Blogs - rikhanz

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Nice moddb posts still allows embedded Youtube videos. Some of your folks know what I have to say about this, if anyone has been following this blog over the years! You know how this massages my ego, with what I've been saying, all these years!

A charm to remember how great modding, can be! Xmas hat on Werehog Sonic!

While I savior Sonic Generations and Sonic Colors for how long? I have been thinking about the previous game Sonic Unleashed, maybe a very dated game that is almost forgotten about. So hopefully when I get to playing that, I have encountered Sonic Forces Running Battle and I must say, while I barely care about mobile games on the Android (I'm playing another game), I do like how the Werehog from Unleashed is being used for the event. I've even taken a few screens, well from the event page and loading screen. I'm putting it out there, I like how they make use of the character of Sonic.

I haven't played Unleashed yet. I passed on it because I wasn't fond of the night battles. Could have been better but I think I'll sit and play Unleashed sometime, since there are some great features that made the game worth while.

Hi, so it's been like almost forever since I've posted here but then with the release of Sonic Colors coming up, I can't help but blog what I have to say, considering what I've throw here over a decade ago. As a few many know, I created a Green Hill level for the UT3 mod UT2D. I also sat back and watch Sega make Sonic Colors, which I strongly believe, that after seeing my work went on to drive them to make Sonic Colors. I actually should maybe really open up about why I created a Green Hill level for UT2D in the first place.

At the time, after playing Sonic Adverture, Sonic Heroes and the early Sonic games on the Mega Drive. I was getting fed up how the Sonic create was getting a bit run down, so it was the main reason I wanted to see Green Hill in a current (at the time) graphics and wanted to share it. That and to show off how the UE3 editor was like. It took me 2 months, to make that level, so I see that had results.

So with maybe Sega taking notice and seeing my work, get recorded uploaded on YouTube or GameTrailers (the website is gone now, I see save that screenshot, featured here). I didn't care much until I saw Sonic Generations. It was actually when I looked further back and noticed Sonic Colors for the Nintendo Wii. I wasn't fond of the Nintendo Wii but I was bored one day and it seems to take on board, that goes on around here.

After further thought, Sonic Colors may have been the answer to Sonic being modded on the Unreal Engine. Unreal is set mostly in space. Sonic Colors have aliens called Wisps and are set on various planets. Seems very familar to what goes on in Unreal. Why I didn't notice, so soon. Sonic Colors is on a hardware that is no where near as powerful as something Unreal Tournament 3 could run on but i see for Sega, that was good for them.

So maybe a little too late to explain everything and how I really feel (after all those years). Sega has decide to release Sonic Colors Ulimate, pretty much everything you could maybe expect from a Sonic game for an Unreal Engine, maybe. Sega is big enough, not to have their flagship game to be run on something like the Unreal Engine but it doesn't stop to take ideas from a game like Unreal Tournament and fusing it into their own ideas, like what they mentioned in the latest video.

Collecting 100 rings will make you invincible.. like in Unreal Tournament 2003, where collecting 100 of those pills makes you more powerful?

Rival mode, very similar to the idea of having Duel mode in Unreal Tournament 3.

Of course, everything upscaled in 4k and if the song is remixed, like some of the remix songs in Unreal Tournament 3, which featured songs from the first Unreal Tournament game (like MechanismEight). Just tells me Sega's really holding on to the ideas, what they wanted to put in there.

I would say, after this remastered. I never had taken noticed of Sonic Colors for the Nintendo Wii. I do have a copy but I haven't played it, but it does seem like I have taken the game for granted. At the time, it was only released to "add value to the Sonic games" as Sega put it but it seemed that it was successful enough to be included as part of the main games, considering it appeared in Sonic Generations.

If there's one thing i would say, if I strongly think they're trying hard to keep Sonic fresh and take that spotlight back and away from the modding community. Then maybe that's good enough reason to keep working and holding projects for myself until I get them finished and released. Not a pleasant thing to say. I don't ever plan to work in the industry but I have enough skill to make content and release it and maybe for myself and for everyone, just don't make a mod about Sonic.

It's nice to know that Unreal Tournament 3: Black Edition has the editor included, so I wouldn't have to worry about getting the discs and put installs, everytime I get a new laptop before working on any project I want to be made.

So I would like to contiune my work, mkaing content and yes, while the Unreal Engine 5 is around the corner and Unreal Engine 4 is still hot, I would like to take advangate of the skills I've gathered making my maps for UE3 and get it somewhere else, so I've fired up my editor for Unreal Engine 3 and hopefully, more updates soon.

I'm sure many have noticed my username with the letters "khan" in it, so I really wanted to know what Mongolia, the folks who've popularized the name are up to in the video game world. Have they ever made a video game for commerical release? They haven't and would I force them to make a video game? With a population of 3 million, that's a tough one but if they ever do, make sure it has modding support because I'll be more then happy to mod for a game created in Mongolia.

