New Video of Sonic: The Fated Hour

Will There Be a SAGE Demo?

Our editor, who most of you know as Blaze Hedgehog, has again posted his monthly update regarding Sonic: The Fated Hour, his long running SFG project.

In this edition of the update, there’s more progress to note with the menu mechanics, and prospects of extending enemy lock-on with crosshairs is noted:

The most important thing this video showcases is that I’ve been getting bits of Sonic’s new menu up and running lately, and with it, I’ve been going back over some of Amy’s stuff to make it a bit nicer as a result. I got rid of that weird, Super-Mario-World-style floating item icon in exchange for hiding it within menus. Now, when you sell the item, it shows its icon in the sell slot, and when you have the item, obviously it shows it in Sonic’s menu. Nothing else currently works in Sonic’s menu but what I demonstrate here, but at the very least, you can now buy, sell, and most importantly, use items you are holding.

A lot of other little tweaks have been going on behind the scenes, as well, as always. After playing way too much Sonic Unleashed I grew increasingly tired of Sonic’s total lack of air control in that game. I noticed this was kind of a trend in TFH, too, so one tweak I enabled was giving Sonic a little bit more air control – it’s so subtle that, with any luck, you won’t even really notice it, but basically, your ability to change directions while in mid-air has been improved. I also went back through and completely re-did Sonic’s underwater physics (something had broken them) and I implemented similar underwater physics for your Buddy character, too. I’ve also begun toying with the idea of having a homing-attack crosshair, but right now that kind of covers up what you’re locked on to, so we’ll see.

The corresponding video that accompanies this update is available below.  But before you take a look at that, you may be wondering whether a new public demo of TFH will be available next month at the Sonic Amateur Games Expo.  According to Blaze…unlikely, but stay tuned:

That’s a hard question to answer.

I’ve been pushing myself rather hard lately, trying to get some momentum again on TFH. When you get in to the habit of doing something and then you stop, suddenly, regaining that momentum again is probably one of the hardest things. After the demo last August, I kind of got burnt out on working on TFH. Working on something, non-stop, without any breaks or recreational activity, for two or three weeks solid will do that to you. Adding insult to injury, the next items on my “To Do” list were perhaps the hardest, most tedious things to do in the entire game. Those were, funnily enough, Sonic’s menu and the rest of Amy’s menu. The same two things that I’ve been talking about for almost this entire year. If it wasn’t for me feeling obligated to do these monthly TFH updates, I probably would’ve gotten distracted again and shelved production ( as I have a tendency of doing).

Okay, I’m rambling here – let’s get back on topic. The point is, that while I have been working on TFH, I’m not entirely sure if I am at a point where I want to do another demo just yet – and from the sounds of things, the only way you’re going to be in SAGE this year is if you have a demo. I am eager as hell to get the next demo out the door as soon as anyone else, but there were people last SAGE who complained about the Dry Savannah demo having all of the coolest features unavailable in a boring, generic, tiny little level.

That shouldn’t happen a second time. I could finish Sonic’s menu and could most definitely build a demo out of that, but it still wouldn’t be totally feature-complete. Granted, the majority of things that are still left on my to-do list are things you aren’t going to be seeing until much later in to the game – which means I might be able to cheat and get a demo out and none of you would be the wiser. But, no, I don’t think I want to do that.

So TFH probably will not be at SAGE this year. When will the next/final demo be released? I could be optimistic, but instead I’ll be realistic: I don’t know. Given the struggle I’ve had to regain momentum on the project (and my horrible ability to estimate release dates), it could be Christmas for all I know.

So, with that in mind, have a look at the updates, in visual form, via the video below.  We’ll continue to keep tabs on the game’s progress.