What do you want for the next Sonic game?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Yeah, I'm talking about the sign that appears on enemies and even springs and bosses before you homing attack them. I think that's oversimplifying. It's lame. Every game from 1998 to 2006 was just fine without this. Those games had more cinematic feel to them.

BAD idea. That is basically there to ensure that both you and the game know exactly what you're planning on hitting before letting Sonic fly towards the target, instead of the game having you attack a different target you weren't trying to hit. In past games, you would often attack the nearest enemy which could be anywhere in front of you, and there have been points that you would attack the wrong enemy like in ShTH where you could attack a soldier when you were trying to hit an alien.

That's game design for you. It's to keep you from potentially fighting with the game's targeting system so that it's less stressful, and to take it out simply because past games didn't use it and were fine without it is being completely ignorant of why it's there in the first place and is encouraging anything but good design.

If you want an option of taking it out, then by all means I'm for it. But you can't take it out simply because it's anti-climactic and doesn't let you be a part of the world (which is completely irrelevant with or without the targeting), and others happen to like how they know ahead of time what they're about to hit before they let'em rip in mid-air. And calling it for teh babies is the most patronizing and sorriest justification for removing it as well.

Edited February 2, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Blacklightning]

The homing attack in previous games wasn't so good not because of some lock-on sign. In more recent games it was just better executed. Having some element of HUD doesn't make a gameplay element itself much better or not.

Yes it does. It's called having visual feedback. It's the same reason people don't like having to guess how much ammo they have in any ordinary shooter, especially when they fuck up on account of not having said ammo when they actually need it. This really isn't that much different when you think about it - without a reticule, you don't know whether or not you're locked on to something, and even when you are, you don't know what exactly you're actually locked onto until the last second. Which might not seem like a major problem at first, but you do have to take into account you can be in some way punished every now and then for hitting the wrong mark (most obvious examples being targets that can protrude spikes or electrify themselves).

This isn't even a problem or solution mutually exclusive to Sonic, either - all good games with lockon mechanics have a visible marker to indicate as such and end up having little to no issues (Zelda, DMC, Tales of series), whilst bad games with lockon or homing mechanics require the player to guess what they're trying to hit next and largely end up being fiddly and convulted (Too Human, Metroid Other M, too many other AVGN-calibre games to note). It shouldn't be difficult to see why a visible lockon marker is nothing other than a benefit to gameplay, and to say the "cinematic" feeling of not knowing exactly where your HA works somehow outweighs those benefits is just stupid beyond words.

You got me wrong. Cinematic feel to me is when I feel like I am a character in his world. When there are sings like the lock-on, it feels more like a game.

Then the word you're looking for is "immersion". Though frankly, immersion really isn't something Sonic should stand for either (especially considering at not a single point in the entire series has it ever been about any kind of immersion so much as delivering a speedy platforming game with a light narrative wrapped around it), least of all when you consider whether or not Sonic has even perfected what IS supposed to be the highlight of his games is still widely under debate, even if taken a turn for the positive these days.

[ArtFenix]

If you want an option of taking it out, then by all means I'm for it.

OK, looks like you've got a point. But an option would be great, this is something I can agree with.

P.S. But that was for 3D games... How about Sonic 4 ep1? Why the hell it's there?

Edited February 2, 2012 by ArtFenix

[Diogenes]

The homing attack shouldn't have been in S4 at all.

[Kuzu]

The homing attack shouldn't have been in S4 at all.

There are a lot of things that shouldn't have been in Sonic 4.

Ok my two cents:

Original levels with gimmicks that take advantage of Sonic's arsenal, but are spaced out enough so the levels don't get repetitive or tedious; Mostly 3D plane, with a 8:1 ratio of 2D in the levels; 10-12 zones with 2 main acts, and additional bonus acts. Boss battles at the end of every zone. Also, less emphasis on boosting through levels, it should be an additional ability not the primary one.

Additional playable characters that play similar to Sonic, but with their own mechanics that take advantage of the level design. In this case, Tails(and probably Knuckles, I'm not sure because Sega seems to hate him nowadays).

A story that doesn't try to cut corners to meet a deadline, and not every cutscene being used for a gag, cringeworthy humor.

Plenty of unlockables(Concept art, Sound Test, etc.)

[SilentDoom]

Yeah, I'm talking about the sign that appears on enemies and even springs and bosses before you homing attack them. I think that's oversimplifying. It's lame. Every game from 1998 to 2006 was just fine without this. Those games had more cinematic feel to them.

