I'm really a fan of the use of Egg Pawns to add variety to the enemies, especially since the Egg Fighter Shooters and Egg Fighter Shields are not in Generations, even if they are mostly non-threatening and end up being homing attack fodder. Of course, your custom touch on their appearance is welcome and entertaining. (Bandit robots!)
Wow, that's amazing, Dario. I wish I could see more, but for the past few days I've been stuck relying on shitty phone internet which lags everything when I try to watch Youtube videos, but from what I have seen, it looks amazing as usual. Edit: Also, I'm trying to use SonicGlvl to make joeylaw's Flame Core mod a bit more forgiving in that turn between the first loops and the first homing attack chain by at the very least adding invisible walls to the edges. Unfortunately, I can't even move the camera due to that function requiring the middle mouse button, something my laptop lacks. Is there an alternate method of moving the camera?
Hm. I'm not so sure that level fits well in to Sonic Generations. The port looks great, and I love how more vibrant the colors are (the original Arid Sands was kind of a dull, washed out level in Unleashed), but I feel like the Sonic Unleashed level is one of the levels that has a tangible sense of being on the edge of losing control because you're going SO fast and interacting with a lot of stuff at the same time. In the Generations engine, Sonic is noticeably slower and certain level interactions are... less frenetic. Which I'm sure some will really like, but as somebody who thinks Sonic Unleashed was at its best at that razor's edge of speed, it is not nearly as thrilling. But again, probably not really a fault of the porting job itself. :P
Generations Sonic goes faster(using skills in this stage makes a difference), it's just that Unleashed abuses the FOV and distances of the camera A LOT in various places. The most ridiculous difference is in the pillar section, where it's nearly the double of the default quickstep camera in Generations. Also, Unleashed Sonic has a sped up running animation. While we do have the original cameras in place, whenever the game switches to the "default"(not specified by the stage) camera, you can start seeing a lot of differences regarding the FOV and distance from both games. Remember how that Dragon Road Big Chaser section looks in Unleashed? It's probably 1/2 the speed of how we do it in Gens, it just uses a ridiculous FOV to simulate the speed. We can tweak the FOV and make it "look" go faster, but there's a whole lot of scenery at the same time lost for me to think it's a worth the tweak. The pillars section in Unleashed covers half the screen with just Sand due to the fisheye FOV. Most of these "default" tweaks can be done in the Sonic XML AFAIK, so I'll just leave it up to whoever likes that to use it if they want.
1. I've made a few more changes to Modern Neo Metal Sonic's model. I forgot to add the white parts on the side of the eyes in the previous model. I fixed that. Also, I revamped the white designs on the arms and legs, giving them the same "opacity-based material" effect as the head stripes. I made some changes to the shape of the arms and legs (making them more accurate.) Finally, I re-shaped the shoes to better match that one official render image (complete with the grooves in the middle, and the black boxes inside those grooves.) Now the only remaining inaccuracies are extremely minor things that are barely noticeable. 2. It's about time that I showed some more Metal Sonic Generations footage! It mostly just shows off Modern Neo Metal Sonic. 3. If you look hard enough in the video, you'll notice the new loading screen animation. Check out my signature to get a better look at it. 4. I have a general question. Is there any way to get .models into 3DS Max with their vertex coloring intact (whether it be through the import script, or through .DAE imports?) It would be extremely helpful when modifying the models for effects, such as the boosting or spin-jump models. I know for a fact that quite a few effect models utilize vertex coloring as a way of coloring the model itself (as-in, they'd still have color even if the textures were solid gray.) It'd be nice to be able to see (and modify) the original vertex colors instead of having to guess.
So, the guy who's making that Flame Core port decided to use the original textures. http://youtu.be/LOU_iAZg5VM It looks less like ass, though the creator thinks it's uglier for some reason :\
Did anyone else think that the wall jump solution was...well... Also It does look better with the original textures. Wonder if he will attempt to HD them.
Flame Core has always been a pretty ugly level, even in it's original state. I don't understand why they chose to remake that one of all the levels in '06. However that wall-jump solution was pretty dang clever.
Speaking of stage imports, I'm actually getting ready to attempt a stage import of my own. I've never attempted to do one before, so I'd love to make sure I get everything right before trying to import the terrain. I've already got the stage's models set up within 3DS Max. Each portion is at a proper size compared to Sonic's model, all pieces are located at {0,0,0}, all rotations at {0,0,0}, and all the pieces have 100, 100, 100 scaling. I can easily convert any of its textures to .dds format too. My main concerns involve the lighting and overall size. When adding directional lights in 3DS Max, should I only have one large directional light that covers the whole stage, or is it alright to have multiple lights covering specific areas? What about having a large light over a whole section with smaller lights for important areas? Also, is there a limit to how big a stage can be? The stage I'm working on is going to be pretty big vertically, and I'm hoping that won't cause too many issues.
You're going to need to make a Stage Guide spline to avoid loading problems, but other than that I don't think there's any sort of limit.
I've been find without stage guides. The one thing I haven't been able to do is super sonic paths, despite making one.
Use one VraySun light over the whole stage. Multiple lights are supported by the engine but not the editor AFAIK. The VraySun, upon export, will export the correct *direction*, however it does not export the proper RGB values. You'll need to manually update your .scene file to reflect this. Add me on an IM client and I'll try to help you as I can with the process.
I managed to get the stage into the game (using Sky's tutorial was a huge help.) Now I have a different lighting problem. I just put in a single large light that encompasses the whole stage (I didn't change any of the light's settings within 3DS max.) However, everything ends up being WAY too bright. I have no idea whether its being caused by the actual light object, or if I didn't properly remove GIA (I want to get the layout working first,) but it hopefully shouldn't be too hard to fix... On the plus side, all of the actual stage geometry works well, and I even have all of the needed collision already done. The lighting, materials, shaders, and object placement is all I have left to do.
