Sonic Skywind: Episode II

[TailsSena]

Partners serve the same purpose as in Sonic 2/3. To be there. And for drop-in-drop-out multiplayer. Have player 2 clunk away on whatever the second control option was in options, and they'll be controlling the partner. (This defaults to a joypad.)

[Streak Thunderstorm]

You can further compress your oggs. Oggs dont lose too much sound when compressed lower. I compressed my oggs for Mecha Madness to 40bps and they sound just fine.

[TailsSena]

Even Smaller!!

Today I learned how to compress.

Only real change is that it screams at you if you double select one character.

[Floofy]

it screams at you if you double select one character.

D:

[TailsSena]

Oh, can someone show me how to make a Height Map/Voxel for the Mode7ex object? It's needed for slopes and multi-level (non)planes.

[BlazefireLP]

DUDE you went from 97mb to 14mb. What a freakin' difference.....More people need to know of proper compression methods to be honest. Otherwise you get games like SBTS and others which are beyond 100mb.

I'll download this game tomorrow and give you my feedback on it then, if I remember.

[TailsSena]

DUDE you went from 97mb to 14mb. What a freakin' difference.

I'll download this game tomorrow and give you my feedback on it then, if I remember.

Thanks.

You better.

[BlazefireLP]

Typing this as I play.

It appears that the scale code for the image over the menu words isn't coded properly. As it stutters until the movement is complete. You should fix that. Also, the menu. When resizing the screen, it looks fugly. Not that this entirely matters. But you could probably solve this by cloning each menu screen and have one menu PSP size and the other Worlds size aka 320x240.

Loading screen......WHY? MMF2 never needs one.

Sonic's acceleration or any character for that matter is WAY too fast. If the acceleration value exceeds anything more than 2.0 then you've gone way too far.

I can change the direction when spin-dashing, this is typically not allowed. The physics are worse than Sonic4, I can walk around an entire loop.

What's with the poor choice of sound effects? I jump I hear Sonic06 sounds, I roll then jump I hear a Poor quality Genesis jumping sound. And I occasionally hear SonicAdvance voices. The level design is very generic and slightly boring. It feels like it's just a straight but forced path the entire way through. I found myself having to guess where the collisions where in the part where you climb up to the top. You should make it more obvious. Perhaps use of the MMF2 shaders to go through the backdrops in the way and show where he is. At leas then, we'd be able to see where we are going. I don't particularly like guessing where I am going. Especially when there could be a ton of spikes either on the side or below me at any given time.

Where is the SonicAdvance element in all of this? It feels nothing like it at all. It feels like the worlds biggest style mash to be perfectly honest. The HUB type world thing, Where the hell is all that light on the tiles coming from?

Also, I found it hilarious, how you stuck in a loading screen RIGHT before credits. (lol at the edited drawn tails).

That's just about all I have to say. All in all, it was fine at best. But it reminds me nothing of the advance series. Baring in mind the original point of this project (and the name of the game). As I mentioned before, you could simply use the sound-effects I ripped and that'd keep that problem from being there. If you want a more accurate variable layout for something of the Advance type, look at the old Advance2 engine I posted a while ago.

If you think I'm being harsh, I'm not. I'm being Critique-al and honest. I could do a 5 word sentence and just say "THIS IS AWESOME" and leave it at that but that doesn't help you at all does it.

I hope some of this helped you.

[TailsSena]

It appears that the scale code for the image over the menu words isn't coded properly. As it stutters until the movement is complete. You should fix that.

It's an animation, and it's fixed now.

Loading screen......WHY? MMF2 never needs one.

It's also a saving screen, and I may lower the time soon. Plus it just looks cool. Mess with char combos and see how it changes.

Sonic's acceleration or any character for that matter is WAY too fast. If the acceleration value exceeds anything more than 2.0 then you've gone way too far.

Fixed that before you played it, expect a new release sometime soon. No-one has an accel factor higher than 0.005. (You don't know how fast that is...)