Totally disagree. The lock on sign was the best thing to happen to the Homing Attack for 3D games. Being able to properly see what you were aiming for with the Homing Attack made it so much less frustrating. I've lost count of how many times in 06 I wanted to Homing Attack something, only for it to veer off in some random direction to hit some rail or item box I barely noticed. It's infuriating.

However, I do agree on having the option not to have it and I also agree about it being in Sonic 4. There was no point in Sonic 4 whatsoever.

Though what do you mean the games from 98 to 06 were cinematic? Unleashed has easily been the most cinematic game in the series. Those production values....

[Briraka]

- No more 2D sections

- Stages are made to be more curvy

- Less scripted areas

- More open areas to explore

EDIT: and replace sliding with rolling

And here's some small ones

- L1/R1 for rail switching

- A Super Sonic theme

- Extra characters that play simular to Sonic

Edited February 2, 2012 by Briraka

[Diogenes]

Though what do you mean the games from 98 to 06 were cinematic?

[batson]

My idea of the perfect Sonic game would be one that:

Essentially plays like the Mega Drive games, although of course it should still have plenty of fresh new inovations that keeps the player on his toes. Whether the game is 3D or 2D doesn't really matter; if they could make a Mega Drive style game work in 3D then by all means it could be in 3D, but good old 2D works just as well.

Have the same ambition to tell an exciting, epic story as most of the main series games released between 1998-2006 did. Naturally, it would have to be executed a lot better than most games from that time though, but that should go without saying.

Aestethically, the universe it takes place in should be reminiscent of that of the Mega Drive games. I think S1, S2 and S3&K are still the best looking games in the series (but just so there are no misunderstandings, im not saying i want the game to look 16-bit).

There should be more than one playable character, maybe three of four, but possibly even more. Regardless of the number of playable characters, i would love it if a good deal of the series reccuring characters would still be involved in the story in some way.

[Tails spin]

As much as I love Tails and Shadow as playable characters, I really want another Sonic & Knuckles game with only them two playable. New zones, new bosses, with both Sonic and Knuckles.

[Phos]

It's something I want to do, and something I think Sonic should be able to do. The added dimension makes it notably harder, so I think something should be done to compensate for that. It doesn't have to be the homing attack, but I believe it's a workable solution, so I keep it until I hear of something better.

I've seen plenty of places in Generations where I've had to break out of a boost straight into a Homing Attack for whatever reason (Sky Sanctuary probably being the most rich in examples off the top of my head), but that's a bit besides the point. To be honest it just puzzles me why you'd want to enforce such arbitary restrictions on the player's abilities on the basis that they weren't necessary once apon a time, in an environment that didn't have these abilities at all and as such had no reason to be designed around them.

It's also worth noting that some folks (included the quoted) have misrepresented the problem slightly; speed plays a factor too, no doubt, but Sonic tends to control a fair bit slipperier than most other 3D games that expect direct jumps on head - as a result of the gradual handling that originates all the way back from the freakin' Genesis era. As a result, hitting an enemy at reasonable pelt (not even boost speeds - imagine peak speeds just holding the control stick) in a 3D environment reliably without a HA is much more cumbersome and time-consuming than it's generally worth, as it's really easy to misjudge your angle and miss entirely due to non-instantaneous handling and stopping. Of course, you could demonstrate this for yourself by booting up a level with one of the "we scattered enemies randomly over this section to give the player some Boost meter recovery" sections and try taking out enemies without stopping or HAing. I'd personally recommend the early bits of Crisis City for that.

This is another example of Sonic Team's games being so badly designed that there are layers that need to be peeled away to realize what's going on and what would happen if you got rid of all of it. This is something that really frustrates me because I personally believe that Sonic's attributes actually make him very cut out for 3D gameplay before they adapted him.

If we're doing this at speed, that implies some ability to see ahead of Sonic, which in turn implies that you would be able to line up in advance to a degree. Now, here is the first way that Sonic's attributes make him suited for 3D: his "first derivative*" controls prevent him from being twitchy in comparison to the direct controls they saddled him with later. They also combined these two types of controls together which is why a lot of these games are really twitchy with characters that change direction instantaneously.

But had they made his directional changes dependent upon momentum in some fashion (rather than nothing, and then arbitrary values post Unleashed), the player would be able to control Sonic with greater confidence, not needing to worry about not being able to turn enough within reason and not worrying about flying off in a random direction if they so much as flinch.

