Try and Predict What the Next Main Sonic Game Will Be Like

[DabigRG]

5 minutes ago, Jango said:

 

But no. When they finally got the formula down, they throw away, and try a new gameplay that frankly controls like ass, just later on RETURN to the boost gameplay, but nerfed big time in both movement and level design. It's like those bastards are mocking us or something.

And That's because Forces apparently uses an engine similar to that of Lost World.

[Jango]

11 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

And That's because Forces apparently uses an engine similar to that of Lost World.

Which doesn't excuse them one bit, it actually just make them look even dumber. Why in heavens they tried to replicate the boost gameplay using the Lost World engine, instead of using the actual boost engine they already nail'd down before? This is beyond stupidity... They had no idea of what they were doing in Forces. I'm surprised at how the game didn't turned into another Sonic 06.

[DabigRG]

11 minutes ago, Jango said:

Which doesn't excuse them one bit, it actually just make them look even dumber. Why in heavens they tried to replicate the boost gameplay using the Lost World engine, instead of using the actual boost engine they already nail'd down before? This is beyond stupidity... They had no idea of what they were doing in Forces. I'm surprised at how the game didn't turned into another Sonic 06.

I have little clue.

One would think it's because that's the most up to date game engine they had, though the fact that there were only 3 level designers(one from Lost World, one from Colors, and one brand new) may also have been a factor.

[MadmanRB]

17 hours ago, Jango said:

Which doesn't excuse them one bit, it actually just make them look even dumber. Why in heavens they tried to replicate the boost gameplay using the Lost World engine, instead of using the actual boost engine they already nail'd down before? This is beyond stupidity... They had no idea of what they were doing in Forces. I'm surprised at how the game didn't turned into another Sonic 06.

Well from my understanding they switched the engine to be more ready for high def, with 1440p and 4K displays being more popular now the old engine may not have had the scruples to pull it off.

Its actually not a stupid decision when you look at it that way, however yes the game could have spent more time in the oven

[Multikaris]

5 hours ago, MadmanRB said:

Well from my understanding they switched the engine to be more ready for high def, with 1440p and 4K displays being more popular now the old engine may not have had the scruples to pull it off.

Its actually not a stupid decision when you look at it that way, however yes the game could have spent more time in the oven

They could have modified the original boost engine, though. 

[Blue Blood]

12 hours ago, MadmanRB said:

Well from my understanding they switched the engine to be more ready for high def, with 1440p and 4K displays being more popular now the old engine may not have had the scruples to pull it off.

Its actually not a stupid decision when you look at it that way, however yes the game could have spent more time in the oven

Right, no.

Unleashed was the first game from Sonic Team that utilised the Hedgehog Engine as a rendering/lighting system; this was mainly so that level geometry could be loaded and unloaded on the fly, without the need for loading screens in levels and so that it could all be achieved with the global illumination lighting systems that the game emoloys. It used their own in-house engine for gameplay/physics based on the Havok Engine. Generations adapted both of these engines further to suit its needs and Lost World adapted Generations. Both large and small changes to made to the engines each time because that's what game development involves.

With Forces being released on much more powerful hardware, the Hedgehog Engine was given significant upgrades to its rendering capabilities. They referred to it as the Hedgehog Engine 2, and included within that name the latest iteration of the physics/gameplay engine. The graphical capabilities of the engine don't dictate what the gameplay can and can't be. Forces was built on Lost World which was built on Generations which was built on Unleashed.

Forces could play exactly like Generations if Sonic Team wanted it to/had the time to do it/weren't so incompetent (take your pick). The fact is that they chose to have acceleration as a binary setting in Forces, they chose not to implement Sonic's drift move, they choose to have Classic Sonic control the way he does etc etc. It's not as if these factors were somehow set in stone by the game being based on Lost World.

[MadmanRB]

7 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Right, no.

Unleashed was the first game from Sonic Team that utilised the Hedgehog Engine as a rendering/lighting system; this was mainly so that level geometry could be loaded and unloaded on the fly, without the need for loading screens in levels and so that it could all be achieved with the global illumination lighting systems that the game emoloys. It used their own in-house engine for gameplay/physics based on the Havok Engine. Generations adapted both of these engines further to suit its needs and Lost World adapted Generations. Both large and small changes to made to the engines each time because that's what game development involves.

