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Need Advice for my Fangame

Discussion in 'Fangaming Discussion' started by Aquillis, Aug 31, 2022.

  1. Aquillis

    Aquillis

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    Hello! I'm Aquillis! Like I said in my Validation thread, I'm mainly on this website to get your guy's advice as to how to tackle my fangame in general.

    My idea of this fangame... can be summed up as 'Sonic the Hedgehog meets H.P. Lovecraft, that is if the beings in H. P. Lovecraft weren't things that can't be comprehended'. I plan on setting the game on the same location that Forces itself was set on, like, six months after the war. I plan on going with a Sonic Adventure Style for my game - mainly, in the form of the characters having their own playstyle differences (Both Sonic and Knuckles, for example, have their playstyles from SA1) while also adding a new flair to a sect of characters (Tails would have the run n' Gun aspects of SA2, but instead of him being in a Mech, it'll be his Megaman Blaster from Battle as well as a similar playstyle of SA1) and giving a new character an old playstyle (One of the characters I have planned for this game uses Tails' old playstyle from SA1).

    I also plan on making the game either SA1 art style, where the characters are their actual heights and whatnot, or the Sonic Jam art style, in which every character would be chibified een more than they already are.

    Now, my biggest question to you guys is this - how do I tackle something like this? Should I take apart Sonic Adventure's coding that I have from Steam to learn how to make the programming for the characters work?
     
  2. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    I don't know enough about game making to properly answer you, but we'll see if I got right what you're saying (the important part for my reply, at least) and then give you the best answer I can, which may be stupid for someone with actual knowledge.

    So you start taking about game concept, plot, playstyle, art... But you ask about checking out the code of one of the games in your library to learn about a specific part of it? Either I got this wrong, or you seem a bit lost in more than a way.

    First of all... Are you gonna use an existing fan engine or do your own thing? Do you know how to develop or customize said engine so it fits your project? I'll assume 'yes' since you're already thinking about importing code from a different game; if the answer is 'no', though, you may be trying to run before learning to walk. Start small, you'll have time to think big later. I assumed 'yes?, anyway, so the next question is: do you really know how to import the code from that steam game? You may find it easier to do guesswork and tweak your own code, though, of course, none of this choices is a small feat, I assume. Unless you have the actual code, in that case you might try.

    From here on, whatever you have to do or how much work you have already done or can borrow, it won't be nothing compared to all the things you want to put into that project: multiple character playstyles, blending the art of furry cartoons and eldritch horrors, writing a story that handles them well... I hope you have a team, because it's already hard to tackle classic 2D fangames alone, so going adventure 3D will be a nightmare unless you're the most talented and efficient person around and can do all of that without help.

    So, for now, my advices have been to start small before thinking big, and to get a team for this task. I may have exaggerated at the end of the previous paragraph, since LakeFeperd has already released Sparks 2 and 3 on his own (and 1, but that's 2D), so my next advice would be: if you're gonna sacrifice yourself to get a game out on your own, maybe you should try making your own thing instead of a fangame. I know I'm digressing, but I don't think saying this is out of place either.

    Back to what I see, your post doesn't give me enough info about how developed are your concepts or which skills do you already have, so not just me, but a lot of people will need more details to get you in the right direction or tell you if what you want to do is feasible. I can tell you right now with what I know that, if you're bringing the Lovecraftian mythos to the table, the style shouldn't be cute and cuddly. Have you watched "Scooby-Doo: Mysteries Incorporated"? That's a Scooby-Doo show with an ongoing plot that ends up going Cthulhu-esque, and the "skills" each character has are even overdefined (not exactly Sonic skillsets, but my help). Might give you clues in how to approach this without going wild on tentacles and sanity loss, which is what one could expect from Lovecraft. Overall, you should know exactly what you want to do before actually doing it, or you may find yourself redoing parts of your work and losing time guessing how what you're doing really fits in what you want to do.

    I think that's all I can say, feel free to call me out if I talked out of my ass or said anything rude or condescending, as my intent is to help, not to offend you. Hope what I said is useful to you.
     
  3. Aquillis

    Aquillis

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    Nah, it's fine! I tend to have a bad habit of being vague, so I understand the confusion.

