Time Travel Decomfirmed for Mania

[Alienrun]

Source: https://www.famitsu.com/news/201706/14135044.html

Spoiler

Q: A new trailer was revealed in the end of May.
Iizuka: Yes. In this clip, we added a new stage from ‘Sonic the Hedgehog CD'. There is no time warp element like in the original, but we arranged the stage to add a taste of it.

RIP my hype lol. It's no wonder they only teased Stardust Speedway...makes me wonder how they will accomidate for it? (Also explains why they only showed SS past!)

[Badnik Mechanic]

Is no time travel, but dimension hopping.

[molul]

Makes sens, doesn't it? I mean, think about implementing time travel for a single zone. It's not worth the effort.

And fwiw, I prefer it that way. The time travel wasn't that easy. If it was a simple item that makes you travel, it's ok. But having to run for a while, it's not very "friendly" to me.

[Alienrun]

It honestly wouldn't have been that hard. Just change the mechanic to touch the Past or Future sign and then jump in the stars that come above it ala S3 bonus stages.

Or you know...just do it like in CD.

[Indigo Rush]

And recreate 3 other variations of each Act in addition to whatever crazy stuff they're going to do for Act 2? lol

[Diogenes]

Yeah, I'm not surprised, it wouldn't have been worth the effort to program the mechanics, make/update the art and music for multiple time periods, possibly adjust the level design on top of that, just for one zone and for a mechanic that was never actually fun anyway. Can't say it wouldn't have been neat to see the different time periods of course, but not nearly neat enough to justify the effort.

[Osmium]

Was anyone actually expecting time travel to be in Mania? 

[Alienrun]

7 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

And recreate 3 other variations of each Act in addition to whatever crazy stuff they're going to do for Act 2? lol

It can't be that hard to tweak pre-existing level design right? (even for just 1 or 2 zones)

Still Diogenes makes a good point, but I can't help but feel that the novelty of the zone working as intended would have been worth the extra effort, even if it means we only get 1 CD zone. (Reminder that CD zones are based off Sonic 1 zones so I don't think people would mind that too much, assuming the rest get 2 zones.)

[Salamander]

Not unexpected, but the full statement indicates that there will still be a "taste" of the original time warp element.  I still expect multiple time zones to be homaged in some way, even if it's at least gimmicks and level design imported into the Past version - and at most, who knows?  I also imagine that the fact that it is Past Stardust Speedway won't go unaddressed, even if it's at a minimum Sonic transitioning from the previous zone through a Past sign and transitioning into the next zone through a Future sign.

[Indigo Rush]

3 minutes ago, Alienrun said:

It can't be that hard to tweak pre-existing level design right? (even for just 1 or 2 zones)

You'd essentially be getting 4 Zones that most players may never bother to see, and yes every asset in Mania is rebuilt from the ground up to match the 32-bit fidelity. It's a lot of work and I hate how few people appreciate the differences in detail.

Sonic Mania would not be coming out in August.

[Alienrun]

After giving it some more thought, I guess I can't be too disapointed...

CD was designed to be exploration first, speed second. Mania not so much, even if its main inspiration seems to be CD from level design, it borrows a lot from Sonic 3 as well, and that's a good thing honestly.

4 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

You'd essentially be getting 4 Zones that most players may never bother to see, and yes every asset in Mania is rebuilt from the ground up to match the 32-bit fidelity. It's a lot of work and I hate how few people appreciate the differences in detail.

Sonic Mania would not be coming out in August.

I mean...that's a really good point but...the original game was made from the ground up to so... *shrugs*

[Indigo Rush]

Just now, Alienrun said:

I mean...that's a really good point but...the original game was made from the ground up to so... *shrugs*

What kind of argument is this?

[Alienrun]

2 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

What kind of argument is this?

Sonic Team made the original zones from scratch.

Mania Team has to copy said zones, and re-imagine them from scratch.

Tell me which one is harder? That's my argument...

[Indigo Rush]

2 minutes ago, Alienrun said:

Sonic Team made the original zones from scratch.

Mania Team has to copy said zones, and re-imagine them from scratch.

Tell me which one is harder? That's my argument...

It was never about if it's hard or not, it's if you want the game out by August or not, and if a mechanic that depends on botching the level design is worth said delay?

[Alienrun]

2 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

It was never about if it's hard or not, it's if you want the game out by August or not, and if a mechanic that depends on botching the level design is worth said delay?

I highly doubt any one specific thing would cause a delay. If anything I just assumed development started quite a while ago and they just made a delay just to be on the safe side. (Which I might add is only 3 months, a considerable amount of time but nothing to lose sleep over.)

I also don't wanna start a "Is Sonic CD's level design bad?" argument or anything, but I don't see how adding extra paths that are completely optional "botches" the level design.

