Tiny 2.1 Preview
- Thread starter Mystic
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you guys are funny
Anyways, I'd say just finish the actual game and work on the other portions like the ending and such.
Espyo
Member
I'm not too keen on the whole cutscene thing. Explanations aren't needed, but those little transitions, even if they're over-the-top are very appreciated. CEZ2 -> ACZ1's transition was pretty simple, yet oh so fun. It didn't make sense that being launched vertically from a castle got you launched diagonally to a canyon, but it's still a neat little detail. And personally, I find it all the funner to imagine that you were actually shot several kilometers. It doesn't matter.
But yeah, these kinda transitions existed since the first game, and are more detailed in Sonic 3. I don't care how the water jet from HZ2 got you to MGZ1, but I loved that little detail.
But yeah, these kinda transitions existed since the first game, and are more detailed in Sonic 3. I don't care how the water jet from HZ2 got you to MGZ1, but I loved that little detail.
I'm pretty sure this isn't intentional. CEZ2 currently ends halfway into the level (as exemplified by the fact that there are two exits), so this point is not the actual ending. Even if it were, CEZ3 is supposed to come between those two levels.
Latius
Hybrid Kart Mapper/Porter
You mean, the boss of CEZ is not going to be an End Zone Boss like the others, but a Mid Zone Boss?
Well, maybe CEZ2 (which would be moved to become CEZ3 and vice versa) might end with a miniboss of sorts, seeing as the main boss is defeated halfway through CEZ. It could be that Eggman's running away, but Sonic catches up and forces him to have to fight him again like he did in GFZ3, although with less HP (due to his prior defeat in the Eggscalibur and the fact that he hasn't had as much time to make repairs) but using the room he ends up facing Sonic in to his advantage.
I'm pretty sure he means CEZ3 will come in between CEZ2 and ACZ1.
No, it's going to be a regular end zone boss like every other boss. I was saying that CEZ3 comes in between CEZ2 and ACZ1, so it would make no sense for CEZ2 to segue into ACZ1.
Let's just ape Monkey Island's fake ending. No-one will ever know!
Courtesy Mystic at 3 AM last night in IRC. Wave goodbye to rings and hello blue spheres, because "you didn't think you would get through SRB2 without hearing that sound a million times, did you? ^_~" (paraphrasing)
(The ACZ special stage is an alternate abridged version of Spring Hill, if it appears familiar)
(The ACZ special stage is an alternate abridged version of Spring Hill, if it appears familiar)
The other special stages look nice, along with the spheres. Not quite what I was expecting though.
Sonic flies through the air splitting blue spheres into floating jelly blobs when he passes through them, which subsequently lose stability and evaporate into the air. When the air is saturated with blue jelly, Robotnik's fossil fuel-powered machines lose their defence mechanisms as the jelly traps oxygen in an incombustible state.
As great as the first three stages look despite an obvious (and understandable, at this point in development) lack of decoration and of course the somewhat problematic DSZ texture set, I'm skeptical on using Spring Hill Zone as the basis for ACZS. The problem doesn't lie so much in the actual track, which is totally fine, but in the landscape. That spiraling staircase in particular sticks out like a sore thumb because it's not only a very unnatural shape, it's also not integrated into the landscape at all. Most of the sector layout in Spring Hill Zone is that way, and I'd rather not see these carried over into the special stage. I don't have a problem with using the track, but I want a new, more logical scenery layout.
Although, of course, that takes a backseat to getting the tracks done. Aside from that, I have no complaints. These stages look cool, just like NiGHTS stages should, and the presence of 166 links in the screenshots makes me confident that Rob knows how to design them tracks.
Although, of course, that takes a backseat to getting the tracks done. Aside from that, I have no complaints. These stages look cool, just like NiGHTS stages should, and the presence of 166 links in the screenshots makes me confident that Rob knows how to design them tracks.
I will probably fix ACZS to have more canyon-like looks to it. The trick will be in making it so that the player still knows where to go.
And it's a goal to make sure you can link through the entirety of each stage. It may be fucking HARD, but I intend on making sure it's possible.
