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Sonic Studio

Discussion in 'Fangaming Discussion' started by Lapper, May 19, 2018.

  1. Lapper

    Lapper

    Lappering Tech Member
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    Sonic Studio, Sonic Physics Guide, Kyle & Lucy, Freedom Planet 2
    [​IMG]

    Classic Sonic,
    Editable.
    A celebration of momentum-based 2D Sonic.

    Sonic Studio Blog & Information

    Sonic Studio is an unreleased stage editing fan game, with its core goal being the easy, accessible, and fun creation of sloped Classic Sonic style stages.
    It will enable you to create Stages from a wide selection of available Zone themes for you to build your terrain and add your own selection of enemies, items, gimmicks, hazards and bosses!

    History:
    The idea for a fangame Sonic stage editor took initial form, at least for me, with the creation of 'Sonic Maker' in 2009. It was inspired by the PlaySega Sonic level creator. I was, unfortunately, unable to give Sonic Level Creator a try, so I gathered what little I knew of programming at the time and took it into my own hands.

    'Sonic Maker' included a rudimentary stage editor created in Visual Basic, and used an old GM8 Sonic framework separate from the editor to play stages.

    Fast forward to 2017, Mania released and inspired me to try again.

    Details:
    • Sonic Studio is made in GameMaker, and is developed by Lapper (me), with music by Jahn Davis and Noah Copeland, and UI Design by Mr. Chao. Special thanks to Mercury for their help over the years, making this possible!
    • It features brand new redrawn pixel art and remixed music!
    • It's built to be as accurate as possible for an authentic Classic Sonic experience. Slight adjustments and compromises are in place to allow the unique collision system to work smoothly.
    • Speaking of the collision system: Uniquely, the framework uses vectors and line intersections to perform its collision checks, and builds terrain as entirely custom polygonal shapes.
    • Any shape is possible. This essentially makes every level 100% customisable. Nothing to stop the player constructing a level that will break the engine - but I don't care! Go nuts.
    • You can decide how each line of the edge of a polygon will look (eg: grass, border, edge, nothing, etc), or keep it to the default automatic.
    • Decorations such as trees, totem poles, ruins, etc are automatically generated and can be shifted around and customised per edge of any given shape.
    • Lush zones such as Green Hill and Marble have automatic "hilliness" applied to the grassy surfaces, which is optional.
    Progress:
    Detailed progress page
    Currently, the entire game is planned out. It's just a matter of making it happen.

    I'm currently creating features and art. Lots of features and art. Meanwhile, a ton of epic music is being produced!

    No current release date!

    Twitter - @SonicStudioProj
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2023
  2. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    Glad you could finally make a topic for this epic editor! I'd like to say Keep up the good work !
     
  3. 360

    360

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    Sonic Neon
    Yeah fucking awesome to see a dedicated thread for this pop up! Happy you made one! It's a fantastic project with immense skill and talent behind it and evidently so much love - and everything about it from the technology to the revamped art to even the logo - hell, even your videos promoting it - it's all top-notch. This is one of the coolest things to come out of this community and I look forward to seeing more.
     
  4. Saad

    Saad

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    Now that is something awesome, and that art is amazing! I hope to see more in the future. Keep up the good work!!
     
  5. Lapper

    Lapper

    Lappering Tech Member
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    Sonic Studio, Sonic Physics Guide, Kyle & Lucy, Freedom Planet 2
    Cheers!
    [​IMG]
    Some polygon edit controls.

    In addition to this you can of course edit the polygon's shape how you please, add and remove nodes, toggle and edit a line's curve, and edit the surface visual of each individual line if needed (e.g. grass or a border).
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2022
  6. 360

    360

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    Sonic Neon
    Looking awesome dude! Keep up the excellent work! On a semi-related note, I just eyed your amazing work on updating Labyrinth Zone in the Pixel Art thread (so presumably for Sonic Studio?) - looks fucking great, and continues your streak with working on and dramatically improving previous classic zones - so would love to see a WIP screenshot of that zone in action. Just a thought!
     
