3D Sonic fangame engine test

Pardon, but if its all the same to you guys, I'd like to clarify a few things...

First, don't get me wrong, I'm not very involved in this project (just pitching occasional art resources actually), but I am seeing some general misconceptions about what they are trying to do here.

I'd also like to clarify that Dami didn't start this project nor was it his idea to use Blitz 3D. That was Mark. So (this is particularly directed at Sik) don't try to fault him for lazy programming. If anything, he's the opposite. What he did basically was taking Mark's engine and restructuring it to make the player management more sensible along with making a number of other corrections.

Moving on, I have to explain to you all... this isn't really anywhere near more than a proof of concept yet. All that's really meant to be going on here at the given moment is a dynamic engine for the various slope mechanics common to 2D Sonic games in a 3D environment. Certainly features are being added, but the point is, nothing in here should be taken at more than face value. Hell, it was first shown in a chatroom. Dami wouldn't even have posted it really had no one expressed a desire to play around with it.

The camera, which I see is a topic of much complaint, wasn't even really made by these guys. Its a stock set of camera control methods that is included in Blitz meant for FPSs really. Again, its all just meant to be part of a proof of concept.

Anyway, in the meantime, don't take this as anything more really than a demonstration of a method for player movement. that's the big thing on showcase here.

EDIT:

One last thing, please don't treat this like its some kind of game that competes with SEGA's products. There is nothing that annoys me more than people looking at an early engine concept and turning around and saying crap like "oh, now that's how its done!" as if SEGA's stuff were worse. This isn't productive and inspires nothing but hubris. I greatly prefer people to approach these types of things with postive criticism rather than ridiculous comparisons.

 

fine here's your criticism
this fucking rocks!

hey with the latest one, the camera doesn't change with F2, are you guys going to always use the vomit camera?

 

When I asked him why he decided to use Blitz3D, he said that it was because he didn't want to make the graphics engine. Now, if that isn't lazyness...

 

And might I ask where your own 3D graphics engine is? Particularly one with non-standard lighting methos and either shaders or at least some method of faking the appearance of having shaders... I'd think you'd do something along those lines if you were going to call someone lazy for not having done it themselves correct?

From where I'm standing, lazy is relative. What relative stance are you looking down at Dami from? Call me curious.

 

Hello there, fellow Sonic Retro friends, let's clarify about this so far:

First, hope you all enjoyed the test demo. I gotta thank you for all for the compliments and the constructive criticism, specially for those who offered help (but please, refrain for making the "best than Sawnik Team" comments for now, though, we're nowhere near completion yet.) Second, let me explain what's this all about.

The goal of the tech demo is to show / do a field test our project engine. We're going for the standard classic formula, old-school gameplay style adapted to the extra third dimension. This means we're going to try to emphatise of control, exploration and gimmicks interaction, moreover than just linear path levels and insane speed (we all know classic Sonic only had a few high speed moments, it focused on gameplay and exploration through the multiple paths to mazeish-styled levels).

When we finally ended up deciding to use Blitz 3D (and I even told you this, even though you seem to have omitted that), it was because we wanted things to get done. The people working on this project already know the story, aiming too high will produce an even more higher fall. Creating a new engine would require a lot of time and effort just to reinvent the wheel to the point it would probably never lead anywhere. If there's an engine available that does what we want and how we want, there's no real point on going through the process of:

• Developing our own game engine (along with 3D graphics engine, collision, scenegraph management, etc...)
• Learning a new engine just to do fancy graphics, having to study how our current method would fit into it and check out if it's even possible to do it as easily as we do now.

Blitz3D (even though using an outdated graphics engine and it's Windows only) has clearly proved to be flexible enough to fullfill out goals. We don't need fancy shadows or shaders (heck, mostly of what any of the previous-gen games did in terms of graphics, we're able to do too with fixed pipeline, water refraction and reflection too (properly once we get the new system to work)). We're not even aiming to produce an AAA quality game (unless really good 3d modellers/designers just pop out, out of nowhere, wich possibilities of that happenins are near to 0) so it's safe to say we're good with it. I won't negate that Blitz3D doesn't have inconvenients though (like the ones quoted above), but it also provides some pros like being quite compatible with nearly almost every graphics card out there, works decently on wine (if linux users want to give it a try) and has good perfomance overall (taking in account there's no spatial culling method implemented).

Sik, your behaviour towards the engine test and anything we've done so far has been keeping annoyed me to no end, culminating with your posts. If you want to make your own engine, good for you, go ahead, I'll look forward for it, but you need to stop being so arrogant. We want things to get done, so we've decided this was the best method to achieve that goal. Programmers should work with what they feel the most comfortable with, specially when it's a project along the lines of a fangame. Due this, lazyness isn't exactly what justifies the usage of Blitz 3D, keep that in mind.

On another order of things, since it's a technical demo some things need to be worked out (and eventually will be. Control is experimental in both mouse look and gamepad. An implementation for reading input schemes through an external file has been currently added, so you guys can create your very own schemes. Mark has been working on objects and I'm mainly developing the backend framework, trying to get a more solid way to manage Sonic's motion, finishing Sonic object actions and adapting Mark changes to engine's code style (even though he's already been doing quite cool work). So yes, this is a very WIP project yet.

We'll eventually release the source code (once we reach the first milestone), so anyone who wants to contribute is free to do so, make a game off this and even work on new features to be added into the main trunk (as long as it fits the project's coding style and goals). If you want to give a try with level designing for now for the game, it's as easy as getting any tool that features B3D export (such as 3D Studio Max, DeleD or Leadwerks' 3D World Studio), adding the geometry you want and load it on the "Stage.xml" located at the stage folder.

