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Sonic ATS - Released


LakeFeperd

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I LOVE THIS GAME!

[qimg] CX2HlIg.png?1 [/qimg][qimg] 3EgOz2a.png?1 [/qimg]

[qimg] IBAhEBE.png?1 [/qimg][qimg] t8mUu7k.png?1 [/qimg]

:asmile:

Yeah um... that's the secret I said about that I wasn't going to tell anyone but you kinda killed it.

lawl...

Judging by the fact that we've found 2 NPC's in cyan city's special act, I have a feeling cyan city plays a role in sonic chrono adventure.

The columns in HHZ, as well as the various coloured ones in other levels and in the PPZ hidden room, all have the same pattern as the Chrono Adventure city does (and note the weird 'map' signs which go OFF the island). I think the entire island and how it's conveniently placed right next to Angel Island, all play in to the Chrono story. Considering the columns are old ruins, Chrono involves time travel and has a time when the floating city is in ruins, implies that ATS takes place in one of those ruins (and therefore the destroyed floating city is in PRESENT, not the future).

In other words: All this freaky shit you're seeing is related to Chrono, in some way (column ruins, weird characters, those prophecy boards in the volcano, etcetc).

>tfw a fan game can create speculation

Well played, Lake...

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I wanna give deeper feedback of this game whenever I have time to finish it, but this is what i got so far.

@Lake:

I will agree with one of the criticisms upfront -- the levels do indeed seem to drag on too long. I was never a fan of Sonic CD or its 3-Act level format for the same reasons. I think these levels would benefit immensely from having the overall design of the 3 acts condensed into 2, or at least chopped up into 3 much smaller maps.

It seems like most of the acts focus primarily on one type of interaction, and as a result the stages tend to feel more like gimmick showcases instead of organic levels. By extension, going into a new act, i find myself going into autopilot very shortly after getting the "catch" of the level theme. When this drags on it compounds the issue. But most importantly, it removes the sense of suspense/surprise from the level, and turns the act into a routine rather than an experience. This really became noticeable to me with the act that introduced the invisible platforms with the lightning rods, which quickly went from "wow awesome" to just somewhat aggravating. The stage with the filling water was the exact same way. The Kirby powerup too.

IMO this is really where Sonic 2's charm and Sonic 3&K's strongest points were. The stages were shorter and fewer than Sonic 1's stages, but doing that, they were able to increase the amount of diversity in the levels making them feel alot more fluid and fleshed out regardless of actual size. Water stages suddenly weren't so infuriating, and spaced out gimmick placement naturally created "landmarks", making the stages more memorable. I think everyone would agree that the worst stage in sonic 2 was probably Metropolis Zone. Could be any number of reasons why, but i'd wager that 3rd act is what really drives it over the edge.

I haven't finished yet, but that's probably the most apparent downside for me. On the other hand, the graphics and attention to detail is awesome, as are your overall ideas and concepts for the level. It really feels as if you work from your imagination, and I honestly wonder how you get so much stuff into the levels you do. I'm also very happy you keep the bosses interesting and creative without making them difficult or annoying, something fangames really seem to be fond of for some reason.

I am aware of how long this game has been finished. I...can't really remember having the same issue with BTS though. But those are my initial thoughts anyway.

And I guess walking into this topic was asinine if i expected to actually be surprised by any easter eggs or secrets in the game.

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Ignoring the spoilers and speculation for a moment, I've seem to have run into a bit of a problem with saving... Does the game have an auto save feature? Or is there something I gotta do in order to save it? Cause I got pretty far, closed the game, and opened it to find my progress wasn't saved...

I'm running Windows 8 x64 with an i7 processor, a 4GB GDDR5 graphics card, and 22 GB of DDR3 RAM if it matters.

I'll try and experiment when I get home, but for the time being, if any of ya got suggestions, go ahead, I'm listening.

EDIT: Oh, and both time I played, I was using a wired 360 controller. My inner IT tech wants me to list EVERYTHING that I had going on.

