The Perfect Hunt

[Chaotic Chao]

Edit: This should've gone in the suggestions board I didn't notice, haha...!
Double Edit: Nevermind, the suggestions board is only for singular posts and not threads so it's too late anyway =S

I know the gametype isn't used very often, but I've been making a lot of emerald hunts lately and I feel like it could use a couple of mechanics to make it much better.

The first is simple: hint balls. Just like the ones in Sonic Adventure, you'd touch one of these floating orbs and it would fly toward the closest emerald piece (and totally ignoring collision). This would be great for bigger emerald hunt maps and could keep players from tearing their hair out...unless you WANT that. Totally optional, after all.

The second thing is a bit more complicated. In Sonic Adventure 2, the emerald pieces/keys/chaos emeralds always spawned as far away from each other as possible so you wouldn't have, for instance two emeralds right next to each other (which can very easily happen in SRB2). I think the game would benefit from doing what SA2 did by having the spawning calculate by distance - one emerald spawns in any random location, then the second spawns as far away from the first as possible, then the third spawns such that it chooses a spawn point as far away from both as it can calculate. This way there won't be situations where you can beat an emerald hunt level in 10 seconds because the emeralds all just so happened to spawn within 6 inches of each other despite there being like 100 other spawn points...

Last and probably least since it's the most unnecessary I think, is that it would be cool if emeralds could occasionally spawn inside enemies. Both Adventure games did this. Maybe a flag or something you could check on an enemy to validate it as a possible spawn point?

At any rate, just some potential improvements I thought of.

 

[742mph]

I second this. Emerald Hunt levels aren't very commonly made, but maybe they'd get more love if mechanics like these were added to make them more interesting and a little less based on the dumb luck of where the emeralds will spawn.

 

[Boo]

Well, yeah, this is a good suggestion the improvement of an Emerald Hunt, Srb2's emerald hunt isnt that interesting, just a bit boring, so i see that it may be needing improvements, but i see only the good side of this improvement, im not sure about the consequences.

 

[MK.exe]

I third this. I find emerald hunt maps underrated.

gosh... the last emerald map i played was Fres's Sugoi entry, and i found that mildly refreshing from all the SP maps (no offence to all the entries, they were all great!)

 

[Chaotic Chao]

Just thought of something else. Could have it so an emerald can move around on its own like some of the ones in SA2 do (like that one that circles the main room in Wild Canyon I seem to frequently get, for example).
Glad everyone agrees...I think these changes would be cool to see in a future release, if the devs care enough about it.

 

[Boo]

Well i think it would be hard for the developers to program the emerald to move, but it seems like a good idea, if you know what am i saying.
But i think they are, that would add more things(items) to srb2.srb.

 

[sluggard]

Well i think it would be hard for the developers to program the emerald to move

Not really, But making them move in a Pathway might..

 

[Boo]

Not really, But making them move in a Pathway might..

Yes, its probably easy to make them go straight, but i mean making them curve while they move around.

 

[sluggard]

That wouldn't be a problem either.

 

[SANICBOOM644]

I figure it would work similarly to the Metal Sonic race where a player records the movement and Metal Sonic follows the instructions.

 

[Boo]

If they can, but its also a good suggestion, just similar to the moving emerald.

 

[Chaotic Chao]

Wouldn't waypoints be the easiest way to do that? I'd imagine you could use the angle of the emerald hunt location thing to have it follow a specific set of waypoints before looping back around to the first...seems like it'd be the most sensible way to have one move.

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Some of these ideas sound interesting indeed (like making enemies able to have an emerald, that would be tricky to put into code though), though I can't see us going the extra mile to recreate Sonic Adventure or Adventure 2's Emerald hunting level gameplay entirely. Particularly since we don't use Emerald Hunt in our own levels anymore, I mean.

Doesn't necessarily mean we won't do anything at all though, obviously some people still care about it. =P

Also yeah waypoints would be the way to have moving emeralds, having full Metal Sonic-style demos would be too much for something that's not even remotely like a player.

 

[Superjustinbros]

I'd be down for seeing this- it'd make for some good scavenger hunts if you make maps big enough.