***Contribution Rules & Guidelines***

<div align='center'>An Introduction to Contributing</div>

<div align='center'>Sonic 2 HD community goals, welcomes anyone with artistic talent to showcase their skills in the relevant topics.
We are always on the look out for individuals that can collaborate with others as a team, but who are also polite, positive and helpful in their approach towards others.

<!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->To register on S2HD Database, send a private message to Vincent or Canned Karma, indicating a username and password for your DB account.[/COLOR]</div>

<div align='center'>Click the following image to be taken to the database:</div>
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<div align='center'>Contribution Rules & Guidelines</div>

<blockquote>ART:

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->The Art submitted for S2HD is meant to be exclusive use of S2HD.[/COLOR]
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.

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->4x Resolution Art is Required for Characters - Items - Badniks - Foreground tiles.[/COLOR]
This is because the Genesis/Mega Drive displays a resolution of 320 x 240. For the S2HD project we are working at four times that: 1280 x 960. For submitted art to be usable for S2HD project, it must look sharp and crisp, while being completely feasble to adjustments and revisions. Your program of choice must be able to save Layered files (I.e Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash, Inkscape..).
Please use the the various tutorials on following posts to learn more about HD art production.

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->You can find specific Art Tutorials on the dedicated thread.[/COLOR]
Click on this link to read them.

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->Inspired and basing on the "Original Pixel Art" concept, you can picture and add as much details as your creativity dreams!
(For characters we take details from the "Original S2 SEGA Artworks").[/COLOR]
Since we upgraded to million colors, 256 color limit don't exists anymore. HD stands for "High Definition", so any upscaled / hq2x filtered original 4X art, with few color shades or details will be not qualified.

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->The art style for characters, badniks, objects and level tiles is remastered 2d (rather than 3d).[/COLOR]
We think that remastered 2d artwork suitably captures the appearance and atmosphere of the original retro Sonic series.

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->Strictly follow S2HD Staff artstyle for a faster and productive approach of your contributions. Artstyle is not being discussed by your examples.[/COLOR]
To adjust your art consistency, feel free to use the above images!


• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->Manual shading with added in-between shades should generally be used, rather than automatic set gradient filters.[/COLOR]
There are however, some exceptions to this.
Keeping the cartoony feeling of characters and environment, advanced gradients use is permitted especially on enemies and Metal items. An excessive use of automatic gradient filters is however very unnecessary and create art clashes.

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->Please always post both the remastered and original sprite scaled to four times the size[/COLOR] when showcasing your artwork on our forums, so that feedback can be left more easily.

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->You can download the original sprite assets (scaled to four times) [/COLOR] from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on our database (pleased click the image above to be taken there).

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->Empty sections of the database that still need contributions are denoted with red bullet points [/COLOR]( • ).
Please feel free to take a crack at these sections with your own talent - community contributions are valued!

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->We are using the original 16x16 chunks to remaster the tiles from each zone.[/COLOR]
These can be accessed from our database (scaled to four times the size) under the "Zones" section. All of the assets from each zone (apart from the objects) can be constructed from these same chunks. In the future however, we may develop a method to selectively remaster the tiles from the 256x256 chunks. Before this can be considered further, the 16x16 chunks from each zone must be remastered first, so as to serve as a base.



MUSIC:

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->All remastered music should transcribe the originally intended instruments and overall style, whilst updating them to today's musical standards.[/COLOR]
Obviously style can be enhanced by adding some more detailed notes, good instrument sets, stereo panning and velocity changes, as well as overdubs or complete drum kits and loops. The tempo and notes themselves should remain mostly untouched, but of course, new notes are also welcomed to avoid shallow sounds. In order to capture the ambience that Sonic Team originally intended, we prefer remastered music than remixed music. Here is an example from one of our top music contributors. The original genesis tune plays first, followed by its remastered counterpart: Click here to download!

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->All remastered music MUST be submitted in the OGG Vorbis format at 320 kbps.[/COLOR]
This is largely because the MP3 format has some inherent limitations when it comes to looping music, which makes it unuseable for the project. When uploading music submissions to the database, it is preferred that they be included inside a .ZIP file.

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->All WIP Music Files can be freely uploaded on Hinchy's Music Database.[/COLOR]
You can directly host all your WIP musical compositions files, without having to worry of free file share common problems, such as spams, boring time limit, or even server deletion! Ask him for a login and pwd!

• <!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro-->You can download all the original music from Sonic 2 (including individual tracks from each tune) from our database, as a reference.[/COLOR]
All of the community's current music submissions are also available to download from the database.</blockquote>

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<!--coloro:yellow--><span style="color:yellow"><!--/coloro--><div align='center'>For any questions regarding the goals, guidelines, or general comments on the project, please contact Vincent or Canned Karma[/COLOR]</div>