*You have control over directional acceleration rather than velocity which is in contrast to Megaman and Crash Bandicoot where the players input becomes the velocity directly.

Now, as for why it's so challenging to hit enemies in other 3D games, well, they have to land directly on top of them don't they? Sonic doesn't need to. As long as he's spinning, it's a hit. For an example of what a big difference this makes, I direct you to Super Mario Galaxy: the change in difficulty is compatible to the difference in stomping an enemy versus spinning into them. Landing on an enemy is so much harder than just touching them that every 3D Mario game has included something to make it either unnecessary or significantly easier. 64 had punches, Sunshine's water pack could help in any number of ways, and if you do a stomp during a spin in Galaxy, it becomes a homing stomp, Even Mario needs a HA to simply "land on" enemies!

And Sonic doesn't even need to jump to attack! He can just roll.

But what if the enemy isn't on the ground? That's also made much easier by the more forgiving nature of Sonic's spinning attack, as the enemy simply needs to be somewhere along the path Sonic takes through the air. Position the enemy so that it's altitude is just below the apogee of Sonic's jump and its altitude will overlap Sonic's for most of the time he is in the air.

Doing this at speed makes no difference, any hypothetical increase in the difficulty in timing the jump is canceled out by the increased displacement of Sonic jump which in turn causes the area of altitude overlap to increase in volume.

Do any doubts remain?

An equivalent statement would be "Sega made a need for rolling in Sonic 1 because it wasn't needed otherwise". It's level design made in mind of the abilities available to the player - I fail to see why this is an inherent problem.

Deep mechanics are exempt. If the only reason you need to have a mechanic is for the sake of a repetitive and or shallow action, get rid of both.

Yeah, I'm talking about the sign that appears on enemies and even springs and bosses before you homing attack them. I think that's oversimplifying. It's lame. Every game from 1998 to 2006 was just fine without this. Those games had more cinematic feel to them.

The current games pretty much need the reticule given the range the homing attack has. Unleashed's homing attack had a simply ridiculous range, often able to hit things that were off screen. It became less a player aid and more a move unto itself... but really that had already happened as early as Adventure 2, and even a few spots in 1.

[Blacklightning]

If we're doing this at speed, that implies some ability to see ahead of Sonic, which in turn implies that you would be able to line up in advance to a degree.

[Phos]

Even if you're fortunate enough to get thrown a HA-able enemy at the end of a boost corridor, you still generally have about a second to react, give or take (usually take). Of course, as much as it may seem so, not all actions done at speed are in a straight line, even if ideally there should be even less still if we're talking about level design better than "straight line boost, boostpad/spring direction chage, platforming segment, not necessarily in that order"

I'm not sure what circumstance exactly you're talking about, an enemy in some kind of turn? Like a turn off a race track? I can't really think of a situation where some enemy is going to be visible in advance but the player not be able to line up on it.

I don't think this is very important.

Even with the hitbox requirements of landing directly on top of an enemy as opposed to just colliding with them I think you're really overstating the difficulty of jumping on something outside of Sonic games,

It's a problem I had for a while with Super Mario Galaxy. I'd be damaged but was having a hard time landing on enemies to get coins rather than the easier spin that just gives star bits. I have to skip ahead in your post for a moment...

I'd also like to add that never did I imagine seeing you using that ridiculous "Galaxy homing stomp" strawman in your defense, after seeing the way people tend to use it in poorly-made arguments supporting the HA. And to a pretty strong extent it still does, so I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by stating that even against enemies with heavily telegraphed presence and attack methods in an environment several times more tame in pacing somehow still needs some measure of homing to assist the act of landing on one's head.

The point is that Mario's devs acknowledged that "any contact" is much easier than "landing upon", there is no "homing spin" because there's no need. Sonic's normal spin attack state is comparable to Mario's spin state. It would be even easier because Sonic, well should, go where you expect him to. The newer games have that strange air friction.

...I'm sorry, why are we still talking about the HA as an attack? You are aware that it's a redirecting mechanic first and an attack second, right?

I'm not talking about the homing attack at all. I'm talking about the regular spin jump.

