Wow...

I downloaded this game last night... A very fascinating project! And very well executed. I didn't play as much as I'd like to just yet, but I played the first couple of levels, and it was fun. ^_^

I used to modify Doom a long time ago, but that was before the source was released, so wasn't quite as involved. :3 I was, interestingly enough (or not), making a Mario conversion for it! I never got as far as you guys have, but I did get pretty far untill my hard drive got wiped. So make sure you back up all your source files and programs and stuff!

I feel I haven't really played enough to tell you my final opinion. I find the control a little hard to get used to (only played as sonic so far - so fast!) but I'm sure I'll improve with practice. Only thing I might suggest is, the levels seem to all use 255 brightness? (Actually I don't know but it seemed that way). If you have it totally maxed out then something way in the distance doesn't differ even slightly to a wall right next to you. I always found it best to have a little darkness to add depth. And you could change the darkness for those levels to white instead of black if it'd look better. I'm playing on a bit of a crap video card at the moment, so when my new computer arrives, the whole game will look much better anyway. ^^

You look to have everything in place already, but if you need any graphics or anything, I'd be happy to lend a hand. I drew sonic professionaly once for a CD. SEGA wouldn't allow my best sonic pic, but the let us use a little sonic siluette (sp?) I drew.

I'm a big fan of SA2 on the dreamcast. Loops and ramps and rails and stuff would be really cool in your game, but I should think such feats of programming are rather impossible. The springs are enough for me anyway, I'll never get tired of them. ^_^

Okay, I'll shut up now~ But good luck with finishing this game as much as you can.

Hello, thanks for the comments. I too found Sonic hard to control at first. If it frustrates you, try Knuckles, he controls way easier.

I'd never thought about the maxed-out brightness before. AJ ("SSNTails") has been working on SRB2 since the beginning, and did the technical work in making the level layouts, so he probably has some sort of justification for that. I'll wait to hear what it is before uninformedly agreeing with you.

There are a lot of enemy sprites and textures that still need to be drawn, so if you're willing to help with your drawing abilities, that would be great. If so, write me at graue at icarusindie period com, and I'll fill you in on some stuff we need.

At the moment there's a zero percent chance SRB2 will ever have slopes, and a negative infinity percent chance of loops. Slopes have been attempted (copying code from ZDoom) with dismal results. They would be great for adding variety to levels, but they remain strictly in fantasy world, unless some linear algebra genius just happens to come across the game and program them in.

Good day!

I've had a proper chance to play the game now. Had a good multiplayer session with my brother and sister. Truely amazing how much fun it is. Easily more entertaining than Sonic Adventure 2. I LOVE how tails can carry the other players! Can be a drawback if you're trying to escape after tagging someone tho. XD Co-Op mode was fun, but cos they run so fast, you're never really together that often. Maybe if there was special co-op versions of the levels, that had elements like Four Swords. ^^ (But that'd take long!)

It's a real shame about the slopes. I thought I saw one while I was playing, but it might have been the 1px deep stairs work-around or my imagination I guess. zDoom does slopes very well, it's a pain the source wasn't helpful. If you had slopes you could make rails to grind (like thin sloped conveyor belts with invisible walls either side).

Over all I think the game is some amazing work. It's so much like the retro megadrive sonic games, but 3D ^^.. I think this game is my favourite sonic game of all time. Really!

As for the brightness I just meant in the outside areas btw. ^^ It's fine how it is, but having a tiny bit of darkness would just make the areas miles and miles away a shade different to the ones right next to you. (since the levels are so big). ^^

BTW. When I tried to change the graphics mode it said something like it can't change while in software mode? Just wondering how you change this?

Yeah, we have "slopes" that consist of very fine staircases in a few areas, and they have a seperate sector type so you actually run on them instead of flying into the air.

A few people have thought about making special Co-op levels, but I don't think anyone actually made one. The nice thing about Co-op is for really hard stages like the ones in Mystic Realm. It still requires effort to keep together, but it's rewarding to keep together when the stages are hard, since you can cover each other's back from enemies.

The idea of using a brightness of less than 255 is actually quite interesting, but I don't think we can use white for the fade color, because most of the stages have caves and other areas with less than 255 brightness. Correct me if I'm wrong AJ or a441, but I don't think we can have sector-by-sector fade colors.

Mystic said:

I don't think we can have sector-by-sector fade colors.

Click to expand...

Actually, that's what fog does! Only in software mode, though.

Yup. I'm using it for lava. The 'fog' makes the lava look 'thick'. One more reason I reallyreallyreally don't like hardware mode.

