[Release] Sonic: Ring Rush

So far so good. I love the art, and can't say anything about the songs because my sound card is fucked =S
Layouts are also great.

Good job

Also what about RRZ bg? all I see is some gradient.
Your double jump has also the same problem as mine: If you press the two command buttons, sonic jumps the Height of his normal jump + the height of the double jump.

 

I like the palette for act 2, very nice. The buzz bombers firing repeatedly took me off guard, definetly unique.

Now for a few bugs.
Using an "Insta-Dash" cause the ring counter to do odd things. Sometimes the ring counter won't show the ring loss for using the move and other times it actually added 5 to the counter. It wasn't until I collected a ring that it updated. The double jump also doesn't increase you height properly if you use it while descending from a jump.

 

I am now going to take the time to sit down and tell you every single thing that is wrong with this hack.

First off—the levels. Outside of the first level, none of the game's level designs are changed in even the most minuscule way; this is, of course, because the first level was drawn and designed by none other than the prestigious MarkeyJester, whose skill and range of talent is something I could only hope to live up to. With that said, it would be an impressive start to the hack, provided that the content was actually yours. Since it's not, however, I won't hold it in much regard; after all, it isn't your work, and I won't praise it as such. You did, however, do a fairly nice job touching up on his level art in its incomplete state and you've picked a very pleasing color scheme, so props for that.

The rest of the levels outside of the first are bland and uninteresting, both in design and level name. The level art—Hydrocity tiles in Marble Zone and some variation of Tidal Tempest in Labyrinth Zone—are unoriginal, overdone, and pretty boring to look at by now. There aren't any new layouts to choose, either, so I can't really comment on anything other than saying that it's the same old, same old. Nothing special; nothing interesting.

Next up is the art in general. The Sonic sprites certainly look interesting... I don't know if you drew them or not; if you didn't, then that's just another piece of borrowed work with your hack's moniker slapped all over it and something I'm not terribly impressed by. Everything else is jacked from the SCAA, which is both annoying and severely abused in hacks these days. And, as with all cases, it has proven to be completely and utterly unoriginal, unappealing, and just plain lazy.

The music is, for the most part, very well done! That would be because nineko made it, though. No comment. Why can't people do their own work anymore? It's impossible for original work and legitimate effort to flourish in most hacks these days, I suppose...

The features in this hack aren't much better. I see another splash screen that, for some reason, people feel absolutely compelled to have as if it''s something terribly impressive or interesting, and I see some additional moves present for the character. Spin Dash is bock standard and in every hack at this point, so I won't really comment, but the other three moves—jump dash, double jump, and that one-button-spin dash thing—are extremely overdone, extremely unoriginal, and extremely disappointing to see pop up in every other hack now. Most of the time, people don't seem to have the capability to make use of these moves—they just add them and call them a day. Your hack is unique in that not only are the moves poorly coded, but they have ridiculously unrealistic ring requirements for use, making them effectively useless! Also, for some reason I can't spin dash without hitting down and C. You might want to fix that.

Overall? I'm not impressed at all; in fact, I'm pretty irritated at seeing another unoriginal, bland, and rehashed piece of work appear in this scene. I would say I'm looking forward to future releases and improvement, but at this point I don't see anything positive or redeeming in its future. Get a game plan and some unique ideas, dude.

 

This is quite a nice hack. I especially like the boss!

I have a few bugs that I encountered however:

Firstly, after coming out of the tube here the first time I was fired straight through the wall and Sonic became stuck, switching continuously between his rolling and standing sprites:



I have been unable to reproduce this glitch however.

Secondly, every time I run through this loop from the upper path on the left, Sonic's pushing sprite is shown for a frame or two:



Lastly, at the end of Act III when you break the capsule the space directly central below it can be fallen through. (The rabbits all fall through it when released too)

 

What really annoyed me with this hack is the broken (and now overused) music imports. If you're gonna use them, at least fix the DAC or add new samples using the guides available on here.

Sadly some people wanted the screen to be public, this is what you get. Same with every other guide available publically. No wonder the SRN splash screen's gonna have a few restrictions.

 

Looks pretty cool, but the amount of attention this hack is getting so quickly is surprising me more.

