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S.L.W. Screenshots (P. 54) "Grammar Errors? This game is a sequel to Sonic's Schoolhouse!?"


Badnik Mechanic

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Having large levels isn't really the problem. If I'm not wrong, doing large levels properly boils down to how effectively the rendering engine can load the stage on the move. I think that's principally what the Hedgehog Engine was created for (though I hear from some, that it isn't terribly good by today's standards).

 

For a Sonic game, I think that 12 stages with 2-3 acts from 3-6 minutes long is the perfect balance (if its possible to pull off within 2-3 years with moderately large levels). Maybe some extra gimmick acts tossed in as optional extras would be nice.

I know lag is mainly caused by the game trying to load assets while the player is progressing as you said, but large levels (with high amounts of detail) still have an effect. Even if you weren't going through the level in Unleashed Adabat the game still lagged due to how much was going on. And I take back saying they should go the Colors route, they were lazy with making 'new' stages...

Edited by WiiUOne
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I remember people complaining about how Generations looked when the first trailer was released, and people saying it was jaggy and not as good as Unleashed.

 

 I'm not going to dig through the old topics to find it, but I believe it involved people scaling the images to a degree you would never see them in game and claiming they were ugly.

This reminds me, have people noticed the draw distance on the grass yet? :V

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This reminds me, have people noticed the draw distance on the grass yet? :V

I noticed, hilariously it looks better than the shit low res grass in Generations!

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It's weird because if you look at the 3D screens on the first page, it actually looks like we're going to have legit (slower) expanded platforming sections.

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I know lag is mainly caused by the game trying to load assets while the player is progressing as you said, but large levels (with high amounts of detail) still have an effect. Even if you weren't going through the level in Unleashed Adabat the game still lagged due to how much was going on. And I take back saying they should go the Colors route, they were lazy with making 'new' stages...

 

The size of the levels can be mitigated by having Sonic not go at 300mph at all times. The stages would therefore no longer need to be as ridiculously massive, which I suppose would ease the burden of rendering it all on the move.

 

Anyway, I reckon the best way to go about this is to design a rather large stage, and then break it off into 2-3 acts. Load only the parts relevant to each act. That way the acts feel connected, but aren't inhibiting performance due to the overall scale of the level. I don't know how that would work on a technical level though.

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Might have said this already before but I really don't like Generations' art direction. It looks nice in screenshots but in motion there is just too much going on in the background, mostly in the Classic Sonic sections. It was jarring a few times in Green Hill Zone how a few blocks that looked close enough to the foreground weren't able to be stepped on, and when I watched the area I just really wanted to explore the areas beyond rather than going forward. It's a very distracting direction, and for a fast paced game like Sonic I welcome the new art direction. It makes things a lot more discernible where the focus should be.

Funny, I personally feel like Mario and Sonic ought to both switch art direction focus. The Galaxy approach works better for Sonic as proven here, but for the regularly paced adventure the Sonic Generations direction would probably work well with Mario.

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I might be a little late to the discussion about graphics changing before final release but near the final release of Generations they added a bridge to GHZ Act 1. tongue.png

 

3zq5t.jpg

 

Demo 2 is basically final, since they released the demo like 2 weeks before the final game release, if I remember correctly.

 

Demo 2 has more smoother graphics than Demo 1 as well.

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I'm glad people on this forum are finally rediscovering the value of 60 fps, something that has been disregarded ever since we made a big deal about how badly the PS2 version of Heroes ran.

 

I never disregarded 60fps...but since SO many console games ran at 30fps this current generation, we kinda got used to it.

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More like SEGA released screenshots at sizes you would never see them and this made the flaws more obvious. People them scaled them down to more reasonable sizes (1080x, 720x and lower) and they still looked pretty poor. Generations is very jaggy and blurry though. It runs at a low resolution and gets stretched to fit the supposed HD resolutions.