The chaos emeralds are really trapped in the dreams of the characters and the tokens you see are really ether capsules they use to knock themselves into the dream world where they fly around as everyone's favorite yellow hero and collect blue spheres (Because they are arbitrarily forcing requirements on themselves to get them when they could literally just grab them but these are ambitious teenagers, after all.) in order to pop the trap they believe their nemesis put there to keep them from getting the emerald (they want to be heroes in their own minds so they came up with this also in the dream world. How egotistical can you get?!). They use the nonexistant power of the spheres (Note how the spheres explode rather than being truly collected. Their energy just expanded to different smaller spheres. It's like, asexual reproduction. Except in dream spheres. And the children just kind of die). Then they take the chaos emerald they "rescued" back to the beginning of the dream where they use its power to expel the ether from their bodies and wake up with a jewel in their bed.
The old ones only look more like special stages to you because your mind associates special stages with the current special stage texture set. Imagine someone whose first experience with SRB2 is 2.1. They will simply learn to associate NiGHTS with special stages and it won't be awkward for them at all. The new ones were designed after the main zones because that makes it easier to make the stages look visually attractive. There's only so much you can do over the course of seven levels if you're always using the same texture set, not to mention that the new special stages are quite a bit larger in territory than the old ones.
I actually do think that some of the old special stages are quite cool. SS4, SS6 and SS7 are awesome and the part with the collapsing platforms in SS5 is also cool. As for the rest, it's just not very interesting to collect clusters of rings. What makes the ones that I previously mentioned so cool is that they actually require you to do platforming to get the emerald. In the first three ones and parts of SS5, what little platforming there is is vastly overshadowed by the act of collecting large clusters of rings over and over again, which is little more than an exercise for your direction controls. That doesn't have much longevity.
As far as I'm informed, the game was always supposed to have NiGHTS special stages and that's why NiGHTS was implemented in the first place. Warning: Unnecessary history lesson incoming, just because I can. I take no guarantees for this to be entirely correct.
The current special stages were originally implemented in Demo 4 as a placeholder because the system was much easier to code and the stages could be designed quickly. That was sometime in 2001. SRB2 2k3 (released in 2003, as you can guess) included a very basic and unfinished version of what is now Spring Hill Zone/ACZS, with about 20% of the track in place. The item placement was all messed up, with lots of items not matching up with the NiGHTS track and some of them even being stuck in or below the floor. The NiGHTS system was still in the process of being coded and there wasn't yet a reasonable way of placing items. (Objectplace mode was eventually invented so that Sonikku and SSNTails could place the items in runtime during a private netgames.) I assume that Spring Hill Zone was always intended as a proof-of-concept map.
By the time the Final Demo (1.01) came out later in the same year, the map was finished and the NiGHTS system was fully coded. What then happened is the reason why SRB2 took so long. Instead of designing stages for the final version 1.1 like they originally planned to do, they got caught up in bugfixing, hired a guy called a441 to rewrite the game menu and other things, added tons of new features and constantly changed the multiplayer maps around with each release. This lasted until 2006, when 1.09.4 was released. Then they finally remembered what they originally wanted to do and started mapping (I think Deep Sea Zone was the first stage they worked on). Then they figured out that they were making incredibly slow progress and hired a lot of community members to help them out. One of them was Rob, who started working on the special stages. This must have been around 2008. 2.0 included the first batch of content finished since 2006 and 2.1 will include the second batch, so to speak.
TL;DR: There were always supposed to be NiGHTS special stages, it just took until 2008 to get someone to make them. The current ones are placeholders.
Sergeant Brown
An Eggman Fan
Seems accurate enough. Thank you for your history lessons Mr. SpiritCrusher!
With that said though I'm pretty sure we never heard in public of Rob working on the stages (correct me if I'm wrong).
With that said though I'm pretty sure we never heard in public of Rob working on the stages (correct me if I'm wrong).
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it several times.
I pretty much jumped at the chance when SSN first said "The special stages were actually meant to be NiGHTS stages". That was back just after the new Sky Sanctuary team replaced the old Hidden Palace team, about 3 - 4 months in. I've always been a fan of NiGHTS, and the opportunity to put some more of that into SRB2 was not something I wanted to pass up.
I pretty much jumped at the chance when SSN first said "The special stages were actually meant to be NiGHTS stages". That was back just after the new Sky Sanctuary team replaced the old Hidden Palace team, about 3 - 4 months in. I've always been a fan of NiGHTS, and the opportunity to put some more of that into SRB2 was not something I wanted to pass up.
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