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Sonic Forces Thread

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Blue Blood, Jul 23, 2016.

  1. Amnimator

    Amnimator

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    I know some people might find this cynical, but the chances of the level design being changed are extremely thin. We're only complaining about Green Hill and the city stage, but I'm sure we can assume this design mentality spread itself to their other stages. We're straight up asking them to redo what level design they have already. Not going to happen. Let's just hope this game is at least on par with Generations, which I personally didn't like but respect the game for what it is.
    Tell ya what, I'll forgive them if they add modding support. Let us make our own stages without Generations' abysmal modding workflow. I don't care if the tools are in Japanese, we'll translate it ourselves :V Of course, that's wishful thinking to the point of being comical. Even Japanese devs who acknowledge modding almost never give out mod tools for their games.
    That being said, I don't see this game being worse than Generations, but it could be much more.
     
  2. Lobotomy

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    Little late on this one, but:

    [​IMG]

    It's seriously as if they learned nothing from Generations, but instead just remade the same game over again, piece by piece, in a better engine, not even realizing they did so. Dear SEGA, please learn from Nintendo's mistakes. Signed, everyone.
     
  3. S0LV0

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    I dunno, the bad level design and uninspired terraforming compared to Generations has me inclined to say "no".
     
  4. Lobotomy

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    Yeah, but it probably isn't fair to judge the whole game that way, considering we have had a whole two videos of footage of this game. Maybe it'll be better after Obligatory "Hey Does Anyone Else Remember The Summer Of 1991" Zone Acts 1-3. I will be completely okay with this game if it by bare minimum matches the quality of Generations.

    Does Modern Sonic look way fucking stiff to anyone else, on a sidenote?
     
  5. Amnimator

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    Yeah, but you show us New Super Mario Bros U. That game was praised by reviewers, and that helps push sales. They'd take it as a lesson that this is the right track to go on, even if it was received negatively by fans.
    Yeah, I mentioned that earlier. It seems like he goes from 0 to max speed in a second.
     
  6. Atendega

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    Random question: can anyone tell if boosting still applies a gross filter to the music? I've watched the modern gameplay video a gajillion times, and I can't tell, too much noise.
     
  7. Dark Sonic

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    Oh I know the level geometry is likely set in stone, but there are still things they can do. Every form of GHZ version 18 show so far has been different in some way and has shown things added or changed between them. There's still a chance that, maybe given feed back, they'll remove some of these boosters/springs/unnecessary things. I can't find the footage, but at a similar stage of development GHZ Classic Generations had different object layouts than its final version. Lets hope the all powerful PR team can take some notes and convince Sonic Team to make some changes.

    If we learn how to mod the game though we can just remove these things ourselves :specialed:
     
  8. Lapper

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    Sadly a lot of people will buy this and sadly that means it'll all continue.

    We'll all be having these exact same opinions about the next terrible classic+modern game.
     
  9. Dark Sonic

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    I mean, I'm still holding out a bit before I make my final opinion, but I probably will buy it, both because I liked Generations and for mod potential. Nothing I've seen has been a deal breaker, perhaps a bit disappointing though. Maybe I'm part of the problem but whatever.
     
  10. Amnimator

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    Yeah, true, even late in development we do see level design changes. It's salvageable if they choose to listen. And as I said earlier, I don't see this being worse than Generations.
    As far as unofficial mod tools go, mod tools for Generations and Lost World were unbearable for rapid prototyping. Absolutely awful for making a level from scratch.
     
  11. Dario FF

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    I don't think anything short of making the level inside the game like the Unleashed prototype will make it any more convenient. We know they have something like that and most likely a regular mouse-controlled interface.

    There's far too much tweaking per object that goes on these layouts to make them work.
     
  12. Amnimator

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    I know, but even that's an improvement. Plus, a play-in-editor kind of feature is massive, especially when as it is we have to guess and check objects like cameras. Even blocking level design out before modeling over it would be huge. I'd like to also say I'm not putting anything on you by saying this, but Sonic GLvl's instability also harms production speed. You did more work than you really should have, I respect that, but because of x feature I find my self jumping between GLvl and the unfinished rewrite. It could be more efficient and I've tried a few times to make a stage from scratch for Generations. One time I stopped mid way modelling for it and the other I stopped in the level design phase. It's all just way too messy to bother most of the time.
     
