Sonic has actually had tornado abilities before in the general canon, it looks like an ability he would actually have.
I say keep it the way it is, color that sprite purple and use that sprite to add an Espio Monitor. Mostly for spite at this point because I'm not fond of this kind of bullshit nitpicking put into high gear.
I also thought that making Sonic take on Tails and Knuckles' physical characteristics wasn't very creative. Sonic spinning around like Espio looks far more appealing to me as a flight power up than Sonic randomly growing a pair of Tails. The concept itself is creative, but the execution was not. I say you should stick with the spinning top idea, but...I have no idea what you could use for gliding. Though I will add that having orange sparkles follow Sonic around (like invincibility stars do) could provide some emphasis that Sonic is spinning around like a top and flying because he is borrowing Tails' powers for a moment. Just an idea. Also, for whatever it's worth, I'm not fond of the palette change idea. If it's so easy for you to implement, perhaps you should leave it as an option? It seems to be a love it/hate it thing, and I fucking hate it. It's your game though.
New dilemma...If you have two shields available, should I allow replicates? Example. I hit a fire shield monitor, and then I select slot two and get another fire shield. Is that fair? I'm leaning towards yes
You know what would be even sexier? Gunstar Heroes style shield mixing. Then you could use (and lose) two shields at once! *awaits people saying it's not creative... well yeah, good thinkers think good ideas, great thinkers steal great ideas*
Well heres how it works. You can either ignore the feature all together (as it doesn't show up unless you press A) or you can hold down the third button (A) and then press B or C to sort through your shields. The Life icon is no shield, the other two slots are for your shields. Whatever shield you have selected will be over written with whatever new shield you have, unless you have no shield selected. If no shield is selected it defaults to slot 1. EDIT: DW...I really want to make that idea work...that sounds fucking awesome. EDIT2: Thinking about it makes my brain hurt though...I would have to make graphics for the mixed combos...which would be like 36 combos...36 shields in a game?! I'm kind of drooling.
Obviously, I think that if you are going to do that you'd want to scale back the base number of shields to no more than 4 or so. There is such a thing as too much win. EDIT: And by that, I mean too much win for one person to realistically do concepting, programming, and art for before getting bored with the whole concept. EDIT2: Oh, and in case it isn't entirely obvious, in those conditions you'd always just be able to lump some of your existing shields into combinations of others.
Well, I could always make the two powers weaker when combined too. For example, if the electric and bubble shield were combined. The bounce would be weakened significantly, as well as ring attraction and double jumping. Actually, the concept seems cool and all, but I don't think it would work too well in reality.
I don't even know how you'd select double jump abilities in that case. I was thinking more along the lines of... well, how it's done in Gunstar. You have the ability to choose to use one of the two (and can switch at any time) or the ability to use both to do something augmented and fancy that relies on the properties of both. For example, fire and lightning could combine to do a fancy long distance forward diagonally upward jump thing. Then if you were good at switching shields on the fly, you could instead jump up, use one shield and then switch to the other and use that shield ability as well. Just going through the classic combinations... water + water - Faster bounce, add extra enemy killing zone ala instashield from hitting ground fire + fire - faster forward dash, add Knuckles rock destruction properties, crazy dripping fire effects lightning + lightning - higher double jump, more sparks, send them curling towards the ground and have them kill stuff water + fire - air shield (thinking water vapor) sort of like the one you were demonstrating in that first video water + lightning - double jump with a lot stronger gravity which does some kind of effect when the player hits the ground fire + lightning - well, I mentioned that already. At the same time though, thinking about it like that it almost seems a little too unbalancing, so you might want to just stick more with modified ideas entirely.
That kind of sounds like something out of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards if you ask me, but a shield version of it. The idea seems fine to me but I still dunno about the execution. I'll hold on until something is made final later on.
Jay T.: If you've never played Gunstar Heroes, you owe it to yourself to do so at least once, if not a couple dozen times. It's like one of these quintessential 16-bit era games that employed all kinds of visual trickery to get its points across. And it's just an amazing game too.
Ok I didnt catch this post until now. What the hell do you mean my poorly executed? I literally have a 1/32 of a level to even work with. The monitors are only placed the places they are in the video for proof of concept. Of course theres going to be more to it. Youll find these monitors hidden somewhere that will allow you to gain alternative paths, or items. If you mean execution as in sprite choice, then that's more aesthetics than anything. EDIT: and I also have a bitchin idea for a shield mix, but I don't want to reveal the new shields quite yet so I might PM you DW. EDIT2: It bounces faster and shoots flames :3
It shoots flames when it bounces? That's outstanding. How are you going to work water/electric? Maybe single jumping would automatically get an electric shield jump boost, double jump bounces? This whole idea has some amazing potential! Would you do any additional powers if you mix Tails/Knuckles with the shields? Even more options, I can't fathom.
Heh, that looks awesome. To further differentiate it from the bubble shield, you could remove the aspect where it stops you in the x direction before bouncing so that you can use it to actually bounce high and still go far while running.
The shield mixing idea looks like a good one, just be careful not to make them too overpowered and ruin the game. As for the whole character monitors thing.. keep it. It's a brilliant idea like that (one I've had before but never bothered to implement beyond giving Sonic Tails's tails object in S1EE, and still might add again as a nod to you, lawl S1EE is Sonic Classic, vice versa etc.), and the sprites for Sonic "flying" were perfect as they were Tails's "powers" (use that spinning one for an Espio monitor or something). Alternatively, you could go the Knuckles Chaotix route and just replace the character outright for a set amount of time. Looking forward to seeing more progress on this.
