[Open Assets] Sol Sestancia 1.8

[Rogerregorroger]

Hi there, welcome back to Island Sol Sestancia.


*************
Update 1.5:
Emblem radar. Also a bonus file: Download SonTV.pk3 for a AOSTH based circuit race

UPDATE, version 1.3.
Brand new secret level, new optional side routes, emblem hunting.
Changed the music in the port level since it was copyright sensetive.
So re-download the music file as well.
**************

I gave you a brief tour a while ago:
https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=47442

Now it's time for the main event. Well, chapter 1. More's coming in the future.

-Who're you?
Hi, I'm Youtube's Rogerregorroger, maker of cartoons and discussion video's. I noticed I got increasingly cynical and bitter when thinking of Sonic's future, so figured making my own level mod within my favorite Sonic fangame would be a nice therapy.



-What's this?
It's kind of an homage to the 3d platformer and RPG hybrids you got in the late 90's and early 2000's like Megaman Legends, Mystical Ninja starring Goemon and Sonic Adventure.
Also these games that relied more on texture work rather then complex 3d modeling for their graphics, creating this effect you were walking inside of a cartoon. Like in Fur Fighters, Red The Hunter, Wild Riders.
So, very story/ context driven, so much it feels more like you're bouncing around one giant island rather then merely going trough disconnected levels.



-So what do we get?
There's 10 levels. 2 RPG ish explore area's, 7 "normal" platform levels, one hidden. And one level where you just run like mad.



-30 mb?
Jup. It contains over 1600 new textures.
Anyway, music's in a seperate file, so activate both for the full experience.




-What's the story?
The island of Sol Sestancia is nearing it's 100th anniversary and is organizing many events to celebrate. The Catering is organized by..Eggman enterprises. That can't be good. Time to figure out what's really going on.

There's technically supposed to be cutscenes between every level to push the story forward but I gave up on getting that to work.
I'l include the cutscenes in a let's play I'll do of this level pack later on.



- Content can be re-used and repurposed?
Yeah, sure, knock yourself out. It's messy, tough.

- So it's still beta?
Nah, I'll consider it complete. Altough I might come back and fix up a few things when I learn new tricks when I work on part 2.
Particularly the audio and replacing some npc's with sprites when i figure out how to do that.




So uhh, yeah. Hope it's fun to play.
View attachment 35744

 

[Zipper]

Welcome to Releases.

 

[Kix_Fantasma]

So, i love this mod, but there are no checkpoints in the levels, maybe add them in the next update

 

[Snowy]

After giving this my first run through, I have to say, before I feel confident on giving my full opinions...
I am *beyond* impressed. While there is absolutely still some awkwardness, these are far from bad levels, and the amount of effort you put into the atmosphere is astounding! I especially enjoyed the current final act, mostly because I already prefer to try and blitz forward in your map-style- so it felt like you kinda embraced it. Nabbad so far, though I'll try to find a chance to give my full thoughts eventually, likely after a few more playthroughs.

 

[Rogerregorroger]

Oops, just realised this pack has the same Savefile specification as the island tour one. Sorry. Fixed that.

No checkpoints? Pretty sure there are.
You refer to the Alcudia Port stage? It's more a Hub ish area.
But right, I suppose people can die when they fall for Eggman's little surprise at the end, so I put a checkpoint at the hotel.

Other change this 1.2 update, there's an intro cutscene now.
Quite frankly, I start to regret wanting to put Cutscenes in here, getting these things working is a nightmare.
Does anyone know if it's possible to have more then an intro and an outro, because I just can't get the game to play a inbetween cutscene, it either crashes or skips to the final cutscene. Good grief I hate writing code.

-----
Update: Sorry, left in a cutscene trigger which crashed the game after you beat it. Took it out.

 

[Kix_Fantasma]

i died in the third level and went ALL THE WAY back to the start, the hub area wasnt the problem
EDIT: nvm im dumb

 

[Rogerregorroger]

No no, you're right, I did remove the checkpoints in the ruins and militairy level. Oops.
I forgot I temporarly removed the checkpoints because I was worried it could lock the player away from the emerald shards.
Okay, updated 1.2 to insert checkpoints.
And added Cream's flower shop in the Hub to replace a generic flat building.

 

[rocklight124]

Um does this support Co-op I'd love to play with my little bro.

 

[Dabir]

Alright, just started playing, and I already have two things to bring up. One, I get that starting out on the Tornado makes sense, but the strong wind effect there is probably gonna get players killed within seconds of starting the level for no real reason. If you just try and jump from the plane onto the deck, you go flying back through the Tornado's wings and get dumped into the death barrier. That, and it's a complex bit of geometry that really gets in the way of the camera. Have the players start on the deck next to it, at least.

Also, the floor is too low on a couple of sectors making up the back wall, so you can easily use the yellow spring on the box to get stuck inside the wall. In fact, the strong wind there makes it very likely that that's exactly what will happen.

Edit: The red container inside the soda hangar is too tall for the walkway it's next to, so a section of fence is raised and you can see through the back of the container.

