As it turns out, this is a mappings error -- Sonic's head is 2 pixels to the left of where it should be. Thanks for spotting it.
Is Wing Fortress supposed to be beatable? The ending cutscene just goes forever, vertical looping bugs abound, the plane flies off the screen with Tails, Sonic and Knuckles keep dying, a medium sized chunk of space background keeps looping, as well as the spaceship. I was playing as Tails. e: Dying on the Wing Fortress boss restarts you above the boss area, with the boss already triggered, and two invisible barriers making the level, once again, unbeatable.
In the currently revision, playing with Sonic in the lead usually allows you to continue to Death Egg. For better results, keep the other two players closely behind. The next revision, as I mentioned 4 posts above your post, will fix all outstanding issues with the Wing Fortress cutscene. I had already found and fixed the issue with the boss area; the next revision will also fix this.
I better be careful not to get stuck in this particular area in Wing Fortess until 10 minutes. Here's something I found by accident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exMF6YECIiw + - Game Over tiles bugging Sonic and especially Knuckles in the video above .
It is actually bugging the invincibility stars. In any event, I fixed it. It probably also happens with shields, given that they use the same VRAM region, and I fixed it too. Now I have another quick poll: which of these for multicarry flight (1,2) and for carry/multicarry glide (A, B, C, D)? FYI, multicarry flight is currently implemented as option 1, but without correctly setting priorities. It can lead to some jerky camera movement (hardly noticeable unless you keep alternately pressing left and right to change facing) if the current leader is holding at the legs. Multicarry glide is not yet implemented. As for Sonic, I am thinking of having him be faster than the other two (and accelerate faster), but have Tails and Knuckles share Sonic's stats when Sonic is leader.
Flight 2, Glide C. That makes over-shooting jumps (like when attacking a boss such as Silver Sonic) a bit more likely until you get used to his speed, if you up it even just a little. Speaking from experience here, but then again it was a year or two since I've done that.
Faster, yes. More acceleration, no. Changing the acceleration will mess up everyone's habits until we get used to it (as said in the post above), while more speed = more fun.
Derp question: wasn't Knuckles already a bit slower, anyway? But in either case, it's understandable you'd consider that, as (like people have discussed) Sonic would otherwise have no advantages over Tails besides the shields. As for the sprites, I just don't know! Maybe 1/2, and probably D since it seems the least physically and aerodynamically infeasible. :S
2nd for Flight 2, Glide C Nineko's suggestion makes sense, changing the acceleration would alter how we know he plays.
2 for flight, C for glide. It's the only formations that make some sense and don't look extremely awkward to look at... However, they could also use the circle formation from the original Heroes (similar to the one you've used at the very bottom) while going down, when the player releases the button. They could be shown spinning while holding hands, using their respective floating animations. Perhaps you could try assigning the Competition mode stats to each character? I'd make that optional, though, since people are already very used to Sonic's original speed, as has been said.
2 for flight, and D for gliding. Because if you made A for gliding, they would be too close to the floor when gliding in a straight place, not to mention Sonic and Tails might easily hit their faces on anything that's on the air. Kind of the same goes for B. On C, it wouldn't make much sense to have Sonic and Tails to hold on Knuckles' legs, and in a logical way, it would also put alot of weight into Knuckles' legs, he would probably be unable to glide if he really had to carry Sonic and Tails on his legs like that. On D, it's the one that I like the best as Knuckles probably focus his strength on his arms to glide, and would also be able to have Sonic and Tails to hold his arms with no big problem.
brofist Thanks! I didn't feel up to doing anything so outlandish as explaining my choice, but this is basically why.
2 + A. Simply because I've seen them both done before in a few fan games a few years back so it's recognisable.
So A looks recognizeably bad? =\ The hanging characters should be going the opposite direction Knuckles is going to.
Good point. That somewhat applies to Tails, too, although I still think 2 looks better (less bad?) than 1. I wonder if there are any alternative sprites that could be tried out? Not that I want to slave-drive flamewing, obviously!
Yeah, 2 looks a little bit awkward, but Sonic's legs could be slightly edited so Knuckles can hang from them at the same position than him, forming a straight column.
On the topic of Sonic's speed. I'm fairly sure he had some sort of ability for even more speed in his Sonic CD era. Prehaps applying Sonic 3's body onto these sprites maybe a feasible idea;
I will add some peelout abilities for the characters, yes; and I am thinking of actually using the same mechanics as the spindash (but pressing up instead of down): hold up and mash jump buttons to gather speed. I will not, however, use the Sonic CD images -- not untouched, at any rate -- because they suck horribly. I mean, where are the legs? In all sprites you have a red blur pasted on top of a crippled Sonic. If you have the red blur you should have a white blur for the socks and a blue blur for the legs. I am thinking of using (maybe slightly modified) the following sprites by Gardow (which are present in the latest MFS Ultimate Sonic sheet): I am thinking of putting the arms back, like the "standard" peelout images. For Super Sonic, there isn't need for new sprites -- he is already flying. I would still need good Knuckles peelout graphics, while they are rather easy for Tails.
I can make you some Knuckles peel out sprites if you want. Do you plan to make him do the peel out just like Sonic is doing in those gifs?
