The whole point in using the scrolled back service was so that you could scroll back and see my questions, and since my question was about sprites (not the "swap" command like you suggest), chances are, some of the others may have known, so it's logical to ask in the group chat. It was not a bold-face lie Speaking of not contacting you. Why did you not contact me about Megamix before making this thread? The last known discussion about working on megamix that I found was longer than a year ago (skype won't let me go back further than that), just about the time I started working on Bone Rattle. The last known contact in the "group" chat was almost a year ago too. You didn't discuss this with me, you didn't even "try" to get me back working on Megamix, you just posted a thread with "poor little old me, working on my own". That was not what I "asked" you about, please reread the logs and get the facts right. That was something I "mentioned", but I didn't "ask". I asked you about controlling sprite graphics because the others were eger to get the whip art in, something of which I had little to no knowledge of. I sat that to a side and went to continue the grappling hook, but hit a snag when I wasn't quite sure whether or not moving the... ..No, this isn't getting anywhere... You'll just call me a liar, I'll just call you a liar, there's nothing really productive here. The simple fact is, it didn't work, and this isn't working either, and I want no part of it.
Unfortunate situation but if you two were both working on other projects on the side then it is what it is. I'm sure when Stealth gives the tools used on the project, somebody will finish it.
I don't mean to get in the middle of your argument, but thanks for having it here, it's actually a good thing to learn from. Ultimately, Stealth has never finished any of the original fan projects that he's started. He clearly wanted to do it and had interest to do so, but lacked time and motivation to continue. He finally realized that it was a good idea for him to abandon the project. I think this a smart decision, ultimately the project could have dragged on for years or potentially the same thing may have happened later on for other reasons. I'm personally guilty of the same thing with some projects outside of this community but haven't actually let go because I don't want them to die completely even though they're not getting the effort they deserve. The biggest problem you ran into was a lack of communication. I agree with MarkeyJester that it would have been a good idea for Stealth to give the rest of the team a heads-up that he was going to abandon the project. Maybe it could have been handed off at that point, maybe not. Over the past year I've managed to land a couple of in-person job interviews with some big tech companies on the west coast of the US, and each time they've spent lots of money to fly me out there and I've fucked up. It was always due to a lack of communication. Once I made a mistake that I could have salvaged, and did, but they never found out about it because I didn't try to let them know. Another time I had described a solution to a problem, but when it came time to implement that solution, I realized that I wouldn't be able to finish in time so I simplified my answer to be less efficient but I knew it would be accurate and done in time. I felt like it would be okay as long as I still finished in a manner compatible with what I originally described, but my source on the inside informed me that I should have told them because that's exactly how I failed. The point of my story is that you can make mistakes if the people you're working with don't understand what you're about to do. I think you're both reasonable people and you can resolve this without being pissed off at one another long-term, because what's happened already is done and can't be changed. Is there something either of you might want that would make you feel better about the way this ended? Or is that it, have you said all there is to say and the public discussion is concluded?
Only thing I hope is that your collective effort doesn't go to waste. By which I mean I really hope you will eventually release stuff that is done in a more or less playable state (please make it as bugfree as possible) and finally move on (even though you apparently already moved on)
It is. In this particular instance, I completely missed it because I was heavily occupied and other conversations were happening at the exact same time. I continued a conversation with Rick and totally blipped out on your line. To the best of my knowledge at the time, there was nothing I had to scroll back for. We talked about that later, and that is indeed how I know exactly what you're talking about, because once you finally brought it up again, as you personally attested to in this very thread, "months down the line", I did, in fact, scroll back to look for it. I apologized to you and finally responded to the best of my ability. I also told you that it would be best to bring important questions directly to me instead of putting them in a group chat. I will freely admit that even on my best days I have trouble keeping up with those, which I believe I've said twice over the course of development within the Bone Rattle team chat AND at least once directly to you, and which is a huge factor in why I don't normally attend fully public chats in general Go fuck yourself for this, dude, seriously. I didn't hold anybody responsible for anything, and I went on after you weighed in to compliment your work and highlight you as the most-contributing member as of late The chat died a long time ago, for sure. I know for a fact that I've talked to you about it privately since then a few times, though, and if I have to, I can probably pull some evidence of how recently that was if I can get my Windows 7 install to boot again. I figured it was the best way to go since of all the other members, most weren't talking anymore and the rest just hadn't even had anything to do within the scope of their involvement in the longest time You're all like "oh I didn't have time to work on Megamix because I was working on Bone Rattle" but you also admitted yourself to waiting "months down the line" to bring up an issue that was