Highwire4

I'll definitely try it out over spring break, and if there's a big enough improvement over the sage version I'll do another video on it. Great to see you respond to feedback this quickly too.

Oh yeah that looks pretty sweet on the grass. Curious as to how you got that to work though.

ooo so this is your indie game! I like it! The character and the world looks pretty cool too, can't wait to play it when its done!

Oh my god that is absolutely gorgeous. I can't wait to see what final fall looks like. I hope the level design holds up as well, too many games that follow this style fall flat from that. As for Parhelion Peak, come on man there are so many more unique and iconic stages from Lake's games to choose from xD Personally I'd love to see Foliage Furnace or Sugar Splash or Technology Tree, but whatevs. Looking forward to the demo and curious to see what other fan games you plan on remixing levels from!

I couldn't figure out how to get it to properly work either, and I replicated the code from the test level by hand in an attempt to teach my self how it worked. I couldn't get it to work so I just literally copied the cameras and code I wanted from the test level and pasted them into mine and it worked. Try that. As for it being too zoomed out, thats the camera info actor being too far away from the point of interest. Rotate it 180 degrees and bring it closer to the point of interest and it should work.

@True Nightmare: Thanks man! What exactly do you mean mapping area bugs? As for the half pipe I'm well aware of how retarded it can be. Sorry about that, it'll get fixed in the next version :c @Xaklse: Thanks man, glad you had fun! I am actually surprised by that since the first thing I tried out was using as little as possible and ran into a ton of problems, so I went with using more. To be honest, splines confuse the heck out of me in just about every way. I looked at how they were used in the GDK test map and that only helped a little bit. As for the 3D areas, yeah I suppose they do. I didn't have nearly enough time to mess with cameras except where it was absolutely needed (2D section) but I did entertain the idea when I was making level designs and few areas would really benefit from a new camera (the ship wallrunning segment for example.) so yeah thats something I'd love to have in the next version.. assuming I don't go insane from how retarded difficult unreal's cameras are when doing anything with them. I thought that was what the 3D spline rails were for, though I didn't experiment with them at the time. My one concern about them is that I don't want to take away the player's freedom in some sections, and splines tend to just nail you to their path. I know a splines strength can be edited, but any resistance to sonic's movement will be instantly felt by the player and I'm not too big on that. But if it doesn't work that way then yeah I'd say lets go for it. As for collaborating, hell yes I would love to collaborate. I can't work on this game nearly as much as I had been due to my priorities shifting to working on my indie game, but yeah, lets do it! Thanks for offering do help me out with this man!

I actually quite liked it, well the single player at least. I didn't really have anyone to play 2Player with soooo yeah lol. I featured it on my channel along with a full critique which you can check out here: I hope this keeps going, and until you do secure someone like a pixel artist, I wouldn't worry about the graphics too much. I think you should just keep focusing on refining and streamlining the level design and handling.

So I was going to feature your game on my lets play channel since I'm doing full coverage of sage and all, but I unfortunately couldn't due to a number of odd glitches. The first and most important one would be the lack of sound. There was absolutely no sound at all, and considering that the main mechanic relies on sound, playing it would be kinda weird with out it. The other weird glitch was an odd frame rate issue where the game ran at like 10 fps so it was like a delayed slow-mo segment through out the whole game. There were also a few odd animation glitches where some animations would only play if activated while facing a certain direction. It was odd, and an isolated case considering other people seem to have no trouble playing it. I was pretty bummed about it since I was looking forward to playing an original title here at sage. Sorry man :C

Thank you so much for the critique Azookara! I've heard a few comments regarding the color placement in certain parts of the level, and in the next release, they'll be less strenuous on the eyes and a little more intelligently placed. I agree with you 100% on GDK being the main thing bringing this game down. GDK does a lot of frustrating things that I have almost no control over (like sonic deciding he doesn't want to go through a dash ring for absolutely no reason) I tried to put in fail-safes in areas where its retardation is more likely to happen but they don't even always work. By insta-death spots are you referring to the big pits that you dash ring over? Or perhaps the cargo ship wallrunning segment? I purposefully tried to avoid bottomless pits at all costs since they're stupid, the only exception being the dash ring level transitions due to the fact the player would (usually) have to go out of their way to die in one of those segments. But I can alter the level design for the next release to do away with those insta-death areas. I'd love to see this in generations, but I've got no knowledge of how that works so oh well I suppose. Thanks again for the critique! I'll address all of the issues you brought up in the next public release.

