Have to say, Luster Lakes really is old school underwater labyrinth style done well. I started it and thought "Oh no.. a Labyrinth level" but it actually is a lot of fun because it gets the whole suffocating thing right. In the originals, being underwater is much less an issue of oxygen than it appears. Only Sonic 1 and CD even really make it necessary and that's only on occasion. In this game, you're underwater for ages and you feel the need for those bubbles like you need.... air. Perfect. On top of that, rings are rationed very well. The whole zone really does get it right, more than even Sonic 1 imo. For the type of level I dislike most, I am really quite happy with Luster Lakes. Except... Houston we have a frikking problem. While restarting the zone boss, I went for a bit of an explore with Knuckles. Ended up climbing really high, got to see where Fang used to be, and got to glide wayyy above the boss area. Then dropped, and landed on some land above it. Boss sequence starts, camera locks, I'm stuck. Ok, wait for the timer to expire this time, I'm too far in................ ..... the timer doesn't expire. And saving doesn't work. FFS! Dammit just when I was starting to relax about bugs, this happens. Does saving work for anyone here? Edit - Just checking... the no music version actually has a save of what little I played in that one. :S
Just wanted to say that regardless of the numerous bugs I encountered throughout the game, it was really good fun regardless. It's certainly not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but what's there was a real blast to play through and managed to catch me off guard (in the good way) several times, luster lakes and the final level especially. Well played Hez, well played.
Oh, the saves are working for me now, strange...will have to have a proper play of this tomorrow :specialed:
I'm more than likely going to remove the encryption method in REV01. Seems to be the main problem on most computers. This would allow super amounts of cheating though. Which I'm half way fine with, considering I can do this with about any game on a PC anyways. If you're going to cheat, you'll find a way. As with everything else, I'll fix all the bugs mentioned in rev01. Level layout design on the other hand, I may tweak, but you won't see to drastic of changes. Because as with anything, I cannot please everyone.
That's the way to do it. Sure, you want to make sure people play your game legitimately, but it's not exactly harming you if they don't.
I played the game for a long moment, got to + - Death Egg Zone. It's a very difficult zone, because even if Silver Sonic is quite easy to beat, the fact that you don't know how to hit the second boss before it kills you (in one hit) makes you have to go through a long path again before you get a chance to try to understand how it works. I faced several annoying glitches, some were funny, some just made me lose a life. I didn't find Luster Lake annoying, a bit long indeed, but the bubbles are well placed and you can get them quite often, and even the boss becomes quite easy to beat once you know that you can hit him two times before he even starts his move, and then just jump from the left corner regularly to get a bubble and hit him with the instashield in one jump. About the glitches, I also had some weird save resets, but it seems that it doesn't happen anymore. I had three deaths in mid-air after just using a yellow spring in the Hazel Hills "Timed challenge". And I think I had some the levels in the wrong order, but I'm not sure. There also is this deep pit with spikes in the desert level, but even if it's a pain, I can't call it a bug. And yes, the music is too loud compared to the sound effects. Another thing is that there are several moments when you don't know where you have to go, and just do a spin-dash-jump to go forward and find out where you land. Finally, + - I have to say that Bridge Zone is very difficult because of those weighing scales of wood. They make you slide to the pit when you walk on them and you're forced to fall and die before it makes you bouncing... the Boss was entairtaining, and not easy. Too bad this zone ends with a dead end. And, come to think of it, I really don't remember how I could reach it in the first place. I also went to another zone instead of a regular level, it was called "Magnetic Mines" or something like that, and it was just an all-blue zone that made Sonic start above a deadly pit. So to conclude, I'll say that the glitches don't make the game impossible to finish, and some are actually amusing, but it's sure that to go from a "very good game" to an "excellent game", it would be nice to see them disappear in the future. Still, nice work, it's a very fun game to play.
Currently in Luster Lake. Probably the most tedious level so far. Encountered a glitch where whenever the floating block sunk after the water shot it into the air, I tried to land on top of the block and I immediately died. Not exactly a full-blown complaint, but I'm somewhat offput by the fact that four out of six stages I've played so far have had water in them. I hate dodging routes if I have to, but if I want a good route to take throughout Hazel Hills I almost always have to take the high route. Otherwise, this game feels incredibly polished and much like a classic Sonic title should. I applaud you!
Just done with my first playthrough of the game, currently have just beat Luster Lake. I haven't encountered any game-killing glitch and the save function is working on my side (I clicked on "File" then "Quit" to close the game, also I'm playing on a Win7 laptop). I'm globally very satisfied with what I played so far, I had a lot of fun and the level design is pretty faithful to the classic Sonic games. The few gripes I have with this game have I believe already been voiced so I will not bother mentionning them. While it's obviously not a perfect classic Sonic experience, it however is a very good one and I applaud you for that
As someone said, something definitely needs to be done about Aqua Arena's backgroung/foreground indistinguishableness. Maybe darken one of the blocks types or something.
What are you using as saving the game data? Save Game Object? How do pass the second Special stage? I go to the left and I can't reach it, and I go to the right, the springs doesn't bounce me hi enough.
Jump, when you're high enough, land on the platform, be careful to not fall or else you will lose time. And don't take the rings path, it also quits you time. Pay attention and then step in the rotating platforms part with your last spring and there's the Chaos Emerald.
