Post by marbleycake on Nov 5, 2024 10:52:04 GMT -8
When I first got into making Sonic fangames, I couldn't find a lot of resources online about how to design Sonic stages. I also didn't really look for them too hard, and just kinda winged it.
But as I kept making Sonic fangames, I kept picking up useful quirks and tendencies I noticed from the official games and other fangames. I also started to learn that I really liked 3D Sonic games, and soon I was publishing Pyrite Adventure.
After Pyrite Adventure, I was the lead stage designer for Pyrite Adventure 2 and I still continue doing work for Sonic-like and other action platformers to this day! This article is 10 tips that I've put together from my own experience to help you improve your Sonic stage design.
If you incorporate these tips into your designs as early as possible, you'll get a lot of good practice with some foundational principles and, hopefully, in time you'll be able to design stuff even more fun than you've ever imagined!
1. Don't intentionally screw the player over.
This is a trap all of us have fallen into when we started making Sonic fangames: we create these impossible jumps, unavoidable hazards, and other things in our stages to try and turn up the heat on the player. But this is a big no-no! Your stage is like a living, breathing thing, and it needs to treat the player fairly! Hazards, pitfalls, and enemies need to be clearly seen and the player needs to be given time to react to them.
While set pieces like impossible jumps and unavoidable hazards may seem cool to you, all they do is just frustrate the player. Empathy is one of your most important tools as a stage designer. Ask yourself while designing something: if I was a normal player going through this stage, would this hazard feel unfair? Would it feel like I had no time to prepare for it?
FUN FACT: Pyrite Adventure's Baconhair Base actually violates this rule completely. Since the Pyrite series wasn't yet established at that point, and I figured the game wouldn't get too popular, I thought it would be funny if I made a final stage that just absolutely thrashed the player at every single turn. If you look at a playthrough of Pyrite Adventure, you'll see how unfair Baconhair Base is compared to the rest of the game. Baconhair Base is a perfect example of what to avoid when making a stage.
2. Turn unintended shortcuts and exploits into alternate paths and secret areas.
While you or playtesters are testing your stage, you may notice that certain sections of your level can be completely skipped with a couple timely jumps or other skills. Don't get bummed out about it, because that skip can become an intentional alternate route!
Take the path that was used to skip parts of your stage, and turn that into an actual part of the stage complete with gimmicks and hazards and other things. Alternate routes add replayability and exploration to your game, and generally leave players really happy.
If it's too unrealistic to make the shortcut into a path of its own, make it a secret area instead. Add some collectables or fun Easter eggs to reward the player for thinking "outside the box" and getting to that area.
FUN FACT: Pyrite Adventure 2's Twister Park has lots of Easter eggs and secret areas. During playtesting, SuperJumpman12 found lots of areas in the stage that he could crawl, fall, and jump to. Because of that, there's lots of ring capsules and other fun things hidden around that stage.
3. Give the player things to do.
Your stage should always be stimulating the player's mind in one way or another. That doesn't mean you should throw obstacles at them at every single turn, but you need to keep them engaged with your stage.
Having the player run down a straight hallway for 10+ seconds with nothing to do or look at is boring. Our goal is to make a good Sonic stage and avoid that! You can avoid boring the player with simple things such as making the hallway twist and turn, even. When the player sees gimmicks like dash pads and springs, it gives them something to run to. Enemies also achieve the same thing.
Try and sprinkle differently designed platforms, floors and rooms throughout your stage. Avoid copy+pasting the same platforms and objects and just placing a bunch of them in your stage. Constantly giving the player unique situations to handle (even if they're not that different from some others in your stage) keeps them active and engaged with your stage.
FUN FACT: Abandoned Kingdom from Pyrite Adventure is probably my best example so far of a stage that's constantly giving the player things to do and situations to consider. There's rarely any hazards or obstacles that are exactly duplicated in multiple parts of the stage.
