You know that some people don't play games precisely the way they're told to, right? The control isn't illusory if you're actually not trying to go where you're directed. If anything, it's fucking SUPREMELY FRUSTRATING when you try to deviate from the beaten path, only to have the game flip you the bird and force you back into your lane, in an incredibly jarring and flow-breaking way, like boost panels, splined automation, invisible walls, dash rings, and whatnot. Objectively, that's bad game design, and it forces the player to realize that they don't even really have to be present. It destroys the importance of the player. You don't build a character around modularity, and then rip that away from the player in a follow-up title. That is also bad game design, or at least piss-poor consistency. Look, I play these games to test my speedrunning ability. I like exploiting the game to get farther, and go faster. Sonic games are a rare bird, in that exploiting the level design to suit your desire for fast IS NOT equivalent to breaking the game. The original Genesis Sonic games were made to be played creatively. If freedom of movement is a thing that Sonic Team are unwilling to give me in a game about a character and his ability to move freely, then I don't want to fucking play it. It's just as self-defeating as it is unnecessary. Telling me to simply put up with it because you think I won't deviate from the flow in a fuckin platformer, is tantamount to telling someone to just shut their brains off and enjoy a shitty movie, because that's what you choose to do. The very essence of a good game is modularity. Remove modularity, and all you get is a cutscene. Seriously, if you've ever taken a look at a Generations level in Dario's level editor, you can see firsthand that you don't have any say in where Sonic goes for a good half of the game. It's really disheartening that this is what platformers are now. This is coming from someone who loved Sonic Generations. I still do, but I'll be god damned if I'm not going to call bullshit where it needs to be called. The game is 100x more fun when you're not hitting a boost panel every Planck Length. There really is a good game hidden in there. It's fucking frustrating to see that Sonic Team are so lazy, that they would rather pad out the stage with bullshit and automation than give you a chance to actually enjoy the meat of the gameplay, that I believe they put an honest effort forward in creating. I even proved it once by removing almost every non-essential boost pat in Modern GHZ 1, just to see what would happen. What happened? The game played just fine, and it was a lot more fun, because MY intended route wasn't being obstructed by the in-game nanny, trying to forcefuck me in a direction that I don't want to fucking go! I don't play games to watch simple shapes and pretty colors on a screen. I play games to test my hand-eye coordination. I want my input in the game to fucking matter. If I wanted a game that could beat itself with minimal player input, I'd go buy into the NSMB series. They have a literal win button in those games, and if I wanted to get to the end, I would just hit that and stare at the screen like a mongo. I will say, though, that Dash Rings absolutely have their place in 3D Sonic games, and I think that so long as the buffer period upon exiting the ring is minimal, that it can be a good obstacle, and fun to interact with. A few of the bonus stages in Generations pulled it off nicely.
OK Mr. Smartypants, show me an example of an unscripted angled ramp like this (aka with no complementary scripting object on the end of it to make sure physics don't screw up) in classic games (aside from those standalone ramp thingies in Spring Yard zone).
The "literal win button" only pops up after five-eight consecutive deaths in every single course and it's not even exclusive to the NSMB games (the first game didn't even have one!). Additionally, the games penalize the players for using the Super Guide and it deliberately ignores collectibles (at least I think it does, most of the time) and alternate exits so that the player isn't able to access courses without trying. Plus, the NSMB games still use lives (you start with 5) and you get booted back to where you last saved if you get a game over, which is going to be right after a fortress, castle, air ship, item house (in NSMBDS), or warp, until after you've seen the credits roll, which is when you're able to save whenever you want. On top of that, attempting to use the Super Guide early on gets you an extremely slow tutorial since it was intended to help teach bad players and if you're dying five-eight times in the first course, Nintendo assumes that you most likely suck. I get what point you were trying to make, but I wanted to point out that you literally cannot exploit the "literal win button" to make any real progress like you were suggesting and it'd take forever even if you could.
Green Hill Act 1, just after the S-tube. While it's a 'curved ramp' there, in Generations they recreated that and had to use scripts so Sonic would always reach the ring pyramid on the sky.
Mr Lange's point is still undermined because there are plenty of cases in which the curved upward slopes are designed to launch Sonic at a certain speed if he moves quickly enough. Sonic 3 and Knuckles comes to mind.
