Hello everyone, we come stirring from our graves to bring you this spookerific Halloween flavored promo pic by me and PicsAndPixels. We know it's a little late, but do enjoy this while we prepare a soon approaching major update, so be sure to keep an eyeball out for it. Happy Halloween!
Pumpkin Eggman in the Pumpkin-Mobile, which shoots flames and drops small pumpkin bombs which explodes in 2 1/2 seconds, can be hit back and propel Sonic into Eggman much like the Hydrocity Act 2 Boss
Had a go at the 2014 demo. Fun stuff. Not very useful to comment a lot since I imagine it's outdated by now, but I'll mention that the badniks generally seem too big to me- a bit more Chaotix than Sonic 1. Here's hoping we see Tokyo Tower Zone appear. Also is there a name for the rabbit you guys've given him or anything that I've missed, or shall we continue naming him "rabbit"?
+ - ... the only file here that seems separate is "Bam", is that it? A bit of an eh name, have to be honest. Great animation on him though
Great job so far! A bit late, but things I noticed: I really like the way you use scrapped ideas. You take ideas from concept art, and then fit and stretch them together in a way that makes it both original and sensible. Music is really good, especially Act 2 at 0:51; it sounds like something a 70's pop artist would listen to. A note about palettes: objects taken from the original game (Sonic, Eggpod) have a brightness range from fairly bright to fairly dark, and have little to no hue-shifting. The new sprites, however, go from fairly bright to medium-dark, and use tons of hue-shifting. The shaded 8x8 edges of the platforms in Act 3 aren't solid. If it's supposed to be in perspective, then one side should still be solid. Holding right in the swirly tube thing when transitioning to the final straight part can occasionally completely kill your momentum. You can use whatever you set Enter to to pause, but you still have to unpause using Enter. Level design needs some work. At many points, you build up momentum just in time to run into an unnecessary wall. Also: He's in his normal outfit on the Act 1 signpost, though...
Alright, let me see if I can address all this. I'll make a corresponding list. Thanks, but you may want to look over the concept art again. We adapted it pretty faithfully, the loop was not on a grassy surface. Take a look here. Much appreciated, although ascribing it to lunch break music is kind of trivializing lol. No idea what you're talkin about there, Sonic's sprites are handled expertly. Indeed, the palettes we're doin have more an emphasis on vibrant shading, ala Ristar and Knuckles Chaotix. Can you be more specific or post an image? Yes, this is a known bug, the spiral tunnels are not perfect, however it's rare enough that it was considered passable for the demo. Input is kinda broken, working with MMF2 was a huge pain lol. You might also notice the menu only works with the keyboard. The best solution for this demo is to map the inputs to arrow keys, zxc, and enter, and use joy2key. Next demo will have no such troubles. I'm not sure what you're thinking of that gives you the idea that this rarely turns out well. Even if it is rare, we can certainly do it right. Sunrise Gate has been under revision, and the next release will see some nice changes based on our own review and criticism compiled since this demo's release. And to answer the last bit: The manga, although a charming piece of Sonic's history, is not canon, and sprite errors or indefinite oddities are not exactly considered substantial material to work from over existing deliberate designs. One thing I suppose I should make clear is that the general idea is to "finalize" prototype material. The rabbit for example, we attempted to "complete" his design as if he was used and established in the series (although the changes are subtle, as we also want to retain the look and feel of things too). Otherwise we'd be using "needlemouse" Sonic or what have you. Things like pajama Eggman are special appearances where they can be made to work in a sensible way. The stage is "Sunrise Gate" implying it's morning, and Eggman was caught unprepared; thus his pajamas were in a very suitable scenario. + - ("suitable", get it)
Sure. This is literally as far left as Sonic can stand. This also points out that Sonic lacks a balancing-on-edge animation! If he takes another step left... He falls! (Yes, I know, he's technically "below" the floor in this screenshot, but I can only pause so fast!) Here's a mini-graph: It's the same on the far right of ledges as well. I would also like to thank you for giving a detailed response, even if some if my points in it were poorly worded or not true at all :specialed: Good job on what's done, and good luck on what still needs to be done.
