Betaman

Okay so I did this basic loop a while back, but I feel like it's missing something. Maybe add some boards or supports to the poles?

Well at this point, if you haven't registered, you'll have to wait until the next one. We've expanded to art and music booths rather than games in this recent year, so you don't HAVE to make a game, it's just that the meat of the event is in the games.

The Sonic Amateur Games Expo is upon us, and the registration date deadline was two days ago. The staff have sent out booth page information to the participants, and people are getting super busy working on their games for the event. I'd say that would be why people aren't posting as much.

Working on the tiles for the Amethyst Palace area in Epsilon. Not Pictured: The slope tiles (They're not finished yet.), and the half-pipe tiles (Also not finished yet.) Will hopefully post the finished tiles to the forest area and city area soon.

The Beta in my name comes from the fact that I enjoy researching unused and dummied out content from earlier versions of video games, sided up with my overwhelming desire to be second best at everything I do. (Beta is the second character in the greek alphabet.) ICome to think of it, my old common username was BLEAH (It is pronounced by making a gagging noise and a scream of pain at the same time.), which also started with B. The man part of the username comes from the fact that it sounded weird with just "Beta", and I figured that most sites would already have a member named Beta. Funnily enough, there's actually more to my name that that. My full name is *Insert Adjective Here* Betaman. The unused part comes from an inside joke with friends on how I'd refer to myself in third person and use a different adjective to describe myself. It's unused because it's way too freaking long, but if I can't get just Betaman, I'll put IAH-Betaman as a sort of reference to the full thing.

Ah yes, you're seeing the WIP tiles for one of the three zones I have planned for the demo. I like them too, but I want to expand them to give a little more variety to what you see. Currently those are pretty much what all the buildings look like.

Alrighty, now I need to work on some tiles. (I trashed the originals due to being very rough and unpleasant to look at.) I have four sets of sand tiles for the start of the zone that takes place on the beach. Which one do you think looks better? Keep in mind that this beach section is relatively short, and you won't be seeing the tiles most of the time. EDIT: Got the bee working in the engine, but the platform can't be used when it's killed. I'll work on making a platform that falls and can be stood on later.

Well I mean it's not that big a deal. I can do both options since I'm doing difficulty settings. I can make it so that you go through the enemy on easy, the enemy just sorta chills and doesn't do much on normal, and on hard, it's a full on badnik. However, I'll test how it all works later on. (I get the feeling that the programming will need to be slightly more complicated than a normal badnik.

Hmm. Well your newest title looks to be a combination of your previous two attempts. It still looks a little wonky, though your second logo looked fine. All that it really needed was a few color changes and a bit of change to the AFTERMATH text. Something like this: This is just a suggestion of something you could do, and my example is undeniably flawed. If you want to use your latest title screen, use it.

I would absolutely change the badnik design. The above picture is from the drawing engine, where I test any weird concepts to see if they animate well. That bee is really only there because I didn't want to use a simple circle and, to be honest, it had a little loop for the chain on it anyhow. If I had to change it, I would probably replace it with an Orbinaut looking guy.

Well do you have any ideas for gimmicks or set-pieces in the zone? Having memorable scenes and areas in the first zone really sets up the idea that this is going to be a good experience.

New enemy concept in development: a bee that carries a platform. Two versions too, with a stationary bee that lets the platform swing, and a moving one that lets the platform trail behind. If you pop it, the platform has nothing to support it anymore and drops out of the sky, making you take the lower path. Since I'm doing difficulty options, I'll probably make it so that you can't kill the enemy on lower difficulties.(Can you tell that I'm having fun with the sprite chain code yet?)

I would also like to take a stab at criticizing your logo (the more information, the better, eh?) Not only does Sonic blend into the ring, the details all blend in because the inner color is so similar. I can barely see the stars! Using a complementary color would be the best option, as that will make it pop more. (I recommend orange for the outer rims and the stars, as that will make them pop out off the blue inner section.) Banner is fine, I suppose. The original red also really stood out from the blue and yellow (notice the theming of primary colors here.) If I had to nitpick, the large amount of yellow is a little hard on the eyes. Background is okay, but I hope that is actually reflects an ingame location. As for the AFTERMATH writing, I dislike the overly simple letters. There is no detail aside from some checkerboard dithering on them. I think that it would seriously benefit from some detailing to make it unique, and not just some generic font. Oh, and I wish you best of luck with this project. Can't wait to see more and I hope you'll be joining us at SAGE.

Progress on the title screen ring! This is all rendered via the engine rather than having a 1 frame background image. The giant ring, banner, and propellers are all separate pieces, while the Sonic sprite is shown after a specific even happens. (And the top half is drawn twice to prevent layering issues.) On top of that, the banner animates, the propellers spin, and those balls are generated via a code similar to how the chain for the swining platform is done. The banner itself kind of bobs up and down in the air, and it's neat to look at. As of now, I still have not added shading to the ring, as you can still see the clipping errors and gaps where the raw model refused to connect. This will probably be the next thing changed, as it bothers me to even look at it. Oh, and going to probably make the title theme a remix of that Right Said Fred song, Wonderman.

Alright we have a title screen going on. I initially wanted to do a Yoshi's Island styled title theme with a psuedo 3D rotating clump of islands, but this did NOT turn out as I had hoped. So as a compromise, I just put a flat 2D space. (The clouds might be changed to mimic Sonic CD's title though.) The ring itself is very rough at the moment, as it is a raw rip of the 3D model that was used to make it, which means no lighting or real shading. (And a few clipping problems where the polygons didn't connect correctly.) And while the picture shows little in the way of animation(probably becausw it's only a mockup), the title screen will do this little thing where Sonic kind of bashes the ring into place and jumps in from below.

It may not seem like much, but I've implemented a new resolution selection screen into my game. The third option does not work, so I'm probably going to replace it with a full screen option. Please tell me though, what do you think of the background? (It is animated, by the way.) Too distracting? Fine the way it is?

They're more refreshing than the typical "emulate the genesis original" or "horribly port the physics and music", don't get me wrong, it's just that I really don't want to spend money on mobile phone games, it all comes down to it that I don't spend a lot of time on my phone anyway, so the money would end up being wasted there.. If they ever get a PC port on Steam, I would definitely consider purchasing them. Then again... maybe I own enough copies as it is. Let's see, Sonic 1 Genesis cart, Sonic 1 as part of the Genesis 6 pack, Sonic 1 3D on the 3DS, Sonic Genesis on GBA, Sonic 1 as part of the Mega Collection, Sonic 1 as part of the DS Classics Collection, that Sonic 1 demo in Gems collection, and I had part one of the shitty java mobile version... Right there that's like 8 different versions of Sonic 1 that I own, but I think I'm forgetting some. I know I've got more ports of the game. Sonic 2 not as much, but I definitely own more than one copy of that game as well.