Sonic: TFH July Media Recap (or lack thereof) news

So what happened? I was going so strong for June, with tons of updates, and then suddenly the game's profile flatlines?

Well, if you had been paying attention, I am currently wrestling with some generally nasty computer problems. I've been slowly narrowing down the causes and it is either a bad power supply or a bad motherboard. In the last month, I have replaced the video card and the RAM (hooray for my birthday). What was once a computer built almost entirely from hand-me-down parts is now 90% new parts as I've been trying to track this problem down. I've scraped together a bit of extra cash and will be ordering a replacement Power Supply later today.

In the meantime, I have discovered that the computer functions relatively okay as long as it stays cool. Whatever is shorting out inside of it seems to work best at night when the room temperature is below 70 degrees. This has been when I've gotten in a bit of time to work on the game here and there. I wouldn't even be doing this media update unless I had something to show for it, and, well, I do. Of course I do. You wouldn't be reading this otherwise.

To put it simply, The Sonic Amateur Games Expo is coming up, an online-only event I personally founded 7 or 8 years ago (and retired from after running it for three years). If you're interested in visiting the site, hit up Sagexpo.org. It's grown a lot since I retired, and the last few years they've been getting some pretty big guests (well, big if you're a Sonic fan) to participate in group chats. Folks like Ben Hurst (writer for the old Sonic TV show), Ian Flynn (current writer for the american Sonic comic) and Ryan Drummond (former voice actor for Sonic the Hedgehog in the Sonic games). Sonic: The Fated Hour used to be a pretty big deal at SAGE. With me getting back in to the swing of working on the game, many people seemed to be asking or wondering if I had planned to show TFH at SAGE with a demo or something. Initially my plan was to just keep trucking along working towards the beta I mentioned in the June update. Unfortunately, trying to muscle my way through Sonic's status/equip menu is proving very tedious. I needed more motivation. And what's a great way to motivate me?

Release a new demo, that's how. This level will be exclusive to SAGE 2008 and is unrelated to the beta and will not be present in the final game. It is a one off level who's inspiration should be painfully obvious, though it's worth noting that it is only inspiration - I am not up to doing a 1:1 port of the level from Sonic Unleashed. I will, of course, be posting it here - so don't sweat being left out just because I'm making this for SAGE. Everybody will be able to play it. I am planning on this being much larger than the Christmas demo by orders of magnitude, so hopefully it won't be something you can clear in under 30 seconds.

It'll have limited features, though. This is still running on a WIP version of the engine, so not everything is up and running. To give you a basic idea of what to expect in this demo, when you start the level you will be given the option of picking one of several "load outs" - a certain set of equips to test out. There will be two or three equipment load outs to try out, and I'm not ruling out the possibility of a couple secret load outs. ;) Each load out will have a specific theme behind it, so you can get a feel for all the different equipment variations TFH will have to offer. Later on when I finally get around to doing the beta, you will be able to mix and match equipment as you choose as well as access all of the features I'm planning for the game, but, at least for this demo, not everything's going to be in there and ready.

Such is the curse of a tight deadline.