Sonic Bliz

[Emerald]

Hi guys, newbie here. You can call me Emerald or anything you like.

So ive decided to work on a sonic fangame in my spare time. Originally i thought it was something way out of my skill and expertise but then i came across the sonic worlds engine and decided to give it a shot.

Now im not going for anything revoultionary. I'm simply aiming for a good game players can enjoy and extra content for those that stick with it. I would love to add unique gimmicks and characters and i will try to, but if i cant implement it properly then it will be removed.

The main thing i am focusing on is the visual style. I may not be much of a coder but i am a good artist.

I am aiming for 7 zones with 3 acts each. The end of act 3 will have a custom boss fight. There will be a hub zone. hidden goodies dotted around the levels that unlock secret stuff once found. I also want to include a few minigames if possible, like a sonic spinball bonus game. Just a nice little oddity to amuse the player.

Some screens:

This is all very much early days. I'm still learning MMF and I'm only able to work on this in my spare time.

The purpose of this thread is gain some feedback and hopefully some support, as I think i will likely need some of that down the line.

Sorry if this thread is in the wrong place.

Thanks for reading.

[Serephim]

for some reason this brings me back to SFGHQ of 10 years ago

my dick is hard

[Emerald]

hmm....... an Interesting first reply. Don't know if i should feel grateful for that comment or be fearful of it.

Thanks... i guess:icon_lol:

[Serephim]

hey, im not scary, i speak only the truth!

your avatar on the other hand

[Betaman]

I'm definitely getting a peculiar vibe over the style being used. It definitely reminds me of something I've seen before, but I can't put my finger on what it was. However, I hope you change the objects and the HUD to match the style of your characters and level art. Seeing this design with the default Sonic Worlds graphics really clashes.

Anywho, it looks decent and that's all the really matters when looking at screenshots. With a demo....that's a completely different story, but I won't get into that right now.

Keep it up, I can't wait to see more of this pop up here.

[Emerald]

Funny you should ask, i do have something of a "demo" you can play around with. Although is VASTLY incomplete and has some noticeable bugs.

sonic is missing some key animations where it switches to the sonic 1 sprites.

Level total score and power ups dont reset when bacl in the hub world.

"debug" mode from the sonic worlds engine has been left in, didnt mean to leave it in but I dont feel confident to mess with it yet.

Level music doesnt loop properly.

Sonic travels faster on vertical surfaces in ball mode.

DEMO:https://www.box.com/s/6pd7uave49fv060t6fdq

The HUB will be changed, pretty much everything, visual wise i want to change so it fits the style.

So have play and tell me what ya think. Also, is there any chance of a mod fixing the typo i made in the name of this thread?

It reads "Sonic Bliz" when its meant to read "Sonic Blitz" yea.... I made a boo boo.

[Betaman]

Okay, so I played it and my general thoughts on it were:

Sonic's animation for running, paired with his overall speed when running, make it seem like the game is too slow and I had to mash the spindash/peelout button to get any speed. Then again, this may just be the level layout consisting of mostly vertical sections. It feels like I had to abuse a normal move that should only be used if you want to use it, not that you have to use it. (Think Sonic Adventure's Spindash abuse.)

The platforming was rather nice, though some choices were not really that great. It's not wise to have a bottomless pit over a mandatory platform section, unless that stage's cliche calls for it. (Think Sonic 1, where most bottomless pits were in alternate pathways or hidden areas. The only mandatory ones I could think of were in Starlight Zone and Clock Work Zone, but even then most were on the alt pathways.)

The artwork idea was a nice touch, though I couldn't find the thing for the 2nd Act. (I'm assuming the red thing I collected in act 1 gave me some artwork) I assume it's there and I was just too lazy to look for it, but I got the 1st act's too easy.

As it is, the art style is very nice, but some stuff should be shifted over from the Sonic Worlds Stock to match it.

Final thought:

You've got a long way to go, but if you change the level design so that speed is earned through running rather than abusing the peelout/spindash, finish Sonic's art, and match the art design up, you'll travel far in a shorter amount of time than you think.

