I'm talking about that last stretch when you and the truck are walking along the side of the buildings, the part where the truck crashed at the end. If you don't boost, it gets you like RIGHT before it crashes, or there abouts.
I disagree. I honestly find importing stages from other games like 06 and Heroes etc. to be much much more interesting than Unleashed or Colors levels. Nobody's gonna deny that Dario's doing an incredible job with Unleashed PC, but tbh at the end of the day I feel like I'm playing the same stage I played four years ago when Unleashed came out. When you import stages from other games it gives you a chance to do something new with it, to experiment with the level design and experience it in a completely new way, because the gameplay is completely different. Why are people porting stages instead of modeling a completely new stage? Because, uh, modeling an entire level from scratch is kinda difficult. Especially if you don't have much 3D modeling experience. And some people just want to try their hand at making a level without having to learn the ins and outs of how to make a giant, complex model in 3DS Max. There's nothing wrong with that. If people weren't porting stages, that doesn't mean they'd be making original stages, it means they probably wouldn't be making anything. Or really bad original stages. So wait, do you have an issue with ports, or with bad ports? If you see something that really sticks out in a port as ugly, then that more than likely means a bad porting job, not that porting that level was a terrible idea. Blue barriers in place of Flame Core doors is unnecessary for example, since it's entirely possible to port in the actual doors themselves from the original game and animate them to open. Wave Ocean could probably use some scaling up, if there's no room at all for boosting like you say. There are a ton of ways to work around flaws in ways that feel natural. On a related note, I tried making a completely original level before I started working on my port. It was incredibly slow going because modeling sucks and I had never touched a 3D modeling program before. The five seconds of level you see in the video took a very long time to make and it still didn't turn out all that well. I'd like to come back to it, but online tutorials can only help you so much, and even just porting an existing level with the model pre-made is turning out to be a ton of work. (On that note, on the "doing something new with the level" aspect, I really hate how people porting Colors levels split them into six acts like the original instead of making one big level. The original game had every single act in the same map, so I don't see any reason to arbitrarily split them where the game did when you have the opportunity to do something much more interesting with it. Feels like a gigantic missed opportunity to me.)
I don't think ports are bad, as long as its helping them with learning how to do object placement and testing around. Which is why Colors works so well since they can try to replicate it, best as they can. With the Colors levels being split up, you're either gonna have someone do a cpz pipe or just have a zip-line to get to another section. But porting isn't all that bad as long as they improve and learn I have no problems with it. Unless if they just release it as a garbled mess. I mean I've ported a few Colors stages haven't finished them due to only using them as place holders for testing things out. Sure I could have done more with it and actually finished it, but I just wanted to see how the blocks would work out to make them kill you. And it worked out for the most part needs some fixing like adding a trip block.
are the acts all stored separately or something? In the original game they're all on the same map... like, Tropical Resort 2 starts behind the ending of 1, you can see the start of Asteroid Coaster 2 from the end of act 1, and the only thing keeping you from continuing past the goal in Sweet Mountain and Aquarium Park are invisible walls. Same for Planet Wisp, though I'm actually not sure about Starlight Carnival. I figured if you imported the level geometry to 3DS Max then you'd already have all the pieces together, but apparently that's not the case...?
The stage models are split into multiple files for each act. Though if you import the acts that are designed that way they are modeled to actually fit together perfectly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gcFI8TqXFE It's about time I got to work on this again, I started it months ago.
Alright if any of you are having problems with Easy Ogre and such I do recommend this way to export the .scene file: Firstly, export with Easy Ogre Exporter into a folder wherever you want, delete everything but the dds files. Now export with OgreMax for 3DS Max (Download link: http://www.ogremax.com/downloadsinto the same folder. Open the .material file in the folder in WordPad. Hit Ctrl + H and replace the old extension of the textures (usually .png) with dds. And then you're done. I tried to edit the Wiki and put this in but yeah, it's giving me problems. This can solve a variety of problems like texture maps and such so yeah. Well, I'm wrong. Sorry about that. :/ Prolly confused myself with models, stages and all that. Bleh.
The whole reason we use EOE is to have the 2nd texture UV channel(used for GI), as well as a variety of texture units... don't edit the wiki with bogus information if you don't know the reasons. :v: If you have any specific problems with the plugin which can be pinned down to the exporting process itself and not SonicGLvl's fault, any bugs should be reported to the developer... It's an open source plugin as well, unlike OgreMax.
Egg fleet was a pretty combat-heavy level, yeah? With lots of those multi-hit mech enemies? What are you planning for the generations port of it?
I'm still working out the layout, the one in the video was mostly placeholder until I got things worked out. I'll have to look into how I can incorporate the original design of the level's gameplay.
I cannot figure out how to make quarter-turn shuttle loops (Pyramid Cave-style loops) from scratch in 3DSMax. Does anyone working on levels know how to make them?
>Combat-heavy level in a Sonic game. It might not be a good idea to just try to use the original design...
Eh, aside from a couple E-3000 units I don't recall it being that much of a matter. Would be a real waste not to import an air-current mechanic like that one section in Wing Fortress though, maybe with cannons firing throughout, as a replacement for the propellor bits...
http://lab.visual-logic.com/2010/08/3ds-max-spline-modeling/ You'll need to change the primary shape used in this tutorial as well as a few other things, but this is the method you'll need to use. I use it for making all sorts of paths for Sonic levels.
I don't get all the dislike for slower or action segments in Sonic levels. The preference for high-speed boost levels is one of the few things to make me seriously think "that's just, like, your opinion man". Each has it's own good points. While some people might enjoy refining their technique to finishing levels in as short a time as possible, I among others enjoy regular platforming sections that allow one to think for longer than a split second about what they're doing. Take the Colors stage in Generation for example. People have blasted that for poor level design, while it's in fact very reminiscent of later acts in old Sonic games. I dunno, maybe it's just the variance between hardcore and softcore Sonic gamers, or a split between how people have focused on speed vs exploration. tl;dr, if you think you can succesfully recreate an action-oriented Egg Fleet level, go for it.
Planet Wisp gets blasted because of poor pacing and overuse of Wisp powers, which are both real problems.
