Sonic - Light and Darkness

[DimensionWarped]

And lets not forget "Sonic Legendz" by Khaotiz. There is too much legends going on in here, haha.

First things from those screenshots I notice:

HUD is far too big

Resolution is far too big

You really should stick with a native resoltion such as

320x240 (Normal Standard fan-game resolution)

427x240 (Standard Widescreen size)

You can get away with as small as 320x240 if you have a decent camera scrolling system. It's not like they're hard to make though is it.

If you want that just a bit more room, the widescreen 427x240 would be better.

Otherwise, 640x480 is bordering on the ridiculous.

There is some quite bad sprite mixing going on here too and with the 2xed background and normal sized tiles it looks all around odd. Bare in mind, you can solve the "looks too small" problem by making an option to 2x the entire screen from 320x240 which basically achieves what you have in your screenshot to an extent. Try to stay with one style of sprites. Mixing typically isn't good but it can be as shown in SonicFusion with the Carnival Zone from SonicCrackers. It can be executed properly but often but not isn't. Just be careful for your choice of color and sprite mixtures.

I haven't played it yet but once I do I'll give my feedback.

First, high resolution with small characters isn't that big of a problem... within reason. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is an example. Second, there are other ways of fixing that than just using a lower resolution. Scaling the artwork is an option as well and can produce pretty good results with a lot more flexibility than just upscaling. I don't know if you can do this in MMF2, but in Game Maker you can use shaders to apply scaling effects like what Mercury put into Sonic Time Twisted. Last I checked, MMF2 has shaders now, so that sort of thing might be possible there as well.

Also, 427x240 isn't a standard of any sort. 427 is a ridiculous number in general. 16:9 doesn't scale well to lower resolutions. Yeah, there are probably more 16:9 monitors out there now than anything else in the world, but if you want something resembling a standard out of 16:9, you are going to have to ditch this preconceived notion that the vertical size should remain the same. There are no standards in that range though.

You really have two options if you want the best scaling. The first is to start with the common 16:9 resolution at the low end... 1280x720. Cut it in half to get 640x360. Yeah, if you use standard Sonic sprites it'll seem to be zoomed out by a factor of about a third. I don't think that's a particularly big deal though.

Alternatively, you can work from 1080p and cut it in quarters to get 480x270. No one is likely going to look down on the extra 30 pixels.

[Chaos-Fusion]

@LH: Thanks, the blocks that you mentioned are just me adding more paths for the player to take. The double checkpoints are neither here nor there so I'll get rid of them.

@Serephim: http://imgur.com/LReEy

I'm going to take that on board. Should have thought of that. Thanks

[Serephim]

Awesome stuff

[Falk]

Yeah, there are probably more 16:9 monitors out there now than anything else in the world, but if you want something resembling a standard out of 16:9, you are going to have to ditch this preconceived notion that the vertical size should remain the same. There are no standards in that range though.

480x272. And you'd be all set to make homebrew PSP ports too!

[Mareeo64]

Never thought i'd see Sonic in an RPG-style game. It should be fairly successful, however, i hope you still get to use Sonic's super speed.

[Chaos-Fusion]

Never thought i'd see Sonic in an RPG-style game. It should be fairly successful, however, i hope you still get to use Sonic's super speed.

No need to worry about Sonic losing his speed because the RPG elements will actually make him move a lot faster if you level up enough.

[Sparks]

Never thought i'd see Sonic in an RPG-style game. It should be fairly successful

[Falk]

...Ouch? >_>

[Chaos-Fusion]

Chronicles...An RPG that I'm not taking inspirations from in any form.

[Chaos-Fusion]

I did say that I would release the final demo around SAGE but I'm a bit concerned about my games performance on other computers. On the few I tested it on, the results varied from slow as a slug to choppy in certain parts on the desktop and laptops I got a hold of.

This version is based off a later build with most of the new content removed for the SAGE demo. There is 1 level with 3 variations.

1 with parallax and a distortion effect(certain levels use a distortion),

1 with only parallax and finally

1 with none of them.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1g3m98swdcwukn9

All I need to know is the framerate the game runs at (Use Fraps or something) and if it runs 100%; What your specs are?

Edit: There will be some minor bugs and incomplete features so no need to point them out

Edit 2: Press F1 for controls

[Core]

I experienced a lot of slowdown with my computer. With the heat wave, framerate is really instable. It can go up to 120 FPS (according to Fraps); it usually varies between 80 and 110 FPS, but sometimes it drops and at times the games freezes for a while. With the 2 other versions, the framerate is more consistent and varies between 50 and 60 FPS, but sometimes it drops.

[Chaos-Fusion]

Oh boy, not a good start...I'll add the ability to remove the distortion or lower the distortion quality because I get the feeling that other people are going to suffer slowdowns as well. Then again, gamemaker also has terrible optimisation which is one of the main culprits of the slowdown.

[luksamuk]

Hey, dude, just tested your game... You impressed me this time.

I had no problems running it on my notebook, although the Heat Wave sometimes blinked in a solid red color. If that's not in purpose, that's probably my lack of graphics card driver right now.

I ran it using a Windows 8 x64, 6GB RAM Core i7 @2.20GHz.

The only thing that bothered me a bit was the fact that your game was consuming about 106MB of my RAM.

[JetHawk95]

Just played the game and the Heatwave lagged a bit.

THe only other complaint is this REALLY needs some instructions,

The first time round it took me ages to work out you had to press W to change to punch mode. How would a player be expected to know that action is available in the game?