Hey guys, now that Lost Adventure is out I would love to hear your feedback regarding my little game! I really hope you guys have had fun with it! Any constructive criticism you guys have to offer is welcome as well. Lay it on me!

@Proto Dan: He got "Jam" from the Flappy Bird Game Jam that happened either two weeks ago or last week. I'm pretty sure its over but I could be wrong. I just know I've been seeing it a lot on Twitter lately. As for you making this into a whole game... alright. If thats what you want to do go for it. But I hope you have more in mind for it than just a string of pipes for the player to go through for the whole game because that kind of layout really only works for an infinite runner like Flappy Bird. So I'm curious to see what other things you'll throw into the mix @Candescene: Woah new character! Honestly, I'm not very impressed with the GUI you have for the dialog interface. Its kinda weird to me to have it right in the middle of the screen like that when theres so much room on the bottom for something like that. HUD items shouldn't go in the middle of the screen because thats where the character is so having it there seems kinda messy. It also clips into the actual dialog speech bubbles which is kinda annoying as well. So I'd suggest moving it to a lower portion of the screen. Also not to nitpick or anything but is 20+ options for dialog really necessary? 8 is a pretty good number for a multitude of reasons and keeps the game focused and easy to follow, so 20+ just seems kinda.. I dunno, not the best design decision you've made so far. I do like the addition of this kind of mechanic though, don't get me wrong about that.

Oh god yes thank you so much for this little update. Gonna shove this into my game before sunday as well xD

@hobbes: I think its my turn to say holy balls cause holy balls is that edit amazing. She looks so gorgeous and badass omg can I just hire you to make the pixel art for the game or something like seriously ~<3 Thank you so much for taking the time to do that! I can use this as a great thing to learn from and look at for when I make more of her sprites in the future. I'm amazed at the amount of detail you managed to cram in. Good lord this is awesome, you're the best hobbes <3 Also thanks a bunch on the Lost Adventure comment. I just hope its as fun as it is pretty. @Candescene: Now that I've seen it in action this looks really solid, and by the time I got through both videos I was pretty intrigued and wanted to play it, so I can't wait for SAGE to come around so I can do just that! The shadowed rooms with the free flowing camera is also really cool as well and is a lot smoother than I thought it be. I actually quite like it, since you have to physically walk into the dark space to see into it, adding a rather large bit of uncertainty and tension to exploring which I think is pretty rad. @Protodan: Controlled by the mouse cursor? How so? As in completely controlling the x and y by moving the mouse around? Or does it work in flappy bird fashion of clicking to make him flap upward?

Wow, that looks great Candescene! Impressive time frame as well. Last time I tried making a boss it took me a whole weekend. So I've been super busy with Sonic Lost Adventure (Which is nearly basically done at this point) and with Project Estate. So here's some stuff from both: As for Estate, I've been going over character designs for the past two weeks and I've settled on this: I'm calling her Beta right now(simply because that's her file name atm) and she's a scientist and the main protagonist of Project Estate. I tried to give her bright and vibrant colors that contrasted with each other in all the right places to really make her stand out from the background and give more definition to some of the more important areas(like her ridiculous hair in front of her face to bring out the detail of her face) and long silly hair to fill up her hit box. As for the gun, I'm still experimenting with things so this could be totally different. I like this design right now since it's barrel rotates when fired which adds a cool feeling to the lazer mechanic I think. I'm very iffy about her design right now, what do you guys think?

By the looks of it either that one pipe is colliding with the edge of the screen or you've got something wrong in the code for when its created. I'd look over your code in the event editor for something like that rather than the object properties. Do try to learn how to do things yourself though even if you do want to get a team together. Having basic knowledge of something your teammate is doing will vastly improve your communication with them and speed up the planning, execution, and problem solving of making your game so its pretty beneficial to you in the long run. As for the graphics, go ahead and make some to the best of your ability. If you actually do manage to get a team together, you can save time for the graphic artist by already having a base for him/her to go off of rather than just completely start from scratch. If you don't know how to do something look it up on youtube. Its been my savior for the past 5 months for both of my current projects that I've been working on alone.

For a game like Jazz Jackrabbit, one of the problems with it was that the screen size was too small to accommodate his speed and his shooting mechanics, and I can't help but notice that there isn't a whole lot of difference between your game's screen size to character size ratio and that of the original Jazz Jackrabbit. You think it would be possible to maybe give the player some more room to see whats ahead of them by bumping up the screen resolution a little? Its really cool what you've done so far with this, quite impressive.

