Sonic General Discussion Thread v2 - Sonic Has Cleared Facepunch Zone Act 1
409 replies, posted
I have noticed that occasionally in cutscenes but only when free cam is used. I think it was an intentional decision to do that sort of thing because it would help with the camera angle they were using.
To be fair, the limbs of characters detaching from their body is really only a problem when playing the game in widescreen, as no one was actually supposed to see that stuff when playing the game in 4:3, which was how the game was intended to be presented. But with 16:9, you’re now able to see all that shit that the devs never intended for players to see.
But yeah, other than that, I definitely agree with you that SA2 has aged well in the presentation department. Though I’ll be honest, in terms of the other aspects such as music, level design, gameplay and even story, I do prefer SA1 over SA2.
SA1 was a jumbled mess of ideas packed into one terrible presentation.
the only thing that SA1 has on his belt that rivals SA2 is its soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsUfJCoyBxs
everything else has been done far better in the sequels.
For what SA1 did with making the shooter segments and Tails somewhat fun and Knuckles not be frustrating, both unlike SA2, it made up for the shit factor by making Amy and Big exist.
I can tolerate Amy, if only because her entire playthrough is honestly pretty easy and the slower pace and occasional puzzle are trivial besides the colored blocks one potentially throwing first-timers for a loop. Big on the other hand varies between "done in a minute" and "goddamn you stupid fat fucking frog get your ass back here"
I'll take the slightly open if somewhat confused level design of SA1 over SA2's COD-tier linear hallways (except with Knuckles stages where they have the exact opposite problem) any day thanks.
also nothing in SA2 is close to gamma's story
thats is something i've always wondered since people always brings this up.
There's SA1's open ended, multiple pathways that are genuinely inspired the the Genesis games and that in some stages works pretty well. Speed Highway is probably the one that makes the best use of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oela0BEC2ME
its full of multiple paths that you can explore and try, even the ones that were not actively designed to do so if you can fizzle with the game's mechanics, and like most stages in SA1 it has its own, unique cinematic moment (in this case, the helicopter ride or running down the building).
problem was that this particular stage is the only one where all of this worked as intended.
every other stage was a big amount of desing choices slammed together with the aforementioned little cinematic moments that get in the way. top that with the well known camera and control problems and you get a sonic game where you barely ever go at max speed.
you could genuinely argue that SA2 changed all of this towards a more streamlined experience and forced all of the gameplay through a halfpipe, but in doing so they managed to solve above issues by focusing more towards sonic going fast, and actually beign able to move fast.
SA2 has its own glaring problems, but certainly was a step in the right direction, wich is away from the mess that SA1 was.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to disagree with you here because the spindash is literally a free action, if you're moving in a straight line then there is no reason not to mash spindash to instantly start moving at max speed.
Comapre the guy who also did the video you just linked VS someone who can actually move playing Red Mountain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCfurQnLu8Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFxlKRx4dkc
Even the second one's a tad slow for my liking but it gets the point across well enough. The first one is agonizingly slow and looks more like a Mario game but worse, whereas the second one is just zooming over obstacles that the first one meticulously platformed over. But it's not like Tails in this game or the genesis games where it feels like you're skipping the challenge, the challenge is figuring out what you can jump over, what surfaces can you stand on to soar with an angled spindash and how to chain all of it together. If I were to describe SA1's speed in a nutshell, it'd be "Stunting off the level geometry", which is something unique to this entry and is mostly why I love it so much.
Watching this has gotten me in the mood for some SA1, brb speedrunning Red Mountain just to prove a point
I'm well aware that map knowledge allows you to almost sequence skip entire segments of the stage altogether with well timed spindash movements. muscle memory is indeed a thing when you're actively trying to cut time so you can clear a stage as fast as posible, so that is not even my point.
the problem with that stage in particular is the exact same one that most if not all of the level desing present in SA1: you're not going fast because you take advantage of the map's desing, you go fast because you have to skip and actively avoid elements of the map in order to progess. it is most noticeable when you see that both runs struggle with the same spots in the second section of the map. even with all of the second player's skill and knowledge, you're bound to run into a wall because the controls and camerawork push you into the wall, making you lose momentum, let alone the first player having to deal with unfair bullshit.
