[Canned Karma]

I just responded to a couple PMs asking for what exactly the plan is for the future of this project, and I'll say the same thing here that I told the people who sent me the messages. It's already been taken care of. Unless a drastic, and highly unlikely, change happens in the next week, I'll be putting up the details of the project's future a week from now. I'm glad to see someone found out the easter eggs put in the game so quickly. As for the fire, it wasn't even a placeholder; the real art that scanline made and gave to LOst was never put into the game. What you're seeing is the replacement LOst made himself and put in there in its stead. And no, no one in the project's leadership authorized that either.

Also, if there's anyone reading this who hasn't read Guess Who's article, I'd strongly recommend it. He did a very fair job of summarizing things, and I agree with nearly everything he brought up. Almost. One of the admins posted in this thread earlier that the S2HD staff hadn't been in contact with the admins, and that our decision to have this not be a community project was just a bolt from the blue. Let me set the record straight on that -- the admins knew. We made an effort to talk with Tweaker before his removal, Scarred Sun, and Cinossu multiple times throughout the past year and a half, and even provided a pre-alpha build to them some time ago so they could see what we'd been working on. I wasn't aware that David the Lurker was even a part of SR's admin panel until he popped up here (until that point I didn't even know who he was), and his statement that he would be contacting us soon is incredibly puzzling considering he's never made any effort of the sort up to this point to make himself known to us. And he still hasn't contacted us. Outside of normal SR forumgoers, no one has.

[KingofHarts]

I believe in Sonic 2 HD... If the project does continue, which it should, at this point IMO...

Get rid of that piece of shit LOst. Keep doing an excellent job with your graphics and music and sounds, and get behind an engine put together by a programmer with morals and merit.
Don't give up...

This post has been edited by KingofHarts: 31 March 2012 - 12:24 AM

[Scarred Sun]

I don't think anyone was disputing the community project move, and in fact that was publicly said when the decision was made a year ago.

PM.

[Hyperblue]

Very excited to download this! Thought the day would never come

[Rika Chou]

KingofHarts, on 31 March 2012 - 12:18 AM, said:

I believe in Sonic 2 HD... If the project does continue, which it should, at this point IMO...

Get rid of that piece of shit LOst.

This kind of disrespect is really uncalled for.

Yes, maybe it wasn't the best idea to add DRM to this project, but Lost (and the rest of the S2HD team) has worked countless hours on this game -- for free. Where's the appreciation?

This post has been edited by Rika Chou: 31 March 2012 - 01:55 AM

[DimensionWarped]

It's just a dick move to do that sort of thing with something that started as a community project. There is something uniquely appalling about a project built on the back of reverse engineering to be actively preventing (and seemingly demonizing) reverse engineering. Of course it failed as a community project and I guess that's why it went closed, but I just don't think that would have been as much of a problem if the engine had been a collaborative work though github on day one.

EDIT: In retrospect, was github even around when this started?

This post has been edited by DimensionWarped: 31 March 2012 - 02:40 AM

[Deef]

Stealth, on 30 March 2012 - 09:47 PM, said:

Deef, on 30 March 2012 - 09:10 PM, said:

One thing that is impressive...

Spoiler

With debug mode I put over 200 sprites on screen. I don't think the client even noticed. Not a single flicker.

I'm interested- what sprites were those? After spawning 140 Sonics I start to see noticeable slowdown.

Mashers... I'll try it with Sonics.
I admit, the framerate did drop to 30fps. But I really mean it's as if the client didn't notice. No chugging, no slowdown, just a game running at 30fps perfectly solidly. I consciously noted to myself yesterday that things are actually more pleasant to play with 200 sprites on screen; that's how solid it is. More pleasant because instead of my framerate hiccuping between 60 and 40 fps, it just sits stable. If I didn't have the counter on I would have noticed it feeling smoother (though this is likely because it didn't need to present new terrain). And when I bopped all those Mashers, again not a flicker. Just explosions and scores.

Trying with Sonic just now, at about 150 it stopped letting me put more on screen. Still no slowdown at all.

I grabbed an invincibility and tried with Buzz Bombers. More than 200, again 30fps, again no chugging, flickering. Just perfect.

I just tried with rings. After 248 it stopped letting me place more. Still no slowdown. However while collecting them the score would disappear, so there's something a bit strange.

Bizarrely, after I collected them all it wouldn't let me place more than a handful at a time anymore, to the point where I could only place 1 on screen, collect it, place another one, and so on. The most rings I have placed in 1 go is 300, in 3 visible piles. With the 248, I made sure there was at least a small difference in position for every ring.


In all this I haven't ever seen the game slow down once, and never go under 30 fps.

This post has been edited by Deef: 31 March 2012 - 09:00 AM

[KingofHarts]

Rika Chou, on 31 March 2012 - 01:26 AM, said:

KingofHarts, on 31 March 2012 - 12:18 AM, said:

I believe in Sonic 2 HD... If the project does continue, which it should, at this point IMO...

Get rid of that piece of shit LOst.

This kind of disrespect is really uncalled for.

Yes, maybe it wasn't the best idea to add DRM to this project, but Lost (and the rest of the S2HD team) has worked countless hours on this game -- for free. Where's the appreciation?

