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Sol Sestancia 2 playtesting.

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Rogerregorroger

Rogerregorroger

Animator
✨ Collaborator ✨
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The hunt is on.

So....
Usually I immediatly upload my level packs as soon as I think they're done. And then receive urgent feedback that I left in horrific mistakes and have to panic for a few days to get it all sorted out. Figured this time I'll just upload a demo of some sort and save me the drama this time.


Yes, Sol Sestancia 2, about 3 years too late, but here it is...Well, 93-95% of it more or less. There's still a few things left to do, in particular the final stage, so it'll end right before the climax now. Hey, gotta keep some surprises for the final release i suppose.

So, for those who can't wait to play and don't mind lacking some of the features and final stage, here it is, and those who want to do playtesting and give me some feedback, thank you very much. Can't promise I can magic all problems away, there are a few problems I don't know how to resolve at the moment. Anyway, the pack contains 15 levels at the moment. 12 proper levels, 1 HUB stage, 1 secret level and 1 end level that's just a placeholder for the final stage and contains credits at the moment. And yeah, feel free to upload playtroughs on youtube or whatever, I don't really care about spoiling it. This is a more or less official release, even if unfinished.

To do list: Final level, one playable character (Sonic drawn in my style I guess, most requested...)
Level headers, little cutscene touchups, proper main menu graphics,
Not all emblems and chaos emeralds and pointless Big the cat cameo's are implanted yet.
And probably an endless list of minor gameplay and coding adjustments.

List of problems I'm already aware of:
Swatbots scream "Priority #1" a little too often, gotta look into that.
Some levels suffer slowdown, especially the mineral cave section in the mountain level. Not sure what to do about that.
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All these weird yellow line gaps drive me up the wall, especially the one in the night skybox here. Don't know how to get rid of them.
The pig-ride is really awkward since the player and pig move with different speeds, sometimes even changing speed. I'm utterly baffled how that's even possible, it's the exact same setup for both. Guess I need to bother someone to help me with coding a proper runaway pig.
Some cutscene are a bit off since I missed a few voicelines or need to track the actors down again. Hence why Bunny's a bit nonsequitor at times or even changes voice.
I just quickly rushed the level select pictures, haven't had time to make proper ones.
There's supposed to be dialogue at the beginning, recapping the first game's plot. Not entirely sure how to do that yet tough.
I hope Island Cross is stable for everyone. That level really hates me and kept crashing. I think I got it under control now...
The timer dissapears from the HUD after the Tunnel escape level. I think this happened in the OLDC it was featured in too, guess I have to ask again how it was fixed there.
In the mountain stage, there's a secret spa that says it requires 192 rings to get in, but it's actually 200. Probably made a linedef too long.
Realized I should have put rings in the Knothole stage to show players where to go. Oops, little late.
Anyway, enter Sally's hut at the far end right side of the town.

Anyway, yeah. I'm taking a break from this project till April, after that I'll get the final bits and bops finished and get this baby completed already.
Let me know what you want to see changed. Happy gaming.
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when i entered this area i had a gigantic drop in frames
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this animation is broken
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there are some dark patches on the background here
 
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some smaller things i noticed in the town
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the gap needs to be made smaller here
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these npcs are floating
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some texture errors i found
 
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In Lost City Zone, you can actually fall into the Hole Fang was at. I thought it'd be some secret room, now I'm just stuck here without Tails lol

Also the lag is AWFUL, I know you know but jeez. Likely due to all your object spam, the Fang fight room sent me all the way down to 9 FPS on my RTX 3060 in OpenGL, and even worse in Software. I think you have to calm down with the falling rock objects to smooth it out.
 

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So, just finished the pack (I was playing as Modern Sonic, sorry) I gotta say, MAN, Roger you impressed me once again, To the level design, mechanics and hell, even the music, all fantastic, my only problems that kinda bother me are the voice acting kinda keep talking over each other and lag in the first level, Lost City Zone, other than that (where do I submit my OC to in it haha, I'm just joking, I don't wanna bother you) I'm very excited to showcase the full complete release on YT channel soon, keep up the good work!!!
 