4. The player should always be progressing through the stage; no backtracking.
Your stage should, generally, always be progressing the player forward and to new areas.
Backtracking is a way of world-building within your stage and padding its length, but it's also often slow and not very engaging. Nothing feels worse in a Sonic stage then having to walk and trace your steps backwards in order to progress.
In some cases this can be used appropriately, though. Let's say your stage is a secret base, and you have the player run into a big room with a locked door. Having the player backtrack very quickly to find a key and unlock the door is acceptable here, because it makes sense with the secret base theme of the stage: someone won't just be leaving their doors unlocked in their secret base.
Generally though, your stage should always be giving the player the impression that they're moving forward and making progress. The player should feel like every step they take is a step closer to finding the goal.
FUN FACT: Baconhair Base is, again, a good example of what NOT to do here. The first part of the stage is one long giant corridor that's constantly spiraling down. It gives the player the sense that they're making no progress and the stage is never-ending. When the player feels this way, they're more likely to give up on your stage because they're unmotivated and they feel like it's not worth it to keep playing.
5. Gimmicks and obstacles should be introduced in low-stakes situations first.
If you have a big hazard or obstacle you wanna hit the player with in a stage, introduce a smaller (or less lethal) version of it earlier in the stage. Even just adding a part of the hazard in an earlier area that the player can see but not interact with will tip them off that there's something coming ahead.
You want the player to feel just familiar enough with obstacles and hazards so that, when they experience the real ones for the first time, they're not completely lost about what to do. This keeps them moving through the stage, but also confident. When the player is feeling confident, they're more willing to keep playing the stage.
Let's say you have a bottomless pit with lasers that switch on and off, and this is your big hazard near the end of the level. None of your other stages up to this point have had this hazard. Earlier in the stage, you should have a smaller room set up where there's lasers switching on and off around the floor, and the stage makes the player navigate around that. Even if the player messes up and gets hit by the lasers here, they wouldn't fall to their doom. Unlike the ultimate hazard that's later in the stage with the bottomless pit. Having that first room is a good way to introduce the hazard to the player in a way that won't frustrate them as badly than if you just gave them the bottomless pit obstacle with no warning.
The idea here is to give the player a really challenging situation, but to also give them the "tools" to overcome that challenge. The "tools" are all the experiences the player has with the smaller and less-dangerous versions of that hazard from earlier in the stage.
FUN FACT: I consider the opening stage of Mega Man X one of the few perfect "first levels" because the stage throws situations and objects at you in a way where you have no choice but to learn the gimmicks and obstacles of the game. But the key here is that most of the situations are low-stakes, or at least you come to realize that they're low-stakes.
6. Design something you think is cool and you would enjoy to play without compromising Tip #1.
Ultimately, it's your creativity and ideas that are going to make your stage shine through and be really fun to play. You shouldn't follow stage design "rules" to the point where they're limiting your ideas, because at that point it probably means you're being too strict on yourself.
Think to yourself: if you were playing a Sonic stage, what kind of things would you like to do in the stage? What kind of obstacles and enemies? What kind of platforming? How would it all be positioned, rotated?
"Cool" means different things to each of us, but you should follow what you think a "cool" Sonic stage would be designed like. Would it be cool to have branching paths in this one area? Would it be cool to homing chain some enemies to reach a higher path? Would it be cool to have a cinematic spring chain throw the player around a skyscbobbar? It's all up to you!
The only other thing I'll mention is that you should try your hardest to not break my first tip: don't intentionally screw the player over. Almost no good ever comes from doing that to the player, in any circumstance.
FUN FACT: This is one of the biggest rules I follow for myself. So much of my stage design is impulsive and simply comes from me thinking "what do I think would be really cool to add here?" You have time at the end to refine your stage anyways, so don't let perfectionism get in the way of designing some ideas and seeing if they stick.
After Pyrite Adventure, I was the lead stage designer for Pyrite Adventure 2 and I still continue doing work for Sonic-like and other action platformers to this day! This article is 10 tips that I've put together from my own experience to help you improve your Sonic stage design.
