SonicGDK 1.30.000

Make that sphere 5 times larger and there you go, Blue-sphere in Unreal Engine 3.

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About the new demo...Its awesome, lot of new things to do, 2.5D love, lovely models, and loving the underwater part.

There is only one thing on the 2.5D part and its that when you jump, it jumps forward just a bit, but I suppose that is nothing really hard to fix. Also, I'd love to see some orange-brown pattern textures there =P... Man, I'd totally love to see another "Green hill Zone" in 3D...at least like the one in SA2, you should totally try to do a GHZ Skybox =P

But as I know, the engine come first, and I suppose there are lot of things to improve before any "nice" level =P

Oh, by the way, this isnt that important (Because its...obvious), but its running perfect (60fps) on my HD4670, but considering that...the level is really simple, I don't see why It should run bad at all =P

 

Wait, there are gamepad controls?

Huh.

It's reading my Smartjoy USB in reverse. So I press down on the analog stick to go forward, but left and right are fine.

 

I get the D3DCompiler error, not compatible with XP?

 

Runs okay on my 6600 GT. 20-30fps.

Edit:

Go get the latest version of Direct X. :P

 

I don't understand as well why aiming the Spin Dash requires aiming the camera and not Sonic's direction. The jump dash seems to do this too.

Also a suggestion to improve gameplay would be to make it where running or moving "backwards" (towards the camera) swerves the camera back to behind view.

 

Went ahead and made a video showing it running on my (rapidly aging) system :P



Edit: Also showcases a weird bug with running on water around 6:36. I think it had to do something with me recording, because it was working fine until I opened FRAPS and started capturing video. Once I started capturing video, it would only work if I hit the water in a certain direction.

 

And (unlike BlitzSonic) it might actually look GOOD

 

This is the best 3D Sonic engine I've ever seen. I have a few gripes, but it nails the perfect marriage between classic Sonic and a 3D explorable world! Even gets 2D right. Runs great on my Radeon 4350 too (rather weak GPU, but it runs perfectly on it). I love how you handled the loops, there's plenty of room to move around inside them and you're not going to suddenly fall off the sides by accidentally twitching the analog of keyboard. I see a bright future for this in fangaming! :D

I did have a few issues though, mostly a reiteration of what other people have said-

1- the max jump height is a good deal too low. I'm not expert in Sonic physics, but in the classic Sonic games, Sonic's max jumping height was about 2.5-3 times his own height. In this game though, his max jumping height seems to be at most, 2 times his own height. I'd bring his max jump height to 2.5-3 times his own height. So I guess he needs to jump 50% higher. And yes, I did hold down the button and am aware of the variable jumping height.

2- The gamepad controls need a bit of work (no not the inverted analog control, I used your advice and fixed that). At the moment, the ideal way to control Sonic is via keyboard and mouse just due to the way the camera and movement work. I'd say you need to get rid of the overly snappy camera for when you physically turn Sonic using a gamepad. The camera reacts to your turning way too quickly and gives a disorienting and almost nauseating effect. I think you need to tone that down a little. The effect is that you turn way too quickly and jerkily. I'd either tone it way down by making it much slower and more delayed, or make it like controlling via keyboard where Sonic turns and not the entire camera. At least slow the camera turning down when you're turning Sonic. It would also be nice to have a way to control the camera angle left and right using the shoulder buttons on a gamepad. When I'm playing a game, I don't like to take my thumb off the face buttons to readjust the camera angle using the second analog stick. Especially in a fast paced game like Sonic. If you program the camera to adjust left and right using the shoulder buttons, you can use your index fingers for that and keep your thumbs on the action. Sonic Adventure may have had its share of problems, but it did analog movement well.

3- Again, reiterating what others have said, but roll physics seem off when you're going down hills. When Sonic is in a ball, he should gradually (but rather quickly) accelerate and potentially reach a peak speed faster than his running acceleration. I've done my best to test his ball and running physics, and so far it feels like his peak speed is better achieved by running. Rolling into a ball to get speed while going downhill is a bit useless at the moment due to the way acceleration works here. I'll continue to test, but I'd speed up the acceleration of the ball mode, heavily increase the maximum speed you can achieve in this form, and decrease the time it takes to accelerate faster. When programming ball physics, I suggest you use Sonic 2's chemical plant as reference. Anyone who has played it is probably familiar with the extremely tall slopes where you can outrun the camera. Test this part both running and rolling. And note- ball physics should propel you upwards very high when vaulted into the air via a ramp.