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Okay, updated the Sol Sestancia 2 file with level 1 having reduced the object spawners and their frequency.
Hope that helps. Odd, that was one of the few levels I didn't have any slowdown on.

Wasn't planning on immediatly updating, but it sounded serious.
Weird, level one is one of the few that DIDN'T give me slowdown.
The mountain stage will be fun then....
 
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List of bugs I've encountered in a Vanilla No-Save Sonic & Tails playthrough before I got slapped with a Game Over

Return to Acludia: Birds texture is bugged
Egg TV Network: You left an Emerald Token instead of a real Emerald, so I got sent to a really bugged Special Stage
Secret Train Track: That 2d segment is really weird, I got game-overed real quick here. I also got softlocked by being pushed forward outside the 2d segment, I had to waste a life on a Retry. I don't think I got a Game Over in a SRB2 mod for ages, so that's unfortunately where my No-Save failed me lol.
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Outside of bugs, I just found Up Town a bit janky. Here I was even holding forward, but I only barely made it. A lot of jumps in that level feels like I can't trust the automation.

I'll come back to say my positive notes after I actually play through the whole thing lol. I don't think I've ever seen Knothole Base as an actual recreation of a base before in SRB2, it's always "SRB1 reference!!" so I'm pretty happy with that simply chill stage.
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Oh, saw the patch. And guess what? It works EXTREMELY well now. First two are Software and OpenGL on the old version, last one is OpenGL post patch. Much mcuh better.
 
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Gotta be honest, I didn't really design the springs to be automatation in and on itself, they're part of the gameplay, you are supposed to steer. In fact, there's several parts in the pack where steering trough springs is vital ,like the vertical room in the palace, the moving platform springs in the forest, the tree branches on the mountain, the crystals in the mine and the final horse sequence at the farm.

Guess I should warn players at the beginning springs are part of the gameplay, not actual "sit back and watch" devices.


Thanks for the feedback so far. Quite a grocery list of gafs already.
 
InfernoMelon said:
(where do I submit my OC to in it haha, I'm just joking, I don't wanna bother you)
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You're free to request OC's.

Anyway, oops, only now noticed the secret Train level always plays, it was meant to be an challenging optional secret level. Sorry!
Took it out of the proper level rotation again. And fixed a few of the other complaints as well.
 
Oh nice, is DMing you (on this site) is fine with you? if so, just me a few hours-

(also didn't know that train level was a secret in the first place, banger secret level ngl)
 
Uhh.. it's pretty much perfect! Can I give 4 main suggestions?
I will give 3 then I'll suggest the last one later.
1)The title screen can be based of Sonic 06 with the background being Knothole.
2) The thing that Eggman puts animals into like jail can be at the end and then a bunch of Mobians and humans will escape.
3) The more you're into the story, the more you'll see characters from Sonic, SEGA and OCs in Knothole and they can have dialogues (not necessarily voiced)
Pls don't attack me for suggesting and say that a rule exists stuff even though that's what a playtester does
The biggest thing I have gripe with is that
A) Sally sometimes just feels bossy and most of the freedom fighters barely even do anything. Probably that's because cutscenes are actually not added.
B) The lost city and the castle feel empty. I guess adding more foliage, debris and people in the castle

I like however quite alot of stuff here like the levels, jokes( favourite being the chucks one) and the story.
Like the references to previous addons you made!
 
