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Sonic 3D Blast MD, 2017 and beyond!

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by ICEknight, Sep 8, 2017.

  1. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Can't entirely agree on the complaints about the changes made to the Flickies. 3D Blast may not be a challenging game, but the way it was designed around the Flicky collecting objectives made it a tedious game to play IMO. A fair amount of incidents that resulted in lost rings + Flickies were also caused by cheap injuries, like barely edging close to enemies or getting hit by stray projectiles, which only served to make you waste more time. With that said, Sonic's icebutter controls was one of the biggest problems of the original game, and tightening those up alone improves the game significantly as it is, so adding protections to the Flickies may not be entirely necessary.

    Pseudo-invincibility with the speed shoes isn't really needed either, but I do like the idea of giving Speed Shoes an additional quirk of its own outside of instant top speed.
     
  2. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    I say... Use the Flickies as a shield , screw the new speed shoe rule. lol
    I didn't mind the spikes around the enemies, he should have added a spike instead of remove one lol
     
  3. Fred

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    This. Might as well get rid of the Flicky characters if you're removing any threat of enemies breaking your increasingly long trail. I mean, that's like the whole point of the reference.

    Oh well, I guess this hack won't be good after all.

    The river looks like it's using the same colors too. Here's my completely uninformed guess: the river was using the same colors as Sonic, so it would glow yellow when he becomes Super Sonic. The compromise is to push the grays halfway to blue and use those for both the river and the stage objects.
     
  4. nineko

    nineko

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    Yes.
     
  5. Fred

    Fred

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    The ironic part is that there's no way to get all the emeralds in Green Grove unless Jon adds a cheat code for that.
     
  6. big smile

    big smile

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    I always thought it would be nice if collecting the Flickies was optional. Admittedly it would remove most of the challenge, but at least that way you can blast around the game, similar to a standard Sonic title, and once you've learnt the level layouts you can take on the challenge of finding all the flickies.
    There's a "No Flickies" hack by Silk that does that, except it removes them completely.
     
  7. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox

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    Anybody feel like removing the golden shield and making the homing attack the default behavior would make the game a lot better? I mean, that's how it is in later actually 3D Sonic games and the golden shield only ever appeared in Sonic 3D so it's not an important trope.

    I love the friction/handling changes, but have to agree that all the invincibility (flickies, speed shoes) changes feel like an easy mode. A cool thing would be a radar of sorts to go looking for that flicky that was accidentally blasted off your trail 10 minutes ago. Seems like it's almost impossible to actually lose flickies with all the changes he proposes, kinda defeating the point of the game.

    And yes, please don't change the Green Grove palette to accommodate Super Sonic's colors, it's impossible to get all emeralds and turn super there anyway.
     
  8. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    I'm good with pretty much all the changes so far. 3D Blast was never my favorite game due to the whole Flicky aspect, so if it's harder to lose them then I'm all for it. Obviously purists might not like these changes since Flickies are the whole point of the game, but I'd like to be able to enjoy the game without having to worry about losing them or having that green flicky run off to god knows where. I can see how some of these changes might make the game a bit too easy though, although even without the flickies I found myself running into trouble towards Volcano Valley.
     
  9. D.A. Garden

    D.A. Garden

    Sonic CD's Sound Test Member
    I've watched the video and I while I like some changes, some I think are unnecessary. I'll list them and my opinions (I'm good at that):

    • The changes to handling sound good, but whether or not they work in practice is a different matter.
    • The smoother camera looks very similar to Sonic CD, in my opinion, although it moves even when you are stationary to allow you to see further in front depending on where you are facing. This seems like another 'good in theory, but unsure in practice' change that I didn't see too much of in the video, and am unsure of how exaggerated it might be.
    • The changes to speed shoes seems completely unnecessary and, in fact, I don't like them. Outrunning the camera, knockback with no damage against enemies/obstacles... These seem like changes to make a game easy that don't really require it. Plus, the invincibility now feels unintentionally nerfed.
    • I like the flashing flicky icon if one is wondering around and you haven't got it. This could be used in conjunction with if you got hit and lost them, so you'd know you were missing one or two. However, the flickies are now invincible and you can't lose them unless you have zero rings, which means that this will hardly ever happen. It also means that recollecting flickies works as a secondary health method, like rings, where as long as you have one, you can't die. The game wasn't that hard to begin with.
    • I'm also not a fan of changing the flickies' behaviour, as that was what made them unique. They felt like they had their own identities, which will be lost as they'll all act the same now.
    • Nerfing the hunter badnik doesn't make much sense, as rolling into them was easy enough and now they are a stationary badnik, which is just weird.
    • I welcome all other changes, such as the score counter and the adjusted hit-boxes.
    This is definitely beginning to feel like a ROM hack and not an official update. I'm fine with bug fixes and the like, but adjusting behaviour in ways that appear to make the game much easier is something I just don't care for. This is all my opinion, of course, but I just never found Sonic 3D that difficult in the first place.
     
  10. Dark Sonic

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    I don't think they're changing completely. At least what I got from it it sounds like he's just making them a bit easier. I imagine the red one will still hop and the green one will still be confused, they'll just be less awful (I hate the green flickies they can go fuck themselves).