Well, we don't need to really get into engine-specific details to agree that Classic Sonic in Generations felt really weird. * The spindash was like, REALLY strong * The platforming was kinda floaty/off/unsonic-y. * Sonic felt sometimes 'glued to the ground' when walking down downwards slopes I don't know, it didn't seem as enjoyable, even though the visuals and soundtrack were spectacular. He controlled better on the 3DS. But Classic Sonic had a really weird homing attack, even weirder than Sonic 4's. So, I do think a hack of Generations 3DS would get me really satisfied with the game engine. Sonic hasn't been 'broken' it just doesn't feel polished movement-wise.
http://youtu.be/OVWJIKxJZc0 Honestly, there is way too much scripting than necessary sometimes in Classic Sonic. But with Forces, the issue seems to be level design more than anything. It's so plain, blocky and boring. And yeah, the implications of the drift being gone is a bit upsetting, but I hope maybe they've really tightened control now that you don't need it... I really did like the drift though. :I
Some slopes were scripted aswell, like the one at the end of Chemical Plant act 1. With the "No Automation" mod Sonic usually doesn't have enough speed (while running) to get even halfway through it, but in the vanilla game it's no issue. My two cents is that there's an invisible trigger somewhere on that slope that sets Sonic speed. For all I know this could happen somewhere else in the game too, but I am not sure. Sonic 4 Episode 2 gets torn apart because it does this, but not Generations.
Of course that some gimmicks won't work if they rely on something removed from the game, but that's their fault for making sonic slower out of the scriptings. While it's true modern and classic games have different playstyles, I basically agree with Mr. Lange and Lobotomy: I don't want to retry the whole level instead of backtracking a bit every single time I miss my way on a fork just because something blocks my way backwards, while I still can fall to death from a place I shouldn't. Difficulty shouldn't be based on player's ability to have a nice game session despite the design flaws, specially when they tend to add some cheap tricks to the mix. I can play modern games and find them fun, but the quality contrast is evident, no matter which are your tastes. Oh, and I don't need to hear that nice "Swoosh!" sound five times per second, that won't made up for any frustration and boredom I get from the other elements. Automation is ok for some transitions and helping the gameplay some times, but not as a "playstyle".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JwnP9eFo-c Here's a play through of the Park Avenue Avatar stage. It actually doesn't look too bad. There are different paths, it looks fluid enough. And honestly if they're going to remix Modern stages to make the Avatar stages I'd much rather they take that route than half the acts from Sonic Colors. And another positive, at least in my eyes. Despite those Classic Sonic bosses being nostalgia driven (I bet they're like the first bosses of the game, so I doubt they'll all be rehash), one nice thing is that they aren't auto running bosses. Generations and Colors had only 2 bosses like that, and Unleashed had none. Hopefully there's a bit more of a mix of bosses than just run forward and hit when the time is right. Those fights can be fun, but the strategy is often very similar from one fight to the next. That and at least Eggman's boss dialogue is more compelling than "How about this?" "FREEZE" "Hmph" "Not Bad"
HOHOHO, I 'm going to miss that. I like story driven dialogue as long as it doesn't tell me how to jump. If only they would tone it down for the Classic and Hero stages (they won't respond anyway). Just a little.
I mean, do you think they'll even bother? Also, what do you mean by "finish the baked lighting?" So the Switch uses pre-baked lighting INSTEAD of the real-time lighting, or are they both used? I'm not too familiar with this.
That's because you're looking at a screencap from a tv. In HD those pixels and blurriness will be much more proeminent. To my knowledge all objects have baked lighting, with some realtime being exclusive to effects like Sonic jump etc. The spikes and buildings on the Switch version don't have their lights/shadows complete, that's why it looks so flat.
I thought that the part of the Hedgehog Engine's lighting that was at least precomputed was the global illumination.
This was briefly talked about in the Famitsu interview. They probably will. They may still be in the process of porting the lighting system.
I'm sure they'll fix that, but it will take time to downscale the game and make it look pretty. You can remove some interactivity of the effects and make them static/baked into the textures etc. Can some techie please talk about this? Do you guys think they'll have the Switch version ready on time?
After mulling over Iizuka''s thought in the recent interview about this game... I'm pretty convinced that the only thing holding back 3D sonic from becoming a true, classic-era-evolution of a platformer, is Sonic traversing loops/curves slopes and the camera perspective on those kinds of situations. Frankly, even Mr. Lange''s Utopia doesn't address it well and allows Iizuka''s point to stand unchallenged. If someone can address that with an elegant approach, this problem can be handled once and for all, and 3D sonic gameplay can be expanded upon without any fundamental flaws, into something special enough to compete with games like Mario Odyssey.
You probably didn't ask for this, but it must have something to do with the position of your joystick and how fast the character you play as approaches them. What happens to your character if you let go of the joystick and how does he behave when you're too slow. Also, who said it would be easy to run through loops in 3D? Keep in mind the size of a loop-de-loop nowadays.
