Considerations on Sonic engine design

Some good ideas in there. Now you just have to prove you can do something with them. No big deal!

 

The reason people don't use the various available engines for the most part is because, quite bluntly, they're too lazy or unable to grasp the concept of any kind of scripting that isn't Game Maker or Multimedia Fusion. Not everything is entirely straightforward or self-evident, because that's really how game development works. It's expected that you know what you're doing; if you don't, then you need to learn how to do what you want to do. Since all of this is apparently easier with click-n'-play type programs, most people opt to use those instead of using an engine which may be a technically superior choice. It's about convenience.

How could this be rectified? I'm not sure. I guess what there needs to be to provide incentive for people to make games with a proper Sonic engine involve tons of tools and dumbed-down documentation, along with a fair bit of pre-created functions that can be modified slightly to create whatever kind of object people want in some sort of scripting language resembling that of the sort of scripting used in Game Maker and such. The problem here is that you very well may be sacrificing performance for convenience—is that something you're willing to do?

The other problem here I think has a lot to do with awareness. E02 is a fully developed engine entirely ready for use, but not a lot of people know a lot about it because Stealth doesn't exactly advertise it heavily. On the other hand, ProSonic and Retro Sonic are pretty well esteemed by the general public, but aren't exactly ready to have games developed with them yet. Retro Sonic has shown that a game can be successfully created by an external party using it without too much fuss (see: Sonic Nexus), but the tools needed aren't really public right now.

Honestly, I think the fact that there are so many different Sonic engines is ridiculous. There really should just be like one or two—E02 and Retro Sonic. One should be user-friendly, and one should be catered to the general-purpose programmer—the people who know what they're doing. I think this would be the fairest balance, but I'm probably being too narrow-minded here.

How do people really know what engine is best for them, though? Consider how easy it is to just pick up a disassembly and make your own levels in SonED2 compared to trying to create a game with, say, ProSonic or something. Do you really know where to start? Is there as much documentation available to use ProSonic to create that full game like there is with a disassembly and SonED2? This is why the choice generally seems pretty superior in that regard.

But, uh... yeah—I'm just sort of pessimistic about the number of engines popping up recently. I tried your engine test when you posted it in the IRC channel, and I had a good bit of fun with it. Do you really think you have what it takes to make people choose your engine over the dozens of alternatives, though? That's the question you should ask yourself before you decide to take this in any serious direction.

Hope this helps.

 

<!--quoteo(post=274101:date=Jan 29 2009, 09:00 AM:name=Rolken)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Rolken @ Jan 29 2009, 09:00 AM)

 

You kinda called me out, there. I didn't appreciate it.

That's an interesting link to use. The fact that they don't doesn't mean that they shouldn't, though I didn't actually mean that they had to read line-for-line every single text file before opening one of the scripts, and was actually attempting to say that the overviews are important to understand, and each of the files contains nothing but valuable information. Your opening statement was based entirely on the idea that something was fundamentally wrong with the way the existing engines functions just because "nobody is using them", which isn't even true in terms of RetroSonic and E02 when you consider RetroSonicXG, Sonic Nexus, Project Mettrix, and at the moment, Project Retro. The latter may not have quite as much substance yet, but the higher-ups have been pretty adamant about making use of it when the time comes. As for the rest, they are clear demonstrations of how solid the two engines are even now

You didn't mention "scripting", you mentioned object control, and I highlighted the relevant files. If you want strict "scripting", have a look at the files in green, which aren't specifically object-related, but are common to all scripting for the system. The file selected in blue is the one I thought was most relevant to what you were talking about, which is default movement control. The rest are about different aspects of the high degree of object control that exist. If you were talking more about the main settings, those are in "Object Def.txt". I don't know which one you opened, but most of them are about the hard-coded functions you need to reference for various reasons in the general settings, and the only one of them that starts to mention anything about scripted functions (this is all "scripting") would be, again, "Object Def.txt", which makes reference to the scripted control function listings and ID settings. If you want to know more about writing scripted functions, those are in the "funcs.txt", highlighted in green, and folder "functions" contains the documentation for each type of command and it's parameters, which are common to all control functions for every aspect of a game. There are also the scripts that drive "Project Mettrix", which are where you get into E02 having anything to do with a Sonic game in the first place, and which are entirely unobfuscated text, and can be freely modified from any point. It's not like you have to start "from scratch" at all. If you want to do something to it, look at the relevant documentation, open up the appropriate script file, and have at it. Copy files between folders, change names as appropriate, and build off them if necessary - That's what I do. Everything is laid out in each of the documents as thoroughly as possible, and being able to also look at it in practice, I have a very hard time finding that to be anything of any real "difficulty"

Level layout editing/ripping, object layout and property manipulation, and object graphic property manipulation tools are built-in. I don't believe my system of mathematics qualifies that as "zero". The only other necessary tools are a graphic editor, a text editor, and whatever you use to make sound.

Considering what I've just said, I think we have very different definitions of the word "chore". If you can build something where you just click a button and it makes a brand-spanking-new-game for you, then I'll be impressed and saddened all at the same time. You're not going to accomplish anything good without a fair amount of work, ever. There is nothing difficult to understand about my script system and editors whatsoever, and if copy/pasting a command from one place it already appears to another new location and replacing it's parameters to build a function that can potentially do pretty much anything to the game that you want is your idea of a "chore", then I find you to be pretty pathetic, and I wonder why you're even looking into building something like this in the first place.

