[steveswede]

Now with this in mind there is Tails, Knuckles, Robotnik and Super Sonic to be done, which is going to take a good few years more.

Originally it took me 4 days to produce a crappy standing pose with 8-9 colour shades.
Now, the average dev time takes me around 2 hours per frame with full antialias control, 16M colours shades and alpha channel for spotlights!

If no artist will aid me on Tails or Knuckles, my best guess would be only half a year to complete Tails, and one year for Knuckles.

But in total with Super Sonic and Robotnik as well would take a couple of years. By the way. Nobody answered a question of mine earlier. Is it being considered to add Sonic 3 abilities to Sonic 2? Like tails swimming? It would be nice to know in detail what the team would consider regarding the Sonic 3 abilities and the extra ones that I suggested.

[Elratauru]

Now with this in mind there is Tails, Knuckles, Robotnik and Super Sonic to be done, which is going to take a good few years more.

Originally it took me 4 days to produce a crappy standing pose with 8-9 colour shades.
Now, the average dev time takes me around 2 hours per frame with full antialias control, 16M colours shades and alpha channel for spotlights!

If no artist will aid me on Tails or Knuckles, my best guess would be only half a year to complete Tails, and one year for Knuckles.

But in total with Super Sonic and Robotnik as well would take a couple of years. By the way. Nobody answered a question of mine earlier. Is it being considered to add Sonic 3 abilities to Sonic 2? Like tails swimming? It would be nice to know in detail what the team would consider regarding the Sonic 3 abilities and the extra ones that I suggested.

Well, Robotnik frames? Nah, thats an easy thing. Also Im in charge of the bosses and badnik part after all.

About Sonic 3 Abilities, no, the engine of course supports abilities (since its a perfected version of S3 Engine), but It would change the gameplay too much...maybe as a "special" mode or some shit like that, who knows...

[Gambit]

Yeah, Tails will most likely get his abilities from Sonic 3, though I think we'll have an option to turn them on or off. Knuckles will obviously get his moves, though I don't know if Sonic will get the insta-shield. The insta-shield is pretty game-breaking at times in Sonic 3 & Knuckles if you're good with it.

[steveswede]

I think it would be great then to have a mode were you could switch the abilities on and off. I would love to see the Sonic 3 shields in there as options but I suppose that would be too much of a change. It's something I hope that would be considered though.

[Synergy]

Hi guys, I've been following the forum and project for a while but finally decided to jump in. Just wondered if you needed some ideas for the special stages? As I mentioned in my validation post I had made a Sonic 2 Special Stage prototype with the intention of updating the graphics, real 3D and effects etc. before I found out about this project and wondered whether I could be of assistance. The prototype was intended to nail down gameplay, movement, and track/object generation before I went on to address the presentation. It generates and manages the dynamic "tube" mesh and places the objects on-the-fly using a level descriptor file (I'm hoping to build in an editor so that stages can be built directly in the game). The rest of the models are exported from Maya. Currently using DirectX but can be switched to OpenGL fairly easily as I abstracted out the API calls.

Oldish flat-shaded screenshot below, let me know if I can help at all.

[Canned Karma]

Hi Synergy, glad to see you're interested in helping us out with the Special Stages. At this point, literally everything regarding them is up in the air. Without a programming base to work off, everything thus far has been resigned to concept only status. Obviously we're going to need a lot of ideas, a lot of design iterations, and a lot of talent to make it polished, but by all means: if you've got things in mind we'd love to hear them.

I'm liking the concept that you have there. Something that can procedurally create the tube instead of having someone build it from scratch and then pre-render everything could definitely come in handy. Mind giving us more details on it?

[Synergy]

Sure. As Special Stages consist of five types (straight, turn left/right, hill up/down - these are mirror images but it simplifies the code somewhat at the cost of a tiny bit of memory), I've defined five Bezier curves that represent them, as well as a tube profile curve that is basically a semi-circle representing the profile of the solid. The semi-circle is then extruded down the Bezier curve to produce a mesh for each piece which is then stored for the five base types. During play, the level representation is read continually at discrete intervals, and the tube generator maintains the mesh by attaching the appropriate base type at the end (either by welding vertices directly for straight-to-straight, or otherwise by stitching - placing the new piece at a slight distance and generating faces between them for a more visually pleasing result) as well as removing old geometry behind the camera. The Bezier curves are also used for the camera movement. When new pieces are generated, the level data also provides object data for rings and mines for that piece (item type, z-depth along the piece with 12 distinct distances, and angle, which can be from 0 to 360 in 32 steps, allowing for 16 objects in a "ring" formation, like the circle of mines in the original).

Movement works pretty nicely but I'm not totally satisfied as it doesn't quite match the original in terms of the slipping or friction at the sides. From the screenshot, the two players are on circular (1D) frames and jumping detaches the player from it, allowing them to move in 2D for that brief time; we detect whether the player has hit the frame again by finding the frame circle Y from the player X, and if the player Y has exceeded this, it re-attaches the player on the frame at the right spot. I'd be interested to know if anyone has tackled the player movement in Special Stages from the disassembly of the original.

