Fan Game SONIC PROJECT S

[Sr101]

Hey all! I'm making a Sonic music game called: SONIC PROJECT S

The goal of the project is to make a simple rhythm game featuring Sonic-styled gimmicks and music from the community. I currently have about 10 artists signed on to "donate" some tracks. Keep in mind this is obviously going to be a free game, and they will all be credited big time! :)

So, how does it play? Simple.

4 Notes.
Left = Yellow = Combo Hits. These extend combo and act as the "glue" that holds the groove.
Red = Down = Spin Hits. Enemies are inbound! Time to spindash! Miss these and lose all your rings.
Blue = Right = Ring Hits. Hit these to collect some rings.
Up = Green = Item Hits. Hitting these grants you one of several items from an item box.

Speed
Get a 50 hit combo to gain some speed! I'm considering having a "boost meter" on screen to show progress? What do you think? Speed helps you make it through tracks faster. Replaying songs over and over? The better you get the faster you can get through. Of course, there are going to be modes where this is not the goal. Faster times give you a bigger speed bonus!

Art
I'm going for a GBA aesthetic. I think the Adventure era designs were very well adapted to 2D in this style. As such, I'm sticking with the native aspect ratio. This makes it a bit stretched on a bigger screen, but it looks quite crisp this way. The character art is going to be done by the super talented @RegK1tty! Here's an example of the amazing style she's got.

Dev Details
I'm designing the game in GM:Studio 1.4. I have almost 10 years experience with GM, but I've never worked on a project like this all on my own. I'm a college student studying Computer Science (3rd Year!). As such, please keep your expectations at a safe level :) I currently have an engine I created 100% from scratch to write and record notes for songs with somewhat minimal effort. I don't expect the game to take very long to complete. My goal at this point is to focus on adding a good amount of content while keeping in mind I am ONE guy, so I need to be realistic!

Songs

I made some tracks as well! Here's one, called "Green Hill Harrier"


Who else will be featured?
For now, I'll say a few, but I want to keep some nice secrets!

Vic McKnight @Xacxon ‏ will be contributing some tracks along with @SquigglyDigg ‏
Luan @LuanRemixes ‏will also be on board!
and finally (for now...)
Lil Boulder @LilBoulder ‏is gonna kill it in the game!

Of course, they are only some of the many artists I already have planned! Which of their songs will make it in? Hmmm....

I'm planning a good number of tracks, that I won't give away. Every main Sonic game will have at least a track, if not 2. Side games will be represented if I can find a great remix to represent them.

Videos

Latest Update Video (as of posting)



So, are you ready to try out the game? Welp, not yet... but I promise that soon I will be able to get something playable out there. I don't want to taint the game with a messy beta launch. Expect a good amount of content by the first release.

I also have a huge surprise to share once my twitter reaches 100 followers. Trust me, it separates the men from the boys as far as fangames go. It's one of the reasons I decided to go with GM :)

Thanks for reading! Hope you like what I've got here. I've put easily 60 hours AT LEAST into what is currently finished... I expect to double that number. Consider this a thanks to the fans and series who made me love music the way I do! :)

Sr101 - Mike - @SONIC_PROJECT_S
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[Sslaxx]

Looks pretty unique amongst all the other Sonic fangames out there, nice job!

 

[P3DR0]

Oh hey, that looks pretty cool! Few things I noticed from the video:

- The arrow icons are a bit confusing. It's not awful, but making them more clear will probably help in faster levels.
- The area where the button should be pressed is also very faded, not sure if it's due to video compression, but making it more clear is never a bad idea.
- The stage looks a bit uninteresting and starts to get repetitive real quick. Maybe having slopes or more stage decoration can help you out on that. Maybe you could have 1/4 of the stage in the beach area, another quarter spent on Neo Green Hill, another one on NGH but with denser vegetation and maybe at the end a "boss fight" of sorts, nothing fancy, just maybe dodging projectiles.
- Give Sonic more moves/feedback. You're using the Advance sprites. Not only there is a crapton of sprites made for the 3 games, but there is also a lot of custom animations made by fans and released for others to use. One example could be change his running animation to a regular jogging and have him speedup throughout the song or maybe when pressing -> he'll go faster (animation wise) and when pressing <- he'll go slower. Maybe after a few combos in, he can do the Advance 3 celebration run and so on...
- Also those fonts are very antialiased, it looks terrible in lower resolutions giving that weird "jpeg" feel to it. Always avoid that type of stuff and if you absolutely must use antialiased text, try to do it by hand instead. It'll look much better.

You already have a great base, adding stuff like that will do wonders for the game to look more appealing and interesting.

Keep going!

 

[Sr101]

Great ideas! I'll take them all into account, as I feel the same way. Some things, like slopes, would be a bit hard... so i'll try other methods to add flair!