[Open Assets] .Luke's Blaze The Cat - v5 5

[TDRR]

The same classic 1.09 Blaze we all know (and few people love) is back once more! Just a basic port of .Luke's Blaze character for 2.2, now with a tweaked Flare Drill to cover larger distances and get greater height.

Now it has (copypasted) sprites for the special stages, and slightly updated character selection text, hooray! Oh yeah and she still can transform into Burning Blaze too. Her flare drill ability remains mostly the same when transformed, though.

Oh, and yeah, Jeck Jims and LonelyFoxz both made fantastic models for Blaze.
https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=46560 - Jeck Jims'
https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=48577 - LonelyFoxz's
I recommend you try both, they're really awesome!

Thanks to .Luke for allowing me to port his character.
If you are going to reuse this, don't credit me, just .Luke since he's the guy who made the original, and Naluigi/Da Luigi too since he made the sprites recolorable, plus Kasumi-san with his tweaking really made this mod shine a bit more. FinnishGameFan's airdrill is used here, too.

Spoiler: Changelog

v5 (big thanks to Kasumi-san, this update consists of almost entirely his work)
-Added a proper continue icon.
-Blaze has a new sign.
-Blaze's icon now shows accurate colors from her sprites.
-Blaze now spins as normal while in her superform.
-Burning Blaze's colors are accurate and actually shine now.
-Buffed running speed.
-The Airdrill has been replaced by FinnishGameFan's recreated Airdrill.

v4
-Life icon now changes color
-Super color is red, instead of yellow

v3
-Sprites are now recolorable (Thanks, Naluigi/Da Luigi!)
-Changed thok sprite to afterimages
-Fixed CSS text, it now starts at the same line as the rest

yes, my second release is a port, i should be ashamed.

Supporters / CoAuthors

• Lilly
• Naluigi
• Kasumi-chan

 

[TDRR]

You're missing the V in the filename. The correct format is "vc_BlazeTheCat-v2.wad

There also is a couple of errors in the soc lump.

WARNING: Line 9: Unknown word: SRB2
WARNING: Line 12: readPlayer 0: unknown word '//PICNAME'
2 warnings in the SOC lump

Fixed. I didn't notice the "V" when reading the guidelines though, my bad.

 

[Inazuma]

Everything seems to be functioning properly now so...

Welcome to Release!

I do wish her fur would change colors instead of her outfit though.

 

[TDRR]

I do wish her fur would change colors instead of her outfit though.

Noted for V3. I guess it's because back in 1.09 there wasn't any good skincolor that would fit Blaze so .Luke just made the outfit change colors (After all, lavender does suit the outfit nicely).

I was also thinking some Sonic Rush-style spin animation with the dust particles changed to fire, that would be pretty neat. Not too sure on the ability though, does anyone like Flare Drill as it is or it could use some tweaks?

 

[little guy*]

Welcome to the releases!

 

[Prime 2.0]

Oof, sorry, there's been a bit of a mix-up; modtype prefix needs to be upper-case. There's only been one download so far though, so we should be able to get this fixed up without too much disruption. Just leave a reply when it's fixed and we'll put it back in.


Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[TDRR]

Fixed. No biggie, though a notification when this kind of thing happens would be nice.

 

[Goldenhog]

Definite +1 to giving her the Elemental Shield spindash particles instead of the normal spindash dust, and to changing her sprites so that her fur changes color instead of her suit.

A couple minor things that could be addressed in a 2.1 though: Her character select text starts one line lower than everyone else's (see gif) and the default color makes her clothes way too dark. A not-so-minor thing but the spindash circle thing needs to go, it doesn't look so good now that it's so small.

 

[TDRR]

Definite +1 to giving her the Elemental Shield spindash particles instead of the normal spindash dust, and to changing her sprites so that her fur changes color instead of her suit.

To both: I don't think these will end up happening. I know next to nothing about Lua to change the spindash dust (And no i'm not interested in learning either, this is supposed to be only a little side project) and all fur colors i can get are far too dark. I'll experiment a little more with the shades and available colors but if not i'll just try to improve the color-ability of her suit.

I'll at least make a custom spindash animation like she has in Sonic Rush to compensate for the inability to change the dust into flames. (In SR, she hovers slightly above the ground with fire coming out of her... shoes i guess?)

A couple minor things that could be addressed in a 2.1 though: Her character select text starts one line lower than everyone else's (see gif) and the default color makes her clothes way too dark. A not-so-minor thing but the spindash circle thing needs to go, it doesn't look so good now that it's so small.

I fixed the character select text issue, and i'll fix the default color later. The spindash circle may be replaced with afterimages instead because i agree it's a bit too small.

 

[weepnwallow]

Question, how do you port old characters? I wanted to port the Toei Sonic wad and CD Sonic wad. Just curious.

 

[Frostiikin]

Not a huge fan of her ability, it seems to kill her momentum...

 

[Prime 2.0]

Fixed. No biggie, though a notification when this kind of thing happens would be nice.

Ack! I thought another judge had PM'd you about it already, sorry! I'll be sure to err on the side of sending an extra notification next time.

 

[Sinny33]

Question, how do you port old characters? I wanted to port the Toei Sonic wad and CD Sonic wad. Just curious.

