Tweaker's comment is spot on. This is my favourite ever hack, but I haven't finished it! There's something not quite right about that.
Yeah not to shit on your parade even more but I have to agree with Tweaks here. Collecting stuff Super Mario 64 style isn't something that suits Sonic. Unleashed pretty thoroughly proved that to be true with it's arbitrary medal hunting. Having the emeralds as something optional that, if the player so chooses, would unlock extra stages or bonus content, would be more beneficial to the game overall. Just like collecting chaos emeralds in normal Sonic games, you can complete the game without them, but you also wouldn't get the best ending/Super Sonic/extra Zone/etc. Some folks are okay with that, and I can't necessarily blame them. Just make it more like that, and you'd have a stellar hack on your hands here that everyone can enjoy.
I dunno, I like the current way of doing things. I loved the classic mode but this hack's emerald collecting gameplay has kept me coming back to it, unlike every other hack which I play a few times then never pick up again. I do wish the emerald requirements between worlds were smaller, though. I suck, so I can't get past Casino Night right now. Other stuff: Chemical Plant Act 2 is not fun. The insta-kill water is just plain frustrating. Also, when you die or beat a level, it's frustrating when you spawn across the overworld map from it. After dying a billion times in Chemical Plant Act 2, I got really tired of having to make my way down into the alcove where the entrance ring is located. As far as bugs go, this release seems a lot less stable than the previous one. At one point in Cascade Valley Act 1, I ran into a loop and it wouldn't let me pass through. It was like a wall. In Mystic Forest Act 1, the bat near the entrance glitches out and warps all over the place when I walk past it and then go back. I noticed a lot more slowdown in this build too. Overall verdict: Keep up the good work, but try and make the game a more forgiving and less buggy, and add back classic mode. Sure, it's basically an extra and people have criticized it, but go ahead and let them. They don't have to play it.
@Cinossu: I have *always* put an emerald right after every boss to meet people halfway on your point. I also added Mystic Woods at the start on the pretense that the acts were each less than 30 seconds long at top speed and had some easy emeralds, like the one in the hub, the special stage, and the one with the homing chain right at the start of Act 1. I am more than a little saddened at the idea of making "extras". See, the classic game is 20 to 30 minutes long like Sonic 2, so if I made more levels, I"d be putting them into the main level progression. I don't want the main game to only have six zones or so, I want something that uses the majority of the 17 available zone IDs for the main game. The more pressing question is "What is my incentive to continue to develop the emerald-hunting instead of devoting all resources to Classic Mode?" The topic's made it pretty clear that it's not a slight majority that want classic mode, it's all but a few people. From a developer's perspective, spending months on the mode few will play and a day or so afterwards ordering the levels and programming around the SRAM checks for the more popular mode is poor time allocation. This is a very serious question, because if Classic Mode is the only thing in the game, the game would get designed much faster and the next release could easily have many more zones instead of the measly four-act increase this year had. I do apologize to the few people that really want me to keep going with the emerald-hunting, but if you're out there and simply not being vocal, now's the time.
You know it's your work and I see no problem with this hack the way it is. It's a smidge challenging but it's different and that's good. I also give you props for releasing updates every year or so, unlike so many others out there (I know it's your guys work but I would love new versions of megamix, extended edition, or the s factor). Keep going on course dude. It's your work not theirs I do have a question though. Tails has signpost art and is on the title screen, but will he ever be playable?
I actually just played through the whole hack (all 95 emeralds), and I love the style as is. In it's current form, it's my favorite hack from this place. I know I might be part of the minority here, but the emerald hunting is what makes this hack stand out from everything else I've played, and what made it so replayable. I really enjoyed the challenges for each zone (maybe not so much the 7 Emerald monitors ones - those were pretty time consuming, and by far the hardest missions since there's no radar or anything for them). However, even though I love this game to death, I can understand why some others aren't quite as enthusiastic as I am. I love SM64-style games, but pulling off a cross between classic Sonic and that is a challenge. A couple things that might help: -I'd put Classic Mode back for those who want it. If people are baww'ing about how levels play themselves, I'd adjust the level design to add some more platforming elements to the speeding paths. I do really like the speeding parts, though, so please don't get rid of all of them. -If you were to change level design, there's two things that might help for the emerald-hunting mode. Since this game is exploration-based, I'd make sure backtracking is always possible. There were only few places in the game where it wasn't possible (Like Chemical Plant or Metropolis's walls that come down and prevent going back), or at least didn't seem possible. -My best advice I can give - I don't mind the emerald barriers to new levels as much as other people do, but... maybe, you could lower the levels of emeralds needed to progress to new levels to much easier amounts, but add special stages to the overworlds which would have much higher emerald barrier requirements. That way, players can progress though the game without being forced to explore too much (or at all, depending on what you want to do), but exploring and completing the missions rewards you with Chaos Emeralds. This would also be more in-tune with a traditional Sonic game. I would personally love to see that. But no matter what you do, PLEASE don't get rid of the emerald hunting, it's what makes this game unique. It *can* work with what you have.
