^It'd be cool if there was a way to trigger events by interacting with objects. To do the vines in Mystic Cave I had to put very small EventCollisions on top of the sszpoles, and even when small they're prone to triggering when you don't want them to. Speaking of which... Almost there. Generating GIA in the main stage is a bitch though, keeps freezing because of the poly count I presume.
Summed up basically perfectly, Sarsion. As far as I'm concerned personally, I want my own mods to be as good as I can possibly make them, and I like playing high-quality mods from other people, but I'm kinda over scrutinizing other peoples' mods if they don't happen to be up to my standards. Nobody's doing this for a living, nobody's lives are going to be ruined if someone happens to make a bad mod, we're all here to do something we enjoy and have fun with it. So let's stop taking it so seriously. :P If someone makes a bad mod I might personally not find it enjoyable, but hey, it's all good as long as that person enjoyed making it, and bonus points if other people enjoy playing it. Speaking of high-quality mods, holy crap this looks good. I want this.
I am SO ready for this!! It looked pretty amazing from the previous footage. We haven't really seen a full Classic Level mod completed, so this is exciting to me! I have a random question though. Has anyone attempted to put in Classic Sonic against the Egg Dragoon boss fight? I don't mean a Classic skin over Modern Sonic either, I mean Classic Sonic hacked into the stage ala Classic Sonic Adventures? I think it would be pretty amusing to watch.
And technically, you won't see one completed from me for a while. Planning on fleshing this out (if that would be the correct phrasing) more later on. :v:
Jesus Diddly Christ that looks epic! Looks like it would belong in Generations. I love Mystic Cave's aesthetic, shame it wasn't in Generations. But if it was, then Chemical Plant wouldn't be so what are ya gonna do? ... I really wish Generations took 2 levels from Sonic 1, 2, 3K, Adventure, and Adventure 2 and called it a day. Oh, and ya I got some gripes against the guy, but I'll admit, this is actually pretty cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hfg9OT-lWk&list=UUmRIX3OerwoV7Iziylm-Arw To my knowledge, no one has ever tried this before (Someone do it with Sky Sanctuary tiles and the Metal Sonic fight, replacing Metal with Mecha Sonic please). In fact, I kinda wish Sega did this with Silver in Generations, as his arena just being Crisis City seemed kinda lazy. And I'll give him this, at least the recreated crap physics, the model, and the hud are all entirely optional in conjunction with the real mod.
About the whole 'oh this is for fun' thing, let me address that head on. Most of us dabble in it because we love doing it. Sometimes the prospect of actually doing it -for a living- might seem like a pipe dream, but devs are always looking, and finished products that you can sit down and play are always better than a resume and paper certification that some institution shits out. This has been true since the 1990s (take Ilkka Keränen who made AirQuake, got picked up by IonStorm and is, two decades later now currently working at Valve. Take for a more recent example Taxman. Take for example the hundreds of people who have gotten the express lane for hires just based on modding games) Granted, there are many reasons people may want to keep this strictly as a hobby (not ruining the fun of it, not having to answer to people on a commercial basis, not having the stress of something depending on your work, etc) but let's be honest, who hasn't actually considered doing this shit for a living that at one point or another when the going gets good with your mod. So yes, if your mod, your fangame, or your portfolio work in general is is shit for whatever reason, you'd do well to listen to criticism.* If your attitude is shit, God help you because you don't want to be known as the guy who's a pain to work with (and this isn't even in 'oh my god game dev career' territory anymore) edit: removed some shit I wanted to say about Sonic ATS and attitude. Let's leave a dead horse dead. *And no, having a massive viewership and amazing like/dislike ratio doesn't mean jack shit where developers are concerned, because that's not an indicator of actual ability, especially when it comes to hierarchy or teamwork.
I liked 06, but this...I don't know what this is. It's like 06 but worse....like automated 06 but worse. It's ugly, the physics don't fit, and frankly he's not doing anything to fix the original game's problems. Shit on a golden stick.
It seems the gist of Falk's little rant is that your general audience attitude and level of positive rating should not cause a disproportionate inflation to your ego and cloud you to any kind of criticism, whether unfavorable or not. On that subject, I worked with brianuuu briefly at one point, and it turned bitter for me when I went to the trouble of arranging him a rather nice hub tune that he decided to replace at the last minute without informing me at all. Considering it was the first project I really managed to get involved with, I came away from it very miffed.
Probably most of it. It is easy to find someone who will contribute one asset or two to the project, it is much harder to find people who will contribute for the lifetime of the project. (in unpaid projects - this problem goes away for the most part in paid projects) Your crashing issue might be related to vray running out of memory. I get the same problem when rendering my GIA. Use selection sets in 3ds max to keep track of what you're rendering per-batch. Try to make sure you're not rendering more than 340 or so nodes at once (that has worked for me, but your mileage may vary). Save as soon as you're done with a render set so you don't lose the uv unwrapping.
Would the actual objects in the scene (even if not selected) influence the freezing too? To clarify, the program becomes unresponsive for up to 10 minutes but usually resumes. I thought that perhaps the calculation of light from so many nodes could be causing the issue.
