Flicky Turncoat General

Discussion in 'Showroom Archive' started by GT Koopa, Mar 9, 2011.

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  1. GT Koopa

    GT Koopa Well-Known Member Member

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    Hello! I'm GT Koopa. You may of seen my stuff on Youtube or Retro. I'm known for Flicky Turncoat DX. However, I'm not working on that right now. That's because of this side project, Sonic 2 Flicky Turncoat Edition. What this is you may ask? It is a port of Flicky Turncoat DX's infamous features to Sonic 2. Let me tell you this right now, IT IS NO WHERE NEAR DONE. For example, I still haven't put in the emerald monitor code, the special hud, or made all of Marine's sprites yet. What I HAVE done, is the basic features themselves, graphic work, and tweaking bosses. Not just changing arenas, but the bosses actual code, something that isn't done a lot in hacks.


    VIDEOS:





    So why am I posting here? I need input. My usual test group aren't hackers. So I am releasing my latest build to you guys for opinions. Most bosses are complete, some are complete but don't have a boss pinch mode yet, there are ones in the process of being worked on (OOZ Boss), and one (the final Eggrobo boss) hasn't been started at all. Play the bosses (use level select if you have to) and tell me what you think.


    DOWNLOAD 03/08/2011 BETA
     
  2. MarkeyJester

    MarkeyJester ♡ ! Member

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    Hello there, glad you could share your work with us, while most of the hack was very simple or untouched, I was starting to feel disappointed in the lack of work, but I noticed all of those bosses, and those are "Very" interesting, infact some of them suprised me (in a good way), you've managed to turn simple bosses into something new and fresh without ruining the basic concept behind them.


    EHZ - I thought was possibly too simple for my liking, but having those objects fly out made it a little challenging.


    CPZ - Was more fun with the loop in the middle, though I did shit myself when it started moving up and down in sine wave with the water rising =P


    ARZ - The concept was pretty cool here, a lot more challenging now that you "have" to use the arrows to your advantage, it became more difficult when the arrows started getting faster, which was equally cool.


    CNZ - To begin with it was pretty simple to master and did take a bit of patients, though the second part where it rises to the very top and randomly shot bombs down (and occasionally dropped down itself) was much too difficult and unfair, I had to skip this one.


    HTZ - I wasn't sure on this one, is it incomplete? That was the vibe I got here sorry.


    MCZ - The first part seemed simple and quite difficult (but dull in a way), took forever for the rummbling to finish before it came back up, but that second part was much better, although hard with the dropping pieces actually "following" you, was more fun and a bit more fair.


    OOZ - You just changed the whole meaning of the word difficult there, I did spot the speach bubble saying "NO" though =P


    MPZ - This was a bit cheap in my opinion, although I thought the yarn balls were unique


    WFZ - Again, quite cheap, nothing too stunning


    And the Metal Sonic fight, interesting twist, not much to say than that though. Some of your bosses are impressive even if slightly simple, I had fun though and I'll be looking forward to seeing you progress in this with other edits yet to come =)
     
  3. DanielHall

    DanielHall Well-Known Member Member

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    Looks an interesting hack. Have to check it later.
     
  4. MicroChirp

    MicroChirp Wow, I was so stupid a few years ago... Member

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    Marine is just a one sprite edit of Miles, but I understand, it's unfinished, it's beta. It has cool bosses, too.


    I like how you added Nyannyan/Tiger from Flicky.
     
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  5. FireRat

    FireRat Do Not Interact With This User, Anywhere!!! Exiled

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    I never played your hacks before, but flickies attacking you is a very nice and funny idea, keep it up! I really needed see hacks with ideas such as this...
     
  6. MicroChirp

    MicroChirp Wow, I was so stupid a few years ago... Member

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    Yes, it's an idea from his old Sonic 1 hack, Flicky Turncoat DX.
     
  7. GT Koopa

    GT Koopa Well-Known Member Member

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    http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?sho...st&p=607532


    So after many months I posted Sonic 2 Flicky Turncoat Edition at Retro. It has enhancements such as...nothing. I haven't been working on ANY HACKING for these past months. Also, as many of you may know I kinda...dropped the ball on submitting to the hacking contest.


    So if you haven't played it, play it now! If you have played it already, I thank you in advance.
     
  8. Crash

    Crash Well-Known Member Member

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    Some hopefully constructive criticism: insta-death spikes littered around levels where you're going fast (i.e. Emerald Hill) and can't see what's coming up ahead lead to frustrating arbitrary deaths. They work in games like Mega Man because you're moving slowly and can see them and have to use skill to maneuver around them, here it's just annoying memorization. You could possibly still use them in slower platforming sections or boss areas for extra challenge, and use different graphics to differentiate them from regular spikes, but seeing how they work in your hack it's pretty obvious why the original designers didn't do it that way.


    Nice work on the bosses though, CPZ especially was pretty fun!
     
