SFGHQ Enters a “New Age”

As the new year rolled around, many considered SFGHQ to be going into a sharp decline compared to recent years. But as Heroes and Battle plopped into the mainstream, an effect I like to call “Luckett’s Theory of General N00Bivity” took place. Basically, whenever a new Sonic game hits shelves, the mass public tends to browse over to Google and type in “Sonic the Hedgehog” and join whatever message boards pop up.

Fortunately, “The Year of the Hedgehog”, as Yuji Naka calls it, hasn’t had that effect yet, at least not at SFGHQ. While there always is that dumb person you can’t stand, the general “newbie” population has been rather tolerable. As a matter of fact, the majority of new people have a large tendency to be knowledgeable in the more conventional forms of programming their own games (C and other languages as opposed to the widely accepted “Klik” programming”)

But not only have people been posting about their future dreams, most have actually expanded on them. While other 3D fangames crashed-and-burned (the ill-fated “Sonic Fusion” made in Dark Basic comes to mind), a project with a professional engine and models has grabbed the limelight of many forum-goers. Sonic: Dimension Warped, being worked on by Jonathan R. Rose and others of his team “Intelligence Squared”, features edited models from Sonic Heroes and a professional engine from Garage Games.

What sets this game apart from other 3D fangames is its amazing graphics engine and apparent huge list of features and specs. Everything from levels, badniks, objects, and even missions themselves will be customizable by the user. As of now, 12 playable characters at the get-go will be playable with tons of secrets and such. Multiplayer online battle and co-op modes are also planned. But the gameplay isn’t the only thing that’s impressive. On average, the 3D models pack a whopping 2600 polygons (and yet, the recommended specs for runtime are low, weighing in at an average 1.2 Ghz processor with 256 meg of RAM).

The game also utilizes DirectX 8 and supports both Direct3D and OpenGL (bump mapping, what makes Halo 2 so pretty, is also used in rendering.) Textures and music should also be top notch in the quality department, using PNG and OGG Vorbis for compression.

Stay tuned to SFGHQ’s Message Board and TSSZ for more inside news on the advancement of this gem!