Not really a fanwork topic as that would require the actual team to talk about the project, I imagine. I'll leave it here for now, but if another mod wants to move it, then by all means.
I thought they'd moved into the indie scene - the trajectory was away from Sonic Retro last time I heard. Because a community partly formed on dissecting Sonic 2... spent too much time dissecting Sonic 2... or something. Hey I hope the Emerald Hill Zone music has those missing notes put back in this time around :specialed:
You're right about that (the moving onto independent games at least). You're thinking of Scanline99 and Cerulean Nights who went on to form PagodaWest Games and create Major Magnet. Considering we hung out together at E3, I can say they're not working on Sonic 2 HD.
It's pretty cool news that what has essentially been Sonic Retro's dream project is being revived from the dead, but by this point it needs to expand on it's original purpose in order to garner interest for the project again. We already have the results of what the game looks and sounds like and what content it was going to have, and on top of that Taxman/Stealth's Sonic 2's remaster with it's bonus features galore (especially the Hidden Palace remake) kinda blows the general idea of a HD remake of Sonic 2 out of the water (the likes of Sonic 4 and Generations remaking levels and recycling content from the original game doesn't help things either). Though I am not necessarily calling for it to expand into some general remake of all of the Genesis/CD games, the project will have to be more than a HD remake with a few bonus features in order to turn more heads. Nonetheless, I hope progress goes much more smoothly than the last effort and I do hope to see and play the finished product sometime. It also helps that I am genuinely more interested in how this product turns out much more than the Boom games and Sonic Team's next attempt at a Sonic game, as I have little-to-no enthusiasm whatsoever for any of those three games.
It would be interesting if you guys attempted to remake all three Genesis games, but with a consistent art direction that took the best ideas from all three games in terms of art direction. That idea would be insanely ambitious and extremely time consuming though.
Obvious questions: What programming language is the new "engine" written in? Will this eventually be open-source and/or multi-platform? Will "Hack Detection" be implemented as an easter egg? :v: (I did this in GCN MemCard Recover v0.2)
I highly, highly, HIGHLY doubt no.2 for some reason. I doubt it so much that I'm actually wondering if you're being sarcastic.
You forgot Tee, who also did the (amazing) soundtrack for Major Magnet. (He was at PAX last year at least for some sense of legitimacy)
My most requested feature. :D I second the other questions though. I hope they get a much better workflow arranged this time, and the access to inserting assets into the current build of the game is provided to everyone on the team. It sounds obvious, but it sounds like it wasn't that obvious the last time. :v: (From what I heard that is)
I use git for my own projects and at work. Git (and Hg) allows each developer to have a complete history of the entire repository. This works well because, among other things, it allows for completely offline development (you only need to connect to the main server to push changes back to the 'master' repository). I highly recommend using git or Hg for this sort of project, especially if there's multiple developers involved.
I second this, but apparently the issues were a bit more complicated than just getting a common repository. The last programmer was the only one with access to implementing assets into the game due to the package format.* That must've slowed the workflow a ton, since it must be pretty annoying and demotivating for the artists to be unable to iterate with the assets and test them in-game. *: I don't recall where I heard this, but there's probably not much point to bringing up past drama.
That's something else that should be included in the repository: utilities to work with any custom formats as well as documentation. (Alternatively, if the customized format isn't really required, use a standard format, such as ZIP archives.)
I still think "Remastered" is a better and more accurate title :v:/> All jokes aside, I'm interested to see where this goes.
Eh, speaking from personal experience, "Remastered" automatically condemns your fate to having your fanbase bitch about not having the ability to switch to the old soundtrack. </snark>
Amazing news that this has come back, Sonic 2HD was the reason I signed up to Retro to submit my music. I'm more than happy for the team to use it again and they have my complete permission to use whatever parts they want to providing Canned Karma still has the individual audio files. If not then I'll submit them again.
For the love of god, I hope the coders have learnt the lesson from LOst's bullshit - don't deploy DRM measures in a fangame that you're already technically infringing IP rights on. + - That said, I'd also approve of an Easter Egg about Hacking Detection =P Also some slightly less insane system requirements would be nice.