Sonic Generations - Unleashed Project v1.0 Available

It'd probably be a better Crisis City than the '06 Crisis City

(Generations' Crisis City I'm kinda meh about)

 

The 2D section ruins the flow, doesn't it?

 

Because it betrays the original game.

One of the reason it makes me so angry is because... well, I'll just be blunt: one of the reasons I rarely play ROM hacks is because a lot of people who make hacks have unrealistic expectations about difficulty. Anybody can make anything more difficult, and often people do just that, even without realizing it. There's bits of Kaizo Mario type design in most hacks. But unless you set out to intentionally make something that is about high difficulty (see: Ninja Gaiden, Super Meat Boy, Contra), there is no excuse for having an unfairly high challenge in your game other than it looking like you didn't understand how to properly balance difficulty.

The idea that you are supposed to "push yourself to be better" only goes so far, too. If we all had the same reaction times, the same affinity for understanding and identifying specific types of shortcuts, then yes, achieving less than utter perfection would come down to one simply being lazy. But as I said in a PM to Paraxade on Youtube a couple days ago, not everybody is equally great at all things. I have above average artistic talent; some people can barely draw a stick figure. I've grown to understand that just because it's easy for me does not mean I can demand people to just "get better at it". Sometimes they just can't, for reasons neither they or I can entirely explain. That's how life works, sometimes. And pushing them past that point can just frustrate and annoy them further - you end up pushing them away, not to greater heights.

Sonic Unleashed was a game with a specific difficulty curve that felt "right" to me. It took a great deal of effort to finish some stages with S-Ranks, but they were still possible.

Every single level in this mod betrays that with a far more insular difficulty curve meant only for die-hard fanboys. The only way I've been able to get S-Ranks in this is by being told by somebody else how to do it or watching a guide video. If I differ from their path at all, I don't get the S-Rank. These are pretty heavily scripted games, but strictly from a game design perspective, that's the wrong type of scripting to be embracing.

 

Not at all. Crisis City is one of my favorite levels in Generations:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/5Hu_lW3P6w0[/youtube]
(This is my current best time. I've since found a few more shortcuts and gained some confidence about midair boosting through fire, and I know I could knock it down further.)

Oh, and I found a Wentos and sent the pic to the indicated email address, and nothing's happened a few days later. Do you have to find all of them?

 

I'm blown away by how good this mod is. I never played through Unleashed because the awful boss fights and werehog levels were untenable. This amazing work has made it so I can properly enjoy the game that I could never force myself to finish.

 

I am also VERY impressed! Jungle Joyride runs fairly well for me, though it was hell doing it with Classic Sonic.


I seem to have some problems with the mod itself, though. Firstly, I'm not getting any music. Also, the act select screen appears glitched.

 

Did these runs a few days ago.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Now only Empire City and Jungle Joyride remain.


P.S. Jungle Joyride is a pain to speed-run.

 

I only have S-Ranks on the first 3 stages haha. The others are all A-Ranks.

though I must say thanks to Dario and Parax and DSS on the tips for Windmill Isle!

 

I'm going to ignore most of your post because I'm lazy, but let me ask you something: can you beat the stage? If you can, that means the unrealistic expectations you are talking about is not there.

I myself prefer having hard as ass to get S ranks because it motivates me to get better and better and better. Sonic is a fast character and he likes to go fast. Why would the game reward you if you don't go as fast as you possibly can?

 

Why isn't every game ever made nearly impossible, then? I mean, who gives a shit about accessibility, right? Forget the rest of the world; as long as the top tier 5% is being challenged, everything else will obviously just fall in to place as if by magic. We clearly live in a world where there is no such thing as "frustration". Nobody ever gives up. Nobody ever plateaus. It's just an eternal up-slope reaching to the stars, forever.

All I'm asking for is a little extra consideration.

 

Oh, Christ, you're still on the S-Ranks? Let me spell this out for you: The way the ranking system works, the only two options they could've done for S-Ranks are piss-easy (Generations' default) or, as you call it, "unrealistic expectations about difficulty." Plenty of people have posted Youtube videos getting S-Ranks in the mod without abusing the usual speedrun tactics.