Do I really need to explain how much I don't care for classic mode. If I want to do that, I will play one of the other dozen of hacks that play exactly like that. I for one love the emerald hunting, there is no other hack out there that is like this, plus the amazing level design, which in all fairness is designed for this style of play so why would I want it any different. I feel that the minority that don't like it just want this hack to play just like the classics and will have it no other way. They're not interested that this game, from my perspective is about exploration rather than a run through level clearance and I feel it's more their problem with them not accepting that there are different ways to play a Sonic game out there. I for one disagree with what Tweaker says. He mentions that putting stuff in the way from letting the player progress is punishing the player, I think this system rewards the player for their hard work and gives them a sense of achievement, something that is lacking in modern day games which I really miss. If I was new to this hack, the fact that new areas open up through completing missions gives an incentive to play better and not be a case of just playing it through and never play it again. I mean how many of you have played, completed Sonic 4 or maybe other modern Sonic games and just not play them again because the stuff do in them was short lived? This has a massive 95 emeralds to collect that give a sense of accomplishment due to the challenges it takes to get them and with that gives massive replayability. As much as I'm not keen on some of the new ideas that have been put in this, the core of this game emerald hunting is what makes it good and stand out above the rest. It's in a different league to others in a very good way. Why change it into something that it's not.
Yeah, I mean, I suck at this and haven't played it for ages or in any of its recent versions—mainly for that reason—but it is your project, and the fact that it's different isn't bad by definition. I don't know whether others, who suck less, think the difficulty could be scaled down; but there's little point in razing it back to the level of holding right and jumping every now and then. If I had more patience with difficulty and my own ineptitude, I could probably spend days playing this—and I think that's probably part of the effect you're aiming for. Besides, anything that references Super Mario 64 just has to be good.
Actually, I'd say most people are somewhere in the middle. The emerald collecting is a unique feature of this hack, and at times it works very well indeed. The problem is that it too often feels like a barrier, preventing the player from seeing all the other beautifully-designed zones you've made. Instead, you wander lost around the same level for half an hour with nothing to show for it. So, rather than stripping the emeralds out entirely, bring the balance back towards "fun, fast exploration" rather than "slow, confusing backtracking". Give the player clear goals, like time attacks, or "beat the hidden boss near this really obvious reference point", not "find the 10 randomly placed widgets". The player needs to want to find the emeralds, not to feel forced to. A good example is in the first level where the emerald was in an underground cave. It wasn't too difficult to find the entrance, and once inside you opened up an entirely new section of the map with different music. I immediately forgot about all the cool stuff stuck behind that stupid emerald barrier, because there was cool stuff happening right here! But you'll never, ever get a consensus, because there's a whole spectrum of players from the methodical explorers through to the time attackers. You won't please them all, although you certainly seem to be making a big effort to do exactly that. What's more, it's obvious that you have your own idea of what this hack should look like and you're getting frustrated trying to incorporate suggestions from people that want something different. Make the hack you want to make and it'll be a better game as a result for the people that like it, even if the majority don't.