If you incorporate these tips into your designs as early as possible, you'll get a lot of good practice with some foundational principles and, hopefully, in time you'll be able to design stuff even more fun than you've ever imagined!
1. Don't intentionally screw the player over.
This is a trap all of us have fallen into when we started making Sonic fangames: we create these impossible jumps, unavoidable hazards, and other things in our stages to try and turn up the heat on the player. But this is a big no-no! Your stage is like a living, breathing thing, and it needs to treat the player fairly! Hazards, pitfalls, and enemies need to be clearly seen and the player needs to be given time to react to them.
While set pieces like impossible jumps and unavoidable hazards may seem cool to you, all they do is just frustrate the player. Empathy is one of your most important tools as a stage designer. Ask yourself while designing something: if I was a normal player going through this stage, would this hazard feel unfair? Would it feel like I had no time to prepare for it?
FUN FACT: Pyrite Adventure's Baconhair Base actually violates this rule completely. Since the Pyrite series wasn't yet established at that point, and I figured the game wouldn't get too popular, I thought it would be funny if I made a final stage that just absolutely thrashed the player at every single turn. If you look at a playthrough of Pyrite Adventure, you'll see how unfair Baconhair Base is compared to the rest of the game. Baconhair Base is a perfect example of what to avoid when making a stage.
2. Turn unintended shortcuts and exploits into alternate paths and secret areas.
While you or playtesters are testing your stage, you may notice that certain sections of your level can be completely skipped with a couple timely jumps or other skills. Don't get bummed out about it, because that skip can become an intentional alternate route!
Take the path that was used to skip parts of your stage, and turn that into an actual part of the stage complete with gimmicks and hazards and other things. Alternate routes add replayability and exploration to your game, and generally leave players really happy.
If it's too unrealistic to make the shortcut into a path of its own, make it a secret area instead. Add some collectables or fun Easter eggs to reward the player for thinking "outside the box" and getting to that area.
FUN FACT: Pyrite Adventure 2's Twister Park has lots of Easter eggs and secret areas. During playtesting, SuperJumpman12 found lots of areas in the stage that he could crawl, fall, and jump to. Because of that, there's lots of ring capsules and other fun things hidden around that stage.
3. Give the player things to do.
Your stage should always be stimulating the player's mind in one way or another. That doesn't mean you should throw obstacles at them at every single turn, but you need to keep them engaged with your stage.
Having the player run down a straight hallway for 10+ seconds with nothing to do or look at is boring. Our goal is to make a good Sonic stage and avoid that! You can avoid boring the player with simple things such as making the hallway twist and turn, even. When the player sees gimmicks like dash pads and springs, it gives them something to run to. Enemies also achieve the same thing.
Try and sprinkle differently designed platforms, floors and rooms throughout your stage. Avoid copy+pasting the same platforms and objects and just placing a bunch of them in your stage. Constantly giving the player unique situations to handle (even if they're not that different from some others in your stage) keeps them active and engaged with your stage.
FUN FACT: Abandoned Kingdom from Pyrite Adventure is probably my best example so far of a stage that's constantly giving the player things to do and situations to consider. There's rarely any hazards or obstacles that are exactly duplicated in multiple parts of the stage.
4. The player should always be progressing through the stage; no backtracking.
Your stage should, generally, always be progressing the player forward and to new areas.
Backtracking is a way of world-building within your stage and padding its length, but it's also often slow and not very engaging. Nothing feels worse in a Sonic stage then having to walk and trace your steps backwards in order to progress.
In some cases this can be used appropriately, though. Let's say your stage is a secret base, and you have the player run into a big room with a locked door. Having the player backtrack very quickly to find a key and unlock the door is acceptable here, because it makes sense with the secret base theme of the stage: someone won't just be leaving their doors unlocked in their secret base.
