Apricity

The point of it is to increase the chance in getting extra lives not to increase the score, who cares about the score? You have 90 rings and with the shield you're 10 away from an extra life, then you lose it and your rings are down to 45 which is considerably more away from an extra life. But again I will stress that you can do what you want Alex, it's your game.

Keeping them is fine too. I was just thinking them being halved actually gave gravity to losing the shield. Losing fire/water/electricity shields frustrates the hell out of me because you lose the double jump or the infinite breath or the fire dash abilities you had before. If you lost the ring shield the player would just shrug it off as the effect it had hasn't completely gone. Having half the rings disappear is not only fair but it actually gives the player a bigger reason to be more careful with the shield.

I assume the Crash Shield is a nod to Kirby, right? Ring Shield could double the rings you collect when you're wearing it and then halve them when you lose it?

Personally the ring shield seems really redundant as there's already a monitor you can break to give you 10 rings. Crash shield seems like a cool idea. Gravity shield seems cool too but you'd have to be careful with level design to make sure that people can't just break the level with it.

Oh jesus christ. You cannot pretend to own the idea for "Sonic Advance 4", it's so ridiculous I actually thought you were all joking at first. Do you know how many fangames there are called "Sonic 4" or "Sonic 5"? It's because it's a logical step in the progression and I promise you that if you go back far enough in the fangame board or screenshots thread then there will be more Sonic Advance 4's. Sega owns the "Sonic Advance" franchise not any of you, so don't pretend you wield any power of the use of it. Unfortunately because so many assets used in fangames come from real Sonic games it's very hard to "own" any ideas unless you name it completely differently, use original music and original sprites. Just calling it "Sonic Advance 4" is so close to what Sega do that you really can't pretend to have an sway over who uses it and who doesn't. If you really care so much about the integrity of the name of your fangame then consider adding something on the end to differentiate it like, "Sonic Advance 4: The Return Of Robotnik" or something. Or better yet just give it a totally original name. But if you're stuck at Sonic Advance 4 then you're just gonna have to accept that it's such a logical and easy progression that plenty of other people will "think" of it too. Is this really the place for petty squabbles over names? I'm not a mod and I really can't force you to do anything but for the sake of the thread even if you don't agree with what I've said could you try to keep the discussion like you said, on Skype? Think about how you'd feel if you posted a cool game/engine and people spent half the thread arguing about whether butter tastes better than "I can't believe it's not butter". -- Getting back on topic (and hopefully staying that way), this is really a fantastic engine AeroGP! I'm helping with Time Twisted alongside Overbound, purely in the sprite department right now but will soon be hoping to assist him in some coding and level design (nothing major). I must say Overbound couldn't have picked a better engine. This one is smooth and reliable and I think my favourite part is how it has all the bells and whistles you need for a classic Sonic fangame and no more. It's very concise and without clutter, other engines with 100's of pointless features can seem daunting at first but the elegance of your engine really lends itself to usability. I've tinkered around with it and not made anything of any use but after some getting used to it seemed a lot easier to use than other engines I have seen.

Love the visual effects going on I can't tell if they're kinda moving to music or if it's just too late for me to be messing around with this. Also I've been in a rotten mood all day and for some reason this has cheered me up considerably, I'm not sure that was the intended effect haha.

I think another main problem, aside from texture/shading is the colours and contrast. They're too dull and similar, there's needs to be more contrast/colours and perhaps a brighter colour scheme. Bright and over the top colour schemes (as long as aesthetically pleasing) lend themselves to the early Sonic style. This isn't necessary though as long as you use a wider range of colours and more contrast. Another thing is contrast from background to foreground, it may sounds silly because the landscape is going to be the same all over but differentiating the background strongly enough makes the foreground tiles pop out in their own way. It needn't be big either, old genesis games accomplished it and they ran off the same palette. Notice how that even though the background uses exactly the same greens and browns as the foreground it is still easily recognised as different because of the contrast achieved by the large expanse of water in the middle. Something you could try is to make the water bigger. Another technique I like to use is to slightly tint the background a colour like blue and then reduce the saturation slightly, this ups contrast but keeps it remaining nice to look at. The foreground should pop out a bit better. Excuse the shoddy examples: & One last thing to break up tiles is to add other thing such as impurities to the rocks and to vary the colour and depth of the rocks. The most basic example is how in Hydrocity zone there are fairly basic brick tiles made interesting by alternating the colours and depths of the bricks to add more contrast and to make it less flat. This is probably an awful example but take these WIP graphics (bear in mind they're actually background not foreground tiles now): While they've got relatively dull colours (they're under water) they work because of the contrast (albeit subtle) from red to blue and the way that there are both dark purple shades and lighter grey shades. I was harping on about impurities and although these impurities are very repetitious, they make the tiles interesting, the shells and starfish add to the tiles rather than subtract. The shading on the rocks adds depth as well. They still need a lot of work. You should probably take my advice with a pinch of salt cause a lot of it is down to my style and my personal preference (I'm a stickler for more muted colours) but I just wanted to add my own spin on the advice that's been said already (I agree with everyone else's advice btw!) to see if it could help you Mr. Potatobadger. I hope this helps you.

http://butylhydroxianisole.deviantart.com/ Literally anything on my old DevArt (bonus points for Sonic related)

Agree with Highwire4 massively ^ Otherwise I'm looking forward to some game play from your game Mr. Potatobadger! Although I do agree that the metal sonic sprites look a little out of place.