"ah, but you can optimize that in a speedrun"
yeah well, a speedrun isn't exactly the goal of everyone playing the game, specially when you had such a miserable experience playing that level in the first place conditioning you not to play the stage again if not strictly required. a speedrun is a self imposed trial to learn how to deal with a level's bullshit, RNG factors included. wich is why speed highway stands out above anything else SA1 can offer in terms of level desing.
Sonic games and their stages are, imo, by design, meant to be speed-ran. The first time you play a stage you'll be slow and you'll suck, but the more you play it you'll get so good to the point you can anticipate jumps, enemies, etc and know the most optimal path to get the best times.
Playing Sonic 3&K again thanks to A.I.R., the games are basically designed for this, yeah. Yuji Naka was quoted as being inspired by beating Super Mario Bros. 1-1 as fast as he could, and when i've been going for certain achievements in AIR my memories of the routes would result in almost pixel-perfect movements and efforts to narrow things down as precisely as possible. I'd say the Boost formula is technically an extension of this same philosophy, but then only in Generations and the secrets for Colors did they expand on the idea to have some actual routing, because otherwise it just becomes "memorize everything so you have as much boost as possible without getting hit". Even if Forces technically did the routing too, to a lesser degree.
Someone at Sega has to understand this, but at this point I wouldn't even be surprised if the next mainline Sonic game becomes some weird open world adventure RPG platformer hybrid or some shit because Sonic Team does whatever nowadays.
I liked both SA1 and SA2 for what they were. They're both still extremely janky games though.
I really liked the branching story paths in 1 and the relatively non-linear nature of it. It really felt like an adventure. Story and storytelling was meh at best though. (except gamma though)
I feel SA2 was a lot tighter and trimmed a lot of the bloat SA1 had (fishing and amy) and while pretty linear, threw a lot of neat gameplay concepts and ideas at you while the story felt like it actually had some weight to it. Also the cutscenes and character models were a lot more fleshed out and refined.
Nah, the one in the first vid plays it how I remember it. 2nd vid plays it like someone who's played it multiple times, practiced it a lot, and developed a good time-trial run.
Yeah, they're going fast. But that's because they has a lot of experience with the level. They're doing moves I would never even consider doing, because they're risky if you don't have the layout down.
Red Canyon in SA1 is literally a platforming exclusively level. almost all of the levels in SA1 are focused almost entirely on platforming more than actual acceleration and speed. in speed highway you do get acess to better/different routes if you keep you momentum, some of its gimmicks are even built into the concept of you using your speed to reach a higher platform.
one could argue ad infinitum that "getting good at the game" means that you can use your skill to flash through the stages and get faster times, but these aren't the result of using your built speed.
the whole point of sonic games is to keep going as fast as posible, while using both your skills and your knowledge of the routes avaliable to you to get the best of your chances - all of this while making something cool out of it.
Its literally why i like this particular Sonic GT trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxAlQrHQ85w
not only because the actual feeling of speed, or because it shows how many posibilities there are to the whole run, but instead because of the blooper reels at the end show that the thing never holds your hand, and it takes skill to achieve that kind of run - skill that centers almost exclusively on keep going and using your momentum to its best result - something 3D sonic games have struggled for the longest to achieve in terms of gameplay and level desing.
A lot of those looked more like bugs than outright failing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVEkZO7KE8U
How the hell have they made the game better than the real thing? Not exactly a high bar to raise, but damn.
