Post your screenshots thread

[P3DR0]

That looks decent enough. Lighting could get some extra tweaks, and I'm not found of the UDK standard skydome. But for the most part, looks nice. Too linear, but nice. I'd suggest throwing in some blue and green containers as well. Just to break the flow and get rid of some of the warm tones. As a matter of fact, is best to keep warm tones at minimum when dealing with games, they tend to pop-out more than cooler tones and it could be distracting, specially when it comes to fast action games.

Warmer tones should be used when you want to draw the player's attention or you have a stage where the overall theme is warmer (deserts, volcano/lava stuff) or represents danger (enemie's bases, boss stages). I'm not saying that you can't have warm tones in other situations, but they should be kept to a minimum or blend in with the environment (not fully red, but more of a magenta tone). If you do a quick Google search on containers docks, and stuff like that you'll see that, yes, it does have a lot of red in then. But if you add the tag "games" or something like that you'll see that those containers tend to be either blue or in cooler colors:

[Highwire4]

I see what you mean. I'll tone it down a little bit and throw in some cools. Sonic games usually have bright, vibrant, and fun colors in their levels, so I tried to keep that going along with the energy of the game.

I threw this together pretty quickly so its not a good example of my ability but I'm sure you mean something in this direction?:

[P3DR0]

That's much better. It can still have vibrant colors, just more "neutral". Like instead of red, try magenta, instead of pure yellow try orange, etc. It's already looking better. Will look great once you throw some better lighting, make those shadows blue/purple-ish.

[Highwire4]

Awesome. When I get the time I'll sit down and focus on perfecting the color pallet till everything is just the balance I want. I'm probably going to go with something along the lines of magenta, yellow-orange, and teal/cyan. But I've also had the thought of adding patterns to the boxes so we'll see about that.

Lighting is actually my weakspot when it comes to 3D. I barely understand how shaders work or how to do things with them. LUCKILY THOUGH I have a friend who's beast at it so maybe he can show me a thing or two.

but yeah, awesome, thanks for the help!

[InfinityAlex]

Ooh, a monitor! But...how do I get to it...?

Wonder where this leads...

Oh...this is starting to make sense, now.

Almost there...!

Finally made it! Well, this looks like it'll be useful!

Spoiler'd for size.

Also, these are out latest set of Cyber Sonic sprites, special thanks to Shinbs and Hobbers.

[OverbounD]

Those sprite and background are all kinds of awesome. I look forward to playing this.

[Mr. Potatobadger]

@Overbound

Might wanna remove the odd double post. I hate it when that happens :/

Also, alex let me test the game, and it plays VERY well, the animations are done almost perfectly save for when sonic is running at full speed, and the level, while short, is designed well. I think alex forgot to mention that the level is never lake, just like the first level in my game:

I'm having a hard time debating who's tileset is better, mine (zigzax) or alex's (hobbers). Theyre both very good. I suggested to alex merging the tileset and using the same level just for kicks and giggles, but we decided that wouldn't work. :/

Anyways, good job on your game so far, alex & dahog.

Also, I proudly came up with the name sonic sigma, it's very clever what it means c:

[InfinityAlex]

Actually, it wasn't when I first joined the project.

[Mr. Potatobadger]

It wasn't what?

(I also forgot to mention the music is kickin')

[ZigZaX]

Hobber's is INFINITELY better than mine. Have no idea why you would have a hard time deciding.

[InfinityAlex]

The final music will actually be by our guest musician, Can of Nothing. What I meant was the title meaning wasn't clear.

[Apricity]

@InfinityAlex, looking great! Seriously, the Cyber Sonic sprites are really fresh.

[InfinityAlex]

Sadly, I can't take credit for those; they are the work of our excellent spriter, Hobbers, using a base from Shinbs, so kudos to them!

[Mr. Potatobadger]

Hobber's is INFINITELY better than mine. Have no idea why you would have a hard time deciding.

Haha, you're like a self conscious teenage girl who think's she is ugly when it comes to your tiles. And tbh, they're pretty similar

[Light The Hedgehog]

And I made some progress on the game. Programming wise.

New Stage Gimmick:

More moving platforms:

And the enemy in place of that one guy who was out of place:

The spoiler isn't a big spoiler, but if'd you'd like to be "surprised" with the game don't open. (It's nothing new or innovative though):

SUPER SONIC!