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Ignoring the spoilers and speculation for a moment, I've seem to have run into a bit of a problem with saving... Does the game have an auto save feature? Or is there something I gotta do in order to save it? Cause I got pretty far, closed the game, and opened it to find my progress wasn't saved...

I'm running Windows 8 x64 with an i7 processor, a 4GB GDDR5 graphics card, and 22 GB of DDR3 RAM if it matters.

I'll try and experiment when I get home, but for the time being, if any of ya got suggestions, go ahead, I'm listening.

EDIT: Oh, and both time I played, I was using a wired 360 controller. My inner IT tech wants me to list EVERYTHING that I had going on.

The game generally saves at the start of a level, in ATSave.bin. Make sure that's present after playing at least one level, and isn't being killed by any anti-virus crap (dunno why it would but meh...).

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Guest Mr Lange

The complaints about too many spoilers early... well that's really your own fault you know.

There's another cameo in Cyan City's special act. Has anyone found it?

And I was wondering when someone would discover the hidden area in Parhelion Peak. Lake's idea for it inspired me to make that music.

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It's lakes avatar from a while back.

I think the original picture of it was stationed in Sugar Splash but I dunno which Act. I can't be bothered to look for something he might've moved though. I'll leave it to you guys. Wish we had a thread for finding and logging this crap, so we didn't have to annoy everyone else...

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I think the original picture of it was stationed in Sugar Splash but I dunno which Act. I can't be bothered to look for something he might've moved though. I'll leave it to you guys. Wish we had a thread for finding and logging this crap, so we didn't have to annoy everyone else...

Actually, I think the original picture was in foliage furnace. Not quite sure.

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I think some people are reading far too deeply into the level design, the levels are just as long with as much variation and alternate routes as S3&k's levels, I don't think anything's automated I always feel in control, tons of platforming that work well with the gimmicks so how do the gimmicks take over all other aspects of the level design? And I'm not seeing how some think the levels drag.

Btw Lake, what is the snowflake falling at the end of Sugar Splash supposed to relate to later in the game? Maybe I'm being stupid but I haven't figured it out yet.

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Guest Mr Lange
Btw Lake, what is the snowflake falling at the end of Sugar Splash supposed to relate to later in the game? Maybe I'm being stupid but I haven't figured it out yet.

It's a foreshadowing of Storm Station being a weather control machine. Notice it flashes right before the snowflake falls.

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Btw Lake, what is the snowflake falling at the end of Sugar Splash supposed to relate to later in the game? Maybe I'm being stupid but I haven't figured it out yet.

lawl, I thought it was just a very random time transition. As in: It's a 'snowflake of sugar(wat)' and the zoom effect was just... an effect which faded in to a later point in time, in which they had arrived at Cyan City.

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It's a foreshadowing of Storm Station being a weather control machine. Notice it flashes right before the snowflake falls.

Ah yeah, thanks, it makes sense now.

So, a pattern with BTS and ATS, the second zone of each game involves the characters getting high in some form, I wonder if Lake's done it again for the second main area in Chrono Adventure that would be awesome.

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is it this? [qimg]http://sites.levelupgames.com.br/Forum/grandchase/users/avatar.aspx?userid=139928&lastmodified=633859559169034550[/qimg]

Lake i have a serious question, what's that? i think i've seen it somewhere else but, did you made it or did you got it from somewhere, and if you did get it from semewhere, from where?

That thing was made in SPORE wasn't it?

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It was present after I first closed the game, before I noticed any problem what so ever.

Huh... that would suggest something is stopping it from writing.

All I can think, is to try specifically opening the program 'as Administrator' (if you're on Windows), or (temporarily, for testing purposes) disable whatever security software you have.

Either that, or you did what I almost did, and keep going for 'New Game' by accident, lawl. The default option when you load up, is 'New Game' which modern games don't do much, so it threw me and I just insta-hit enter.

