Frequently Asked Questions
Contents
About Open Sonic
What is Open Sonic?
Open Sonic is a free open-source game based on the "Sonic the Hedgehog" universe. It introduces a different style of gameplay called cooperative play, in which it's possible to control 3 characters simultaneously. Unlike most similar games, Open Sonic provides a greater level of interaction between the player and the levels. It's more than just a jump'n'run; the user must come up with some strategy in order to get through the levels.
Open Sonic is written from the ground up in C language and uses the Allegro game programming library for graphics, sounds, player input and timers.
Where can I download Open Sonic?
Check out the download page.
Who develops the game?
Open Sonic started to be developed in August 2008 by Alexandre Martins, a computer science student from Brazil. The development team has been growing up over the time, and now we also have musicians, translators and other people over the Internet working on the project. Check out the developers page for more information.
Can I help?
You most certainly can.
- If you're a graphic artist (specially a pixel artist), we need you! Open Sonic needs new sprites and backgrounds.
- Create game content in the form of graphics, sounds, musics, translations and levels.
- Tell other about the game: tell your friends, post about it on your blog, etc.
- Report bugs and tell us about your good ideas!
If you want to help, just get in touch and ask.
Playing the game
How can I control the characters?
You can play using a keyboard or a joystick (run the opensonic_launcher program to choose). Using the keyboard, the important keys are: directional arrows (movement), space bar (jump), left ctrl (change character), enter (pause) and esc (quit).
I can't get through the door at the first level!
Use any character to step on the button located near the door. Press the left ctrl key to change the character and you're done.
How can I make my own levels?
Take a look at the Level Editor Tutorials.
Are there additional levels?
Yes, check them out !
Troubleshooting
The screen size is too small!
Run the opensonic_launcher program and do NOT mark the "improve speed" option in order to double the size of the window. Selecting the fullscreen mode may also help.
The game has no sound! (Linux)
Games made using the Allegro game programming library can't play sounds on some Linux distributions (like Ubuntu 9.04) due to a problem with pulseaudio (check out the full explanation). There are two possible approaches:
- Remove the pulseaudio package. In Debian-based distributions, open a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
- If you want to keep pulseaudio, read this tutorial.
Technical questions
What are the dependencies of Open Sonic?
The dependencies of the latest SVN revision are:
I can't compile the game!
Once you download the source tarball, read carefully the readme.html file. It contains detailed compiling instructions for many platforms. If it doesn't solve your problem, feel free to ask on our forums or contact the developers.
I've found a bug!
If you've found a bug you think had escaped our attention, make sure you have as much information about when it occurred as possible. Tell us the steps to reproduce the bug, situations where the error won't show, etc. You can report the bug on the forums or contact the developers directly.
Advanced command line options
There are many interesting options that are not available in the launcher program, like using different image filters, reducing memory usage (slow hardware), using different color depths (256 colors, 16 bpp, 32 bpp), etc. Open a console/terminal and type:
opensonic --help