Sorry about the long text, I hate to dedicate more space for nitpicking than praise. Rest assured that you've done more than any other 3D Sonic engine has ever done IMO, and the positives far outweigh the negatives. I just wanted to be as descriptive as possible when critiquing, so you'll be able to get a better idea of what to fix.

And for reference, this may not be the gamepad everyone is using (it's mine), but here's how I'd probably handle the controls if I were the one programming-

 

I'm highly inclined to disagree with that setup!
Being the main action of a platforming game (engine), there is absolutely NO question about what button should make the character jump: "Button 2" in your image. It's the "default" position most players rest their hands on, and thus it's the "main action" button.
Button 1/3 for ducking ("Spindash/Roll") would somewhat fit with that button being used for the spin dash in the 3D Sonic games, but I really don't think it would quite feel natural; I'm somewhat inclined to second AerosolSP's suggestion to have it as one of the back shoulder buttons, but which one? And what would the other one be used for?
Letting the player use either one may work as well. This is something that I'd recommend testing to see how it feels and going from there.
I'm also tempted to suggest moving camera panning to the back shoulder buttons instead of the front ones, but that may just be my experiences with the Dreamcast controller with its far-back shoulder buttons speaking.

 

Yeah, I forgot the crouch button. It is my gamepad, but I worded that a bit badly. It's basically a PS2 controller as it shares identical buttons (even the clicky analog sticks). Most people would likely use something like it. You could probably do without the second analog stick if absolutely necessary. I don't like to use it during action heavy games (to me, it's usually used just for admiring the scenery in a game). I'd much rather use shoulder buttons to control a camera. If you needed a way to adjust the camera height, you could maybe use the dpad or something.

My basic point though was that I hope the gamepad movement can be fine tuned to be less snappy with the camera. I don't particularly like the camera moving along with my character. It's too fast and I like turning without the camera turning as fast as I can (maybe have a delayed reaction from the camera or something). I'm no programmer though, so I'm not really in a position to give a proper example, sorry... I'd probably also just use the Sonic Adventure way of handling the spindash, with a single button. I've always thought they handled that pretty well in the transition to 3D. But I guess for the revving up mechanic, having another button to pulse to charge it is the best. Although maybe a meter in the corner showing the spindash charging level would be a good idea (longer you go, the higher the meter gets and when you let go, the meter's level will be how fast you go).

But regardless, I see a shining future for this engine. Just fix the jump height to be higher, and the rolling physics to be more ball-like, and you'll have one hell of a 3D Sonic engine!

As for SoNick's comment, I guess I should have left the face button positions off. I can use any button setup really, it should be user-choice. I used the setup seen in a lot of GB/GBA games. That's how I grew up, especially with Sonic Advance. :P

 

My hardware specs are almost entirely identical to the ones in this video, yet, this just does not run for me. I installed DirectX 9.0c June 2010 redist. and everything, but still nothing.

 

I can't for a release we can play with.

 

You'll have a hard time mapping the original layouts onto a real sphere, since they're square.

I think that happened to me as well on my first play-through, when I hit the booster I would just fall in the water. However, the second time I started the game, it worked fine.

Also, the colors don't look right:


Finally, Sonic seems to slow down when he's running on a ceiling; he should maintain his speed as if he was running on flat ground. I don't know if that's covered by the "Sonic physics" option mentioned earlier.

 

However, a giant doughnut would be perfectly fine.

 

By the way, how tall is the sonic model?

 

That runs pretty sweet on my computer, very smooth and fast since I have a new video card (GeForce GTX 260).

However, there is one thing that bugs me. You didn't showcase anything on the GDK that uses PhysX like smashing down walls via spin dash or the water ripples when you run via high speeds.

 

Yep, UDK has a fractal feature for meshes.