[Knucklez]

Flare, on 10 April 2012 - 05:08 PM, said:

Well I have to say I'm not angry just disappointed LOst has made little to no comment on this when he should be - defending, explaining or apologising. I mean I know there was no evil intent behind this whole ordeal - too much effort for it all - but the lack of response hardly makes it seem as innocent as he should be defending it to be.

If someone like LOst would intentionally tarnish his own reputation or image in the Sonic community, if he truly had one, I wouldn't understand why.

If you were in charge of a project praised by a community to the highest magnitude and everyone counted on you to make it happen, why would you fuck up this badly? ..on purpose?

[steveswede]

Andeed, on 10 April 2012 - 04:38 PM, said:

Now that LOst is history, what I want to know is, was it his influence that turned the project so closed and secretive? Is it possible that this can be relaunched as an open-source, community project? I'm sure this could be released, in its finished form, to an exceptional quality if it was done by a dedicated and talented team (of which there are a huge number of talented developers at Sonic Retro), with the remaining members of the management team overseeing development, and having greater community input on matters from music to artwork. Even having a larger team of artists to create the artwork, based on the art style, would accelerate this project to no end!

There are many reasons why the main runners of this fan project closed to the community but none were related to LOst because his status was always the sole programmer. It became closed because people were submitting stuff that didn't need to be done, arguments on how the art should be done, single things like Hill Top Zone tree taking far too long to do because everyone had their own idea what it should look like and clashing art. Personally the art team is fine with the members it has they only need a programmer to get the project moving again.

[Flare]

Knucklez, on 10 April 2012 - 05:31 PM, said:

Flare, on 10 April 2012 - 05:08 PM, said:

Well I have to say I'm not angry just disappointed LOst has made little to no comment on this when he should be - defending, explaining or apologising. I mean I know there was no evil intent behind this whole ordeal - too much effort for it all - but the lack of response hardly makes it seem as innocent as he should be defending it to be.

If someone like LOst would intentionally tarnish his own reputation or image in the Sonic community, if he truly had one, I wouldn't understand why.

If you were in charge of a project praised by a community to the highest magnitude and everyone counted on you to make it happen, why would you fuck up this badly? ..on purpose?

My point, I doubt someone would go to these lengths to deploy some malware, that said he hasn't said anything regarding the situation (which he must have been aware of since I doubt his own anti virus software didn't pick this up at some point) but he hasn't which confuses me because if it was all innocent then wouldn't he have said it or at least explained the situation to avoid this whole ordeal.

I don't hate LOst but it makes me sore in the head to not see him do anything about it. Which he must have known before it went public, someone on the team must have asked or questioned the anti virus alert, I mean it hasn't just happened to a couple members of the public.

[CyberKitsune]

My response to S2HD currently:

"The programmer has a nap. Hold out! Programmer!"

[Rolken]

kazade, on 10 April 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

The best thing that the S2HD members could do now is:

* Rename the project (cut all ties with S2HD, that name is now toxic)
* Open a new forum
* Host all of the existing artwork/music/tools publically (so people can improve and re-use)
* Advertise for programmers to develop an accurate, cross-platform, well-coded engine[1]
* Make the whole thing a proper, open community project, with a bug tracker and code on GitHub or Retro's Mercurial server
* Make someone a gatekeeper, or have a panel of 3 people or something who vote on what makes the grade and what doesn't and give them the power to merge branches. Proper open source style.

Basically, IMO, a fresh start is the only thing that'll save this now.

This is absolutely 100% the way to make overtures to any actual developers who happen to have fond memories of Sonic. Anyone who gives a shit about this project should reread this post until they understand it viscerally, and then execute it to the letter.

If you do not heed his post, and you (as a community) find yourself bemoaning a lack of programmers, it is completely your own goddamn faults. There are tons of 20-something programmers who love the old Sonic games, we just have better shit to do than put up with your drama and call it a hobby.

