leaning back and his legs bent. :v: We're getting to that.
It makes his quills look longer, that was why I pointed it out. :v: About the minimap, have you considered giving it a border? It blends with the grass too well as it is now. By the way, do you think you could give a listing of the level names (in order) at this point? It would make the story easier to write...
Yeah, the minimap needs something to make it not blend in with the gameplay. A border would definitely help, as well as making it circular and not square. Also, maybe a filter should go on top of it to make the landscapes look like a single colour? It's clearly just a bird's eye view of Sonic's current position :v: Also, does the minimap use a perspective or orthographic viewport? I can't tell which one it is but if it's currently perspective an ortho viewport might work better. Just my 2 cents of course. :P
I figured out how to make the minimap round, and it will have an overlay. You can all breathe now. lol I will post a screenshot as soon as I get the compass working.
No its not that, I was just emphasizing that its finally done now because people keep bringing it up is all. Your opinions are welcome. And, I sort of like a little perspective in the minimap. I think it helps to see the loops and ramps a little better; If everything were perfectly flat, I think it would make some things hard to see/interpret without some perspective. Eventually I'm going to have the camera zoom farther out the faster you go. That should help the perspective issues when trying to see over edges or tall objects.
So wait, are you planning on doing that for just the minimap or also for normal movement, if also for normal movement, then awesome, that was definitely one of my main ideas.
Sorry, I should have said minimap camera or just minimap. I keep forgetting you aren't familiar with Blitz3D. In Blitz3D, or any 3D engine, a camera is an entity through which your 3D world is rendered (its actually a bit more complicated than that, but that basic definition will suffice). When I said the camera will zoom out, I should have specified the camera which is being used for rendering the minimap. No, I was not planning on doing that for the main camera (what you referred to as the normal movement). So to make sure we are on the same page, the main camera will stay the way it is, but the minimap camera will zoom out the faster you go. However, because you are the project leader, I can have the main camera zoom out if you like, though I think this is a bad idea.
Could you also make it so, when moving at a high speed, the minimap camera isn't centred on Sonic, but a small amount ahead of him? Since you've moving forwards at a high speed, knowing what's behind you is less important.
That all sounds fine by me. Why not though? It'll create more of the illusion that you are going incredibly faster and will make the camera more active and make the gameplay a little more dynamic than a camera which is just made to stay in the same distance behind Sonic at all times.