How time affects game/demo development

[Kirk_Johnston]

You can see the little improvements TiagoSC made here from the August to September versions of his old Sonic the Hedgehog demo on SNES:

 

And it makes me wonder just how much progress could be made on stuff like this if someone took say ten years to just keep tweaking and polishing and pushing everything to the absolute limits of the system.

 

Something I mentioned here for example was that it would be possible to actually add in similar semi-transparent water as seen in the PlayStation port of Sonic [also by TiagoSC] if anyone were so inclined: https://inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/2023/02/16/sonic-on-snes-vs-genesis/

 

I wish TiagoSC had kept going with the SNES version and actually added in some more stuff specific to the SNES port along the lines of the gradient he already added to the sky, the semi-transparent water I mentioned, and a few other things too. I guess we'll never know just how far this SNES version of Sonic could have been pushed, but it's just something to think about.

 

Note: No major reason I picked this game other than I was watching a clip of that amazing Star Fox port on Genesis recently, which I noticed has been in the works for around ten years so far, so I figured it would interesting to ponder the same thing in reverse in principle on SNES and just imagine how much could be achieved with the same time and energy dedicated to a single project similarly.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Kirk_Johnston

[Mittens0407]

One day Kirk will remember that the SNES is in fact not the Atari Jaguar, and that it already has many fun and limit pushing games, so there's no need for this hypothetical nonsense.

[Biff Burgertime]

Has this all been some sort of meta- social commentary, to remind us that we're all mortal beings with a fixed amount of time? Is he showing us the contrast of what 1-month worth of progress looks like when you shut up and actually work on stuff, vs. the giant portfolio of nothing you're left with if all that time is spent aggressively spamming forums?

[Austin]

19 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

And it makes me wonder just how much progress could be made on stuff like this if someone took say ten years to just keep tweaking and polishing and pushing everything to the absolute limits of the system.

That would be a complete waste of life.

[Tanooki]

3 hours ago, Austin said:

That would be a complete waste of life.

Spoiler

Any hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said: Challenge accepted!  Game Maker 8.1 here I come.