With Forces being released on much more powerful hardware, the Hedgehog Engine was given significant upgrades to its rendering capabilities. They referred to it as the Hedgehog Engine 2, and included within that name the latest iteration of the physics/gameplay engine. The graphical capabilities of the engine don't dictate what the gameplay can and can't be. Forces was built on Lost World which was built on Generations which was built on Unleashed.

Forces could play exactly like Generations if Sonic Team wanted it to/had the time to do it/weren't so incompetent (take your pick). The fact is that they chose to have acceleration as a binary setting in Forces, they chose not to implement Sonic's drift move, they choose to have Classic Sonic control the way he does etc etc. It's not as if these factors were somehow set in stone by the game being based on Lost World.

Correct, again it all makes sense when you cobble the pieces together.

Though the way Sonic team does that is with a square peg in a triangle hole and they use a spoon to hammer it in

[DabigRG]

7 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Right, no.

Unleashed was the first game from Sonic Team that utilised the Hedgehog Engine as a rendering/lighting system; this was mainly so that level geometry could be loaded and unloaded on the fly, without the need for loading screens in levels and so that it could all be achieved with the global illumination lighting systems that the game emoloys. It used their own in-house engine for gameplay/physics based on the Havok Engine. Generations adapted both of these engines further to suit its needs and Lost World adapted Generations. Both large and small changes to made to the engines each time because that's what game development involves.

With Forces being released on much more powerful hardware, the Hedgehog Engine was given significant upgrades to its rendering capabilities. They referred to it as the Hedgehog Engine 2, and included within that name the latest iteration of the physics/gameplay engine. The graphical capabilities of the engine don't dictate what the gameplay can and can't be. Forces was built on Lost World which was built on Generations which was built on Unleashed.

Forces could play exactly like Generations if Sonic Team wanted it to/had the time to do it/weren't so incompetent (take your pick). The fact is that they chose to have acceleration as a binary setting in Forces, they chose not to implement Sonic's drift move, they choose to have Classic Sonic control the way he does etc etc. It's not as if these factors were somehow set in stone by the game being based on Lost World.

Wait, what? Lost World uses the Hedgehog Engine?!

[Blue Blood]

12 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Wait, what? Lost World uses the Hedgehog Engine?!

Yes. Without going into the technical stuff because I don't understand that either, the best indication of it is GI and how the environment itself lights Sonic. You can see it here on Sonic, as the green of the environment around him is bounced off of him.

That game achieved a (relatively) stable 60FPS on Wii U by heavily modifying the engine. Most lighting effects were removed or toned down entirely, with the GI even being significantly toned down from before.

The engine is what the system can handle/learn, not everything that it necessarily down. As I said in a previous post, the Hedgehog Engine was designed with large levels in mind where geometry would be loaded and unloaded at certain checkpoints. Have you ever seen speedruns of Unleashed of Generations where people skip huge parts and the level end up looking invisible? That's because they skipped the part to load the geometry in. Lost World actually completely does away with this feature, making it pretty much impossible to port over the huge levels of something like Generations.

[MadmanRB]

37 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Yes. Without going into the technical stuff because I don't understand that either, the best indication of it is GI and how the environment itself lights Sonic. You can see it here on Sonic, as the green of the environment around him is bounced off of him.

That game achieved a (relatively) stable 60FPS on Wii U by heavily modifying the engine. Most lighting effects were removed or toned down entirely, with the GI even being significantly toned down from before.

The engine is what the system can handle/learn, not everything that it necessarily down. As I said in a previous post, the Hedgehog Engine was designed with large levels in mind where geometry would be loaded and unloaded at certain checkpoints. Have you ever seen speedruns of Unleashed of Generations where people skip huge parts and the level end up looking invisible? That's because they skipped the part to load the geometry in. Lost World actually completely does away with this feature, making it pretty much impossible to port over the huge levels of something like Generations.

well maybe not impossible but certainly hard to do.

