I made a video of this hack ages ago (back when I sounded like a miserable shit lol), but not once did I complain about the sprites. I think the sprites are pretty decent, and I don't think they need changing. It's one of them, "don't fix something that isn't broken". The only thing I complained about was that I found the hack quite challenging, but maybe that was because I was Silver =P
Sprites are fine. Ring Land and Destron City are the things that maybe need work. + - Get that douche who did the first two zones' art to do 'em.
Make Silver's telekinesis power's more useful. I want Silver to be able to throw badniks to their death. Secondly, you should finish your unlockable characters. Everything else has already been said. Thank you for putting out such a quality hack by the way.
I've got to be honest, while I like Silver's model, I've got an impression that Sonia looks like male hedgehog wearing make-up :P I'ts especially strong when I'm looking on her head. I see there some inspiration from Sonia in Sonic Underground (please, correct me if my observation is wrong), but while Sonia from SU had undoubtly female appearance* (even with this unfortunate punk-style), I can't help for my impression in case of Sonia in The S Factor. I am aware that doing this kind of character is harder, since there is in fact not too much to compare with (female hedgehogs in rom-hacks/original games) - in fact only Amy in two flavours (younger and older). *I know, comparing cartoon character from the end of 90' with rom-hack character of game on 16-bit console is not the most fortunate comparison, but I just wanted to point out my overall impression of the appearance
I am very aware of this, and let me briefly say the struggle is real. Detailed edit when I get home EDIT Allrighty then. Yes, there is a buttload of inspiration from SU. I took the time to re-watch the show ep by ep and screen cap every image I figured I could base a frame off of. I got Sonia's entire orthographic view this way, as well has her standing, pushing, and running animations. Same goes for the Super Twirl sfx and Sonia being a power type. There's probably more, but that's off the top of my head. At any rate, stances aside, there's a twofold challenge present. The only female character to go off of from back in the day of the games is Amy. While I could just nick Amy's face style and be done with it, there's also the fact that Sonia is Sonic's twin sister. Canon jive aside, I at least wanted to keep that aspect so essentially, I have to make a "girl sonic". It's more apparent in the modern style arts (such as the character select screen and signpost) where Sonia takes some traits from Amy such as lack of an "assface" for lack of a better term, and a shorter nose. I've tried playing with it before, where I messed with the muzzle a bit, and it's definitely something I can try playing with again. Even more so that I've begun to notice enough differences between the classic and modern styles that the player characters are going to gradually shift over to the classic style in a bit to unify the art styles and make a more cohesive product, as well as to prevent clashing. A few exceptions will be made, and that Sonia's clothes will remain palette shifted and Scourge will not revert to Evil Sonic. That said, anyone who fancies themselves an art maestro is welcome to take a whack at it. The good news is that all that truly needs to change is the face. Currently, the bomb men in Chaotic Street can be grabbed this way. Otherwise, it's worth looking into. Both Sonia and Silver need a rebalancing anyway, so it'll be passed on.
@Aquaslash - there is always an alternative solution - considering Sonia as fraternal twin, not identical, and you've got bigger field to manipulate Anyway, I agree that at this moment it's mostly about the head. And I personally think that it was a good idea to take inspiration from SU (although somehow I've got an impression that slightly better developed was appearance of queen Aleena than Sonia, but it's been a long time, maybe my memory tricks me). Sonia and Aleena were probably only female "non-Amy" Hedgehogs presented somewhere else than in comic (at least in official stuff). Probably my experience is not very relevant in this case, but I remember that once upon a time I've tried (just out of curiosity, gave up after a couple of days) to draw some Sonic characters (mostly with some guides found in the internet) and I was trying to figure out, what are the distinctive features in case of female characters (mostly in case of Tikal). There is not too much in fact, for sure clothes, eyelashes, "hair" and.. something which I couldn't identify exactly (probably due to my lack of skills), but has something to do with muzzle. Anyway, it's really cool that you're paying attention to such details (it's not something which is "destroying" the rom hack, but for sure it's noticeable). And I'm really eager to see what modifications will you make (in future) in case of Sonia's model.
Silver is still fun to use but I just felt like Sonia was the more powerful one in this hack and if he had that ability it might balance them out more. It will be really cool if he can use his telekinesis powers while running too for those who like to do speed runs. By the way, thanks I'll look forward to your next release. Silver
As I mentioned to Aquaslash in PM, a friend of mine proved that Silver is ridiculously OP for speedrunning as-is: And while this is a TAS, the technique is basically a variant of what HDL calls "Bunnie hoping" in E-122-Psi's Bunnie in Sonic 1 hack, with the difference that you lose less speed because telekinesis sets your vertical speed to 0 (whereas Bunnie's rocket sets it to 0 then accelerates up, causing speed loss). So it might be entirely viable for unassisted speedruns.
I'm talking about him using his telekinesis on his enemies. Currently, it is more useful to spin attack than to use his telekinesis attacks which makes him no different than Sonic. Basically what I'm saying is he is Silver, and he should use his telekinesis to attack enemies rather than relying so much on the spin attack. In Sonic 06, Silver doesn't even have the ability to spin attack but I understand he has it in S Factor mostly because of the boss fights. Furthermore, when you play as Sonia, she feels more like her own character and her attacks are all useful because you don't have to stop your momentum while doing them. I cannot say the same for Silver. If you want to use his powers, you literally have to stop and wait for an enemy to attack you.
This is where balance comes in. Right off the gate, I'll say that there will definitely be a reworking of all four of the main PCs. (yes four. Let's be real here, Blaze was the worst kept secret ever :v:/>/>/> ) Updated layouts are a given. As these videos, and a few older build videos show, Silver as is can't be given any sort of speed boosting ability as it can chain into his levitation and make him skip large portions of levels. of course, the seemingly obvious solution would be to have levitation insta kill all of his current momentum but I'm not sure if that's necessarily a great idea. It's worth testing at least. There's also the question of what else should his powers work on. Right now, IIRC, it's projectiles, Chaotic Street bombs and the caterkillers. Might have to try picking up enemies as a whole and see how it works out. That, and I need to make it more obvious that Hold Smash exists and is your go to method for wall breaking aside form rolling. So basically, I'm not saying "no", but I might wanna test it. Maybe put out some kind of demo with a updated Silver, I dunno yet
What about if levitation halves his current momentum instead? Then there's still some measure of momentum but it doesn't cause him to break the level if another ability is introduced.
Kinda meshed our Sonia's faces together to see how it'd look.. kinda loses the S1 style though. Just trying to show it's possible to have her look unique facially and still look like Sonic.