That's all assuming you manage to align yourself laterally, which is pretty much what the entirety of my argument was referring to. Whether by HA, stomp or simple jumping, I don't think there's ever, ever been any argument over whether the Y axis has been a problem in hitting shit, and I don't see it starting any time soon. Of course, any increase in lateral handling would be welcomed regardless of whether it had the HA backing it - it just means there's opportunity to use the HA as less of a platforming crutch in situations where such controls would get in the way of landing on a platform, and more of a way to increase your midair options when they're genuinely needed.

I'm not sure in what circumstance this would be hard, unless the camera is lined up strangely. Lining up laterally is just... go directly at them.

[Rexeljet]

Here' what I'd like to see out of a new Sonic game:

I'd like to have a game that does not have levels that are too linear, I prefer levels that have plenty of areas to walk around in and explore, like in Sonic adventure 1, but the main goal should always be to get from A to B. Alternate pathways are perfect by me but don't make it so non-linear that you don't know where you're supposed to go.

Boosting should be a little downplayed, closer to Unleashed and Colours than Generations. I'd also replace the sliding with rolling.

I like how there's more platforming in Sonic Colours and Generations than there is in unleashed and some of the Advance/Rush titles. However, I'd like it if it were less Mario-like and designed more like the Mega Drive games and SA1.

I would like to have a selection of characters to play as, rather than playing as Sonic and another form of Sonic (Such as the Werehog and Classic Sonic, as much as I liked both). However, I'd just like to play as them when I want, and have them play like Sonic but with different movesets, rather than having individual gameplay styles. Here is how I'd set it out.

Tails: Almost as fast as Sonic, but not quite. Acceleration is high, but he cannot boost. Can discover hidden areas or passageways the other characters can't. Doesn't have a homing attack but can use his Tail attack.

Knuckles: A little slower than Tails, but can find new paths by gliding or breaking through walls.

Shadow: Plays like Sonic, but boost is harder to obtain. However, his equivalent to boost would temporarily stop time.

Silver: About as fast as Tails. Has the option to jump on enemies but cannot homing attack. Using his telekinetic powers he can destroy enemies easier. He can use this to hurl objects at them but give this ability some sort of homing device.

As for story, I'd make the story a little more prominent than it has been in recent games, and set the seriousness level at around the same as it was in SA1 and Sonic Unleashed. I'm not sure on what the story could be about, but hopefully something as good as one of those two games. Something that has some sort of effect on the game but is simple and doesn't confuse people.

I have no problem with the art direction much at all. I think the more surreal and cartoonish style of the recent games is more fitting fr a Sonic game than the blend between Realism and surrealism that Unleashed gave us, as beautiful as that was.

As for Music, I'd like pretty much all the people who composed Music in Generations to come back. I like them all. I'd rather have a main theme song than a credits medley for the credits, though. Not sure what that main theme song would be. We've never had an indie styled Sonic theme, have we? wonder what that would be like.

Gah, I thought I had more to say than this. I'll probably remember what I was going to say in this message a few hours later and start kicking myself that I didn't add what I wanted to say!

[Blacklightning]

I'm not sure what circumstance exactly you're talking about, an enemy in some kind of turn? Like a turn off a race track? I can't really think of a situation where some enemy is going to be visible in advance but the player not be able to line up on it.

Among things. There's also loops, helixes and just generally twisty architecture that will get in the way of a straight line approach - things inherent to the Sonic style of level design, regardless of era (even if admittedly used more often further back in the franchise). The point is, having means to reliably hit something on short notice in a situation where lining up a jump properly just isn't feasible is a pretty nifty ability to have, and nigh-on necessary when you're required to do so at a pace any faster than "the same speed everyone else does it". And really now, if I have to slow down to hit shit then it starts getting pretty hard to call it a Sonic game.

I don't think this is very important.

Looks like your quote fucked up a bit there, chief.

It's a problem I had for a while with Super Mario Galaxy. I'd be damaged but was having a hard time landing on enemies to get coins rather than the easier spin that just gives star bits. I have to skip ahead in your post for a moment..

The point is that Mario's devs acknowledged that "any contact" is much easier than "landing upon", there is no "homing spin" because there's no need. Sonic's normal spin attack state is comparable to Mario's spin state. It would be even easier because Sonic, well should, go where you expect him to. The newer games have that strange air friction..

Frankly if you have problems landing on top of things in Mario Galaxy of all games then you probably shouldn't be playing platformers. It's literally the most lenient 3D platformer I can think of off the top of my head. But more to the point, full-contact jumping isn't going to make jumping on things any easier at Mach 1, which is an argument you seem pretty insistent on ignoring entirely.

