NEO Emerald coast (Original stage, based on E.C concepts)

Here's a first look at act 2! It will include more indoor areas, more intresting natural enviroments and more stuff that I don't even realise is going to be included in this stage!
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Here's the first original area you will see in this stage, pretty basic but it introduces one of the main gimmicks in this stage, the wind and the fan sectors (Aka wind but blowing upwards)

One of the indoor sections you will go through in this stage, I made it as a kind of tech-demo for light sources inside caves, and with this we get another plant that will appear throughout this stage, the flame torch (a creative way to add torches without making it look like humans were there before)

The beach section after exiting the cave, I actually used a map concept I made a while back for this one.

Mecha said:

crawla gameplays

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Whar?

Nice!

Me when no updates for a whole week D:
So I had my tooth pulled out. And If I wanted to work on this map I was feeling like there was smoke going out of my ears 60's animation style. So I just went on a multiple small mapping sidequests and I have new ideas again :D. So here's some stuff I did.
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Footage of the new sections, and of the new gimmick. The upward wind. (at 0:52)

For now I made a small section where you have to drift mid-air to maintain your speed, but I will use it in other situations as well.
Here are the changes done to the eariler sections that you could see at the start of the video:

I finished all of my exams, so I can practically work full-time on this act without any major worries. The only worry I have, is that development goes way slower than I expected with updates few and far between. But maybe it's better this way.

I added more personality and polish to earlier sections, and added few more things along the way.

Aquavine said:

Me when no updates for a whole week D:
So I had my tooth pulled out. And If I wanted to work on this map I was feeling like there was smoke going out of my ears 60's animation style. So I just went on a multiple small mapping sidequests and I have new ideas again :D. So here's some stuff I did.
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Footage of the new sections, and of the new gimmick. The upward wind. (at 0:52)
View attachment 119072
For now I made a small section where you have to drift mid-air to maintain your speed, but I will use it in other situations as well.
Here are the changes done to the eariler sections that you could see at the start of the video:
View attachment 119073
View attachment 119074
View attachment 119075

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Aquavine said:

I finished all of my exams, so I can practically work full-time on this act without any major worries. The only worry I have, is that development goes way slower than I expected with updates few and far between. But maybe it's better this way.
View attachment 119461
I added more personality and polish to earlier sections, and added few more things along the way.

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Damn, You're really crushing it!

I REALLY enjoyed the demo you released awhile ago, I have full confidence you'll make the second act just as good!
I can't wait to see both acts finalized.

Good luck! Make sure to not overwork yourself! (overworking is the main killer in a lot of projects.)

Also I'm curious, Have you started on a skybox and/or horizon effect yet?

MrBoingBD said:

Damn, You're really crushing it!

I REALLY enjoyed the demo you released awhile ago, I have full confidence you'll make the second act just as good!
I can't wait to see both acts finalized.

Good luck! Make sure to not overwork yourself! (overworking is the main killer in a lot of projects.)

Post automatically merged: May 17, 2024

Also I'm curious, Have you started on a skybox and/or horizon effect yet?

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Thanks for the tip and for your opinion! Things like this make all this work worth it! But for real the delay in updates is because of me replaying games to minimize the burnout due to playing the same game. (and if you look out for my other projects you probably already know what the other game is...)
And no, I didn’t work on the horizon/skybox because for one, from what I see opengl doesn’t support horizon effect on FOF’s like water, and this stage is kinda made for opengl due to the sunset colormap looking actually like a sunset. And the skybox wouldn’t work like I want it to because if you noclip out of bounds in act 1, you can see that the stage is never at the default height, and that would make the water in the skybox be above or under the in-game water.

I don't know what to say for this one for some reason. Just more sections done, but it's a bit unfinished later down the video. I made this beach section but I don't know what to do with so it's not boring, I added some dust devils as obstacles but after playing it, they could be used as a route that's faster but with a minus of losing some rings and other bonuses along the way. And the stone cirlces at the end are the floating platforms that you will have to jump across to move forward.

And I changed this thread's tags, because it would still look like this is a single stage addon.
And my birthday is in 4 days (28th), so I may do a not-so-special birthday update that just a normal progress update but birthday :D

Aquavine said:

I don't know what to say for this one for some reason. Just more sections done, but it's a bit unfinished later down the video. I made this beach section but I don't know what to do with so it's not boring, I added some dust devils as obstacles but after playing it, they could be used as a route that's faster but with a minus of losing some rings and other bonuses along the way. And the stone cirlces at the end are the floating platforms that you will have to jump across to move forward.
View attachment 120181
And I changed this thread's tags, because it would still look like this is a single stage addon.
And my birthday is in 4 days (28th), so I may do a not-so-special birthday update that just a normal progress update but birthday :D

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I really love the creative use of slopes and objects. Keep up the good work I get a lot of SA2 vibes from the level design here.

(On a side note, My birth day is on the 31st. we are only 3 days apart!)

MrBoingBD said:

I really love the creative use of slopes and objects. Keep up the good work I get a lot of SA2 vibes from the level design here.

(On a side note, My birth day is on the 31st. we are only 3 days apart!)

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If you spindash at full speed at the big slope in the beginning of the video, you can actually just fly over the small beach below without even jumping. And you don’t even have to spindash, you will have enough speed to make it over if you managed to keep your speed in the wind gliding section earlier!
If I post something on may 31st I will send birthday you wishes :D

No birthday update sadly :< I will have to think a bit longer on what I want to add, and I will momentarily scrap the beach section because it's too bland, and I also work on my side project too so there might be only weekly updates again.
And I got sick right on my birthday D:< looks like having to walk in bare sun after 8 hours of school and 2 P.E's caught up to me, and it might be a reason why I have no creative ideas too.

