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Sonic Islands (Very Early Alpha)

Project Overview

Sonic Islands is a (currently incredibly unpolished) attempt at creating a Sonic experience that merges the classic gameplay with elements from the Adventure and Boost games. Each Chaos Emerald provides a new ability to further expand Sonic's arsenal.

(As is probably obvious, this is the most I could finish before the deadline. I would have liked to have done more, but keep an eye out for updates.)

Screenshots and media!

Bonus Content

Controls

Jump - Space / A button
Curl - Left Shift / LB
CameraRecenter - Left Alt / Right Stick Button

Credits

Gameplay development by Steve Taylor

Sonic Model and Animations by LakeFeperd (from HedgePhysics)

Skybox from TL Multimedia (UnityStore)

Wireframe Shader by jokix (UnityStore)

Latest reviews

I dont know why but this feels like the best of your sonic islands although it might be because it runs smoothly at 60 fps and doesn't have insanely low fov. (Your newest one is great though just bump up the fov)
Not only does this feel like a faithful translation and refinement of Classic Sonic gameplay into 3D (the closest of which I feel so far has been the Adventure series).

It figures that with momentum-based gameplay, there needs to be a way to negate the build-up of speed. The braking system you've implemented works pretty damn well if I say so myself - it comes in handy for when you're rolling down ramps and don't want to fly off! It's a useful thing to have, and a good feature to base some level design around. It's something that legitimately feels like it should be in a Sonic game, and doesn't have a whiff of gimickiness about it.

Well done on the good work, I hope you'll take this further!

Edit: Now I'm not sure if the brake thing is a bug or not. I can't seem to get it to happen anymore. It would happen when pressing the right shoulder button, forcing Sonic into a backwards spin. It would be nice if this were intentional!
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Steve Taylor
Steve Taylor
Thanks dude! There's better things to come, don't worry. And the braking isn't a bug, it's a feature ;)

Grab the blue chaos emerald and try hitting the RB button (right click) again
This reminds me of the HedgePhysics engine that LakeFepard made but just a little more fun and bouncy. All the slope movement and other Sonicy stuff is very fluid, and the camera did a really good job of naturally moving along with Sonic. My only complaints would be that the camera feels a bit wonky and off center when you turn it, and the mouse cursor isn't hidden.

Overall, very good. You should be proud that you are capable of making something like this! I'm excited to see what's to come.
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Comments

More people need to know about this! I jumped in expecting not much, just a little GDK thing, and then WOAH. This is the best classic engine for 3d we've ever seen, and I think that might include Utopia if not just for the optimization
 
More people need to know about this! I jumped in expecting not much, just a little GDK thing, and then WOAH. This is the best classic engine for 3d we've ever seen, and I think that might include Utopia if not just for the optimization
Dude, you're killin me, I cant take all the compliments

Seriously, thank you man. I was so close to not submitting this, but I feel way better about it after the positive feedback it's been getting.

I'll be posting some new demo updates soon, and if you think there's anything I should focus on in particular, let me know. Thanks again :)
 
I left a rating without a proper review, assuming I could just review the game later. But apparently you can't review a game after rating them. Nice.

Anyways this is probably the most promising game on SAGE this year. The controls feel great, and I like the jumpball and the effects a lot, so I can't wait to see an actual game made with this engine.

Unfortunately there isn't much to say about it, mainly because there is literally nothing to do in the test map. It's really empty and there are so little objects you can't even play the game for more than 2 minutes without getting bored. I wish there were more stuff in the map, similarly to Hedgephysics' and Sonic World's test maps. That Sonic model also looks really really strange but I know it's a placeholder.

I rated it 3/5 as I couldn't get much enjoyment out of it, but I'm still pretty excited for what's to come. Good luck!
 
This game blows...

...other 3d Sonic engines out of the water! The sense of weight and inertia that sonic has when he rolls is awesome! It feels like when you roll you're actually a ball, unlike other Sonic engines where it feels like you're just able to run faster on slopes when you're a ball. It really puts a sense of mass into the momentum of Sonic's momentum-based gameplay, (because momentum is mass x velocity, haha.) Basically what im saying is that it's perfect. Could you give an approximation of how you coded the rolling physics?
 
I do not like the homing attack. I think if a button could do the player go to the direction of a position of a point, would be better. This button, while actived, would help the player to go to the direction of the objects in the game, all of them would receive an indication to active the button when the player is near of them. The indications to activate this would appear on the top of the image of the objects. With this work, the player could use the button pressing it, going to the direction of the object he or she wishes in the game.
Independent of what Sonic is doing, if the hedgehog is running, jumping, or rolling, this resource always could be used by the player. This possible application is similiar of the implementation of the Z-Target, in The Legend of Zelda series.
The intention of this idea is to let the game more manual than automatic.
Sorry for my English.
 
This game blows...

...other 3d Sonic engines out of the water! The sense of weight and inertia that sonic has when he rolls is awesome! It feels like when you roll you're actually a ball, unlike other Sonic engines where it feels like you're just able to run faster on slopes when you're a ball. It really puts a sense of mass into the momentum of Sonic's momentum-based gameplay, (because momentum is mass x velocity, haha.) Basically what im saying is that it's perfect. Could you give an approximation of how you coded the rolling physics?
Thank you so much, dude. I really love that everyone's enjoying the rolling physics :D

So, in a super condensed nutshell, the rolling takes the normal of the ground you're on, compares it to gravity's up direction, and draws a line between the two (with both normals set at Sonic's position).
 
This game blows...

...other 3d Sonic engines out of the water! The sense of weight and inertia that sonic has when he rolls is awesome! It feels like when you roll you're actually a ball, unlike other Sonic engines where it feels like you're just able to run faster on slopes when you're a ball. It really puts a sense of mass into the momentum of Sonic's momentum-based gameplay, (because momentum is mass x velocity, haha.) Basically what im saying is that it's perfect. Could you give an approximation of how you coded the rolling physics?
now that we have the slope direction, depending on how steep the slope is (so how large the line between up direction and the slope normal is), the current forward direction is pulled towards the slope (when the slope direction is projected onto sonics orientation).

Finally, friction is reduced downhill and slope speed is increased. So you get faster feeling downhill movement that pulls you towards the nearest steepest slope.

That probably makes zero sense, but that's essentially how it works.
 
Linux builds if possible, please?
Sorry, dude, I probably should have thought about all the Linux and Mac users lol

There's a demo coming out in the near future, I'll make sure it has all the different OS builds. Only reason I can't make a Linux build of this demo is because the project has changed so much since this one.

Soon though, promise
 
I do not like the homing attack. I think if a button could do the player go to the direction of a position of a point, would be better. This button, while actived, would help the player to go to the direction of the objects in the game, all of them would receive an indication to active the button when the player is near of them. The indications to activate this would appear on the top of the image of the objects. With this work, the player could use the button pressing it, going to the direction of the object he or she wishes in the game.
Independent of what Sonic is doing, if the hedgehog is running, jumping, or rolling, this resource always could be used by the player. This possible application is similiar of the implementation of the Z-Target, in The Legend of Zelda series.
The intention of this idea is to let the game more manual than automatic.
Sorry for my English.
I think I get what you're saying. Funnily enough, I've wanted to implement a Z-Target in the game since the start, it'll probably work like Dark Souls (left stick in when near an enemy).

Might be finished by the next release, so stay tuned :D
 

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Steve Taylor
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Comments
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Reviews
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Rating
4.60 star(s) 10 ratings

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