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Sonic Generations |OT| What Sonic can learn from Sonic

Nert

Member
Rooftop Run Modern is the best Act.

Of all time.

Everywhere, ever.

I've spent more time with Rooftop Run Act 2 than I have with the rest of the game put together. It's just so much fun (for me, at least) to try to speed run that stage. The music, the visuals, the level design... I just love it.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Of course. But I have faith in the Sonic community.

Wait did I really just type that
KuGsj.gif
KuGsj.gif
KuGsj.gif


I blame my forced avatar. Agumon is much more forgiving.
I need to know the story behind the avatar now.
 

OMG Aero

Member
Eh, I've played a fair amount of Unleashed's day levels and Generations is a few notches higher in level quality, generally speaking. I'm not missing much, I feel.

Also, I find Unleashed's music outside of Rooftop Run and the artic level to be somewhat dull, which doesn't help.

Yeah, aside from Rooftop Run, the Cool Edge music and Eggmanland music are probably the only day time music I really like from that game.
 
I need to know the story behind the avatar now.

Made an avatar bet that I could beat a fellow Gaffer in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and lost.

A couple weeks later, we had another one, but the avatar bet was made after my accepting the match. Another month on top of that one.

I can finally shed this...monstrosity...come March 4th.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
I've been replaying/playing Sonic Unleashed (replay HD/play SD) on-and-off (I say this cuz I wanna replay Tales of Graces this week~), and I've become even more fond of the music. Of course, Rooftop Run is superior in Generations, but the melodies are so wonderful. The genre and instrument variation throughout the soundtrack because of the 'world voyage' idea the game employs is extremely refreshing. You hear instruments that you don't typically hear in other soundtracks.

It's almost like an RPG soundtrack in that manner (and I guess that's what was intended due to the hub worlds, NPC chatter, etc... in some ways, you can argue that it's a better RPG than Sonic Chronicles was), and because of that, it rivals even the better RPG soundtracks out there. It reminds me of Terranigma's town themes a little, tbh.
 

Sciz

Member
Of course, Rooftop Run is superior in Generations, but the melodies are so wonderful.
I think I've said it before, but stringing Unleashed -> Act 2 -> Act 1 together and listening to the theme change over time makes me happy in ways I can't precisely define.

You hear instruments that you don't typically hear in other soundtracks.

And large amounts of them are live. They recorded an actual erhu for Chun-Nan Night, and the two Adabat tracks feature an honest-to-god gamelan. I can only wonder at what the sound budget for the game was.
 

Lijik

Member
I think I've said it before, but stringing Unleashed -> Act 2 -> Act 1 together and listening to the theme change over time makes me happy in ways I can't precisely define.

I should try this. I really enjoyed hearing the three act themes progress in Colors.
 
I was sold on Unleashed after the first trailer, but it was the High Europe one that really made me a believer.

Would have been great without the werehog. ;_;

"That has to be fucking CG" was my first thought when I saw the Europe trailer. So jawdropping. Still is. I can't believe they went from making 06 to that. It's like a generation ahead in every way.

Also, I find Unleashed's music outside of Rooftop Run and the artic level to be somewhat dull, which doesn't help.
Yeah, aside from Rooftop Run, the Cool Edge music and Eggmanland music are probably the only day time music I really like from that game.
Oh hell naw.
 

WillyFive

Member
The High Europe Sonic Unleashed trailer looks like a beta version of Sonic Generations. It's similar, but missing a lot of elements that make it look complete.
 
Regarding Unleashed levels in Generations, there was a new video for that yesterday:

Skyscraper Scamper
Skyscraper Scamper is one of my favorite levels in Unleashed. Running through the city on twisting, winding roads, grinding past industrial districts, running at high speed across the not-Manhattan Bridge, all to an awesome sax.

Especially that one part where you run in a zigzag pattern right up a skyscraper or two. That particular part is my favorite moment in the three 'modern' games (next to Terminal Velocity), just amazing.
 
Regarding Unleashed levels in Generations, there was a new video for that yesterday:

Skyscraper Scamper

Sonic Team must be impressed by fans that are this inventive. And maybe kicking themselves they didn't port the Unleashed data over...

But seriously impressive stuff. My mind is blown at how well they ported everything. I wonder if they'll tackle porting stages from other Sonic games.
 
Can they port Sonic Colors stages over?

Once they figure out the formats for everything, more than likely.

But the only reason they're doing Sonic Unleashed ports right now is because it's the same engine. A lot of the data formats are similar that it's just a matter of cleaning up/converting the Unleashed stuff.