apparently stopping you cold, and since then, you haven't had anything that needed to be done for it since we agreed to put it on hold in favor of something more simple, which still hasn't been settled on yet. On the flip-side, you've had plenty of time to come up with a few complicated mini-hacks to suit your own insecurity because of like one random jackass telling you "oh Sonic hacks aren't as good as 'demoscene' so you suck automatically no matter what you do" without regard for what you've claimed to have considered your other responsibilities in terms of commitments made to other projects (IE: Bone Rattle and Megamix). You've had plenty of downtime, and plenty of work to do on Megamix, which I had reminded you of again and again. When I didn't contact you regarding the cancellation of Megamix, I was being sensitive to your situation. You have an obsessive need to satisfy random detractors on the internet due to some apparent mental issue, such issues being something I can sympathize with, and you had described such pressing issues in your personal life that I figured that since you hadn't been back on Megamix during any of what may have been your free time and despite the fact that I had already tried pushing you a bit previously, I decided to forego placing pressure on you and release you of the burden of sticking with Megamix for another five years or whatever. I was trying to be nice, and somehow in your mind you've completely mutated it into some kind of personal attack on your character. Your character was never in question until you brought it into the picture yourself just now Right, you didn't "ask". If I do remember this correctly, you mentioned it in the team chat, and I believe that I later addressed it in the same chat after having come across it, but you seemed to have never caught on. It came up later in a conversation I had with Ossie where you were apparently legit bitch-complaining behind my back about how horrible the HCGE scripting system was because you had to type in so many lines to swap the values within some variables even though the swap commands were listed in the documentation that I personally tried to acquaint you with, and I did, in fact, tell you about the swap commands at some point, which I remember believing to be prior to your private complaints to Ossie, and you never once addressed the issue directly to me. If you had done so, I would most certainly have told you exactly what you needed to know. Why wouldn't I? How can I be expected to keep track of what goes on in the middle of a flowing chat while I'm otherwise occupied if you're apparently perfectly clear to not have to scroll back to look for stuff that happened while you weren't there as you suggest that I didn't do? (Spoiler: I most certainly did scroll back for stuff I wasn't present for, even when it was fucking humongous) Yeah, you did, and that's what came up when I totally blipped out due to ongoing conversation and having to juggle it with other shit I was doing at the time, which, again, I later apologized to you for after it was finally effectively brought to my attention. I also did have specific talks with you about the difference between manual and full automatic control of movement for the individual whip pieces, so don't even try pulling that crap. I remember your responses about how confusing it was and a little back-and-forth on why either way would be better Sure seems like it. I never had you pegged for something like this, man. I always thought you were a nice and decent person. Maybe a little twitchy but it hadn't gotten in the way in the past. We were friends, dude, all the way through my cancelling of Megamix. I tried to make it easy on you because I didn't want to go stressing you the fuck out about making you the only one doing anything. I haven't even been able to touch it for months, and clearly the same thing will be true for a while to come with Mania being announced for Spring 2017, so, I wanted to clear the plate. I wanted to finally lay it out there that I understood that Megamix was taking way the fuck too long and that it's nobody's fault - it's life. I wanted to secure what I could absolutely be certain of about its future to sate people's expectations, and I wanted to clear up the disappointment of the inevitability of Megamix's perpetual state of development hell before I got to tell everyone why I couldn't do it right now, so it wouldn't sting so bad in the end Also to make a point of it, we did talk over this in private after I responded to you for the first time on this thread. I tried to explain all of this to you already, and at the time, you made yourself out to be gung-ho on the project, which, to your credit, you probably actually were sincere about. You told me what you wanted, and I responded to that by creating a trello to lay the entire project description on the line for you. I know it's mostly just "overview" sort right now, but I did, in fact, include a sort of "to-do" list like you asked for, and it is a huge overarching generality (which you, yourself, commented on to me upon seeing it), and was meant to be filled in as I was available, but I barely had the time to do what I actually did at the moment because I was busy helping to prepare the 25th anniversary party demo for Sonic Mania. I tried, though, and I agreed to work with you behind-the-scenes to do all that we could to still flesh this thing out while not raising anyone's expectations. This was between the time that you responded to my "cancellation" post, and your post from yesterday leading directly into this argument You did great work, man. Again, you did the work of like five people by the end, and I seriously appreciated it. I am sincerely sorry to be losing that, and for any extent to which any of it "goes to waste", because it deserves better than that. You've made it perfectly clear that you don't want to work together anymore, though, and I honestly find your attitude extremely unappealing and upsetting. I hate it, but if this is how you want to handle it, then I don't think I have anything else to say to that fact other than "you know where to find me"