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Rogerregorroger said:
You're free to request OC's.
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Wow, really? That's pretty cool, but is it okay to request an OC here?
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Vincent The Rabbear said:
Wow, really? That's pretty cool, but is it okay to request an OC here?
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Well, I mean, if that is the case, then I'll go and request one cameo appearance:
My character, Volkage, is seen lost with no sense of direction, spotted in the small pond section here in Return to Alcudia, exclaiming how he got lost and in this "giant lake" and can't get out, despite the fact that he could just jump.
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Vincent The Rabbear said:
Wow, really? That's pretty cool, but is it okay to request an OC here?
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Well, I mean, if that is the case, then I'll go and request one cameo appearance:
My character, Volkage, is seen lost with no sense of direction, spotted in the small pond section here in Return to Alcudia, exclaiming how he got lost and in this "giant lake" and can't get out, despite the fact that he could just jump.
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Click to expand...
Luckily, I have my OC here, in case you wondered about the looks of it:
 

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lol guy said:
1)The title screen can be based of Sonic 06 with the background being Knothole.
2) The thing that Eggman puts animals into like jail can be at the end and then a bunch of Mobians and humans will escape.
3) The more you're into the story, the more you'll see characters from Sonic, SEGA and OCs in Knothole and they can have dialogues (not necessarily voiced)
Pls don't attack me for suggesting and say that a rule exists stuff even though that's what a playtester does
The biggest thing I have gripe with is that
A) Sally sometimes just feels bossy and most of the freedom fighters barely even do anything. Probably that's because cutscenes are actually not added.
B) The lost city and the castle feel empty. I guess adding more foliage, debris and people in the castle

I like however quite alot of stuff here like the levels, jokes( favourite being the chucks one) and the story.
Like the references to previous addons you made!
Click to expand...

You're free to make story suggestions, altough I'll warn you Sol Sestancia isn't really meant to have a deep story, it's more a series of set pieces and scenerio's with some context around it. I made it a rule cutscenes never go on longer then about 30 seconds, hence why they feel kinda rushed.

1) Sorry, menu's already planned, someone drew me a cool logo.
2) Good idea, we haven't seen many jails yet. Altough since most people are succesfully brainwashed, Eggman doesn't need them so badly yet.
3) That's an interesting idea... Haven't thought of that. I'll give it a thought.

A) Reason why Sally sounds bossy is because I wrote the cutscenes to be fast and efficient, hence it's straight to business.
I suppose I could add more flavor dialogue during exploration to soften her up a bit if it's a problem.
I'm not entirely happy how her voice worked out, so I'll have to ask the actress for retries or find someone else.

Frustratingly, there is one part where you see the Freedom Fighters in action, at the start of the Convoy stage.
However it's so chaotic and fast, you barely see any of it.I hope I can fix it up for the full release, but I've been struggling for a while with it as it is.
You're supposed to see Bunny beat up a Swatbot, Shortfuse and Antoine run across your path and Rotor and Tekno firing guns.
But can't blame you for not spotting those, it goes by in a second and some don't trigger properly.
Besides that, I am kinda limited in how much I can have non-player characters interact with the level.

The idea is that the player character, You, can technically be any characters there is. So in a way all of them can be potentially the main character.

B) These locations are kinda meant to feel a bit empty, same as Alcudia before the alarms go off.
It's for atmosphere. I like to make things quiet before things go wrong, gives it a nice Rollercoaster feel. Slowly go up, madly go down.
That said, the lost city might need some additional details, it's the oldest level I made for this pack. Over 3 years ago, so it does feel a bit out of place with the rest of the pack.


Vincent The Rabbear said:
Well, I mean, if that is the case, then I'll go and request one cameo appearance:
My character, Volkage, is seen lost with no sense of direction, spotted in the small pond section here in Return to Alcudia, exclaiming how he got lost and in this "giant lake" and can't get out, despite the fact that he could just jump.
Click to expand...

Alrighty. You do the voice, or do I need to find someone?
 
Understandable have a great day!
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The jails can be the people who aren't brainwashed yet.
 
I recorded me playing this until it ended due to a 2d bug (its also unlisted because I don't know if you're fine with it being public)
 
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