Your encryption is not working very fine, though, since I can easily cheat in your game, just change and/or adding variables in the .ini file. Level=9 to play Death Egg, Character=3 to play as Fang, etc, and all that. I insist you should work on that. Also, that's why I should've reserved judgement for after actually playing the game. At first, I thought was exagerating. Unfortunatelly, he was not. The game is really frustrating in my opinion, and I found the game designing choices questionable. When I reached the second stage I rage-quit the game. And why does this game have such a horrible lowdown? the second stage was un... play... able! each second took three seconds to elapse. I can't see why a 2D game has such a massive slowdown. I've seen 3D massive computer games that runs more smooth that this. As far as fan games goes, Sonic Fan Remix have so much going on but runs at 60fps. Heck, even my own fangame has so many completly unnecessary graphical improvement shaders and still runs smoothly. Aside from the frameskip; when will I see a fangame that let me actually set the buttons for the joystic? I have yet to see one. All these MF2 bullshit set a default controller setup and don't allow me to set up mine, so I have to play in the keyboard, because the Jump is assigned to the fucking Select Button. Can you please add a configurable control setup option for the next release, please? Jesus Christ, I'm so frustrated. Outside of that, I belive the game captured well the essence of the classic games. Even the game's manual. I just question some of the game designing choices, choices these that I won't get into detail here right now, but the game ultimately achieves it's basic goal: to mimic the old classic style gameplay. You pass this Special Stage by opening the SClassicsf.ini file in the directory of the main executable while the game is running, and changing the variable 'Emeralds' to '2' and 'Recieved' to '2' as well. There, you have yourself passed the second Special Stage. See? That's what I'm talking about when I say questionable designing choices. Also, I can't tell how much I rage because of the fact that, if you are with a elemental shield, you cannot use these bounce springs, since the second jump will activate the shield's special ability. Fuck this shit.
Assuming you're using the Blowfish encryption extension for Multimedia Fusion, something I learned: it takes the extension some time to encrypt/decrypt files. I'm going to assume your problem is that you decrypt the save data and try to load it immediately, which loads bogus data. Instead, program something to wait... say, ten or fifteen game frames. Example: I was having lots of trouble encrypting/decrypting leaderboard data for my own fangame because of this exact reason. It probably has to do with HDD access speeds, encryption algorithms, etc.
I downloaded and played this yesterday before I went out, though I was tired at the time, and just now after waking up, I gave it another shot. What's keeping me from enjoying this and wanting to play it more is the heavy lag I'm getting (5 seconds per second) although this is not entirely your fault as I understand it, had I a better resource machine it probably would've been smoother. Though if you are taking requests then a proper fullscreen mode that reduces the resolution to it's lowest would be something I'd be pleased with, I've seen other unfinished fangames do this and it does reduce the lag quite a lot. With the above in mind I'll try to give what feedback I can. Firstly, I always look at graphics of a game, and I like what you've done graphically from the levels to the menus, it has a decent style, although I'm not one to be hyped up over reused art and prefer original designs, what is done here is quite good, it has style, and the levels seem "filled" by it. This is just graphically speaking though, the level structure (I.e. layout and object placement) seemed not really like how a Sonic game would be, though I'm no good at understanding it myself, I'll leave it at that. The special stages particularly the one with the Crackers level used, I thought was a cool idea, it's something unique in my opinion, and I like that, though there seems to be an invisible wall issue to the left, is that intentional or is it a bug? Jayextee mentioned this and I agree, either the music volume is too loud or the sound effects are too quiet, I'll assume it's the SFX because of the quality they have been ripped/played at, which brings me to the point about the mixturous amount of music. The quality between the tracks seem to change quite a lot and this is slightly offputting in a way, having a full filled music track played and then to hear a low frequency level complete jingle does feel kinda odd and makes it feel unprofessional, I do like the wide range of different tracks with different themes though I must admit, hearing a "tropical" track being played for a "tropical level" is brilliant after hearing a shit tone of hacks which feel that heavy metal fits the bill better for some stupid reason =P The only other thing that came to mind was Sonic's physical delay with the level and/or object's collision system, it seems the game runs through the level and object collisions and sets Sonic position right a frame too late, I don't know what control you have over the programming (heck I know almost nothing about "fangame" programming), but as a general megadrive game programmer, Sonic (as a "sprite") seems to be drawn "before" the level and objects can take collisional effect, while it's not a problem gameplay wise, if you can, I would suggest taking a look at that =$ At this point, I can't say anything else a part from a few bugs like not being able to go through a loop because it's blocked off, etc, and like I say having playing this at 5 game secones per second really has put me off of it, I'm terribly sorry as this is not necessarily your fault, with that in mind, if anyone feels the need to correct any of my opinions above, please do, it may convince me to go back and give it another play. I did try to have fun though, and it did make a change to play something that was moderately worth while, and obviously, there's no doubt you spent a lot of time and hard work on this, nice work on your efforts =)
It's been many a year since I've even touched multimedia fusion, but I think a big problem with it, being event based means the user isn't always made aware of how everything is executed sequence wise, which causes sync issues. And with what Blaze said about the blowfish encryption object not working unless you give it enough time, a lot of things must be asynchronous as well. That's the price of trying to make it not a programming language I guess.