And good that it is; I couldn't bear to look at it after everyone else got finished mangling it

That's a really stupid way to look at it. They're lazy, yeah. Most humans are fucking lazy pathetic pieces of shit, and personally, I don't find it appropriate to cater to and perpetuate that lifestyle. I find the people who practice it utterly repulsive, and I find the people that understand and allow it to be even worse. I'm not about to compromise the functionality of my product just because most people are too retarded to live their own lives without clicking a button in "Adobe GetUpandGoToWork"

I don't recall making a significant case out of the generality of E02 going unused. The shitstorm you linked was entirely based on the fact that someone in specific couldn't see what was right in front of their eyes by design of their own predecessors, and complained as if it weren't there. Not only that, I was told to present. I don't see where you're getting this business of basically attempting to call me a hypocrite, when I'm perfectly happy knowing that my system isn't being used to create a million tiny little pathetic games by people who wonder who that creepy idiot that always stares at them through the mirror is. That's what happened to hacks, and one of the reasons I'm ashamed of the original SonED. Fucking quick-fix society is dilluting everything. "Everyone's an artist"... I disagree. It takes skill to do anything decent and worthwhile, and rather than have everyone in the world sitting around with bucked teeth showing off the latest thing they pulled out of their ass all by themselves, maybe they ought to find themselves a group of people with other skills to balance with their own and create something nice instead of half-assing everything and bogging down the internet with sub-sub-par crap. If they can't do any of that at all, their time is better spent doing something other than taking up valuable real-estate where people who can properly implement those ideas are actually trying to do so at a rate befitting a real quality product. I think Project Retro would be a relatively appropriate thing to mention again at this point

 

Percieved flexibility is the only problem imo with the current engines, of course that applies for rom hacks too. With a tool like MMF equipped with something like Sonic Worlds, which creates a pretty damn accurate replication of the Sonic engine, developers can literally do whatever they want with it, and express themselves in unique ways. (See: Mecha Madness)

I will go with the notion, I don't understand why people here don't learn to use E02. It's much more flexible than freaking rom hacking, can provide room for creativity, and works with many of the established tools you've already learned to love. I know SR is generally allergic to creative expression, but that doesn't mean every freaking hack\game\etc here has to be "Sonic 4".

 

I thought Pro Sonic and Retro Sonic would be more flexible though?

I tried the demo on the E02 engine and the graphics seem to...I dunno, lack? Then again, I haven't tried the new demo so...

If it were possible to script custom bosses easier though, then perhaps people would jump on the engines more, as that seems to be a hot topic in hacking now a days..

 

Let's try approaching this discussion from a completely different angle:

Hey, Stealth! Say I'm your typical aspiring potential fangame developer, who has some great ideas and a moderate degree of skill in the way of art and and design, but otherwise has absolutely no experience with coding outside of making a basic calculator using Visual Basic in my high school Programming 1 course. Would it really be enough for me to peruse the documentation included with E02 to get started? If not, where do I even begin? What concepts would I need to be familiar with, mathematical or otherwise?

In these circumstances, it isn't really a matter of laziness so much as complete unfamiliarity, and if you're dead set on catering exclusively to the hardcore programmer crowd, it'd at least be extraordinarily generous of you to indicate how someone like me could acquire the skills necessary to work with the engine.

 

I'm not Stealth, but the first solution that comes to mind is "find a programmer and work with him". I mean, it's not like a programmer by himself would be able to fare any better in any sort of game development than an artist and designer by himself. Otherwise I would actually have completed one of the ten million game projects I started on my own.

 

Next solution, please!

 

Try harder?

 

Wait, wouldn't it be better to write an engine for Windows/Mac enviroments instead of the DOS enviroment? Hardly anyone these days uses PCs with DOS on them, not to mention that DOS graphics are inferior.


EDIT: Changed context. My ignorance was showing there for a minute.

 

What's being written for DOS, exactly? E02 has a DOS port, certainly, but it's existed for years; not only that, but the Windows version works just fine as well. Also, while DOS graphics may not have the same technical possibilities as Win32 applications, the code's efficiently doesn't really change from DOS to Win32—that depends entirely on the skill of the program's author.

Actually, you could probably argue DOS applications are more efficient than Win32 applications—they take far less API programming and have little-to-no dependency on dozens of external libraries. Since a Sonic engine is perfectly capable if being made under a DOS environment without any trouble—hell, it ran just fine on the Mega Drive, which is far less capable—it would actually be more technically efficient coded for DOS than for Windows!

The More You Know!™

 

Oh I see, I was just thinking about many DOS applications that don't run on Windows XP/Vista enviroments. But yeah from my experience, E02 isn't really user friendly, but w/e.

 

When it comes to gaming, DOS programs can be ARE far superior to Windows programs, because of direct hardware access and all of that.
The problem with DOS programs nowadays is that they have to be emulated, by Windows itself, dosbox, or a vmware of some sort, resulting in an actual heavy loss of performance.
But yeah, if I have to work with graphics, I find myself much more comfortable when I work in DOS.

 

You're completely missing the point. The question was an advocative one, posed with the intent of gauging exactly what it would take for a complete beginner to even begin to put E02 to good use, and how much of the fanbase is to be alienated. Not only is "Try harder" a thoroughly pointless and unproductive response, but it doesn't even suit the goddamned context of the question. Thanks anyway, but mabye you should let Stealth handle this!

 

Ritz what's with all the agression dude? So he misunderstood your context, no need to fly off the handle.

Calm down and have a glass of Vernors or something dawg.