  7. Retroman

    Retroman

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    If SEGA saw your work, I hope you make good money off this! This would be an excellent competitor to Mario Maker.
     
  8. Lapper

    Lapper

    Lappering Tech Member
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    Sonic Studio, Sonic Physics Guide, Kyle & Lucy, Freedom Planet 2
    Sega wont fund a GMS2 game ;)/>/> regardless I can't see them ever picking up a pre-exisiting fangame anyway. Mania was a very special case.

    Updated logo:
    [​IMG]
    I've seen a few times people asking if it will be free etc, as if it's not a fan game.
    [​IMG]

    Edit:
    [​IMG]
     
  9. Lapper

    Lapper

    Lappering Tech Member
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    Sonic Studio, Sonic Physics Guide, Kyle & Lucy, Freedom Planet 2
    [​IMG]
    You can predict where a spring will send you. With this I'm probably begging for auto-levels, but I like it.

    This is an estimate, your speeds upon hitting the spring play a part also (however, mostly in the axis that the spring isn't facing...).
     
  10. /dev/sr0

    /dev/sr0

    Member
    I like all of this
     
  11. Covarr

    Covarr

    Sentient Cash Register Member
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    Trapped in my own thoughts.
    Two stageplays, a screenplay, and an album
    You could join the dark side and add support for fully scripted springs. Thank you for not.
     
  12. fmtransmits

    fmtransmits

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    I'd be interested to hear about how you did the node based editing in this.

    If it hasn't already been asked lol.
     
  13. Lapper

    Lapper

    Lappering Tech Member
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    Sonic Studio, Sonic Physics Guide, Kyle & Lucy, Freedom Planet 2
    I assume you mean doing that in GM? I can't begin to explain in a post - it's a combo of a lot of things, but nothing overly complex.

    Just shuddered a little at the thought of that. And you're welcome.
     
  14. Man this is so good!! Your 2D style is so on point. Well done, really looking forward to trying this out!!
     
  15. fmtransmits

    fmtransmits

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    I'd assume it is very complex. Really neat project though lol.
     
  16. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    For the spring estimates , why not use a cone like shape to show min speed and max speed landing points.
    Also to further the idea, you could do a translucent 2 color version, the second color for the direction that the spring is not facing.


    I drew some lines to illustrate the idea, my landing points for the blue may be off , but ehhh I don't feel like booting up an emulator right now to check behaviors.
    [​IMG]
     
  17. Lapper

    Lapper

    Lappering Tech Member
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    Already thought of the cone idea. However in reality if you want to you can make a spring take you almost anywhere along x axis with the right speed so I'm not sure how useful it is. The springs affect your x and y speed depending on their angle, and uses sin and cos to figure out how much the spring should affect each axis (since you can place a spring at any 360 degree). Ex a > Left spring will not affect y, 45 will do a bit of both, and ^ Up will not affect x. I feel that's a bit to complex to describe visually.

    Showing off some collision (from twitter)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PRP-B2OoIc
     
  18. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    About the spring thing, I'd say it's enough if the line points to the middle/standard position from the range available, player should be able to estimate what would happen if they push the d-pad in either direction after hitting the spring, or if they hit it fast enough. This game has physics instead of script excess, after all. :v:
     
  19. Felik

    Felik

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    Sorry, but someone has to say this.
    Title of the video perfectly describes the feeling I get when I watch it.
     
  20. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    I've been actually thinking... I know what you said in the OP and the interview about which are your goals with this project and which aren't, but, let's say someone finds your engine, level editor and, well, everything else from this projecto good enough to be the base of their fangame; would you collaborate with them or make a "pro" version featuring things not meant for Sonic Studio but useful for more standard projects? Not wanting to do that myself or anything, as I want to keep my stuff within the limits of a more classic approach, but it's just that you could have done something really good for a project without great ambitions, and it could make the life of some fangame developers a lot easier.

    Btw, Wood Zone looked like fangame stuff as it was in the Sonic 2 protos, so it's natural it doesn't look very fancy here. A minimal test level isn't the kind of thing that looks great either, so I believe you're right about that vid, but I hope it doesn't define your opinion about the project itself.