New & Old Horizons combo pack!

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One thing I noticed a lot about your aesthetic design is that you leave your thok barrier walls bare and rectangular. So in the middle of your rooms you've got all this life flowing through the level with varied texture, water and flora, and then you look at the sides of the room and it just looks like someone put up a wall around the entire thing, rather than something that was a product of mother nature like the rest of the level.

You want to make sure your level boundaries look as natural and immersive as possible. Try and jag up the walls and give sections of the walls different heights. Make your rooms look a little less rectangular. It'll look more like natural terrain this way and add to your visual appeal.
 
I really like this map, i'd love to see it's potential in the future. Although, I'd like suggest a song that fits well with the Floral Road boss in some future releases, maybe it might be able to fit for all of the normal bosses when the mod is complete!
 
Some improvements

Then since the last version we restarted working on the project and I myself made the skybox for FRZ1:

mini_249539srb20040.png


I think I will change FRZ2 and make it a sunset level, as that was did in Heroes Adventure (A project where I helped a bit but I don't know if it's still in work.)
 
Then since the last version we restarted working on the project and I myself made the skybox for FRZ1:

mini_249539srb20040.png


I think I will change FRZ2 and make it a sunset level, as that was did in Heroes Adventure (A project where I helped a bit but I don't know if it's still in work.)

Those clouds look like they're simple wall textures rather than F_SKY1, so it might be a good idea to change that. If SRB2 tries to render F_SKY1 within a skybox, it'll be the normal sky rather than an infinite tunnel of skyboxes, so use that to your advantage.
 
Those clouds look like they're simple wall textures rather than F_SKY1, so it might be a good idea to change that. If SRB2 tries to render F_SKY1 within a skybox, it'll be the normal sky rather than an infinite tunnel of skyboxes, so use that to your advantage.

You mean ONLY set the mountains as textures and then use a sky?
(The only problem will be the act 2 if I understood what you said.)
 
You mean ONLY set the mountains as textures and then use a sky?
(The only problem will be the act 2 if I understood what you said.)

Yeah, place the mountains as textures on the walls of the skybox and display F_SKY1 all around them.
 
Yeah, place the mountains as textures on the walls of the skybox and display F_SKY1 all around them.

Alright this will be done in... 30 minutes?

---------- Post added at 05:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:52 PM ----------

Done:

mini_195518srb20042.png
 
REVIEW

My first impressions were... iffy.

The new HUD just seemed like it was changed to be cool. It doesn't fit with the HUD name of your character very well, because the letters aren't spaced like the rest of the font. It doesn't go all the way to the corners of the screen, which defeats the purpose of using the small font. I believe it was applied to the HUD name to save space, but you didn't even soc it to make it fit accordingly. I also noticed the words "BOSS" in the boss meter aren't under the same font as well. The millisecond dot in Record Attack also hasn't changed at all, and looks off because of the different shadow color and the strange placement.

I also thought that character-only emblems were bleh; all of them are easy to get and character-only emblems are really only in 2.1 for backwards compatibility. There's a reason that

All of these levels could benefit from some custom badniks too. It's not like you're bad at soccing, there's a pretty complicated (& very cheesy)boss right there in the third level! The only level you can argue is GHZ, because Crawlas act like Motobug, and SDURF acts like Chopper, but that's really it.

I also saw that all four levels are all, pretty much, Neo Greenflower Hill Zone. This was a little off-putting.

~FLORAL ROAD 1~

This level is okay.

One of my main complaints is that the level is super linear, and nothing to really explore. Only the first and third pool in the level has anything in it, which is extremely lame. Yes, GFZ1 is linear, but I still enjoy playing it because there are little branching paths that reward you for going out of your way; even small rewards go a long way. If you fall in most pools in these levels then you just have to find the entrance of the room and jump on the springs.

The waterfalls are also a huge issue. As you mentioned, they all have a gross, not-good-for-reapeating-upwards-at-all texture. But, they are also EVERYWHERE in the pack. There are so many areas that don't need waterfalls but have ten anyways. Most of them, you can just fly into the top as Tails and notice that they are just coming out of rock. Not a hole in the rock, the rock itself.

On the bright side, this level is pretty for a GFZ themed one.

~FLORAL ROAD 2~

The linear-ness is a even bigger problem in this level. Yes, there's more fun rewards for you to grab, but this fails to give us more paths to choose from.

Back to GFZ, Act 2 has one main path that most follow, but there are several more. There's one over at the top of the mountain to the right of the start that take you to the area with the pinned in Crawlas, then in that area there's a spring inside a pool that leads to the top of the waterfall. There's even a path-split at the end; if you miss a jump and fail landing on the cliffs that lead straight to the goal, you gotta go through the longer path through the cave and meadow; all of this is the second level of the main game, too!

