I think a post-release community map pack would be win/win, as well! One less pre-release burden on Lapper, and curated community-made stages that showcase what others can genuinely do with the editor. Mario Maker did this with the mindset that new users would be overwhelmed with choice paralysis, by giving them all the tools and gimmicks up-front. While keeping it simple this does let the casual user start off readily, it needlessly puts stumbling blocks in-front of everyone else. It's not a popular design choice by any measure. And, if your UI design is good enough, you shouldn't need to hide most of your UI and tools from a new user. Doing this in the software space is heavily criticized, and the most compelling component of this game is on its software side. Hiding content makes this ill assumptions about a wide swath of users that may not be applicable in reality. It's more likely to confuse people as they look up tutorials, who then can't find the relevant UI elements/tools as described/shown. Users coming from prior versions of games/software simply want to get busy with the new tools in the new version, as well; not be forced to interact with content they would have liked to try out later, on their own terms. Working adults with limited free-time have also grown to loathe unlockable QoL content in games in general; even more-so with fighting games, and now ROM hacks/mods.
i hadn't fully realized before now, but, creating new level designs with the Emerald Hill artwork will be quite special and revelatory!! The official game's version of the zone is incredible, but also definitely they limited the size and nature of some of the areas so it would work in the 2PVS format!!
I wonder what he's been cooking that's been taking so long. I'm thinking mushroom hill (that was confirmed right?) with different seasons because that would take a long time to make music and art for.
We shouldn't forget that this is a hobby project done by just him and a musician (AFAIK). Dude could also be wrapped up in more personal or professional matters that obviously take priority over this.
Not gonna lie, I feel like this is one of the few Sonic fangames (frameworks?) that would actually benefit from being "early access" (or whatever it's fangame equivalent is) instead of "done when it's done". Solely because it is at its core a level creation tool with strong potential for building a community around it. But it is what it is
I kind of agree. I think a lot of facets of this project could benefit from public feedback. Not that it needs it, just because actually being hands-on is different than seeing someone else mess around and giving feedback on what you see them do.
This! If I had infinite free time (or if making fangames was a job lol), this would be long done by now. Free time has been gradually less and less of a percentage since the project began, but I'd rather keep progressing with things when I can rather than give up and cancel it, because I enjoy it, and that's why I even began doing it to begin with. As for early access, I have flipflopped on wanting to release an early demo for a long time. I have since settled on yes, I do want to. It's still not ready for that yet though and I really can't give any meaningful predictions about it. To give a small peek behind the curtain generally, the main focus on development and time atm is not adding anything cosmetic like zones and such (I'd release a demo before completing any more zones/zone art), rather it's the more complex core editor features that still need work, ensuring the vast amounts of object<->object interactions don't break things (too easily), things like that. I am aware there's a lack of any updates, there's a fair few things that haven't been seen that I could show, but I realise it for the vast majority of people just ends up building hype for no good reason so I am holding off on that for now.
Just want to say this is an incredible update on the project!! Thank you!! If you think about it, whichever year the demo is complete and reaches the many Sonic communities, it will be in a very special overall 30 year anniversary window of a unique time in Sonic history (3D Blast, Sonic Jam, and the Adventures)!! the idea that 30 years after that time period, an adaptive Sonic level creator would emerge, is very inspiring!!
I'm interested in the idea of what the extent of special stages will be. In one of the Spring Yard music videos (Day I think it was), it showed Sonic jumping into a big ring, and then immediately cutting away to something else. If special stages are in the game, I don't know whether it would use an existing stage design, or have a new one all together. I would think the former personally, as there are no new zones themes that have been added. All I know for a fact, is that the music and visuals will be amazing.
Introducing Stage Boundaries Good question, I do have an accurate Sonic 1 special stage recreation cooked up, but currently no concrete plans for SS. If they make it in, it'd be post-demo. Just thinking out loud (since it's all hypothetical atm), I'd also love to do a Sonic Mania-esque race track editor as a SS option The Big rings are actually unrelated and I'd likely provide another way to disperse special stages if I do (or keep them as big rings but differentiate them from those you saw before).
This is becoming more and more awesome after each update, excellent work. Feel free to contact me if you'll ever want to make multilingual versions and you'll need an Italian to do some translations for you.
Silly question, does crossing a boundary from the outer side do a camera lock or something? So like, pass this point you cannot go back anymore?
If you move into the back side of a boundary facing in any direction, once it passes the middle of the camera, the camera will begin to slide into place to abide by the boundary's rule. So yes, it would lock at that point unless you then went around it. A boundary only begins to exert itself once it touches the relevant half of the camera (so if a "push camera upwards"/bottom boundary touches the bottom half of the camera, or if a "push camera left"/right boundary touches the right half of the camera, for example) As shown, you will be able to preview how the influences of one or more boundaries affect the camera directly in the editor.
Seeing Tails made me wonder, do you plan on adding Encore mode to the framework? unless it's outside of the project's scope of course. Talking from the personal experience, in Sonic Mania I would never pick Tails as my character of choice for the campaign, but I would gladly use him to spice things up in the encore mode
I'm so happy with how Sonic Studio is really looking into fine details in Sonic's ruleset so you can play with them! It is my favorite Sonic project, official or otherwise, and has been for a while. Oh yeah enlist me for a PT-Br version if you ever need one, too. Let's go global.
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you how incredibly happy I was yesterday. I looked through my email and the first thing I saw was that not only was I answered on my question, but a new video on the Sonic Studio channel came out after over a year. As I was watching the video I was grinning so hard, and afterward I took the time to read through the response I was given. This project keeps looking better every time I see it, and I can't wait to be able to play it whenever the demo comes out. Thank you for continually updating us on this and still finding time to work on this project.
