Sonic Ability Design Contest (SADC) Discussion Thread

[Rumia1]

ATTENTION:
The contest is now over! I am no longer accepting submissions.
Please wait until the contest pack has released before releasing updated/changed versions of your submitted abilities!​

If you haven't been active in the community lately or maybe you've been living under one of the various rocks found in Arid Canyon Zone...
Lately Sonic's iconic ability, the Thok, has garnered a bit of controversy surrounding it. Some people think it's too difficult for beginners and people might shy away from the game with how difficult it is to master, some people have stated it's too overpowered compared to the rest of the cast's abilities, others have stated it's a mainstay of the game and it would be unreasonable to remove it, and that people should just git gud.

We're not here to debate about that though.

Instead I propose that we all put our heads together and put this energy towards something a bit more constructive, and as such, I present to you...

The Sonic Ability Design Contest, or SADC for short.


What is this, you ask?
-This is a month long contest intended for people to come up with a new ability for Sonic that's hopefully easy for newcomers to understand as well as complex enough that it's fun to use with enough practice.
-Anyone who knows Lua or SOC and is interested in joining can participate.
-After one month, finished entries should be submitted to me via DMs either on the message board or Discord (rumia1#2977). These submissions will be added to a zip file and released on the message board with proper credits attatched.
-After I recieve and review all the submitted entries, trophies will be awarded for the following categories in the release post:
--First place
--Second place
--Third place
--Most fun ability
--Easiest ability to pick up and play
--Most broken ability
--Silliest ability
-Some of these trophies may overlap depending on how many participants join

Here are some guidelines you should follow
-The ability must be for Sonic and replace the Thok.
-The ability's activation should ideally only require pressing the jump button in midair. I'm fine with more complex two button activations involving Jump and Spin if necessary though.
-Ability should not function similarly to any of the current abilities found within the base game (The CA_ and CA2_ constants) within reason. (You can't just submit a nerfed thok, a homing attack exactly like the one as seen in the game adjusted to be really fast, etc.)

The deadline is 4 weeks from today, the 5th of July. Please have your submissions DMed to me by that time. In the mean time feel free to discuss and post gifs of your ideas here!

And finally, I request that you all maintain a level of civility and professionalism in this thread, this is in no way a thok discussion thread and I'm not a moderator so please don't ruin the fun for everyone!

Thank you and have fun!

 

[Unknownlight]

Ooh! This sounds fun. Great idea!

I suppose, if anyone somehow missed it, here's the previous thread with a lot of discussion and proposals for Sonic's new ability: https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=47082

 

[Princess Plushima]

I've posted this a couple times on discord, and unless I stumble upon something cooler, it'll probably be my submission here.


Climbthok is like a normal thok 90% of the time. However, thokking into a wall will cause you to climb up it. This preserves all the fun things you can do with thok normally, while giving Sonic a bit of extra recovery and platforming ability. Thokking from closer to a wall will cause you to go a bit higher, with the fixed length of the trail being a visual indicator of exactly how much 'thoktime' you have. (Also because the 'thok trail' being only a single object in vanilla has bugged me since I was 13 >.>)



I'm still experimenting with exactly what to do with the player's horizontal momentum when climbing. The current version doesn't change it at all, which causes you to go wide if you hit a wall at a bad angle. I'd like it to be a bit more usable when you're panicked and trying to recover from a missed jump- which would entail making it more reliable when used poorly- but I worry that halting the player's momentum to ensure you always make it safely up won't flow as nicely.


I also need to take the time to make it not work on noclimb walls and thok barriers, but whatever it's a prototype >.>

 

[izzy]

Climbthok is like a normal thok 90% of the time. However, thokking into a wall will cause you to climb up it. This preserves all the fun things you can do with thok normally, while giving Sonic a bit of extra recovery and platforming ability. Thokking from closer to a wall will cause you to go a bit higher, with the fixed length of the trail being a visual indicator of exactly how much 'thoktime' you have. (Also because the 'thok trail' being only a single object in vanilla has bugged me since I was 13 >.>)

Katmint's Comet Dash.

