Yeah, I have to second that you give After the Sequel a go. It's better than Before the Sequel, and much more like classic Sonic than Chrono Adventure. The soundtrack rocks as well, and some of the level themes are pretty original. You just have to get used to Sonic World's physics and a few less-than-professional graphics. As for Nexus, I'd love to see that come back in some form. I used to check on that project's blog every day back in '08 hoping for a new demo. It always seemed so... solid compared to other fangames of the time.
I'd say let's worry about porting Sonic XG to "something better" later on. I think it would be a higher priority to get the game finished and out the door first than set it back two more years by switching to unfamiliar tech again.
But Endri was offering to tweak within MMF2, or am I misreading? edit: And on topic of ATS/BTS soundtracks, I'm not too sure if it was a fair comparison as most of us were doing music professionally at the point we finished off ATS. (I was neck deep in Square Enix stuff, KgZ was already working at Harmonix, Funk Fiction was/is DJing in LA and living off his project studio) I dunno, I always feel bad when people point to those games as a benchmark as if music is some kind of competition. There's a lot of good shit out there, even if we inadvertently set this hilarious precedent that it takes like 20 guys to do a soundtrack for a fan game.
If you're referring to my previous comment, I wasn't comparing soundtracks, just game design. I just mentioned that the music was really good. This is a bit off-topic, though...
It was more of general sentiment than this thread or that post specifically. Discussion quite often went down that path.
You are correct. Although I'd be so tempted to move it to something better and portable, because I find it hard to believe that some of the things that want to improve in this game are even possible within MMF2 alone. I'd hate to see this game fall victim to any of the things that 99% of the fan games do (or don't, thereof), which includes, among many things, lack of proper audio management (or any audio management at all), lack of a "technology-pushing" Special Stage (because the game making suit doesn't allow, or because the creator simply doesn't know how to implement their idea), use of a "Power Sneakers" track out of sheer convenience, because the creator don't know how to rise the tempo without also raising the pitch of the music, innacurate Tails AI, awful physics. That being said, I'm almost certain that the current Special Stage in XG is probably some 2D shit and probably sucks (not really suck, what I mean is that it probably isn't as good as it could be, if you know what I mean).
There hasn't been a good special stage in official Sonic games in years - they're usually half-arsed variants on the tube (aka coming up with ideas is really hard). Lower your expectations?
Gonna have to say I've never found any realtime speedup convincing but I'm pretty anal about music. (My ideal solution would be to have two versions of a track, one with the BPM up by 25%, and then have the audio engine track beats via BPM info and swap to/from on a beat, perserving the number of beats from the start of the song when you activate/deactivate the sneakers powerup)
20,2814%, if we really want to be that accurate! :v: (the Genesis games up the tempo by this amount) Realtime sounds good enough to me; the DirectX's XAudio2 API increments sample position by 0x0400. I just have to change it to 0x04cf. The audio information loss is negligible. However, incidentally, this method you described is exactly what my audio driver do; I have two tracks (one rendered at its regular BPM and another rendered with BPM × 1.202814), and (I don't have to keep track of anything because XAudio2 already does that internally) I change between them tracks on the fly.
Yeah, when I mocked up that solution in Wwise just for the heck of it, the jump was still noticable, especially around long percussion samples like cymbals. Still a much better solution than a sped-up track. My solution solution was to then have the sped up version have a slightly different arrangement (usually just a little more percussion) so that the change was more intentional/pronounced and then have the engine only swap them on the next beat which masks the transition better too. Of course, if we're talking about YM2612 tones then the material itself is a lot more forgiving to manipulation without sounding artifacty. (soz4tangent)
I quite like the 2d special stages in Sonic Chaos (I think it was Chaos). I don't think it matters how its made, as long as its fun and playable.
I don't mind Special Stages being 2D or being a half-pipe variant. I do mind it, however, being at the same time, both a bad 2D and a bad half-pipe variant. Now, I don't find the concept itself bad, I find its implementation bad. Here's a much better approach. The thing I have with Special Stages is that they always tried to stretch the technology during the Genesis era: rotating maze, "Mode 7", 3D race, 3D puzzle, 3D fully polygonal tube/stage. Special Stages should at least strive to go beyond some limitations.
Or you could stop being so pretentious and simply contact him yourself. It'd take 5 times less time to make an AIM account and contact him instead of sitting here and bitching about sonic games bot official and fanmade not meeting your expectations.
Was that honestly necessary? He's critiquing someone's work, as in saying whats wrong with it and how to improve it. That's a GOOD thing. People do that on threads all the time, and his points are accurate. The perspective on XG's special stages is poorly implemented and makes everything look like it pops out from the center and moves to the sides, which just feels wrong and distracting. I take it your a fan of XG, but if someone says "this doesn't work and here's my take on how to fix it" the mature thing to do, if you disagree, is state that and how you feel it DOES work. What you don't do is go "hey fuck you man."
You probably took my post out of context. At no point did I say it's wrong to criticize one's work. I was referring to all of his posts including this one rather than to only the last one.
Wait, YOU are telling him to quit bitching about a fan-game and to contact him? Hypocrite much? While on topic, I agree with Endri on making whatever you choose the special stage be, to be at least playable. I'd take an amazing 2D special stage over a mediocre 3D stage any-day.
That video of the XG special stage is stressful to watch, let alone to play. You wait 90% of the time, then you got a small window when the stuff pops and you have to react. In the 90s games the stages were better paced, even Sonic 3D Mega Drive's.
I'm willing to aid him make his fan game better, but I'm not desperate to impose my whims on the game, nor I have the time to, the point of having to create accounts in other forums or whatever. All I'm saying is that if he wants to improve his fan game, I know how to, I'm willing to do so, and I will do it, if he so wish; the offer is placed. But the interest to make his own fan game better must come from no one other than himself, and I can be found in all those media I already use. While that doesn't happen, I resume my schedule working on actual games. About "bitching about sonic games bot[sic] official and fanmade not meeting your expectations", there was no bitching. And about official games, uh, sorry for Sonic Boom not being good enough for me? But then again I never "bitched" about it either (just said it was bad, and handwaved its existence). I think the person being pretentious here is you. Incidentally, yours are examples of great Special Stages.