Maybe you guys should figure out a way to 'highlight' important objects like Sonic himself, rings, springs, enemies, etc. I don't wanna go overboard with this post, so I'll keep it brief. I love what you guys are doing with this game. Sure, the enemy placement could be better, and there's some other minor things, but otherwise, fantastic.
Murr, this is superb, I only ran into three annoyances. 1. When crouching Sonic's face seems to twitch, it just looks weird. 2. I went around a loop quickly and I didn't loop. Think of it as an S2 loop without the path swapper. 3. Sonic's shoes seem floppy, it's like they're too big for him. When running it's fine but when walking it ...looks bad. Aside from those I absolutely love this!
First, there's no vsync at lower quality settings, or there'd be no tearing (which was definitely there). Second, I'm fairly sure vsync doesn't inherently introduce lag, unless the program refuses to drop frames. Personally, I'd like a more customizable settings screen, because different people have different preferences as far as what they're willing to put up with. I, for one, don't mind zero AA, but can't stand tearing, while other people don't mind tearing but won't play a 3D game that's not antialiased. More choices would make the game better for people with midrange rigs that can't necessarily have both on at once.
I don't know if anyone else had this, but I find the only way I can play this properly is when I have it set to the lowest resolution. Fastest to Beautiful or whatever the settings were never really did have an effect. I was amazed that worked at all. It's kind of a pity too. I would really love to take advantage of my 1680x1050 monitor. Hopefully after I finish building my next PC it won't be an issue. As for keeping track of Sonic, it's not keeping track of Sonic that I have a problem with, it's keeping track of everything else that's the problem. I will admit, though, this probably won't be much of a problem when I change hardware. On another note, I would like it if the secret paths were a bit more secret. I seem get flung into them far too easily just because of my tendency to hold right while I move. It's not really anything that hurts the game, but I think actually finding the secret paths should have more challenge to it than that. Just a preference.
First I just want to say that this demo is amazing...but you've heard this from everyone already. I am running this on 3 monitors in nvidia surround and it works great...except for the filter applied in the center. See screenshot - http://lh4.ggpht.com/_m4ygvA6-tB0/TMTUFrS5...sonic%20fan.jpg I know that you probably didn't have this in mind when designing the demo... but is this filter something that you could possibly have gamers like myself manually disable in future releases? Or possibly have it applied on a larger resolution screen area instead of just 2600-2800 pixels in width. The game looks stunning and running it at 5760x1080 resolution is trully beautiful...
I was going to mention Metropolis Zone but thought that what I was trying to describe wasn't exactly like those parts. I guess though in essence they are similar ideas in the end.
So far my only real complaint is the animations on Sonic himself seems a bit stiff and lifeless. I suggest rigging the eyebrow area and also moving his mouth to the side to give him a wide range of expressions during poses. Also some eyelids and have him blink sometimes would help too. Having his mouth on the side of his face is much better as the game is in a 2D perspective and having the mouth on the front it's very hard to give him any expression visible during most animations. -The walking animation needs a bit of head movement. Right now his head is pretty stiff during the walking animation. Tilting it slightly left and right would make the animation look much better. - The falling animation could use some facial animation to go with it. The body movement is nice, but the face seems really blank. It would add a lot of life to it if you were to add a slightly open mouth, and wide eyed expression as if Sonic is looking out for what he's landing on. - The springing up animation could use a smile, besides that I like it. The 45 degree spring animation could use the same change. - The balancing animations are the most dead looking poses Sonic had in the demo. His whole body is very stiff and lifeless, especially his face which has a very blank stare during it. It could really use a scared expression to it, and have his body less stiff and look more like he's balancing. Sonic 4 actually has some very good examples for balancing animations surprisingly. You should take a look at them. - The pushing animation is very stiff and Sonic's feet don't visually look as if they have any traction on the ground, and his face is once again blank. It would look better if you gave Sonic a expression of strain. A small frown and lowered eyebrows should help it. - The ducking animation is very jumpy and stiff. If you make his spikes slightly bounce, and give him a small frown it would look better. - The Running animation is pretty nice as it is, but could look a bit nicer if you gave him a small frown. - The getting hurt animation could use a pained expression with an open mouth, and lowered eyebrows.