I'm working on my first Generations mod. I have a screencap, but, I'm posting from my phone right now, so... I'm not really able to link it right now. :P I'm having a couple issues that I can't find mentioned anywhere else, but, if I missed something, let me know. So! My first problem is with QuickBMS. It does not work for me. I can't even tell you what the problem is - I start the program, choose the cpk.bms script, a second menu pops up for a split second, and the program crashes with a "QuickBMS.exe has stopped working..." error message. So I'm having to build my mod off of another mod (Tropical Resort Act 1). And this thing only has one act, while I'm trying to make classic and modern versions of my mod. Sucks as much as it sounds. My second issue is another thing I'm not entirely sure of. Whenever I try to load my work-in-progress level in-game - just so I can preview it - it sticks at the loading screen. It doesn't even crash; it just stays loading forever. Any advice?
Oh, you mean it's just taking a long time to render? I thought the program was closing on you, causing you to lose work. Rendering lightmaps does take a great deal of time, it will cause 3ds max to go unresponsive from time to time. You are correct in assuming that a simpler scene will render faster though. If you can, try to hide everything that won't influence what you're trying to render - for instance, if you're rendering lightmaps for a room with a hallway on each end, hide everything but the room and the two hallways - even if you're not rendering the hallways, the lights and models in them will contribute to the lighting in the room - HOWEVER, you can hide anything past those 2 hallways because any influence from them would be minimal, and just wastes render time. It's tricky but you'll get it eventually. Also, if you're using vray, try using a lower amount of bounces for your GI, as well as using Light Cache, since it is the fastest rendering method. You can also do a single pass, instead of double. I'd go in and get you the exact options settings to help you out but I'm currently rendering, so 3ds max is all locked up for now. If you want, get ahold of me over PM and I'll send you my skype/IM details and we can chat more about this kind of stuff.
If it makes you feel better... It's probably a good thing to have as little connected to him as possible. Nice job!
Ok, let me rephrase my statement a little. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking your own work seriously. I always do. Whenever I get to work on something I always want to make it the absolute highest quality I can. The problem is, when it comes to critiquing other peoples' work, it gets really easy to keep thinking of it in the same mindset (that it should be absolutely as good as possible), when the creator might have a completely different intention and want to get different things out of it than you do. It's like if you went to talk to Daku and started critiquing the quality of the rig on his penis mod. A lot of people do want to improve even when they are just doing it for fun, but the creator's intentions should be factored in and reflect the amount or level of critique directed at them. If someone's just starting out and trying a mod for fun and you nitpick all the hundreds of things wrong with it you're probably just going to turn them off from trying again. If they have higher aspirations then it makes more sense to start focusing on the small things. Regardless, when we get to the point that we get upset someone else made a bad mod that doesn't affect us, we are taking things too seriously, hobby or not. I'm speaking in general terms here because admittedly this doesn't really apply to brianuuu - he obviously does take this seriously and isn't exactly new to modding. But if you think his mod's bad and that he's not receptive to negative criticism, well, that's his problem, isn't it?
Which goes back to what I said about attitude. If the only people who think your 'work' is 'good' are shitters who aren't going to benefit you in the long run, what's the end game? Attention? Grats etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbr3ee0uaE Demo 3 is out of the 06 mod. I gotta say, it's improved. It's actually pretty good. Yes, there are some flaws from Sonic 06 that you can't fix, but seriously, any of the "this plays worse than the original Sonic 06" comments are bunk. If anything this mod at least shows what in 06 just flat out didn't work, and what was just the cause of a shitty engine. So cheers, it's getting better. And it's really a ton better because of the fact that the comments, 06 model, and quasi 06 physics are entirely optional. Plus once you beat the demo, the evil future levels show up in the regular HUB, so you never have to go to the Crisis City hub again. Note though, install it just how he says and do not play this with other Mods unless they're like shader mods. Otherwise it gets all screwy.
I played through the mod, because why not, and I'm willing to admit that he did improve a lot of things. I still found myself suffering by the end thanks to the fact that I was pretty much playing 06, and despite his determination to port the game in its purest form, he made a lot of creative decisions that fail even that premise. And it still pisses me off that he asks you to add things to your Sound and movie folders, without explaining what or why. If that seems like a nitpick, just keep in mind no other mod worth its salt asks you to modify anything outside of the dedicated mod folder. It comes off as both inconsiderate and pretentious. edit: keep trying to refute me brianuuu, it turns me on
So much talk about that one mod is driving me crazy. All I want to say is it's pretty obvious that the main issue, the stem of it all, is the fact that he's faithfully porting something that just has nothing to do with how the Generations gameplay style works. In any case, Mystic Cave is something I'm really looking forward to for the hacking contest. That mod's looking swell.
Oh, right, I never did comment on that Mystic Cave stuff. It really does look great! A very nice reimagining of the style, for sure. By the way, I'm not sure how many are aware of this Hang Castle mod: http://youtu.be/Nf5W3DoJZag (Ignore the silliness of the release trailer :p) Anyway, it was under my radar for a while until I stumbled across a gameplay video, and I have to say that it plays beautifully. Despite its rough edges, the generally wide-open design of the terrain is a really fresh concept, and this person really seems to be bringing a new ideology for the Generations engine to the table. If you have the chance, check it and their GameCube Galaxy mod out.