    But I like how this mod (and I mean that's basically what it is) is a balance between the original game and the no flickies hack. It's a little easier than the base game but it's not as empty as the no flickies hack, plus you get some nice quality of life improvements. Personally I think I'll enjoy this, shame it's not tacked on to the Saturn version though.

    I kind of wish he could add an on screen timer as well. I know it's a VRAM issue or something but couldn't they just make the numbers on the HUD smaller to save space? The guy likes to talk about compression and space saving all the time yet there's this large HUD taking up space.
     
  11. Sean Evans

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    I actually like the new changes! The only one I raised an eyebrow at was the speed shoes, but it kind of makes them more valuable, and gives them a neat little quirk. Speed Shoes...didn't really do anything (useful) in the original game. That is, unless you like worse controls. 3D Blast was never really hard, more-so tedious and obnoxious to play. I'd get burnt out half way because the flickies were allergic to fucking everything. You could be doing just fine, but they'd get clipped, forcing you to waste time retrieving them. And in some of the worst places at times. Stuff like the flicky shield, and the added damage state create an incentive to try and get all five in one go rather than one at a time, which in turn means you'll get a better score for bringing them all at once. I like it! I hope he's able to add a bit more meat to the game, like with Super Sonic (perhaps a challenge or time mode), because scouring a stage for flickies can only be so fun for so long.
     
  12. Fred

    Fred

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    aaaaaaaa


    I'll note there were also bonus tokens scattered around which you could only get by bouncing on a spring with a full flicky chain. The incentives were already there.
     
  13. Sean Evans

    Sean Evans

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    And who, pray tell, went into the game knowing how the scoring system and bonus tokens worked? Or better yet, what immediate benefit do they give you? The new features give people a legitimate reason to want the flickies. Hell, the score wouldn't even have been in the back of your mind, it wasn't even on the screen lol.
     
  14. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Ugh the bonus tokens. Yes they were an incentive to get flicky chains to springs in order to have them reach higher (which was clever), but you needed 10 of them to get a continue in a game that gave lives pretty freely. Like why couldn't there have been some shields or other neat items up high to get? Plus, the "reward" becomes kinda stale after getting the same thing time and time again.

    A little before it's time but it'd of been nice if those bonus tokens unlocked things, but since the game had no save system that'd of been kinda pointless.
     
  15. Fred

    Fred

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    And who, pray tell, would go into the game knowing that flickies act as a shield when you stand perfectly still?

    The bonus points show up right there on the screen when you touch the end ring with a lot of birds.

    Yeah the reward itself was kind of gummy; I never saw the game over screen when I originally played it. But I have to remove those fuckers from the playfield in order to satisfy my OCD.
     
  16. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

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    It's been so long since I played that game for the last time, I didn't get which were the changes from watching the video, only a couple of things like the blue monitors or the standstill flicky shield, plus I thought the difficulty of losing the rings was something related to a hack bug, not a real feature. By the way, I used to bring all the flickies to the giant ring in one run, which doesn't mean I did it always easily, it's just that I preferred it over backtracking, even if Volcano Valley got me out of my nerves.

    I wouldn't change the game other than improving the controls and losing the flickies only when Sonic himself is hit, and this second change just because I sometimes lost a flicky and didn't notice until I brought the other four to the giant ring. Adding the debug or the unused badnik, ok, but altering the base game more than needed... Better improve the special stages so they actually give us a challenge or some fun.
     
  17. Sean Evans

    Sean Evans

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    You probably won't notice that the flicky birds don't run off because a stray obstacles or enemy hit them, because that's something you shouldn't have to keep track of. Made sense in the arcade game when all you were doing was leading them around, the enemies actively chased you, and they were all clustered in small looping maps. Not here where they're about a fragment of your size, you have to destroy enemies to even get them, and half the game is built around just finding them in the first place. Also, the flickies rotate around you whenever you stand still here, even during your waiting animation. To me that's at least enough of an indicator to try it out. Just saying I don't think it's to make the game easy, it's to get rid of stuff that's tedious.
     
  18. CheatFreak

    CheatFreak

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    At first I was skeptical about the speed shoes change but after some careful thought about it, I think the change does make some sense.

    One of the biggest problems in Sonic 3D Blast is flying into things you barely have a chance to react to if you're moving quickly, so making you not lose rings while you have them helps incentivise you actually take advantage of the power-up and recklessly barrage through the level fast. (Which is sort of the point of speed shoes, right?)

    The punishment for you for running into robots or obstacles is now breaking your speed, which is a lot more fair given the nature of the power-up.
    I mean, sure, you can treat it like a "poor mans invincibility box" but I think doing that would sort of miss the point. The power up is on a timer, and taking hits would reduce how effectively you get to use it.

    Remember that in Sonic 3D Blast, a lot of the things in the game aren't actually enemies, but obstacles that you need to avoid, and these sorts of things are everywhere, so you're still likely to barrage into them while moving quickly, even if the improved camera gives you a few more ms to react.

    The Invincibility power-up allows you to not get hit at all, simply passing through obstacles and destroying any robot you come into contact with. It's considerably different, I'd say.
     
  19. XCubed

    XCubed

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    I hated this game. Watching this update legit has me interested! I'll brinh the barf bag!
     
  20. JoePro

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    In a youtube comment, he says the Saturn and PC versions were handled by someone else completely, and he had little involvment with them.