  9. GT Koopa

    GT Koopa Well-Known Member Member

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    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]


    So MegaGWolf will sometime in the future review Flicky Turncoat DX. While the waiting has been killing me, it also made me realize something. Why not post the latest build? I might as well give him something slightly better for said review. While there are still things that I forgot to fix that have been driving me crazy (for example I keep on forgetting to fix the bonus exit variable not clearing) there are updates. Ricky Illusion Act 2 has more layout done and the Boss has yet another new (better) song.


    But there are things I am afraid of. All videos on Youtube of people playing Flicky Turncoat DX don't seem to show off all the bonus stuff. No one uses the secret underground paths. No one tries to collect 50 rings and collect the emerald monitors in each act. No one seems to find the bonus exit, let alone the 2nd next act starting point it unlocks. No one waits for Pocky Field's boss to slow down, insisting that it is "impossibly hard" instead. Via text comments, no one seems to explore Ricky Illusion at all. No one even mentioned the "rising bottomless pit instant death" part at the start of Ricky Illusion Act 2. Do they know there is a semi playable zone that is accessible by the level select?


    Then there was Laundry Zone. Remember when I was working on that? It was for the SSRG group project. Unfortunately, the chunks and layout I made were well...substandard. It didn't look natural. I think it was because I tried to have lots of open ceilings on chunks but in the end I crammed as many paths as possible, to the point the layout looked like a jumbled mess. I hated it. Pathwise everything flowed but visually it was horrible. It caused me to go into a depression and take a break from hacking all together, for many months. I just...never got back into it, not even during summer. Now, I can't even WORK on stuff as I want to anymore due to my laptop getting a horrible virus couple weeks back.


    So, here you go. Both roms are included below. For both Ricky Illusion And Laundry Zone, I repeat you HAVE to use level select to access them. Activate debug as well to get around incomplete paths. Well, I guess that's it for now. I have been sitting on these for several months, I might as well show people them since I haven't done anything new lately.


    Download the GT Hack Bundle.
     
  10. MarkeyJester

    MarkeyJester ♡ ! Member

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    Now that I've had the chance to properly play it, I'm going to give my up most honest opinions here.


    Your hack is quite bizarre, even more than that of Selbis hack, and it isn't in a good nor a bad way, it's a mix of a both, I'll try my best to explain why as I think it's more to do with a lack of unplanned direction. By that I mean, you put stuff in that although are nice in a way that you have shown you are capable, are not something that actually fits and does tend to ruin the game play.


    First off, the info screen, if a game is unique, it is of course going to need explaining at some point, the problem is, a lot of games during the 90s (and before) had instructions in the manuals, but no-body read them and they got along quite fine without them, because they're games that you can go straight in and work out what to do right away, your hack is so bizarre that it's not directly clear on what's going on that one has to read the instructions. It's not the main issue, but players in general don't want to spend their time reading a manual.


    First thing I've noticed are level changes, notably the perspective, I do like the new take on this perspective personally, and I do agree that some things are out of perspective like the monitors and Sonic, but it's not as much as a biggy as most people are making out, my real concern is the clashing of colours, with the BG it "sometimes" makes it hard to see, I think I got to a few sections where I thought there was a floor I could walk on, but I didn't see the <!> in time to know it was a bottomless pit or something. A few enemies I destroyed and ended up getting hurt for, and it took me a while to realise that it was the flicky, in fact, forgetting about the flicky is something I did on a regular basis, animals that are spawned (from a Sonic players point of view) are often invisible to them as they're used to not caring about it.


    I was impressed with the few badnik changes, wasn't so sure on that sliding left/right badnik, often it would come out of nowhere and hurt me before I have the chance to dodge it. It's also nice to see enemie art changes, the green one holding two baseball mitts has to be my favoured design. The layout and object placement is all over the place, I won't lie to you, I'm not fond of the layout much, it's hard to navigate around in places and you can lose flow quite easily, there are a few cheap shots like when I hit a red spring sending me right, and it sent me right into that left/right sliding enemy.


    The artistic graphics aren't great, but they aren't terrible either, you can actually see what stuff is suppose to be which is a good start, I think you need to get the colours arranged to suit your designs better though, like more shades of the same colour and less of different colours, strictly speaking you can fit three decent colours into one like with multiple shades of each, this might be your downfall. The music is quite catchy in the first level I must say, it needs better instruments and maybe improved syncing, but I do like the catchiness of the track.


    I've deducted that my only problem with the hack is as I stated above "lack of planned direction", you have things in here that although are nice, they just don't fit or they cause the player more of a headache than entertainment.
     
  11. TheJeli

    TheJeli Umm... Member

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    I was gonna post but Markey said it for me and I'm not a parrot.


    What music plays in Laundry Zone? I recognize it but I can't remember what it's called.
     
  12. GT Koopa

    GT Koopa Well-Known Member Member

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    Good Vibrations.
     
  13. GT Koopa

    GT Koopa Well-Known Member Member

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    Update: Sonic Hack Showcase time!



    I asked MegaGWolf about it and he said that I can post this here, so I'm doing it mainly because it needs to be seen.
     
  14. DanielHall

    DanielHall Well-Known Member Member

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    Hah, rather unique and pretty cool!
     
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