Sonic Ambience

[Compsense]

3D Sonic Fangame developed in the Blender Game Engine

Overbound said not to be afraid of posting a topic, even if I don't have a great amount of content to show. I didn't want to post anything until I at least had something decently playable I could share, but I've been losing my motivation to work on the game, and I figured posting a topic on here about it would help get me motivated to keep working on it. So, here it is

About

This is certainly no ambitious project. In fact, this fangame only started out as a small project for school that I wanted to continue working on into the summer, to see what came out of it.

My goals/plans for this game are simple: I wanted to create a sonic game with large worlds that could be explored, but with clearly identifiable paths through the levels. As well, I wanted to aim for a nice aesthetic look no matter where in the game you were, keeping in mind times where it obviously can't be help (lack of skill, player is staring at the wall, yada yada). I also wanted, and obligatorily of course, 2.5D sections in amidst all the 3D fun. Why not, after all =P

Oh, and I don't feel any reason to ever keep any development in the game a secret. I feel keeping anything about it under covers gives the impression that I assume people will be hyped by the promise of progress and eventual content release, and I don't want that at all; I'd almost consider it pretentious, on my part. I'm just a guy with mediocre skills making a mediocre game, and there's no reason to act like it's anything else. Furthermore, I plan to make every bit of this game "open". Every part of this project will be made available to anyone, including any and all of the game's resources. Once they're decent, of course. ^^

Screenshots

Some screenshots may be more dated than others, showing slight inconsistencies here and there.

Concept Art

Sometimes, as a way to help illustrate an idea I want to implement, create, or use, I draw it out on paper (and edit it a bit in Gimp) to make it easier for me to do once I get to it in game, as I have a reference to base the work off of. Here's everything I've come up with for that very purpose. Please, excuse my poor drawing ability~

Music

Any music I've written for the project. If I ever create any sound effects of my own, I'll put them here as well.

Zone 1 Act 1

Downloads

6.14.10 build

10.24.10 build

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Well, thanks for checking out my game! I'm always looking for critiques on everything, anything that can help me improve my skills as a 3D modeler, a music developer, a graphic designer, and ultimately, a sonic fangamer. Even if you don't have any to provide, a nice little comment is always motivating ^^

[Delta Hedgehog]

Those screenshots look really impressive. hope you show it in SAGE!

[CrypticSailor]

Dude that's really awesome. I understand how you feel with the whole humility thing and not expecting to complete/or a big project but if you've done all of that 3D art by yourself and somehow made it playable/explorable, then you deserve a fu*king cookie(in the most non-sarcastic way possible).

[ZykovEddy]

Looks great!

[Rawr]

Great work so far, I like how you are just keeping this very simple and are worried more about getting something that is playable and working out first before aiming for anything higher. I'd love to see you continue with this!

I also liked the music track , some of the volume levels on things could probably be altered a bit, but overall it was nice! I'd have to give it more listens to properly give better feedback.

[Sslaxx]

How much of this is put together with Blender's logic blocks, and how much with its Python scripting?

[Cstyler]

Hey Compsense,

Your game looks magnificent, I've written about your project here. ;D

[Compsense]

Hey, thanks guys! I don't know if I'll have enough content ready in time for SAGE this year, but I'll certainly see what I can do. Given how quickly it's coming up, I don't like the idea of putting something up that's riddled with bugs just to show it off, so it might be best to wait until next year. I'd have way more to show off after a year of working on it than I would with around two month's worth.

How much of this is put together with Blender's logic blocks, and how much with its Python scripting?

I try to use scripting where I can to avoid logic brick setups getting too messy and confusing, but I've pretty much ended up using logic bricks for dealing with simple things and scripting for more complex things that either can't be handled by logic bricks or is just easier to script than to do with logic bricks.

For an example, there are large rock platforms in the air that rotate; all they do is spin on the z-axis, so I set up logic bricks for it and call it done. On the other hand, the badniks sitting on those rock platforms shoot fireballs, and that's a bit more difficult with logic bricks alone, where I need to duplicate an object and relocate/reorient that duplicated object as needed.

But just for fun, here's sonic's logic brick setup. There's a few things I should probably clean up, where scripting would be more efficient than depending on logic bricks.

Hey Compsense,

Your game looks magnificent, I've written about your project here. ;D

Neat! I feel special :3

[Michael B.]

here's sonic's logic brick setup

Well that's a bit more then confusing, but it looks rather interesting to me, I can bet I've had to deal with something similar before though.

[Compsense]

WHAT LIGHT RAYS I DONT KNOW WAT UR TALKING ABOUT

Here's what they used to look like. Sorry for not updating this game in forever, I just stopped developing it for a while, and never bothered to get back to it. I would sooner leave it undeveloped than to simply cancel it, since that leaves room for sudden motivation months later :B

Actually, the reason I wanted to work on it a little again was because of a dream I had a week ago (or so). I was playing some sonic game that I assumed was my fangame, and it looked absolutely gorgeous, and the whole time I was wondering why I ever stopped working on it. I was playing in sections I had never actually created, which later became inspiration for level segments that I've drawn down and plan to use. Of course, when I woke up I was disappointed because I remembered that my game, in fact, looks (graphically) horrible in comparison, but it just means I'll have to spend some time working on the visuals. I liked how sonic's lighting looked in my dream, I'll see if I can recreate it as well (it was actually sort of similar to Sonic Unleashed, with the brighter blue lighting on his head/quills).

