Khorney

i have no idea when it was, but its almost a similar situation, i remember having a go in the SEGA S&K party/propaganda van and thinking 'woah, the knuckles dude is awsome' been fav character since. i remember there was a competition where you had to collect as many rings as possible, when i saw my brother playing as knuckles i tried to kill myself (in the game =P) so i could change characters, but i they made us invincible for the trial, so i just ended up with no rings at the end =/ good times

ah sorry, misread your post. i thought you meant the music from the smash bros promos

wasn't it live n' learn?

thats what i was getting at. that doesn't really excuse having no gravity on certain floors though for lazyness' sake (looking at you S'06)

hmm, i see what you mean by adding new challenges, but surely diffculty of control (the bane of the newest iterations) is going to be to the annoyance of the player as opposed to creating genuine challenge? what happens if the fall off? the stop and go round the loop? fall into an ultimate death trap of doom (don't get me started =P)? go back and try the loop again? it seems like it just breaks the pace of the game. Also, you're probably aware, but i'm not trying to be aggressive or putting down your ideas, just trying to stimulate the grey matter into some interesting discussion. and this is only the discussion of loops, which as kain mentioned, very rarely served as a gameplay gimmick, more as eye candy to show off the engines capabilities. the half pipes you use could probably easily serve the same purpose and proove as a gameplay challenge aswell, but requiring much more interaction from the player on a level unavailble to the 2D games. Can you think of many examples of gimmicks in the 3D games which couldn't be transffered to the 2D games without breaking the control? grinding? the down building run from SA1? with the half pipe, this has to function as a preset event in 2D, whereas in 3D you can having him moving up down left and right while having to maintain momentum in order not to fall down if the floor is removed. I suppose it comes down to the use of the extra space allowed by 3D, i found this was best exploited in the treasure hunting levels and the boss battles. which is another interesting point, lineararity of the levels. but i can't be arsed to write about that now =P also concerning control schemes, the setup at the moment just about works, but if you start having fast moving, quick reaction levels i can see it falling apart quickly. dual analogues are much more intuitive to 3rd person platform where precision movement is required, with precise direction and speed control. the mouse is sufficient for camera (abliet with adjusting), but for movement WASD is restrictive at best. Although, i do realise this still extremely early and subject to change and refinement. one interesting thing to look up may be the use of the mouse wheel for speed, for those who are analogue deficient. this was used in splinter cell and worked pretty well, but also, a slow moving, carefully planned stealth game isn't exactly a good basis for a fast moving platformer

i just like the look, not necessary the speech or whatever. but it's probably best not to turn this into an all out argument. that was just a throw-away comment. the main point was about how they are going todo loops, and , while critised, the on-rails loop system isn't that bad considering the technical and visual implications of making a fully functional loop in 3D. I mean, how much control is removed?In the 2D, all you do is hold right untill you go such a speed at which you are able to pass through the loop, and then continue to hold right to finish. In the 3D (in SA2 at least, can't remember off the top of my head the rest), all that is remove in the necessity for building up speed inorder to pass through the loop. although looking slightly artificial, not that much control is lost in comparison to the 2D version. in fact, the addition of control, as demonstrated by this tech demo, is to the detrement to the playing experience, surely making it a moot point?

SA2 is the least of my worries in terms of the quality of the 3D series, the later entries were much worse. to be honest automatic loop control (kind of alluded to with your building run, and IIRC it's been mentioned in one of DW's 'this is how it should have been done' threads) was probably the best idea, since now these guys have got to come up with a way that makes manual control relevant (ie, not just jumping through the gap and skipping it entirely), look good (probably not by having huge walls going around the inside =/) and not annoying (by falling off the sides all the time).

i actually quite like the new designs for the 3D games (moreso than the 2D probably), but the shoddiness of implementation in the later editions can obscure them somewhat, which the, perhaps justified, shameless 3D hatewagons tend to do. retro is also good though =D the ball jump from sonic adventure is a nice touch

so is it a file your chosen 3D app can generate once you've finished building it, which then the engine interperets and lays out the model as a level? how do textures work with that, or is tht all bundled in?

how difficult is level construction at the moment? how does that work? EDIT: whoops, left this tab open too long >_< well, i guess the question still stands. also, WTF is a scenegraph?

will it be that difficult to port things over from the 360 engine, such as DW's gimmicks? obviously it's a whole new kettle of fish with the extra dimension, but if gravity and such things are behaving in a similar way some of the things should translate relatively directly[/arse talk]

that cat thing is legendary, it's like a japanese game show, but the flag area on 1-1 is the funniest "oh, you think your so hot, you dodged the flag laser, well heres a fucking ghost bomb, pow!" burst blood vessels ensue

Xpadder? is that some kind of joy2key thing?

great stuff, now you've more or less got the engine going, its now doing to figureing out good 3d level design. One thing i notcied from the videos is you kept on falling out of the loops. i'll probably be able to comment on this better once i've played, but perhaps putting some kind of wall round the inside of the loop to stop you falling out maybe required?

well, you could split it up and do the 3D ones at a later stage, but surely there's a threshold for how fun these runs can actually be before playing the games becomes a chore, thus defeating the point, perhaps

don't do the 3D ones? then you can probably shorten it to half a day or something

please excuse my complete lack of knowledge, but surely all the games are developed on the PC, then tested by moving it to the respected consoles dev-hardware? the GC being the primary console they focused on, and just boshing it on to the other ones as a 'that'll do' job?

for some reason? its probably just the crapness of the ports and the excess power the PC has, considering how old the consoles are now. heroes was renderware wasn't it? or at least shadow was and that was basically the heroes engine

its a bit confusing how some of the background logs are the same tone/shade as the foreground logs, i'll try and get a screen cap for you, but it can be slightly confusing

the new one looks a bit pants, its all doom and gloom and anime characters (face covering hair and all IIRC from the trailer). advance wars 2 was good, but i felt the super double power was a bit redundant, and the last mission was a complete ball-buster. what was the 1st DS one like?

i don't get it Gamma... anyway, this looked good, i saw a trailer for it when i went to see imma legend, so slightly hyped

on second thoughts, i don't want to know HB for the future, i guess

i picked one up for ~£30, a wacom one. works fine, not especially good for line art, but fine for most things. usually better off sketching on paper then scanning in anyway

might i suggest: http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/crayon/

its too choppy to watch from here =/ sounds hilarious, but you'd have to watch highlights (if there were any) from it in retrospect for it to actually be anygood. that said, i clocked in about 30 hours just for TP (i thought the timer was a nice addition), abliet not consecutively, and went through MM a couple of times to get all the sodding masks and bottles. i don't think i've actually ever finished OT, or even got past the first part of the ganondorf boss. but i can't be arsed to play through the whole thing again, MM was way better (IMO). god knows how long WW took, but that was mostly artificially increased by sailing etc...