Sonic Overture Thread [Sunrise Gate Zone Demo Available]

Surely Robotnik's gotta change out of his PJs at some point......into his bumblebee outfit! :v:

I'm really digging the music on this, I've been humming the Act 1 music all day!

 

Woke up hungover as hell this afternoon @ 14:45; stuck a random playlist on and Sunrise Gat Act 1 - 3 were played one after the other despite having shuffle turned on. Suffice to say it still manages to put a massive nostalgic smile on my face. Considering this is an entirely original set of tracks I think those who brought it together should feel very proud.
God I love these tracks.

 

I'd love to hear the musicians take on the Invincibility theme, and possibly the speedup too?

I've only heard one Sonic 1(/2) take on the latter, Yarharhar's version from 2000!

 

I just played the demo and was extremely impressed with the production values, gorgeous graphics, and great soundtrack, along with how well everything controlled. Did you guys make any major changes to Sonic worlds' engine, or is the engine now just significantly better than it was around the time fangames like Sonic Axiom and Before the Sequel were made? o_O I also found the level design to be pretty fun, but that spiral tonal is way overused. First time it was really cool. The fifth time just seemed really redundant, especially since it takes awhile to get through. Overall, I'm impressed with this game's early state and looking forward to the next demo.

Full screen support is broken for me as well so I had to play in window mode (which I only do if I have to). If full screen mode is fixed in the future, that would be extremely appreciated.

Edit-

I forgot to mention that I hope future zone will be less linear and that I'd like to see more in-level gimmicks added in the first zone. There weren't a whole lot of them in that zone.

 

Thank you muchly WAC. We didn't make any major changes to the engine, we're just using the latest version 1.4.3 and yes it's vastly improved over version 0.5 which is what BTS and ATS used. One tweak we made was removing the roll jump lock, so it behaves like Sonic CD and helps the flow. Yes, that's the most common criticism, that we overused the spiral tunnel and had too little in the way of gimmicks. We agree with these criticisms and we're working on Sunrise Gate accordingly. As for linearity, expect some of that for this level. It's going to get much crazier in the later levels.

Yeah don't expect anything of full screen right now, it's just using the built in MMF2 method which sucks. We should have proper full screen support at some point.

 

Great to hear later levels will be far crazier in level design. I initially assumed the first zone was so linear largely due to Green Hill Zone's linearity in relation to later zones and because it's the first zone in the game. Kind of amazes me a lot of the best completed Sonic fangames out there use such extremely outdated versions of Sonic World. I'd love to see BTS and ATS updated someday with a more recent iteration of the Worlds engine, but I don't think LakeFeperd would want to go through that massive amount of work. It's a shame since the engine is enormously better now and ATS is my favorite completed Sonic fangame.

Edit-

Any chance this fangame will add widescreen support? I find it bizarre so few Sonic fangames with the Worlds engine supports widescreen.

 

Widescreen support has been on my mind to some extent. Biggest issue with this is how MMF2 works. There's also the concern of keeping the integrity of the game's appearance, being design to be like a late 16/32-bit era game.

 

So I showed a friend of mine the demo tonight and he was really impressed with how much the Sonic Worlds engine has improved, and how everything controlled mechanically in the game...until the boss battle. When you hit Robotnik, why do you not bounce off of him? My friend died three times on that boss because he would go through Robotnik, Robotnik would leave his invisible state, and my friend would either lose rings or die. Also, I forgot to mention this, but some of the walls look like walkable platforms and that confused my friend as well. You might want to modify those graphics in that stage to prevent confusion in the future.

You could always add widescreen as an option for those who want that preserved. Though if you mandate widescreen, I think few people would be annoyed by that. It was a great addition to the Taxman versions of Sonic 1, 2, and CD, and would be a great addition to this game.

Wow. I wonder what happened. o_O

 

Probably Lange did something injudicious or insulting again, considering he's banned (or deleted his own account) there... again.

