I've been showing some out-there loop designs on Twitter: Figure 8 https://twitter.com/SonicStudioDev/status/1249768478330028032 Triple https://twitter.com/SonicStudioDev/status/1250053113119158272 Figure 8 loop improvement
Hey Lapper, could this loop be modified to have corkscrews in the middle and make it like a mobius strip? Like Sonic runs on bottom, starts loop, goes into a corkscrew towards the inside left side of top loop, he runs around on the INSIDE of the top loop, and another corkscrew makes him run to the inside of the bottom loop running towards the right? Did I explain that right? Imagine Studiopolis' Inline turns that turn you upside down but between the loops.
That is awesome, I love the versatility on display here. What you've shown of the editing interface looks so polished and user friendly. So excited to play but take all the time you need. The videos of these loops working are so cool. I'm curious, for this figure eight loop with two levels of terrain, if you approach the loop from the bottom left (light blue to green transition) and jump off from the top left outer loop (dark blue to light blue transition), how is that interaction programmed?
There's no way to flip around to the other side of a solid currently. If its a big deal I could try adding it one day, didn't seem too important though, but I can see how that'd be quite cool. How would you get out though? When you are cyan layer you can collide with every layer, but when you are blue or green you can only collide with the one you are on (and cyan). So jumping off the outside of that loop would just be normal and you could even fall right back down - until you go past those large layer switchers, walk back to it, and you are now on the blue layer on the left side, and could go through the top loop rather than bumping into it. Though I'm sure you could set it up just a tad different and make it work smoother.
My god, this is crazy. How is this not an official Sega project? I would pay for it, seriously. This, and "Mania 2" (that I still want to believe it's going to happen). On my Switch. I'd go crazy and find myself wasting hours and hours playing.
What impresses me isn't so much the various shapes themselves, but that your auto-tiling is able to keep up with all of the crazy shapes and twists without breaking. I've seen commercial programs that break down trying to do even simpler stuff. If you've ever tried using RPG Maker, it's got auto-tiling set up for cliffs and ground types, but those never work out well and you have to spend so much time fixing things by hand that you'd have been better off assembling everything manually to begin with. On top of that, if you don't waste available layers when fixing it, each tile you hand-place to fix things just further breaks the autotiling. And that's a $50+ paid-for program, not a freeware fan-game one.
Really enjoy your QnA questions, sort of quirky fun, but I was hoping you'd show off in engine how large a loop could be. I assume its limited to the height of a stage, or how large you can make a curve without it breaking into flat angular segments.
Yeah I should have, though I am holding off on showing building loops as I plan to make a full explanation of the layer system etc, and all the different ways to build them, it's kind of a big deal I guess so I don't want to miss anything important out. Of course, if you make a loop as large as a stage there's then the matter of building the speed to traverse it, heh.
I'm liking the fact that the more of this I see, the more fleshed out things are looking and becoming. I love making level layouts, and I feel like using this would take away the restrictions that come with traditional level layouts in Sonic games. In some case, those restrictions are great and help mould the level's structure, but some levels from the classic games could definitely have benefited from this level of micro-management. All of the loops you've shown off so far look really cool, but I don't understand the most recent one (above). I can't see visually how it works; the art doesn't help to contrast where things are (lack of shadows), and Sonic seems to just move forwards/backwards on the (virtual) Z-Axis without any visual explanation as to how. It's also incredibly gimmicky (maybe one of these in a whole Zone), and I'm also wondering if this level of freedom is prevalent in other Zones; can you make a loop like this in other Zones? Can you micro-manage the floor to this degree in other Zones? or is it all restricted to Green Hill Zone? I'm sorry for the all the questions, and I do not want to dissuade you from this level of editing, but I genuinely love where this is going, and I am more interested in what can be achieved.
Damn I reallllyyy hope there's an online upload component to this like Mega Maker has. I'd love to play an endless amount of Classic Sonic levels like I can in Mario Maker. This looks soooo good. I love it.
Definitely gimmicky, that's the point! Shadows are something I'd love to add but they do complicate things a bit so it might not happen. You can control how clear things look layering-wise to an extent with the shape borders (which you can change) and also the rings you place can help guide. As for it being confusing to traverse, the bottom part where it overlaps normal ground right at the end I'd even argue myself is weird, or at least very unconventional. I think we'll see a lot of that type of weirdness when the time comes for others to try. You can kinda see from the thumbnail how it works, where the greener shapes are the front layer and the more blue shapes are the back layer. the most weird part is the bottom gets you to switch rather than follow the front curve all the way to the left.
I've always wanted to ask, how do you plan on handling collision in regards to players getting caught inside level geometry?
That's a pretty good question, and I plan on a video which shows all the different cases involving slopes and stuff because it won't be immediately obvious what does what. In terms of getting stuck in stuff, there's one general thing I've accepted and that is it's going to happen. It's not tile based and it's totally free in terms of the possibilities so people can make whatever heinous shape they want, and yeah many of those will cause glitches. It's impossible to account for every case. Normal every day terrain shapes should have very minimal problems. I'm kind of shifting the blame onto the level designer though. If their stage has a clipping issue but they built a ridiculous shape, that's their burden to fix. This isn't to say I'm not avoiding what I can, but these are 1px thick lines and not safe ordered neat 16px thick tiles. Here's a couple results of certain cases: If you find yourself inside a shape completely, you simply will fall out of it, and there's no collision inside shapes. It could be worth checking if you are inside one then reverting your position but that's a lot of calculation looking for something that should be avoided in the first place. If you build a crazy sharp corner, either something you fall into or run into, there's the real possibility you can't get out of that on your own. So that would be a soft lock. Alternative is you move in just the right way to phase through. Generally, tight spaces you arent really built to fit in can cause issues so should be avoided.
Maybe I am getting where I should not, but it's completely possible to prevent crossing collisions, no matter their size, depending on how you are handling them. Can you describe me overall how do you calculate the collisions? I may help. I have in my computer a prototype of another game where you can literally blast at 10000 meters per frame against a pixel thick collision and you won't cross it, using my own collision system. Edit: Awesome project, I am amazed by it, really.