If it's not that, then you can try extracting the game to a different file and testing it there, to make sure it isn't just a rare glitch that has appeared in your save file... otherwise, I have no idea.

Your actual PC specs are similar to mine and the only one of them that would really make any difference at a reading/writing level error, would be the OS which is the same as me (Windows 8), since none of the other things you listed play any part in the actual reading/writing instruction creation or translation (at a high-level, anyway. If it's assembly level(very unlikely) then: You're fucked!).

I still put my money on something stopping it from writing though. Either the admin thing or a Security program not allowing the program to write (although running as Admin SHOULD bypass that...).

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I had no idea that Storm Station was intended to be a weather control device. It's really obvious in retrospect but at the time it felt like an illuminating moment.

Anyways, I've played through this game twice already and I love it for the most part. I love the general aesthetics for the zones and the gimmicks that are introduced for most of them. Technology Tree stands out as my favorite zone aesthetically, but Sugar Splash just barely edges ahead of it in terms of how fun it is to play.

The only mediocre parts of the game (there weren't any blantantly bad parts, with the exception of the PPZ boss glitch) for me are the bosses and the unlockable zones. Especially compared to S:BtS, the bosses feel a little unsophisticated and easy, although when you compare this to the bosses that were present in the Genesis Sonic games, they're all above average. Also, I'm kind of disappointed that none of the bosses incorporated level gimmicks. There are so many cool ideas in Sugar Splash, for example, that I'm a little surprised a fun boss that could meet your high standards couldn't be included in the game.

I think this was due to over-hype rather than anything else, but I was expecting the Special Acts to be radically different than the regular levels, rather than the regular levels with different palettes and harder object placement. Granted though, RRZ and PPZ's Special Acts did mix things up a bit and for that I appreciate it.

Overall, this game has been a hell of a time. Heh, I'm probably gonna play it again tonight, because I haven't really got into the Special Stages too much yet.

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I had no idea that Storm Station was intended to be a weather control device. It's really obvious in retrospect but at the time it felt like an illuminating moment.

I kinda knew it from the beginning, it's not hard to notice.

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A few people people seem to have a problem with the bosses and that's alright, their opinions, but some points they could consider.

For the first boss as long as you don't have the bubble shield it's a good difficulty for the first boss. I think the only boss that wasn't that great in the whole game was Cyan City's, it was better than the demo because of the surprise of how different it is, and it is slightly harder, even if only by a hair, but if Lake changed that boss because it was too easy, then he could've done a better job at raising the difficulty from the original boss, or you could've improved the one from the demo by making the spikes on the orb start to come out at random really fast, and make the orb itself move left to right faster.

The rest of the bosses are all amazing imo, very inventive and original, maybe they could've been harder, but for me it's a case where the difficulty doesn't ruin how extremely enjoyable they are, plus I still get hit a few times by some of them, someone on retro just said they drag and there's too many multiple phases. I love the multiple phases not only for how creative they are but because of the length, it's just right, the bosses last the perfect amount of time, if you want to see pacing for bosses with multiple forms done badly go play Sonic 4 Episode II, I think at this point saying "I feel the bosses are dragging, don't like the multiple phases" is just the sonic fanbase being the sonic fanbase.

When you look back at the bosses from the classic games, some of them do end too quickly, Chemical Plants' can last five seconds, the length of these are much improved and it's well balanced, and again I love the ideas and how fun they are apart from Cyan City's.

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I GOT DEBUG MODE! It's not like what you think it is, but it is still cool. Not sure if I should hint how to get it or not...

It's a HUGE spoiler, so don't ruin it for yourself.

Don't do it if you want a surprise...

Hey man, it might not be worth it.

You have come far. It has to do with Perihelion (Yes, it's spelled perihelion) Peak... Don't go on, screenshot ahead.

Hey man, back up a bit.

Woah woah woah, too close man.

Alright, fine...

RRIM3OO.png

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