What's with the poor choice of sound effects? I jump I hear Sonic06 sounds, I roll then jump I hear a Poor quality Genesis jumping sound. And I occasionally hear SonicAdvance voices. The level design is very generic and slightly boring. It feels like it's just a straight but forced path the entire way through. I found myself having to guess where the collisions where in the part where you climb up to the top. You should make it more obvious. Perhaps use of the MMF2 shaders to go through the backdrops in the way and show where he is. At least then, we'd be able to see where we are going. I don't particularly like guessing where I am going. Especially when there could be a ton of spikes either on the side or below me at any given time.

Been working on slowly changing from 16bit sound (including music) up to modern quality. Shouldn't be a problem much longer.

Ooh, spikes. Good idea!

The HUB type world thing, Where the hell is all that light on the tiles coming from?

Also, I found it hilarious, how you stuck in a loading screen RIGHT before credits. (lol at the edited drawn tails).

Just because. The load is short, could make it shorter. And I had to shrink the drawing, it was originally like... 1024x768?

That's just about all I have to say. All in all, it was fine at best. But it reminds me nothing of the advance series. Baring in mind the original point of this project (and the name of the game). As I mentioned before, you could simply use the sound-effects I ripped and that'd keep that problem from being there. If you want a more accurate variable layout for something of the Advance type, look at the old Advance2 engine I posted a while ago.

If you think I'm being harsh, I'm not. I'm being Critique-al and honest. I could do a 5 word sentence and just say "THIS IS AWESOME" and leave it at that but that doesn't help you at all does it.

I hope some of this helped you.

The physics are a Work in Progress, and the sounds are being updated.

Criticism is fine and good until it's bashing, so you're good here.

[BlazefireLP]

It may look nice the first time, fair enough, but when a player is waiting to get the level and being delayed like that. It just gets in the way and is frustrating. I'm pretty sure the last thing on our minds in Sonic2006 before getting to the level was "Oh, I like how nice this loading screen looks. Stares at screen*".

[TailsSena]

I tried to make it look a little like a vertical Shadow the Hedgehog loading screen. It also takes you to and from every level/room in the game. It is THE loading screen. And it's been shortened to reasonable. Maybe even below that.

By the way, did anyone else notice any NPC's? There's one in that demo.

[thesuperinvader]

And looking at the recent demo, I'm rather glad that the first fan games that I will be in the credits for are sonic fusion and sonic skywind

[TailsSena]

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but if you're hinting; yes, I need to update the credits.

[thesuperinvader]

I'm saying the game needs a lot of improvements

[SaitoSan]

I suggest using blazefirelp's advance engine. Try changing the HUD to sonic advance 2 or 3. Adding that you put sonic advance worlds means the gameplay should kinda be just like advance 3 since ure having a charecter follow you. Adding things like when sonic goes too fast the screen doesn't follow him for a short time gives the feeling of im about to play an epic sonic advance. Try studying the advance games it might smooth out your gameplay.

(But thats what I would do. You don't have to make it like that. It's your game man.)

[P3DR0]

Time for uncle P3DR0 criticize...

Starting with the Plot... TailsSena, I have to give you my thumbs up... This is the worst plot I'd ever seen in a fangame in my entire life. And yes, I'm considering those shitty ones of 2000~2006 with fanchars and stuff like this.

My mind was blown away when I read the plot... Not because it sucks, but because someone actually considered using it in a fangame and had not even a little bit of shame about posting it in here. I would be so embarrassed of writing it that I would probably nail my ballsack into the wall (a.k.a. suicide).

Is that much horrible... Seriously, don't use it.

Presentation... The graphics looks fine at the menu and loading screen (this one very well done, btw). Ingame... Meh, average fangame graphics. Advance tiles + some overpowered/oversized photoshoped vfx. There isn't much to comment, I'm just growing tired of every single Advance-themed fangame having the same levels... It's so hard to open Paint and start drawing or modifying shit, or at least PM some spriter in here or MFZ's forum?

Gameplay... Generic as could be... Sonic seems to lack the capacity to achieve the top-speed animations. There isn't much to comment on this one just that it's generic and not in a good way. The partners seems unnecessary since they don't do shit or at least cooperate with the player. Infact they don't even seem to be able to keep the player's pace.

