Sonic Generations Megathread

I believe stereoscopic 3D combined with head tracking could probably help a lot if the platform game in question was a first person affair like Mirror's Edge. Not so sure about a 3rd person bouncing from enemy to enemy in 3D. Depth perception helps a lot when telling how close objects are relative to yourself, but it's a lot harder to figure it out referencing two objects at a distance from yourself.

EDIT:

Certainly. The game has certain targets of importance like the tops of street lights or telephone poles, pegs sticking out of the wall, etc. etc. As you are jumping around, if you start to approach one of these objects of importance, the game starts pulling on you as if controlling your controller for a moment to make you automatically approach the object of interest so that you can jump from a tall building onto a telephone wire, start riding its current over to the next building, leap off, hover around for a little while, start doing a massive dive, and then end up dancing around on a garbage can lid once you reach the bottom.

In other words, it's just making objects have a natural clingyness to them that automatically directs the player to attack them. You could have a button for doing that in a Sonic game or you could just have it do that automatically with a lot of care taken so that it doesn't mess the player up too much in abnormal ways.

 

As I recall, yes, enemies weren't the easiest to jump on in the 3D Mario games, let alone chain hits. That's probably a big part of why Mario gained the ability to punch and kick, as well as a slew of acrobatic moves: making him easier to maneuver. Even the Goombas themselves seem to try and make it easier by practically running under Mario's feet when they spot him. The homing attack may be overused as a gimmick (and I'd like to see the Instashield idea brought up for Freerunner in action), but giving an old character some kind of new move to help him compensate for the added dimension isn't exactly sacrilegious.

 

Oh boy, we're talking about the homing attack. S4:E1 threads all over again.

Remember that in the classic games that while you were moving, most of your badnik kills involved Sonic either rolling or jumping through them. Occasionally you could fluke and, jumping from a high distance, get back the huge air you lost by bouncing on some enemy that just happened to be there, it was a nice surprise. 3D's odds of you hitting a badnik like that, now with the 3D sections existing, make this a lot harder of course. But even in the 2D sections I don't think it's going to do you any damn good. To tie this to the upcoming game, I don't think anything's changed where it would be a nice little advantage. The only time I bounced on enemies was when I got the bubble shield in S3&K, but I doubt that they'll put in the elemental shields either, as I wrote a few pages back. Summing this all up, since Sonic Team is still having trouble making level designs that really feel interactive, I'm sure they haven't changed a darn thing about the gameplay to make their jobs figuring out the levels easier, so the homing attack is going to be there. Oh well, it's not a surprise, we can't do anything about it, tough shit. So yeah, let's not try to talk about how to fix Sonic, please.

I know I shouldn't bring up that Facebook poll they did with the zones since it's already been discussed, but I'm really wondering why they would make such a thing in the first place. I don't think it holds too much weight, since a game with zones pasted from various Sonic games would feel gaudy, and from a story perspective (they're going to have some story to tell in this game and you know it), there's no way to tie all that shit together. Not to mention the differing aesthetic from game to game. Hm. I'm stretching things at this point, so I won't post anything unless there's some significant development down the line.

 

Here's one thing I don't think alot of people know about - sonic team has kind of already come up with the proper solution to attacking things in 3d, they just don't realize it. Let me explain - in Sonic Adventure, there are a few platform objects that detect if you are over them. If you are, the game immediately increases your deceleration value and kind of 'pulls you in' in a sense. If you manage to overshoot the middle of the platform anyways, the deceleration is restored to its previous value and you keep on going like business as usual. You could probably come up with an analogous function for enemies, where if you're near them in ball mode, the game could kind of suck you in, but only gently. There are other areas in sonic adventure that use an object called O OTTOTO, which is placed near the edge of playable surfaces - if you're moving within a certain speed and along a certain trajectory, the game will kill your speed to keep you from flying off the edge, but if you persist it lets you go over.

Instead of using complex, subtle game mechanics, they've dropped this idea in favor of very rigid, strict gameplay from heroes on and I think that is what has caused the games to be lackluster.

tl;dr - instead of homing attacking, gently 'suggest' a direction for the player using complex maths and control checks.

 

That's definitely an interesting idea. For another, more obvious example, for those with Halo Reach try this. In forge world, make a tin cup, then get a golf ball and drop it at the very edge of the tin cup. Upon close proximity, the golf ball is pulled towards the center of the tin cup. Turn the cup upside down, and drop the ball again, this time the pull is weaker. Something just a tad weaker than that would pretty much be perfect.

 

Dude's idea is a very interesting one -- I am moreso curious on how many ideas Sonic Team has thrown around in regards to making attacking enemies in a 3D perspective work. Perhaps they have already considered all these ideas and found homing attack to be most effective, though a large part of me highly doubts that.

 

Dude's idea is basically what I was suggesting.

 

BlitzSonic does that with springs, if I'm not mistaken. At least, I remember implementing it...

Also, I'm almost sure: Portal's "funnels" do something similar.

 

That's exactly what it does, as I posted earlier.

Though I'm more inclined to it being an action rather than an always on implementation, I'd rather not have the risk of accidentally being funneled into an enemy when jumping into a platform.

 

I don't know if this has been brought up yet. But what I would LOVE to see in Sonic Generations is Classic and Modern Super Sonic. But with them playable through each Zone and not like the SA1 Super Sonic Mission. To me, that would be pretty fucking sweet. But why stop there? I'd love to see the return of Hyper Sonic, both in Modern and Classic styles.

 

To add to Cornholio's post, remember the action figures we are getting are Retro Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Robotnik. Considering this, there'd better be some Super Emeralds if I'm making the right inference.

 

Classic: So, lets get Eggman! Got the Emeralds?

Modern: Yeah, here they are, lets go Super!

Classic: Dude, why go Super when we could go HYPER?!

Modern: What the heck is going Hyp..

*Classic goes Hyper

Modern: 0.o

 

this speculation is neat and all, but I'm pretty sure that classic and modern are just different skins

 

This made me laugh, only there's one little thing I've edited, as I found it'd be hilarious. =P

 

If you wanted any more confirmation about the title 'Sonic Generations', Shaddix at SSMB has pointed out that the registered domains now all link back to SEGAs site.
http://www.sonic-generations.co.uk
http://www.sonicgenerations.co.uk
http://www.sonic-generations.com
http://www.sonicgenerations.com

 

Screenshots to boot! Looks very interesting right now.

 

Gameplay trailer:

Making the pose of Classic Sonic at the end of the trailer my avatar now.

 

Looks pretty. That's the only good thing I'll say.

Unfortunately, it's Unleashed-style, so my interest has more or less plummeted. And Sonic Colours' 2.5D gameplay was terrible. That, and I want Sonic Team to stop using 2.5D as a goddamn crutch to mask their inability to make a good 3D Sonic game.