An Engine Tweak Yields some Fast and Pretty Results
This month brings about a new engine release of something that’s managed to lay low on the radar, despite some already promising results.
It’s called Sonic Blitz3D Unleashed, and it falls under the Sonic fan game genre. Created in the Blitz3D engine, it continues to be a work in progress, and with each revision comes something exciting–be it modeling, physics, or both.
The latest release, version 1.1, offers a bit of everything, including a nicely modeled 3D Sonic, some tweaks to how he moves and jumps, and its execution in some re-imaginations of Sonic levels from today and yesterday, including an Apotos like environment from Sonic Unleashed, and what appears to be a call back to Emerald Coast from Sonic Adventure.
All of these are on display in the 3 minute video shown below. If you decide to click on it, you’ll be taken to a page that offers the opportunity to download the newest engine. From there, you’ll have to scour the Internet to find additional stages. There’s a lot of promise here, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated as major improvements happen.
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Impressive!
Very impressive!
Someone needs a lesson in level design.
It’s very cool this game is a mix-up between Sonic Unleashed and Sonic 06 very cool though. but on the gameplay we can see its a fan-game (poor on it) but still impressive
Other than the metallic effect for the shoes and the homing attack/burst forward effect, its a pretty cool looking model.
The gameplay looks pretty good too.
This has nothing to do with the article, but I’m dying for some more needlemouse information… another trailer, some posters, even a real title would be nice!
Perhaps once Mario and Sonic 2 is done and dusted…
The only thing that’s really that good about this mod of the BlitzSonic engine is that it contains a full, real Spindash, and Sonic runs somewhat faster.
Other than that, it took the whole point out of why BlitzSonic was made in the first place: to imitate the classic Sonic gameplay / pinball mechanic in 3D. And this makes the reason of it’s creation nonexistant since it removes momentum-gained speed and replaces it with the “BOOSTLOL” of Sonic Unleashed gameplay.
Sheesh, sometimes fans miss the point just as bad as Sega does themselves.
Cody Collins: It’s about opinion. Some people like tha new games some dosen’t. The new games are not really that bad. And sometimes we just have to enjoy it instead of comparing.
Anyway, impressive. Really cool model. I hope he makes better levels and when it’s done. Give us a download! I want to try!
That’s not the point. I liked Unleashed very much, however. I just prefer the classic games WAAAY over that. So don’t get me wrong by that.
The thing that bothers me is how it was an engine built to do a certain type of gameplay, and then they twisted it into something completely different from that, DELIBERATELY because they believed it would “improve” the gameplay.
If they wanted to improve the gameplay for BlitzSonic, they could’ve fully implemented rolling, which would have aided the “pinball mechanic” gameplay BlitzSonic has to offer. If they wanted to make a game that plays like Unleashed, they could’ve made the gameplay from scratch rather than ripping something good in it’s own right and twisting it around.
Just imagine: what would happen if you put the Boost in S1/S2/S3K/SCD/Chaotix? Not only would it remove the “pinball mechanic” motive, but it would also make the games way too easy, and would require stuff such as “fake difficulty” in order to gain a challenge. Mixing the Boost + Genesis-styled gameplay together is well, game-breaking.
But I digress. People won’t understand.
And lastly, new games, not that bad? NOT THAT BAD? Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow, Nextgen (especially), Secret Rings, Black Knight, the Rivals games, the Rush games (somewhat), and Chronicles might like a word with you.
Azakura: How did you lump Adventure 2, Black Knight, Shadow, Heroes, and Rush with Next Gen? I can see Secret Rings, I’ll even give you Rivals, Black Knight, and parts of Shadow, but Adventure 2 was the FAR superior Adventrue game, and Heroes and Shadow had some of the most interesting levels I’ve seen in a Snic game.
@Azukara: Epic fail. That is all.
@Snooky: Epic fail. That is all.
See what I did there? =3
I see that you’re a modern fanboy, not just by the fact that you’re trying to stand up for the new games, but the fact of how immature that statement was. You deserve a cookie.
Skai Cyan: Sonic Adventure 2 was not the superior Adventure game by any means. It was overly linear, Shadow was an over-rated piece of crap, an overload of treasure hunting and shooting games, a deep and dark unneeded storyline, THAT DANG SOMERSAULT ATTACK, Soap shoes, grinding (although it was at least decent in this game), overusing the same level-themes over and over because of sheer laziness, characters overshadowing the main hedgehog himself, narmfest ahoy, etc. etc. and once again (to list again), THE FREAKING SOMERSAULT, WHICH SHOULDN’T EXIST SINCE ROLLING CAN DO EVERYTHING IT COULD. SA1 was superior because you got to have a ton of original stages as Sonic, and it played almost like a 3D carbon-copy of the Genesis games (minus a few flaws, which are excused since SA1 was Sonic’s first 3D outing). Don’t bring up the storyline, either. I don’t play Sonic games for the story, thank you very much.
Heroes was Yuji Naka’s attempt to fuse together the old and new continuities of the series into one and make Sonic solid again, but then Takashi Izuka pulled the whole “TEAMWORK YEA HAPPY COLUR SEEZURS IS FO KIDZ YALL” system in and broke the game completely.
Shadow was an abomination. If you liked it, I’m sorry.
Rivals (like Advance 2 & 3, actually) were hold-right-fests. Rush was a hold-X-fest. Rush Adventure was an improvement, but how does the phrase go: “Close, but no cigar”?
Secret Rings shown potential, and became a game that was fun for about an hour or so, but then became really repetitive. So repetitive, I haven’t played it since about March of last year for that very reason.
Black Knight started as a stupid idea, and didn’t fail to show me that it was, well, a stupid idea.
Unleashed was good only because it brought new (somewhat good) things to the table. Although, the Boost almost killed it for me. Almost. At least I still think it’s the 2nd best 3D Sonic out there, since nothing can topple SA1 as of right now. (Only if Needlemouse will….)
Lastly, I guess you guys should just ignore the whole “what if Genesis games had Boost” argument, since seemingly I noticed that you losers don’t like those games, do you?
*rolls eyes*
This is a horrible abomination.
1. Horrible level design. It’s a straight path, with bottomless pits everywhere.
2. Hold boost button to win. The video also shows how badly coded it is. All they did was set “button here” to make Sonics speed variable go to the max value, making him impossible to control. (Which is why the video maker crashed into walls every 3 seconds)
3. It’s not a good model at all, nor did they make it. It’s just the Unleashed Wii model, with bad choppy animations.
And this is coming from someone who actually likes most of the newer Sonic games, so imagine how bad it is to anyone who doesn’t like the new games.
Yeah, I KNOW how bad it is to someone who doesn’t like the new games. That would be me. =P
It’s you you’re the child.
…and I never mentioned anyone being a child. Ok…
Azukara: Very true about those modern fanboys. I try talking sense into them all the time, but they just dont fucking listen. Sonic advance 3 actually had a very greater degree of difficulty than advance 2 though. I personally tried the whole “hold right” strategy and I got gameovers constantly. never played rivals though. SA1 lacked one KEY feature of the classics: rolling. and the spindash was essentially the predecessor to these overly abundant speed boosts. SA2 wasn’t THAT bad. It’s most certainly one of the last few decent Sonic games (along with advance 1 and unleashed). Gotta agree with you on the linear levels, overrated sonic clone, and pointless gimmicks though.
Yes, I agree, I now noticed Sadv3 is harder, but still sorta boring.
SA1 did have rolling, though, but it wasn’t enforced like it was in the classics. Plus, the graphics were mildly wonky and Spindash was spammable, but still. It’s the closest we’ve got to a real 3D Sonic game so far.