New Sonic Engine Coming...

The Shad · Feb 11, 2010

Chimpo said:

So in layman's terms...

Am I following correctly?
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Holy shit, it makes sense

Mercury · Feb 11, 2010

Chimpo said:

So in layman's terms...

Am I following correctly?
Click to expand...

LOL, yes, you're following.

nineko said:

Aside from the 360 degrees of sprite rotation opposed to the classic 8 ones, this is pretty much awesome.
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In the final, there will be options for limiting the number of rotations, as well as defining specific sprites for angle ranges. In my game, for instance, I want there to be unique sprites when running upsidedown and so on - after all, Knuckles' dreads have to conform to gravity, and not point up when he's on a ceiling, right?

Overbound said:

Mercury this looks great I can't wait to see more. Tell me if your switch to C++ would you create an entire development kit similar to what Taxman has done Retro? I would be very interested in something like that.
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I'm still in the early stages of the switch idea. I'm not fully decided on the specifics yet.

One (not-so-bad) limitation of my mathematic slope system is that it's currently limited to straight lines. Does anyone know any good algorithms that might give me the Y height of a bezier just by knowing the X coordinate? Beziers are more difficult for the user to assemble, but it might to nice to have them in my bag of tricks in case I ever need them.

Damizean · Feb 11, 2010

Mercury said:

One (not-so-bad) limitation of my mathematic slope system is that it's currently limited to straight lines. Does anyone know any good algorithms that might give me the Y height of a bezier just by knowing the X coordinate? Beziers are more difficult for the user to assemble, but it might to nice to have them in my bag of tricks in case I ever need them.
Click to expand...

Finding the correct time at the X coordinate on a bezier may be too tricky. Instead, why don't you use a sine wave to do smooth curves? It would serve nicely to get quarter loops and similar structures easily instead of creating thousands of small linear slopes.

Code (Text):

t = (x-x1)/(x2-x1);

y = y1+y2*sin(lerp(0, PI*0.5, t));

DigitalDuck · Feb 11, 2010

Damizean said:

Finding the correct time at the X coordinate on a bezier may be too tricky to do it correctly. Why don't you use a sine wave to do that instead? It would serve nicely to get quarter loops and similar structures easily instead of creating thousands of small linear slopes.
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Isn't that essentially how the original did it? If so, then implementing that method would make this truer to the original physics, which isn't a bad thing.

Armada · Feb 11, 2010

I can help with a level editor if you need this. I've made a mapper and format for my own game. Drop me a PM if you're interested. Great work, we need more projects like this so people stop spouting shit about how GM is terrible. Its not. Idiot 12 -year-olds make bad games with it.

Fred · Feb 11, 2010

DigitalDuck said:

Isn't that essentially how the original did it? If so, then implementing that method would make this truer to the original physics, which isn't a bad thing.
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The original games just looked up the pixel height and angle value from a premade look-up table, there were no calculations taking place in real time.

EDIT: Might as well comment while I'm posting in the thread. schweeeeeeeeeet

Overbound · Feb 12, 2010

Do you start with Knuckles because he is the hardest character to program? Also as far as features go how about a following Tails?

Mercury · Feb 12, 2010

Damizean said:

Finding the correct time at the X coordinate on a bezier may be too tricky. Instead, why don't you use a sine wave to do smooth curves? It would serve nicely to get quarter loops and similar structures easily instead of creating thousands of small linear slopes.

Code (Text):

t = (x-x1)/(x2-x1);

y = y1+y2*sin(lerp(0, PI*0.5, t));

Click to expand...

I can implement this pretty easily, but my problem with it is that the originals don't conform to sine waves and quarter circles all that often. I mean, you can do a bunch of S3&K with those pieces, but Starlight Zone just has too strange of shapes (which is why I used it in the video).

I suppose people will most likely be making new Sonic games with the engine, and not trying to emulate old ones, but I just felt bad about it not being able to handle at least what Sonic 1 could, you know? That's why I was contemplating beziers, because you can make any sort of curve with them.

Armada said:

I can help with a level editor if you need this. I've made a mapper and format for my own game. Drop me a PM if you're interested. Great work, we need more projects like this so people stop spouting shit about how GM is terrible. Its not. Idiot 12 -year-olds make bad games with it.
Click to expand...

I really appreciate the offer, but I've already got mine basically finished. It works in real time, too - like the ultimate debug mode!

Overbound said:

Do you start with Knuckles because he is the hardest character to program? Also as far as features go how about a following Tails?
Click to expand...

I started with Knuckles because I wasn't decided on which Sonic sprite set to use yet.

As for a following Tails, I haven't begun work on anything like that yet, but I've got the previous position table and the ability to log input, so he shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully having 2 Player objects won't take up too many cycles, because I'd like to have a multi-player mode, too.

Oh, and for anyone who liked SX8B Playable, with what I've learned since I ought to be able to pop its levels together without driving me crazy. So it looks like it might get finished after all! Get ready for those multi-coloured Chaos Emeralds! :v:

New Sonic Engine Coming...

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