The brightness thing is, well, when I used anything darker, it just looked weird being outside and seeing stuff fade in the distance. I try to use different light levels in the later maps. *shrug*.

Visible slopes will probably never be, but just maybe there might be invisible ones. I had a linear algebra and computer graphics algorithms class last semester, and I've put slopes into a game for this fall's SAGE, The Wizard Needs Food, Badly.

Hmm, the fade colour not working in hardware mode is a pain. As for the brightness I was only thinking like a tiny bit less than 255 so it's just one shade different in the background, but it's not really an important suggestion or anything XD

How exactly do I put it in hardware mode?

-opengl at the command line.

Or open gl mode in the launcher

Mystic said:

Yeah, we have "slopes" that consist of very fine staircases in a few areas, and they have a seperate sector type so you actually run on them instead of flying into the air.

A few people have thought about making special Co-op levels, but I don't think anyone actually made one. The nice thing about Co-op is for really hard stages like the ones in Mystic Realm. It still requires effort to keep together, but it's rewarding to keep together when the stages are hard, since you can cover each other's back from enemies.

The idea of using a brightness of less than 255 is actually quite interesting, but I don't think we can use white for the fade color, because most of the stages have caves and other areas with less than 255 brightness. Correct me if I'm wrong AJ or a441, but I don't think we can have sector-by-sector fade colors.

Click to expand...

call me crazy, mystic, but is it possible to do the loops they way you did the slopes? like, 4 slopes and some walls?

No, it's not. Because the Sonic sprite doesn't have animations for running up a slope, which would be absolutely required if he's to run upside-down.

sw2k said:

call me crazy, mystic, but is it possible to do the loops they way you did the slopes? like, 4 slopes and some walls?

Click to expand...

Ooo! ooo! Me first! Me first! You're crazy!

:D I may have missed the explanation as to why not, but I do have the (non-working) workaround! Make a loop thing using the fake slopes and such as you described, and mark several sections with wind (The ones that go up are upwards wind, down is downwards wind, and you'll need to use intangable FOFs for the backwards wind). The reason it won't work: Wind won't work in FOFs! The second workaround to get around this problem as well? A zero-gravity FOF in the place of the backwards wind and some awkwardly placed diagonal springs of course! Good luck getting though all that to find out it looks like crap XD

If I only knew what you were saying.

Basically, without being exceedingly convoluted and complex, loops are completely impossible, and no matter what, they'll be ugly and bug-ridden. Henceforth, don't bother.

yep, and the only possible way is 3d models.
WHICH
I
HAPPEN
TO
HAVE

sorry, had to get that out of my system.

Bah! *fistshake* Hardware Mode is the best! Hardware mode is the job!

SRB2 could be so much better if it just cast away the icky buggy software mode and went to opengl-only. Yeah, it's great that SRB2 can run on a 266mhz in Software, but... we're in the realm of computers approaching the 4ghz (maybe even 4.5ghz) processor mark. You could buy a 700mhz proc and a TNT2 nowadays for pocket change.

There are actually advantages and disadvantages of each rendering mode.

Software mode has trouble with very large or very complex areas, causing sprites to disappear and glitches in the sky. It also makes major glitches when looking up or down beyond about 45 degrees.

Hardware mode has trouble with transparent walls as well as other random effects, such as precipitation and the problem with colormaps being applied to areas they shouldn't be. Also, OpenGL is much brighter than software, which makes levels that are supposed to be dark look much brighter

Personally, I prefer using software mode unless I'm playing deathmatch, because software's lighting effects look better and it does really nice in the single player levels. OpenGL, however, has the ability to look straight up and down, which is so generally useful in deathmatch that it makes me ignore the problems with OGL and use it for multiplayer.

I designed the game for software mode. I have done a few special little things for OGL, like making sure the level at least looks right most of the time and adding some lights and stuff, but OGL could really use doing-away with, or a whole rewrite (at least, I don't like how it's written).

For precipitation to work right in OGL, it would actually run slower. It turns out I did some weird hack that seems like it shouldn't work but it does in software. Go figure. =P

I don't actually see a use for Software mode, myself. It's ugly, it's pixelated and it's low-color.

I'll take Trilinear Texture Filtering, Corona and Lighting Effects, a longer and more capabile draw distance and 16bit (or 32bit?) color any day, even if it means a few bugs.

All OGL mode needs to be just as functional as software is to fix the scrolling flats bug and to fix the rain bug. The scrolling flats bug is easy - the flats already scroll, it's just they only scroll on the underside of the flat, never on the top.

As for the rain bug, well, I don't actually care if that ever gets fixed in OGL, personally. :P I can live with slightly buggy rain rather than no rain at all.