Hello there, fellow Sonic Retro friends, let's clarify about this so far:
First, hope you all enjoyed the test demo. I gotta thank you for all for the compliments and the constructive criticism, specially for those who offered help
(but please, refrain for making the "best than Sawnik Team" comments for now, though, we're nowhere near completion yet.) Second, let me explain what's this all about.
The goal of the tech demo is to show / do a field test our project engine. We're going for the standard classic formula, old-school gameplay style adapted to the extra third dimension. This means we're going to try to emphatise of control, exploration and gimmicks interaction, moreover than just linear path levels and insane speed (we all know classic Sonic only had a few high speed moments, it focused on gameplay and exploration through the multiple paths to mazeish-styled levels).
When we finally ended up deciding to use Blitz 3D (and I even told you this, even though you seem to have omitted that), it was because we wanted
things to get done. The people working on this project already know the story, aiming too high will produce an even more higher fall. Creating a new engine would require a lot of time and effort just to reinvent the wheel to the point it would probably
never lead anywhere. If there's an engine available that does
what we want and
how we want, there's no real point on going through the process of:
- Developing our own game engine (along with 3D graphics engine, collision, scenegraph management, etc...)
- Learning a new engine just to do fancy graphics, having to study how our current method would fit into it and check out if it's even possible to do it as easily as we do now.
Blitz3D (even though using an outdated graphics engine and it's Windows only) has clearly proved to be flexible enough to fullfill out goals. We don't need fancy shadows or shaders (heck, mostly of what any of the previous-gen games did in terms of graphics, we're able to do too with fixed pipeline, water refraction and reflection too (properly once we get the new system to work)). We're not even aiming to produce an AAA quality game (unless really good 3d modellers/designers just pop out, out of nowhere, wich possibilities of that happenins are near to 0) so it's safe to say we're good with it. I won't negate that Blitz3D doesn't have inconvenients though (like the ones quoted above), but it also provides some pros like being quite compatible with nearly almost every graphics card out there, works decently on wine (if linux users want to give it a try) and has good perfomance overall (taking in account there's no spatial culling method implemented).
Sik, your behaviour towards the engine test and anything we've done so far has been keeping annoyed me to no end, culminating with your posts. If you want to make your own engine, good for you, go ahead, I'll look forward for it, but you need to
stop being so arrogant. We want things to get done, so we've decided this was the best method to achieve that goal. Programmers should work with what they feel the most comfortable with, specially when it's a project along the lines of a fangame. Due this, lazyness isn't exactly what justifies the usage of Blitz 3D, keep that in mind.
On another order of things, since it's a technical demo some things need to be worked out (and eventually will be. Control is experimental in both mouse look and gamepad. An implementation for reading input schemes through an external file has been currently added, so you guys can create your very own schemes. Mark has been working on objects and I'm mainly developing the backend framework, trying to get a more solid way to manage Sonic's motion, finishing Sonic object actions and adapting Mark changes to engine's code style (even though he's already been doing quite cool work). So yes, this is a very WIP project yet.
We'll eventually release the source code (once we reach the first milestone), so anyone who wants to contribute is free to do so, make a game off this and even work on new features to be added into the main trunk (as long as it fits the project's coding style and goals). If you want to give a try with level designing for now for the game, it's as easy as getting any tool that features B3D export (such as 3D Studio Max, DeleD or Leadwerks' 3D World Studio), adding the geometry you want and load it on the "Stage.xml" located at the stage folder.
So... have fun editing if you're going to try that out! Remember to post pictures of what you do
muteKi 
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