[Cooljerk]

I dunno if anyone remembers, but a few months ago, I came on this board saying that I was bored, and wanted to take a crack at making a sonic engine, much in the same vein as tax's awesome retro-sonic.

Since then, I've done some pretty extensive research as to how sonic's engine works, and even spoken to tax (or maybe sax? One or the other) about checking to make sure my theories work.

So about a week ago, I figured I had enough information gathered that I could begin coding my back engine.

So here's a little demo to show I have started progress on the game:

LINK!

that's a pretty unimpressive demo, I must admit, but what it's doing is pretty neat, to me at least. If you'll notice, I didn't include any images that get drawn to the screen. that's because I've been working on my own paletted image format that it uses. The image is actually made up of 4 layers, each with their own palette.

I actually made a program that automatically converts any image format (bmp, gif, etc) into a palette of colors used and a tsr file, which is my image format.

Press w to toggle pixel shift... see how I can shift on more than one layer at different intervals?

again, not very much, but now that I got all this grunt work down, I can begin actually coding the game.

some images:







And these images are from an older build:



I'm planning a GP32 and DC port of everything when it's done, too, since I'm using SDL. I'll update again in a few weeks or so.

[WiteoutKing]

Looks pretty snazzy, I must say. Though this might have been better placed in the Engineering & Reverse Engineering Forum >_>

[Vangar]

I must say that ripple on a higher resolution then the original sprites looks very nice.

[Cooljerk]

Vangar, on Jul 25 2006, 04:51 AM, said:

I must say that ripple on a higher resolution then the original sprites looks very nice.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but that's actually a setting I can change. I can change the ammount of ripple.

It's worth noting that everything is scaled to fit the screen. My engine can handle real-time scaling and rotation pretty well. Each pixel you see on the screen is actually 4 pixels, which allows for me to do smoother pixel offsetting like you described.

[Quickman]

I notice in that last screenshot the pink crystal has been cleaved by the ripple - is that an unavoidable hazard or do you have some devilishly clever way of avoiding or circumventing it?

[Vangar]

Cooljerk, on Jul 25 2006, 11:54 PM, said:

Vangar, on Jul 25 2006, 04:51 AM, said:

I must say that ripple on a higher resolution then the original sprites looks very nice.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but that's actually a setting I can change. I can change the ammount of ripple.

It's worth noting that everything is scaled to fit the screen. My engine can handle real-time scaling and rotation pretty well. Each pixel you see on the screen is actually 4 pixels, which allows for me to do smoother pixel offsetting like you described.

I wasn't being sarcastic, it really does look nice.

[GameNerd Advance]

I'm not even going to attept to download it, since Rapidshare is utterly retarded.


It looks nice, though.

[Lostgame]

Mind if I do a Mac port, if it's already SDL?

[WiteoutKing]

Quickman, on Jul 25 2006, 09:02 AM, said:

I notice in that last screenshot the pink crystal has been cleaved by the ripple - is that an unavoidable hazard or do you have some devilishly clever way of avoiding or circumventing it?

If he had a certain number of lines from the surface of the water that is "anchored" to the top of the water, it would look a lot smoother. As in, the very top bits of water don't move, or barely do. Then, say, 10 pixels down it's more extensive, etc etc.

[Cooljerk]

WiteoutKing, on Jul 25 2006, 05:59 AM, said:

Quickman, on Jul 25 2006, 09:02 AM, said:

I notice in that last screenshot the pink crystal has been cleaved by the ripple - is that an unavoidable hazard or do you have some devilishly clever way of avoiding or circumventing it?

If he had a certain number of lines from the surface of the water that is "anchored" to the top of the water, it would look a lot smoother. As in, the very top bits of water don't move, or barely do. Then, say, 10 pixels down it's more extensive, etc etc.

I can actually do this, I've just been too lazy to have the translation always begin at the top.

Anywho, I feel so embarassed about how little is going on in the demo I posted that I threw in a small animated sprite of sonic running around to make it more interesting. I also included some more layers to be drawn, and each layer has a ripple effect drawn on them with different wave lengths and frequencies if you press the w key.

slightly updated demo

enjoy

EDIT: A couple of pictures in case people don't want to download it just to see things ripple and sonic run:

This post has been edited by Cooljerk: 25 July 2006 - 03:57 PM

[Cooljerk]

you know that visual trick they do at the end of Super metroid when you beat mother brain and her entire body becomes a glowing rainbow?

Yeah, my engine can now do that. Very trippy demo:

Trippy as hell

[Nomad]

That is awesome. I do say, though, that you should port it to xbox.

[WiteoutKing]

THE LONG AWAITED REMAKE OF SONIC PAYNT RETURNS AS...

Sonic Acyd.

[Zweih]

Fuck yes I'm downloading this shit.

[Caitlin]

I need to learn a real programming language, aside from 68K.

But first I need to finish a shit load of work on other stuffs. =P