For my second post I hope nobody will mind if I share a little bit about a project I've been working on for the last couple months. It's not a mod or a hack, but it is a Sonic related project and I couldn't find anywhere better to post about it. It started out with me realizing that Sonic 3K is one of those rare games that never gets old to me, so I thought I'd start making videos to kind of track how my personal playing style progresses as time goes on. I was aware of tool assisted Sonic videos but I naively thought I was good enough that I could also put mine online and they would stand out for being unassisted, but of course other people had already done something similar in the form of unassisted speedruns. Those videos differed from mine in that they were strictly about finishing the level as quickly as possible and often used glitches to bypass parts of the game, while mine I would say (hopefully without sounding condescending, as that's not the case at all) were more focused on style. Never the less, in terms of accomplishing our respective goals, even the levels I was good at could hardly compare to the level of quality set by others, in particular the videos by MRMIdAS2k (who I still literally can't believe some of them but that's another story), and I needed to seriously practice my bad levels. At that point my goal shifted to not only recording my own way to play the game, but to also becoming better at doing so, so that I could have comparable recordings of my ideal playthrough of at least many if not all of the levels in the game. I had already done several of my good levels by then, selecting them from the character/save menu and recording the entire zone in one go. After that, I had to enter the level select code and just practice recording 1 act at a time in order to achieve what I felt was an acceptable level of a quality. And that's where I'm at right now. I've finished 3 acts and 6 zones so far. I surprised myself how much I improved by practicing one act at a time in the zones I'm bad at, which has lead me to consider whether I should re-do the zones I'm good at in this fashion as well. But I feel like the few, minor flaws present in those videos are outweighed by the fact that it's an entire zone clearly being finished in a single, continuous playthrough. As I mentioned above, I don't focus entirely on speed, but at the same time, by no means could what I do be considered a true style or ring run, either... so, I have been wondering whether my gameplay constitutes a valid, perhaps kind of hybrid, playing style in itself or if it isn't really just sloppy and lacking any real direction? I'm curious what the community and those in the Sonic scene would think about this, and I hope I explained it clearly enough that it makes sense Sorry for the long post. If you read it all, I thank you. I'll also be thankful for any and all feedback about my concerns in the paragraph above and about the 2 of my actual videos below.
Sonic's eyelids are the same colour as his muzzle, not blue in the classic design. (Sorry, I'm nitpicky) Otherwise, interesting, nice work :3 Might I ask if you're going to edit the island in the background of Emerald Hill to resemble South Island better, as I'm convinced it's supposed to be that.
I second this. That background is beautiful. If this is what we can expect from a Sonic 2: S3 Edition, I hope you do one for Sonic 1 after.
And one day I will go back and make it a proper S3 Edition hack. I do have an idea for a background already.
I did primarily mean the character screen though I'd love to see this Sonic 1 S3 Edition.... :D I didn't know he made that... I've played the old S2: S3 Edition
Have you ever thought about using the Sonic 2 Master System bosses for Act 1 bosses? I can see the warthog boss working very well in Mystic Cave Zone when you take into account the falling debris. I don't know where the others would work best though. There's only six bosses in that game, not counting Robotnik.
It's that turtle from Triple Trouble! That's really awesome. So Master System bosses aren't out of the question then.
You wouldn't mind someone with the same idea to use him again in the future, without being called an idea stealer, right?
I've always loved the art style of this hack, it makes me really look forward to playing it. Can't wait to see what you've done to the other stages.
Right, my comments and criticism are; I'm not too fond of the palette you have for the level, it seems quite dank and odd, I will admit though, it is really nice to see some art edits in there (I.e. the background bottom area), as for the layout, I have a mixed opinion on it, generally speaking it visually looks odd in places but in a way I cannot quite explain, I think it might be to do with the lack of curves and hills in comparison to the original, the curves and hills always made Launch Base Zone a lot less basic and blocky, having said that though, DAGarden has mentioned on many occasions that Launch Base Zone is problematic to work with due to the indoor/outdoor switching areas, so I understand that it might make it difficult to use certain chunks in certain areas. One thing I think is brilliant though is some of the clever use of objects you have, like having the laser gun devices on a long rail with platforms under them which you have to jump across, this makes it feel more like an actual game, other interesting uses are the Carnival Night Zone air vents (I don't know what to call them) used with the elevator tubes in the same manner, clever man, I like that. Using the flame devices as platforms is a real neat idea too, and one final thing that I thought was really interesting was the line of 4 doors where you had to go around searching for the switches in individual places before you could get through, that's a very clever idea. I guess the only real problem I have with your work is that it looks "visually" wrong in a lot of places, otherwise it's very nicely done and very clever. That looks very interesting, I hope it does some neat gimmicky moves. On a side note to all, I want to see more artistic edits folks. Come on guys? Don't leave me dry =(
Thanks for your comments Markey. The plan is after Zone 6 to make the levels more darker and sinister. One of the ways to help get that effect was to make the colours dank and dismal. I do want to make further art edits to Launch Base Zone so I'm hoping the colours really add texture to the new look zone.
I started rebuilding my palette editor from scratch, then it became an all purpose tool. v3: Rebuilt from scratch .
