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Project Announcements

Discussion in 'Sonic 2 HD (Archive)' started by Gambit, Mar 22, 2010.

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  1. Gambit

    Gambit

    Sonic 2 HD Staff - Level Artist Member
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    <div align='center'>This thread will be used for all our announcements.</div>

    <div align='center'>______________________________________________________________________</div>

    As we stated earlier, Sonic 2 HD's EHZ is now locked up to final adjustments and polishing. We will be showing off relevant assets to aid in production soon. We'll provide you the art style & guidelines for how things should look, along with a complete overhaul of the Database to streamline things.

    By sharing our working methods, we're also sharing goals and a deadline. We'll be giving out our best, to direct artists and help them to improve (given that they'll be cooperative and motivated enough to do the hard work) towards a S2HD community goal.

    All the topics have been (or will be soon) adjusted for this purpose, getting members into S2HD development as protagonists. What's this mean? In a nutshell:

    New topics across the board. New thread for music, new threads for each zone's level art to reduce clutter and focus tasking, a new thread for characters, new thread for badniks/bosses, and a general thread for people who come up with ideas that don't fit into a specific thread. This new general thread will not be a dumping ground for everyone. We're going to set goals, and we're looking for a focus around them if you're wanting to contribute.

    The first goal is to work with the staff to create Hill Top Zone. That includes concepts, actual level assets, badniks and the zone boss. There's a set way the tilesets are constructed, and we'd like nothing better than for you to be constantly asking Gambit for advice on this since he basically created the workflow for it single-handedly. This doesn't mean the tedium of making endless grass and ground tiles, since those are covered in the EHZ tileset.
    You'll be given 3 months to rough this out. We're committing ourselves to helping you out with this, but rest assured—this is where the community section of the community project comes in. There's no better way to achieve the transparency so many have talked about.

    Why Hill Top Zone? It's practical, from an asset creation standpoint, and the vast majority of EHZ has been completed. As you're well aware, the two share many pieces in common, and since EHZ's art is what we're basing expectations on, this will form a good base to get things rolling on. We're still lacking a really solid, jaw-dropping music track for the level. Also, I doubt any of you would complain at having two zones available in the alpha. Currently that's EHZ and EHZ only because that's what exists and what's polished. If you want HTZ in there, work together to make this happen.

    Once the needed assets for Hill Top have been done, we'll be directing you to a new area to focus on.

    To prevent confusion from clogging down this process, there are a few strict rules to follow:

    -The S2HD staff will regularly interact with the community to approve your works. Needless to say we've got our lives and the alpha release on our priority list, so don't expect a reply after 5 minutes from your post. We'll get back to you as soon as we can.
    -We encourage everyone to take part in it, even if some of you won't have your first shot at a given asset approved; until the deadline you can continue to improve them if you want them to be included.
    -We will not tolerate useless bickering over tiny details, so try to be thoughtful when providing feedback and/or contributing. The art style is set so do not propose different artstyles or complain about a current one.
    -What's developed for S2HD is for S2HD-use only. While we do not hold any legal property over it, it's a basic form of respect for the artists who have put hours of passion and hard work into it. Stealing / leaking will prevent us from sharing any sources.
    -All artists must have complete access to the Database, so PM myself or Vincent your username and desired password in order to start submitting your own revisions.
    -Upon hitting the deadline, the S2HD Staff will review all of your work and where it is needed update it to be further tweaked before final import to the engine.

    If you've got any further questions related to a particular area, these are the guys you need to reach through PM:


    Character Art: Vincent
    Level Art: Gambit
    Badnik & Bosses: Cerulean Nights
    Backgrounds: Cornet Theory
    Visuals & Animations: Scanline99
    Music: ScubaSteve
    General Q&A: Canned Karma
     
  2. nineko

    nineko

    I am the Holy Cat Tech Member
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    I'll just add something.

    If you need a rip of an original sprite which isn't present in the database yet, and you don't feel like taking a screenshot in your emulator (or said screenshot can't be easily taken because you need to e.g. disable a layer), feel free to ask me, either on AIM if I'm online (nineko84), in IRC (I'm in #retro rarely), or just PM me.

    This is all I can do to contribute to S2HD since I'm not an artist :v:
     
  3. Canned Karma

    Canned Karma

    S2HD Project Manager Member
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    Sonic 2 HD, various 3D work
    <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->Sonic Retro Community Progress Report[/COLOR]

    After the overhaul of the S2HD subforum, very specific goals were created with the promise that the staff would be readily available to guide work done by the community for potential inclusion in the alpha release. Two and a half months was set as the timeframe, with extremely reasonable goals to achieve.

    Here's what we've seen, here's what we haven't:

    Character art—good submissions and revision work has been done on the Eagle. Although it wasn't assigned as a goal, the work done on the Chicken has also been impressive.

