Imagine Thok and Homing... together?!

DISCLAIMER: I'm sorry if this is "begging." If you want to describe it that way, I'd encourage Mods to reply to this and explain their reasoning, rather than locking the thread. IMO this is a "suggestion" and to frame it as a "beg" is pejorative from an elitist perspective. I'll entertain the discussion on this only if prompted, otherwise I'd rather focus on the idea [/DISCLAIMER]

THE PITCH:
Why is there no "Both Worlds" mod that exists?

• Jump + Jump = Homing/Double jump (MotdSpork mod)
• Jump + Dash = Thok (standard thok)
• Shield abilities override one or the other (replace attraction shield's homing power with the nuke shield's power; cut the nuke shield)

Or flip it around.

• Jump+Jump = Thok (as it is).
• Jump+Dash = Homing/Double.
• Shield abilities override Homing/Double (replace attraction shield's homing power with the nuke shield's power; cut the nuke shield)

THE THOUGHT:
Replaying 2.2.5 campaign mode last night, I was reminded again how much I love the thok. I have never been against the thok. I just think it isn't enough on its own, it's like having the Air Dash from SA1 without the rest of the ability.

I figured somebody might try it in the Sonic Ability Design contest. But all of the contestants opted instead to redesign the Thok. Some of them were really cool. I liked all of them on some level, especially the ones that made it more fun to keep Sonic in ball form (like the wall-crawling one, I think the Rebound? I forget).

The main problem in Sonic is navigating precision with speed. Thok gives you one. Homing gives you the other.

20 years of development and I can't find any evidence that this has ever been attempted. Is it too "obvious"? Is it because it is so culturally unacceptable to ever consider "homing" in SRB2 because it isn't "classic"? What's going on?

I don't care about this being "my" idea, because it's not really mine. Any developer is free to make this idea "theirs." It seems like it would be fairly straight forward to program??

DISCLAIMER 2: I think the Neo Sonic 2.0 mod comes closest, and there are some others, but there isn't a mod that simply allows "Thok" and "Homing" on the same Sonic, without adding a bunch of other features too.

I don't want to add tricks, boost, color changes, gauges, extra buttons... literally I just want to be able to jump fast when I'm looking to jump fast, and be able to hit the target I've got my eye on reliably without needing to first get gud.

(At this point I have "got gud" enough to not really need the Homing but I still feel it would be beneficial, to everyone, and especially new players, and again, being that it's a separate button makes it entirely optional too).

DISCLAIMER 3: I know I've brought this up before. I hit the Mystic wall. Let's try again. I don't think there's any good reason to NOT do this.

Just going to say this outright:

Homing Attack has no business being on Sonic's kit. I know a lot of people like the homing attack, but it does nothing to help SRB2 platforming and will more often be a down grade to the thok. The only issue homing solves is event combat, but enemies aren't grouped up in huge numbers and most of them follow a very simple movement pattern on an attempt to attack the player. The homing attack will feel good for very early gameplay but the longer you get into the game, the worse off homing is.

I've seen it suggested as well to put enemies at ledges to assist Sonic platforming, but that would work against every other character trying to platform there by blocking them off.

Simply put: thok solves nothing that makes Sonic hard to control and would only add more or be useless.

As for the double jump, this has its own host of problems. Namely having shields override either the thok or double jump is a detriment to the player. Both the thok and double jump create an extremely powerful core set of of abilities that getting rid of either is a down grade. The main problem is it causes players to not want shields because it ruins the core abilities of the character. There is a risk reward on play and I could see some players giving up thok, but changing around the characters abilities like this will only hurt the player in the long run.

The only situation this works really is it we add custom button 1 to Sonic. However this changes him to the rest of the cast and the simple control style. But I have no clue how focused the new team is on this way to build the game.

Is it because it is so culturally unacceptable to ever consider "homing" in SRB2 because it isn't "classic"?

Click to expand...

It's culturally unacceptable to put the Homing Attack in SRB2 because it's not a Modern Sonic game. It's a 3D Classic Sonic game, which has Classic Sonic gameplay. If you really want the Thok+Homing Attack thing, you have either Neo Sonic or the Attraction Shield.

Whitus said:

It's culturally unacceptable to put the Homing Attack in SRB2 because it's not a Modern Sonic game. It's a 3D Classic Sonic game, which has Classic Sonic gameplay. If you really want the Thok+Homing Attack thing, you have either Neo Sonic or the Attraction Shield.

Click to expand...

Right, I acknowledged in the OP that Neo is about the closest, or somehow a permanent Attraction Shield, but neither is what I'm proposing/suggesting/begging.

The mental frameworks of classic, modern, what "has business" on Sonic and what doesn't (from the other poster) -- these are all choices to limit things for no great reason. It's just fanatacism.

Thok is great. Homing is great. They could work greater together I think. But without all of the extra noise and extraness of Neo or a permanent shield.

Homing attack has been created to recreate the bouncing on enemies from the classics in 3d. Homing attack would make the Sonic gameplay faster, because you would fight enemies faster. Currently, its hard to attack enemies while blitzing at max speed throught the level. To attack enemies or bounce on a spring or get the monitor you need to drastically slow down. The homing attack made Sonic different from the cast in Sonic Adventure.
The concept of the homing attack has been ruined over the years, and thats why people think its not classic. Now your momentum doesnt even need to be directed towards the enemy, and no effort is required to pull of the homing attack.
I would like an Adventure-like homing attack that does not move the camera when done, attacks only on-screen enemys that are not too far, and that attacks only the direction Sonic is facing.

In the interest of having something to reference, here's a quick n dirty script of your initial suggestion. It swaps Sonic between CA_HOMINGTHOK, CA_DOUBLEJUMP, and CA_THOK as necessary. I personally am not a fan overall, though I do like how absurdly powerful the thok is when not mapped to the jump button. Thok's biggest weakness has always been that you almost always needed to be descending while using it and this just makes it so powerful that it outclasses the two other abilities by a longshot.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1to9hiCxTbyKBcPvyxAkWTdjNI3SzXcUV/view?usp=sharing

I feel that on the topic of people wanting to give Sonic an air spin ability it would make more sense to just make shield abilities have their own button rather than just having Sonic use his own custom button.
Shield abilities having their own button would also fix Amy's mess of a control scheme as well.


On the topic of the homing attack, while I do think it's fun, it doesn't really have much of a use outside of being cool. It doesn't fix Sonic's core problems so I don't really think it's worth changing the whole control scheme just to include it alongside the thok.
I would honestly rather have the drop dash as I find it far more useful and fun but overall it's just as useless at improving Sonic's usability.

Hello, aren't we forgetting that the Homing Thok is already an ability in SRB2? It's context-sensitive, in that it homes in when near someone.

The only downside is that the Homing Thok we get there forces you to uncurl when you took or after hitting a target.

We've discussed the thok time and time again here on the forum, and I'm sure the staff already has their opinions on what to do with it by now. As for the homing attack + thok, this has been experimented with in the past before, and is something you could have put together yourself. I'm locking this topic, because it is so very clear that you just want people to make some kind of mod for you, as opposed to trying to make the mod yourself, which would not be that difficult with a little effort in learning. Using "DISCLAIMER" does not act as a shield to your actions.