 

[Princess Plushima]

I am absolutely loving the narrative design here. The little jokes hidden everywhere are super fun to hunt for. The two emerald hunt levels play that up in a way that works super well, but things like Eggman chiming in on the intercom do a lot to make everything feel more exciting.

 

[calliecoolswag]

10/10. Amazing, just amazing.

 

[GrayAngel]

Nice! It's changed a lot since the Island Tour. I took some notes of my thoughts as I played along.

• I really liked the idea of starting the game on the Tornado as it is boarding Eggman's flying ship. But the air currents pushing you back are a little too realistic, IMO. Unless you're going to have the air currents be a constant threat when outdoors in that level, I'd remove it.
  
  
• The "intruder spotted" thing kinda scared me a little. I don't know why. Just wasn't expecting it, I guess. lol
  
  
• Loved the cafeteria joke. That got a laugh out of me. I think the windows in that room are just gaps, however. I'd suggest putting some glass there. Maybe leave one window missing or broken to let Tails escape and find a hidden emblem outside?
  
  
• The first hotel sign looks very different from the back. I suspect you probably made a new graphic for it to replace the old one, but forgot to change both sides of it.
  
  
• Alcudia Port. *Heavy breathing.* So open. So much detail. How did you find the time to do all this?
  
  
• In Jungle Crash Site, there's a waterfall, but the wall over the waterfall is also moving like it's being affected by the waterfall animation. I'm new to Zone Builder, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on there.
  
  
• In JCS, I noticed the colormap is yellow, but the water is blue. Are you planning to turn the water yellow? If it's meant to be soda, I think brown might be a better choice. When people think soda, the first things to come to mind are Dr. Pepper or Coca Cola, not so much Mellow Yellow. Yellow might imply a different kind of liquid.
  
  
  (Editing this in later, I noticed purple is used for the soda glasses later. Purple could also work for grape soda, but it's used in the main game for that bouncy goop, and purple stuff on the ground hurts you in your levels, so it might confuse some people.)
  
  
  ((Editing again, again. I noticed you seem to use orange soda in later levels? I'm guessing this is what you intended to be in JCS and just forgot to change the water here.))
  
  
  
• I noted JCS has some turbines on the broken ship. Since they still seem to be working, it might be cool if you could place those tornadoes from Arid Canyon Zone over the turbines you help you reach hidden areas or something.
  
  
• The water in JCS is pretty empty. You could place some more aquatic robots inside, like the Chop Chop.
  
  
• In general, the ring placement in the levels feel pretty arbitrary. In the main games, rings are often used to guide the player forward. Sometimes they're used to point out hidden areas, or help a player make a difficult jump (follow the rings, and you'll make it). In Alcudia Port, for example, you could place rings along the road and within buildings to make it easier for the player to know where they've been, and make it harder for them to get lost. I noticed you do this more often in your later levels, though. I definitely notice your skills improving as the levels go on.
  
  
• This isn't really criticism of your level, but I was today years old when I learned you can destroy turrets. What? I always assumed those were just stage hazards, but they're Badniks? ...Carry on.
  
  
• I love that you incorporated Emerald Hunting into your levels. But who keeps putting the Master Emerald in the coffee? lol
  
  
• In detention, I don't know what the black stuff is supposed to be, but I gathered from the sound effects that I was probably not supposed to touch it. lol
  
  
• I think some of the Badniks are facing backwards. Like the archer bot at the top of stairs in the library.
  
  
• Thank you so much for not making the bottomless pits in the library instant death.
  
  
• I like the music, but after listening to it for so long, sometimes I get tired of hearing the same song loop over and over. Maybe it's possible to have the music change mid-level, like the way it happens in Sonic Adventure?
  
  
• The sugar river is a funny idea, but it looks like it's running up instead of down.
  
  
• Jesus Christ, dude. You put a lot of work into this. I wrote all these notes, and I'm not even finished with your level pack yet. I'm gonna have to take a break and come back for part 2. lol

 

[Mr Beagle]

There's so much attention to detail that it is hard to find things not to like. The fact that it is also consistent throughout the huge levels is quite a feat and shows dedication.

I like all of the references to other Sonic content and the humor as well. Now the difficulty curve seems to be a bit on the low side once you get to the island, but I don't know if this is considered close to completion yet. I do echo the hint that you should add emblems, as there are tons of places where they can hide.

A couple of map design tips to take into account, single segment slopes can be made far smoother if you use triangles instead of quads. In addition, make more use of linedef 7 (sector flat alignment) so things like paths and pillows are properly mapped.

 

[GrayAngel]

I do echo the hint that you should add emblems, as there are tons of places where they can hide.

His previous "Island Tour" pack, which was basically a proof of concept for this pack, included emblems. So I'm assuming the lack of them here is due to him wanted to nail down the level design first.

 

[Rogerregorroger]

Okay, updated version 1.2 with some minor changes.

Um does this support Co-op I'd love to play with my little bro.

I just activated Co-op and race for the pack, just for you. I have no means to test it tough, so you're my guinea pig now I'm afraid.

Okay, put the starting point of the first stage on the airship itself.
And fixed some of the things Dabir brought up.

