How would you implement Chaotix's rubber band and carry mechanics into a Classic Sonic game?

I'm one of those weirdos that actually likes Chaotix as-is, but I see two main problems with it.

• It doesn't do much with the rubber band mechanic other than the slingshotting, and occasionally making you throw you partner at bosses, to get up higher, or whatever.
• Large levels sparsely populated with enemies, etc. You do a lot of running up/around quarter pipes after having been launched by a slingshot, and... not a whole lot else unique to this game.

So I'd, unpopular opinion, make the rubber band mandatory and permanent as it currently exists, but spend more time designing gimmicks and bosses centered around it. I feel like because of the rubber band's lack of interesting use, it ends up feeling like a mediocre Sonic game with the rubber band shoehorned in, and so you feel annoyed when you actually have to use it, it gets in the way of your Sonic game. The tricky part would be doing so while keeping the speed aspect of Sonic gameplay, and also tutorializing its use in a non-annoying way. Botanic Base boss is a good example because it does something unique with the rubber band, I like it, but I could definitely see people being annoyed with it because you're literally being held in place, going against the speed aspect.

Maybe also focus more on the unique abilities that characters have, maybe also give them more unique attributes, and allow them to be selectable not at random. I definitely wouldn't include heavy and bomb. Every character has crazy mobility like dashing or climbing walls, but IIRC you're never required to use these abilities.

 

I'd introduce the mechanic into the retro engine on top of more traditional S2/Mania style physics, but also customize the levels so you can play them without it if one prefers. My current retro sonic dream is still to see chaotix levels ported into the retro engine fully, with tweaks to make this possible. It's clear SEGA will never do this themselves, so it'd have to be a fan project, and it would take a lot of work.



Again, this mod got us part of the way there (one level for each major stage!), but no rubber band physics and no chaotix exclusive characters yet. The mod was later abandoned completely.



There was also a partial attempt to implement Charmy/Vector/Espio into Mania's engine, but it's just a sprite swap (albeit a very well made one). Nothing as impressive as the SRB2 Chaotix mod which developed full gameplay styles for each character in 3D.



Obviously none of these use the original rubber band mechanics, but that just shows how poorly understood/disliked the mechanic is by many. Personally? While I obviously don't prefer it over the classic gameplay, I find it interesting in its own right once you master it. Speedrunning with it is very fun, and for that reason I wish modern engines would try using it at least once.

 

you're the best person



I played a lot of Chaotix for that topic and I don't strictly think the combi-ring is at fault, it's more that the game doesn't know what to do with it. Which means you're navigating single-player levels with two characters (save for the occasional switch and/or lift). There's also only one(?) boss that gives a damn about the tether (Botanic Base) - the rest could be copy-pasted into a standard Sonic game without issue.

There's also a clear hierarchy with the characters. If you want to win, pick Charmy. If you don't want to win, have Heavy or Bomb as a partner... and don't pick Charmy. I think the original Sonic/Tails dynamic (without special powers) was probably a better call - the game is less dull if you purposely gimp yourself by playing as Mighty or something, but you're stillre putting yourself through 3498023984320 acts of essentially the same thing on a loop, just slower than with Charmy.

 

I really liked Encore’s partner mode.

It’s makes Sonic more accessible for beginners, as if you take damage without rings, you just lose a partner, which gives you more chances to take hits before dying.

It works so much better than lives or coins (Coins are a nice idea, but they become redundant once you unlock everything and beat the special stages).

Having a partner also makes playing less lonely!

They could probably enhance it by having more routes that only certain partners can access. And also having special team moves which you can only produce with certain pairings.

I'd also appreciate it if you could use the shoulder buttons to switch between partners on your team, rather than having to wait for the current partner to die before another one takes his place.

So, to answer the opening question: I’d use the partner system in place of the rubber band mechanics.
The rubber band mechanics are confusing and frustrating. And although they become fun when you learn them, they don’t add anything to the gameplay.
Whereas Mania’s encore mode brings the best aspects of Chaotix's use of dual characters, without the frustration.

Sega did a good job of making drop dash a default feature in all new and past classic Sonic games. I wish they had done with the partner mode (and elemental shields). I’d have loved to play Origins with a Sonic & Amy pairing!