This post has been edited by Rolken: 10 April 2012 - 05:53 PM

[Clutch]

Flare, on 10 April 2012 - 05:40 PM, said:

Knucklez, on 10 April 2012 - 05:31 PM, said:

Flare, on 10 April 2012 - 05:08 PM, said:

Well I have to say I'm not angry just disappointed LOst has made little to no comment on this when he should be - defending, explaining or apologising. I mean I know there was no evil intent behind this whole ordeal - too much effort for it all - but the lack of response hardly makes it seem as innocent as he should be defending it to be.

If someone like LOst would intentionally tarnish his own reputation or image in the Sonic community, if he truly had one, I wouldn't understand why.

If you were in charge of a project praised by a community to the highest magnitude and everyone counted on you to make it happen, why would you fuck up this badly? ..on purpose?

My point, I doubt someone would go to these lengths to deploy some malware, that said he hasn't said anything regarding the situation (which he must have been aware of since I doubt his own anti virus software didn't pick this up at some point) but he hasn't which confuses me because if it was all innocent then wouldn't he have said it or at least explained the situation to avoid this whole ordeal.

I don't hate LOst but it makes me sore in the head to not see him do anything about it. Which he must have known before it went public, someone on the team must have asked or questioned the anti virus alert, I mean it hasn't just happened to a couple members of the public.

This is sort of how I feel about all this. Lack of malicious intent or not, I think it's more than a little silly for the sole programmer to leave the rest of his team to handle damage control and field questions they can't possibly answer.

[Vincent]

Billy, on 10 April 2012 - 05:29 PM, said:

This project is getting a lot more attention than I realized. I'm worried about how the reaction from this release will affect the project's future. Don't give up, S2HD team!

That front page headline is just plain terrorism and speculation.
I keep asking myself why it wasn't adequately tested before by a coordinated programmer group (which already exposed what it is a DInput bug), as there's no evidence of data being uploaded to label S2HD as scam of the worst league.
Unfortunately for us the damage is done and misinformation keeps spreading. I'm hereby asking Sonic Retro to amend that headline as soon as possible.

This post has been edited by Vincent: 10 April 2012 - 07:14 PM

[Stealth]

Without having completely read through five more full pages of comments, I don't know with absolute certainty that this has been addressed, but I did search for the words "Taxman", "Retro", and "CD" and found nothing, so, I'd like to address this:

SANiK, on 10 April 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

jman2050, on 10 April 2012 - 11:56 AM, said:

Yeah, like Sega was ever interested in touching Sonic 2 HD in the first place...

So when SEGA purchased Taxman's project, you were 100% expecting that?
But as for S2HD, you don't think they would?

The implication in what you're saying is entirely incorrect. Not only did Taxman go to Sega himself, but he also went to the fans, who shoved him down Sega's throat, and this was in direct response to Sega already publicly advertising that they were revisiting old properties on the mobile market with carbon-copy re-releases. That's a far cry from them suddenly becoming interested enough in Sonic 2 HD to, of their own accord, go out of their way to ask a group of random people if they can pay them money to do something that's not even a unique idea

SANiK, on 10 April 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

Let me guess, you also expected Facebook to buy Instagram for $1 billion?
Cause you could just see it?

It may be that this was an unexpected move (one I personally don't know anything about), but I don't see how it's relevant enough to bring up sarcastically in a point being made about an entirely separate company. If you want to set precedent, let's talk about all the other fan projects Sega just up and bought on their own, or the fan developers they personally reached out to regarding the development of a new release, or even responded to with regard to anything of this sort. I'll list the ones I know of:

[VizardJeffhog]

So what Guess Who said is just about the whole 9 yards of what the situation really is then. Right? I can at least try to mend a few misconceptions over on TSS.