The presence of air friction I can't exactly refute, but removing it doesn't exactly negate the purpose of the HA either - it'd just mean the move flows a lot better, especially if you allow it to conserve momentum post-bounce while you're at it.

I'm not talking about the homing attack at all. I'm talking about the regular spin jump.

My bad. Writing late at night does that sometimes.

I'm not sure in what circumstance this would be hard, unless the camera is lined up strangely. Lining up laterally is just... go directly at them.

We've been here before, haven't we? I'm pretty sure we've been here before.

If it were really that simple there wouldn't even be any percieved need of the HA in the first place. As long as you've brought it up, let's talk about the camera first. To hit an enemy with a 100% degree of success essentially means that the camera has to be focused directly on the target you want to hit - at which point you can just tilt forward at 0⁰ and you'd intersect with your target no matter what. Of course, we know that camera systems aren't fucking precognitive, sad to say, so even if Sonic Team intended to do exactly that they couldn't possibly account for every possibility of where the player would want the camera to go, and it'd make dealing with multiple enemies at once an absolute nightmare unless they were all lined up single file. So then you'd think the next best solution would be "just give the player control of the camera". Sadly, even if you account for unavoidable aspects of human error that I've already repeatedly covered, there's no way to account for the fact that human beings do not have three thumbs. You'd have to release your right thumb from the jump button to redjust your camera, which is nigh-on suicide when you're expected to do so on short notice.

So now we've established that the perfect camera angle is impossible to attain consistently. Which quite often means that you'll be forced to attack enemies outside that 0⁰ comfort zone. Now to most other games that doesn't mean a damn thing because you have plenty of time to calculate your angle in relation to your target long before the jump itself actually becomes viable. As I've mentioned time and time again, Sonic does not have that luxury. Hell, to an extent I'd even argue he shouldn't have it because that would imply a break in flow, but that's a different matter entirely. Point is, when you have to spot enemies either in the distance or from around some fucked up trick of topography, a 0⁰ angle in relation to your target and a 15⁰ one seems about the same in the time you're given to make an estimate. That's even assuming you're already travelling in the general direction of your target when you spot it in the first place - when that isn't the case, you probably couldn't even steer fast enough aim yourself at it properly, much less jump on it. It's really not that different from the way Unleashed would expect you to dodge bottomless pits with little notice (or sometimes even negative notice, as was the case for that one fucking drift curve in Empire City), with the exception that missing a jump at speed doesn't always kill you.

Honestly, as far as I can see most of the actual problems with the HA amount to it being used as a crutch for bad physics rather than overcoming persistent human error in speed jumping. Which just begs the question of why we have to take the absolutionist approach instead of simply fixing its application to level design instead, especially when we consider no real alternative for its purpose has been brought up yet as Diogenes pointed out a page back.

Edited February 4, 2012 by The Cheese

[Thirsty Pocket]

You know what we'll never see again?

Lock on.

EDIT: ...unless it becomes DLC. We'll see if Tails suddenly becomes playable in Sonic 4.

But no seriously, I'd like to see more new characters come back to older games.

EDIT AGAIN: ...I just remembered Tails is now in Sonic CD... So I guess we just saw the newest instance of Lock-on. So...yeah. I derped.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Lando The Bat

[TNT]

I'm willing to try anything, but I'm honestly getting just a little tired of the 2.5D gameplay with the boost.

The 2D parts take out freedom and make me fee like I'm playing Rush instead, if I wanted Rush I would buy it and the boost is completely broken, it practically makes him super sonic and that's pretty much the only move that you need to use or can use (cant run on water without boost, kill enemies with boost, get to a better track with boost, break that, move that, kill that with boost bleh).

I'm all for respecting the roots of video game series, like how Sonic started in 2D, but isn't that what Generations was all about? Classic Sonic = 2D Modern = 3D, but instead was about 75% 2D, kinda annoying.

I think everyone keeps referring to Sonic Adventures for this new completely 3D Sonic game simply because it's completely in 3D. To top that they seemed like classic Sonic games but in 3D with a homing attack.