 

Yeah, but I remember someone took a picture of Green Hill's entrance on the Hub World and showed how it looked up close(which you'd never actually see in game, it's in the background). Maybe that was on Sonic Retro and not here, though. It gets jumbled together sometimes lol.

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Yeah, but I remember someone took a picture of Green Hill's entrance on the Hub World and showed how it looked up close(which you'd never actually see in game, it's in the background). Maybe that was on Sonic Retro and not here, though. It gets jumbled together sometimes lol.

 

Doesn't matter what people did to the picture. Fact is that it looked bad. Generations seriously suffered from lack of AA and low res textures.

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Might have said this already before but I really don't like Generations' art direction. It looks nice in screenshots but in motion there is just too much going on in the background, mostly in the Classic Sonic sections. It was jarring a few times in Green Hill Zone how a few blocks that looked close enough to the foreground weren't able to be stepped on, and when I watched the area I just really wanted to explore the areas beyond rather than going forward.

Perhaps then, it shouldn't be used in the context of 2D gameplay. I know the bit in Green Hill Zone, that you're talking about, where the background looks like its a part of the foreground you're interacting with. Didn't happen very often after that though.

 

It's a very distracting direction, and for a fast paced game like Sonic I welcome the new art direction. It makes things a lot more discernible where the focus should be.

What exactly is so disctracting about it in a 3D game? Plenty of 3D games offer backdrops that you aren't necessarily able to interact with. And again, maybe its the problem that a lot of Generations 3D gameplay was also in 2D, and the fact that you were going far too quicky in what was basically a straight line. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be as "distracting" if Sonic were to move a little slower (and not be moving at top-speed for pretty much the whole of the stage), the level design wasn't as much of a race-track to the end, and you were actually allowed to interact with more of the scenery.

And what do you mean about the new art style? The new style of more cartoony texturing? Cause I could get behind that. Or the fact that the stage is a giant tube floating in space? Cause if its the latter, then I whole-heartedly disagree. I think I've made it plenty clear before exactly why I don't think that is a design choice that should ever be made permanent with the Sonic series.

 

Funny, I personally feel like Mario and Sonic ought to both switch art direction focus. The Galaxy approach works better for Sonic as proven here, but for the regularly paced adventure the Sonic Generations direction would probably work well with Mario.

The Mario series has never really had an art style which matches Generations or Unleashed. Its always been about simple shapes and bright colours. SMG, despite having better graphical capabilities didn't make everything more "real" or more detailed, it just increased its fidelity. There were more polygons, higher res textures. Changing Mario to look more like Generations would create a massive shift in the Mario series' visual design paradigm. I wouldn't expect to see Mario wandering around in a stage that looked like Jungle Joyride day, and to be honest, it wouldn't really fit (if we're talking about a main-series Mario game).

The same is true of Sonic games, but vice versa. Since like.....Sonic 2, probably even earlier in parts of Sonic 1, the art style has always seemed to be more about trying to create as much detail as possible. All the level tiles had as much detailed crammed into them as possible.

Edited by Scar
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Honestly, for Sonic, I prefer more detail in the environments than simplicity. It gives it more striking beauty to the aesthetics and is far more eye-gasmic when you look at how stunning it is. It adds to the edgier feel Sonic has in contrast to the cuter feel of Mario, and gives it a greater identity on its own as well as making Sonic's environments feel a lot more alive and busier.

 

Lost World isn't really a downgrade as far as the direction goes, but I'd rather go back to having more detail in the environments.

 

EDIT: I misunderstood people's points. Lol...

Edited by ChaosSupremeSonîc
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Anyway, I reckon the best way to go about this is to design a rather large stage, and then break it off into 2-3 acts. Load only the parts relevant to each act. That way the acts feel connected, but aren't inhibiting performance due to the overall scale of the level. I don't know how that would work on a technical level though.

 

That's EXACTLY what they did with Colors.

 

I also remember a ton of people complaining that idea was stupid in Colors.

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That's EXACTLY what they did with Colors.

 

I also remember a ton of people complaining that idea was stupid in Colors.