This is not happening for me, so either you have a freak copy or this is only in a specific place. And we are indeed aware of the lack of edge balance animation, this was not in Worlds which was used for this demo. The next demo will have it.
In the gif you posted you can visibly see in a frame the foot overlapping the wall, you're just proving his point :v:
Ah, I see. As for the ledge problem, you're right- it's just the first ledge in the level , on both sides. Two or three other things I forgot to mention, all really minor, but present: If you jump at just the right moment at the end of Act 3, you can clear the top of Eggman's rebound hitbox and end up behind him until the boss starts. Does nothing, really. Rings make their normal sound when collected normally, but make a neat pitch-bendy sound when collected from an item box. I can't figure out if it's intentional or not. This is actually because flashing Eggman in this game is solid and can hurt you; you do bounce off of him in the demo. In the Genesis games, flashing Eggman is non-solid so you can pass through him and not take damage.
The edge is being treated as a solid. The slight dip is the collision sensor reaching its corner, the Worlds engine results in Sonic dipping slightly before walking off an edge. If it were the issue he was describing, Sonic would have fallen much earlier and landed inside the wall. That is indeed intentional, ring monitors have a fancier ring sound.
I have just recently gotten around to playing this demo on stream, and in my opinion it's not a bad start. Two things really do cross my mind though, the first is the artwork, of which seems to put a lot of emphesis on dithering, while I'm not against dithering, I do find it odd that a game that runs on a system with advanced graphics, would deliberately make the graphics less great for the purpose of nostalgia. When I look for a new Sonic game (in this case hack/fangame since SEGA are too incompetant), I often wonder if we'll ever get a decent game with advanced graphics whilst maintaining the original style. Again, it's not a complaint per se, I am just curious, that's all. The second thing is more important however, there's something about the layout, I can't put my finger on it, but for whatever reason, I found myself just wanting to get to the finish, I didn't feel a need to explore or anything like that. It just didn't feel right, there was nothing wrong with it mind, no dick moves or anything like that, but it just doesn't seem right, and I don't know why...
I'd almost consider it an art style. I, for one, fucking love dithering. It just looks really good in my opinion and gives me them nostalgia feels. But then again, its not for everyone. I fucking hate cell shading.
Um... what? You say that like it's strange for a Sonic fangame to have pixel art. Do you go into playing any Sonic fangame with the expectation of full res, full color modern digital art because modern computers can handle it, and thus consider it a detriment if they use pixel art? Did you forget that the original Sonic games were 16 bit pixel graphics? Is it somehow a stretch or absurdity that a fangame based in the classics would follow suite? Hearing this criticism from you, Markey, is incredibly strange to me. I would imagine you of all people to appreciate this. It's especially strange to hear you accuse this rather natural design choice as nostalgia pandering. "Deliberately make the graphics less great"? Like we have a "good graphics" and a "not as good graphics" switch and we just hit the latter? Or we already had "good graphics" and deliberately decimated them? I consider this good art. Not bad graphics. 16 bit (or fake 16 bit in this case) allows enough range of expression that I consider good art most important. There's actual practical and aesthetic reasons to do pixel art that aren't nostalgia. Should be obvious. Pixel art, at least for this game, is much more feasible given the limited demands on detail and easy to manage colors. Assets are easier to manage overall. The original 2d Sonic games were very tile based. Pixel graphics are generally easier to keep measured and organize in tiles. This is based on the classics and is related to the first game in the series. The classics being pixel graphics, it's reasonable for this to follow suite, for the sake of consistent appearance and familiarity, like a large scale cohesion. Familiarity =/= nostalgia, either. A lot of assets already exist for us to work with, which also ties into visual cohesion. What you're suggesting would require us to recreate everything from scratch, things like Sonic's sprites and animations, as well as all of the games assets for that matter, with methods comparable to Sonic 2 HD, and at the standard of quality we have for this game. This would leave us in total development hell and would be an insane plan, as if I should have to explain that. We're already challenged greatly by what we have before us. Besides all of that, pixel art can look great, and ours does, what with Pix's stunning work. What we have is beyond satisfactory for ourselves and any fans looking for a classic Sonic experience. Quite frankly I feel stupid for trying to explain any of this.