And then I don't know how but on my second run I changed into Dark Sonic. Is this intentionally meant to happen this early? Is it a glitch? Did i press a key to activate it?

Instructions are needed because it was frustrating to say the least.

Apart from that though I liked it, The level was a bit slow paced at times and multiple paths is a good idea, but not if it pointlessly loops you back to the start.

The rainbow rings worked well at the start but when Sonic landed onto the box/crate he was stuck in his falling position.

There's a part in the stage where you jump on a spring and then have to jump on another spring to reach a high platform near the ceiling. If you move slightly to the left you can go above the screen and skip half of the level by running on the roof.

The music was an awesome piece but it doesn't fit a Sonic game though.. Who composed it? I really like it as a piece of music.

So yeah overall it's a good concept and a good start but needs work.

[Chaos-Fusion]

@LH: That's unusual. The cleanmem dll is meant to reduce the amount of memory used. Must be a compatibility thing with Windows 8.

@JetHawk95: F1 should show the controls. Mistake on my behalf.

Dark Form is activated by chance when you try to change normally (A + S in during a jump). If you didn't do that combo, you may have pressed '1 or 2'(Testing controls that force superform). The more you change into Super Sonic, the higher the chance you'll turn into dark form next time.

Level design isn't the greatest thing of this version as the level is just the test zone with a modified layout(Those spring at the end are a placeholder for another gimmick).

I'm aware of the glitch where Sonic stays in his landing animation on crates after using a rainbow ring, I've already fixed it.

The music used in the level is: "Kyuuketsu Koroshi" by Iuchi Maiko. Indeed it's not suited for a Sonic game but for cutscenes, it would fit much better.

Anyway, thanks for the quick feedback guys.

[Chaos-Fusion]

I haven't got anything to show when I ask this as I'm keeping most of it as a surprise for SAGE but I need some testers to see how well the style system handles when played by others and if people run into any bugs. If anyone is interested, send me a PM and I'll provide a link.

The version I'll provide is a mostly complete demo with a few things unpolished.

[Chaos-Fusion]

After a successful SAGE, I was made aware to some bugs/polish issues in my game that I need people to narrow down a bit to fix. If any of you played my game during sage:

Firstly, sound Issues: I was told by a few that my game suffered from sound issues. How many of you experienced Sound Issues?

Secondly, the Controls: I did upload a fixed version that fixed key bindings and people said that the controls need polish. Are they unresponsive, uncomfortable or not working (despite the update)?

[Core]

I remember the sounds were stuttering at times, but I think it was related to the slowdowns.

[Chaos-Fusion]

I have a bit of doubt that the lag is the reason as the computers I tested my game on didn't have any stuttering despite the amount of lag and slowdowns they had but then again, everyone's computer is different so I'll do a bit more testing to see if the lag is the reason.

[Chaos-Fusion]

Well, School is finally over for me and I'm a free man...for now.

To celebrate, here are 2 video updates:

Also, engine completion has been delay again as I've decided to rebuild some of the mechanics (Super Form, Underwater Values, Homing Attack and Light Dash) due to glitches caused by them.

[themonodevelop]

Looking good! I like the originality this fan game offers, haven't seen a Sonic game implement combat and RPG elements so seamlessly.

[Serephim]

Looks neat. I don't know if you're working to address this, but your combo attacks look pretty abusable because they stop you from falling. You may want to force players to hitconfirm attacks (actually hit something with them) in order to allow a string into the next attack. Or at the very least, It shouldn't add upwards momentum unless you're hitting something.

Otherwise, you'll just be able to use the combo attacks as 4th jumps and whatnot.

[Chaos-Fusion]

@ themonodevelop: Thanks, hopefully I can get a final engine build completed soon so people can try out the combat.

(Ignoring what I said about the engine being almost completed last time.)

@ Serephim: Even better, if you spam the attack button, Sonic can practically jump forever due to short delay between attacks.

Anyway, I haven't done too much on the balancing quite yet as I'm still adding more attacks and ensuring that they can chain well. And I may use the latter suggestion as the combat is somewhat inspired by DMC so they should be able to practice the moves with out enemies.

I also realised that I didn't put up some of my progress videos so:

[Chaos-Fusion]

Not really something thats too exciting but I finally managed to track down the root of all slowdown in my game. Turns out that I overlooked how many rings there are throughout the levels so I left them out of object deactivation resulting in tons of slowdown. Now that they do deactivate when they are out of the deactivation region, even the levels with a shit-ton of objects runs at a smooth 55—60 fps instead of 35-50 frames on my current rig. Obviously results will vary but still, it should run faster regardless now.

 

But yeah because of this, I’ll most likely go against what I said yet again about releasing another engine test and post another demo so others can play my game without the slowdown. Pretty much an apology to those who couldn’t play the SAGE demo at full speed and suffered from horribly slow gameplay.
 
Oh and I've decided to increase the screensize to make it easier for players and I've tweaked character physics so that Sonic doesn't accelerate as quickly & his top speed has being reduced.

http://i.imgur.com/jPM4aUB.png
http://i.imgur.com/h7Ej1o2.png
http://i.imgur.com/t5aBFvf.png

To be honest, this update is really also just to show that my project is still alive. : / No matter

Edited December 10, 2013 by Chaos-Fusion

[OverbounD]

Wow man I don't know how I missed this before. This game is looking great judging by those videos. Can't wait to play.