 

Well, I'd definitely make it so there's less of a rubber band effect when a character is airborne. As someone who likes Chaotix, jumping on a spring does not need to be as awkward as it is. I'd also design the levels to be more oriented around solving puzzles with the combi-ring. I have a bunch of combi-ring-related game design sketches lying around somewhere. The ideas in these sketches range from using your partner as a grappling hook to using your partner to make a magic wand!

 

You could argue that because the "tech" originated on the Mega Drive, it's not a great 32X demo


Although the Special Stages are the most "32X" thing ever made. Colourful, confusing and clunky while promising true real time 3D - they're not remotely good enough by 2024 standards, but it makes a nice change of pace from Sonic 1 or Sonic 2-style special stages that keep showing up.

 

The main problem with chaotix is the bizarre level design. I don't just mean how the levels are vertical and really have no set paths or how they're devoid of meaningful springs or half pipes or loops or any of that. What I mean more is how so much of the game is the same acts copied and pasted and changed slightly, when the base act they started from was never much fun to begin with. To your point that the game doesn't do much with the rubber band mechanic, that's because most of the game is just the same acts done over and over again. I feel like that's why they went with the roulette wheel, because it'd become much more noticable if you played every act in order, back to back, how much of the game is copy and pasted. Some real, actual level design built around more than just slingshotting would do wonders for Chaotix. The way individual acts in Chaotix works reminds me of Sonic CD's time travel mechanics, where each time zone is clearly just a slight edit of the present time zone. In KC, it feels like for the vast majority of the acts, they were made just like that, as slight edits. I honestly have no idea what they were going for with KC's level design and progression, it makes very little sense. Like take Speed Slider, it's all the same basic map with the roller coaster dip on the left hand side of the stage that runs diagonally across the whole zone. It's there in each act, they just progressively add more and more redundant adjacent platforms surrounding the main coaster, without real rhyme or reason. Sometimes a zone will have 2 different base "acts," like Botanic Base, where acts 1 and 2 seem like edits of each other, then acts 3, 4, and 5 seem like edits of each other. Sometimes all the zones in an act will feel like edits of each other, like Techno Tower. Sometimes, none of the acts will feel similar, like Isolated island. But the vast majority of acts in the game, you can point to another act somewhere that used it as a template or starting point.

Rebuilding Chaotix to work well would basically mean starting over from scratch for everything, except maybe the art and music. You'd need to realistically redo every single act, from top to bottom. Probably ditch the weird random level progression, so you can build in a ramping difficulty. Maybe do something interesting with the time of day mechanic, like similar to what sonic cd did with time zones? You'd need to rethink what you could do with the rubber band mechanic, and that would probably come down to reworking the physics so they behave more like Sonic. Apparently part of the reason loops never happened is partners get mixed up when planes switch. I think a big boost would be if you could "break" the link if you get pulled too far. Make it like how tails worked in the original sonic 2, he could get lost for moments then come back to you. The game already has a recall button, but it's kind of useless as-is. If you could break the link at times and become separated from your partner, it'd allow for much more leeway with how physics and plane switching works.

More than just fixing the rubber bands, I think Chaotix would do well to let you freely switch between the two partners you have, and also give them more unique abilities that would let them reach different paths in a level. Kind of like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, where Knuckles abilities naturally lead to different paths. If the individual acts had separate paths for every character, then choosing which two characters you partnered with would drastically change your options as you went through a zone. Depending on which two characters you have, and which of the two you have currently selected as player one, a single zone could branch into dozens of alternate paths. This would make replaying the stages as multiple different combinations of characters more enjoyable, as every run through a zone could feel different.

Chaotix has a lot of ideas, but the ideas it has all lack substance. Fleshing out any singular idea in the game would mean deep top to bottom reworking, otherwise it'll feel suplurfluous and out of place. FWIW I feel like NiGHTS into Dreams has a lot of the same problems Chaotix has regarding these kinds of features. There are so many bizarre and weird and one-off gimmicks in NiGHTS that people never mess with and have never been documented. There are entire features of NiGHTS into Dreams that are being discovered as we speak through ghidra hacking. Things like the A-life system in NiGHTS: it's so much deeper than you'd expect, because the game never discusses or brings to your attention how it all works or even puts it in your face. It's just this super deep thing far off in the background that 99% of players would never even notice, let alone interact with.

