Sonic Freerunner

Huh. I didn't know you were a level-designer, Scar. There anything else you're not telling me? Like that you're actually Spider-Man? =P

I like that general layout, but it occurs to me that it's trying a bit too hard to shove a whole lot of alternate-route goodness into the stage at the very beginning. I get the sense that it should, y'know, spend a little more time fanning out before it get to the point of having four distinct routes. I just get the feeling that seeing three or four different pathways before I even start running might feel a bit overwhelming, or something. But this thought may have occured to me because I'm such a nut for streamlined, linear stages that focus on doing one thing well rather than a whole bunch of different things all at once, which isn't really the right frame of mind to be working with when designing stages for a Sonic game.

 

I didn't either.
I honestly just sat down and drew something. I then inked it and rubbed out the initial pencil marks.
I'll what I can do with the level layouts and whatnot though.
Notice that there is one path that goes straight through all of the alternate routes and will eventually lead straight to the end, if you want to skip the drama with alternate routes.
Its up to the object placement and badnik placement in order to make the linear route more challengine, but I'll try and make the level design challengin so its difficult to stay on the linear route.

 

This isn't very impressive. It looks like your main concern was cramming as many paths as possible instead of refining them. Not a single pathway here offers an incentive to take other than the loop-de-loop which cuts the bullshit and takes you straight to the goal. All the other ones are just narrow pathways that lead to the same destination but takes longer. There's absolutely minimal platforming here, and zero real exploration. The race track quality of the paths lead a lot to be desired in terms of freedom and enemy and object placement. There's zero platforming involved and everything seems to be concentrated on the elevated pathways with nothing happening on the floor, so if you just happen to fall off from one of the other tracks, you end up in an area of empty nothingness where you either a) have to go back to the beginning and start over or b) just run straight ahead in flatsville with nothing occurring.

I would suggest cutting the amount of alternate routes you want down to 3, and have them branching in different directions rather than have them lead towards the same direction. You should make them wider and more varied and have some actual activity and platforming going on in the bottom. Right now it looks like a Trackmania Track with no real sense of direction and a false promise of freedom.

 

Thanks.
I'll bear that in mind next time.
I'm no pro. I just have to get used to drawing like this. I have ideas, but I'm still unsure how to get them on paper.
I can sketch well, but layouts take me a long time. I guess its still a work in progress, but I guess you'll have to wait till I make another one.
Working on it, but it'll take some time.

 

Now you see, I should have known to draw something like that.
I need to experiment with this style a bit more. I think I'm confining shit too much.
Excuse me while I go take a look at some SA1 level design.

 

As a base template, it does have promise, but yeah, the racetrack motif does suit a stage that actually uses racetracks moreso than a Generic Hill Zone or anything of that nature.

If I were to make another general suggestion (more for anyone listening than just for Scartillery), rather than simply having alternate routes, having a slightly smaller number of routes, some of which have multiple methods by which they may be traversed, would be a good compromise. Think of it as a combination of the multi-tier classic design mentality and a modern 3D design mentality (where you may, for example, have a long straightaway path with a number of different objects and obstacles in different places to traverse, which is a pretty good way to take advantage of the third dimension in the context of the immediate area; the only problem with that design element in Unleashed was that the one-route-with-miniroutes was typically the only route there was—with one hand God giveth, and with the other he taketh away, as it were).

In this way, you can make individual routes count by giving each of them a little more punch—there's freedom in choosing which route to take, and freedom in choosing how to attack certain routes. I feel this is also a good way to implement high-speed sections without resorting to the S3&K method of long spectacle segments which more-or-less play themselves—give the player something to dodge, hop over, or weave around. Take advantage of the camera's behind-the-back perspective to give the speed segments more substance and inject a bit more speed into the other platforming challenges.

As another general rule... to, y'know, avoid a common pitfall of the 3D games... decide on a level theme, and possible stage-specific gimmicks, before making a layout. By doing this, designers can avoid falling into the trap of making every stage feel like a generic racetrack level with a different skin on it. Think back to the classics, and even to Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 (to a somewhat lesser but still notable extent)--the lay of the land actually looked and felt like what it was trying to be. Oil Ocean's level structure feels like an oil refinery. Green Hill feels like rolling green hills, Labyrinth feels like a submerged ruin, Scrap Brain feels like a mechanical fortress. Emerald Coast is shaped like a beach. City Escape feels like the city it's based on. This is an aspect that does much to separate the memorable stages from the forgettable ones. Obviously you don't need to tie yourself down to what a landscape would realistically look like, but it's a good base to start from when deciding, say, the shape and quantity of the landscape's various slopes and slants, or what kind of turns the player should encounter, or whether a level should feel open or enclosed, and in what ratio and contexts those two aspects are utilized in.

^ This is just generic design advice I've picked up on here and there during various discussions on this or any other forums, so don't take this as some kind of "I am the master, you are the apprentice" lecture or anything. ^.^'

 

I personally think it would be better to first think of all the possible "situations" that could occur in the level, and the different places to visit, traps for the player, secrets that may offer some incentive to explore, etc... and then try to tie them with some paths, trying to make them balanced so they offer a different experience while making them equally rewarding.


Just going the Scalextric way to make some cool shapes and then filling the roads with enemies and objects feels like bad level design to me. Sorry. =(

 

Oh shi---
I thought I was doing Robotropolis seeing as my level design was best suited to that...
I've already started that one, so I'll finish it later.
PM me any stuff you have for Robotropolis so I can take care of that when I get round to it.

AS for this, thanks for the info. I'll bear that in mind when I'm designing it.
This time, I think I'll add an extra layer of detail to the levels.

 

that water slide thing is going to require some form of track camera, just letting you know. Get ready for programming mayhem.

 

Those watermelons. Could they rotate based on the weight you place on any given side of them? I think that'd be a cool, if somewhat basic, function to set them apart from ordinary "platforms."

Although it occurs to me that this could be a pain to implement without breaking flow with some sort of semi-scripted object function.

 

Well, in a perfect world, I'd think more along the lines of purely physics-based platform objects that rotate and/or move depending on where Sonic's weight is oriented on the platform, but as I say, without some semi-scripted function—like said gears, actually—it'd probably really fucking hard, or even impossible, to get working in practical gameplay sort of way, so that alternative presents a decent compromise.

It just seems like such a waste to have something as random as watermelons floating in the water and not have them actually do anything, that's all.

 

That's not surreal, that's lolrandom. =P

 

Things could get funky with Sonic's physics, actually, especially if the game retains that odd quirk where the faster Sonic goes, the easier it is for him to stick to curved surfaces—like watermelons.

That, and his speed could potentially make the watermelons finicky little bitches of platforming segments unless the watermelons just happened to be absurdly huge, which might come off as a touch forced.

I do like the idea of being able to move the watermelon, although the prospect of having to maintain balance on a rotating object strikes me personally as more interesting, and potentially more in-line with the whole physics-and-momentum-based-platforming ideal. But ideas like this have a tendency to sound better on paper than in practice, so I can't really say. It'd be no problem if this were a slower game, like Mario, but Sonic's speed complicates things a tad.