You're not wrong... Perhaps I took it too far,but don't mistake that as a lack of appreciation for the others. I've played the alpha... And all of them, LOst included, have done amazing work. But I will not regret or feel remorse for my comments... (matter of fact, I deleted out quite a bit. That comment you saw is. Itching compared to what I originally said.) As talented and gifted as LOst is, he is the definition of hypocrisy at its finest, and the project would just be better off without that cancer slowing them down. Remember, as talented as LOst is, he's not the only one... And if the other don't share the paranoia, overinflated ego, and hypocrisy that he exhibits... I for one believe it's worth the trade off. I stand by everything I said... And if I offended you or anyone else, then as long as you're name isn't LOst... Then you have my sincere apology. (especially to Canned Karma and the rest of the S2HD TEAM.

[Ayu Tsukimiya]

Canned Karma, on 30 March 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

As for the fire, it wasn't even a placeholder; the real art that scanline made and gave to LOst was never put into the game. What you're seeing is the replacement LOst made himself and put in there in its stead. And no, no one in the project's leadership authorized that either.

Dammit, LOst.


Anyways, I'm glad to see things are going to be worked out. If we're lucky, the game might be done by this year if most of the artwork is ready.

This post has been edited by Ayu Tsukimiya: 31 March 2012 - 09:50 AM

[Sonica]

Canned Karma, on 30 March 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

As for the fire, it wasn't even a placeholder; the real art that scanline made and gave to LOst was never put into the game. What you're seeing is the replacement LOst made himself and put in there in its stead. And no, no one in the project's leadership authorized that either.

What the fu--

Damn. I was looking forward to seeing how that would have been drawn.

This post has been edited by Sonica: 31 March 2012 - 10:07 AM

[Deef]

Is there a way to turn off debug mode so I can have my 3-button spin dash back?

[Sonica]

Here is something I've known about for quite a substantial amount of time now:


Look carefully at the frames of this flower, 2 of them need flipping in order methinks.


But yeah.

[Robjoe]

Rika Chou, on 31 March 2012 - 01:26 AM, said:

KingofHarts, on 31 March 2012 - 12:18 AM, said:

I believe in Sonic 2 HD... If the project does continue, which it should, at this point IMO...

Get rid of that piece of shit LOst.

This kind of disrespect is really uncalled for.

No it's not.

LOst managed to take Sonic 2—a game that initially fit comfortably within the Mega Drive's 64KB of RAM—and make it hog upwards of 1GB. There is no excuse for this. Seriously, how does it make any amount of sense for a port of Sonic 2 running at 4x its original resolution to be this demanding?

LOst doesn't deserve anyone's respect. He's always been incompetent, and manages to obfuscate that fact by talking with an (artificial) air of secrecy, as if he's up to something legendarily marvelous, when in actuality he just has his head up his ass. The man is as arrogant as he is clueless.

[Lobotomy]

Robjoe, on 31 March 2012 - 01:24 PM, said:

Rika Chou, on 31 March 2012 - 01:26 AM, said:

KingofHarts, on 31 March 2012 - 12:18 AM, said:

I believe in Sonic 2 HD... If the project does continue, which it should, at this point IMO...

Get rid of that piece of shit LOst.

This kind of disrespect is really uncalled for.

No it's not.

LOst managed to take Sonic 2—a game that initially fit comfortably within the Mega Drive's 64KB of RAM—and make it hog upwards of 1GB. There is no excuse for this. Seriously, how does it make any amount of sense for a port of Sonic 2 running at 4x its original resolution to be this demanding?

LOst doesn't deserve anyone's respect. He's always been incompetent, and manages to obfuscate that fact by talking with an (artificial) air of secrecy, as if he's up to something legendarily marvelous, when in actuality he just has his head up his ass. The man is as arrogant as he is clueless.

This. I don't think I'd even need to forward any of the allegro.cc posts of complete incompetence to support this point.

The project is fantastic, but the engine is poorly coded, inaccurate, and eats up FAR too many resources. Years ago, (2004-ish, IIRC) Damizean made a fucking GAME MAKER 5 Sonic tech demo with better physics than S2HD.

This post has been edited by Lobotomy: 31 March 2012 - 02:48 PM

[Black Squirrel]

Again

in the industry people are hired to make the most out of graphics cards and optimise the crap out of specific sections which they have knowledge on. LOst is one man. Regardless of whether it's right or wrong that one man did everything (bar sound?), it's stupid to expect amazing graphics programming AND amazing physics AND handle the game engine AND presumably do a bit of hacking to get data from the original game.

I mean people like to make comparisons to Rayman Origins but I count over 30 members of the programming team in that game. Are we really suggesting one man should have the technical skills of thirty industry professionals working day in, day out? Really? I'm surprised the Mobius Engine isn't already out the door then!

The real question I suppose is why only one person was touching the code. It doesn't make that person demon spawn for it because that's kind-of the project manager's responsibility. The DRM stuff is the only questionable bit in LOst's code. It's an "alpha" not a "demo". I bet the Crysis alpha only ran on supercomputers back in the day.



also if you were to profile this you'd probably find the majority of the RAM usage comes from rendering the scene - getting Sonic to move and react with the environments uses a negligible amount of CPU (though more than the original game because you're not working as closely with the hardware and you're doing actual calculations in places where Sonic 2 just does estimates). Graphics are very processor intensive regardless of dimension - this is why graphics cards were invented to ease some of the strain. RAM has gone from KB to GB in the space of twenty years - that's a significant exponential rise. 320x240 has evolved into 1920x1080 in the same time period - not quite as impressive (especially when you consider colour depths).