Here's my experience with the game thus far: (Apologies if any of these things have already been mentioned.) It still has a LOT of bugs that I've noticed, and the physics seem kinda floaty to me. Fullscreen is highly recommended for this game, it gives me the smoothest framerate that way. The level design is nice, and the music is decent. The special stages are directly taken from Sonic Chaos for the Game Gear, which I like. Though, time limits on some of the special stages seem a little too restrictive, but once you've played through them a few times and know what to do, they're not so bad. Still kinda bullshit though. The whole two water level thing only moderately bugs me, as they're not badly designed. A lot of my frustration probably stems from the aforementioned broken physics that can screw up your jumps or get you stuck in places you'd rather not be. There's also times where I can't enter a special stage ring, for whatever reason. There's a weird ‘glitch’ in the fourth Special Stage, where if you take the lowest route near the end of the level, and keep running right, you'll eventually trigger an off-screen sign post and…clear the Act you were currently in before you entered the Special Stage? …huh. Yeeaaah, might wanna fix that. I've played it through to the end and, all and all, it's certainly not a BAD fangame. It does have a level of polish and loads of extras in the 'Challenge Mode'. I can appreciate all that. However, I've been playing it a bit more today and it's still seems pretty broken. The glitches keep me from truly enjoying this game. I think Hez probably jumped the gun when he released this, for sure. Still, I really hope he can get the bugs ironed out, because it has potential to be a pretty great fangame.
Honestly I'm happy with all the water in the game. I know it's easy to hate, and I'm one of the crowd that is certainly not a fan of the original Labyrinth zone, but imo it's always good to have it for variation in a level as long as it's not allowed to get too annoying. Five of Sonic 3's six zones have it and it is just fine I reckon. Admittedly I have only played as Knuckles so far, with whom the first water level is a complete walkover (glideover) and the gliding rebound physics Hex has implemented for bosses makes him just superior for that boss fight too. Love it hehe. The second water level I found to be just great. Honestly enjoyed its watery gameplay more than any other classic Sonic game - it just gets it right and you're moving along, bubble to bubble, wondering when the next one is. Still trying to get a good crack at this game. I've only played... 5 zones I think? It's a tad hard to get into after the 3rd time the games cracks its dacks and locks you out, then fails to save. But I'm getting teased by all these levels people are talking about... and the challenges... totally working on me. Trying to unlock stuff in a Sonic game? Of all things.
The speed was slow but playable under Ubuntu using WINE but I thought that was more to do with me playing on an Intel Atom N445 processor. Anyway once I got onto my main Windows machine I was able to give it a full-speed run through, currently in Gigapolis Zone Act 1 and it's been very impressive so far. I've made screenshots of the bugs I have came across: I somehow got pushed up on top of those moving blocks from the second level by jumping in the corner of them while it was moving upwards, I believe. Not sure how I encountered this one and ran into the stars on top of one of the lamppost things, in then all of a sudden this loads up. Sonic freezes for about 2 seconds before finishing off his death animation. This loops until I have no lives left then the "GAME OVER" texts kicks in and then I return to the start of the SEGA screen.
Another bug, which I forgot to mention earlier: There was a point in Hazel Hill Zone where I tried to Peel-Out up a convex curve, from the bottom of the curve (I.e. not quite flat ground); the result was that I died. :S Also regarding the Peel-Out: Is it supposed to be as limited as it is when underwater? I ask because the Spin Dash doesn't seem to have been reduced in power to the same extent. Regrettably this is not effective on Wine. This is similar to what happened to me (and another user) in the first Special Stage, although I did see the sign post; it was at the bottom-right of the screen.
I'm not sure what everyone found so frustrating about Luster Lake; I actually thought it was quite a fun zone, for a water level :P I got up to Death Egg, but died as soon as I got to Mecha/Silver Sonic's second form, so I will try again another time; all in all it's a good game, it just needs a bit of polish. I have to agree the music is quite inconsistent.
I have absolutely no problems with Water Levels in Sonic games. In fact, I love 'em. I was sad to see that there isn't a water level in Sonic & Knuckles and these days Water Levels are restricted to just one Zone. Anyway, I'm going to try playing this on a faster machine.
I don't necessarily hate Labyrinth Zone, for example. I just didn't like that it was preceded by two very slow zones, it being slow enough already. I won't say it's one of my favorite zones, but it is certainly one of the most memorable and a fun diversion from faster zones. It sorta works.
Playing through it so far, I have resolution troubles (Windows 7, Intel GMA) where the correct resolution will not work and I end up having to have essentially a full window. Full screen does not play nice on resolutions too either. Also, the object placements are absolutely atrocious. Countless times I have got to a point where I can't get out of it, thus having to reset the game. A release is a release though and bugfixes can be made. Other than the issues I have, good work so far.
Dusty Dunes' boss is just flat out horrible. It's not a challenge. It's piss poor programming where the suction doesn't pick up the mine even when it's just a few pixels away (oh sure it picks up Sonic fine). The music doesn't help much in that it's so loud you can't keep track of the hissing noise to hint when it's about to speed up suction. This boss is just plain ridiculous, I'm at a standstill. Sorry if I sound like an ass, but I haven't been so pissed at a boss in years. :specialed: Wow I beat it in 6 minutes, that is BULL edit: In positive contrast, Luster Lakes boss was a lot more creative and easier but still provided a challenge. I didn't know what the hell was going on with the color pipes though. Was Robot Rave one of your last zones to make? I swear this is my favorite zone out of your whole game, ESPECIALLY Act 3. It's a positive thing to play after the boss mentioned above.