This post has been edited by VizardJeffhog: 10 April 2012 - 08:32 PM

[Irixion]

Apparently a keylogger that doesn't phone home is now a virus? Dicks. Can LOst provide some input on this? A reason? Seriously, staying quiet as a fix isn't doing him any good. Damage control? :|

[Elratauru]

Vincent, on 10 April 2012 - 07:12 PM, said:

terrorism

lolwut.

Edit; nah, seriously, if a keylogger was inside, that's bad enough. But if it was a directinput careless, well, I don't get it. I mean, there are tons of programs/emulators that do Off-focus key-handling without triggering a tonshit of AV software :V

Meh~~

This post has been edited by Elratauru: 10 April 2012 - 08:40 PM

[TonicBH]

Falk, on 10 April 2012 - 05:54 AM, said:

btw I'm also uninstalling Fraps because it starts recording video when I press F9 regardless of whether the Fraps window is in focus or not. WTF man

don't expect any more gaming videos from me.

You can change it to any button you want. Or like, run Fraps only when you intend to record.

[HeartAttack]

I've been getting an earful on another forum due to this whole debacle. If any of you recall, I posted something similar a couple weeks ago about the initial antivirus popup warning due to utilization of obfuscated code. *sigh* At least I've been able to prove them wrong about the keylogger and such. Still, though, this projects reputation is in the gutter and likely irreparably damaged for good. I will continue to support the project in whatever capacity I can, although it will be difficult from this point on :-/

Also, it doesn't help that the official word from the Sonic Retro site is that people should uninstall the program because it's supposedly a keylogger. Talk about jumping the f*cking gun. The amount of FUD this site has spread about the project is insane. Take that warning down because it is f*cking retarded.

[jman2050]

The one thing I'm taking from all this personally is that Sonic Retro has far more clout than I realized.

[SANiK]

Reposting link to article (Jeff posted it above, but in case people miss it):
http://www.reddit.co...logger_here_is/

Vincent, on 10 April 2012 - 07:12 PM, said:

Billy, on 10 April 2012 - 05:29 PM, said:

This project is getting a lot more attention than I realized. I'm worried about how the reaction from this release will affect the project's future. Don't give up, S2HD team!

That front page headline is just plain terrorism and speculation.
I keep asking myself why it wasn't adequately tested before by a coordinated programmer group (which already exposed what it is a DInput bug), as there's no evidence of data being uploaded to label S2HD as scam of the worst league.
Unfortunately for us the damage is done and misinformation keeps spreading. I'm hereby asking Sonic Retro to amend that headline as soon as possible.

The damage isn't that drastic as people make it out to be. Most blogs have already figured out that ScarredSun's clueless and it's a bug.
The only people making it bigger than it is, are the Sonic fans, and since you're chatting here, the problem seems huge/deadly.

1) Get LOst to remove the obfuscation and fix the DirectInput bug.
2) Write up an article citing incompetence (and malice) on part of SonicRetro's staff member, specifically ScarredSun.

Let me break her post down:
"Earlier today, I was contacted by a professional antivirus employee who was interested in why Sonic 2 HD consistently popped up as a threat by multiple antivirus software programs and did some investigation."
"Professional" - was never verified.

"His results showed that a keylogger is part of the Sonic 2 HD software."
A key logger that never wrote a log (or transmitted keys), but just interpreted input.

"After receiving this notification, we conducted our own independent tests"
She jumped the gun, and ignored the conclusion of SonicRetro's own technical community; that it was just an input bug.

"and found that there is indeed a keylogging program as part of the Sonic 2 HD alpha software."
Sensationalist wording; That's not what was found. No logging or transmission functionality was found.
Furthermore, she makes it sound as if S2HD installs a separate keylogging program (a payload). The line should be:
"...and found Sonic 2 HD alpha software monitors input when window is not in focus."
But obviously she didn't write it like that, cause that is going to expose the post for what it is.

Furthermore, people say she did a good thing for being cautious. Pfft! She ignored SonicRetro's own technical community.

This post has been edited by SANiK: 10 April 2012 - 09:07 PM