Unlike Sonic Team, who were split into thirds and had the series lead director quitting with a bunch of his own people mid-development before Sega fucked everything over by pushing the game out for an Xbox 360 launch title exclusivity deal with Microsoft way earlier than it should've been, these fans have a game basis to work from already. Almost all of Sonic '06's coding was also in LUA, meaning easy to understand and interpret for the most part, and converting that over to Unity probably wasn't a difficult task.
Just for clarification for anyone curious, the is actually the SECOND Sonic 06 remake. Both are being developed parallel to each other, and both are done in Unity, no less!
The first one is lead by Mefiresu & Gistix, and is simply called right now Sonic 2006 PC:
https://youtu.be/yhas85hd5Ow
Current Demo link: https://sonicfangameshq.com/forums/showcase/sonic-the-hedgehog-sage-2018-demo.192/
The second one is lead by ChaosX, and has the project name of P-06:
https://youtu.be/VNLvefiZ4rg
[Download links in video description]
Will certainly be interesting to see how each one evolves in the future.
I actually thought they were one and the same, interesting. They've basically handled it in two different ways despite being the same gist. P-06 seems to be trying to modernize the presentation, while besides the base Unity graphics features additions 2006 PC seems to be trying to recreate it accurately but with improvement tweaks to the gameplay.
https://twitter.com/darkybenji/status/1119367533918859265?s=21
https://twitter.com/darkybenji/status/1119368236225703942?s=21
For those who don’t know what this is, Chao World Extended (CWE for short) is a major mod for SA2PC that, to put it simply, greatly expands the Chao system in SA2.
Official Mod Description:
Chao World Extended is a mod for the Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure 2 that can change the system of the Chao Garden depending on what you choose. Chao World Extended also brings back unused content and adds a variety of ways to get Jewel Chao and Special Chao without the use of Fusion's Chao Editor.
You can also edit the difficulty if you're looking to spice things up!
Current released version right now is 7.5, but as you can see, v8 is currently being developed.
Chao Island Forum link: https://chao-island.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=45060
Gamebanana link: Chao World Extended v7.5 | Sonic Adventure 2 Mods
On that topic:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/sonic-adventure-2-neuro-ai-hd-texture-pack/downloads/sonic-adventure-2-neuro-ai-hd-texture-pack-v10
Someone made an AI upscaled texture mod which includes the Soap ads.
All we need now are two simple things: Dreamcast button prompts and fixed cutscenes.
There's a mod that restores the Dreamcast textures to all the cutscenes, but lighting is a different story.
Dreamcast Cutscene Textures: Dreamcast Cutscene Textures | Sonic Adventure 2 Mods
HD GUI (Includes DC Button Prompts): HD GUI
SA2 Menu Overhaul: Menu Overhaul | Sonic Adventure 2 GUI Mods
The guy who made these mods posted a fixed cutscene on Twitter, so it is definitely possible:
https://twitter.com/SPEEPSHighway/status/1094156387423346688
https://twitter.com/SPEEPSHighway/status/1105748807877316609
Some of those alternate lighting sets can be directly traced back to prerelease trailers and screens for SA2.
Regarding P-06, for anyone who wants to see a more in-depth first time experience, Somecallmejohnny (a man who has arguably played Sonic 06 more times than any sane man should) recently did a spotlight video covering it:
https://youtu.be/VUJS39ADmxo
Also, here’s a clip from when he showcased the Crisis City build of Sonic 06 PC (the first remake project) during SAGE 2018:
https://clips.twitch.tv/WildRudePandaCoolCat
The second and final part of TSR Overdrive is coming very soon:
https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/1121192149997871105?s=21
Speaking of TSR, apparently this is what the main menu looks like? Not sure where it's from, looks like it may be a convention?
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/333547/b267a709-1e02-4d3b-9896-bb09a79935ef/58377866_10213803938232355_3249575374299856896_o.jpg
Also I hadn't even thought about it until now but I really hope Mania gets some form of rep in this game, even if it's just reused music.