I've been working on remastering the whole Sonic 3 in a 2.5D fashion game since late 2014. It started in UDK but I quickly moved to UE4 as soon as I could afford it (thank god it went free!). I've been posting some updates on YouTube but it wasn't until some weeks ago that I started to get a lot of views and comments, so I decided to post my work here for you all. I'll post 2 of the videos that I find most significative of the progress of the game, but you can check different stages of development on my channel. [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqGxwxw7MDs[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5OxGR8qJnU[/media] I wanted the gameplay to have the exact same feel as the original, so I based all my code on the SPG here at Sonic Retro, with some minor tweaks to adapt to a 3D environment, of course. The music is made by me and Fraug L. Coolman (US). About the art and level design, I've recently joined Dan Serditenko (Russia) who's gonna be in charge of it. My purpose is to release a playable demo of at least 2 entire levels with their respective 2 acts and bosses. I hope you like it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADkLBtSGKMo Seriously if you haven't already turn down the bloom to like 1% of what you have there because it's incredibly hard to watch. It's so high that you can't even see what's in the item boxes. The Blue Spheres video looks okay though.
My PC can barely run anything UE3-based, so UE4 is basically out of the question. But I can honestly say...
Is this the first time you've seen anything made with Unreal Engine 4? :v: Seriously though, not to shit on meinukey's work, gameplay-wise it looks pretty decent. But let's not get crazy about how good the visuals look. Angel Island Zone is not much more than Unreal Engine 4 demo assets and doesn't even actually look all that much like Angel Island except for that it's a forest. And the assets for Blue Spheres aren't really all that hard to make, as it's just spheres with basic textures.
Thanks guys! ^ Exactly. The only reason why you're seeing mixed stuff like an Angel Island title card on a test level that has nothing to do with it, the bloom being too high (sorry for that) or sample assets quickly painted on a flat terrain is because I'm focused on getting the mechanics right and these videos were never intended to be used as a formal presentation of the game, just to show it to some people around me. I'm not saying 'hey look how gorgeous my game looks!' or stuff. *BTW, I've made the grass and the trees and flowers are from a cheap package I bought in UE4's Marketplace that I fixed and added LoDs for performance.
As someone who loves the base combo-game, I can only praise your efforts, movement looks great. I would like to help, but I suspect you want to keep it as a personal project. Keep up the good work.
Honestly, it would be great to see this become UE4's Sonic GDK. It looks like a pretty solid base. That's probably far outside the scope of the project, though.
Looking good ! Its great to see you made use of some of SGDK special stage assets like the special stage fisheye shader. I received your youtube response and meant to respond back but yeah man, I was so busy than I completely forgot about replying, will have to get to that this evening. Keep up the good work for sure ! P.S. I've remade all the collision geometry in 3D for Angel island a few years back. its 1 to 1 with the genesis game's collision shapes. The Chunks are just sitting here doing nothing.
Looks great man! And I'm really glad that you acknowledge that bloom needs to be toned down. Any plans on releasing this rad blue spheres remix? I really love it!
Hey there, what you have done is great so far, but I just want to warn you that if you want to make a faithful tribute to the series, it's best that you ONLY focus on the demo first before getting to work on anything else, set that as your big goal before beginning work on the rest of the game, for now I'd suggest refining how Sonic animates, and some of the graphics, and work on assets for the levels you have planned. (I'd honestly suggest just working on Angel Island zone for now.) Other than that, make sure to have fun and try different things to get the result you want.
I honestly think that Ricardo's HDK is way more suitable to be UE4's GDK than this. My code is heavily Genesis-2D oriented. Alright! Looking forward to it! About the collision for Angel Island, I'll tell you when I get further on the design of the level. Thanks! It'll come with the demo, ofc! /> Thanks, and yeah that's been always my goal from the very start. In fact my original plan was to release a demo of AIZ and HZZ, but after joining Dan and him showing me his work on Mushroom Hill Zone, I've decided that it would be stubborn of me to stick to my plan and switched from HZZ to MHZ.
Not convinced with the lighting of the special stage (the fact that there's a light source means you can work out where you are on the map (!!)), but it's certainly nice to see a Sonic 3 special stage rendered in 3D. Super duper number one top tip - 3/4 view > profile. Now I admit it's tricky to pull off this effect in 3D, but that was the first thing that stood out to me - it doesn't look anything like Sonic 3. This whole idea is very ambitious but it's certainly a neat little project.
While this is in a very early state and the scenery is most certainly a placeholder, I'm seeing signs of poor art direction already, particularly with that ridiculously high bloom that would have to have been done manually (or if not, should not have been such an oversight before making a public video when it would be an easy fix). Poor art direction is what ruins projects like this for me. I hardly trust anyone to do it right. So I want to get this out of the way while the project is still early and hopefully make a difference. Other people might be easily impressed (cough those UE4 "demos" people make) but I'm not. In my eyes, this is lazy and uninspired: Even if this were refined and made to look much better, this style is out of place for Sonic, ESPECIALLY a Sonic 3 & Knuckles remake which already has an established distinct style to be respected. The disappointment would only go up with the amount of work put into it, because it's that much more effort put into the wrong direction. Just looking good should not be the aim, but looking right as well. I hope you spend a good long while soaking in Sonic 3&K's artwork and deconstructing it. A remake of this game in 3d and high fidelity, those are massive shoes to fill. I will be holding this up to high standards and I expect you to do the same.
The light source is not stationary. It's attached to the sky, which is a giant sphere that rotates in the opposite direction of Sonic's movement to achieve the same scrolling effect in the original game, since he actually moves along a plane and it's the floor that bends downwards around him. 3/4 view, I've tried my best on idle poses but when he runs it looks awkward. Giving the camera some angle to catch him a little bit more from the front doesn't help either; one would lose some of what's happening in front of him. You said it, it's tricky.
Not really. But even so, it's still gorgeous. I mean, it makes me wish my laptop (bought for $300, American, in 2012, when it was considered "low-end") could run UE4. But it struggles with UE3.
I've put no effort in painting some foliage on a flat terrain mesh. I need people to talk about how the animations and physics look and maybe give me some ideas, hence the title of the videos naming gameplay implementations and not shouting things like "graphical showcase" or things like that. Now, you gotta believe me that I agree with you on most of what you say, I also see a lot of questionable artistic work out there, but I'm not going around telling them how they suck. Time is going to show you how wrong you are.
I still feel like this is very early though, but he came to the right place for critique. He's at least making sure the mechanics of the game work, which is more important than the aesthetic. A lot of this stuff is likely placeholders. Buy I'm cheering you on I think this can be great
