Introduction

I've just recently decided to report my progress in some shape or form in the internet and recalled I have a blogger. Although, I kinda forgot how to use it "well" so I'm sorry if these blogs look basic and simple. They're not made to attract people, as I mentioned earlier, it's only to report progress every once in a while.

With that out of the way, I'll start from the "beggining". Formally, there's no specific point in time where I started having the idea, it's been a long time. It was a very simple idea, I was trying to imagine how'd Sonic Dash look like if it was somehow combined with RPG elements: "How about it was divided by 2 sections?, after reaching a 'goal', a RPG battle would begin".

The strategy I had of dividing a game by sections was actually created for another game I also have in mind, but not planning on making that one anytime soon (G-Core).

I made a drawing just for fun but, maybe the idea I had had something to do with the decisions I made throughout drawing it. I say "maybe" because I was not drawing with that game in mind.

I was obviously inspired by Dokkan, but because I love RPGs, I figured just putting some of those elements there.

Back then, I didn't had either Unity or Blender installed, I had not enough experience to program games in advanced softwares, so I decided to keep studying at my college to get all programming experience I could (good lord I used C# the most). And after a semester where we took Unity classes (first time in all history of that university), I said to myself "Now it's time to begin this". 

I already used blender a year before taking that Unity subject, so I considered myself ready after passing it (even tho we saw nothing in regards 2D, I bet it's not that different XD).

I'll show the work I've done in blender BEFORE even starting the subject:

My first model

Learning how to texture

My second model (still unfinished)

As you can see, my first 2 models had a whole lot of polygons. I then realized if I was to make a game with my own models, I shouldn't go crazy and instead go with something simpler, especially if I'm planning to add multiple characters.

So I modelled another Sonic with way much less polygons:

Yeah, the eyes need to be fixed but I took the desicion to leave it like that, I'll make a better head later, in a better version of himself.

And I recently made animations for him:

You can see most of them in this video: https://youtu.be/L-G227NbtaQ

It's most but not all because when I recorded that video, I thought I had all the animations I'd need, but realized shortly after that some extra animations needed to be done, the most obvious one being a victory animation.

I'll show you just some poses (frames) of the extra animations:

Spring bounce (loop)

Unlike Sonic Dash, the spring would be to save rings and do tricks, gameplay wise would be just to have a small breath, but for the engine it'd be to let it load the new "random assets" and obviously clean up the memory a lil bit.

Spring fall (loop)

And our character would start falling after all assets were loaded correctly (I hope at least)

Fly (loop only in section 2)

Sonic does not fly, characters out of the Fly Type won't ever be able to fly by themselves, they need help for a Fly Type character, let's say for example that that's Sonic holding Tails' hand, who's helping him to across a pit. It consists of 3 sections:

- Jump (to get their helper's hand)

- Holding (just waiting to get to the other side, that's the screenshot's pose)

- Release (they get to the other side and can continue running)

Victory (loop depends on each character)

Yes, it's based on the famous Sonic Advance pose:

I'm working on other 2 animations literally right now, as I'm writing this, so now I'll pause for a sec and continue the remaining animations.

Alright, they're done, hopefully no more animations need to be done for this unit.

To understand what animations are them, I first have to explain any unit in the game can gain extra abilities depending on the passives the player decided to give them. Instead of animating every single ability in the game, they'll just use either a general offensive or supportive animation depending on the ability itself, if, again, said ability was equipped or gained by an external source and not by the unit itself.

Offensive ability

Supportive ability

These animations are obviously for the RPG/Duel section.

I made a whole gallery on DeviantArt dedicated to this project, maybe you'd like to take a look at it (the oldest this blog is the better)

https://www.deviantart.com/kenji195/gallery/75028920/sonic-dash-and-duel

That ends the introduction, I obviously have to explain the... let's say "theory" behind the game, to make you understand what exactly are my plans for this project, as this time I didn't really explained how'd that game work, what are the mechanics, etc.

So what's next?

I'll explain all of that in the next blog, but for now I'll leave it like this. Next steps are modelling and animating 2 badniks, the one that looks like a ladybug and the one that looks like a bee.

I'm also modelling and animating a bigger version of the "ladybug" badnik, which will be the first boss.

Yesterday I got a bit too excited and draw Tails instead, so here's a little teaser of what's coming after the badniks.

I'll start programming once I've finished animating Knuckles, who comes after Tails.

So the order of things to do in blender before programming anything would be modelling and animating:
- Ladybug badnik (Moto bug)

- Big version of Ladybug badnik (Moto bug)

- Bee badnik (Buzz bomber or Buzzer)

- Tails

- Knuckles

That's quite some work to do XD

Welp, until the next report (as I mentioned, I'll explain the basic "theory" of the game and maaaybe share my progress, if there's any worth mentioning)

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