+- The VG Resource (https://www.vg-resource.com)
+-- Forum: Archive (https://www.vg-resource.com/forum-65.html)
+--- Forum: July 2014 Archive (https://www.vg-resource.com/forum-139.html)
+---- Forum: Creative Zone (https://www.vg-resource.com/forum-86.html)
+----- Forum: Games Development (https://www.vg-resource.com/forum-22.html)
+----- Thread: [FANGAME][IDEA] - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! (/thread-14021.html)
[FANGAME][IDEA] - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Rökkan - 07-08-2010
So yeah, I thought of how exactly would be a 3D Sonic game that kept the game design of the classics (about being very based on momentum) but also introduced new stuff. I basically thought "what if we had an equivalent of Super Mario Galaxy but with Sonic?", and this is what I came up. More or less for fun, doing game designs is kind of a hobby for me, I develop three per year on my head. (and also several annotations on my notebook and on .rtf documents on my computer)
Please, feel free to critique, but try to think what exactly would be the best for this idea. Try not to put your personal preference too much on here, I wanna know what could be improved on this, and not "I like sonic heroes" or "okay scrap this and do something entirely different like this".
The game only uses two buttons and the analog stick. I'm gonna call the first button "A", and the second one "B".
A makes you jump. It's essential however, to know how your jumping works the longer you hold A: Just tapping it makes a more straight-forward jump, less controllable, with small jump height, but makes you lose almost no momentum, while holding A longer makes you jump really high, and it's much more controllable, but makes you lose a lot of momentum.
Pressing A again mid-air makes you do the Jump-Dash, but the Jump-Dash here is just useful to get farther in jumping, it cannot be used to give you speed, because it works like this: You're propelled forward, but after propelled with a certain speed, you unaccelerate and lose all speed. You lose as much momentum as you would by doing a jump with maximum height.
Homming Attack is also present in this game, but it's a bit limited at first. You cannot chain your homming attacks at first. You can only attack one enemy with the homming attack, and then after that, you have to land, jump, and then homming attack again. You are able of chaining multiple homming attacks later, but I'll get into that way later. Plus, after doing a Homming Attack or a Jump-Dash, you fall in a non-spinning way, making you vulnerable to enemies, so be careful!
Tapping B makes you go spinning like a ball, just like in Sonic Adventure (it's also like pressing down while running in a 2D Sonic game), but in this concept, this ability is very very useful, and learning when to use this technique is very important because first: when you do this, you're very vulnerable to the curvatures of the ground, if you do this while you're going downhill, you can achieve a speed that you can't by just running.
And second, if you hit a wall head-on while running, you're screwed, because you are thrown to the ground and you lose all of your speed, but if you spin right before hitting on a wall, Sonic ricochets, making you not lose all of your speed, but just some of it. But of course, staying in this mode when you're not going downhill makes you lose your speed, therefore, knowing when to spin and when to quit spinning is very important. Pressing B again while spinning makes you go back to running.
Holding B makes you charge your Spin-Dash. The Spin-Dash is kind of broken in Sonic Adventure because you can hold it for less than a second and get a lot of speed, and then press B again to quit spinning and go running. And you can see how broken it is by how much this flaw is abused in speedruns. So in this one it kind of works like in Sonic CD, you have to wait a bit until it's fully-charged, if not, your boost will be really small. You'll notice when it's fully-charged when you hear a louder KEEEE noise and the dust behind you double its size. But there's something important you need to know about the Spin-Dash: you don't have to stop running to begin charging it!
If you hold B while running, Sonic will start charging his Spin-Dash, making him slide because of his speed that he had while running, and you can kind of control that sliding too. And this is very important because this is how you drift.
Go running, start holding B, drift through a curve with this sliding, and while it's sliding, it charges up the spin-dash, and when you're done with the curve and the spin-dash is charged, you release the B button, making you go through a large curve, while also keeping your speed or even speeding you up!
Also, there's this small detail about the Spin-Dash: When you release the charging and actually dash, you'll notice that in the first two seconds of the dash (when he's accelerating/boosting), Sonic will have this blue aura arund him, kind of like how the Spin-Dash looks in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Hitting enemies in that state makes you slice through them, instead of bumping, like you do when you jump/spin on an enemy.