[Guest]

I'm completely fine with time-travel not making an appearance. It's understandably a large undertaking for probably very little gain, and then it would imbalance the game contextually. Why would Stardust Speedway have different timezones if the other zones didn't? It wouldn't make sense.

I am a little confused that they chose the past timezone, however. I thought present would make more sense.

[Indigo Rush]

10 minutes ago, Alienrun said:

I highly doubt any one specific thing would cause a delay.

Yes, yes it absolutely would.

Quote

I also don't wanna start a "Is Sonic CD's level design bad?" argument or anything, but I don't see how adding extra paths that are completely optional "botches" the level design.

You actually don't understand how Sonic CD's level design works, do you? The levels aren't built to have "extra paths that are optional," but to be wide open playgrounds where it's possible to backtrack to the very beginning of the Act; the level structure itself and the object placement discourages forward progression and encourages the player to backtrack - this is a clear distinction from the level design of Sonic 2 or Sonic 3&K, which is what Sonic Mania is built upon. Changing the level design for one Zone (potentially more Zones) to not only include 3 (6 since the second Act heavily remixes things) extra variations (that few people care about) is a really, really dumb idea and a waste of time and resources. 

A more reasonable expectation would be for the second Act to change to the Future variation or something, something that doesn't obstruct the level design philosophies of the rest of the game.

[Alienrun]

1 minute ago, Indigo Rush said:

You actually don't understand how Sonic CD's level design works, do you? The levels aren't built to have "extra paths that are optional," but to be wide open playgrounds where it's possible to backtrack to the very beginning of the Act; the level structure itself and the object placement discourages forward progression and encourages the player to backtrack - this is a clear distinction from the level design of Sonic 2 or Sonic 3&K, which is what Sonic Mania is built upon. Changing the level design for one Zone (potentially more Zones) to not only include 3 (6 since the second Act heavily remixes things) extra variations (that few people care about) is a really, really dumb idea. 

Here's the thing...since there will be no "Robotiziser" or whatever, there would be no need to have the zones be as backtrackable, they can be designed like (or similar to) all the other mania levels. Also, when I said "extra paths" what I meant was the time travel gimmick invisibly putting extra paths, AKA Extra Timezones.

In that regard they are optional and wouldn't get in the way of just going through the levels fast. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to interpretation.

TL;DR Some people would actually like a Time Travel feature.

[expansivelovestories]

I think he is implying something still very special exists in this zone!     

Quote

There is no time warp element like in the original, but we arranged the stage to add a taste of it.

 

[Alienrun]

Honestly though...I would have loved to see some instant time warping in this game. To this day I'm surprised that wasn't implemented into Remastered Sonic CD as that was the original intention of the game but was cut due to hardware limitations.

Maybe that's the "taste" Iizuka is talking about! (Still I would have perfered a more natural approach to this.)

[Blue Wisp]

Wild mass guessing here, but with the "We arranged the stage a bit" part I had a thought that the stage design (not layout) would change as you go forward, maybe starting in the past and ending in the future by Act 2. 

[Faseeh]

42 minutes ago, Theodore Wispvelt said:

Wild mass guessing here, but with the "We arranged the stage a bit" part I had a thought that the stage design (not layout) would change as you go forward, maybe starting in the past and ending in the future by Act 2. 

This is most likely what will happen, with the music prolly having homages. It'll be better than the original Sonic CD, trust me

[TheOcelot]

Yeah, makes sense. Re-imagining four versions of the same zone would have required an insane amount of programming. So just sticking to the past version - which has a lovely aesthetic - is smart.

I'm gonna make a wild prediction. *SSMB draws breath in anticipation*

Act 1 of Mania SS will take place in the past (which will include both acts 1&2 from the original version and new layouts) with a mini-boss similar perhaps to the Metal Sonic boss-race from the original.

Act2 will take place in the Present or Good future version:

Then the Eggman boss for act2 will be a re-imagined version of Taxman's R9 Sonic CD Final boss concept:

 

 

 

[JezMM]

Yeah I imagined it would be that the time zone would change at fixed parts of the stage that can't be avoided, but that was like my "without limitations" imagining of it, said limitations being:

1. Recreating the art for multiple time zones

2. Do we provide suitable remixes of the music too?

3. How do we even do this in a way that isn't super confusing for anyone who hasn't played Sonic CD and thus isn't aware that it involved time travel and were just treating Stardust Speedway as another level of Sonic Mania until now?

 

It sounds like whatever time travel-related elements are in the stage, they'll be minimal, which honestly piques my curiosity more on what they have done.

[Tracker_TD]

Yeah, fair play. Reworking level design, making new graphics, making new music, all that (and per act, too)... it just wouldn't be worth it when that time could go to more important things. I like Ocelot's suggestion though!