Sonic Nexus '08 Demo

I can't say I'm impressed by this.
I dunno why, but you keep making it from scratch every year, when it came out I played the 2006 demo, so I did with 2007 one, and now I've played this. The three are totally different from each other, and it's seriously a waste of work. If you didn't insist on that, Nexus would be at least 70% completed. People are so bored about fangames, and that aspect of them bores them even more.
You know, you don't have to make things perfect, just fun. Nobody's shooting you if you aren't a perfectionist.
Hell, the original Sonic games were full of bugs, but hey, fun!
People want to play a fun game to pass their time and have fun, not some 'rocket science' tech demo.
At least, make the boss for the first zone, it isn't even there, and that's a big thumbs down.
And unlike what someone said, this isn't a Sonic CD experience, first because Sonic CD was simple and not meant to "impress" you graphically yet very aestically pleasant, Sonic CD had time zones, and it had very catchy tunes that make you replay the game for many times just to listen to them.
And at the end, it had its own unique feel that stayed with you even after you finished playing the game, Nexus doesn't leave anything to me.
This version of the Retro-Sonic engine is better than the previous (2007) one, many glitches that I saw in the previous one are now gone, but I got stuck at the first loop slope in the second level, there was a glitch that made me fall through the blocks (!), at least make the player die when he falls under the level. I either had to restart the game or wait 9 minutes and half, I did the former.
It didn't happen the second time I played the game, so I guess it isn't very serious, but should be fixed anyway as it's pissing off.

Well, these are just my opinions and criticism. You don't have to take them seriously or as an offence.
I was accused by someone to have scrouched him in the dirt, and that's a very laughable lie.
Just to let you know.

 

Well, I have to say it's quite good, and has a lot of great ideas (like the parachute. Brilliant.)
Too bad it's using reused tiles.

 

Please oh please get rid of that god forsaken "Sonic CD" camera everyone raves so much about. I find that the be incredibly annoying and it feels like it's breaking my speed, not to mention it breaks my concentration. Other then that, it was good. Physics felt off, but nobody can get them right, I suppose.

 

I can't make out a word you just said.

And Phoebius, you're really one to talk about reused tiles. Besides that, the tiles' source is not the main point of the presentation—the level design, technical feats, and music are. You know, basic principles of game design. Graphics are just a shell, and can always be replaced and modified in whatever which way, but level design stays consistent. That's what I love so much about this game.

And yeah, the Retro Sonic engine isn't perfect, we get this. But it's extremely fast, renders quickly, delivers nice graphical effects (did you see that title card? I shat bricks, that's fucking awesome), and delivers a faithful Sonic experience, even if the physics aren't 100% spot-on. Besides, they can always be improved in a later release; they don't really detract from the gameplay, do they?

I'll echo a personal distaste for the extended camera in Sonic CD. I know it's part of the whole aesthetic design process and everything, but could you make an option to omit that effect? That would be dandy.

 

Tails92, the reason behind the engine switch is due perfomance problems with the previous engine instances. Multimedia Fusion's behaviour is a bit random sometimes, unless you do heavy workarounds to prevent that (wich is mostly why I stopped caring about making engines in MMF). We're not perfectionist, but hell, we want to have a nice game experience without needing a powerful computer.

Retro Sonic provides a powerful and fast framework, and additional features such as being able to port the game to other systems. The editor is very user friendly, and with the actual scripting engine, you can pretty much do anything.

And how is not an experience similar to Sonic CD? You see, even though we don't have time warp (nor that shitty Sonic CD spindash), the actual game content is heavily based and makes reference to the Sonic CD level design patterns, the 3d depth sensation and the psychodelic feeling of these. Yeah, I know it's not perfect, but at least the general feeling I had while playing it is quite similar to Sonic CD

As for those glitches, these aren't the Retro Sonic engine's fault (the actual engine is pretty much bugless, specially since the collision system has been rewritten from scratch and is very, very solid) but our level design mistakes. These style of levels are very tricky to design since some tiles need to collision a way or another so that's why we had made mistakes and placed some tiles with the wrong collision settings.

Ahem, and who doesn't?