Yeah, I should change the water surface of the swamp levels.
Anyway, they're yellow because it's supposed to be swamp water. The fact tons of broken soda containers float in it won't help either.
It's orange in the Boot Leggin stage because the soda's unfinished there, the ingriedients are still being added in the factory.
Heh, maybe I put too much thought into this and just make things more confusing. ^^;

The archer in the library was meant as a warning, I was worried it's unfair if he immediatly shoots you, before the player can look on top of the stairs.

Yeah, I could add more tracks. In fact, would be useful for the Boot leggin stage, the concert looks out of place with the music.
I'm worried about the already big filesize, tough.

THERE'S A WAY TO ALIGN FLATS?
I had no idea, that's so useful.
Yeah, I'll do that for next update.

Yeah, emblems will be added later. I got caught up in trying to get the cutscenes to work that I forgot some details.
At the end of the week I'll have another update when I have more of the voicelines in, then I'll add the emblems.
Maybe a bonus circuit race track, to use up some of the visuals I never had an oppurtunity for.

Ohh, and for clarification, it's confusing with the cutscenes missing... This isn't the full planned campaign of Sol Sestancia yet, only chapter 1.
Was meant to be one 10 stage level pack, but kept getting more and more inspiration so to avoid having an extremely boated file, gotta do it in chunks. Not to mention I'm still hesistating if I want to keep it cartoony in tone or slowly build toward a more Sonic Adventure esque bigger showdown. Doing it in chapters allows me some thinking and planning time.

 

[Goldenhog]

A bit disappointed that NPCs (and some assorted details, like glasses of Eggman soda and tank turrets) are still textures instead of objects, so they become thin lines if you're not facing them head on. Understandable, as there are a lot of NPCs that'd require a minimum of 5 sprites each, but still. I also kinda wish the voice lines came with subtitles, some of them are a bit hard to make out.

Other than that... sheesh, you went all out with this, haven't you? It's amazing. Looking forward to see what future updates bring!

 

[Snowbold]

I like this, a lot! Two criticisms however. 1. Please tone down the amount of uniduses and pop-up turrets. 2. I think some of the characters would look better as billboarding scenery things.

 

[GrayAngel]

Yeah, I should change the water surface of the swamp levels.
Anyway, they're yellow because it's supposed to be swamp water. The fact tons of broken soda containers float in it won't help either.
It's orange in the Boot Leggin stage because the soda's unfinished there, the ingriedients are still being added in the factory.
Heh, maybe I put too much thought into this and just make things more confusing. ^^;

Oh, yeah. Probably overthinking it a bit. lol.

If that's supposed to be swamp water, though, shouldn't it be a dark green?

The archer in the library was meant as a warning, I was worried it's unfair if he immediatly shoots you, before the player can look on top of the stairs.

I wouldn't worry about that. Castle Eggman has them sniping the player from tall places. An experienced SRB2 player should be trained to scramble when they hear the sound of that Badnik loading its crossbow anyway.

Not to mention I'm still hesistating if I want to keep it cartoony in tone or slowly build toward a more Sonic Adventure esque bigger showdown. Doing it in chapters allows me some thinking and planning time.

Personally, I really like your style of humor, and hope that stays consistent throughout the levels. But you do whatever you're inspired to do. It has worked well so far.

 

[Rogerregorroger]

I'd love to use sprites instead of textures for the characters, but I don't know how.

Okay, so I put the sprite graphics in a "Sprite" folder in the pk3. file.
Name's 4 letters, then Capital A and a 0 since it's the first static frame.


Then declade freeslots in the SOC code.


Remove the original flat Vector from the level.


Insert an object in it's place-



......And then what? How do I tell the object what sprite it needs to represent, I can't type in any commands or do anything, I can't find anything in the Wiki.


This is what drives me INSANE about the SRB2 wiki, I can almost never find how to actually inplant features into Zonebuilder as that information is often on entirely diffrent pages or a footnote sandwiched between endless advanced information.
Probably my own fault, I'm not really technical minded and problably look over the solution somehow.
Wasted several days in frustration trying to figure out how to put audio into the level, endlessly bouncing between wiki pages, doom tutorials and breaking into people's pk3 files until I accidently stumbled into the 414 linedef casually mentioned all the way at the bottom of the audio page.

 

[Zipper]

I'd love to use sprites instead of textures for the characters, but I don't know how.

......And then what? How do I tell the object what sprite it needs to represent, I can't type in any commands or do anything, I can't find anything in the Wiki.

https://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/Custom_Object_tutorial
https://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/Object
https://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/State

To be able to use a custom object in ZB, you need to create it in SOC first, with all the necessary Object info, alongside the state it's going to start in. For example, your Vector scenery should look a little something like this:

(Note, every time you see an S_NULL, sfx_None, MT_NULL (and MT_THOK in this case), feel free to omit that line entirely, I just put them there for clarification)

As this is a scenery object, having only one state with one frame is perfectly acceptable. I believe the custom object tutorial does a decent job at explaining why states need to be designed the way they are, though it can be extremely daunting when you're first starting out.


The most important thing here is the "MapThingNum", which is the object number you use in Zone Builder to place it on the map. If you want to make an object that is not placable, you can use -1 for that instead. Hope this helps.