Pressing B mid-air makes you do the Saw Spin. It's kind of like the Bounce Attack, but without the part where you bounce. You very very quickly dash downwards, slicing all the enemies that are in the way. It's fast, but it's so fast that you cannot really control it, so watch out where to use. You also have a little delay when you land somewhere, so don't land on a platform that can quickly fall and kill you.
Pressing A near a wall makes you stick in it, and pressing A again makes you Wall-Jump. If you stick in a wall for more than two and a half seconds and you don't Wall-Jump, you unstick from the wall and fall. Be careful, when you Wall-Jump, you do it without spinning, so that makes you vulnerable.
There are also power-ups, in Sonic Adventure fashion, but they're more like "skills", as in you can improve them and they aren't gadgets/accessories that changes your character's appearence.
Homming Attack: You start with the Homming Attack already unlocked, and you can level-up it so that you can chain two enemies, then four, then six, and finally, you can chain as many enemies as you want. I decided to restrict the Homming Attack at first so that there would be something else about chaining it than just "LOOK A TRAIL OF ENEMIES IN AIR THAT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING AT ALL BUT WAIT TILL YOU HOMMING ATTACK THEM WOW THAT'S CHALLENGING". Leveling up this ability incentivates you to go back to previous levels and take alternate paths that you couldn't before, and also to think wisely when aiming. Sometimes there will be 6 enemies flying in air, but you can get through the trail of enemies by only doing 4 homming attacks.
Light-Dash: This skill works VERY different from its Sonic Adventure or Sonic Heroes counterparts, so pay attention: Like the Light Speed Dash or the Light-Dash, this skill is about running through a trail of rings. But you can only do that while you're charging your Spin-Dash.
It works like this: There's this large curve that you have to drift through, with this trail of rings that starts in the curve, but goes to another route, or are positioned in a way that if you go through them, you'll do the shortest way through the curve. So when you drift and you touch one of them, you drift through the trail of rings. When you do this, you don't unaccelerate (like you do when you usually charge your spin-dash), and your Spin-Dash charges faster. (you go faster through them, but don't go extremely fast through it like you do on SA or in SH) You can also dash out of the trail by just stop holding B.
Light-Attack: Also works kind of different. You charge it by jumping, and then after releasing the A button, holding it instead of tapping to do the Jump-Dash/Homming Attack. Sonic stops in air and spins fastly, charging the attack. As it charges, it aims at multiple enemies at once, doing a "trail" through the aimed enemies. After you release, Sonic homming attacks through all of the aimed enemies fastly, being invincible while doing it. At first, you can only aim at three enemies at once, and then you can level-up to four and then five.
Splash Jump: It's that skill from Sonic & the Secret Rings. It works like this: If you bump on a wall, you're propelled upwards some. You cannot multiple Splash Jump though.
Splash Dash: By doing the Saw Spin and pressing B when touching the ground, or by holding B while doing the Saw Spin, instead of tapping, Sonic is propelled forward with some starting speed.
Warp Attack: By spinning on the ground, doing jump-dashes, homming attacks or charging your spin-dash, you leave a blue trail behind you. If you're fast enough to get to the "tail" of your own blue trail, every enemy that's inside your "circle" of blue trail is destroyed, and all rings collected (plus you have a slight speed boost). By upgrading this skill, your blue trail increases size. But even if you're really really fast, your "circle" won't probably be very big, so this skill isn't really very broken!
Item Monitors:
Ring - Gives you 10 Rings
Shield - Protects you from a single hit, and then disappears. It can also deflect small projectiles and makes you breathe underwater.
Speed Sneakers - Gives you higher top-speed and acceleration, specially acceleration. You can also run on walls and on the ceiling while with this power-up. The music plays faster while you're with this.
Invincibility - Durp.
Double Ring - Doubles the value of rings collected for a certain period of time. Plays a rhythm along with the currently playing song (kind of like when you ride Yoshi on Super Mario World) that plays a faster tempo when the power-up is running out of time.
Safeguard Ring - A bright, white-ish, winged ring with a star. It "saves" your rings collected before you got the Safeguard Ring and also adds a ring to your counter. If you're hit, you'll only lose the Safeguard Ring and all the rings collected after you got the Safeguard Ring. In the middle of the rings you lost, there's a chance that the Safeguard Ring might be in the middle of them. It's bright and leaves a bright trail behind, but it bounces and disappears faster than other rings. So if you collect it, you will be able to keep the power-up. If you lose it again, though the Safeguard Ring will not be in the middle of the rings.