This post has been edited by Synergy: 19 March 2010 - 12:05 AM

[Canned Karma]

Z-depth was going to be one of my questions, so it's good to see that's already factored in. As for the rings and mines, do those have to be generated by your code entirely, or could/is there room to import external assets? The rings and bombs could be done in 3D or in 2D; last year we had people working on bombs for the Special Stages only for them to be tossed onto the database and virtually forgotten.

Big issue for the tube itself: texturing. While it's certainly possible to have the basic colors applied and leave it at that, we're not satisfied with doing that to the main game, and I see no reason why the Special Stages should be any different. Do you think your method would allow for color maps to be applied?

Let me rephrase what you said about the players. The circular frames are made that way so that at least one point on them is in contact with the tube at all times? That's how it looks in my head at least. Following this would be the same question I had around the objects, but with characters. I think it'd be great to have appropriate 3D models of Sonic and Tails in, or if the Special Stage could be rendered as such, use stylized 2D assets instead.

[LOst]

Sure. As Special Stages consist of five types (straight, turn left/right, hill up/down - these are mirror images but it simplifies the code somewhat at the cost of a tiny bit of memory), I've defined five Bezier curves that represent them, as well as a tube profile curve that is basically a semi-circle representing the profile of the solid. The semi-circle is then extruded down the Bezier curve to produce a mesh for each piece which is then stored for the five base types. During play, the level representation is read continually at discrete intervals, and the tube generator maintains the mesh by attaching the appropriate base type at the end (either by welding vertices directly for straight-to-straight, or otherwise by stitching - placing the new piece at a slight distance and generating faces between them for a more visually pleasing result) as well as removing old geometry behind the camera. The Bezier curves are also used for the camera movement. When new pieces are generated, the level data also provides object data for rings and mines for that piece (item type, z-depth along the piece with 12 distinct distances, and angle, which can be from 0 to 360 in 32 steps, allowing for 16 objects in a "ring" formation, like the circle of mines in the original).

Movement works pretty nicely but I'm not totally satisfied as it doesn't quite match the original in terms of the slipping or friction at the sides. From the screenshot, the two players are on circular (1D) frames and jumping detaches the player from it, allowing them to move in 2D for that brief time; we detect whether the player has hit the frame again by finding the frame circle Y from the player X, and if the player Y has exceeded this, it re-attaches the player on the frame at the right spot. I'd be interested to know if anyone has tackled the player movement in Special Stages from the disassembly of the original.

That sounds really cool!
You are using the 3D hardware more than I would have, and that might be the winning technique. You get the Z buffer for free by letting the camera follow the Bezier curves.

So all objects right now are in 3D? I suggest using billboards http://francis.dupont.free.fr/coindev/english/effet3d.htm since most artists can do sprites better than 3D models.

To answer the disassembly. I don't know if anyone has looked into the special stage code. Let's focus on the texturing of the half-tube first.

This post has been edited by LOst: 19 March 2010 - 08:03 AM

[Synergy]

The rings and mines aren't procedurally generated at the moment, those come from objects I've exported from Maya, so they could either be complex models or as LOst points out, billboards could be used instead (might be a little easier on people's hardware too). With regards texturing, it's the next thing on my list; I was going to procedurally generate the tube's texture map as it's not particularly complicated and also would allow stage editors to specify their own colours for the three components: base colour, grid colour (usually the darker colour) and light colour (usually yellow). I also made a shader for the tube that fades it to a darker colour in the distance, per the screenshot, but also allows the yellow colour on the tube to remain unfaded, as per the original stages.

[LOst]

The rings and mines aren't procedurally generated at the moment, those come from objects I've exported from Maya, so they could either be complex models or as LOst points out, billboards could be used instead (might be a little easier on people's hardware too). With regards texturing, it's the next thing on my list; I was going to procedurally generate the tube's texture map as it's not particularly complicated and also would allow stage editors to specify their own colours for the three components: base colour, grid colour (usually the darker colour) and light colour (usually yellow). I also made a shader for the tube that fades it to a darker colour in the distance, per the screenshot, but also allows the yellow colour on the tube to remain unfaded, as per the original stages.

That sounds awesome! Keep up the good work!

[Hamneggs]

Hey if you are still wondering how to nail down the physics in the Special stage, I think this may help:

Sonic Physics Guide

[ICEknight]

Hey if you are still wondering how to nail down the physics in the Special stage, I think this may help:

Sonic Physics Guide

Does any of that apply to the Special Stages, though?

[LOst]

Hey if you are still wondering how to nail down the physics in the Special stage, I think this may help:

Sonic Physics Guide

Does any of that apply to the Special Stages, though?

No, don't think so.


I believe the Special Stage to be fairly static. If the jump height is the same, no matter how long you press the jump button, then it shouldn't be a problem to do anything Special Stage related.

I still think we need to see texturing first. A demo can also shade some light how well the engine (techniques) will work on everyones computer. Even if that engine has the text "The programmer had a nap" instead of a playable Sonic.

[ICEknight]

Wait a second, regarding the boss arenas, why isn't this being considered for 16:9 mode?

So this is a 16:10 monitor, but just adding a bit more of vertical scrolling does sound like the most feasable idea, as long as the hud stays in place when zooming in.