I played till Aqua Arena. I am also very very bugged with how the level design is set up in a lot of parts, not to mention a bunch of other things that also sort of puts me off. As Tweaker said too, I'm trying really hard to enjoy this game but I can't. Here are some of my peeves with it: 1- The levels seem to have a lot of going back and forth. It's fine, Sonic 3 did that a lot in contrast of the going-almost-all-the-time-rightward sort of design of Sonic 1, 2 and CD, and Sonic 3 had really good level design. But this game seems to overdo it a bit and doesn't seem to know how to do it right. It seems like the majority of checkpoints are placed in places that you have to go leftwards. So when I die and respawn, I go rightward only to realize that I've been backtracking and I have to go leftwards. This bugs me a lot. If you're placing Checkpoints in places where you have to go leftwards, make them be next to a huge wall or something blocking the rightward parth so that you know you have to go leftwards. There's just way too much misdirection in the level design of this game. Sometimes I go to one direction thinking it's the right way only to realize I was backtracking through an alternate route. Uh, what? Also, Sonic 3 at least had the decency to put some signposts indicating the direction you must go whenever you are in an area that is too open or too confusing to know which way you have to go. 2- Boring Special Stages and Bonus Stages. Yeah, I know that this must be due to limitations on your programming and all, but seriously, not only the Special Stages are boring as hell, but really badly designed and/or coded in a lot of ways and it is the only reason I lose at some of them. Some Special Stages don't even seem like you even cared! What's the difficulty at all of the first and the third Special Stages? The first one's only difficulty is of you holding right and falling to your doom because Sonic didn't break the goddamn monitor like he was supposed to. 3- Boring and badly designed bosses? The bosses in Sonic 1, 2, 3 and CD followed one main design: You are able of destroying them really fast if you know how to. Most of the times is knowing how to spam your jump at the boss without getting hit. Some other times is knowing how to hit him even when he's not completely vulnerable, etc. The first boss is impossible to try to destroy it quickly because Sonic just bounces back so much after he hits Robotnik and Robotnik is so far up too. Not to mention the ENORMOUS invincibility time the bosses seem to have. (or at least the boss in Crystal Caverns has). Also the boss at Gigalopolis is pretty much a joke of how boring and easy it is. Not to mention it also doesn't follow the design of the bosses in the Sonic series :I 4- There's a reason why Sonic 1 keeps shifting through "fast" and "slow" zones. It's because whenever you're in a zone that lets you go really fast, it's not clear when (and you don't want to either) you have to stop and then go through a careful slow platforming section. The thing is that a lot of the zones here pulls this dickish move in which it throws a lot of loops, turns and etc at you and you feel like you can, and you have to go really fast, only to realize you fell into a deathpit because you went so fast that you jumped over a slow platforming section and fell into a deathpit and died. Gigalopolis for instance. You throw at the player this section in which Sonic goes really fast through a bunch of loops, U-turns and all with a bunch of Speed Boosters only to instantly see that platforming section of the end of Spring Yard Act 3 RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU with no warning, stop or speed down or anything and even more dangerous and dickish than it was back then. 5- The level design again. I have to emphasize this. It has so many parts in which the player doesn't know what does the game wants him to do. I faced an occasion in which I jumped in a deathpit thinking that I had to go down there. I jumped carefully on a bunch of platforms upwards thinking to be greeted with power-ups or an alternative route above only to find absolutely nothing. Not to mention the whole misdirection too that I've mentioned. So many other small things that bother me so much, both with the design and the small bugs or issues with the engine/gameplay, it's hard to list. You really need to polish this game up a lot. Really.
Also this boring bastard in everyone's favourite, Sonic 3 & Bumholes. Classic's bosses aren't that far removed from what we've already been seeing. I have no problem with them; with the exception of Luster Lake, but that's only because I have to play a lot of game just to get back to it after losing my lives on it once. Long first act is long.
Well, I played the game on a computer that can play the likes of Mass Effect on full settings and well... there's still slow downs. I'm having a hard time playing the game because of these slow downs. I imagine that the core of the problem is simply MMF being a crappy game maker. :/ I'm going to try this on the school computers. They can play the likes of Crysis on full settings at 60FPS with no drops. If there's still slow down problems then you're probably gonna have to change the way the ring animation plays when you pick one up. Interestingly enough, there's no slow downs during the special stages with the rings...
Sounds like Fan Remix... random people getting problems. I'm on Win 7 on a laptop, Core2 Duo 8400 and a Radeon HD3650 and I haven't seen any slowdown I believe.
I had random stops and slowdowns, etc. on mine as well, but that was because I was playing it off a disk. When I put the game itself on the hard-drive, all slowdown issues went away. I'm playing on a dual-booted Mac that's running Windows 7. I don't know why it was an issue, but its gone now.
lol, the 2nd special stage is really easy with a lightning shield, not that I had a lightning shield when I entered! I had had one in the 1st special stage, a zone before haha. It seems to have lingered in there and now I come out with a free lightning shield.
A weird glitch I encountered in LL, I had de-highlighted the game (so it was still visible, but not the program the computer was running primarily). I re-highlighted it, and absentmindedly clicked the space-bar and Sonic's sprites dissapeared. I could still get air-bubbles, but the game didn't register me passing the check-point. I got to the boss and I "drowned" once, but the game kept going. I could still hit Robotnik though. I ran out of air again, and this time I did die. I started the level over and everything was back to normal. Weird.
That is one of the greatest bosses in the game, you shut your mouth. Out of all of the Classic bosses, the most awesome one had to have been Gigapolis Zone, if only because it put a sweet twist on the original that made the boss fight much better.