Generally though, your stage should always be giving the player the impression that they're moving forward and making progress. The player should feel like every step they take is a step closer to finding the goal.
FUN FACT: Baconhair Base is, again, a good example of what NOT to do here. The first part of the stage is one long giant corridor that's constantly spiraling down. It gives the player the sense that they're making no progress and the stage is never-ending. When the player feels this way, they're more likely to give up on your stage because they're unmotivated and they feel like it's not worth it to keep playing.
5. Gimmicks and obstacles should be introduced in low-stakes situations first.
If you have a big hazard or obstacle you wanna hit the player with in a stage, introduce a smaller (or less lethal) version of it earlier in the stage. Even just adding a part of the hazard in an earlier area that the player can see but not interact with will tip them off that there's something coming ahead.
You want the player to feel just familiar enough with obstacles and hazards so that, when they experience the real ones for the first time, they're not completely lost about what to do. This keeps them moving through the stage, but also confident. When the player is feeling confident, they're more willing to keep playing the stage.
Let's say you have a bottomless pit with lasers that switch on and off, and this is your big hazard near the end of the level. None of your other stages up to this point have had this hazard. Earlier in the stage, you should have a smaller room set up where there's lasers switching on and off around the floor, and the stage makes the player navigate around that. Even if the player messes up and gets hit by the lasers here, they wouldn't fall to their doom. Unlike the ultimate hazard that's later in the stage with the bottomless pit. Having that first room is a good way to introduce the hazard to the player in a way that won't frustrate them as badly than if you just gave them the bottomless pit obstacle with no warning.
The idea here is to give the player a really challenging situation, but to also give them the "tools" to overcome that challenge. The "tools" are all the experiences the player has with the smaller and less-dangerous versions of that hazard from earlier in the stage.
FUN FACT: I consider the opening stage of Mega Man X one of the few perfect "first levels" because the stage throws situations and objects at you in a way where you have no choice but to learn the gimmicks and obstacles of the game. But the key here is that most of the situations are low-stakes, or at least you come to realize that they're low-stakes.
6. Design something you think is cool and you would enjoy to play without compromising Tip #1.
Ultimately, it's your creativity and ideas that are going to make your stage shine through and be really fun to play. You shouldn't follow stage design "rules" to the point where they're limiting your ideas, because at that point it probably means you're being too strict on yourself.
Think to yourself: if you were playing a Sonic stage, what kind of things would you like to do in the stage? What kind of obstacles and enemies? What kind of platforming? How would it all be positioned, rotated?
"Cool" means different things to each of us, but you should follow what you think a "cool" Sonic stage would be designed like. Would it be cool to have branching paths in this one area? Would it be cool to homing chain some enemies to reach a higher path? Would it be cool to have a cinematic spring chain throw the player around a skyscbobbar? It's all up to you!
The only other thing I'll mention is that you should try your hardest to not break my first tip: don't intentionally screw the player over. Almost no good ever comes from doing that to the player, in any circumstance.
FUN FACT: This is one of the biggest rules I follow for myself. So much of my stage design is impulsive and simply comes from me thinking "what do I think would be really cool to add here?" You have time at the end to refine your stage anyways, so don't let perfectionism get in the way of designing some ideas and seeing if they stick.
7. The difficulty of the stage should rely on the player's mastery of the game, not on the limitations of the engine.
This is the "no pixel-perfect jumps" rule. Designing those kinds of jumps and "leaps of faith" add difficulty to your game, but they come at the expense of the player losing trust in your stage design. You don't want to give the player any reason to not trust your stage design, otherwise they're going to fight the stage at every turn and not have fun with your game.
Instead, you should consider some of the abilities and gimmicks you've added to your game. Maybe you have a homing attack, and you've programmed some enemies and some lasers that switch on and off. Instead of designing a pixel-perfect jump, give the player an opportunity to demonstrate their mastery of all those things I just mentioned: redesign that section of the stage so that the player has to homing chain across some enemies while also timing it just right to avoid lasers that switch on and off.