Clock - Speeds down everything but you. Everything around you loses its saturation and are all grayscaled. The music also sounds slower and muffled. Everything starts gaining colour gradativally, indicating the power-up is running out.
C+C pls.
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Koopaul - 07-08-2010
But I don't know if Mario Galaxy has the best level designs. They are more linear than any 3D Sonic game ever made.
Instead build a 3D environment like a fucking jungle gym. That's what was awesome in Sonic Genesis. Levels were like a labrynth, a catacomb of twisting twirling speeding mayhem.
Ever been to Adventure Land as a kid? Think like that.
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Rökkan - 07-08-2010
I know about Sonic's level design and how it's so full of different paths - which was something new to platforming games because they were mostly really linear. When I said Super Mario Galaxy, I was thinking more of gameplay and level gimmicks, and how it tried to approach more to the classics while keeping a lot of things from the 3D games.
You would know that I was talking more gameplay-wise if you read the whole text.
Or maybe you read it and instead of trying to critique the idea for the gameplay you decided to pick a little detail on my text and talk about something unrelated and that I'm fully aware about and explained it at least three times here in these forums. And since I already ranted about that, and didn't want to make the text longer and more rant-ish about bad design choices of the newer games, I decided to only write about gameplay.
Sorry, it's just ugh I hate when this happens, specially as a first reply, and specially with something I worked a lot over and was reluctant to post it on here because of people missing the point or going unrelated (you)
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Koopaul - 07-08-2010
Okay relax. It's just nothing you mentioned in your first post is anything like Galaxy. Your post is completely made up of moves and items. Moves that are more or less tweaked versions of moves from previous 3D Sonic games. I couldn't find anything that relates to Galaxy so I assumed the connection you meant was level dynamics. But I see know you are not trying to make a game that went in the direction of Galaxy, rather the quality.
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Vipershark - 07-09-2010
I will admit that I got bored and had to tl;dr about halfway through
but out of what I read, I liked
the only thing i disliked is the jump-dash idea and don't really see the point/use of it
could you draw a diagram or something and show me how it'd be useful?
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Gors - 07-09-2010
3D Sonic game that doesn't suck=Innovative
HEH
anyway, I read through it and I liked it, albeit being way too complex for me to understand. I think that this game should showcase the moves separately, in small tutorial levels, so the player can memorize the moves and its effects.
I also never played a 3D Sonic game so I don't exactly know why they are bad and broken, but this one seems fair enough.
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Rökkan - 07-09-2010
(07-09-2010, 12:23 AM)Vipershark Wrote: I will admit that I got bored and had to tl;dr about halfway through
but out of what I read, I liked
the only thing i disliked is the jump-dash idea and don't really see the point/use of it
could you draw a diagram or something and show me how it'd be useful?
psst psst
do a Homming Attack without any enemies nearby on any 3D Sonic game
there, you just did the Jump-Dash
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Woppet* - 07-09-2010
tl: dr
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Rökkan - 07-09-2010
(07-09-2010, 10:02 AM)Woppet Wrote: tl: dr
thanks woppet, it was really imperative to know that you didn't read
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Alpha Six - 07-09-2010
(07-09-2010, 10:02 AM)Woppet Wrote: tl: drDon't spam, homie.
Anyway, I like the gameplay ideas (I probably said this on F32X already), but the thing you should be thinking about more than gameplay (since most Sonic games already have fine gameplay), is level design. You should flesh out better level designs and that'll make it a better Sonic game than most games out there already.
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Rökkan - 07-09-2010
Well, I decided to only put gameplay because it's the most solid thing to say. But ok, I'll put level design here, even though some of it will be "yadda yadda new games suck because level design uses 'x' and doesn't use 'y' that older games does".
I imagined each zone having three acts. Each 'act' or level, wouldn't be a plane with deathpits or invisible walls limiting the level, oh no. Each level would be a sphere. Not multiple planets like in Super Mario Galaxy, but just one, really big planet. It's how I came up to avoid invisible walls or having a stage which is surrounded by void or water that if you fall, you die.