    Badnik art—one attempt was made on the Rexon and nothing since despite directed feedback from Cerulean Nights; one attempt has also been made on the Spiker, with the same result as the Rexon. There have also been no submissions for the Zone boss. There has been more discussion over the Nebula, which is -not- one of the current goals, than for any of the other HTZ enemy art combined. Work on the Ghora's flames was going well up until the overhaul, and then came to an abrupt halt.

    Level art—Work was started on the level objects, including the rock, the lift platform, the seesaw, the door, and the tree during March. In the past few weeks there have been no updates for any of them. The existing quality on the submissions so far, aside from the rock and the seesaw, leaves a lot to be desired. The tree has also generated its fair share of debate, but the top section of it is still very unpolished. Actual ground tiles, such as the S tunnel listed in the goals, have seen zero attempts.

    Music—Mesmonium has created an excellent submission and is in the process of revising it. I would still like to see steveswede polish his piece some more as well.

    You wanted this to be an open community project, but there's been very little actual doing on that front. Early on, when the excitement with the topics overhaul was fresh, this was not the case and we saw plenty of activity. Since mid-April, however, this has not been the case; with the exception of a few contributors who have provided pieces on a consistent basis, it's unfair to the staff for you to tell us you want to participate and then leave us as the ones to do all the work. Because make no mistake: we certainly can, and we will one way or another. But don't expect to get credit for work you haven't done.

    We've given you goals that are appropriate and fit with the current level of progress toward the alpha release. That said, if you can't make these goals, let us know; we are open to re-evaluating some things if it will really make a difference in the community's progress. But, the staff is not about to just let this devolve into a 'do whatever you want on your own timetable' sort of deal.

    Because of outside events delaying this progress report by two weeks, I am extending the original deadline of June 1st to June 15th. That said, whether HTZ makes it into the alpha or not is very much in your hands. I know the talent exists here to make that happen. I hope the community here uses the next few weeks well toward that end.
     
  4. Canned Karma

    Canned Karma

    S2HD Project Manager Member
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    Sonic 2 HD, various 3D work
    <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->Progress Report - 6/19/10[/COLOR]

    I'm not going to do a complete breakdown like I did last time because I really don't see a need for it now. There has been much more activity recently in the level art, thanks in no small part to MaximusDM's efforts and Test-Object coming back into the picture. These are just two of the people who have stepped up, and I'd like to thank everyone who has put their effort in over the past month. By all means keep at it.

    Special kudos go to Synergy. He has single handedly created a working test build of the Special Stage and far surpassed our initial expectations. Job incredibly well done there, and things are just getting started in that area.

    Character art, badniks and music are essentially in the same place they were at the last update. For the time being I am removing music as one of the goals. We have a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous at the current time who has submitted an amazing HTZ remaster and wants to refine it even more before it is made public.

    So where does the project go from here? The same place it was before, but we're going to turn things up a notch in asset production. The community has been struggling to get things done for art, so the staff is now going to step in, and with full transparency start creating the same assets we put up as goals over three months ago. This means you guys are going to see the steps Gambit goes through with level art, Cerulean Nights' workflow for badnik creation (and if you're interested in making them and still haven't looked at the great tutorial he created then what the hell is wrong with you), and the method Vincent uses for his character designs in doing the small animals. At this point, everyone on staff wants to put Hill Top Zone into the alpha, and by showing everyone here the step by step methods we've been using I hope more of you who have been lurking will come out and post up your thoughts as well. Many of you have wanted to see our works in progress, and starting next week you will. More specifically, Gambit will be starting on the S tunnel metablock for level art, and Cerulean Nights will be doing the Spiker.

    Andlabs brought up a good question about the code side of things. Here's what LOst has been utilizing so far:

    Code system:
    C++ object oriented optimized with disassembling and debugging.

    Tools:
    Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 x32 and x64.

    Libraries:
    Direct3D 9
    DirectInput 8
    DirectSound 8
    OpenGL 2.0 with frame buffer extension (became standard in 3.0)

    Hopefully that information is useful to those of you with programming backgrounds that have been wondering if you'd have a way to contribute. Let me reiterate that as of this point, we are still in need of someone who can help us get the multiplayer segment of S2HD up and running. Right now we have ideas that we've been tossing around for it, but no actual work has been done on that front. If you have ideas, please send me a PM if it's something specific or just post up general ideas in this thread. For detailed questions I'll have to get feedback from LOst to give you definitive answers, but I'll definitely see what we can do to make things as simple for you guys as is possible on our end.
     
  5. Vincent

    Vincent

    Sonic 2HD - Project Leader & Chara Member
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    Sonic 2 HD
    The end of the year is nearly here, and Sonic 2 HD is ramping up in a big way for 2011.
    To get things started, we'll be updating our new staff development blog with information about the project on a regular basis, including the project history, staff profiles, project trivia, and of course information on what's being worked on for the next release!

    I'd personally recommend adding another bookmark to your browser too. This one will be the source of some very interesting things very soon…
    www.s2hd.sonicretro.org
     
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