Sonic Mania (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC...Netflix?)

On the contrary contrary, should they had really been focusing on bringing new people in when they were coming on the heels of Sonic 2006? How about trying to restoring confidence in your IP among your existing consumers first (which many would say Unleashed would had pulled off on a wide scale without the Werehog's inclusion).

There's business cases, and there's business common sense. If they wanted to play around with experiments like the Werehog, they should had at least proven to the world they could put Sonic back on track first; they couldn't had picked a worse time and a worse game testing the waters with the Werehog with Unleashed (nevermind the questionable fact that they made the Werehog another gameplay genre shift in the first place).

...

Right, Mania thread. I could really go for some new Mania footage and screenshots by now. Green Hill and Studiopolis are great, but I'm hoping we get some new material in the coming few weeks.

I honestly don't think we would even have Mania today if the Nintendo-exclusive partnership and (moreso) the Sonic Boom launch* didn't perform so poorly. When classic fans refused to play ball with Episode II (which showed how far the developers' interest in classic direction really was after Epi. I was supposedly a "test run"), Sega simply cut the series short and moved on to the aforementioned later projects, despite Epi. I reportedly selling well for their standards. As if to say that making a proper classic sequel (via an Epi. III, Sonic 5, or otherwise) would require too much effort on their part. Had the Nintendo partnership not proved to be the wrong horse Sega placed their bets on and the Boom subseries not become a fiasco, they were probably ready to avoid revisiting the Genesis paradigm again with a ten-foot pole.

The recent PR statements about going back to Sonic's roots following the restructure sounds more like Sega finally admitting the classic fanbase had a point in their complaints with Sonic 4 --and to their credit, it takes a lot of swallowed pride to allow a team straight from the community to work on a official title-- ; but I still hold skepticism Iizuka/Sonic Team are anywhere on the same page.

*Mainly referring to the Boom games when I say this; though from the looks of things, only the TV series has shown to be a definite success.

 

I'm right there with you. It absolutely boggles the mind.

Just reading these sentences back to back (further) convinces me that there was some severe incompetence going on there:

:specialed:

I hope to god that "more classic levels than new" is the extent of the executive meddling, given their demonstrable tendency to sabotage even their own efforts.

 

I had the pleasure of playing Sonic Mania today at EGX. I chose Studiopolis as my level of choice and was not disappointed. It's seriously tight and feels exactly like it should with a good level of difficulty to make it challenging to us seasoned players.

I think my only criticism is the rotation effect applied to Sonic on a curved surface, it doesn't look quite right but I appreciate that it was an early build. I'm even more excited for this game now.

 

I just want to chime in with some positive feedback on rotation here, since I recall another comment in this thread also complaining about it...

While I'm not commenting on Sonic Mania's specific iteration of it since I haven't played the demo, I really like the idea of having smooth 360 degree rotation as opposed to just 8 directions like the original games. It just adds to the smoothness attained from the game running at 60fps. I like the look of all of the smoothly animated stuff that we've seen in videos so far and smooth rotation is something I think is necessary to retain that very high-quality look. Personally, whenever I played the old RetroSonic demos, I would always enable the smooth rotation option in the menu.

While they might want to improve the look of the smooth rotation to satisfy some people, I really hope they keep it.

 

Agree with keeping smooth rotation; the only reason why the original games didn't do it was because it simply couldn't (or at least couldn't do it as fast as swapping sprites instead).

 

I guess I'm in the minority of hating it then. Smoother animation doesn't instantly mean better animation. Strokes for different folks I suppose.

 

I think it would be great if they improved the look of it a bit, but I don't care that much.

Edit: Changed my mind. I care. Honestly I thinking it looks better without it.

 

Minority or not, I, too, prefer the classic 8 angles of rotation, for obvious reasons.

 

It is possible for it to be done 'too' smoothly. It can be pulled off, but the engine does need to avoid rotating on a whim.

Of course, having not played the demo, I can't give input on that.

 

Rotating too smoothly isn't really the issue, if sprites are big enough then you are less likely to see garbage pixels when it's rotating. However the biggest issues are the rigidness of them and how we percieve characters affected by gravity. You see while rotating a character in say 8 angles, the eyes picks up that there is a change which gives the illusion that the character is moving their body to that posistion. Sprite rotation nulifies that illusion and all you end up with is stiff sprites that don't feel grounded in the world they are in. As for gravity, sprite rotation doesn't accommodate the force of the body fighting against it so you end up with sprites looking silly and unpleasing to look at.

It's understandable to choose sprite rotation to save time hand drawing every sprite that looks similar, however in the end it makes all that hard work look lazy and unfinished. I know the artists are far from lazy so it will be a damn shame to spoil their work with sprite rotation. Personally I would love an option to turn it off and play it at 8 angles.

 

Couldn't that be fixed with increased downward rotation speed compared to upward rotation speed when facing right and reversed when facing left? I think I did something similar a while back... (goes to look for it)

 

It wouldn't fix it but it would be an okay substitute.

 

The Retro Engine had the option for 8-way and the full 360 rotation all those years ago. Given how this community nitpicks everything to such a degree that the infamous death pit in Sonic 2 became the entrance to Hidden Palace Zone in Sonic 2 Remastered, I'm sure the developers are way ahead of us on this one.

Personally, I'm indifferent with smoothed rotation or otherwise. I'd rather the game be able to run on a (modern) toaster than taxing it on that particular detail.

^{Edit because I shouldn't be posting before bed time, oops.}

 

I like math. I rotate my sprites, personally. Doing rotation is fun.

 

I've always preferred the 8-angle rotation, and now I finally understand why the 360 rotation bothers me so much! I too would like an option for it. I mean, it wouldn't totally ruin the game for me if wasn't there, but it would be a really worthwhile aesthetic choice for them to make, especially considering the 'nostalgia' factor of the game.

 

I've noticed Mania is very careful about when characters rotate, which is very hard to see in currently recorded videos. (Most people playing it stay in a rolling state 99% of the time, even to the detriment of the platforming, massive ugh.) Most fan games have Sonic rotate on whatever he runs on, from what I've seen.

On small slopes or little variations in the terrain, Sonic doesn't rotate at all. I'm only seeing it happen on curved ramps and loops where it makes sense for his whole sprite to rotate.

 

That sonic pre-order statue looks gross on video I'm hoping that's not the final design. Nothing like how it's shown on Amazon.

 

I'm pretty sure the one on Amazon is a 3D render and not an actual statue. So what you see on the video is most likely what you're going to get.

 

The one in the video doesn't look amazing, but it's definitely closer to what you'll actually be getting than what you see in the product art. These things always work out like that.

 

I'm pretty sure in some of Taxman's old fangames there is actually the option to switch between 8-way and 360 degree rotation.

One thing that's always bugged me is why he never took advantage of the high resolution for rotation that is finer than the 320x240 pixels (so sprites rotate using the full set of pixels on the hardware showing them, not just the set of pixels on the sprite). It looks way tighter, and since the Sonic 2 remake, we know he's not above a few advanced techniques making an appearance, and it's certainly easy for him to implement. I suppose he has just wanted to keep his engines pretty strict about that.