But this goes down to using a custom engine for your games, its both a good and a bad thing.

On one hand I find it cool the Sonic games use its own engine as opposed to say unity or unreal, but on the other hand creating your own in house engine is very complex and hard to do.

I will be fair to Sonic team on this point, the engine itself may be a tricky beast.

Plus add in you have to code said engine so it works on all your platforms makes it even harder.

And not saying going multi platform is a bad thing, hell I am happy sonic games are coming to the PC myself.

But i do know that coding an engine can be hard and its often the thing that can make or break a game.

Perhaps another revamp is in order.... I dunno that can go both ways.

No matter how you slice it its going to be a no win situation for sonic team.

Kobayashi Maru indeed.

 

[DabigRG]

48 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Yes. Without going into the technical stuff because I don't understand that either, the best indication of it is GI and how the environment itself lights Sonic. You can see it here on Sonic, as the green of the environment around him is bounced off of him.

That game achieved a (relatively) stable 60FPS on Wii U by heavily modifying the engine. Most lighting effects were removed or toned down entirely, with the GI even being significantly toned down from before.

The engine is what the system can handle/learn, not everything that it necessarily down. As I said in a previous post, the Hedgehog Engine was designed with large levels in mind where geometry would be loaded and unloaded at certain checkpoints. Have you ever seen speedruns of Unleashed of Generations where people skip huge parts and the level end up looking invisible? That's because they skipped the part to load the geometry in. Lost World actually completely does away with this feature, making it pretty much impossible to port over the huge levels of something like Generations.

Huh. Guess that does retroactively explain why Forces looks weird at times.

What is GI?

[Blue Blood]

20 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Huh. Guess that does retroactively explain why Forces looks weird at times.

What is GI?

Global illumination. I don't understand it well enough to begin explaining it, so Google is going to be your friend here. Or watch this video about the Hedgehog Engine itself: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1428/Global-Illumination-in-SONIC

Just a small snippet of what you can see in the video; Sonic Team took a level from Black Knight and ported it to Unleashed, with fully rendered GI, light fields and everything else:

Pics are super low quality because I stripped these out of a post I made on Retro like, four years ago.

[MadmanRB]

1 minute ago, Blue Blood said:

Global illumination. I don't understand it well enough to begin explaining it, so Google is going to be your friend here.

But here's some interesting pictures from way ack when Sonic Team were showcasing the HE years ago. They took a level from Black Knight and ported it to Unleashed, with full GI (and everything else):

That makes sense though, GI giving more realistic lighting and all that.

Would be a bitch to code for though (not to mention ray tracing starting to become a thing gonna make it even harder)

[Blue Blood]

Just now, MadmanRB said:

That makes sense though, GI giving more realistic lighting and all that.

Would be a bitch to code for though (not to mention ray tracing starting to become a thing gonna make it even harder)

Part of the HE2, if I recall correctly, if that it's capable or doing a lot more on the fly than the original HE wherein everything had to be pre-baked.

[Jango]

9 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Right, no.

Unleashed was the first game from Sonic Team that utilised the Hedgehog Engine as a rendering/lighting system; this was mainly so that level geometry could be loaded and unloaded on the fly, without the need for loading screens in levels and so that it could all be achieved with the global illumination lighting systems that the game emoloys. It used their own in-house engine for gameplay/physics based on the Havok Engine. Generations adapted both of these engines further to suit its needs and Lost World adapted Generations. Both large and small changes to made to the engines each time because that's what game development involves.

With Forces being released on much more powerful hardware, the Hedgehog Engine was given significant upgrades to its rendering capabilities. They referred to it as the Hedgehog Engine 2, and included within that name the latest iteration of the physics/gameplay engine. The graphical capabilities of the engine don't dictate what the gameplay can and can't be. Forces was built on Lost World which was built on Generations which was built on Unleashed.