 

I would love to revisit Knuckles' Chaotix to see if its problems stem from a skill issue on the players part or bad design.

I can't for the life of me remember when was the last time I played Knuckles' Chaotix, but I recently played through this game called Umihara Kawase in which you fling yourself around with the help of a stretchy fishing line. Very difficult, I must say, but teaches its rubber band mechanic quite well. That said, coming from the background of someone who grew up with Sonic, it was not easy to wrap my head around how to play this kind of game effectively.

The levels in Umihara Kawase are quite short. I can totally see a Knuckles' Chaotix mode in which the player must climb to the top of a level by utilizing the rubber band gimmick, either as an extra that can be accessed from the menu, or as a bonus stage or even boss fight.

Edit: Remember the vines in Mushroom Hill? Maybe change them so they work like a Chaotix-like stage gimmick.

 

A tech demo demonstrates the features of a console and Chaotix demonstrates all of the capabilities of the 32X, the high color count, sprite scaling and stretching (Oddly no rotation, but we take what we can get), the 4 PWM channels, and primitive 3D as you mentioned. It's a good tech demo, just not a good game.

 

I think that Chaotix's special stages are in some ways better than Sonic 2's because you can see the rings coming or bounce-off bumpers to try moving in a certain direction again. Maybe it's an unpopular opinion. Visually, they're clunky by today's standards, but I'd say they're the most fun I've had in Sonic special stages barring Sonic CD's and Sonic 3&K's.

As for the rubber band, I would've used it not as a tether with any game physics, but rather as a one-button + d-pad function to launch the other player in a specific direction instantly — think like Ristar's or the werehog's grab mechanic, except you're specifying the launch direction instead of a direct target. There would be no gravity or arc to it, just a direction and a max distance from the player. The standard gameplay is too fast-paced to wait for winding-up the tether for a launch or dealing with being dragged along with the tether. (I think that was the main problem. The main player shouldn't be dragged along instantly.)

In other words, think of it as a javelin. Player 2 lands somewhere, player 1 can move to wherever player 2 is or call them back.

Alternatively, maybe it would make sense to treat this as something like in Ristar or Sonic Unleashed in which you can only target specific things (ledges, walls, handles, enemies). That would make it easier to design levels with healthy limits to the player's movement.

 

Eh.....um....maybe make it a stage-specific gimmick? I do not know.

 

Also, I'd restrict Charmy to, like, a cheat mode or a debug mode or something, because Charmy seriously breaks the game. And trying to design things in a way that works with both Charmy AND classic sonic gameplay results in the super bland level design of Chaotix.

 

For the life of me I don't really understand why the rubber band mechanic is so important to Knuckles Chaotix, to the point it's basically all you need to finish some levels, but also so undermined. in the game. Slingshotting in all of its forms is central to gameplay, especially good play, but is so awkward to use-- it makes the game very aerial, but the level structures stop you on your tracks and force you to press switches all too often. There are so many strange items and different abilities that interact with the mechanic differently that it becomes an extremely complicated game. I'd really like to simplify it by making switching between characters more important than holding your partner, making them hold in place or whatever. So I don't see the point of carry mechanics.

If you have regular rubber band physics, but the point is to switch characters so you can use their abilities midair from a better position, you have a simpler game on your hands. We have an example of a game that uses this concept in Triple Trouble 16-Bit, and reacting quickly to switch can make you land on paths you normally couldn't orr save you from getting hit.

I understand levels being more vertical than horizontal, but I'd be willing to risk allowing 5 second speedruns if it meant the average experience being more pleasant in a horizontal, backtrackable level without doors or levers, with a lot of overhead for shooting yourself up and doing tricks by switching characters midair and using their abilities. Charmy would need an even more severe rework, but I think him being too light and rendering the rubber band less effective could work? Dunno. Might make it more complicated than it needs to be.

 

Anyone here know about Open Sonic? It was an old fangame/framework all about swapping between characters to solve puzzles, all while featuring reasonably accurate Classic Sonic gameplay. Something along those lines would work reasonably well with the Bound Ring mechanic.