Hello, so a personal developer update by me. I've replanned what best for my mods D's Mansion however it's only a start (again) for something else. D's Mansion will be a short mod, not a long one. The game being set in London, being my home, it's too much of place that as a 15 hour immersive adventure. That's to unrealistic. I only made the map for a friend, so maybe that's where the energy went when I made the mansion. Doesn't mean I wouldn't complete it. I just have to crop what should be done and what's best.

Other time and energy would be placed in another mod in the future that I'm re-working on. I've got too many project ideas laying around and I've had to travel to get experience elsewhere. It's not just make a mod to benefit oneself. Community experience, considering that I'm making a mod which gets filed along with other mods, is to made a mod to contribute to the culture of modding and I will do just that. So I will complete D's Mansion but I had to shorten the mod. It will still be as beautiful and free as the map that I released years ago. Will just have a story and loads of really cool models and etc.

I do want to make a mod that last long but that's a dream at the moment, so that will have to wait, so for now, I do want to finish D's Mansion and get it released.

So it's been a while and NOTHING has been done, so I should be very ashamed of myself. missD's mansion was actually a glamour mod for an old friend who I don't talk to no more, falling out, being a b****, you get the idea and nothing been done, but not really for that reason, I keep shifting between ideas and can't really anchor down what's a good idea and what's not a good idea and there's too many ideas to push around that I haven't settled, so it's really hell trying to pin down what's good or not.

However, with my previous now wash away success of UT2D_GreenHill and with something like UDK around along with growing up and knowing what turns heads around here for the internet, I've decided to see to make an indie game with the feel that I created from the map. It wouldn't be a Sonic based indie game, where I get approval by Sega, no. We all want that, don't we? Maybe take my time, get what I think it's worth for fun. I do have ideas to make a game for the UDK and it will be fun. Hopefully, you decide, so I will get that underway in development and see how that goes. It is very very hard to get help for my mod MissD's mansion to what I want but I am gathering loads of material to be made into content just for the mod, so it will take a long time. I will continue posting in twitter also and release content but not the better stages of where I want the mod to go at least in the future. That I can do.

Something I encountered, well the first time I've seen this since it's been posted back in 2009: Techcrunch.com

TechChurch were rounding up their week in the news, with my UT2D map being featured at some point, so the guys who wanted to make the most out of the photoshop skills (Photoshop was fresh at the time), decided to get all the objects from each news piece together and here's what I've came out with:

What they did, they taken my map and just covered the green areas with a more minimal tone, so when viewed upon, it looks a bit like Green Hill but mashed up with other objects to make it look interesting but it's okay because one of the links would have taken the viewer to a user-created video of my level which was seen as impressive at the time. I can't get over how they used the overall image from my map because maybe the shapes are there and that's something I want to address because I am proud of my geometry work in the level.

Anyone could make a bunch of blocks and stack them together! I'm more impressed how the image captures the rounded ends of the surfaces which I'm proud of adding in there. The round ends, I always had a headache with how some surfaces looked with games at that time. They always had that 90 degree angle, so it made the maps looks a bit more blocked, like a bunch of boxes stacked up. When I was modding for a game for the Unreal Engine 1, I taken the time to round edges but this could sometimes hurt the level because they the edges from the vortex edging were prone to show but as an artist, covering them was an easy task anyways.

I thought rounding off the edges in this map made it more friendly and not as rough in the level. Even back then, it was the same method when I was mapping for an Unreal Engine 1 game. So it seems the the blogger got into some Adode software and had taken advangate for them and it made that really smooth rounded effect.

So because of that, I'll just release my little secret out to the mod world and maybe I'll make a tutorlal on that some day to explain how I made that effect.

It's been over a decade since I've released my UT2D map GreenHill for UT3's UT2D mod. I hadn't coded UT2D however being part of the early attempts making big mods being in teams has allowed me to make Green Hill to show off what the modding tools for Unreal Tournament did had the time.

So while I had a chance to show off what a Sonic world would look back in it's 2D form rendered in 3D with custom models and even the sound effects, I do think some at Sega had taken notice. One thing I say to myself is that someitimes I think my map alone helpped inspired games such as Sonic Generations and Sonic Colors. I sometimes brag to myself that I feel like the father of those games, not really true. Apparently Sega always had the right idea from the start rendering worlds in other games. I released my Green Hill themed map in Aug 2008. There was one other game from Sega where they gathered all the characters and compiled them into a game and released a few months eariler.

Sega Superstars Tennis gathered many of the characters and levels from the Sega world and placed them into a video game. So Sonic can face off against other characters like Amigo or Eggman in a tennis match. The characters can activate power-ups to improve their performance of the characters in the game and help them win matches.

So maybe Sega wonders if I got back at that game with my map. The answer is, I hadn't had known. One thing that does get me thinking, how did Sega responded seeing my map. Well there's so many other Sega games that are being maded and loads and loads of Sonic fan made content, so I am asking for alot when I ask that. I must be very special and it is the reason that I've been very quiet for the past 10 years with other projects... but... it doesn't mean that I've quiet down from the mods here. Maybe I will return with something that people may like.