Forces could play exactly like Generations if Sonic Team wanted it to/had the time to do it/weren't so incompetent (take your pick). The fact is that they chose to have acceleration as a binary setting in Forces, they chose not to implement Sonic's drift move, they choose to have Classic Sonic control the way he does etc etc. It's not as if these factors were somehow set in stone by the game being based on Lost World.

Exactly, but why tho'? I'm pretty sure the Havok engine should work on PS4. They could've just imported the Generations settings and properties and build from that, like they did with Unleashed to Generations, as you said... Instead they got the Lost World data and tried to make it play "kinda" like Generations, which just ended up feeling uncanny for obvious reasons. They had the structure ready to go, if they really wanted Modern Sonic in Forces to play like Generations, they should've just got the data from Generations, not modify Lost World. It just seen stupid and more work...

But hey, this is Sonic Team, maybe they actually wanted to make a mess. Not to mention, Forces was made by newbies, perhaps they just didn't thought about using Generations data :V

[MadmanRB]

3 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Part of the HE2, if I recall correctly, if that it's capable or doing a lot more on the fly than the original HE wherein everything had to be pre-baked.

well in that case it does make sense why the HE2 exists despite its drawbacks it will gain in others.

Again seems typical for a in house game engine, win some, lose some.

[Detective Kaito]

56 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Global illumination. I don't understand it well enough to begin explaining it, so Google is going to be your friend here. Or watch this video about the Hedgehog Engine itself: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1428/Global-Illumination-in-SONIC

 Just a small snippet of what you can see in the video; Sonic Team took a level from Black Knight and ported it to Unleashed, with fully rendered GI, light fields and everything else:



Pics are super low quality because I stripped these out of a post I made on Retro like, four years ago.

Damn, Sonic Team actually did that? This is so weird and cool at the same time lol

[BaronGrackle]

But seriously, in light of Mania and the positive endorsement from SEGA (eg. the video shorts), have they indicated we should expect more 2D games?

I think if SEGA can keep making 2D and 3D games separately, without mixing them together, things could work out.

[Dr. Detective]

3 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Global illumination. I don't understand it well enough to begin explaining it, so Google is going to be your friend here. Or watch this video about the Hedgehog Engine itself: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1428/Global-Illumination-in-SONIC

Just a small snippet of what you can see in the video; Sonic Team took a level from Black Knight and ported it to Unleashed, with fully rendered GI, light fields and everything else:

Pics are super low quality because I stripped these out of a post I made on Retro like, four years ago.

Before I read your post fully, I actually confused the pics on the right for Adabat. 

I don't know a great deal of this stuff either but I do know I want more of that beauty hanging around. 

[Skull Leader]

On April 23, 2019 at 3:05 PM, BaronGrackle said:

What are the odds of a playable Amy in the next 2D Sonic? After the Christmas short, I thought her appearance was impending.

We old gamers have daughters, y'know.

IF only Chris Whitehead appreciated Amy as much as Tyson Hesse, who basically made it a personal mission to get the pink gerbil into Mania Adventures according to an interview from Forbes.

Oh well, at least I have the collection of hacks for my Classic Amy related needs. XD

(Amy in CD when though?)

[BaronGrackle]

10 minutes ago, Skull Leader said:

(Amy in CD when though?)

Going back in time to save your past self!

[Skull Leader]

2 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

Going back in time to save your past self!

More like dimensional traveling shenanigans given how Classic Sonic is now from a different universe rather than from the past. You can thank Dark Lord Iizuka. : P

Still, the idea could work, like modern Amy inspiring the classic version to be more independent and become a heroine, Classic Tails reminding his modern self that he too could be a hero again if he stopped relying so much on that bootleg Ipad he carries everywhere ever since Unleashed, etc. Basically what Generations should had been.

[Perkilator]

At this rate—who knows. It could just barely be good, but chances are it’ll be mediocre again. Again, who knows.

[Osmium]

Something that will make this board very agitated and I probably won't have enough energy to comprehend. 

[BaronGrackle]

18 hours ago, Osmium said:

Something that will make this board very agitated and I probably won't have enough energy to comprehend. 

I guess, but it'll at least be something. Right now the Upcoming Games subforum is being monopolized by some racing spinoff.