Any other good Sonic fangames?

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Bobinator

Bobinator

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So, we all know SRB2, as a Sonic fangame, is awesome. Unfortunately, this is the exception, not the rule. What I'm getting at here, is that most Sonic fangames suck. Really badly. I went through the Sonic Fan Games HQ, and I didn't find a single game that didn't use Klik N' Play or The Games Factory.

So, do any of you know any good ones? What I'm looking for is fangames with Genesis-style gameplay and no demos, only full versions. Also, no ROM hacks.
 
Bobinator said:
Genesis-style gameplay... no ROM hacks.
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So, you're looking for something that uses a fan-rebuilt version of the engine on which the Genesis games run? You're pretty much limited to prjects that use ProSonic, E02, or some other replica engine that I'm not aware of... unfortunately, I don't know of any games that use this extensively, save the small one by E02's creator. As soon as you step off of a ROM or one of these replicas, you're looking at needing to mimic one heck of a lot of idiosyncrasies from the older games in a brand-new program, and games that attempt this just don't feel right to me -- I find that in most fan games, the character typically feels too slow to accelerate and decelerate. I don't really know of any games that fit the bill, but Ultimate Flash Sonic is pretty well-known, and SAGE had a demo of a game based on the Gizoid from Sonic Battle that felt like a solid, old-school Sonic game.

I tried getting into fan game design a few years ago and just couldn't bring myself to design Sonic physics from the ground up. When I noticed that even the good fangames wouldn't let me pull off physics tricks like jumping from the tops of loops to the bottom for speed, I decided to hack Sonic 2 just so my game would feel right to me. I know ROM hacking is a touchy subject, so I won't elaborate or plug, but it's a shame that there aren't many fangames that feel like the old games.

Unrelated: holy cow my account is still active after three years
 
gs93 said:
You're pretty much limited to prjects that use ProSonic, E02, or some other replica engine that I'm not aware of...
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Uhh, dude. Retro Sonic. While it's gone through many iterations, the engine is now very accurate, and it feels like a professionally done Sonic game. And PC game, too. If you want to have a taste of its quality, just try the Sonic Nexus Labor Day 2008 demo. Nice physics, special effects, and provides an all-around great experience.

Regarding Ultimate Flash Sonic, I tried it for twenty seconds, and then promptly closed it down. I don't understand how anyone can believe that Flash is an adequate platform for game development. It's incapable of maintaining a proper 60 FPS, playing sound without lag, or drawing raster images properly and efficiently (they're forced into vector space which means slowness and ugly, inexact pixel transformations). It also can't provide true fullscreen (as in, resolution change), nor does it allow hardware accelerated graphics. It has no built-in facility for frameskip, so when Flash games slow down (not an uncommon occurrence), playability is lost.

On a similar note, I wish Stealth would stop trying to advertise his E02 engine as a general purpose game platform. These days, most people want something above 320x240, 256 colors, and low-quality WAV sounds. Unfortunately, you can't get that. Instead, you have an unreadable, proprietary scripting language, an editor with extremely small screen space, and a filesystem littered with .def and .pcx files, and 8khz monaural WAV files (yes, this is actually used for the music). Stealth tried to improve the awful music quality by adding support for different music files, but instead of doing the sensible thing and adding support for compressed audio (like what Taxman did with Retro Sonic), he added homegrown XM music playback. Anyone who has an interest in module music will want something with proven accuracy. A homegrown module system doesn't have that. So who exactly is Stealth's target audience? Apparently nobody. I predict that E02 will fall flat because of this very reason. No developer in their right mind would ever want to use such an outdated and limiting system.

Wanted to get that out, is all.
 
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There's this one game called Sonic FGX that looks pretty decent. I haven't played it, but it's one of the few Sonic fangames I've seen that doesn't look gut-wrenchingly horrible.

Also, I can't stand BlitzSonic. The physics engine is just ridiculous.
 
FoxBlitzz said:
So who exactly is Stealth's target audience? Apparently nobody. I predict that E02 will fall flat because of this very reason. No developer in their right mind would ever want to use such an outdated and limiting system.
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I tried to put forth an argument much like that some time ago, to the effect that nobody would be interested in playing a game intentionally limited to "8-bit" graphics and sound. That game was Megaman 9. Not only did people want to play it, people also wanted to design it. It happened, and I was proven hilariously wrong. Think about that before you write off E02.