  13. Dark Sonic

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    Wasn't the most difficult part of modding Generations the lighting? Maybe this new engine will speed up that process a bit.
     
  14. Atendega

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    Re: People complaining about the pointless bridge at the end:



    Not absolutely everything has to be a real threat. Occasional eye-candy for purely cinematic purposes is, in fact, acceptable. Complain all you want about other, actual issues, but complaining about one harmless, four-second sequence is just looking for things to whine about.
     
  15. S0LV0

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    When it's layered on the lack of stakes in the rest of the level due to booster-spring level design, I think it's valid. Plus the way it's arranged looks like an amateur modder's attempt at a cinematic sequence, as I think someone else pointed out.
     
  16. Atendega

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    Criticizing the attempt at cinematic-ness itself is totally valid, but I've seen people arguing that cinematic segments of this nature are unacceptable as a whole. I just wanted to point out that our holy grail itself has bits like this, many of which are longer :v:
     
  17. Dario FF

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    I do acknowledge the issues actually, but I can't do a lot more without the time and I hope to eventually sort those out if possible.

    I was mostly referring to the fact that there's an actual barrier in convenience which is the lack of quick testing. Even with instantly starting the level it isn't as fast as it should be to be convenient enough to test out all the quick tweaks.

    There's also the fact that there simply isn't much documentation on how to actually work with the engine in an efficient way. Replicating their work pipeline is by far the biggest hurdle, and that involves more organization/guesswork than actual features. I'm sure features like previewing the collision ingame aren't there for debugging but rather for actually prototyping the level designs, but you'll see people trying to make the level geometry first (which is significantly harder) rather than get the layout done at the start. It's just not the same workflow like the 2D games where you could at least place some tiles AND have the level playable at the same time.

    I think this whole ordeal with the footage of GHZ even proves that. You can see that the layout geometry didn't even change between the two versions despite how much was actually added to the stage. In such a significant timeframe, no major changes to the layout were made (at least in the sections we saw). That kind of rigid workflow just won't fly with the majority of people, and it's been something I've been intending to work around in some way in the future.

    You could pretty much forego the lighting if you wanted, but the stages did end up looking quite bad. There's been a couple of new tools that made it significantly easier to import geometry in the engine, but it still has a big learning curve and generating the lighting maps is a really expensive and difficult process.

    So far the footage of Sonic Forces has been enough evidence the game still uses some form of baked lighting/shadows. From what we've seen there's evidence of the terrain still using textured shadows and I believe the ambient occlusion as well. What I'm not sure of just yet is the GI (the "color" of the texture) still being present as a texture or being an approximation based on something. There's very significant savings involved in just storing Shadows/AO when it comes to rendering, so it'd fit with Iizuka's claim that they've switched to some form of "real-time" GI.

    If that theory holds true by the time the game is out, then yes, it should significantly speed up making good looking levels at least and reduce the learning curve quite a bit. I do not believe the regular level-making process will be any easier though.
     
  18. Amnimator

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    That's respectable, and I understand why you didn't update it, time and all. Personally, I don't think it's worth it now to go back and fix Glvl. Thanks for the work, though. Even the incomplete rewrite is appreciated.
     
  19. VectorCNC

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    I'm not saying the final sprint across the bridge is horrible either, but just want to point out that the video you posted serves to pad the story and sense of urgency. I can't say the same for the bridge sprint.

    Additionally, it's possible that the first stage of Classic Sonic is meant to be an introduction to the basic play style of Classic Sonic. Mario games always have a simple introductory level and no one bats an eye (they also have 10 times more levels...). With two different Sonic's it seems reasonable to have the first act function this way, and logically it appears Act 2 will do a lot more with the sand. It would be VERY odd to set up this entire level gimmick and then not incorporate it into the Zone whatsoever.

    As for the music, I believe the issue is the instrumentation. Melody is fine, and I get the distortion going on, it is just grating on the ears is all really.
     
  20. Atendega

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    And I would argue that, no matter how you rationalize it, you're still just holding the right button and facing no challenge whatsoever. I don't think Sonic 3 has any sort of special excuse for this, and I don't think the scenario makes it any more acceptable than the bridge in Forces.

    I don't mind either of these scenarios, though the bridge is a pretty lackluster effort, as multiple people have said.