Sonic's Ability Discussion

The fact that Spring Tail damages enemies is about as much of a thing as Tails' tails hitting enemies above him during flight - you can do it if you want but there are better options.

The momentum cut when he starts and ends his spring tail jumping is indeed weird and unnatural, but not entirely impractical (at least not the one in the end). It can serve as a momentum cancel to help landing on faraway platforms (particularly useful in getting that one emblem in that one stage).

Another note completely is that Fang is a Sonic character that isn't designed to fit the gameplay of Sonic games. At least officially. He simply isn't supposed to be able to use speed-based skills such as Spindash. All he has is gunslinger skills and his bouncy tail which was replicated here. He is someone completely different.

Before you try to post another argument against Fang's gun ask yourself, would you stop to hit that one badnik in your way if you could jump over it or go around it? Would you risk hitting the bosses with jumping if there's a safer and faster ranged alternative just because you don't want to stand still?

I'd love to discuss more but this thread isn't about Fang so maybe we should stop.

Cobalt is such an amazing guy, answering with beta-testing.
I liked it so far, it really helped me in platforming and actually made Sonic feel more manoeuvrable. It just feels like if you allowed jump thok to keep horizontal momentum and also gain some as you keep doing it.
But, I cannot see this change happening to be honest, I'd just switch to Metal Sonic after completing the game (Would obviously prefer Sonic over the others, but below Metal still.)
Let's see what others think.

CobaltBW said:

Made some more tweaks this morning.

• Changed how vertical and horizontal thrust is applied (should feel more natural while also allowing for more technical play)
• Increased air maneuverability while in dash state
• Improved spindash scaling
• Some sfx and gfx for good measure
• Thok on Metal (for comparison)

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I think I prefer the last version, actually. This version fixes the auto-brake issue, but does so by making it so that you gain roughly the same (small) amount of vertical height whether you input a direction or not. Now it just feels like a slightly less fun thok with a slight extra jump.

Unknownlight said:

I think I prefer the last version, actually. This version fixes the auto-brake issue, but does so by making it so that you gain roughly the same (small) amount of vertical height whether you input a direction or not. Now it just feels like a slightly less fun thok with a slight extra jump.

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I generally agree with this. It feels generally like it's better for maintaining speed you already have than for gaining it to begin with. I do feel as though it's useful in a more broad range of situations than the thok, though less satisfyingly so for those that are shared between the two abilities.

I'm not entirely sure what would make it more satisfying, though. It feels like a step in the right direction to me, though not enough so for me to want it to replace the thok entirely yet.

One thing I haven't really gone over in this recent build is how to augment the double jump height. If you hold backward and you're already going at high speeds in your forward direction, it'll shift the angle of your momentum more upward.

This is more of an advanced trick I came up with during testing, so it isn't necessarily intended to make the campaign easier as much as it is to increase an experienced player's repertoire, allowing for vertical shortcuts.



My main focus is still to make sure that the core ability is comfortable to use. If the deal still needs to be sweetened somehow, another possibility was to make shields augment the primary ability in some way, or to allow shield actives to be used after Sonic's midair primary ability.

How about turning that into an explicit mechanic rather than a pro trick? Instead of (or rather, in addition to) Sonic double jumping when you don't hold a direction, you always gain vertical height when pressing back. Press forward, left, or right to dash in that direction, or press back to dash upward. I feel it should be fairly intuitive because it would be like controlling flight or swimming in most games, where you press forward to go down and back to go up.

(Obviously it would have to be explained in the tutorial, but that's not a problem.)

I think this is generally an improvement over the new version, for the same reasons specified above.
I think you should allow rolling after a jump thrust since this ability is all about momentum preservation.

Hello thread, my old friend.

CobaltBW said:

Made some more tweaks this morning.

• Changed how vertical and horizontal thrust is applied (should feel more natural while also allowing for more technical play)
• Increased air maneuverability while in dash state
• Improved spindash scaling
• Some sfx and gfx for good measure
• Thok on Metal (for comparison)

Click to expand...

Although I had to get used to playing with this like it was simple mode, this was great to play around with. Trading momentum for vertical thrust has more potential than I thought.

Unknownlight said:

How about turning that into an explicit mechanic rather than a pro trick? Instead of (or rather, in addition to) Sonic double jumping when you don't hold a direction, you always gain vertical height when pressing back. Press forward, left, or right to dash in that direction, or press back to dash upward. I feel it should be fairly intuitive because it would be like controlling flight or swimming in most games, where you press forward to go down and back to go up.

(Obviously it would have to be explained in the tutorial, but that's not a problem.)

Click to expand...

I might need to be a bit clearer: The way it works is that it's compensating for the fact that the player currently has a lot of momentum built up in front of him. It's an alternative to simply jolting the player backward in such situations (which is harder to control) or forcing them to a dead stop with no added height (which leaves the player with no air control in addition to being exposed to falling).

Neutral is just neutral. It doesn't add any height compared to holding forward, and it doesn't add horizontal thrust, which means there's no horizontal thrust to shift vertically.

If the player needs more height from his base air dash, then I'll just give him more height, full stop.

Also, on a separate note, how would Thok+Boost Mode Metal play? Maybe the Boost Mode could be a bit weaker to compensate for the sudden speed burst, but I'm curious as to how OP that'd be.