Nice work! I think it might be cool too have some dust come out of Mighty's feet when he does the second jump and idk if you have this already cause I can't hear the sound but it would be cool if Mighty has a different sound to his regular jump when he did his double jump. Could even be a higher pitched regular jump sound. Different springs are a nice idea, the colour of the blue one is really nice.

Like I said it won't detract from the game if you don't do it because the starting level looks great already haha. Oooh a new gimmick? Sounds intriguing! Can't wait for the demo

Sparks took the words out of my mouth, it's really nice seeing something of this game after so long of only mockups/screenshots. It looks so much better in motion, really looking forward to a demo :') I feel like you guys could really push the boat out here. Okay so the norm is to have a vanilla, grassy start level right? Who cares? Challenge the norm a bit guys. Each new sonic game implemented new features into the start levels and kept them fresh even if they were of a similar trope: Lake District (GHZ), Seaside (EMZ), Tropical Jungle (AIZ) & Forest (MHZ). They're in a similar vain but very different. Now I'm not saying that you should revamp the entire level at all because it looks gorgeous and the level art isn't cliche. Okay so Act 1 is done, which is great. AIZ is a great example of what I'm about to explain, Act 1 is normal and leads the player into the mindset of just thinking that it's a regular zone and then when act two comes along OH SHIT FIRE FIRE. Whether it be a scenery change or a strange new gimmick you could really rock the boat with something unique in act 2. If you're still working on act 2 it might be an opportunity to do something like this. And then straight off the bat in act 2 the player knows the game is different and eagerly awaits the next surprises. Adds a bit of suspense and interest to carry on. Idk it's a complete suggestion, there's nothing wrong with a vanilla kinda start level at all and yours looks great. But idk I feel like you guys have the talent to do something a little clever and different. Good job guys

+1 for bottom (but I'd make the oranges a bit tamer, they create too much contrast between the yellow in my opinion) +1 for lighter blue Awesome work!

Oh man, I'm with Overbound; Those hand-drawn graphics are so cool! The gimmicks are plentiful but they do suffer from being a bit generic. I do like the curly branch one though, it's a nice twist on the olld gimmick.

Urm no that's a Sonic XG screenshot guys not Sonic Edge of Darkness.

I don't like the sprite you're using for the trail tbh. It's blurry and just sticks out from the rest of the sprites. The totem poles are a bit flat aswell and don't really match the colours of the level, it's too dark. I dislike the contrast of the dark brown to the bright yellow. Other than that it's looking really good and I really wish we'd have a demo soon because it's been like 1 & a half years ;-;

I've never really questioned death at all. The thing that hit me when I had that "epiphany" moment was just that I will never accomplish anything in my life.

Love Actually because I told my girlfriend I'd never seen it and she forced me to watch it with her. I actually quite enjoyed it to be honest. Not exactly the usual thing I like but it wasn't bad. (I liked all the bits with boobs). Don't really have a review of it because I missed parts in the middle but yeah, it's not as bad as other romcoms I've watched.

Asleep.

Indeed it's just an informal way of introducing myself from the website arcfx is mentioning. Not 4chan. If it offends anyone I'll happily go and change my post.

It's just my school. I know it sounds cliche but we're run by this thing called ULT (United Learning Trust) who own like 10 schools in the country and are basically a bit tits.

And there was a lesson purely devised for games like simon says and then this proper chavvy (you call them white trash in america?) guy came in and called us "champiooooons" then said that if a guy with no legs can live his life to the fullest why can't we achieve our dreams. It's not so much my countries education system it's the people running our school. But I'd need to write a book to go into them.

England fag here. My school has introduced this new class called like Personal Social something or other. You don't get a grade or anything out of it all you get is a certificate which means bollocks all to future employers. They introduced it basically so stupid people (and there are so many) at least get one qualification; If you can even call it that. All the class is, is patronising common sense that everyone already knows. It complete sends the wrong signals. We did a whole lesson on why we should look up at celebrities and famous people because of how successful they are. And naturally when we had to think of famous people that we admire I just wrote down serial killers. Other lessons consist of almost elementary school tasks. We had to choose people to save from a burning building purely from how they look and after we were told their bios. Obviously the guy who looked like Bin Laden with scars all over his face had the cure for cancer in his pocket (I wish I was overexaggerating) and the really pretty girl is a serial killer. Now this wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't being took out of my ICT class for it. When I'd finished 3/4 of the course. 4 years of work for a qualification (which is important these days) that I am now not going to get. Wooo.

http://butylhydroxianisole.deviantart.com/

Had a totally different expectation from the thread given the name. >_> Welcome! It's pretty chilled here + the community are really nice. Unlike many other forums I've been too.