Carnie Folk
Wednesday, 7th July 2010, 9:32pm (UTC), 4 Comments
Update: Carnival Night Zone added to the Sonic 3 section
The eagerly anticipated (I'd hope) Carnival Night Zone is finally here! This guide will be essential for all of you who are STILL stuck sitting on that rotating barrel in the enclosed room in Act 2. As such, Point #8 may be the single most useful point in the whole site. If you're not familiar with it, the bobbing barrel is an infamous object in Sonic folklore, due to the difficulty involved in figuring out how it actually works, and of course you receive no words of advice in the game itself. As I mention in the guide somewhere, I personally never had a problem with it, I was lucky enough to have it explained to me from the get go, but I understand the pain of those who didn't have such a luxury.

I'm sorry Sonic 3 has been taking me so long to get through, but now that I've finished Uni and settled into a full time job, although my schedule is still busy, it is at least much more compartmentalised. The thing about juggling personal hobbies when you're a student is that your coursework and your free time gel as one, but now my weekends and evenings are completely free, for the most part. This kind of schedule has worked much better for Zone: 0 in the past, so I'm hoping to make Icecap available to you much sooner. It helps that it's probably one of my favourite levels too.

Alongside the completion of Sonic 3, I'll also be beginning preparation for the next big Zone: 0 update soon, penciled for launch late this year. I'm thinking about a new banner, as popular as the current one is. However, it'll be very similar in concept - same colour scheme and idea of level art silhouettes, but better. Other than that, most of the changes won't relate to the visual design, but there'll be a number of improvements to make the site easier to use, plus new features, and I want to explore JQuery to see what kind of fancy transitions and effects I can work out. I've never been that competent in Javascript, but I want to change all that. There will also be a games homepage that lists every game in the series, whether it has a guide or not, and it'll be integrated with the writers wanted mission, as I've stated previously. A search function might be nice, and as a last appetite wetter I've got some really good ideas to enhance the viewing and browsing of level maps - it's going to be awesome!

I'll be back soon with another blog post about next month's Summer of Sonic event in London, which, at last, I plan to attend! Can't wait to finally meet fellow Sonic fans. But for now, a final treat. Ricky Earl's latest, mood-capturing Zone: 0 art, Star Light Zone:

Star Light Zone by Ricky Earl
Comments   4 Comments have been posted.
#1. Comment posted by Enedin on Wednesday, 7th July 2010, 11:28pm
In the Carnival Night section, in the 'Top Tips' section, the 2nd paragraph and the 3rd one are identical. Other than that, great stuff, as usual :D
#2. Comment posted by Mercury on Thursday, 8th July 2010, 5:45am
Oh, that art is nice! I think it's my favourite one yet. :) I've always loved Starlight Zone.

And consider my appetite whetted for those updates!
#3. Comment posted by MoDaD on Wednesday, 14th July 2010, 2:22pm
Another awesome update. I hate to admit it, but that stupid barrel stopped me at one point until I found out from someone what to do. Seeing as you're going to be playing around with some jquery, have you considered adding smooth scrolling, as you make use of a lot of anchors? I've found it helps out with usability, especially when there's large jumps across a long page. Here's an example in case you're interested:

http://css-tricks.com/examples/SmoothPageScroll/

Can't wait to see Ice Cap Zone :)
#4. Comment posted by LiQuidShade on Thursday, 15th July 2010, 6:23pm
Funnily enough I had the exact same thought about scroll-to anchors, and as pages seem to be getting longer and longer around here, they'll definitely be added to a new page scrolling system I'm working on that will hopefully make the site easier to browse than ever before.

And wyldcat, if you're wondering where your comment about Carnival Night in STC went, I've moved it to the Misc notes section of the Carnival Night page, where I thought it'd be more appropriate. Ta :)
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