I'm currently in my senior year in high school, so that takes precedence over this game (whereas laziness is also a factor affecting its development), but I'm going to try and make slow development nonetheless. Maybe I can at least continue to improve what content is already there, because that's easy. Like those blasted leaf piles, they look abysmal. Oh, and the general emptiness everywhere, it needs more props and variety in how it looks (i.e. why must all the walls be barren, flat, and have nothing to look at, let alone step on).

</incoherent post>

[EDIT AND STUFF]: I made some improvements to sonic's model - tweaked the eyes and brow a little, fixed the textures on the eyes and buckle, made the eyes, shoes, and shoe buckles appear reflective, and added that light blue glow/lighting I mentioned before that always appears on the top of sonic from the camera's perspective. I'm also working on improving sonic's texture quality, starting with the gloves (which should be evident in the new glove texture). I'll probably bake the AO again, too.

ONE FINAL EDIT: Alright, here's how he now looks from behind. I've quite a bit of work to do with the textures to 'up' the quality for closer views, but it's quite enough for the regular 3rd person distance.

Oh, and sorry for all the images, I hope none of you use dialup D:

[Compsense]

Holy cow, like, 150 views since that last post. No replies though, I wonder if that means something :B

But, well, I think I finished working on the model. Sorry, I kind of like the green eyes, I feel they add more personality or something.

[Serephim]

this looks.....very interesting.

[Hypersonic645]

The model sort of reminds me of the Sonic Adventure model from the Dreamcast version.

And the green eyes pretty much suit the model. Good work!

[Sparks]

holy

...I love you

[Compsense]

Oh no, people like it, which raises expectations which increases the possibility that I'll disappoint people D:

I, um, just finished a paper in Calculus where I had to compare mathematical limits to the large hadron collider, and now I have a four day weekend to hopefully spend working on the game. I think I'm going to start spending some time working on a new area, including the segment of level I had in a dream a while back.

I want to work on making it more "foresty" and less "giant walls of dirt in every direction", but I'm worried about the poly count (and amount of memory use) as I start adding more trees, more props, and overall more detail all over the place. I want the game to look nice, but I have rather minimal experience, and I generally don't know the best way to go about doing things as is most efficient in video game development.

I'm just complaining about stuff, so here's some more screenshots and stuff. I'm sorry the amount of actually completed playable level is really short, I don't spend enough time working on this game to have more ._.

[Compsense]

Sorry for spamming up the fangames board, but after adding some orange projection rings (like from Sonic Unleashed), I thought I might as well put a new build online. Couldn't hurt I guess, there might be 1 or 2 people that want to try it out.

10.24.10 build

Please understand, the majority of the changes so far have been major graphical updates, so there isn't really any new areas of the level to play. I promise it will eventually be much larger! I just want to get what's already here working and looking as nice as it can.

The controls are still the d-pad for movement (left, right, up and down arrow keys), and spacebar to jump. There is currently no homing attack, spindash, or rolling (apart from mid-jump). There is no walking animation yet (he'll just slide at first).

I guess I should probably show the differences, so here's a few screenshots showing the previous build vs the current one.

[P3DR0]

I've played it and I gotta say, very impressive.

It has a few bugs, and control Sonic is frustrating at some points. It's difficult to make curves with Sonic without stop and turn.

But the graphics are impressive, everything is very beautiful... I'm waiting for more.

Oh btw, maybe is a good idea to chage the resolution a bit. I coudn't play it on widescreen.

[Compsense]

Thanks for the comments!

Sorry about the poor physics, at some point I'm probably going to give them a complete overhaul and program them properly; that is, movements will be completely programmed and not based off of the regular physics of the blender game engine. That way sonic's movements won't be as slippery, but just as well, he won't require so much additional friction to try and combat the slipperiness that he gets stuck to any surface he runs into. When I choose to do this, I'll be basing it off the Sonic Physics Guide as much as possible.

There are some issues I'll probably never be able to properly fix, like the occasional "super jump" (where sonic will, at random, jump twice or thrice as high as normal from the ground), or the falling through walls/floors issue. I have no idea what causes the super jump - at best I can guess that two or more floors (planes) were under him when he jumped - but the latter issue is a defect of the blender game engine caused by fast moving objects. I was considering a potential solution with rays that detected an oncoming surface in any direction around sonic and slowed his speed once he was close enough, but there are some foreseeable roadblocks I'll probably run into, not to mention it might make him play somewhat weird at times.