I really just played Classic Mode once and that's it, I always play it to collect the emeralds, or at least the ones that I like to collect. I love how you designed the game, specially on how collecting just enough emeralds to clear the game was a bit of a challenge to me, but not too much! I didn't need to get those damned emerald monitors that I've always found completely impossible to get all seven within a level, I just needed to explore a bit in each level and time attack and score attack the levels that I feel like I can do it. Some levels I could pretty much ignore almost completely, only getting one emerald or even none, focusing more on those that I enjoy. The game is brilliantly designed around the Adventure Mode, and this Adventure Mode is what makes this hack one of the best out there, not only because of the quality it has in everything of it (graphics, music, programming, design), but because this mode makes this hack pretty different from all other Sonic hacks we've seen, so it'd be a shame to let go of this mode. But at the same time, the collectathon aspect of this game can be very off-putting to a lot of people, as some people were vocal about it around here. It would be really nice to keep the Classic Mode to please everyone, but for all means, do not take out Adventure Mode from this hack, for this hack pretty much is Adventure Mode.
If the only reason people want the classic mode is to see later levels (and given that you can run straight through them anyway for the time limit emerald, can't really see any other reason), maybe a level select code might be an easier way of implementing things than a whole extra mode? I've been rather enjoying the hunt for monitors and hidden emeralds thus far, and I'm not normally the best at properly exploring levels. They're obviously geared around exploration, and well designed at that, so I can't really see why limiting things to a straight up racethrough would be particularly interesting.
The main purpose, and point, of this hack originally was for missions, emerald hunting, etc. To remove it now entirely just to cater to the majority would be stupid, and it would lose a lot of its appeal to me. While I suggested the emerald-after-every-act thing, I meant early acts to get people into the game, kinda like how Mario 64 opens up a lot of levels for just completing a few, but not all secrets/levels are found. Keep the emerald hunting in. Please. It adds replayability, lots of it. EDIT: Thinking further, your level designs are based on missions. You'd have to do some redesigning to get it good for just straight run-throughs. Don't bother, keep the emeralds in.
If it's between classic and mission mode, definitely keep mission. It's what sets this hack apart from the rest of the pack.
I am absolutely in agreement with all suggestions given by Cinossu. The missions are what makes this game, but giving it easy to the player for the first couple of stages is a good idea.
Funnily enough Thorn made it easier to get to the later zones in last years hack. You should have played the 2009 version. I think you had to get eight just to get to Chemical Plant Zone and you needed thirty for Metropolis. A high feet considering there were less levels then.
What ever happened to the Joypolis-looking level by the way? I think it was called Fun Factory or something? Is it anywhere in this build?
To clarify, my earlier post was in no way suggesting that you should remove the emerald hunting from the game; it adds an absolute fuckton of replayability and a whole extra layer of complexity to the gameplay. Again, though, I feel it should supplement gameplay and not necessarily dictate it, since making Emerald collecting mandatory to progress stunts the player's ability to progress through the game and enjoy it for what it is. The Classic Mode function was just an easy compromise as far as I'm concerned. I do like the idea in the maps that there are extra challenge levels that require high Emerald counts to access; these make perfect sense and are a great incentive to collect emeralds on your own time to access them later on in the game. In terms of progressing from zone to zone, though, I think the only thing that should be strictly mandatory is actually completing the levels. In this sense I think the only thing that's really necessary for you to change are the number of emeralds needed to pass each barrier, at least until the last zone or something (which could reasonably require a higher count to access or something, idk). I dunno, man; I get what you're trying to do with the whole Mario 64 influence, but it works a lot better in a Mario game than it does a Sonic game. Mario games are all about pacing and platforming and shit; Sonic games are also strong platformers, but they encourage you first and foremost to go fast and complete levels fast. The last thing I think of in these levels is to slow to a crawl and start looking for all of these collectables and shit. I like that I can, but I don't like that I have to.
After getting rid of the mentality that I have to get all the emeralds (minus score and time attacks) in one shot, I actually found this really fun. I used to want to just go fast, but now I don't mind exploring the levels and finding new and exciting sights. It does kinda tick me off when springs force me to backtrack more than I had planned to, though, but hey, that's what springs are for, to get you to a certain direction pronto. Keep it up, Thorn!
I wouldn't say you have to slow to a crawl to begin with. Sometimes, cautious platforming is needed, but no more so than Sonic 1, or even plenty of stages in 2 & 3. It never feels as slow as Mario 64. Normally, the emeralds seem to require fast-paced Sonic gameplay in order to reach them. The only thing that maybe slows it down is having to go back and forth a lot if you've missed something or want to try another path. Just 'completed' the demo, as in got through the actual levels, but only came out with 38 emeralds. Going to go back and try and get the ones I missed. Favourite zones would probably be Mystic Woods and Casino Night.