I'm not quite sure if it's because I had the momentum mod enabled, but I realized in THZ1 while doing some testing that the air thrust seemed to be applying momentum even when the player was facing and touching a wall while holding the movement button in that direction, causing it to take effect as soon as Sonic reaches a height high enough to clear the wall. This made platforming a little trickier than it needed to be. as Sonic would speed past the top of a platform I was just trying to gain enough height to get on top of.

It's rather akin to the funky momentum problem in Sonic Genesis on the GBA. Again however, it might just be because of the momentum mod. Aside from this problem, and some slight steering issues, I was enjoying myself. The momentum mod (Still using v5 for testing purposes) allows easy access to speed when combined with the air thrust, overall making Sonic feel fast but in control most of the time. Only rarely does the thing seem to mistake where I'm trying to aim, aside from holding a direction resulting in more speed than is wanted on occasion, likely as a result of confusion from the move feeling so much like a double jump.

How long has the thok disabled holding roll as you fall to curl up when you hit the ground?

I tried out the air dash. I genuinely think this is an amazing ability and should definitely replace thok. It feels great and still feels like thok but removes dumb thok spamming. This also incentives running. You aren't getting a stupid instant burst of speed for no reason anymore. I love this.

Inazuma said:

I tried out the air dash. I genuinely think this is an amazing ability and should definitely replace thok. It feels great and still feels like thok but removes dumb thok spamming. This also incentives running. You aren't getting a stupid instant burst of speed for no reason anymore. I love this.

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I'm not so hasty. While I do feel like it's a step in the right direction, I have been having a little bit of trouble with it and I'm not so easily convinced it's such a great idea to replace the thok with it. There's definitely some potential here, but I'm not so inclined to sing it's praises to that magnitude.

An alternative that's also being discussed is to have Sonic's double jump ability simply function as a double jump with increased air control. It's been found that the air control is sufficient on its own to allow players to correct their jumps.

While the horizontal thrust does allow for more technical play, one issue with the current builds is that it makes it a bit too easy to overshoot tight platforming on a keyboard. Controllers don't experience this issue as much due to the granularity of control that a stick allows, but key presses unfortunately don't allow for that sort of nuance.

(Note: Shields are buggy in this build)

I like that in the new version you gain the same amount of vertical height from your double jump no matter what. I think that should be kept. I think the previous methods were a bit too technical, considering that the time that players would need it the most is when they're almost about to fall and are panicking.

I don't think I agree with removing the air dash part entirely. Making it a bit weaker might be the right approach.

I'm thinking that the air dash should be just barely powerful enough to save Sonic from a situation like this one. Just a small amount of extra thrust in a direction.

I think a key point for any newbie-friendly Sonic ability is that it shouldn't be able to thrust him significantly past his run speed without the use of a spindash. Cobalt's ability has potential but I feel it's a bit too similar to thok in the wrong way. I'm also not a fan of having a separate behavior for neutral vs holding a direction - it seems a bit too convoluted even for me and I've been playing this game for 12 years.

I like the new "air control" version that was just posted better. It's very simple but works well for jump correction. My concern is that there seems to be little reason not to use it every jump.

While I'm here, I may as well toss my own ability into the pot. I call it the Comet Dash - a short air dash which can be used up to three times. It adapts your current speed with a minimum speed of 25, the same as Knuckles's glide. Striking a wall with the ability will cause Sonic to wall jump, gaining some height. These two facets combine to make an ability that's useful for extending jumps, correcting undershot jumps, and a few nice tricks.


I can't cheat like Cobalt and upload attachments in this thread so interested parties can try out the Comet Dash as part of Revi's v5 update here.

Katmint said:

While I'm here, I may as well toss my own ability into the pot. I call it the Comet Dash - a short air dash which can be used up to three times. It adapts your current speed with a minimum speed of 25, the same as Knuckles's glide. Striking a wall with the ability will cause Sonic to wall jump, gaining some height. These two facets combine to make an ability that's useful for extending jumps, correcting undershot jumps, and a few nice tricks.

Click to expand...

I haven't used this enough to form an opinion on it yet, but I've been playing around with seeing how well the wall jump works when you're not facing the wall head-on. Sometimes it works great! Other times... it works, I guess?

I really dig the aspect of the Comet Dash allowing Sonic to save himself using walls; something about how it encourages interacting with the terrain feels really appropriate for a classic-style Sonic game. I think the dash itself is kind of weird, mainly because it holds its speed for a moment instead of feeling like a quick burst. Whether that was done to set it apart from the Thok or not, it feels unnatural. I also feel like the final dash shouldn't be allowed to bonk off of walls, for a few reasons. 1) It gives so little height as to be completely worthless, 2) the inability to dash again from it gives Sonic no horizontal ability to go anywhere after already getting that high with the other dashes, and 3) making Sonic uncurl makes him vulnerable in way that isn't fun to play around, especially in combination with the inability to go much of anywhere in that state.


I was... hoping to compliment-sandwich this feedback, and I kind of didn't at all, so let me state again that I love the execution of interacting with walls with this move, and I think it makes traversal much more exciting and creative with Sonic. Keeping it tied to an aerial dash instead of just making it a wall kick when you jump into walls keeps it from being entirely terrain-dependent, too, which is important for when there aren't walls around to do anything with, and restricting it to just three bounces makes it harder to cheese big platforming sections. There's a lot about this that I love, and I'm very excited to see it develop more with feedback.

Thanks the for quick feedback. I made a small hotfix to the comet dash which should make the wall jump activate more reliably. Also fixed a bug where you could sometimes get a false positive wall jump from Canarivore poison.

New download here