[Highwire4]

Daymn Alex and Light are getting shit done. Keep it up you guys its looking sweet!

So I've done some fiddling in Unreal and I've managed to figure out a bunch of stuff. I've changed the color of shadows so they're more blue now and I've upped the poly count on a few of my assets to give them better shadows. I've also been working on the color pallet of the level and made a few new textures for stuff including tarmac and a new skydome that even has moving clouds :3

Thoughts?

[Light The Hedgehog]

It looks nice so far! What type of level is this though?

[Highwire4]

Thanks!

Uhm.. not so much a level as a scene. This isn't really playable or anything. Its for school. Based on a shipping harbor and an old level idea I had years ago.

[P3DR0]

Now that is pretty cool, Highwire. I would still mess around with those lights and shadows if I were you they're still on the dark side, especially on Sonic. Don't feel scared of going with lighter and saturated shadows, even if you're trying to achieve a "realistic" look.

Go to View > World Properties and mess around with the Environment Color value and make those shadows saturated and blue-ish tinted: http://i.imgur.com/FT8mS.jpg (found this image at the Epic Forums).

If things get way too saturated for you, you can always add a Post Processing Chain or reduce the saturation. But honestly, when it comes to shadows, even in non-Sonic games I always feel that the more saturated the better: http://techgage.com/reviews/gaming/sleeping_dogs/sleeping_dogs_10.jpg

Also check this out:

This is a very helpful feature that I found out a while ago, and good lord, this is really something.

Good lights and shadows are one of the things that will decide if your environment looks amazing, or shit. You can have the most impressive meshes and textures in there, but if you're using a white/black light/shadow, it will look like shit.

I'm really proud of the light in this scene that I did a while back:

[Clouder]

Awesome, Highwire! What are you using for this?

[Highwire4]

Thanks P3DR0! Been working hard on getting that balance just right.

Also holy crap the color table thing is blowing my mind right now. I've just messed with it for a bit and gotten some pretty amazing results and so easily too! I'll have to mess with it more to learn when too much editing is too much though. Thank you so much for these resources man!

DaHog: Thanks man! Using Unreal Dev Kit.

Made some changes, will make more since its not what I want yet, but I think its on the right track.

No Color table edits:

Color table:

thoughts?

[Light The Hedgehog]

Wow that looks really freakin' awesome! Can't wait to see more.

[Stritix]

That looks great Highwire.

Work in progress. I plan on putting in a lot more detail. Just felt like sharing progress.

[P3DR0]

Now that is so much better, Highwire. The shadow maps should be on a bigger res but that's ok.

Now, don't get me wrong, your scene is coming along better by every update, altough it's missing character, a story to tell. For that, all you gotta do is put in some decals in those containers and the white barriers things (I personally prefer the ones on the first screenshot with the red stripes), add in a few extra meshes like some cranes perhaps and add in a bit of vertex painting here and there with some water puddles, cracks and vegetation perhaps, just to break up the flow a bit.

Nothing too fancy, I guess, perhaps in the containers you could add some parts where the tint worn out, maybe from rain or from the contact with other containers. You could work this out with texture variations like, say, having a different version of the same material but with a different texture with some metal marks. Don't go too over-the-top with it or else you'll create too much unnecessary noise, but just tiny details.

For the water puddles/cracks and vegetation on the ground I believe vertex painting is the ideal choice here. It may not even make much sense, but gives some character to the scene and will help to create variation without having to throw in new meshes.

(

- a good Vertex Painting tutorial, I suggest watching both part 1 and 2).

Another cool thing that I would add if I were you are some particles in the sky of some seagulls flying by perhaps. Since they're going to be high in the sky, you can pull it off with 2D textures instead of needing to use 3D models and since details don't really matter much and if I remember correctly, you're good at drawing so you could probably pull it of drawing the seagulls yourself, just a 4 frames animation should do the trick just fine. A quick google search will give you a few ideas of how the wings move and stuff like that.

(

- Tutorial on animating particles and introduction to the particle system in UDK)

It's coming along great, man. Congratz.

[Light The Hedgehog]

Well, thought I'd show the rough pallete edits for "Estatic Everglade". Yes I know it's spelled wrong but.

It's the dryer or drier? area of the zone. Gets more "dead" at the bottom of the stage. So stay at the top for the those pretty things to see. (kinda)