 

It's a pretty unnecessary method really. If the acts are supposed to feel connected, all they need is to start in the same place a previous act finished. There's no need to design a single huge level and break it up. You just copy the scenery from one ending to the start of another. But if the acts aren't seamless (ala S3K) I don't even see why they have to feel connected. 

Edited by Blue Blood
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It's a pretty unnecessary method really. If the acts are supposed to feel connected, all they need is to start in the same place a previous act finished. There's no need to design a single huge level and break it up. You just copy the scenery from one ending to the start of another. But if the acts aren't seamless (ala S3K) I don't even see why they have to feel connected. 

 

Sweet Mountain Act 1 and 2 were directly connected....that's the only example I can think of when it comes to Colours.

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Sweet Mountain Act 1 and 2 were directly connected....that's the only example I can think of when it comes to Colours.

 

SM 1&2, AP 1&4, AC 1&2 (I think it's too, if not a different act). There was many occasions where it was the case. But Colours literally loaded the entirety of the level geometry each time, so there were masses of unused areas in each act. It's a waste.

 

What I mean by seamless though is without any loading screens or without leaving the level. In S3K you beat one act and the start the next without moving an inch. Colours takes you back to the menu or a loading screen. If they're doing that, I don't really think proper act transitions are important.

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SM 1&2, AP 1&4, AC 1&2 (I think it's too, if not a different act). There was many occasions where it was the case. But Colours literally loaded the entirety of the level geometry each time, so there were masses of unused areas in each act. It's a waste.

 

What I mean by seamless though is without any loading screens or without leaving the level. In S3K you beat one act and the start the next without moving an inch. Colours takes you back to the menu or a loading screen. If they're doing that, I don't really think proper act transitions are important.

Or at the very least, maybe they could add a feature similar to the "Play the Next Act" feature Sonic 4 had during the result screen, so you can go straight to the next level without having to deal with going through the menu and extra loading screens, but also give the options to "replay an act" or "Exit to Menu" like Generations.

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So just a few days ago everyone (except me, hopelessly trying to voice my opinion as something that makes sense) loved this new art tirection but now more and more people really start to prefer a much prettier and fitting one that was in Unleashed era games?

 

Yeah, that's the Sonic fanbase I know. I won't be surprised when the game comes out and this art direction gets more and more disapproval and there will be demand for that one from Unleashed-Generations to return.

Edited by ArtFenix
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Well, I don't know about anyone else here, but I genuinely like the new art direction they're going for with this game. To put it laconically, it's just more appealing to me than that of the "Boost Era" titles. Is that really so wrong?

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I'm neutral on the new artstyle. I don't really love it or hate it. I'm just waiting to see the game more in action.

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Thanks Cap, I'll keep that in mind. No need for teaching me anything, really:).

Still, I am looking forward to some time after the game will have come out to see the tendency develop.
 

 

By 2040, predictions say, we'll reach technological singularity. When that happens, we'll likely be able to connect to Google Brain and stream unified thoughts directly into the internet.

 

Unlikely. Because yeah. I know.

Edited by ArtFenix
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I still like the artstyle. I admit I prefer the Unleashed/Colours/Gens artstyle but I still like this art for what it is, and I know it has a purpose for being this way: smoother gameplay with less framerate issues. 

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Well, I don't know about anyone else here, but I genuinely like the new art direction they're going for with this game. To put it laconically, it's just more appealing to me than that of the "Boost Era" titles. Is that really so wrong?

 

As I've said before, I absolutely love both and cant pick a pick a favourite. The apparent implications of the LW style compared to the Unleashed one though would suggest it's easier and cheaper to develop for. And that would make it a clear winner over the time, data and money intensive style of Unleashed and subsequent games.

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Maybe since the graphics aren't so intensive this time...

 

WE'LL GET A GAME LONGER THAN TWO HOURS OH MY I'M GETTING STEAMY JUST THINKING ABOUT IT

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