I'm glad you like the graphics, I was hoping people would. It's a vast improvement over the last build, even if I still have some ways to go before I'm happy with the way it looks so far. I'm considering various props to place on the sides of the cliffs, like perhaps large mushrooms that can be used to reach another area, or perhaps large machinery (or etc.) placed by the doctor for various reasons.

[Gear_The_Hedgehog]

tested, and its seems that runs pretty smooth in older machines (like my old Desktop) kinda much more than SFR (not bashing its that blender engine has more flexibility with older pc's than Unity IMO)

Its a pretty good looking game you have here, it has details but not too many and still has that cartoonish look to it, and the sonic model its just wonderful.

Thou there are some things that are bothering me since the first build, i dunno but the log bridge i know its supposed to behave like the genesis ones, but kinda doesnt looks good if the log returns to his initial state that fast, i mean when sonic steps into the bridge the logs goes down like they has to yes, but when sonic its of the log that were stepping into it returns too fast to his initial state, and the other logs are all still and doesnt give that effect that some weight its pushing down the bridge, its just a visual effect but that gives a little more of realism to the prop.

Also some platforms looks too square-ish and less rocky-ish, i mean those that looks like a sideway in mid air could be cool if they had some irregularities to it, like fragment of rocks and stuff sticking down the plane area where sonic walks/runs, but after those things im okay with the game keep it up man!

[Compsense]

I like your suggestions regarding the platforms, I'll see what I can do to improve them and make them less block/square-like. Thank you!

Regarding the log bridge, that's actually just something I've been neglecting since I added it. I've been debating some of the ways that I could implement more realistic physics for the bridge, as right now each individual log just animates down as you walk on it, and up when you walk off of it, which doesn't even cut it for a cartoonish game. I'll get around to it eventually, at least before I put the next build up.

It's good to hear it can run smooth enough on older machines, because that's something I was worried about. I think SFR requires so much more because it has a lot more going on at once, not to mention some of the additional effects it has that also take up processing power.

Oh, and regarding effects, before the next build I'll be adding the ability to turn on and off certain graphical effects, like pseudo-antialiasing*, HDR, and bloom. I'll also see about the ability to turn off some of the other pre-existing effects like lights (which add highlights and shadows), shaders, and extra textures (like bump maps).

Here's a screeny with HDR turned on at default settings and Bloom turned on at a light setting (admittedly, it makes everything kind of blurry, which I'm not too keen on). It adds a touch more color in areas and a larger range between dark and bright colors, but can reduce - in the one quick test I did - 16 fps to 9 fps.

*It's technically an edge-blur effect; the Blender game engine does not support true antialiasing.

[Compsense]

Guess what guys? In the last couple of months, I've made a few hours worth of total progress! Woo~

Right then, a little while ago I bought a new graphics card, which allowed me to not only play my latest build completely smoothly, but record it, too. Ergo, here's a gameplay video. There's no new content to show off, but I thought some people might appreciate a video.

[OverbounD]

Gosh what can I say. You obviously put a lot of effort into this game and the graphics look very nice. But over all I can't say it looks that impressive.

Just from the video I can tell that the controls need a lot of work. The jump look uncontrollable, and every time you need to turn you have stop turn the camera and sonic and then continue on. That's going to get old fast. I think I can tell that this game does not have any kind of rolling physics. That's a big thing for me especially given how your setting up your level. I know not every official game has rolling physics but I think we can all agree they'd be better if they did. Sega is just pig headed. I know this sounds harsh but I'm not suggesting you stop your work. I'm saying focus on adding to your engine some.

[Rawr]

Nice dude, keep going with this. Yeah the controls look like they need tweaking but really, just keep going and fix stuff up etc. Its looking pretty solid.

I think what I like about this 3D fangame is that there really is no huge grand master plan. No promises of EPIC!!!one storylines, no promises of well...anything really. Its simple and manageable and you've made quite a bit of progress compared to 3D fangames I've seen boasted about in the past. I just gotta hand it to you in that regard. I haven't had a chance to test anything yet from that old build but whenever you make enough progress/have a full level built I'll be waiting to give it a whirl

[Hybrid35]

Wow, This must have taken so much time off your hands. I really like the 3D Model of Sonic. Even If you can't finish, I still hope you do.

[GameNerd Advance]

Part of me agrees with Overbound, but part of me massively doesn't.

I will agree with the fact that the controls look pretty awful at the moment, but that's all part of the game-making learning curve I guess. And whilst I do agree that Sonic should have some rolling functions if only to fulfill one of his primary character traits, taking on something SEGA themselves have never managed is a huge task so I don't expect perfect 3D rolling physics in a fangame. The level design looks well structured and the graphics are great, that I can say. Polish it up, fix the controls/camera to be tighter and more intuitive, and add maybe a SA2 style spindash and you're on the way to the makings of a great fangame.

Overall I like what I see. It just needs to be fixed up, but heck to this day I've never seen a fully polished 3D Sonic fangame. And rarely a 2D one either, considering the minute fraction of them that actually get finished.