Sonic Team Defenders

Sonic Team Defenders is a multiplayer strategy game featuring multiple characters from the Sonic franchise. It will be released first on Windows, and eventually Ubuntu, and Mac in the next year or so. The game is currently being developed by Akrivus in the VB.NET language, where it will eventually be hard-coded to work on the Mono runtime platform, allowing support for Windows, Ubuntu, and eventually Mac.

Gameplay
Sonic Team Defenders is a multiplayer game. Players join with a randomly assigned character that isn't being previously used by other players. This makes it so that players are required to be resourceful, as each character carries an indiviual skill, attack, strength, and weakness. At the same time, allowing only one different character per game prevents that possibility of games being predominantly a certain character, which may make the game easier or harder, depending on who is who.

Health points, action points, and rings are three things in the game that the player should be aware of. Health points are controlled by a percentage. Damage reduction is scaled directly by the attack, and added and subtracted upon depending on the character's stats. This means that an explosion can inflict 50% damage on one character, while it causes only 25% on another. Action points dictate the energy required to do something. Action points can only be healed by the fire healing effects of Blaze, and health can only be healed by Amy's magic.

Resupply lockers can also heal players, and if they require a special item such as bullets, they will be provided.

Rings are used as currency and can buy addons that give the player a sense of individuality, or they can buy upgrades for the player. These upgrades can vary character to character, but usually focus on upgrading a statistic or attack. Players get rings by finding them on the map or killing enemies. Eventually, rings will most likely form an economy of some kind, as the amount of rings get higher, the lower their value, resulting in a value scaling mechanism.

The game is placed at a side-scrolling platform perspective, requiring players to use their individual skills to conquer obstacles together, however, for the better ease of use, almost all obstacles in game should be capable of being maneuvered through by each class.

Modes
To prevent staleness in game, there are multiple game modes and maps that are incorporated in the default game, however, with the use of scripts, players can create their own servers with custom maps, gamemodes, characters, etc. Below is a list of all default game modes, and maps that are included within the game.

Release the Captives
In this game mode, the players are usually confronted with a counter that declares how many captives the players has released out of the amount of released captives needed to win. Players release captives by destroying badniks, or some sort of similar enemy that contains them. The amount of captives required to release depends on the map, and enemies may not serve the purpose of being destroyed to release enemies, but instead they may be there to serve the purpose of guarding a payload of captives that the players then release after finding it.

WARNING: Captive limit on some maps may be too large for older processors. Highest accepted value for captives is an unsigned char value, which is 256 - 1 (0xff)

Emerald Rush
This game mode is very simple, and the most competitive because enemies can partake in this game, given their AI supports it. The players must make their way through a large amount of enemies, traps, and riddles in order to find a single Chaos Emerald. Once the player manages to find the emerald and take it back to base, another is unlocked, and the process goes on until the seventh emerald is found. Players can not attack while in the possession of an emerald, but can drop it when dead, or pressing the alternate attack key. At that point, the player, or the enemy, has sixty seconds to find the emerald and carry it back. When the sixty seconds are up, the emerald is teleported back to it's original holding spot.

Secure the Point
Among the most varying of all game modes. The players must find their way through large amounts of enemies, and get to a specific point that must be secured for a certain period of time. While in the point, enemies have the advantage of killing the player, which means that it is best that other players accompany the one who will secure it. Given that the map supports the option, the longer the players secure the point, the more enemies will appear.

WARNING: If the time needed to secure a point to win is too long, an over-abundance of enemies can result. This can lead to large amounts of lag, and at the same time, may result in prior placement errors that will cause enemies to potentially spawn themselves in the same position as other entities, including players.

Characters
Sonic Team Defenders features the most popular characters in the Sonic franchise. With the advantage of scripts for customization, characters can be added, changed, or even deleted. Features can vary of sprite, speed, attacks, and more. A list of default characters are included below.

Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic is a relaxed, cocky, and short-tempered blue hedgehog who's primary skill is speed. Sonic's speed is the fastest in the game, the only rival being Shadow. This makes him an important asset as he can simply run through enemies with ease and get from one place to another quicker. Not only does Sonic's speed make him important, but his ability to roll into a ball is useful as well. When in this phase, he can generate impact damage on enemies, and if traveling fast enough, upon impact with walls he can ricochet off of them and even break them. He is also a very light-weight character, allowing most flying characters to pick him, strong characters to throw him, etc.

Tails the Fox
Tails is a timid, gentle, and extremely intelligent two-tailed fox who's main skill is manipulation. While he can fly, his skills are very limited. He can fly vertically the fastest out of any character, but obtains some difficulty in flying diagonally, and even more when flying horizontally. Tails also has no way to soften his falls, meaning that landing must be done slowly and steadily. On the ground, his speed is relatively modest. The greatest part of Tails in the game is his ability to latch himself onto robots and inflict multiple damage to them. Depending on the keystroke, Tails can control how a robot moves, how it attacks, and can make it shut down. This is useful for double-crossing robots, and making them fight back against themselves. Tails is the only one who can heal robotic characters like E-123 Omega.

