Concept 2:3: Time of Day

[Strife]

To me, the time of day plays an enormous factor in a city-themed level. I tend to notice that as the time of day shifts from morning to midnight, so does the amount of focus on the background - night settings are usually accomplished by lots of blinking lights and neon signs (i.e. Casino Night, Carnival Night, Night Carnival, etc). Though that's not to say that daytime settings aren't interesting - they just give off an atmosphere that's noticeably different.

To be expanded upon by Strife

[OverbounD]

Day levels IMO are also harder to draw BGs for because its hard to make them look pretty when you are sort of limited to black and gray.

[Ironrind]

A sunset or sunrise would be interesting. That would allow a fairly bright foreground with a darker background with lights, depending on where you place the sun.

At night, you could illuminate the sky with spotlights, fireworks, lightning or helicopters that follow the action. Police bots with sirens and blinking lights could be useful too.

[Strife]

Wait, so posting an idea in the banter thread automatically gets you a topic? xD;Guess I'll see if I can elaborate at some point.

Day levels IMO are also harder to draw BGs for because its hard to make them look pretty when you are sort of limited to black and gray.

I suppose it depends on how restrictive your color pallette is, but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to add more colorful buildings to the background. Take Route 99 from Sonic Advance 3, for example - definitely has some nice colors going on in the background without getting in the way of the foreground.

I do, of course, think that it would be pretty difficult to have an animated background during the day. At night, you're free to have all kinds of blinking signs and lights, but for day scenes, you're probably limited to cloud movement, aircraft, or the obligatory construction crane. Unless of course you do what they do in most of the Mega Man X intro stages and make the city get attacked by squadrons of baddies - then you have all sorts of options to play around with, including warning lights, smoke, bombs falling from the sky and whatnot. That might be a little dark for a Sonic game, though. xD;

[Rawr]

I think you could easily make a nice daytime city stage if you were to include a lot of different elements and backdrops. At night it is easier to make things interesting with many lights and such, but during the day you could always have Sonic take routes that take him to some subway tunnels and such as well and then coming back up to the surface etc. Give him different locations so you're not always looking at boring buildings. Traffic lights and other such things would be cool, some rooftops. Basically switch it up often enough that the city doesn't ever really get boring to look at.

Again, sunsets and night-time settings just make these levels look way more interesting imo, but its a little overdone at times because of the ease I think. Just like how all the casino levels are at night in the games, why not during the day sometimes?

[Asuma]

I believe City Escape is the only actual city level in the day. Sonic 1 had Starlight. Sonic Adventure 1 had Speed Highway, Sonic Heroes had CasinoPark/Bingo Highway, Shadow The Hedgehog Westopolis. Not sure about Sonic 2006.

Although, I'd like to see a Daytime system. Changes overtime. As the time changes, stuff opens up and closes. Opening up new paths and such. Or preventing you from getting somewhere.

Maybe there's a big ring at the top of a tower and you need to get inside to get to the tower, but the tower closes after a certain time. Something like that.

[toaster1]

Sonic Unleashed had Skyscraper Scamper.

Just posting to disagree =P

[Asuma]

I never played SU short of the first level, which I'd call a village.