Porting over levels from Colors (or any other game) will probably require a lot more work. New lighting data will have to be generated, scripts for camera controls and such will probably have to be re-written, and a lot of level objects will probably have to be replaced.

The lighting data will probably be the hardest part. Baked Global Illumination lighting (as used by Hedgehog Engine, Unreal Engine 3, etc.) is massively processor intensive; most companies calculate GI lighting data using networked render farms (like the ones used to render Pixar movies), and going by what Sonic Team said, it took days to render GI for a single Sonic Unleashed level, and their render farm was apparently 100 PCs strong.

Since Sonic Colors doesn't use GI, new GI data will have to be generated if it's to be used in the Sonic Generations engine. That time may be reduced depending on the format; assuming Hedgehog Engine's GI data functions like a normal lightmap, you could skip full GI baking and just do more simple colored lighting (the kind Sonic Colors already uses), which would bring rendering times down to something more manageable.

If this is all going over your head, I'll explain it to the best of my knowledge, though the last time I did this I got yelled at for getting it wrong (even though I haven't actually seen any evidence since then to suggest I'm incorrect):

Starting with Half-Life or Quake 2 or so, the concept of "lightmaps" have been employed to apply lighting to a 3D environment. Imagine a 3D model with a transparent texture overlapped across it; this texture is black and white, and represents areas of light and areas of shadow, giving the 3D model the appearance of having lighting. Here's a comparison I found on Google Image Search that shows a scene progress through wireframe, textures, lightmapping, etc.

Hedgehog Engine's GI data is like a big lightmap, but the way the lightmap is created is far more complex; rather than simply having black-or-white shadows, Hedgehog Engine looks at all the colors in a scene and simulates light bouncing off of objects realistically. So, light shown on a blue surface will reflect blue light on surrounding objects. Here's an example given at the initial technology presentation. And here's an image showing the whole thing as rendered by Sonic Unleashed:

1654056-hedgehogengine_demo_super.jpg


Games like Sonic Colors for the most part only render basic lighting, or use some other less-complex method of lighting.

tldr: Yeah probably, eventually.
 

Anth0ny

Member
I think I got the gist of it.

Nevertheless, those Retro guys are fucking geniuses. I'm sure they'll get the job done eventually.

I'm also sure they'll find a way to program double jump/multiple wisps in there too. If not, slightly modify the stages so it's not a problem.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
I really wish Sega would go the UDK route with the Hedgehog Engine. Would love to mess around with it.
 

Skidd

Member
So, I wanna Platinum this game but apparently there's a bug with the Time Attacker trophy/achievement.

No fix for it I presume?
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
I've done the necessary requirements almost twice by now, still no trophy.
I think the temp only fix suggested by SEGA was to delete your friends list and try it again.

That sucks. I didn't encounter this issue, but :/

Sciz said:
And large amounts of them are live. They recorded an actual erhu for Chun-Nan Night, and the two Adabat tracks feature an honest-to-god gamelan. I can only wonder at what the sound budget for the game was.
<3

I love the amount of thought put into the soundtrack in general. We're no stranger to live orchestration in game soundtracks, but for a Sonic game in terms of instrumentals, it was very refreshing.
 
Beat the game. It's pretty great. Planet Wisp suffers from length issues- mainly the fact that your actions are being repeated too much too justify 8 minute stages- and both Egg Dragoon and Time Eater add to that to make for a slightly weak ending- but I was expecting that anyway, seeing as all nostalgia is gone by time you beat Rooftop Run Act 1. (Rooftop Run Act 2 is amazing, but it's not for reasons that have anything to do with memories of Unleashed- that game is too recent). But overall, it's a load of fun. The classic Sonic levels are close enough to the originals with enough of a splash of modern flash to excite and work, and the modern Sonic levels are twitchy 'you-are-awesome' things that aren't exactly deep, but hey, they work. The fanservice is spot on, with each game being portrayed pretty accurately (the Silver battle is a good showcase of how dumb its physics hoo-ha was, for instance), although the lack of levels from 3 or CD was a shame. Same for Rush, but at least that makes sense (fuck the 3DS version though, I both lack the console and the willingness to buy that shitty looking game).

Definitely not done with it- there's still Red Rings to grab and S-Ranks to earn. Plus Trophies and all that. Just thought I'd let Sonic-GAF know what I thought of it. I sit here writing this as the Silver white space theme blasts out of my telly- amazingly, yet another amazing thing to have come out of Sonic 06. 8/10
 
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