That example may prove to actually be more challenging than the pixel-perfect jump or the leap of faith, but it also uses things you've programmed into the game and doesn't rely on engine features that the player doesn't really know because they can't see the code. That example also challenges the player to use your game's abilities and develop their skills much more than a leap of faith would.
8. Background decorations and environments give a stage its "wow" factor.
Stages have (mostly) two elements to them: the stage itself and the decorations. The decorations are as important as the stage itself, because the decorations are what make the player feel like they're really in a real world. Decorations and scenery add brevity to your stage: basically that means your decorations are giving the player a sense of scale and the world around them.
A beach level with an infinite ocean trailing off in the distance might be nice to look at, but the stage's theme could have so much more of an impact on the player if decorations were added. Rock walls making it so the player can't see the entire stage all at once make the stage's world feel more real. Waterfalls, other beaches in the distance, and other decorations also give the player a sense of scale about just how big the environment is. Don't be afraid to build towering walls or lighthouses either, because these also give the player a sense of scale.
Ultimately, the goal is to make your decorations look good and place them in lots of places in your stage so that, when the player is thinking about the canon of your game and the stage they're playing, they can suspend their disbelief about how convenient it is that there just happens to be a playable Sonic stage right in the middle of this place. You really want the stage to feel like a world or an environment, and not just a video game level.
FUN FACT: Adrenaline Highway in Pyrite Adventure 2 does this a lot with all the skyscbobbars and billboards. The point of adding all the skyscbobbars and buildings was to make the player feel like they were really in the middle of a city. Some buildings were intentionally placed far away while others were meant to get extremely close to the player. Those close buildings are huge, and help drive home the point that the player is in a giant city.
9. When the player demonstrates mastery of the game, reward them with paths that have cool designs or offer fun gimmicks.
It's important to reward the player when they pull off difficult tricks or find alternate paths by using their skills in a way only pros could. Rewarding the player has three benefits: it encourages the player to keep developing their skills, it encourages the player to spend more time exploring your stage, and it gives the player more trust in your stage and more willingness to keep playing.
Let's say you have a chain of enemies that can be homing attacked, but only when the player attacks an enemy, and waits a second so that they can fly forward slightly and get a little closer to the next enemy in the chain. That's a really high-level skill from the player, so you should make that homing chain lead to a path that they would only be able to reach because of that skill. Generally speaking, this path should be either easier, or have more rewards, than the normal path at this same point.
This path is a way of congratulating the player and their skill, and the player will remember this moment. They're going to trust your stages more, and they're going to keep looking for opportunities to unleash their skills and discover more paths. This is what helps make a game really enjoyable for the player.
10. Let obstacles and moments breathe.
This is a tip that even I'm still working on! Basically, it's all about giving the player some time to think.
If you have a really cool set piece or moment in your stage, you should draw it out a bit to let the player know that this is supposed to be a "cool" moment.
These are the moments in games like Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors where Sonic will jump onto a grind rail and he grinds in a straight line for a bit while some enemies fly by him, or while the camera zooms out. These are cinematic moments meant to be enjoyed by the player, because they add to the presentation of the stage rather than its design.
If you have a moment in your stage you want the players to really take in, make sure you give the player around 10 seconds to fully recognize the moment and appreciate it. This could be anything ranging from the examples I gave about Sonic games to a really cool decoration in the background.
In the same manner, you don't want to stack a bunch of obstacles on top of each other to the point where the player can't even begin to try and understand how to avoid them. Instead, give them time to process everything.
With Sonic games we usually think that fast = good, but you want to make sure your player has enough time to recognize the cool moments and obstacles in your game. Otherwise, their problems can range from small (like them thinking your stage is paced weirdly) to large (like them being unable to avoid a flurry of obstacles, getting frustrated, and quitting).
ohhhhhh i had like 4 frames instead of a good 8 frames