~FLORAL ROAD 3~

Cheesy boss aside (oh no it's evil super sonic watch out), this is probably my favorite level. There's a neat boss that's fun to play. My only problems with it is that there's so much cover, and they slow you down because you bump into them easily. It's also boring to dodge the Automatic Ring, because you HAVE to be in front of cover; it's not optional. Even if you do get hit by it, you just pick your rings back up. I'd replace it with a Rail Ring attack. Oh, and I dislike how he doesn't glow like normal Super Sonic, but that's not a big deal.

Also, the time attack emblem is really easy. I messed up several times, but I still did thirty seconds better than the requirement.

~GREEN HILL~

First off, I thought that just beating the game isn't all that cool of a way of unlocking this. You could've had it as a reward for getting the all of the emblems. Speaking of emblems, there's no reward for getting all of them. You could've had it so that you get GHZ for getting all emblems (excluding GHZ), and then have the reward for getting GHZ's emblems Pandora's Box.

Then again, I'm not sure that would be a good reward, because this is the worst level of the pack.

It continues the tradition of waterfalls from nowhere that FRZ did to death, and these waterfalls are huge and repeat a lot. You also could've used more textures, because just checkboard's are boring. There's a lot more rock textures in the game, including that big brown GHZ one used in Sapphire Falls. This level also experiences "linearity syndrome" even more-so than the rest of the levels in this pack. It also doesn't help that half of the level is 2D, which just removes any real exploration it could've had. The short length doesn't help the situation at all.

Also, NEVER USE A SPRING TO CHANGE LAYERS IN 2D MODE. That screws up the course, and makes it so that the red emblem is pure luck if you get it or not. Speaking of emblems, why is the emblem set-up here different from the rest of the pack? Yes, it's better because all characters can get each emblem, but why? Why now? Why can all characters get them, and why is there three instead of four?

~OVERALL~

This is only okay. There's nothing there to keep on coming back, it's fun rinses off after one play-through. Next beta, focus on improving your current levels, even remaking some. As it stands, these four levels need much improvement.
 
REVIEW

My first impressions were... iffy.

The new HUD just seemed like it was changed to be cool. It doesn't fit with the HUD name of your character very well, because the letters aren't spaced like the rest of the font. It doesn't go all the way to the corners of the screen, which defeats the purpose of using the small font. I believe it was applied to the HUD name to save space, but you didn't even soc it to make it fit accordingly. I also noticed the words "BOSS" in the boss meter aren't under the same font as well. The millisecond dot in Record Attack also hasn't changed at all, and looks off because of the different shadow color and the strange placement.

I also thought that character-only emblems were bleh; all of them are easy to get and character-only emblems are really only in 2.1 for backwards compatibility. There's a reason that

All of these levels could benefit from some custom badniks too. It's not like you're bad at soccing, there's a pretty complicated (& very cheesy)boss right there in the third level! The only level you can argue is GHZ, because Crawlas act like Motobug, and SDURF acts like Chopper, but that's really it.

I also saw that all four levels are all, pretty much, Neo Greenflower Hill Zone. This was a little off-putting.

~FLORAL ROAD 1~

This level is okay.

One of my main complaints is that the level is super linear, and nothing to really explore. Only the first and third pool in the level has anything in it, which is extremely lame. Yes, GFZ1 is linear, but I still enjoy playing it because there are little branching paths that reward you for going out of your way; even small rewards go a long way. If you fall in most pools in these levels then you just have to find the entrance of the room and jump on the springs.

The waterfalls are also a huge issue. As you mentioned, they all have a gross, not-good-for-reapeating-upwards-at-all texture. But, they are also EVERYWHERE in the pack. There are so many areas that don't need waterfalls but have ten anyways. Most of them, you can just fly into the top as Tails and notice that they are just coming out of rock. Not a hole in the rock, the rock itself.

On the bright side, this level is pretty for a GFZ themed one.

~FLORAL ROAD 2~

The linear-ness is a even bigger problem in this level. Yes, there's more fun rewards for you to grab, but this fails to give us more paths to choose from.

Back to GFZ, Act 2 has one main path that most follow, but there are several more. There's one over at the top of the mountain to the right of the start that take you to the area with the pinned in Crawlas, then in that area there's a spring inside a pool that leads to the top of the waterfall. There's even a path-split at the end; if you miss a jump and fail landing on the cliffs that lead straight to the goal, you gotta go through the longer path through the cave and meadow; all of this is the second level of the main game, too!

~FLORAL ROAD 3~

Cheesy boss aside (oh no it's evil super sonic watch out), this is probably my favorite level. There's a neat boss that's fun to play. My only problems with it is that there's so much cover, and they slow you down because you bump into them easily. It's also boring to dodge the Automatic Ring, because you HAVE to be in front of cover; it's not optional. Even if you do get hit by it, you just pick your rings back up. I'd replace it with a Rail Ring attack. Oh, and I dislike how he doesn't glow like normal Super Sonic, but that's not a big deal.