I gotta say Taxman's work with the physics is marvelous, and he even counted with the help a lot of people from here around to get them right. You may feel them off because you're used to play to the older game instances, but I find them very very accurate indeed.

 

I happen to greatly enjoy the Retro Sonic physics, TBH. I may have to see about using it when it becomes publicly available.

 

All I said was they felt a little off, mostly Sonic's acceleration and deceleration. It's not like it's radically altering game play. If I meant that, I wouldn't have said anything good about this at all.

 

Very exciting to see the latest Retro Sonic engine in action! Congrats to all involved. Looking forward to seeing the community start to use the RSDK when it's released.

 

Getting the work from the old engines into the new engine isn't exactly going to be time consuming and the amount of improvement involved is going to make it well beyond worth it. If you aren't impressed with what we have here (not to sound too egotistical about this project), I doubt you will ever be impressed by much.

 

The project looks pretty decent at the moment, but there's just on thing that concerns me, which isn't related to the demo.

I seem to remember previous screens of this game, one of which was showing Bridge Zone using the background that Rika, Cinossu and myself worked on for the Bridge Zone remake in the hack Ordos and myself are working on, Sonic Remix. I seem to recall that when I made mention of this to someone (I believe it was Slingerland), I was pretty much given the middle finger and was told that it was gonna be used in the game anyway, regardless of it being other peoples work. Is this still the case, or has it been replaced?

 

I don't know if you remember the thread, but I'm sorry to say but the only tiles that were from "other people's" was the wooden hurdle and the mountains background (even though we later found out it wasn't original in any ways). The other tiles were completely made from scratch by me and remixed from various Sonic games. So yeah, we're pretty much going to use them.

 

It was the background I was actually referring to, I just forgot to specify it, so sorry for the misunderstanding. I knew you did the foreground, but I was told the background would remain, despite the fact that it was made for one purpose. Has it been replaced or does it remain?

As for "not being original", the only unoriginal part was the mountains. The bushes and clouds were worked on by Rika, I remade the water reflection to mirror the new clouds and bushes and to keep it to the same style as the original reflection, and Cinossu tweaked parts to clean it up, as I'm sure they will both remember. Despite this, I was told that the background would be used in full, including the customised parts. You can use the mountains, feel free, but the rest of it was custom work by the 3 of us, and no permission was given for that background to be used in full.

Compare the pics for yourself if you still doubt that they are different:

 

I didn't remember them being any different (as I don't hold that background anymore) but now I can see the differences. Anyway, we weren't going to use yours but the Tiny Toons one (and we'll probably heavily edit it, anyway).

 

With all due respect, I haven't seen to say anything positive about a project yet. Maybe you have, but I haven't seen it. I think the most proud achievements of people go unnoticed because some don't truly understand what goes on under the surface. I haven't played the previous versions of this game, but I think it's pretty nice what they have, and certainly Taxman's engine has continued to show progress that makes it more and more appealing. I think these guys deserve a bit more than you're willing to give them. Don't look so much on the surface, look what's under it.

 

I have to say for fan games, this is a pretty good one. One thing that irks me a bit though is the camera shifting as you go faster and slow down. It's so noticeable that it kind of distracts me when it shifts forward and back as I speed up and slow down. I might recommend keeping it more in line with the original Genesis games in that regard. Feel free to disregard my suggestion however.

 

Yeah the Sonic CD camera style was used at Slingerland's request. I actually prefer the genesis style myself. Considering the genesis style is the Retro-Sonic default, it would be really easy to add the ability to switch back to it from the Sonic CD one via some sort of options menu.

 

I personally would appreciate that option.

 

Simple as going

Stage.CameraStyle=0

in TaxReceipt, so when you get around to making your game options menu, do it

 

Incidentally, is the Retro Sonic devkit stuff available to the general public at large? Because I'd be interested in playing around with it, even though I don't have a specific project in mind at the moment.

 

Holy shit this is awesome. Although it's getting annoying with the constant engine switches and stuff.

Off-topic: Damizean, you post here? Now don't mind me asking, but weren't you the one stereotyping pretty much every Retro member as a faggot elitist who despises fangames in that one Sonic 4 thread over at SFGHQ?