Aquavine said:

No birthday update sadly :< I will have to think a bit longer on what I want to add, and I will momentarily scrap the beach section because it's too bland, and I also work on my side project too so there might be only weekly updates again.
And I got sick right on my birthday D:< looks like having to walk in bare sun after 8 hours of school and 2 P.E's caught up to me, and it might be a reason why I have no creative ideas too.

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Happy birthday! Hope your having a good one! (I hope I didn't post this to late.)

Good luck on your level!

MrBoingBD said:

Happy birthday! Hope your having a good one! (I hope I didn't post this to late.)

Good luck on your level!

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Thank you! And it’s still 28th for me so no worries.

I shortened the beach section so It wouldn't be long and boring, and replaced it with more floating rocks and two small islands with goodies.
After a small platforming section, I made a cave section (which is unfinished) that will lead into jungle.
And I changed the grass texture in act 1 so it would be the same as the one in act 2. I also added taller grass in some other places in act 1 for a bit more detail.

I lost my weekly update streak :( (By a singular day) Anyway, there isn't any new level layout I just really polished the stuff that was left unfinished, it's quite a lot to show so I made a (really janky) showcase of what I added.

I used Peppino for more movement freedom while showcasing. I also was 0.2 mb's away from having to rerecord this video :D
I scratched a bit of the cave section but not enough to showcase it. I just added plants and stuff.

Not a huge update but I was playing Sonic Unleashed to feed my hype for Sonic x Shadow generations and I realised that such a stage as Jungle Joyride exits. I could have used it earlier for inspiration while I was struggling to do anything due to zero intresting ideas... A A A A A A-
Anyway, from now on expect more JJ inspired sections, and I also have a one new finished section. (Actually it's not new I just have dementia and I forgor that I showcased it earlier )

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This time I made some parity changes and I'm proud to say that every vanilla character can get to the end of this stage at less than 2:30 (at speedrun pace). Which doesn't mean I'm done with this stage, the fact that's barely it's 2:30 means I can still make more sections without worrying about this stage being like 5 minutes or more.

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I made some small changes all around this stage and the first one is changing this section a bit and adding a speed shoes monitor. The other smaller change is that I added a spin-booster at the first beach section near the start, I hid the booster behind a palmtree so by using a small slope you can pull off a pretty tight skip that skips all of the beach section and almost throws you right into the dust devil.

And if you look everywhere for any possible skips than continue looking, because I may add some faster ways to move across this stage.

And I made this section more full because even after I added some palm trees, it still looked pretty unfinished.

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Today is mine first day of summer vacation :D (Not counting yesterday due to having to go to school for the end of the school year)
And even if I have way more time than I had earlier that won't mean that there will be more frequent updates. I'm still in the drought phase when I'm just polishing what I have with no way of moving forward due to lack of ideas for the layout and I still have a second project in the works.
(Well, that ending was kinda dark, and for some reason I have deja vu when I post here idk why )

It's been a long time since me making a stage update that just wasn't me polishing stuff. Which means that I finally have a rough idea of what I want to do! For the new upcoming sections I took inspiration from Jungle Joyride (as I said earlier) and it's mechanic of running on water among destroyed parts of a temple of some kind. And since the only character that can run on water in SRB2 is metal sonic, I decided that I will warp the water running to water bouncing, so I will put force-spin boosters on every platform that requires water bouncing.

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Here's the showcase of what I did for now, as a rough proof of concept.
This is how no-spin characters will go about this section.

And here's how a... yes-spin? character can go through this section.

It's pretty rough now but I plan to make a small jungle on both sides of the beach. I also will go back to sketching out level layout because it's just easier for me to brainstorm on a paper than on a canvas that has to be physicly created.

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I also made another concept for a section that will be in this area. It's pretty simple, just a ramp with a booster that will send you flying to another island, I may also make the player steer mid air so it won't fall into water. It can be fun due to stiff steering working on land and also in the air.

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I haven't done any new sections since 31 of may of course until now.

I have bad news and good news.

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The bad news is me having to scrap the water bouncing mechanic due to sonic losing height every time he bounces off water which can make platforming more unpredictable and can lead to unfair deaths. And also it was just pretty badly planned/designed.

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The good news is that I locked in and started sketching brand new sections. Remember that all of that is just a sketch and scale is out of picture because sadly I don’t have paper with infinite dimensions :c

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Here’s two sketches, one is the further part of the cave that I stopped at lately, and the second one is the original sketch of the water bouncing section. Fortunately I didn’t made all of the sections based around it so I won’t lose that much progress. The sketches will appear in game in order they’re showed. (from up to down)

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The road starts at left upper corner.
The U turn is inside the same cave that you entered earlier in game, after that you have a small moment of fresh air while running on a edge of the mountian (SA’s lost world style) with the view of the ocean on your left. Then you go back to the caves for some tight platforming over pit with water (not bottomless)
and you end up in a jungle road. (Like the chase sections in Jungle Joyride) I also will add the mountainous beach from JJ right after this section.

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Well, this ones a bit more crudely drawn but it’s the further sections of the water bouncing sections.
These sections won’t go anywhere but I will get rid of any water bouncing because It’s just too hard to work with. It’s pretty straight forward, these sections will have the look of the temple fragments you can see in the ocean sections of Jungle Joyride. I kinda rushed it so some things may change about the level design. One of the sections will use the SA’s jump pads, the same ones as in act 1.

I built the sections from the first page that I shown in the post above. Also funny thing happened, while I was adding fences in jungle section I messed something up and all fence sectors near the slope became corrupted and I had to fix them for like 20 minutes while having no idea why that was happening.

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After the jungle I will add a beach that will lead to the second page of sections. I will rearange them a bit though cause these are pretty rough concepts.