HEY GUYS LOOK AT THAT AWESOME-Oh it's gone.

[Chaos Warp]

I think we forget that with the better controls of Generations, Modern Sonic has the potential for better setpieces. How 'bout a platforming-based setpiece? For example quickly platforming up a falling tower or something.

[KHCast]

This may be a stupid question, but what exactly does that ential? As I don't really understand what you exactly mean by that.

Well I translate it as the modern games are basically just races to get from one big cool looking set piece, to the next, with some stuff inbetween.

[Burnt Ash]

Well, I'm not sure if this counts, but from SA1 - well Generations, set pieces have often been placed in chase sections. SA1, you have the whale in Emerald Coast, the rock in Lost World. SA2, you have the truck in City Escape, that one thing in Final Rush (debris)? Heroes gives you another rock in either Seaside Hill or Ocean Palace, I don't think are chase sections in Shadow, fire tornado in Crisis City, that whale in Wave Ocean. Generations gives you Silver and his giant ball of debris falling on him, Colors and its Final Color Blaster? I don't know, I'm not sure if these fall under what you'd consider set pieces, but that's what I thought of it.

[KHCast]

Well, I'm not sure if this counts, but from SA1 - well Generations, set pieces have often been placed in chase sections. SA1, you have the whale in Emerald Coast, the rock in Lost World. SA2, you have the truck in City Escape, that one thing in Final Rush (debris)? Heroes gives you another rock in either Seaside Hill or Ocean Palace, I don't think are chase sections in Shadow, fire tornado in Crisis City, that whale in Wave Ocean. Generations gives you Silver and his giant ball of debris falling on him, Colors and its Final Color Blaster? I don't know, I'm not sure if these fall under what you'd consider set pieces, but that's what I thought of it.

Oh those count. Big memorable moments in a level. Yeah that's what i meant when I was taking about linearity in the games. It makes things like this, more predictable and boring.

[Soniman]

Well I translate it as the modern games are basically just races to get from one big cool looking set piece, to the next, with some stuff inbetween.

 

Is that really all it is though? A lot of the levels in Colors don't even have "set pieces" and is just a normal level (though on the flipside you get Terminal Velocity which is nothing but one big setpiece). In Generations case, it relies on a lot of background events (like the Chemcial Plant on fire).

 

Or what about setpieces that don't sacrifice gameplay? You have the Flying Blimp Section in Classic Roofotp Run, and the GUN Truck in Classic City Escape, the Fire Tornado in Classic Crisis City, etc. And on the modern side you also have the Fire Tornado (which is a quick step section, but still) and the crumbling ruins in Modern Sky Sanctuary.

 

They're are tons of varying degress of "set pieces" and I don't really think the modern games adhere to one specific "class" of set piece.

Edited February 26, 2013 by Soniman

[Kuzu]

This may be a stupid question, but what exactly does that ential? As I don't really understand what you exactly mean by that.

It's a hyperbole, but what Aqua said; rushing from one set piece to another.

[Diogenes]

I think we forget that with the better controls of Generations, Modern Sonic has the potential for better setpieces. How 'bout a platforming-based setpiece? For example quickly platforming up a falling tower or something.

Generations really didn't do much to fix the controls. And what exactly would this falling tower sequence entail?

[KHCast]

Is that really all it is though? A lot of the levels in Colors don't even have "set pieces" and is just a normal level (though on the flipside you get Terminal Velocity which is nothing but one big setpiece). In Generations case, it relies on a lot of background events.

 

Or what about setpieces that don't sacrifice gameplay? You have the Flying Blimp Section in Classic Roofotp Run, and the GUN Truck in Classic City Escape, the Fire Tornado in Classic Crisis City, etc. And on the modern side you also have the Fire Tornado (which is a quick step section, but still) amd the crumbling ruins in Modern Sky Sanctuary.

 

They're are tons of varying degress of "set pieces" and I don't think the modern games adhere to one specific "class" of set piece.

The Classic parts have more to explore and experiment with. 

 

The modern examples you gave, I found pretty bland and uninteresting.(aside from CC modern. that was a nice piece that presented some challenge)

Edited February 26, 2013 by Aqua

[Soniman]

The Classic parts have more to explore and experiment with. The modern examples you gave, I found pretty bland and uninteresting.(aside from CC modern. that was a nice piece that presented some challenge)

 

So where does the line have to be drawn where it's noticeable and unobtrusive, but is "bland" as a result, or exciting and cool to look at but you won't have much in the way of igameplay nteraction with said set pieces?

Edited February 26, 2013 by Soniman

[KHCast]

So where does the line have to be drawn where it's noticeable and unobtrusive, but is "bland" as a result, or exciting and cool to look at but you won't have much in the way of igameplay nteraction with said set pieces?

Well with the boost gameplay, I'd have to say most of the time the line is at bland and uninteresting, because of the limitations it's presented. Actually being able to do something aside from run and push a few buttons to dodge or just run would be nice.