Thats some pretty impressive stuff you've got going on in there Candescene. I think that mechanic should work out fine and its a pretty cool idea. I assume the rooms are going to be filled up with stuff later on? Cause it looks pretty empty right now. Perhaps you'll want to put a limit on how much you can zoom the screen though to ensure a better user experience but thats up to you. Looks great though!

So the latest prototype has been sent to most of the testers at this point and I'm currently awaiting feedback. Some of you on the list haven't received it because the messenger just refuses to send if for one reason or another, so make sure your inboxes aren't full or something. So anyway, from this point onward there will be a new prototype every 2 weeks! I'll be sharing screenshots soon as well, but yeah! At the rate the game is going I'm hoping to have a short demo ready for SAGE Act 2 of this year.

Since this game takes place in an alternate reality, I'm totally down with the new designs and gameplay they've cooked up. I'm really curious about how this game is going to turn out since it looks so different from any other sonic title out there, especially since SEGA has handed it off to two other super talented companies to design it. Amy is my favorite so far, she looks so badass for once in her life.

Hey whats up guys. I've been on a bit of a hiatus from this game since around November and I'm finally getting back to work on it for school. I'm taking a practicum course for this so you can expect a lot of progress in the next few months. To give you guys a better idea of the amount of work and updates I'll be doing, I'm required by my professor to create a new prototype of at least 3 rooms every 2 weeks. That means a new build every 2 weeks for my beta testers out there along with a lot of updates to this topic. A lot of the work that was done in the past was mostly done on the engine--getting things implemented and working like jumping and guns and stuff like that. This isn't going to be the case for a while. My focus has shifted away from that for the time being (Though I will still be working on that stuff don't worry) and is now focusing back on the design aspects of the game; such as the beat, the pacing, the structure logic, streamlined mechanics, story, character designs, graphics, etc. So the next few betas I send out aren't going to be about finding bugs per say but mostly about finding a formula thats fun and works. Lot of things are going to be thrown around in this period of time and I'm unsure of how it'll go, especially since I'm still working on Sonic Lost Adventure while I do this, but I'll be doing my best to be productive. Thank you guys for putting up with no updates to this and sorry for the lack of progress in recent months. Full steam ahead motherfuckers.

So, Sonic Lost Adventure made the SAGE promo video dead line in at least presentable order. The game isn't finished yet but its darn well close to it. The only things that still need to be done is more graphical touch-ups, textures for a few special pieces, camera fixes, enemy and ring placement, and implementing things like checkpoints and level ending and music and moving platforms. I've got 20 days to do that. Since school has started up again, I'm now back at work on an indie game as well which means I'm working on two projects at the same time. Suffice to say my stress levels are ridiculous, but I'll get through this and hopefully produce two decent products in the process. From people who have played it and from feedback from my peers, this game already has a bunch of problems that I just wont be able to fix (mostly my shitty level design) but I hope you guys enjoy it none the less when it comes out at SAGE. @Biggerboot: Thats the problem, the objects have the SGDK Physics enabled on them and he still does that. I've given up on trying to fix it. I don't have time, its now a part of the game unfortunately. The only other way I can think of to fix the issue would be to make the areas of the levels that have that issue the most into seperate models, which would just take way too long. Maybe I can do that for Act 2 way in the future, who knows. @ZigZax: Ahahaha yeah it may as well be. I've had people commenting on it saying it looks like a carnival as well which is super cool. Means I've been doing my job right.

Thats good to hear! But you do know that the SAGE submission deadline is like, Feb 22nd or something right? The submission date to get the game featured in the SAGE trailer is tomorrow, but you can still finish and submit and updated version later on.

Thats looking pretty cool Candescence, I like the colors you have going on and the characters and other needed information do stand out from the background. Though the character to screen size ratio bugs me a bit. I understand why its so big due to the size of the level and that its a brawler but the characters are just so tiny compared to all that empty space..I kinda had to look for em for a second before I found them. I'd suggest maybe implementing a camera system that zoomed in or out to accommodate all the characters to keep them on screen while keeping them at a certain size, but I doubt that would work in a 2D game like this without serious pixelation. Maybe lowering the resolution a little bit and changing the level design to work more with this character to screensize ratio might help it out?

Well I just know of a rather well known fangame called Sonic Nexus, so... yeah I dunno

If the game is going to feature enemies that require multiple hits periodically throughout the game the player needs to be introduced to it early on. As in the first level. The first level is where the player is trying to figure out and learn the rules of the game while the later levels are about testing what the player already knows. It is for that reason that there should be enemies in the first level that require multiple hits to defeat. Any other mechanics or rules related for those enemies is entirely up to Snooky here. But the first level is a first impression for the whole game, so they should be there.