LOst, on 10 August 2011 - 12:55 PM, said:
Sorry for going a little Generations off-topic here. But I feel I have to respond to LocalH's idea. I am very much against it for a key reason:
Taking an original Sonic game and remove one or more of its quality strengths, would seriously damage the original title. Especially for us, that need those original titles as proof and inheritance (life support).
Well, I don't really see it as removing a quality strength, to be honest. The biggest part, to me, that makes the original titles so good is the gameplay - the physics, collision, player handling, and enemy behaviors. Of course, those who would do the art for such an endeavor would merely have the same responsibilities as you guys on the S2HD team (and I remember earlier on y'all were gonna stick with accuracy to the original graphics as a main key, but then it was decided that things should be improved to take full advantage of the higher resolution while still being majorly inspired by the originals, but not to the point of making ugly bushes just because they're accurate to the original bushes, for example).
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Saying that, I am sure people won't understand or care. We have all seen the Mushroom Hill 2.5 3D render video, and it is awesome! It basically says 3D graphics and effects would give Sonic 3 & Knuckles a whole new experience, and it looks good. But the basic of the original Sonic requires many things to be above a certain quality level, where we already know Mushroom Hill 2.5 3D graphics passed, as well as the original graphics passed. When coming to physics (using emulation), it would pass if you map it to 1x1 pixel units, but any other aspect ratios would be below the quality level:
3D objects would have individual scales, overlapping, twitching, and wobbling during interation (Just picture Saturn's Daytona USA polygon wobble), and as that happens, you loose game feeling as in "my brain saw at that moment it was possible to play the game, but when I did respond to it, it failed".
The motions of every object, including path collision would grid step (The smallest visible unit in original Sonic is a pixel, and scaling that up at any resolution would result in terrible visuals).
There are hundreds of objects in Sonic 3 & Knuckles that were specifically designed to work on pixel paths, and many of them have predefined data, so you would have to reprogram so much that it would be impractical.
Orignal Sonic player's motion is fixed point and can easily be converted into floating point to get a smooth motion for HD play, but as I stated above, all interations, including running in loops, down or up slope, will be like running on a staircase.
3D enhance an original Sonic game at a 1x1 aspect resolution will basically only enhance the perspective visuals (if you like seeing low res 3D models rotate while running). The perspective visuals is what I think Sonic Generation succeeded the best.
I'm sure the 3D engine, being tailored specifically to the Sonic engine, could smooth out object placement somewhat so that you don't see the "jumps" that you'd see if you did a pure X/Y mapping, since the original games are limited to an absolute max of 65536x65536 pixels for a level (and I'm pretty sure there's a smaller engine limit anyway, that's just what you could do without extending the coordinates to 32-bit per axis). It would take quality work, sure, not shovelware work, but I think it would have the ability to be a true reinvisioning of the visual and aural experience, while striving to keep the gameplay itself 100% accurate. I could, however, see another method that may or may not be as much work for the same quality - port the engine rather than emulate it, but ensure that the port logic is step for step the same as the 68k, and then extend things out as necessary to support finer precision.
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As LocalH said it, it is possible to do all that, and it would be a fun project, especially for all the 3D model people here. As for Sonic Team making it, and we helping with disassemblies, the result would be worse than Sonic Generation, and we would complain even more and blame ourselves (we can't do that as the world would end).
I seriously doubt such a project would be worse, given the work that some of the Sonic sceners have done to outright trump the fuck out of Sega. The problem may be getting some of those people on board, but I don't think scener involvement would negatively impact it (outside of perhaps maybe lack of modern game development, but if any of us helped, it would be more on the emulated side of things, assisting with ensuring that the emulator knows what every bit of RAM represents at all times. Yeah, people might bitch because of Sonic Team's involvement, but you'll always have that unless the original Sonic Team rebanded. Nothing's going to be as good as S1-3K for a large chunk of the people who have played the shit out of the old games. Wouldn't it be awesome, though, if for something like Sonic's 30th or 35th anniversary, the original Sonic Team came back to remake the original games in their vision (and they have the right to do so, it being their original vision in the first place), with scener assistance when necessary (if requested and offered by sceners, of course)? As long as they wouldn't pull a Lucas and try to change too much, I think it'd be a very fitting thing to do for such an occasion.
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Back to Sonic Generations, it is a game created by listening to the fans, but only up to a point where Iizuka takes over because he owns Sonic. He wants speed and boosters and all that. So it is not a game I would choose to play.
I do have to say, Generations is shaping up to be the best modern Sonic game so far, in my eyes (with MAYBE the exception of SA1, but this is getting pretty close). This is not to put it anywhere near the lofty status the MD games have, but there is definitely an attention to detail, in the way that the fans want, that I haven't seen from Sega in quite a while. After the debacles of S2k6 and S4E1, Generations is at least shaping up to be a solid 14 karat turd-shape instead of a 10-karat gold plated and shit-filled turd, and there's still room for it to even be less of a turd if things keep going the way they're going now. At this point, I'm leaning about 60/40 on the side of "buy or rent" (assuming I can get my 360 working again).