Edited February 26, 2013 by Aqua

[Diogenes]

So where does the line have to be drawn where it's noticeable and unobtrusive, but is "bland" as a result, or exciting and cool to look at but you won't have much in the way of igameplay nteraction with said set pieces?

Well the idea is to avoid either, I think. A good setpiece should be flashier than regular gameplay, enough for it to register as a special event, but it should still be designed to work with and test the usual gameplay mechanics rather than being flashy and little else.

[Chaos Warp]

Generations really didn't do much to fix the controls. And what exactly would this falling tower sequence entail?

Um yeah it did. Sonic was much less slippery then he was in Unleashed, and accelerates slower and turns smoother, making it much easier to do all the platforming in that game. 

 

And maybe this falling tower sequence count entail hitting a jump ramp onto the massive tower as it's falling onto it's side, and you can get to higher and lower routes depending on how fast you platform up the falling tower and jump off the top?

Edited February 26, 2013 by Generations (Chaos Warp)

[Salamander]

A good first step would be just to have your controls actually mean something during a set piece. Your usual controls, that is. I'll refer, again, to the set pieces that capped pretty much every level in Generations 3DS, for several of which you were literally on rails - rail-grinding - although for many others you might've been. A giant totem pole falling on you at the end of Modern Green Hill, grinding on an inexplicable rail through a cave in Modern Mushroom Hill, the orca chase in Modern Emerald Coast (Modern, Modern, Modern - I'm sensing a pattern here)... in the first one Sonic runs automatically and all you can do to influence the outcome is press the Boost button. I'm pretty sure you can neither stop nor jump nor affect your speed in any other way than pressing the Boost button. So it's a one-button gameplay sequence. The Mushroom Hill cave rail? You have to press Boost to knock through two or three obstacles on the rail, so I suppose there's some variety in that you have to press the button just some of the time and not necessarily all of the time. The orca chase is a quicktime event in which you don't even have to press any buttons until the very end, and they're just arbitrary and don't relate to the normal gameplay function of those buttons; Sonic runs, jumps, and leaps on his own.

 

Some of them were a bit better. The end of Classic whatchamacallit, Water Palace, involves an immense Eggrobo (or something of that nature) striking the wall, knocking blocks down from the ceiling, and you have to platform around them while not drowning. That's pretty legit, although my memory may be distorting some less legit elements. Then at the end of Modern Tropical Resort there's a rail-grinding sequence (yeah, again) in which you have a choice of three rails to switch between and meteors plummeting down from the heavens onto all of them, and you have to switch between rails in a fairly rapid sequence to dodge them. I don't remember if it's possible to Boost or jump in that sequence, and there'd be no point in doing so anyway I guess, but it's another example that's not so bad. Normal gameplay with normal controls in which your actions have a meaningful and understandable effect on the outcome of the sequence which makes sense in relation to the gameplay. I'm pretty sure they didn't have meteors falling between the rails as an obstacle to switching, though, which would've been a good idea. It even makes sense within the context of the level!

Edited February 26, 2013 by FFWF

[Semi-colon e]

Crisis City Modern was good because the visual stuff that was a spring or two was extremely brief (especially compared to it's 06 counterpart where you bounce on 3 springs, hit a ramp, go over a loop, fly into the air where the glass smashes, and hit another spring, and then a loading screen as well before you regain control) - there was no GUN Truck 45 seconds of doing almost bugger all here, it was "fly into the air as glass smashes", and you're back to gameplay. The finale also depended a lot on avoiding and being careful of stuff, but at the same time there were multiple tiers of the highway you could go up to, and depending on where you were, it was easier or harder to reach the goal ring.

 

Classic's level also had the tornado, which was basically just an extended platform section on irregular platforms and with a wind mechanic. And it's cool because of the tornado dragging up all the debris, and even the trollpost doesn't require the player to stop or lose their control. The GUN Truck in City Escape Classic did also affect the gameplay, but only if you were too slow.

 

Set pieces can be good - level gimmicks are typically better. Imo good levels have both. The typical chase sequences are fairly less frequent in Generations, and only really particularly prevalent in levels that had them before.

Edited February 26, 2013 by Semi-colon e

[Gabz Girl]

Nobody mentioned the mach speed areas in Sonic 06? Omg those were terrible, and they were supposed to make Sonic faster. But in the end he was much harder to control and, most of the time, running straight forward crashing into objects. Thank God they never brought that idea back.

[Straw Hat]

Um yeah it did. Sonic was much less slippery then he was in Unleashed, and accelerates slower and turns smoother, making it much easier to do all the platforming in that game. 

 

And maybe this falling tower sequence count entail hitting a jump ramp onto the massive tower as it's falling onto it's side, and you can get to higher and lower routes depending on how fast you platform up the falling tower and jump off the top?

So, basically Mazuri Day's but with falling...?

[Chaos Warp]

So, basically Mazuri Day's but with falling...?

No, I envisioned it in 3d, with the tower falling forwards as you were climbing it. 