Edited February 4, 2012 by TNT

[MuteSpittah]

A game like sonic rush or Sonic colors. I have no problems with those two

[Phos]

Among things. There's also loops, helixes and just generally twisty architecture that will get in the way of a straight line approach - things inherent to the Sonic style of level design, regardless of era (even if admittedly used more often further back in the franchise). The point is, having means to reliably hit something on short notice in a situation where lining up a jump properly just isn't feasible is a pretty nifty ability to have, and nigh-on necessary when you're required to do so at a pace any faster than "the same speed everyone else does it". And really now, if I have to slow down to hit shit then it starts getting pretty hard to call it a Sonic game.

I don't think that putting an enemy where he can't be seen before you get to him. If Sonic is going fast you're going to want to let the player see the enemy before they get to them or else there's nothing you can really do for them. If you can't see what's ahead while at high speed, the game has bigger problems.

Looks like your quote fucked up a bit there, chief.

I was going to say that Sonic going so fast doesn't make much difference.

Frankly if you have problems landing on top of things in Mario Galaxy of all games then you probably shouldn't be playing platformers. It's literally the most lenient 3D platformer I can think of off the top of my head. But more to the point, full-contact jumping isn't going to make jumping on things any easier at Mach 1, which is an argument you seem pretty insistent on ignoring entirely.

If you're going full speed you're probably better off just rolling if they're on the ground. If they're in the air that's not a big deal either. And please, let's keep our passive aggressive comments to ourselves. Super Mario Galaxy's camera isn't that good at dealing with ambiguity (I imagine that's part of why he has such a prominent drop shadow), and it certainly doesn't help that you get one "touch" of directional control per jump.

Sonic doesn't have trouble jumping on enemies while going fast because he doesn't even have to jump to deal with them. Any contact attacking does make things much easier, because it removes a circumstance of great ambiguity: when the character and enemy are overlapping each other on screen even though there is still distance between them. That's the heart of the ambiguity I've been talking about, the only challenging dimension is the one going into the screen, and by minimizing the player's need to judge it. Rolling into grounded enemies being a viable strategy makes this much easier because if the player is traveling into the camera the locus of their attack can cover the entire volume that Sonic displaces.

Not having to jump also makes the entire situatio much less complicated, without "any contact" attacking, the entire course through the air needs to be calculated by the player as though they were trying to hit them with a medieval siege weapon to simply hit a simple grounded enemy.

If it were really that simple there wouldn't even be any percieved need of the HA in the first place. As long as you've brought it up, let's talk about the camera first. To hit an enemy with a 100% degree of success essentially means that the camera has to be focused directly on the target you want to hit - at which point you can just tilt forward at 00 and you'd intersect with your target no matter what.

The camera system just has to remove or minimize the player's reliance on the ambiguous dimension to do this task. Here's the thing about Sonic Team's cameras: They've never been very smart. Adventure 1's camera system was fairly simple: there were a bunch of large invisible spheres and the camera would focus on the center of whichever one the player was in, if none were available, it would focus on Sonic. Not a very robust system, though it is kind of interesting to think about why they needed the homing attack, as this camera system was also not good at dealing with ambiguity. Part of the problem is that this game frequently made the same mistake as a lot of later games: It frequently placed the camera at too shallow of an angle to judge how far in front of Sonic things are. That's a very fundamental error to make, as a camera can only provide two dimensions of low ambiguity. If you were to place the camera higher up and angle it downwards at about 45 degrees you have a much easier time telling the angle between Sonic and the enemy. You can simply program the camera to rise like this when grounded enemies are near. This camera angle leaves altitude somewhat ambiguous, but you can work around it by placing flying enemies at predictable altitudes, they could even be programmed to move to this altitude relative to whatever surface they're above.

These are problems you can easily deal with if it's important to the kind of game you're making. Sonic Team would rather just make their heat seeking slot car games, though.

[Blacklightning]

I don't think that putting an enemy where he can't be seen before you get to him. If Sonic is going fast you're going to want to let the player see the enemy before they get to them or else there's nothing you can really do for them. If you can't see what's ahead while at high speed, the game has bigger problems.

Unless you have a means to deal with enemies quicker than the time in which it takes to line a standard jump up. This is the very reason the HA was invented. You insist on arguing that these things are bad level design in spite of the fact that the HA nullifies all of the reasons they could be construed as such - namely the lapse in reaction time, compensated for by the fact that the HA needs little (often none) actual aiming beyond a basic general direction.

If you're going full speed you're probably better off just rolling if they're on the ground.