Hi ! I finally got the chance to play the game on fantastic detail and fps on my mac. Thanks for this version Because I had no input lag now, it played way nicer while it looked even better! But still I think walking/jumping up a (steeper) slope/hill at low speed doesn't work well. Sonic just won't move forward or even jumps back. When standing still some feet before the top of a hill I just can't get on it directly, not even by jumping. To me this is pretty annoying because I often go back to collect all rings And as I previously noticed too: the piranhas feel too different from the original game. In my opinion they could be some smaller, but should definitely jump higher and move slower. I also think the animation of the fish would be some nicer when adding some easing when the fish reaches it's highest point. I hope you can do something with these points, in my humble opinion it would really improve the gameplay. Btw: I noticed no-one mentioned the moving/jumping on steep slopes before. Isn't this an issue to anyone else? :-) Greets! Anjer
So, I have to say: this runs pretty damn well on my computer. E8400/5870 Eyefinity 6 2GB, just for reference. In fact, it runs almost perfect across 3 monitors except for ONE small issue. On the sides, it gives me GIANT black... I don't know what to call it, but it's visible on both sides of the image. In a later release, do you think you could do something about those? Also, there isn't too much rendered on the sides in the beginning but that's a given. Edit: Just for reference, that screenshot is 4800x900. I actually run it at 5760x1080 on full settings and it looks ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL.
The semi transparent black box is the vignette. Which is very popular to use in games nowadays. These are usually displayed by just using one big image. The solution would be either making the vignette optional; have it scaled to fit the entire screen (or screens); or cut the vignette in 4 parts (a corner each).
What issue? I don't see what you mean.. @Nomad... What is happening in the background of the left screen? And with this one... The rain is different in the right screen.
I have to wonder if maybe that vignette is what makes it difficult to see badniks in front of you/me/Sonic. Something else I just noticed, the jumping sound effect is actually late compared to the button input and animation. Sonic's already started his leap when the sound plays. Oh, and this isn't a big deal, but launching the demo tripped Symantec's (don't jduge) SONAR protection, which is just a portion of the AV software that examines the behavior of an application. I'm not worried about it personally. I'm not sure exactly what it is that's tripped the alarm though. I just added an exclusion for it.
The issue with the first image is that it's where the game starts and it doesn't want to render the left side of the background, however, when you actually move and get centered it renders that side of the background just fine. The second image, I looked and the issue is that it's not rendering the top rain layer. If you look at the rain, there's two layers: downward and sideways.
Kaspersky does the same thing, but it does it for any Unity created executable. It also does it with most emulators too, so it must be the way they all handle input, because they all register as keyloggers (even though I know they're not). So yeah, nothing to worry about.
Excellent demo, guys. The game looks great, sounds great, and feels great. It could naturally do with some tweaking and tightening, like the following: - The environments with their present color scheme and amount of objects and layers are too busy. While the game does look quite beautiful, it's aesthetic beauty is staggered by an overabundance of foreground layers and objects. Those seem much better relegated to behind the foreground rather than in front of them, as they don't look much different than the high-quality JPEG layers used in Sonic 4. Not that they were bad, but much of their prerendered detail gave off a lifelessly shrinkwrapped look. Sonic Fan Remix's look is very lively and not shrinkwrapped, but could do with either some uncluttering of the foreground or some serious experimentation with hue, saturation, and contrast. Plus it's harder to appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the backdrop with too much similarly colored foreground stuff, as well as the detail and presence of Sonic, badniks, and any other main moving objects in that foreground layer, like the dancing flowers. - Sonic's momentum is far more present in this game than in Sonic 4, but at the same time, his control feels slightly loose and untightened. I notice that, when playing on my Logitech gamepad, the jump command is a little delayed and the directional controls not quite as smooth as the Genesis games, for example. The keyboard was more sensitive, but I still got that sensation of very minor delay or sluggishness from controlling Sonic that could be smoothed out. I understand this is a work in progress, of course. - I pretty much second most of Polygon Jim's suggestions about adding some life and expression to Sonic's face. You get mad skillz points if you make Sonic's figure bouncy and cartoony. I played the game at native 1680x1050 resolution with Good graphics settings, and for the most part it runs totally smoothly. Very nice work once again, look forward to your further developments.
oh man, I hope you're just kidding. your levels apear to be busy because you have Black shows in the background art. Tinting it will just muddle the graphics, change the shadow color to a dark purple, or dark color that matches the BG and you will be fine! you have the effect right there in the background mountains! COMPOSITION 101!! seriously though this looks terrible.
> oh man, I hope you're just kidding. Oh, come on. For anyone who might be interested, this is not playable on a humble 2008 2007 MacBook! On 640x480 and Fastest, I got about 5 frames/s and permanently bleached colours.
I hope you can first finish the game without following anybody's artistic advice, and then start considering changing background colors, foreground busyness, and whatever others say can be "improved". This seems like a very personal vision of Sonic, and I'd love to see all you can come up with.