Don't like the LZ pallet though

 

I'm just not a big fan of the ring taxation idea... especially if it's triggered like the features in this hack. Half the time I ended up accidentally taxing my rings for moves when I was simply trying to do a spin dash or scale an obstacle.

After seeing Tweaker's post, I now have a little more insight on your hack. The Sonic sprite is just too flat looking... it looks really boring. The boss is nice at least (but again, given Tweaker's post I can only assume that this too was ripped from somewhere else). As well, the hack is pretty buggy...

 

There are two things things that bothered me while playing this:

1. The fact that I can't say what's solid and what's not just from looking at the art. The art is good, don't get me wrong, but many times I was fooled by the solidity of things: walls that look like background and vice versa, some waterfalls are solid at the top, others aren't, that kind of thing. Maybe you should create some level design guidelines for the sake of consistency between the way things look and the way things feel. Like, more contrast = foreground, less contrast = background; green borders = solid; waterfalls that can be walked on have something visibly solid behind then; that sort of thing... Also, regarding solidity, there are numerous collision bugs (too many to list) that I hope you are working on.

2. The damn waterfall noise! I know there are a lot of waterfalls in the level, but I couldn't stand hearing that noise the whole time! Apparently there is a bug that silences that noise after the speed shoes music plays. Even though it was a bug, I was glad that the waterfall noise stopped. I don't know what could be done here... maybe reducing it's volume a bit? Getting rid of it seems extreme, because after all it is a feature...

 

well I'd like to say "OK" work so far, but there are a few bugs and tweaks to fix which you may already be aware of (As stated above), futher more I think that maybe you should consider fixing these bugs and maybe think about changing the reason for this hack, although it has a nice name that fits what the hack is about, it's not really fun to have to collect countless amounts of rings before you can Spin/Ground-dash, consider changing the name and giving your hack a different but more exciting there yet unique approach, indeed this is unique-ish but it's not exciting enough.

either way it's nice to see a hack released for a change, and I hope you'll be able to fix the many noted misstakes with your hack and bring it to something more original.

 

I'm trying to understand why so much hatred towards the use of rings to activate abilities. It seems to me that is the notion that they should be always, or nearly always available. But why should this be so?

As far as I remember, there are many examples of games, especially speaking of the time of 16-bit games, in which the character has certain abilities, but their use is limited, or has a strong side effect. I think the cost for the use of skills is good, and I think the idea is just this: to make the player needs to collect rings - they never had much use anyway. In most cases, having only one ring is all you need to rush like crazy in the levels, and is very easy to get it back. Indeed, the harder it is to collect the rings, the more interesting could be the use of these skills.

I only agree that there's a lack of where to use those skills. When you increase the cost of something, you also need to increase the reward for your "purchase". In other words, the use of these skills need to be rewarded by the game. And the level design, at least until the present time, does not. Otherwise, the visual of the hack is interesting, but the collision bugs are really a bitch. I'll wait for the next version to see how it will evolve.

 

How come? If you hit a spike/badnik/anything like that with no rings, you get killed instatly. Also gives bonus points.

These are some great uses.

 

I've download this hack, and this is what I think:

So, I will start with the rings idea. You loose rings to use an extra move that is already in a lot of hacks. If you want to make rings useful, you can use them for another thing. Like, to finish a level, you have to take a certain amount of rings and then touch the signpost, and to go to the special stage, you have to take the double.

For the level art, it would be better if, in the future, I see a total reworking of Labyrinth Zone. You know, another thing than bricks. And I hope in the future you'll do art, or most of the art at least.

In conclusion, this hack can be better if you have original ideas. The ring-thing idea is a good idea, but if the rings was used for another thing than already-seen extra moves, it would be better.

 

You forgot the phrase that comes immediately after the one you quoted.

And for the bonus points thing... Wtf? You think that it's great? Well, so here we have to agree to disagree.

<div align='center'>-------------</div>

Ah, totally unrelated to what was said above, I too think that more original moves could help the hack. But IMHO, the most important aspect in a hack is the level design. (Well, graphics also help, of course.) Good levels, and especially good levels that take into account the skills of each character - this can make a, otherwise poor game, into a very interesting one.