[erbuka]

Hi guys,

this is a little project I've worked on the last 3 months. As the topic description says, the game is a remake of the classic "Get Blue Spheres" game written from ground in C++ and OpenGL. The project's goal is to maintain the original gameplay while giving the game a full 3D graphics.
Here it is the last gameplay trailer, which is not up to the latest build, but it gives an idea of what the game looks like:



The reason I do this beta test is that I want to know if the game installs and runs correctly under Windows systems. I also would like to realize something about the performance on different graphics cards, just because I only ran it on my GTX 560 and got 60 fps (140 without v-sync) at the highest quality, but, I suppose it may have hard times on older systems.

You can download the windows installer from here.
All the info you need should be on the website under the Game Guide section. Anyway, feel free to contact me or directly reply to this thread for any questions.

Thanks for your time

[Dark Sonic]

Wow this actually looks really cool. I'll have to give it a shot in the near future.

[Chris Highwind]

Wow, this is actually impressive. Blue Spheres isn't a hard game to recreate faithfully, but I like how it's given a 3D makeover and the ability to make your own Blue Sphere levels.

[Tanks]

I'll give this a shot later. So did you try to port the original engine over or is this from eyeballing it? If its eyeballed, damn that looks pretty dead on to me... I'll let my play through have the final word on that though. :P

[Knucklez]

Dear lord, you have no idea what you just made me do to my keyboard.. this is amazing beyond description. I mean anything S3K-related being perfected like this is.. AHHHH. I love you.

[Ell678]

This is quite impressive. Keep up the good work!

[W.A.C.]

Looks pretty boss. Will Tails and Knuckles be playable?

This post has been edited by W.A.C.: 22 March 2012 - 04:02 AM

[Hitaxas]

Funny thing is: I saw this on youtube about 2 days ago. So to see that it was posted here just yesterday is amazing to me. It's awesome!

[KingofHarts]

I notice only one thing... when you enclose blue spheres with red spheres, and the spheres turn into rings, the ring that appears where you are standing should already be collected by the player once it transforms... other than that, I see no bugs, or anything I can think of. Good work.

[erbuka]

Tanks, on 21 March 2012 - 11:51 AM, said:

I'll give this a shot later. So did you try to port the original engine over or is this from eyeballing it? If its eyeballed, damn that looks pretty dead on to me... I'll let my play through have the final word on that though. :P

Sorry I'm Italian, I don't know what "eyeballed" means To make the game, I played the original one, and try to figure out how it worked. Also I hacked the s&k rom to modifiy the layout of the special stages, and create particular situations to see the game behaviour.

W.A.C., on 22 March 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:

Looks pretty boss. Will Tails and Knuckles be playable?

Yes, I was planning to do that. It's only a matter of finding good models and rigging them. Now I'm very busy with university, but I will do that when I have a little more time.

KingofHarts, on 22 March 2012 - 04:44 AM, said:

I notice only one thing... when you enclose blue spheres with red spheres, and the spheres turn into rings, the ring that appears where you are standing should already be collected by the player once it transforms... other than that, I see no bugs, or anything I can think of. Good work.

Wow... Pretty good eye Yes, I knew about this, and I made the game work this way because the original one sometimes gives you that ring, and sometimes doesn't... Anyway I guess you're right, that ring should be given to the player.

[Ritz]

Very impressive, this is the sort of thing I've been wanting to see for a while. But for the love of god, move Sonic down. He should be on the lower third of the screen, not dead center! You can barely see what's ahead of him. I've never seen anything so disorienting in a game.

Be warned, I have every intention of creating an hour long mixtape with accompanying awful fanfiction just for this. Blue Balls 3D: Lollapalooza! just got the green light.

[Tanks]

erbuka, on 22 March 2012 - 05:46 AM, said:

Tanks, on 21 March 2012 - 11:51 AM, said:

I'll give this a shot later. So did you try to port the original engine over or is this from eyeballing it? If its eyeballed, damn that looks pretty dead on to me... I'll let my play through have the final word on that though. :P

Sorry I'm Italian, I don't know what "eyeballed" means To make the game, I played the original one, and try to figure out how it worked. Also I hacked the s&k rom to modifiy the layout of the special stages, and create particular situations to see the game behaviour.

That is actually what "eyeballed" means. Basically, you did not look at the hard data, you looked at the game and copied what you saw. This is usually considered very impressive, especially if your final product is extremely accurate. It is almost like the difference between tracing an image and drawing an image, the later requires a lot more skills, thus making it a lot more impressive.

[Felik]

Well Ashura Dark Reign did that like 5 years ago
Looks good I guess.

[Professor Neo]

I saw this video before! And I even asked you questions. Isn't your YouTube ID nerdrage562? If so, we've met before.

[Tiberious]

Alright, I've given it a shot, and here's my improvement suggestions:

1) Allow the player to start turning as soon as the stage loads in. As it is, the move and first turn is at the same time, which is BAD if your route is planned to start other than the direction you face.

2) Allow the player to turn as they hit a bumper. I understand this allows 'snaking' through a bumper field, but it's invaluable if you get caught between bumpers.

3) Similarly, transitioning from going backwards to forwards by pressing Up is meant to have a several-frame pause, not instantaneous. This will throw timings off.

4) When completing a stage, the original allows you to queue a turn that will be executed upon hitting the last blue sphere. This is useless, but adding it in would show faithfulness to the original.

5) Also, when finishing a stage moving backwards (as S&K 4 requires, as does S&K 7 when getting a Perfect), there appear to be two phases. The player starts moving forward again after the 'surface clearing' phase, as it switches to the 'emerald collection' phase.

6) In S&KStage7.dat, the ring at 10,13 is supposed to be a yellow sphere. Ring count for perfect is thus meant to be lowered to 57.

7) Also in S&KStage7, the group (actually -pair- of groups) at 22,20 to 24,26 is meant to transform all at once while walking left from 26,23. Currently, only one group changes to rings, and it required hitting the last blue sphere in the second group to change it as well.