[Jolt_TH]

The falling tower thing could work with Sky Sanctuary, instead of having one path, have the path broken so you have to jump over holes, manoeuvre to the right path and jump up/down to higher or lower paths.

Do you mean something like the skyscraper decent in Speed Highway Dio? both gens and SA have pretty much your full move set, you can jump, homing attack and spindash in SA and quickstep in gens, obviously you can't go back or sideways to the extremes but it makes sense due to the nature of the set piece. Again it is a chasing style though.

I'm trying to think of ways that you could change existing set pieces, to get a better idea of how to make them moreso if not fully player controlled

[Jango]

Nobody mentioned the mach speed areas in Sonic 06? Omg those were terrible, and they were supposed to make Sonic faster. But in the end he was much harder to control and, most of the time, running straight forward crashing into objects. Thank God they never brought that idea back.

 

I thought the 3D parts in Unleashed worked pretty much like that, with the exception that you can actually stop and have a little better control over Sonic.

[azoo]

The spin dash is much more usable to interact with environments if not mostly because A ) you have to stop / slow down and charge before going fast, B ) Its charging gives you many alternate variables to Sonic's set launching speed, and C ) you let Sonic react to the environment / objects after releasing instead of having control of its every movement. Not saying you can't make an interactive boost, but it'd require major nerfing honestly. And if it wouldn't then that would have to be proven.

Of course, like Blue Blood said, its not just the gameplay itself but how the level layout sets itself up like setpiece after setpiece. Honestly this wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for how they're all automated, because otherwise I think things like that aren't that bad if you don't force a player through it.. or limit it to hallways.

Going off of what Dio said though I have to agree. Run, jump, roll, Spin Dash, homing attack, drift (and added quick step). I think that's my definitive favorite Sonic setup.

Edited February 26, 2013 by Azookara

[Semi-colon e]

Well it's not really "just" the boost tbf.

 

Thing is Lost World in Adventure and many of the levels in Heroes were fairly linear going from one setpiece to the next (though Lost World has good ones where you remain mostly in control), but there was no boost in those games.

 

It is the setpieces themselves half the time, because you've got to go to those setpieces. Take Speed Highway in Generations, the Modern level was fairly linear until after the building run section, after which point it opened up a surprising amount more. Until then, it was fairly linear because the level design concentrated itself a bit in order for you to get to this section. Skyscraper Scamper's Day level also has the chase sequences, and the rail sections afterwards do open up the level a bit.

 

The changing to 2D sections in these games is almost always a required section as well (there's a skippable wall jump in Seaside Hill and Sky Sanctuary has a short skippable 2D section, and the start of Eggmanland has a brief skippable 2D section, but beyond this...).

 

Essentially, these problems are problems anyway, it's not JUST the boost, the boost is a bit of a scapegoat if I'm quite honest.

 

If setpieces must be in these games, then imo they should be at the start or end of the level. This prevents them from being halfway and required, so the level design does not "taper" to meet this point. The 2D sections actually do pretty much the same thing, whether you're transitioning into them or out of them. Just make the setpieces interactive as well. The GUN Truck in City Escape Modern is obnoxiously long with little input, if you play the mission version where you race a doppleganger, it starts halfway into the level! Sure it's at the end of the level, but it starts so early on that the level becomes really linear once you reach the 2D section (essentially you want the top route, you don't get anything for the lower ones other than time wasting).

 

CD does pretty well in Stardust Speedway where you reach a giant building/Eggman statue as a setpiece and the level design changes to a more pinball-esque style, but you can approach and exit it from wherever and you still have to put in effort to make your way through. This is the exception rather than the rule though, and difficult to replicate in 3D. Hydrocity Act 2 also starts out well with a very interactive wall crushing section, but it's at the start so that once it's done the level is free to open up.

 

Eugh I lost my train of thought here...

[Diogenes]

Well it's not really "just" the boost tbf.

That's true; this is something the series has always struggled with, for a couple of reasons. But aside from the hardware limitations of some of the earlier 3D Sonics, I think the boost (and related design) is the first "hard" obstacle towards fixing it.

[Kuzu]

I will agree that automation and set pieces have been plaguing the series as far back SA1, but the problem just wasn't very prominent until now when the entire gameplay works on being a set piece. The first step to getting around that is to stop trying to make the gameplay a spectacle which means limiting the boost. The boost's entire purpose in it's broadest terms is to make Sonic go fast and look cool.

[Chaos Warp]

I think that the belief that Modern Sonic is setpiece after setpiece is a serve hyperbole, considering all the platforming in Generations between the boost sections/setpieces. The problem is now, in my opinion, is that the level design's paths are too narrow and clear-cut (basically what Diognes has touched on) and there isn't enough usage of slope physics. Yes, you'd probably have to change the controls a lot and basically make it a different playstyle for this to work to it's full extent, but I still think it can be worked into Modern gamepay to some extent.

 

Of course not to say I don't love Modern gameplay, but it is flawed. 

[Kuzu]

The "platforming" is mostly jumping on square blocks, or a just a bunch of floating enemies for a homing attack chain. =/