Level Design... Can't say much, all I did was hold the right arrow key and jump when necessary.

(This means it sucks)

[Dark Raven X]

Time for uncle P3DR0 criticize...

Level Design... Can't say much, all I did was hold the right arrow key and jump when necessary.

(This means it sucks)

Though I can't defend hiding jumps behind the foreground, there is that whole section of back and forth platforming. But once you clear it, you can jump and skip over the entire underwater section. You could call this a shortcut, but it feels more like I'm cheating. ;D

[BlazefireLP]

Which is in affect bad level design. You should't be able to SOAR over half the levels like that.

[TailsSena]

So... Todo list.

Skip story/plot entirely, like the old games.

Edit the tiles.

Make the level harder.

You don't know how much you just helped, Pedro.

[BlazefireLP]

Not necessarily harder, just more TO it. Slightly more complex and less flat platforms everywhere. Keep in mind, this has 360 you know. Take advantage of that. The Advance games did =P.

[P3DR0]

You don't know how much you just helped, Pedro.

Don't worry son, I'm just a Kamen Rider passing by.

About the plot, you don't have to skip it. Just make it less "overpowered-conspiratory-dramatic-fanfic writen by a 12yo fat girl who dreams that Sonic would comeout from her television and come into her pants"... Noone of the old games did that, they just didn't put dialogues or cutscenes explaining what's going on.

I would go with something more simple and less dramatic like the classic: "Robotnik is trying to rule the world again and has made X thing on Y place. And stolen Z item and made a base on space". (This is gold)

The problems with Sonic fangames plots is that people try to make something so epic and complex, that it starts to suck because it's not Sonic anymore. Sonic was meant to be like Mario, simple stuff, colorful, rescue X person and stop the villain. Just like that... "Lather, rinse, repeat".

[Streak Thunderstorm]

I don't entirely believe that. I feel like there's a certain time and place for everything in a story. What makes a story bad is bad character development. When you make a character do what they're not designed to do, it destroys the whole lore of its world and basically, you'd be better off doing this with your own made up characters. Take Eggman for example. Why would he ever have kids? He's hell bent on his own plans, why would he stop, fall in love, bang a few kids out and continue on? Doesn't make sense. Don't make something do what it wasn't designed to.

[TailsSena]

Not necessarily harder, just more TO it. Slightly more complex and less flat platforms everywhere. Keep in mind, this has 360 you know. Take advantage of that. The Advance games did =P.

Working on that RIGHT now. Just relocated the end of the level, you can't get to it without Tails or Cream yet, but once I'm done, even Amy shouldn't have TOO much trouble getting there.

[Ristar]

I'm totally with you on demolishing the plot.

I was playing Sonic Colors on the DS earlier and I was just thinking "why the fuck are these animals talking to each other? I seriously don't care. Let me get to the next level."

adding a loading screen for the sake of it isn't a good idea. Sonic BTS didn't have loading screens and no one said "Ere! Lake, mate! we pure need some loading screens in here like." all it is at the end of the day is a novelty for you, no one else.

if you want a plotline then here's a little task for you:

1. get a piece of paper and write down all the levels (they're the most important thing after the engine itself).

2. Think about how they all connect. Do they all take place on an island a la Sonic 1 and 2? Or do we shift from island to space or whatnot?

3. Draw a map of how Sonic and chums will get from point a to b to c etc. and think about what could happen inbetween.

here's an example that I had for a game:

Sonic is dropped off on the beach by Tails, goes through a jungle, up a mountain, is knocked off the mountain into a sunken ruin, goes through a mine and into a warphole. He comes out the other side on an inverted island (full of raw emerald!), proceeds through a swamp and into eggman's base.

It's not plotless, but it's straightforward. You can easily make something like this or better

[TailsSena]

The recent weather gives me an idea for the plot... Let's hope it turns out okay.

(No, it's not complex at all, and it doesn't involve many characters.)