Actually, never mind all that. Look at the game that is the sole reason this message board exists. Even with all the enhancements it has over the base Doom engine, SRB2 is still very much limited by the fact that it is the Doom engine. Your reasoning would have absolutely nobody interested in developing anything for it because it's painfully limited by today's standards.

No, that's asinine. E02 might "fall flat", but only because it doesn't get enough exposure.

Anyway, back on topic. When I think successful Sonic fan game, I think Sonic Time Attacked. That game is the job. It was almost revolutionary for its time, as well, and not only because it was actually finished.
 
Mmm. Ashura looks amazing AND it has Genesis gimmicks. I mean... Old checkpoint special stage transportations AND collect the blue spheres PLUS GHZ boss. I need UT04. XB
 
OpenSonic is working from scratch (and allegro) towards a Sonic / Chaotix mimic engine, and looks promising.

They're even going for all original characters, music and artwork, which no Sonic fan game ever dares to try to accomplish. Eventually they'll dump Sonic characters for some new ones, for GPL license friendly stuff, aiming for more exposure than a sonic fangame would do, such as a free software repository for a popular distro. In the end the only thing in common would be the sprite sizes, inspiration and the physics, but people play Sonic for the physics right? :P

Most of the 3d (not 2.5d) sonic fangames just rip the models right out of Heroes, which makes it not show a lot of effort involved with design, as if it were done just for the sake of being cool on the internet, which admittedly... isn't that hard to do with Sonic fans.
 
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time gear said:
Sonic FGX is quite good, and Sonic Rebirth is awesome.
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I have to disagree with you on this one. The current build of that game is plagued with an inappropriate physics engine, inconsistant music quality, and some poor collision.

The download via its official site was pulled for a reason.
 
a bee said:
OpenSonic is working from scratch (and allegro) towards a Sonic / Chaotix mimic engine, and looks promising.
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Hmmm...I don't know about that. I LOVE OpenSonic, but I don't think it'll ever come close to standing on a par with SRB2. It's kind of primitive, especially the level editor.

Nevertheless, Allegro was also the parent program of M.U.G.E.N., so who knows? Anything can happen.
 
Have you guys ever tried Super Mystic Power? Their is only a demo version but the gameplay and stuff is cool. Although Super Mystic Power is cool with Sonic's awesome abilities and speed, Srb2 is more original and fun.
 
fawfulfan said:
Nevertheless, Allegro was also the parent program of M.U.G.E.N..
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It's not a program, it's a library for C that lets you easily open up a game window and draw graphics, play sounds, handle input, etc.

Tets said:
I tried to put forth an argument much like that some time ago, to the effect that nobody would be interested in playing a game intentionally limited to "8-bit" graphics and sound.
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I would have no qualms with E02 if Stealth were to call it an 8-bit/16-bit mimicry engine. However, he claims it to be a "general purpose" engine and a "powerful solution", while in reality it inherits many of the ugly limitations that the Sega Genesis had. When most developers want a "general purpose" solution, they want something that can create newer style games as well as 8/16-bit. A prospective developer will look at E02, take in the buzzwords, and then actually try the thing and be sorely disappointed.

The reason I like Retro Sonic as an engine is that it does exactly what it says on the tin. It's an engine that recreates classic Sonic gameplay in the form of a PC game that goes easy on old computers. It doesn't attempt to do any more than this, nor does it claim to be any more powerful than it really is. Taxman doesn't make his engine out to be some kind of ultimate solution for every single type of game ever when it only makes Sonic games.
 
I've always liked Sonic Time Attacked. The physics and asthetics make it distinct from other fangames that try to more faithfully emulate the official games, but it's still loads of fun. It's linking feature is a great and innovative way to create timed missions.

Search for it on Google. You can probably find the download for it easily.
 
I Got A List Of Fangame I Played That Are Sonic.

Sonic FGX.
SRB2 (Of Course)
Super Sonic Knockout
Sonic FGX 2 Demo
Sonic The Hedgehog Advance
Sonic Arena
Sonic Arena 2 (Version 3)

And Pretty Much More Im On A Fan-Spree Lawlz.
 
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