[OSM]

I completely agree with Tweaker. I'll make the animations for Sonic fluid but I'll also try to make them simple enough to break down if the game becomes too large.

[muteKi]

I'd say that 2-8 MB ought to be a good limit for graphical data, really (1 more or less was the case for the Saturn; the second for the DC).

[nineko]

I'm usually in favor of heavy optimizations so I bet that most of you are expecting a "let's use only 1MB of RAM for the entire game" kind of post, but this is not the case.
Optimizations have to be done while being realistic, and I think that 8, or even 16 megabytes, can be useful, if not necessary, to produce a cool game. I'm starting to see computers with 8GB of RAM these days, I think 8MB don't hurt that much.
It's not important how much RAM you take per se, it's important how well you're using it. Say, let's not pull a Vista, and take 1GB of RAM when you're just being idle. Take the RAM that you need, only that, and use it up to the last bit without useless wastes.

[LordOfSquad]

I believe the animation should be as fluid as possible. In an old issue of Game Players, they had an interview with Dave Perry, the guy in charge of Shiny Entertainment, the company behind Earthworm Jim. He said that Sega had approached them about doing Sonic 4, but they turned it down. It might be Dave Perry just talking out his ass, but the idea of a Shiny-created Sonic game has been a nerd fantasy of mine ever since.

[roxahris]

If the original games used only around 16kb of RAM (as Tweaker said)... then I, personally, think we should use around 16mb. Animations ten times as fluid!

[Overlord]

Tweaker, on Jan 29 2009, 08:06 PM, said:

Overlord, on Jan 29 2009, 02:02 PM, said:

Stealth, on Jan 29 2009, 02:04 AM, said:

The math is right, and a gig is sort of an exaggeration just to illustrate my feelings on excess. Pushing like 32mb total RAM usage would be bad enough

There is a point where we realise that our PCs weren't made in 1996, Stealth. I see what you're getting at, and it's both admirable and I approve of it, but seriously? 32MB is like a tenth of what some modern games use, so I fail to see why even (picking a figure out of the air) 100MB of RAM usage for the final finished product would be the end of the world.

To be fair, I'd hardly consider 100MB appropriate RAM usage for a game whose precessors ran using... what, 16kb of work RAM? A 2D Sonic game—or any 2D platformer, for that matter—should not be taking such a ridiculous amount of RAM under any circumstances.

If the amount of RAM the game uses up is something we can control, then we should definitely try and do so. I'm all for fluidity in animation, but game performance is just as important.

Oh, I agree 100MB is overkill. My overly-exaggerated point was that you don't need to sacrifice the game quality to keep it down to a handful of MB. =P

[Phoenix]

My question is, why isn't this in programming? Just wondering...

[nineko]

Right, a question about palettes just popped into my mind.
Are we going to use Genesis-like colors (in the $X0X0X0 form where X is an even number), or any color from the 16777216 colorspace? I'd recommend the latter.

[jman2050]

nineko, on Feb 1 2009, 10:03 AM, said:

Right, a question about palettes just popped into my mind.
Are we going to use Genesis-like colors (in the $X0X0X0 form where X is an even number), or any color from the 16777216 colorspace? I'd recommend the latter.

I'm pretty sure E02 lets you use the entire colorspace when defining a palette. Not sure why it wouldn't.

[Overlord]

nineko, on Feb 1 2009, 03:03 PM, said:

Right, a question about palettes just popped into my mind.
Are we going to use Genesis-like colors (in the $X0X0X0 form where X is an even number), or any color from the 16777216 colorspace? I'd recommend the latter.

Uhm.... I'd guess the latter, seeing as we aren't limited in a colour selection by hardware. The palette does all the necessary limiting (though feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, engine writers...)

[nineko]

jman2050, on Feb 1 2009, 08:48 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure E02 lets you use the entire colorspace when defining a palette. Not sure why it wouldn't.

I wasn't asking about a technical restriction, I know E02 is flexible.
I was asking about an arbitrary restricion, in case Chimpo wanted to preserve the retro feel even more. But as I said I hope that's not the case.

[Chimpo]

nineko, on Feb 1 2009, 03:03 PM, said:

jman2050, on Feb 1 2009, 08:48 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure E02 lets you use the entire colorspace when defining a palette. Not sure why it wouldn't.

I wasn't asking about a technical restriction, I know E02 is flexible.
I was asking about an arbitrary restricion, in case Chimpo wanted to preserve the retro feel even more. But as I said I hope that's not the case.

There's retro, and then there's insanity.

I want a shade of white damn it, not some light grey!

[Cinossu]

[Afti]

Monitors hanging from objects.

Actually quite handy- for example, maybe you need a bubble shield; the underwater area is too long and has too few bubbles. So, you do a puzzle, and a section of the ceiling with one of these descends. Or, maybe, it's an invincibility monitor to cross a bed of spikes.

Art-wise, it's just an edit of Cinossu's.

[test-object]

Insanity, I don't really get it. It's an extended upsidedown monitor? Why not regular upsidedown? That worked before :/

Also, tossing in some ideas. First one slows you down, but it just looks awesome. Speedrunners are able to jump over them.
The second is based on later Sonic games. Why 3D Sonic games never used a magnetizing technique combined with idea 1 when passing a lamp-post, remains a mystery to me.