 

[Princess Plushima]

Katmint's Comet Dash.

...How the heck did I not know about this? I literally just remade it huh.


Whelp, back to the drawing board.

 

[pastel]

I've long since scrapped that particular variant of the comet dash anyways. Its wall interaction gimmicks were a series of rough drafts which could each use refinement, so if you want to make a more polished wallclimb ability I say go ahead and do so.

Also, the comet dash itself functions quite differently than the thok does. I don't think your ability would overlap with it. If you want to compare yourself, comet dash still exists in its purest form as Super Sonic's jumpspin ability in revi.

 

[rairai104n]

I've long since scrapped that particular variant of the comet dash anyways. Its wall interaction gimmicks were a series of rough drafts which could each use refinement, so if you want to make a more polished wallclimb ability I say go ahead and do so.

Also, the comet dash itself functions quite differently than the thok does. I don't think your ability would overlap with it. If you want to compare yourself, comet dash still exists in its purest form as Super Sonic's jumpspin ability in revi.

What made you scrap it anyway? I understand wanting to keep Sonic simple since he is the absolute baseline for level design (or maybe not anymore given Amy's existence), but it was a great idea that gave him more verticality and utility in general without the blatant advantages/disadvantages of Tails and Knuckles. Certainly more interesting than a simple double jump into jigglypuff fall speed.

...How the heck did I not know about this? I literally just remade it huh.


Whelp, back to the drawing board.

Hey, don't you go tossing this idea out either. I don't have much in the way of suggestions right now but if it's momentum based, how good would transferring your horizontal momentum to vertical momentum upon contact with the wall feel?

 

[Krabs]

Rebound Dash

It's a bit similar to the other wall-based sonic ability ideas, but it's unique because of the way the wall bounce works. When you hit a wall, you get launched away from it, so you need to creatively use walls around the stage to get where you need to go. I've also implemented a thokitem trail like draycon's ability, which I use to indicate the time window for when the wallbounce is available after a dash.

 

[Othius]

After I recieve and review all the submitted entries, trophies will be awarded for the following categories in the release post:
--First place
--Second place
--Third place
--Most fun ability
--Easiest ability to pick up and play
--Most broken ability
--Silliest ability

I think you should have the community review abilities, instead of only you specifically being the deciding factor. OLDC Voting style. Maybe after you make the release thread, make a second thread in here with reviews, where they have to place an ability on each seven of those scales, in which you can average up and have the ability ratings be more community-decision instead of personal opinion.

 

[Krabs]

Just about ready to submit this thing.

EDIT: more gifs

 

[pastel]

What made you scrap it anyway?

I ran into a wall trying to figure out what to do with the wall interactions so I decided to explore other ideas. I also wanted to make an ability that worked well with the increased air control I added. The arc jump is made specifically to exploit the air physics in my mod and wouldn't remotely work if removed from its context.

Compare attempting the same manuever with revi arc jump and vanilla double jump below.

The primary issue I had with the wall climb was maintaining speed and flow. Relying on walls to gain height means your horizontal speed is halted, and after surmounting the wall you would need to either manually accelerate or use the ability again. This kind of clunkiness fits Knuckles, but feels wrong for Sonic. My ideal Sonic is a balance of speed and versatility - both Tails and Knuckles sacrifice their speed when using their abilities (well, at least Tails should), but Sonic would be able to gain a smaller amount of extra height without compromising his speed. A double jump is the simplest possible application of this, but I wanted to avoid making any ability which outright increased speed. That does remind me I need to buff the spindash charge speed though. I've never understood why it charges so painfully slowly in SRB2.

 

[Frostiikin]

https://imgur.com/a/YHnyvmy

Momentum thok. It's a thing that exists. (sorry for not embedding no matter what i tried it just wouldn't embed)

 

[Jonster]

These seem very interesting. Can't what to see how the rankings go!