Also, the time attack emblem is really easy. I messed up several times, but I still did thirty seconds better than the requirement.

~GREEN HILL~

First off, I thought that just beating the game isn't all that cool of a way of unlocking this. You could've had it as a reward for getting the all of the emblems. Speaking of emblems, there's no reward for getting all of them. You could've had it so that you get GHZ for getting all emblems (excluding GHZ), and then have the reward for getting GHZ's emblems Pandora's Box.

Then again, I'm not sure that would be a good reward, because this is the worst level of the pack.

It continues the tradition of waterfalls from nowhere that FRZ did to death, and these waterfalls are huge and repeat a lot. You also could've used more textures, because just checkboard's are boring. There's a lot more rock textures in the game, including that big brown GHZ one used in Sapphire Falls. This level also experiences "linearity syndrome" even more-so than the rest of the levels in this pack. It also doesn't help that half of the level is 2D, which just removes any real exploration it could've had. The short length doesn't help the situation at all.

Also, NEVER USE A SPRING TO CHANGE LAYERS IN 2D MODE. That screws up the course, and makes it so that the red emblem is pure luck if you get it or not. Speaking of emblems, why is the emblem set-up here different from the rest of the pack? Yes, it's better because all characters can get each emblem, but why? Why now? Why can all characters get them, and why is there three instead of four?

~OVERALL~

This is only okay. There's nothing there to keep on coming back, it's fun rinses off after one play-through. Next beta, focus on improving your current levels, even remaking some. As it stands, these four levels need much improvement.



I myself thinked to add custom badniks but I do not have an exact idea of what I could make.


FRZ1: Then I guess I will have to rework on this level, add some more exploration ect.
For the waterfalls it's okay it will be fixed.


FRZ2 guess it's the same thing here.


FRZ3 N/A


GHZ: This is a very old level made by me that was ported. Like my Crisis City it's even worse than the cramped design of our pack tough. But we will improve for the next version.


OVERHALL: Many thanks for saying exactly what you tought about our level pack because now we can relly improve it which will be done for the Beta2 pack.
 
So due to some critizes about our -- Let's face it -- bad level design for this level pack tough, I decided to entierely restart FRZ1...
Then it'll be the end of super linear compressed platforming!

mini_472928srb20048.png


mini_734625srb20049.png


The level looks way more open, doesn't have a square level design. It sill looks a bit linear but there are lots of secrets aside of running...
 
That actually looks pretty neat. I'm glad you took my advice.

(also did that hud change yet or is it still horribly spaced)
 
Although it seems you've improved the actual layout of the map, are you sure there aren't any other texture options besides those overused GFZ textures.
 
I thought your design wasn't bad overall, but I look forward to your rework. I don't mind GFZ VI, but a more unique theme for your first level might not be a bad idea.
 
For the HUD I didn't chaged these for the moment.
Concerning the level textures I do not have other ideas of texturing since the level is GFZ-Themed.
Maybe I could change the grass texture to Jungle themed one to see if it improves aesthetic.
 
You should put one or more hazards into the level, there's just badniks, add crushers, a room where you should destroy all the enemies to continue, a hidden button elsewhere in the map to trigger a secret passage way or something more that gives the map more..... "movement"?
 
You should put one or more hazards into the level, there's just badniks, add crushers, a room where you should destroy all the enemies to continue, a hidden button elsewhere in the map to trigger a secret passage way or something more that gives the map more..... "movement"?

I was already warned that our level design was bad because it was... big squared areas.

Now concerning crushers ect, remember this is a first zone, did you see any automatic crushers in any Sonic game in the very first zone?

Now concerning unlockables:

I won't say anything about GHZ because I'll have to redo it from scratch for most of the areas.

But there will also be archives, yes you know the actual levels since they're going to be replaced.
 
...add crushers, a room where you should destroy all the enemies to continue...

Not only are both of those ideas bad for the first zone in a level pack, the "kill all enemies" room is a bad idea in general. Even the SRB2 Wiki advises against doing this because it's annoying, tedious, and it disrupts the flow that makes Sonic games tick.
 
A great level, and I knew Devil Sonic HAD to be part of it.

There are a few errors, as in texture aligments (mostly on FOFs) and the abillity to go in 3D mode in the 2D section at Green Hill Zone.
 
A great level, and I knew Devil Sonic HAD to be part of it.

There are a few errors, as in texture aligments (mostly on FOFs) and the abillity to go in 3D mode in the 2D section at Green Hill Zone.

IIRC, Texture alignment on FOF's is not possible, but I may be wrong.

At least all I know Auto aligning is not possible.
 
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