Knuckles the Echidna
Knuckles is a hot-headed, ferocious red echidna who can do a multitude of things. He can climb vertical walls, and glide, making him resistant to fall damage. Knuckles can also punch the ground to create shockwaves, which inflict damage upon all enemies, and inflict half of the intended damage on teammates. Because of his strength, Knuckles can lift any teammate with ease, and can even throw them overhand. Knuckles is the only one who can attack while holding a Chaos Emerald, however, he is one of the slowest characters, presenting the challenge that he may not be able to outrun large amounts of enemies that would most likely kill him.

Shadow the Hedgehog
Shadow is the only character who has a disposable item. Armed with a Glock, Shadow is limited to 17 rounds per magazine, and after that, assuming he isn't near a resupply station, the gun is absolutely useless. Bullets can richochet, however, this means they can damage players at the fullest extent. Once the gun is dropped or holstered, Shadow is capable of running fast like Sonic, and upon running into a wall, he will teleport through it at a certain distance. This skill is very limited however, as the destination must be a certain amount of pixels away, will be teleported in a random direction, and intentional inaccuracies in distance may result in Shadow teleporting in walls and killing himself. An alternative attack is the chaos blast, however, this attack will lead to inflicting half of the intended damage of teammates, which may result in killing off nearby players.

Rouge the Bat
Rouge is a calm, flirtatious, and manipulative bat. She is best at flight. Capable of flight in any direction, and invulernable to fall damage, Rouge's flight skills are flawless. Secondary attacks include kick-based attacks, where her boots may even penetrate metal, destroying robots with ease. Rouge is a good asset because her flight skills allow her to be sneaky and hard to reach, and she can be hard for most enemies to catch.

E-123 Omega
Omega is a rogue Eggman robot who's armed with guns. Despite being the slowest of all the characters, Omega wields a large machine gun at the end of each hand, that fire an infinite amount of rounds. Rocket launchers mounted on his shoulders make good use for a secondary weapon, and a potential weakener, which totals up Omega to be an extremely good asset, especially in defensive situations that require Omega to stay in one place and fire. The only problem is that being the slowest, he takes the most damage from faster enemies, and he can only be healed by resupply stations and Tails.

Amy Rose the Hedgehog
Amy is a kind, gentle, and sweet pink hedgehog. She has the ability to use magic, and an enormous Piko-Piko hammer that slows down her movement by 80%, but it can easily be sent back to hammerspace. Her magic is primarily healing, but when healing isn't an option anymore, she can generate a field around herself an others, at the cost of health points. Amy is also the third fastest character in the game.

Cream the Rabbit
Cream is a cream-colored rabbit who just now made me sound like Captain Obvious. She has the ability to fly with her ears, however, opposite to Tails, she does her best flying horizontal, and it gets worse the more vertical she gets. She has extremely low health, and strength, but she has an ability to manipulate Chao, which depending on the kind, can garuntee certain buffs and regeneration of some kind. Cream is a moderately fast character, capable of keeping up with most players. When killed, her Chao immediately disperse.

Big the Cat
Big is a relaxed and friendly purple cat. He is extremely large, and the second heaviest character after Omega. Big is immune to most forms of damage, making him a good way to create a target, or bait. His weapons are his fists, he can push large enemies out of his way, and his fishing rod can be used as a grappling hook. When he takes fall damage, he creates a blast that can potentially kill enemies and cause damage to nearby players.

Silver the Hedgehog
Silver is an optimistic white hedgehog who has psychic powers. He can lift any enemy, flight, and travel at the same speed as Amy. His psychic abilities vary at the time of event, making Silver an extremely unpredictable character. A mere attempt to fly can destroy the enemies, and an attempt at push enemies back can do nothing. This can make Silver somewhat useful because of how enemies perceive him as weak, only to see he's extremely powerful.

Blaze the Cat
Blaze is a royal purple cat with the abilility to control flames. She can melt approaching enemies, torch entire tunnels, generate signals, and more. Because of her ability to control fire, she can control the chemical reactions in our cells that basically burn sugars with the help of oxygen. The resulting effect is a minor healing capability presented by this. Like Silver, Blaze features a sense of unpredictability, but if a good understand of how fire works is present, she should be an easier to manipulate character.

Development
Sonic Team Defenders is currently being created by Akrivus in the VB.NET language, under the Mono platform. A game framework called Spooker will be used for the game, which is completely open source on GitHub and Mono-compatible. The game will be released for free, under the MIT license, meaning that server and client downloads will be completely open source. Specifications required to run the game are unassumed, but it is known that the game will most likely run at moderate performance on an integrated graphics card.

Releases
At the moment, there is not any developmental versions out yet, but expect some to appear in the upcoming months as the game gets created.

Modding
Game elements will be made in a way that makes them easy to be modified. Map builders will use a simple map builder with object support and scripters can use Lua to make their own modifiable game elements like maps, enemies, characters, and more. All modifications will be for servers, so that server owners can manage their plugins and scripters can stay fixed on one specific platform. The game, being open source will allow the community to develop the game, and at the same time, allow modders to make their own games or create hard coded mods and features.