If we can kill every badnik just by rolling into them then it's literally no better than the HA as far as repetition is concerned. Or even the Boost, for that matter. It won't kill Sonic Team to design a few enemies that need to be hit from above, or just anywhere besides the front. Or just placing them somewhere other than flat boostspace.

If they're in the air that's not a big deal either.

Among things, I'm pretty sure Sonic's always had less air control than ground control - you basically have to get the angle right prior to the jump because you have even less time and control to re-adjust your trajectory than you would on ground when aiming a roll/slide/other generic ground attack. There's a lot of circumstantial factors that can come into play too, such as camera angle (as mentioned previous post), distance from the ground (which can prevent you from using platforming shadow as a useful point of reference unless you're practically playing from an isometric camera angle) and mentality of the target (because I don't think asking for a flying enemy that's more than a generic unmoving HA target is too much to ask).

And please, let's keep our passive aggressive comments to ourselves. Super Mario Galaxy's camera isn't that good at dealing with ambiguity (I imagine that's part of why he has such a prominent drop shadow), and it certainly doesn't help that you get one "touch" of directional control per jump.

Being deliberately vauge isn't helping your argument.

Sonic doesn't have trouble jumping on enemies while going fast because he doesn't even have to jump to deal with them. Any contact attacking does make things much easier, because it removes a circumstance of great ambiguity: when the character and enemy are overlapping each other on screen even though there is still distance between them. That's the heart of the ambiguity I've been talking about, the only challenging dimension is the one going into the screen, and by minimizing the player's need to judge it. Rolling into grounded enemies being a viable strategy makes this much easier because if the player is traveling into the camera the locus of their attack can cover the entire volume that Sonic displaces.

The entirety of your support for the roll over the HA (and even the standard jump for some reason) seems to imply that all level design encompassing enemies is flat and featureless, with nothing around that could potentially serve to punish the added lack of control that all grounded attacks possess. Which seems like an excessively bleak, even contradictory, way to look at things when the main point of this argument was to discuss the advantages of one airial option over another, so you'll have to forgive me for pondering how exactly this has any relevance to the way a standard jump performs, beyond the fact that rolling is an option on an attacking basis alone.

Putting that aside, most of this is stuff that I've already addressed in some form. The crux of your support for the standard jump seems to imply that the camera angle can always be faced square on with your target with or without the player's input - with reliable consistency, it can't be in any small timeframe, especially if the level design happens to go in, oh say, more than one direction. You're arguing your case basied on a best-case scenario that can't realistically be maintained at all times, and you'd have to be pretty naive to believe otherwise.

blah blah blah SA1 has crappy cameras and I cant argue with that blah blah blah

Part of the problem is that this game frequently made the same mistake as a lot of later games: It frequently placed the camera at too shallow of an angle to judge how far in front of Sonic things are. That's a very fundamental error to make, as a camera can only provide two dimensions of low ambiguity. If you were to place the camera higher up and angle it downwards at about 45 degrees you have a much easier time telling the angle between Sonic and the enemy. You can simply program the camera to rise like this when grounded enemies are near. This camera angle leaves altitude somewhat ambiguous, but you can work around it by placing flying enemies at predictable altitudes, they could even be programmed to move to this altitude relative to whatever surface they're above.

Angling the camera downwards, especially to that degree, removes a lot of the forward view you need to see enemies coming, though (even moreso if we're still talking about flat boostspace combat, though I'd really much reather argue on the pretense that this shit works in not-boring level design). Which is not only largely irrelevant to my main counterargument on the subject of jump accuracy (re: reaction time), it actually amplifies the problem by sacrificing forward vision for it. Again, this is the kind of thing that would benefit a much slower game (and hell, probably already has - not that I care to check), but once again, Sonic is not the kind of game you should be travelling under a specific speed for something to work like it should. It also begs the question as to whether such noticably extreme camera changes can be jarring enough to be disorienting to the player - not that 3D games haven't already had their fair share of that, but they at least generally ensured for the most part that the camera changed in a moment where the player's participation didn't matter much, if not outright removed player control from the equation - or how gameplay can cope when enemies can't always be put within direct camera view of each other when it's important to be able to see the whole pack (such as would be the case when there's an enemy who can attack from a distance). And then there's the matter of how predictable it would be to have... wait a minute. WAIT A MINUTE.