I don't know what happened between you and Sonic United stuff but that's a silly thing to do if you want your game to get noticed by more or less general audience. And your game is shaping up to be a game worth getting noticed.
You seem to be a reasonable person, Jassbec, and should understand that this decision will not do you any good in the long run. But that depends on how much pride matters to you compared to recognition of course

 

Thanks for the insulting assumption Felik.

Actually they banned me and deleted my account over someone's claim that I was going to hack the site. Someone meddled with my account, did manage to hack the site, stole IPs and emails, and faked a Skype chat log with my name passing out this information. There were several other names in this log talking about how they want to take down other Sonic sites. Jass was one of the names in this log. The log was recently proven fake and everyone's names have been cleared. We're still trying to find out who's responsible for all of this happening.

When this happened, no one outside of SFGHQ staff were aware of the situation. They refused to say anything on the matter and began feverishly censoring and banning anyone who asked about or even mentioned my ban or the strange activity. Some people were banned just for being associated with us having done nothing wrong on the site. Jass was also banned for mentioning my ban. With me and Jass having both been banned combined with the prior events, it was agreed that Overture should be removed from SFGHQ. In his place, PicsAndPixels tried to post an announcement on the thread renouncing Overture's place on the site. The post was deleted, PicsAndPixels was banned, and shortly after the entire Overture thread was removed.
Two administrators posted announcements accusing all those who were banned of being responsible for an attack on the site and real life threats. There was a community uproar as this sweeping accusation was made and none of it was true, and because of the bans and censorship, no one was able to defend themselves, which painted a picture to the public that the innocent members who were banned were a danger to sites and even other people. With the staff cutting people off at every turn, they effectively made it impossible to resolve the situation, which put people's reputations at serious risk, including my own.

As of yesterday, administrator Perfect Chaos Zero arrived and learned of the events, and came clean publicly with information on the situation, which lead to us being able to prove the claims and chat logs fake and learn that someone or some people have a vendetta against me, the Overture team, several others, and/or likely SFGHQ itself. We had finally learned that there was a site hacking attempt and that my name and several others' names were attached to it.
While this does explain the staff's behavior and we understand why the did what they did, we're still outraged by how horribly they handled the situation. If they had been transparent and actually interacted with their community instead of living in their own private world and attacking us for the illusion they were wrapped up in, the whole thing could've been solved before anyone was banned and innocent members' reputations were smeared. We don't want Overture on a site under staff with that kind of judgement. However, we except PC0 as he was the one who handled this situation properly and resolved it, and we extend our thanks to him.

There's more details to the situation that have factored into this decision that I cannot easily cover in this post. These are things that have happened over the course of the past week and prior complications with SFGHQ and its staff.

For the record, myself nor any of us have ever had any intentions of a site attack, and never would no matter the circumstances. Despite our problems with SFGHQ, we still respect it and care too much for the community to ever put it at risk. We would never resort to malicious actions against anyone or any website. We only attempt peaceful resolutions, or failing that, leaving the matter alone. Despite our issues with some folks, even if we don't like them, we certainly don't hate them, we don't hold grudges, and we have no ill will towards anyone. We have long histories with these sites and they're very dear to us, and we would never sabotage the communities we're closely attached to and have tremendous respect for, nor the sites that have been a home for our projects and many others that we love very much.

Bear in mind that these are the decisions we have made right now given the existing circumstances. Things may change in the future.

 

I only elaborated on the situation to explain our decision. I should also note that this situation did involve Retro to some extent.
That is all we were going to say on the matter and have no intention of continuing talk about it here.

 

Wow, I didn't think shit can get so serious in Sonic fangaming community.

In this case I owe you an apology, Lange for so hasty assumptions.

 

Thank you Felik.

I feel at this point I should mention we're working on the next zone right now, and it's coming along great.

 

I'm excited to hear that. I don't know how long Sonic United will be down, but maybe Sonic Overture could have its own site for demos and other preview material. It deserves it from what I played.

 

Is the music for the second zone going to be as amazing as the first zone?