I don't think you'll be able to since that those characters aren't allowed to be edited in anyway. If you paid attention to the credits at the bottom

 

[S.T.F]

Please stop porting old 1.09 sprites in to 2.2 which has a more updated art style this just didn't fit at all with how the game looks maybe these old sprites looked good in the older versions but PLEASE! just make you're own sprite of blaze instead of just lazily port decade old wads without even knowing too much of the creator of these sprites

 

[Pyrakid Wolfo]

Its better than nothing. And also I can understand you talkin about the Legacy Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy which have bad sprites and have no reason to exist other than "added challenge(?)" even then it still has no reason to exist and just takes up space. I prefer actually unique characters that aren't in the game already. Making sprites can be hard, YOU make 2.2 sprites for Blaze if you're gonna send messages like these. I'm not good at sprites so I dunno if he can make something as good. Spriting and Coding(and Porting) are very different things.

 

[Pyrakid Wolfo]

Okay, One thing I shall note is that I think the Flare Drill goes a bit too high to where it feels off. It should keep the player's momentum, rather than it being really slow. I think it slowing down the player may be a balance thing but uh... I still think it goes a bit too high, as i said feels off. Should be very slightly controllable by the player, and should not go forward if the player is standing still or not moving.

 

[Lilly]

Please stop porting old 1.09 sprites in to 2.2 which has a more updated art style this just didn't fit at all with how the game looks maybe these old sprites looked good in the older versions but PLEASE! just make you're own sprite of blaze instead of just lazily port decade old wads without even knowing too much of the creator of these sprites

This is one reason why I wasn't going to port over any of the characters I had created to 2.2; they were already showing their age by 2.1, honestly. They clash so strongly against the undeniable quality of the new character animations for Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles in 2.2. You couldn't ask for a better team of pixel artists, MotorRoach and the rest of the crew have done outstanding work to breathe an entirely new life into the playable cast.

But I'm not going to tell people what they can and can't do, either, so I was fine with TDRR porting my decade-old Blaze over. People need something while they wait for a better Blaze, because there hasn't been another finished Blaze for a literal decade, despite many attempts that later went unfinished. (Although I believe there's one artist who will finish their version with more time.) I would have liked to redo this character myself literally ten years later, with my current art skills, but I'm more interested in my original projects now. I burned myself out making a large quantity of low-quality characters during the 1.09.4 days, and haven't looked back. I'm sorry I can't give this community a Blaze it deserves, what limited free time I get now is being used for other things, like building my dream career, and holding a full-time job to support that dream.

Drawing sprites, and God forbid animating them up to a certain standard, is so much more tedious and time consuming than you can ever imagine without having done it yourself. A good SRB2 character can have, at a minimum, 180 frames, or as many as 300 frames of animation, most of which are the same animations redrawn at 5 (or even 8!) different angles. It took me a full-time effort of three months to finish a character, when I used to make them, and that was with a lot of help from other people who were better skilled at art than me. Now, translate that to a competent artist who can only give an SRB2 character a part-time effort, on the side of their other projects and day job-

Your complaint is noted, and I even agree with the sentiment, but please understand why this port exists.

 

[S.T.F]

i am sorry for being a little harsh and i agree with you're opinion but im honestly tired of having silver or shadow getting the special treatment and i know how hard to make and animate these sprites but at this point we have alot of talented people in the community and i did saw someone try to make a 2.2 styled blaze and it looks great i really wanted was for the other sonic characters to get this kind of treatment you know instead of just the million version of sonic or some OC character.

 

[TDRR]

Okay, One thing I shall note is that I think the Flare Drill goes a bit too high to where it feels off. It should keep the player's momentum, rather than it being really slow. I think it slowing down the player may be a balance thing but uh... I still think it goes a bit too high, as i said feels off. Should be very slightly controllable by the player, and should not go forward if the player is standing still or not moving.

I felt this was just right, it's a tradeoff between mobility and speed. If used properly, you can take many of the shortcuts Tails can use, as well as some of the shortcuts Knuckles can use, reaching them faster than both of those characters and you still move faster than Tails so it's a gigantic speed advantage in races.

Not sure if you know, but you can stop raising mid-drill and fastfall by holding the spin button down.

In fact, you can beat Metal Sonic by taking many shortcuts in about 1:20, which is a MASSIVE advantage over MS.
I haven't tested her in race properly (I can only play with my brother who plays very badly) but i imagine it's pretty much the same advantage.

I'll reconsider the ability for the next version, but honestly i think it's just fine as it is.

Oh yeah, it got updated! You can now recolor Blaze's fur AND outfit (Thanks, Naluigi/Da Luigi!) and the "thok" sprite has been replaced with afterimages.

Also, not sure if he's going to kill me if i say this or something but Inazuma is working on a better Blaze, and it looks real good. It might get done this year!

 

[Goldenhog]

Yeah, the airdrill was off for me too at the start but I got used to it and I really like it now.

Fantastic update, by the way. And good job to Naluigi/Da Luigi for the recoloring of the sprites, it all looks better now. My only two issues left are that Burning Blaze doesn't spin when jumping (why?) and that it's possible to trigger Burning Blaze while doing an airdrill. Though yeah the latter would require Lua to fix (and I don't think it should be happening at all... I'll post about it in Bug Reports).

And thanks for the news that a new Blaze is coming. I can't wait :)