Being spherical is not only to avoid that or to be stylistic, but it also plays an important role in level design: Your starting point is in one of the globe's poles, and the end of the level is on the exact opposite pole of yours. You can just go (more or less) straightforward to the end of the level, but then you would only explore 1/8 of it! I'm kinda basing this level design over Sonic CD, which, although straight-forward - letting you beat the level without having to turn back, had a lot of exploration, if you were willing to explore, because if not, you can just beat the level the easy way and go forward. It's more or less like this here - you can just beat the level by going forward, or you can explore it. Exploration is rewarded though - you can collect stuff and unlock things by exploring the levels as much as you can, and you can even find shortcuts to beat your own time.
Not all stages follow this specific idea in the "one trail from a pole to another" way, though. There will be stages that the level design is entirely different (while still following the concept of the start point and the end point of a level being on opposite poles and of different paths of exploration), like for example, a stage of different "levels" of altitude around a smaller globe, and the most "easy" (but longer) way to clear is to go all over through the labirintic bottom level until you get to the other pole, or you can get to higher levels and explore some, while getting a more straightforward way to the other pole.
Needless to say that dashpads/speed boosters are entirely out of question, since i'm basing level and game design heavily on the classics' bases - which are based of momentum.
In a game that rewards you for building up momentum and to keep your speed, a gimmick that instantly gives you speed and that appears everytime in a level does not have place here. "What about horizontal springs? Don't they work the same way that dashpads do?" Nope, it doesn't. Horizontal springs gives you instant speed, too, but in order to use them, it's entirely different than dashpads. Dashpads are just there on the ground, and they reward you speed by just going over them - that is, by just advancing through the level. What is the point of having the hard work of keeping your speed, if there's a dashpad there that will give you - whose already has speed, and someone else that didn't, a speed boost that will equal your speeds? Now imagine this everywhere, there's no work of keeping your speed or trying to unaccelerate, because by just advancing the level you are always rewarded speed.
Horizontal springs are there when you need to go through a structure that requires certain speed to go through, like loopings, but you don't have enough speed, and there's little space so that you can build up yourself. So you have to break, stop, turn back, and then bounce on the spring, which makes you lose a lot of time compared to someone who already has such speed and goes through the looping easily. It's a punishment to the player that couldn't keep a high speed.
Level gimmicks that plays with physics and speed are a huge part of classic Sonic, and they are here. Each level has its own set of level gimmicks and own badniks/enemies. Along with the level design, each Zone will feel entirely different from another because of such great differences they have on these three elements.
Alongside the first two acts, a small third act with a boss, you have small straightforward acts that are more like "missions", like "there's this platforming section that you have to go through with the Speed Sneakers, and also here's this time limit too". They're small challenges, basically, that explores something specific about the gameplay or the level gimmicks.
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Maxpphire - 07-09-2010
No storyline really except to beat dr. Robotnic. Just like the originals were like.
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Koopaul - 07-10-2010
The problem there always was with rolling in 3D Sonic games is that no one wanted to do it or had a need to. You could go a whole game without spin dashing once.
Well the reason is because rolling worked better in 2D. You could easily plow through rows off enemies by spinning through them. In 3D its a much more difficult task. That's why I think spining should have homing capabilities as well.
Think about it like this, you're running down a path and you see a row of robots lined up. Now you are going pretty fast right now, you don't want to stop in order to line youreslf up just right with those enemies in 3D space. You want to run-roll-run!
Well don't worry, you don't have to be lined up to bowl them over. Just be close enough and press B. You'll automatically roll and curve around through those enemies.
RE: INNOVATIVE GAME IDEA - A 3D SONIC GAME THAT DOESN'T SUCK??!?!!?! - Rökkan - 07-11-2010
Hmmm, maybe if you press B when you're near an enemy, Sonic rolls towards that enemy? But only if that enemy is somewhat on your direction (as in you're running forward, and there's a very very close enemy but it's behind you, Sonic will not roll towards that enemy) and plus a speed boost when you destroy an enemy would be good too, so that you can destroy a line of enemies really fast, in contrast of doing consecutive homming attacks that takes away more time and takes away your speed too.
But if the enemies aren't very lined up, you press B near the first one and then you get the speed boost, press B again to shift to running that you won't lose your speed, get closer to the next one, and repeat the process. Doing homming attacks (in this specific case) destroys the enemies faster, because all you have to do is press A a few times, but destroying them with the spinning doesn't make you lose momentum, and you gain some speed after that.