Sonic is not the kind of game you should be travelling under a specific speed for something to work like it should.

travelling under a specific speed

Alright, how about this for a compromise: make the Homing Attack available only at boost-esque speeds. The way I see it, the entire reason the move exists is to remove the need for jump arc calculation in an environment that can't afford to have it - so we keep the game controlling as normal at standard pacing, then when the game does get a bit more towards the linear twitch-fest kind of thing you could replace all jumping outright with some varation of Homing Attacking. We get the best of two words, fix a few problems with both in the process, everyone's happy, right? Hell, I'd go for it just for the opportunity to get a game that can play like the Sonic X / Sonic CD intros when the level design allows.

Maybe I should just make a seperate thread about it because I feel like I could be onto something here.

[Scar]

Alright, how about this for a compromise: make the Homing Attack available only at boost-esque speeds. The way I see it, the entire reason the move exists is to remove the need for jump arc calculation in an environment that can't afford to have it - so we keep the game controlling as normal at standard pacing, then when the game does get a bit more towards the linear twitch-fest kind of thing you could replace all jumping outright with some varation of Homing Attacking. We get the best of two words, fix a few problems with both in the process, everyone's happy, right? Hell, I'd go for it just for the opportunity to get a game that can play like the Sonic X / Sonic CD intros when the level design allows.

Maybe I should just make a seperate thread about it because I feel like I could be onto something here.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Scar

[Solkia]

A sequel to Sonic Spinball.

[GalvaTron]

- Purely 3D levels ala Seaside Hill Act 2 from Generations, I've never took the same route twice in that level, and its fast!

- Leveling up system, high scores mean faster Sonic.

- Multiple characters that have a jump and X/Square move e.g Sonic has homing attack and boost, Knuckles has glide and punch.

That's what I think...

- Purely 3D levels ala Seaside Hill Act 2 from Generations, I've never took the same route twice in that level, and its fast!

- Leveling up system, high scores mean more XP to make an unkillable character.

- Multiple characters that have a jump and X/Square move e.g Sonic has homing attack and boost, Knuckles has glide and punch.

- Sonic has the most levels!!!

That's what I think...

- Purely 3D levels ala Seaside Hill Act 2 from Generations, I've never took the same route twice in that level, and its fast!

- Leveling up system, high scores mean more XP to make an unkillable character.

- Multiple characters that have a jump and X/Square move e.g Sonic has homing attack and boost, Knuckles has glide and punch, Tails has flight and tail attack...

- Sonic has the most levels!!!

That's what I think...

...Oops. You'd never guess that I'm new.

[Phos]

These simple scenarios I'm describing are meant to serve as schemas for the simplest ways to encounter enemies, if they can easily be felt with, enemies in more complex circumstances will only require dealing with the extra circumstances rather than worrying about simply being able to judge distances.

The downward angleing camera is used in some games to great effect, such as Arrow Flash and Metroid Prime, and in others it hasn't really worked at all. Bubsy 3D was the latter, it not working because of the way the camera abruptly jolted downwards during and only during a jump. In this case, it need only angle downwards once the enemy is close enough that its benefit to ambiguity reduction to warrant it.

I'll continue this later.

[Phos]

I finally got back to doing this!

Among things, I'm pretty sure Sonic's always had less air control than ground control

In the classic's, Sonic's acceleration in the air is twice what it is on the ground. That's why the player jumps right at the start of any Sonic 1 speedrun.

Being deliberately vauge isn't helping your argument.

I don't think I'm being vague but I'll clarify whatever.

Putting that aside, most of this is stuff that I've already addressed in some form. The crux of your support for the standard jump seems to imply that the camera angle can always be faced square on with your target with or without the player's input - with reliable consistency, it can't be in any small timeframe, especially if the level design happens to go in, oh say, more than one direction. You're arguing your case basied on a best-case scenario that can't realistically be maintained at all times, and you'd have to be pretty naive to believe otherwise.

The camera only needs to be lined up insofar as the enemy is on the screen and the player can tell in what direction the enemy is from Sonic. For the latter to be the case, the two dimensions that the camera can better project (the view is a 2D projection of 3D space) have the be sufficiently in line with the two dimensions most relevant to to their spacial relation. There can be a considerable amount of offset here

Angling the camera downwards, especially to that degree, removes a lot of the forward view you need to see enemies coming, though (even moreso if we're still talking about flat boostspace combat, though I'd really much reather argue on the pretense that this shit works in not-boring level design).

It only needs to angle downward when the enemies are actually close, otherwise it would be to great a tamper on the sense of speed.