Tyler's Stuff

[Shiron]

It's been a while since I've posted anything I've worked on here but I don't see the harm in doing so now, so I guess I'll start a thread and share whatever I'm doing.

I've been working on some maps in the last year. I haven't gotten very far at all on any of them, but I feel like they're at least screenshot worthy.

Right now I'm working on a single player level pack. I haven't decided on a name yet, but I've just been calling it Sonic Surge for the sake of being organized. idk how many maps I'm gonna make total; I think I'm just gonna make stuff and work it into the pack instead of planning the entire campaign out.

(btw the sky is set to the default greenflower zone sky in all these screenshots bc im lazy and forgot to change the header before taking screenshots lol)

Spoiler

I started this map around fall of last year. It's your basic green-y first zone type of level, but set in the area of a giant ruined temple. Not much else to say about this I guess :/

Spoiler

This is meant to be the third zone in my pack. No concrete reason as to why that is, I just think it's significantly harder than the first zone but still pretty easy. I started this map just last week, but I personally think it has the most potential out of all these maps considering how simple the premise is.

It's pretty much just a swamp with some wood-based structures in it. There's a gimmick where you sink into tiny holes of mud with a hidden spring in them, and use that to get to higher grounds. Also if you take the time to explore, there's hidden springs in the giant mud lakes that can take you to secret areas you couldn't get to with Sonic.

Spoiler

As you can probably tell, this is the least polished map in the pack so far. I'm going to spruce it up with some custom textures and better detail eventually but I've always had trouble adding custom textures, even when I tried to add some recently ;w;

This level is an abandoned toy shop that's been iced over. I plan on adding outside areas that take place in a city or village or something, but I need to practice mapping outside sections more. This level is more difficult than Mud Splash as of now, so I'll place it as the fourth zone.

I'm really hoping I can continue to work on these a lot and hopefully turn them into a fleshed-out level pack, but I'm about to go off to college so of course I'll be busy with school work soon. Despite that, I would love to hear some feedback!

 

[Inazuma]

Not bad so far! The levels are a bit bland though. Try working on texture usage and object placements

 

[Shiron]

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I need to add more objects and make the textures more varied. For example, I've come to the realization just now that Mud Splash has too much brown in it :p

Honestly if I could get custom textures working I'd add the Asset Pack and work with those textures in a heartbeat, but for some reason every time I try to set them up they never turn out right or they just don't show up. It's my fault but I just need to take the time to figure out what I'm doing wrong, I guess.

 

[Shiron]

Some new screenshots. Hopefully Mud Splash looks better; I tried adding more color to it. Plus I finally got off my lazy ass and put in some custom textures! I used Spherallic's Asset Pack, plus some orange-y brick textures ripped from Sonic Adventure.

Spoiler

 

[Larz T]

That's honestly a really good improvement comparing the new Mud Splash Zone screenies to the old ones.

 

[STHE123O]

Lookin good. Mud Splash has 2 different paths at the beggining? Great!

 

[Shiron]

Thanks! I was hoping the visual improvements would help make the map less dull.

And yeah STHE123O, I'm trying to make my maps as open as possible while still having a general direction. The path split at the beginning is probably a bit too obvious, but later on in the map I'm having the path splits be more open-ended, like instead of just two separate hallways to go down there's multiple ways to get to the exit of a room.

That being said, I might redo the beginning of Mud Splash. Something about the starting room just seems cramped and kinda uninspired but that may just be me :/ One possible idea I had is that the player starts out in the mud, with a spring just under the mud that takes the player to the road you see in the first screenshot. It's not much of an improvement, but at least the player is introduced to the whole mud-spring gimmick from the start, and they don't just start the stage standing.

Also, on that topic, I'm completely redoing the start of Lost Temple. The player starts in a short waterslide that leads to diagonal springs that take the player to an open field where they can make their way to the temple parts of the map. Hopefully it's a more exciting way to start the level pack off ^-^ I'll edit this post with screenshots of that once I add some detail and make it acceptable to show off lol

 

[MarioFreak2001]

This looks great so far!

 

[Shiron]

https://gfycat.com/ThoseSelfassuredDingo

here's a giant gif of a huge portion of what I have so far for Mud Splash. A lot of the different paths you can take aren't shown, and there's a path split before entering the inside tree area that contains more swampy stuff. It's not as fleshed out as the tree path is, so I didn't show it. I'll probably post a pic of the swamp area when it looks better.

Also if the gif doesn't work, please let me know and I'll try something different :p

 

[Larz T]

Hey, gif works on my end by the way. I really like the look and the design of the level and I was glad to actually see it in action. It looks nice and open but not to a point where it can be overwhelming or too cramped. One question though, for mud pits that don't have springs underneath them, will it hurt the player when they touch the bottom or will they just sink and touch the bottom of the floor safely?

 

[Shiron]

The large open areas of mud behave just like the normal mud puddles. They don't hurt you or kill you when you sink, the only harm they cause is slowing the player down if they land in it.

 

[sphere]

Mud Splash looks very promising so far! It's good to see a level built with exploration in mind, and I noticed quite a few clever ideas while watching the gif.

However, I'd really advise against using blue springs and having ledges of 128 fracunits high. It's kind of annoying to have ledges that you just barely can't jump up with a regular jump (especially as Sonic), while blue springs disrupt the flow of the level a bit too much. Instead, I'd rework those areas to be clearable normally, for example by adding slopes, stairs or another ledge.

Aside from that, I don't have any real complaints about the level so far. Keep up the good work!

 

[Shiron]

Thanks for the feedback Spherallic! I'll work on removing the blue springs and adjusting the level accordingly.