    I mentioned wanting to take apart Adventure to analyze it because - well, I have no knowledge on how it works beyond 'go zoom zoom'. (I know, that was a bit too rudamentary, but that's basically the span of my knowledge). I actually don't know any fangame engine that could help, which is why I'm asking you guys for advice on how to work on this project. I have some experience in Blender and Unity, though I've never actually released anything from those programs, and it's been a long while since I actually worked on any coding project to completion. I might eventually plan on doing my own guesswork, since I don't know how to decompile a Steam game. I just have the fullest suspicion that I might end up having it break under my own ideas, however, so maybe the idea of figuring out how to decompile Sonic Adventure would be a nice start.

    I was hoping that I could get people interested in undertaking a project like this. I know it's a TON of work to make a game like this, and I've already taken steps to limit how much I need to get done (I.E. Use Sonic as the baseline for the other characters, and change their speeds once I implement them fully into the game). But I know that a project like this will take too much for a single person to get going on, but I'm unsure which place to go to get help for this project beyond Retro itself - the place where a load of Sonic Fangame makers come from. I have more skills in drawing and making models than I do in writing, so I know I would need a competent writer to help me set up the story for the game. I also know I have the art skills to make either the characters super chibifield or a more modern take on Adventure's artstyle if I need to, as well as make the Eldritch monsters I need to create, making them fit into the Sonic series. Thing is, beyond that, most of my skills are either 'I can work on this, but my focus drifts too easily' or 'I'm highly sure I'll screw something up if I try it'. Which is why I had came to you guys to help me with this project - even if you're not that knowledgeable in the whole 'how to make a fangame' side of things, you've helped ground me on some ideas I need to place onto this project.
     
  4. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    Well, first of all: you can't ask for team members here on Retro, you gotta do that the hard way and show a bit of your own work to maybe attract someone's attention so they offer themselves to work with you, I know, it sucks, but there's a lot of wishful thinking out there where people think they'll do a game or hack just by fantasizing about them, and it's better to keep that at bay.

    It also seems SAGE 2022 starts in a few hours, which usually features at least a 3D engine made on either Unity or Unreal Engine. Even if the engine itself doesn't appeal you, you'll have at least some groundwork to check out the kind of things you want to learn and fork to your own custom engine from there. Experiment with that before making the actual game, or to be precise, make a "draft game" before the real one, something that has some intent and direction but only on a practice level.

    For the specific question of Sonic Adventure the part of the community that hacks and mods that game may provide you with info on character stats (in lack of a better word) and moves. And I mean those bits of info, not a decompiled version or anything close (unless it already exists, I don't know).

    If you're skilled enough as 3D artist, you could help on someone else's fangame instead. Can tell you which ones might need help, but you can go to the SFGHQ forums and see if there's some project in development which could use your skills. If any of them is an open source project, you could even have more options beyond the base engines mentioned earlier to learn from, but that's another question. The important thing here is that, by contributing with the community, you could find people that could want to help you later, but don't do that selfishly, you have to earn the goodwill put on you.

    As for writing, get what you need first and I may help you with that when the time comes. Not sure what would I do with these "parameters", but writing is something I know how to do. Not very fond of Cthulhu, but I could sort it out anyways. Good luck with everything until then, you'll need it, among other things.
     
  5. Aquillis

    Aquillis

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    Thank you so much! I'll check in on SFGHQ's then for your advice, and also thank you for being patient with me in spite of my noobness in general.

    I actually found out that Steam allows full access to all the content within the games that aren't made by Valve, so I've been reading into the Functions file to see what's going on under ther hood. Luckily, I remember enough of my C++ classes to know how to read it, so I'm going to reverse-engineer that code at some point. I needed to stop reading because it's been a long while since I had to parse so much, but I am gonna get myself hunkered down eventually to start working on parsing out the functions and what they do, and figure out what I need for the game I'm planning.

    I'm holding off on writing the story/dialogue in general (in fact, I'm making sure I don't get sidetracked by developing the story, as I don't think it's needed just yet), i just have a small outline that basically says the story beats, but I'm not planning on developing more beyond that. Least, until I have everything placed in the game. Thanks for the offer, though! If I get the chance to get near that point, I wouldn't mind taking up your offer on writing for the fangame.