So... have fun editing if you're going to try that out! Remember to post pictures of what you do

 

In the makings. I'm yet making the library that will power it, but I already have an idea about how will it work. And it doesn't focus too much in FXs, those are normally small subroutines that are applied to the base code and change the whole enviroment, I'm focusing more in the method to get it rendering only what's really needed to be rendered. You know, a poor engine is likely to render everything after the walls. Those objects won't be shown in the final screen, but help to slow down everything. Unlike 2D, there isn't a generic way to prevent them and also in 3D more graphic data than in 2D is shown. There are some methods like BSP and portals, but you get the idea :P I don't know how good is Blitz3D at that, but I don't think Damizean made the levels so Blitz3D applies the best optimization in them.

And hey, if you're getting annoying, then ban me. I'm lastly getting against the opinion of all of us, right? Oh, yeah, I forgotten, I shouldn't tell admins what to do. OK, then ban me for telling you what to do :P

 

Neither was Sonic 2006. =P

Hmm... I'd say that 2D Sonic games (at least till Sonic Advance 1, and also including Sonic Rush) were focused in levels with many branching paths each few steps, which made the additional (unwritten) challenge of trying to find the fastest route, out of the many combinations.
Also, I remember reading somewhere (perhaps some internal STI docs from Sonic Cult?) that SEGA tried to minimize any elements that would break the flow of things (something that would have got rid of Big's levels and any dialog-heavy cutscenes).

Somebody make Wiimote+nunchuk controls, plz.

Speaking of Sonic's object... I think the model is almost spot-on, except for a few details:
-Top spike is a bit too long.
-No buckles in Sonic's shoes.
-He doesn't move his head when walking as in the old games (minor gripe, but still a little inaccuracy if you're mimicking the old Sonic).
-The running animation... looks nothing like Sonic's, I really think it should be redone. Also, some red blurring in Sonic's shoes could make it look more like the "old" thing (they originally intended to do that for Sonic Adventure, by the way).
-It looks a bit too shiny overall. Not sure if that's more related to the graphics engine.

Perhaps some side-by-side comparisons with the old sprites and official artwork could help achieve the ultimate Sonic 3D model.

 

that's exciting and all, but there isn't code yet. If you don't mind my asking, how long have you been working on this? You see, you can easily take that approach on something, but it doesn't really reflect negatively on someone else given the circumstances. Dami and Mark have been working on this project for roughly two months now. They decided to direct their work on the physical aspects of the engine rather than what's under the hood so to speak. If your goal is to make a complete engine from scratch, good for you, but unless you understand the scope of any given project, there isn't any need for remarks of laziness one way or another. I'm coming from the stance that a perfect engine that never breaks past the point of conception doesn't hold as much weight as getting a less than perfect engine out in the open rapidly.

I don't know how Blitz3D handles its geometry either, but I do know that currently my computer gets framerates in the upper 200s with the water effect active and in the 500 region with the water effect disabled. Certainly, not a whole lot is going on in the engine at the time I'm currently using it, but the point remains that my framerates are very much acceptable.

If it becomes a problem, then I'm sure Dami will go back and rework how objects are culled. In the meantime, there is nothing wrong with what is going on.

 

Lucky. For those of us with lame Intel integrated graphics, though, it's not good at all. 20-ish (a little less) with the water on, 60-ish without, though.

 

Great game, I haven't seen anything like this.
Also, does anyone still have the bad upload of this?
I'd like to have it, since I like to keep older versions of 3-D games.

 

Given that this is just an engine test, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that, once fleshed out, this will very much compete with the library of what is mostly 3D shit that Sega has put out. But why not? I see Megamix as competition against Sega's classic Sonic titles as well, and it's doing some mighty fine ass whupping if you ask me. The way I see if, if Sega is gonna put out primarily crap with a few decent titles here and there, why shouldn't people in the scene step up and deliver a game that the hardcore Sonic fans will enjoy? Some people may think "oh that's the no true Scotsman fallacy", but I beg to differ. The no true Scotsman fallacy doesn't apply when the official source material has turned to shit this bad. I can't wait to see how this turns out once it's been fleshed out and polished. I'd be willing to bet I'd rather play it over even SA1 anyday.

Never underestimate the power of the hardcore fanbase. It's been shown that, time and time again, there are areas where the fanbase trounces the official offerings. See Scorehero.com vs. Guitarhero.com.

 

Ignoring Sik's retarded shit.

Damizean, please, for the love of god keep the current model style. Some tweaks to the animations to make everything look fluid and smooth and this shit would be the best ever.

As for the actual game itself. It shows a lot of promise. It's certainly isn't "HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE BEST SONIC GAME EVER IN 3D!" Materia, but the potential is easily there. If you can keep the levels in an enclosed like environment like the GHZ test level and not like the stock one, then you get rid of the painful pitfall problems that plauge the Adventure and everything else series. I like the idea behind getting momentum in order to reach and explore new areas. It incorporates both the speed element and the exploration element at the same time and hopefully you can get both to work smoothly. Although its true that the Sonic games really rarely had "HOLY SHIT SON I'm FAST ALL THE TIME" moments, to achieve speed and exploration where Sonic Team has struggled would truly be awesome. Blah blah blah, more shit here but it's 3:00am, I'm off to bed.

 

That looks pretty cool! I hope it gets finished, unlike SRB2 :/

I think, the thing with 3D Sonic games is that they never fully replicated the "Ball" physics of the older games. Because of this, they felt too set and generic. If this game could really capture that rolling around in a pinball machine kind of feel, it'd really be a winner.

 

Yeah, it would be amazing if this 3D engine could be polished as much as to mimic Sonic's 2D physics (when fixing the camera and just moving left and right*).






*In this case, loops could actually be made to work with "layer changers", just like in Sonic 2.