And as much as I do not like that game, Advance 3's tag team mechanics could be a solution to Charmy's overpoweredness as well as Heavy and Bomb's uselessness. As in, what if Charmy's flight was severely nerfed when bound to any other character, but pairing him with the lightweight but extremely volatile Bomb grants him unlimited flight? That would be a great risk/reward system. And as far as Heavy goes, pairing him with "stronger" characters like Mighty or Knuckles should grant the latter two the ability to swing the former around like a sledgehammer, while pairing him with lighter characters such as Espio or Vector should grant you potential to gain more momentum, and thus higher top speeds.

And all other character pairings should have unique advantages and handicaps too, resulting in a wide variety of possible playstyles. And this is also a great excuse to make the excessively large levels more open and varied, with secrets and routes only accessible with certain pairings.

This reply turned into one about fixing Chaotix rather than one about implementing its mechanics into other Classic Sonic games, but oh well.

 

Charmy could've been restricted to being a partner or power-up with the same functionality as Cheese the Chao in Sonic Advance 2.

 

Mild tangent unrelated to 'fixing' Chaotix's rubber-band gameplay mechanic, but this aspect of the game bothers me quite a bit the more I look at it. It feels like the randomized partner aspect of the game exists solely to justify Heavy and Bomb's inclusion as 'Gotcha!' characters. Beyond that, it very weirdly clashes with the game's ability to choose your desired playable character. It's just weird the game has this half-randomized aspect to it at all. A newcomer is also a fair bit more likely to screw up the roulette first go-around, so the mechanic just...weirdly punishes newcomers with a character that makes getting through an Act needlessly harder.

Even stranger is that the game teases a more interesting form of progression initially. When you start the game, you're immediately thrown into Isolated Island with Knuckles as your playable character, and you end up rescuing Espio. There's no character select screen initially. If you haven't read the manual, then it almost seems like the game might follow a format where you have to rescue the other characters you saw on the title screen as Knuckles before you can play as them or let them tag along.

This actually would've been really cool and justified the game's design choice where you can technically visit whatever attraction you want after the tutorial is cleared. You start out with only Knuckles and Espio and can switch up the order of who's the leader and who's the partner, but to get other combinations you have to save the other characters. The game actually has enough playable characters where you could've shoved in one playable character to 'save' per Attraction (assuming you include Bomb and Heavy):




...The game doesn't do this though. As soon as you clear Isolated Island, you have full access to whatever non-booby trap character you like with no strings attached...Why? The conspiracy part of my brain makes me think something like this was initially intended and might have made the roulette system less harsh on newcomers (the player would only have one choice for a partner so you literally can't screw it up), with it getting nastier near the end of the game (now you have the booby-trap characters to worry about or a partner you aren't as skilled with).

So uh, my ideal Chaotix would definitely change this so you had to save your partner characters ala Espio before they were available instead of having them all at the start (and likely junk the roulette system altogether).

 

Rotation is more complex than scaling. Scaling can be implemented by just skipping or repeating pixels. Rotation, you need to use sine and cosine to create a path in which the pixels are shifted. The way sprites are stored would make rotation a pain to implement. Its format was designed to avoid storing as much redundant unused pixels as they can by basically only storing the the rows that actually have pixels, and each row only contains the pixels they contain, including transparent pixels *inbetween* those pixels, but not outside.

Two methods of rotation come to mind: one where you trace the rotation across the screen, and one that's like how the Sega CD handles it by tracing the rotation across the sprite itself. The problem with the first method is that the area covered on the screen isn't guaranteed to not have gap pixels due to precision issues. This website shows that:

Spoiler

So, the second option is preferable, since the direction of the actual drawing to the frame buffer remains a perfect square, while it traces the source image for pixels to plot:

Spoiler

Again though, this would be tricky to implement with the Chaotix sprite format, because you don't have a nice 2D array of pixels to trace a path on. You'd have to figure out which pixel to obtain based on the limited row and pixel data provided by the sprite. The site I mentioned talks about using shearing to rotate, but I haven't looked too deep into it, but having to get the reciprocal of the cosine of the angle to the power of the 2 for vertical shearing and having to perform a downscale after sounds like a bit of an expensive operation (though the 1/cos^2(a) operation could be turned into a lookup table, no doubt), and more than likely would require some space in SDRAM to create the sheared sprite before plotting it onto the frame buffer, and that's not accounting scaling being added to the mix. Scaling with the 2nd method would still be easy, as you can still use the skipping/repeating of pixels as the image is scanned.