^ Note for the above

Now that's not to say that every level should be speed oriented, just don't make it so that the need to abuse the peelout/spindash is there.

[sonicyoda]

Final thought:

You've got a long way to go, but if you change the level design so that speed is earned through running rather than abusing the peelout/spindash, finish Sonic's art, and match the art design up, you'll travel far in a shorter amount of time than you think.

Pretty much that.

One thing I wanna say, I absolutely love the big chunky art style. Like really love it. I'm probably gonna be in the minority here but I just think it looks great. It's cool and original if anything. Also it reminds me of Sonic SV2 (I think that was what it was called) and Sonic Nebulous. Memories...

[Sslaxx]

Yeah, agree about the HUD not really being in keeping with the style of art.

Archie or SatAM, by the way?

[Emerald]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I do agree that sonic felt a little slow. That was due to me not wanting to mess around with the core programing. Having said that, I plucked up the courage to venture into sonics movement values and was able to increase his top speed greatly. Now he doesnt feel so slugish and is able get up walls without relying on ball mode.

I got so used to spaming the peel out i never really noticed how annoying it was, Im having flashbacks of sonic 4's homing attack.

Where were these bottomless pits you mentioned betaman? are you refering to act 2? If so, act 2 is vastly incomplete, its going to be much bigger that its current state and the layout will change with it. If you mean act 1, then could you please tell me which spots you had issue with. I thought it was covered with that bottom path.

Its hard finding the right balance between fair and dickery.

The art work you found, was ment to be unlocked in the stage by finding a white page in the level. Unfortunately it isnt coded right atm, and is viewable from the get go. The red thing was a place holder to see if i could do the "collect one thing here, something appears elsewhere" thing, but having trouble applying it to the actual unlocks for some reason. I'll figure it out though.

Glad you like the art style. Thats one thing i consider myself really good at and found it quite challenging make the tiles. Having trouble making them fit together seamlessly. Looking at the zone names in the HUB should give you a good idea of the various themes ive got planned. My fave theme is Carnival Chaos's. Ive got some fun ideas for that one, i just hope im able to implement them.

What did we think of the music? I want to steer clear of Sonic music for this. Dont get me wrong, I LOVE me some sonic tracks but pretty much every game uses the original music or a remix of a sonic track. I want something different.

Sslaxx, the HUD will be changed, i though it best to get some actual gameplay first and then worry about the smaller things.

Archie or SatAM? Both and neither at the same time. Not sure if im going implement a story, i think the levels ive chosen wont lend themselves to a choesive plot. In my mind atm, this is going by the games continuity and elements of both universes will be included via enimies and characters (at least the ones i like anyway)

sorry for the wall of text.

[Betaman]

Well then, most of my bottomless pit problems were cleared up by the statement that Act 2 was incomplete, as I had most of the problems there.

For me, the music reminded me of Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love in places, but still sounded like Sonic music for the most part.

If anything, I did have one issue with Sonic's Sprite: the ball animation. It looks like he's trying to do some sort of Insta-Shield or something. It just looks...weird and out of place like that.

By the way, using the Tails Debug, I was able to find a metric crap-ton of stuff in Act 2 that Sonic would NEVER be able to access normally. Are those planned areas in the level?

[Ayling]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMQzfncqOQc

While I love Meatloaf it's just a bit out of place in a sonic game. I like the idea of going classic rock for a sonic game though, it would be AWESOME. I could totally get into that. I'm sure as you get a bit more of a finished product up there'd be some musician with an electric guitar who would be willing to contribute something.

[Emerald]

Beta: I kinda just through the ball animation together, i wanted to give it some sort of glow effect, similar to SA2 but wasnt sure on how to that. I'll be revisiting it. Act 2 is gonna be extended all those areas you mentioned will be filled out. While at the moment, sonic is the only playable character (not really counting tails) I'm desinging the levels with exploration and other characters in mind.

