Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: NickonAquaMagna - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Well, here goes. Behold, the next Sonic Exodus trailer.



Progress on building the island is kinda slow, but we have most of it planned out, including caves, forested areas, and a mountain with a lighthouse at the top. As you can see, there is a HUGE focus on using Sonic's ability to roll to get around, and not just running. With Xalse's permission, we're aiming to release this new Sonic model (once Plum returns from his trip to Italy and finishes the remaining animations) for Sonic GDK/UDK/whatever users to download for their own fan projects. We still have a few kinks to work out of the enemies and how they attack, but hey, at least we got them to work in game.

At some point in the next few months, we'll also be holding a music contest for people up for the challenge of getting their music featured in Sonic Exodus.

So yeah, there's that. This is a pretty big day for us.

Now I'm just waiting for that blasted thumbnail to appear in the link. Ugh.

Funny thing is, we DO plan all of these areas ahead of time. That's how this whole thing started. I drew a few maps, someone was impresed by them, and we started making a 3D version of those area.s since then, I've drawn more maps, and many of the later areas have been (mostly) planned out. I just haven't made a lot of these maps public yet, and progress on recreating those routes in game is admittedly progressing pretty slowly.

The biggest hurdle is that I have a very limited staff, all of whom excel at very specific things. And sometimes, life gets in the way of their work. College, things like that. As it is, two of those guys are pretty much done with the project, and won't be doing much more in the foreseeable future... so now it's just me drawing the maps, and SonicSuperDash building the island. And I usually give him a little wiggle room to add his own stuff to these areas, making them bigger and filled with more... stuff. I really like some of his designs he's added.

But in terms of textures and modeling an' whatnot... we've gotta work with what we've got. Our only chance at making more new assets is to attract somebody else who excels in that area. Otherwise, all we can really do is add more clay onto the pile.

We have spiced the island up a little more than early on, though. There's a wider variety of trees, flowers, little touches like still-lit torches, things like that.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that the last thing I want is for this to feel like a "level." I want it to feel like a world, hence the very minimal use of things like floating block platforms an' whatnot. If that ends up making it more bland as a game, then... well, maybe it was a bad idea to even attempt that kind of approach. I just can't stand how artificial and perfectly crafted a lot of levels and places in recent Sonic games are. They're overly engineered and planned, too... polished to really feel alive, at least in my opinion. Something I've always liked about the classics, even the most meticulously crafted of them all, Sonic 3K, is that Sonic's level design can get a little messy. For some reason, those imperfections just make it feel more real to me, like a world that wasn't crafted FOR me to run through it, but one I just happen to be in. Maybe we've overdone it.

The bareness of this island is VERY intentional. This place was attacked by Robotnik, like, a day before Sonic arrived, and all the inhabitants have been carted away to concentration camps to be roboticized. Sonic essentially MISSED the party. There may be a few stragglers here and there, but Sonic's going to have to catch up to Eggman to really know what's going on.

Anyway, we know the backyard isn't a place most players are going to be drawn to, so we left it off to the side, out of the way. Most players are just going to run along the beach until the reach the shallows and proceed from there, or investigate the ruined houses (which will we will spice up before we're done with this, provided we can find some new talent with time on their hands) and move on to the cliffs an' whatnot from there.

As big as the island may seem, the areas we have planned out (and yet to build) amount to the usual three or four routes. That's it. It's just that they'll intersect so frequently, the player can go whichever direction is most appealing to them until all paths converge at the top of the mountain at the other end of the island.

Anyway... there isn't much more I can say that wouldn't just be repeating myself. Sonic Exodus isn't all that. We get it. We're just getting by with what we've got to work with. I appreciate your concerns, but there's only so much we CAN do at the moment. If you want to help, see if you know anybody who'd be interested in seeing some of their work in this game, or if they think they can do something better than we are. But as for enemies and little things like that... well, that's what tomorrow's reveal is for.





I should also note that we have ruins, caves, a swamp, and a forest planned for future areas. The island simply starts slow, and gets more hazardous the further along you go. Early places like the backyard are the most untouched by Eggman's forces, and that's why they're the most... well, like an open field you might see in a real place. It gets more intense the closer you get to Eggman at the other side of the island. Even that aside, though... right now, we're just focusing on BUILDING the island. We'll improve whatever assets we can once we have an idea of how the island is going to shape up and we can shift our focus to that. With our limited staff, it's taking a while as is.

Pulse0, on 22 June 2015 - 08:29 AM, said:

Sorry, man. It just depends on what you're looking for. Maybe our idea of how Sonic should move in 3D and how the world should be built around him are completely different.

If you're talking about the level design being too "all over the place," don't worry about that. The open area at the beginning, "the backyard" is just thrown in there for new players to get the hang of the controls in a safe space, a playground of sorts. It's essentially a tutorial area inside what is otherwise going to be treated as a normal Sonic stage. The rest of the level just has you trekking along the island that is much longer from front to back than it is wide. In fact, if we pull it off right, you should be able to see the level's end point from the beginning of the stage. A mountaintop with a ruined lighthouse.

Still, if you're not into this sort of open level design, you're probably going to be disappointed by the next trailer.

Just posting ahead of time to let you guys know...

Get hyped. Something big is coming to Exodus tomorrow.

I'm working on the next trailer right now, and while I won't be making it public until tomorrow, I should have it finished and online at some point today. So I can post if here, if you really want to see it ahead of time. I'm still on the fence about it, though. I don't want anyone sharing it and leaking it elsewhere.

Every time there's another kickstarter, it feels so good to be able to prove to the big boys that YES, games like this DO make money.