ProSonic Water

I have water working in ProSonic now. Instead of having two seperate palettes like I originally wanted, I went with what I call a "water map" which simply says "replace color A with color B when drawing water". It maps out conversions for all 256 colors.



Also, I should have a picture from the SatAM game fairly soon. It could be as soon as today, or it could be in a few days from now. I'm trying to get out a picture by the end of the month if possible.

ProSonic Poll Results, Updates

Responses here, at SFGHQ, and OCR combined, 21 responses were collected total. OCR tended to be more for 8-bit color, while the rest were mostly 16-bit color. With a 21.8% margin-of-error, Two-thirds (66.7%) said they would prefer more color over better performance. Just one-third (33.3%) said they put performance first. Because this poll was not done scientifically, the confidence rating is not as high as it would be if the poll was done scientifically.



In other news, I have started porting the ProSonic editing utilities to Windows. Only one has been ported so far, and that is the object layout editor. It works exactly like the DOS version. The other utilities should be easy to port. I have thought about possibly releasing these editing tools to the public so levels could be prepared for games when the engine is made public. On the other hand, nobody would be able to test their levels until the engine was released anyhow, so I don't know what benefits would really be served by doing this.

Also, if you have a Sonic the Hedgehog website and would like to link people to my blog for ProSonic updates, you can use one of these images:




I would prefer if you copied the images on your own server rather than using the link sources above. The idea is to spread awareness of the engine. Most people are still uneducated about it and don't understand what benefits it serves over other Sonic engines. I've been posting a lot more on ProSonic lately to try and do something about that problem. I also want to make sure people realize I still have every intention on finishing it.

ProSonic Color Poll

For a long time now, I've been trying to decide between 8-bit and 16-bit color. ProSonic currently uses 8-bit color (that's 256 colors, 4 times that of the Sega Genesis). I've been considering the use of 16-bit color though (that's 32,768 colors, the same amount used by the Sega 32X and Sega Saturn). If I use 16-bit, performance will likely suffer, but the environment would be even more colorful. If I use 8-bit, there won't be as many colors to use in a level, but performance would get a big boost. Right now ProSonic runs at a full 60 frames per/second on a 400MHz Pentium II machine in single player mode. That might not be the case in the future as I add features such as 3D objects.

My question is what would you rather sacrifice? You can answer this poll by submitting a reply to this post (link below).
A - Sacrifice performance for more colors (16-bit color)
B - Sacrifice colors for more performance (8-bit color)

The responses I get won't be the determining factor, but it could influence my decision if people feel strongly one way or the other.

ProSonic Ported To Windows

I have finally ported the ProSonic engine to Windows! There are still a few technical difficulties to work out, but shown below is the current result. I realize the colors are messed up. That is just one of the technical difficulties involved in this port. It is playable though, and that makes me quite happy.

ProSonic Screen Shots Are Back

More dead links have been replaced. You can now view all the ProSonic screen shots again, including an extra one I decided to throw in.

DUMP1.GIF
Demonstrated here is solidity and sloping. The formulas used in my engine replicate the exact results of the original Sonic the Hedgehog games, pixel by pixel, value by value.

DUMP2.GIF
Shown here is Emerald Hill from Sonic 2. Included with the engine are tools to modify levels. One tool will allow you to import levels from other Sonic games. This is one possible result.

DUMP3.GIF
The beach ball shown here is an example of the kinds of objects that can be programmed for the engine. ProSonic supports up to 255 object classes with 256 possible members each. Objects function using ProSonic's easy-to-use scripting language.

DUMPOLD.GIF
This a picture I never uploaded before. It's actually from a much earlier version of ProSonic. The level importer didn't exist at the time, so graphics were imported manually. This was a very basic test level.

BLOCK.GIF
This tool is called "Block-It" and is used to design level tiles using small 16x16 blocks. Everything the original Sonic games offered in tiles is offered in ProSonic as well.

COLLIDE.GIF
The collision editor allows you to modify the solidity of the 16x16 blocks. This program is very easy to work with.

EZTILE.GIF
EZ-Tile is a tool that will import a 128x128 area of a PCX into a 128x128 tile in ProSonic. It automatically generates the 16x16 blocks and checks for any that can be flipped and/or rotated to save space.

LIMP.GIF
LIMP is the level importer used to take any level from the original Sonic games and import it into a ProSonic-based game. It accurately imports all the block, palette, block-map, tile-map, solidity, and ring layout data. The levels are fully playable too.

OBJECT.GIF
This tool allows you to design and re-design the object layout in any ProSonic level. It offers mouse support to make designing easier.

SCRIPT.GIF
This is an example script file. Future updates of the scripting language will be closer to C than they are in this picture. The scripting language is very flexible and will be editable by hand, or by an event editor-type program to simplify the more complex portions of the language.