Ayling: I didnt, feel the music to be out of place personaly although i may be a little biased. I dig the classic rock vibe , but only if fits the stage theme. Once i get a tighter game and a maybe a boss fight, then ill see if someone would like to contribute.

[sonicyoda]

Yeah, I liked the alpha so much I did this: http://youtu.be/SoAMAvYQ-5I

Hope you don't mind!

[Emerald]

Wow. Thanks for the kind words Yoda. Its things like this that spur me on and keep me motivated. I'm not doing this for "cred" or anything of the sort, but I would like people to play and enjoy the game. If people dont play it, whats the point in making one?

Progress is a little slow ATM, not having much free time really slows down dev time. I Do have something new to show, however little it is.

Not looking ahead= Crabmeat to the face. Im thinking ill have to edit my enemy placement. Now that sonic is faster, theres less time for the player to react.

New Monitors. Since sonic is twice the size he originally was, he would tower over the them so i felt i had to change them.

I gotta ask. Is this sort of project really that rare? completely custom art an all that? I wasnt around when fangaming first started but i vaguely remember sonic thridscape and i would love to play SV2.

[sonicyoda]

Liking the changes to the hud and the addition of the hit animation.

As for custom art style, not many fan games use it. There are some out there, but they're usually outweighed by games using existing tiles and changing the colours and/or combining them with other existing tiles.

Neither style is wrong or right, but I was thoroughly impressed by the custom art and like I said in the video, the nostalgia for the fangames of old.

[Betaman]

Now that's looking much better! This is definitely going to be on my list of fan games to play when it gets completed. Though the badniks aren't finished yet, I can't wait to see what they'll look like when they're done. I have a feeling they'd look really steam-punk esque.

[Ayling]

Since Sonic is 2x as big as everything else you might want to consider increasing the window size. Otherwise it'll be hard for people to see what's coming next

[Emerald]

I thought about changing the camera but im not sure of the best way to do it. I just tried increasing the game window size and it worked apart from the act clear text covering part of the screen throughout the whole level but im sure that will be a simple fix.

I did however come across a fairly game breaking bug. I think it was there before i started editing the camera but i cant be certian. This thing really fucks up the whole HUB world thing. Ive updated my help thread in the assitance forum cause i didnt wanna post it here, rules and all that.

I would greatly apprecitate the help if someone could help me fix that.

[Nemox]

I think Sonic's size might be the issue with speed. He may be going as fast as he does in Genesis games, but it doesn't feel like it since he's so tall. The issue of scale is one that can screw up all subsequent physics.

Loving the art style though, and it's certainly what shines and makes this game stand out. If you could find some music that really compliments it (likely outside Sonic's usual themes), you'll have something very special.

[Emerald]

Yeah sonics size was the cause of the speed issue, I have enlarged the games window allowing the player to see more of the frame so they arent hindered by sonics increased speed. Heres a shot of the updated act 2 and the new window size.

Ive since fixed the HUB world and the not dieing bug and will be attempting to code my first gimmick soon, as well as knock up some new badnicks.

[sonicyoda]

That's actually a really nice resolution and those tiles look stunning. Great work once again.

[snow toilet]

This game really makes me want to listen to black metal and grindcore again.

Plus it's fucking scary and I like it.

[Emerald]

Sorry for the slow progress guys, things just like to get in the way.

I just wanted to post a couple of level concepts and get some feedback on them.

This is inspired by Shadow the Hedeghog's Mad Matix. Its a level theme that really hasnt been done alot and i don't know why. I'm hoping to incorparate grinding into this stage. I think i would be cool to see sonic grinding along steams of data and circuitry.

The idea behind this is an underground volcano that has been completey encased in ice. I like the idea of "crystalized fire". Dunno why, I just do. Not entirely sure what kind of gimmicks this stage could have. Any ideas?

Again sorry for the lack of progress, I am still working on this whenever I can.

Oh and just for giggles...the E.G.G.M.A.N!!