 

Because not every game is made with the same intention. This mod was clearly not designed for you.

 

All I gotta say is that even before now Generations was probably my least favorite game of the ones I've played to S-rank. That said, I cared about doing so eventually just about as much as I did in the 2 rush games (that is, not at all).

 

Now more than ever I wish Crimson Carnival porting was a possibility, werehog sections and all.

That S-rank. Imagine the tears.

 

And that's exactly why I stand on the opposite side of the fence.

 

Exactly, this mod was clearly not designed for someone particularly, and this mod especially Jungle Joyride is obviously made for speed runners only. There are NO videos of ppl playing Jungle Joyride without skills to get S rank. There are only 5% of ppl speed running Sonic Generations, while 95% of ppl can only play it normally. I know Sonic Generations's ranking system is stupid, but it's already hard for them to keep 999 rings to the end of the stage, if they can get to the goal ring with 999 rings and quite fast, I think they already deserve an S rank.

 

If people bring it up to me, I will respond to them. Don't act like I'm the one still harping on this when you know damn well somebody wanted to talk to me about it, just as I am responding to you right now. I do not appreciate being made to look like a villain for "still being on this". I am not bringing it up just for the sake of bringing it up. Don't want me to "still be on this"? Don't talk about it, because I have opinions on the subject that I will discuss.

I would like to extend an apology to Dario for the thread getting like this, however. This is a larger issue I feel passionately about, and it goes beyond just the Unleashed Project - but it's here that a lot of it ended up bubbling to the surface for me. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be said, however.

It's not about me! I keep trying to tell people this! Nobody around here seems to actually understand what I'm trying to say, and that's the most frustrating part! Everybody acts like it's just me whining for my own sake, like I'm some kind of lone outlier. None of you consider anything outside of your own little personal skill bubble, and that's the whole problem! There's a whole world of people out there that aren't you or me!

I'm coming at this like a game designer. I'm thinking of the player as a general term. People here are Sonic fans. Retro is the kind of forum that had to be locked down multiple times during the development of Sonic 4, over the color of Sonic's fucking eyes. Making a game for the fanboys is a bad idea if you expect the rest of the world outside of the fandom to enjoy something. Fans are a specific breed of person who have knowledge and dedication beyond "the average joe". That's not always a compliment. You have to consider the bigger picture.

Let's launch in to another personal anecdote: I made the mistake of trying to get in to the Tony Hawk series at Tony Hawk's Project 8. It is, as the name implies, the 8th Tony Hawk game. It was a mistake because after 8 Tony Hawk games, the developers just assumed everybody knew all of the detailed intricacies of the combo system and how to play the game, and for me, basically a first timer, the game was a confusing mess of "How do I do this?" - nothing was obvious, and at some points, I had to refer to guides for previous Tony Hawk games to get adequate explanations.

And even after I figured it out, the skill level I was expected to perform these actions with was extremely high, because they balanced Project 8 around existing Tony Hawk fans. I never did beat Project 8; the last two tiers of events were clearly made with the intent of "We know you've been playing Tony Hawk games for 7 years, so here's something for you guys". The game was, for lack of a better term, up its own ass. Surprise: Project 8 was also one of the last of those kinds of Tony Hawk games - when your goal is to target and please the fans, you are focusing on a narrow demographic that only gets more narrow as time goes on. You push away everybody else and eventually fizzle out a cold, sad death.

I'm hoping Dario wanted this mod to be enjoyed by more than just obsessed Sonic fanboys, at which point it becomes pertinent to get a wider perspective on the matter.

Yes, S-Ranks are ultimately just a letter, yes it's probably not the end of the world that this is happening, but anything worth doing is worth doing right. Dario and the folks that helped him make this mod did an amazing job, but you cannot let yourself slip in to thinking these kinds of things are okay, because it's a slippery slope. I'm only asking for an inch, but I will hold my ground for that inch.