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Sonic Lost Adventure: Havok Harbor Tech Demo


Highwire4

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I had a decent amount of fun with it. 

 

The visuals are definitely the best thing about this. You put a lot of detail into making the environment, and it shows. The colors being scattered red, blue and yellow everywhere is a tiny bit distracting on the eyes and doesn't look as cohesive regarding giving a stage a color scheme, but I think that also helps nail down the idea that it's a harbor with various different types of crates everywhere, as if they all came from different places.

 

The level design is actually best in 2D I thought. The areas of open movement were rather nice, but I'm gonna be honest about the engine: GDK really made it less fun than it should've been. The clunky jumping making me misfire my jumps/homing attacks a lot, rocketing off of downhill areas instead of sticking to them, and the clunky turning just kind of brought the feel down by a large margin, and only emphasized the areas that have almost unfair 'insta-death' spots. The level layouts themselves though were hardly bad though, as I'd imagine putting that in the Generations engine would probably play like a dream. I guess GDK doesn't suit the Unleashed/Gens level design too much.

 

But yeah, fantastic job either way! You did this all on your own, and that's an achievement if I ever saw one. Kudos!

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Thank you so much for the critique Azookara! 

I've heard a few comments regarding the color placement in certain parts of the level, and in the next release, they'll be less strenuous on the eyes and a little more intelligently placed.

I agree with you 100% on GDK being the main thing bringing this game down. GDK does a lot of frustrating things that I have almost no control over (like sonic deciding he doesn't want to go through a dash ring for absolutely no reason) I tried to put in fail-safes in areas where its retardation is more likely to happen but they don't even always work. By insta-death spots are you referring to the big pits that you dash ring over? Or perhaps the cargo ship wallrunning segment? I purposefully tried to avoid bottomless pits at all costs since they're stupid, the only exception being the dash ring level transitions due to the fact the player would (usually) have to go out of their way to die in one of those segments. But I can alter the level design for the next release to do away with those insta-death areas. 

I'd love to see this in generations, but I've got no knowledge of how that works so oh well I suppose.

Thanks again for the critique! I'll address all of the issues you brought up in the next public release. 

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The level design is brilliant how ever I have seen a few mapping area bugs (Thinking about it, it could be engine side related) it is hugely notice-able on the "half-pipe" in the 2D section, just try rolling down one side and go up the other you will find it


 


the engine has so many glitches that until now I hadn't noticed


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Very very good level, it was fun to play.

 

I used some debug commands and noticed why are you having so many troubles with the 2D splines, you would be surprised if I tell you that you need to use very few of them.

The free-roaming sections are screaming for the existing custom cameras, and the boost sections need 3D splines with rails enabled.

 

I'd like to lend you a hand, if you let me we can collaborate.

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@True Nightmare: Thanks man! What exactly do you mean mapping area bugs? As for the half pipe I'm well aware of how retarded it can be. Sorry about that, it'll get fixed in the next version :c

 

@Xaklse: Thanks man, glad you had fun! 

I am actually surprised by that since the first thing I tried out was using as little as possible and ran into a ton of problems, so I went with using more. To be honest, splines confuse the heck out of me in just about every way. I looked at how they were used in the GDK test map and that only helped a little bit. 

As for the 3D areas, yeah I suppose they do. I didn't have nearly enough time to mess with cameras except where it was absolutely needed (2D section) but I did entertain the idea when I was making level designs and few areas would really benefit from a new camera (the ship wallrunning segment for example.) so yeah thats something I'd love to have in the next version.. assuming I don't go insane from how retarded difficult unreal's cameras are when doing anything with them.

I thought that was what the 3D spline rails were for, though I didn't experiment with them at the time. My one concern about them is that I don't want to take away the player's freedom in some sections, and splines tend to just nail you to their path. I know a splines strength can be edited, but any resistance to sonic's movement will be instantly felt by the player and I'm not too big on that. But if it doesn't work that way then yeah I'd say lets go for it.

 

As for collaborating, hell yes I would love to collaborate. I can't work on this game nearly as much as I had been due to my priorities shifting to working on my indie game, but yeah, lets do it! Thanks for offering do help me out with this man!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Hello again guys, I'm looking for volunteers.

Specifically volunteers who had a rather unpleasant experience playing SLA due to bugs out the whazoo. Did you periodically just run through springs or dash rings for no reason and fell to your death? Did you get stuck in a 2D section or straight up fell out of said 2D section? Well Xaklse has been working on fixing bugs like those since mid march and now I'm looking for people to test it out to see if those fixes have worked. If you had problems like the ones I've stated when you played SLA, give me a pm and I'll send an exe of this new version over to you and you can tell me if sonic actually goes through dash rings or not now.

As someone who also experienced these bugs on a regular basis, I have yet to encounter this bug again, but I'd love to know if its actually solved or not. So please, send me a pm if you're interested.

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