 

[Othius]

Frostii, imgur links don't embed for some reason on MB. Upload it to, like, discord and pull the link off of that instead.

Anywho, not my ability, this is Frostii's.

 

[Jonster]

I like the idea of the momentum thok, but it look's to OP. It could be fun to play around with, but some stages might alot of their challenge if the player were to just spindash and thok throught things like pits or generaly dangerous areas.

 

[cookiefonster]

I think you should have the community review abilities, instead of only you specifically being the deciding factor. OLDC Voting style. Maybe after you make the release thread, make a second thread in here with reviews, where they have to place an ability on each seven of those scales, in which you can average up and have the ability ratings be more community-decision instead of personal opinion.

Strong agree with this. Different people have different tastes, especially on such debated topics as Sonic's ability, so I think it's much more fair to have the community get to decide.

 

[rairai104n]

I ran into a wall

heh

The primary issue I had with the wall climb was maintaining speed and flow. Relying on walls to gain height means your horizontal speed is halted, and after surmounting the wall you would need to either manually accelerate or use the ability again. This kind of clunkiness fits Knuckles, but feels wrong for Sonic. My ideal Sonic is a balance of speed and versatility - both Tails and Knuckles sacrifice their speed when using their abilities (well, at least Tails should), but Sonic would be able to gain a smaller amount of extra height without compromising his speed. A double jump is the simplest possible application of this, but I wanted to avoid making any ability which outright increased speed. That does remind me I need to buff the spindash charge speed though. I've never understood why it charges so painfully slowly in SRB2.

While SRB2 is pretty fundamentally different from actual classic Sonic games, the "stop & go" type design of the comet dash fits very consistently with that. The initial dash of it functioned like a traditional air dash which felt pretty good and was useful on it's own, and you only really sacrificed your speed for verticality (something Sonic rarely even has natural access to). It was an ability that made for more interesting and methodical gameplay scenarios while still keeping Sonic as "the basic character" in my opinion, but I suppose it can't helped since you've already settled on the new ability. I think the emphasis on freedom with the arc jump is really cool for what it's worth, but it's lack of utility compared to the comet dash leaves something to be desired.

 

[StarrySunset]

What about the Dropdash? It is provoking speed and it's easy to use! (I know that someone already made this, it's just a suggestion from a user who has NO experience in Lua and SOC.

 

[Wumbo]

Juke Thok

The Juke Thok

While it has no vertical advantage and outright removes Sonic's massive speed boost, the Juke Thok provides alternative methods of recovery in the form of a tiny-but-useful jump boost and the ability to rapidly apply your running speed in any direction (allowing you to "juke" your opponents).

Thanks to Sylve and Bloobsdoop for assistance.

 

[LunickTMM]

Just a quick thought dump:

For those wanting to come up with a new ability, there's quite a few things you need to consider before you decide on the ability: Is it easy to use? Does it ease Sonic's difficulty? And does it function well with the level design?

Is it easy to use? You really need to look at your ability and think about how easy it is to pick up and use. The more times you have to say "if you use it this way, it does this instead" your ability is overly complicated. That doesn't mean it can't do multiple things, but make them intuitive.

Does it ease Sonic's difficulty? One of the main points of contention with thok at all is that Sonic has a significantly more difficult time completing the main campaign compared to Tails and Knuckles. If it doesn't actually assist with platforming at all, the idea is objectively worse than thok.

Does it function well with the level design? This is probably going to be the most difficult and subjective to look at, but if the ability doesn't mesh well with the level design, it simply has no place.

Of course I'm just a spectator so take my ideas as you will, but I feel we're too quick to suggest any idea we have without actually thinking about how it affects things and if it actually tackles the stated problems of the thok. Suggestions like grounded based abilities don't help Sonic out here.

Anyway, good luck to everyone who is working on this.