I'm sorry to say that it doesn't look good at the moment I have to point out again that I did try to contact other members of the team a long time ago on multiple instances in which I was apparently ignored, and I ultimately had to assume that they just wanted nothing to do with me. They hadn't done anything to Megamix or contacted me at all in so long that those two things combined was enough to believe that it didn't matter at all to them. I honestly can't know for certain what it actually was, but that's all it really came down to for me. I can apologize for any perceived mishandling on my part; my explanation was outlined in my response to Aquaslash, so at least those cards are visible now The only seemingly-relevant person that I didn't contact was Markey, and apparently that was a mistake. I've already outlined my reasons for handling it that way in the above post He may have tried to talk to me about this in private on Friday, or that could've been something entirely different, I don't know. All I got was "Hello", and I hadn't responded because I was away in San Diego for the 25th anniversary party and apparently I was signed onto Skype somewhere that I wasn't aware of. I missed a lot of people's messages for that reason, and I finally got around to responding to each of them, except for Markey, because the issue had already become public, and I repeat, just as he said he wanted, if anything is out there, I want it to be the truth I've said all I can on the subject as things stand so far. If he wants to actually get past this, he knows how to contact me
It seems like I have a slight correction to make... My last PM contact with Aquaslash was in 2013, and he did, indeed, respond to that particular message. So, it would seem that all of the problems are pretty much related to Skype for whatever reason. I honestly can't remember the exact sequence, and it's entirely possible that this much is on me. In that case, I'm sincerely sorry about it
That's not fair. I went out of my way to ask him about his experience with the engine up to that point, and he spoke on condition that I not repeat anything he said, presumably because you've got a hair trigger and questioning your design choices seems like a great way toward pissing you off. I had to weigh his comfort against the health of the project- I couldn't just leave him to suffer in silence, so I tried posing his complaints as my own, but wound up digging myself into a hole pretty quick. For what it's worth, the swap instruction deal was just the first stumbling block on a road fraught with them. He's one of the most talented coders here, and even he couldn't get situated with Headcode without assistance. The timezone difference, and you juggling no fewer than 3 projects at a time, really made for a shit learning environment. For all the time we spent together, I still don't understand what function the language even serves aside from obfuscating your code. Bottom line, there's no sense in pointing fingers, we were all at fault on Vertebreaker (c'mon guys it's not "Bone Rattle") falling through. It was Rick's game, but his job limited his availability and he wasn't a strong leader. I stepped up, but had no clue how to manage a project, and banked way too hard on everyone somehow motivating themselves to work on a game that nobody but me and Rick really understood (or even wanted). Markey wasn't good at communicating. Everyone had their own projects going concurrently. Mr. Lange talked too much. You were busy with a much worthier project and couldn't keep pace with developing the engine, and I guess you were banking on getting a much smaller project going, since we totally overshot your proposed 3 month assistance period. It was fun and we'll all do better some other time, hopefully. And now maybe we should do a big resource dump somewhere so everyone isn't wondering what the hell we're even talking about
I understood that. Anyone who's been around for as long as either of you have knows how easy it was to get me started, but I've gone a long way toward dealing with that since then. Not that I didn't legitimately get shit on a lot at several points in my history, but I've pretty-much learned how to separate the real crap from what can actually be discussed like a rational person and how to treat anyone else. What's also not fair is, after all this time, to judge me based on how I might have come off under certain specific circumstances years ago when things were so significantly different. I'll admit to an occasional lapse, too, but I don't know who can ever say they haven't had their bad days. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a person who agreed to work with me of their own free will try to have a normal discussion with me rather than resorting to only behind-the-back down-talk whether it was prompted or not I expected to work with people and get first-hand feedback on third-party experience using HCGE; that was the whole premise of "Project HC". I discussed things and made my reasoning for my decisions known when it came up. I was as up-front about how things were as I could possibly be when I opened call on the project, and I tried my best to make sure everyone knew exactly what they were getting into. I asked them, specifically, if they did, before I continued with them on the team. Markey, in particular, is somebody who's known me for a long time, so if this sort of thing were an issue for him, he should have dealt with it at the start (or by not agreeing). I did personally want him on because he's good, and I asked him personally, but I can't be held responsible for the decisions people make when they don't actually have guns physically pointed at their head or anything like that. If he had that much of a problem with me up-front, then I wish he would have told me HCGE is still in a high state of incompletion. The interfaces aren't meant yet for people who aren't super-serious about what they're doing. The script syntax has a learning curve. Blah blah blah, I went into great detail about all of this already, and again, I tried to make sure that everybody understood this before joining "Project HC". I was to be taking the feedback and working on it throughout the project until I had no time to continue doing so, and resume again when my other impending obligations were complete Specifically addressing the script syntax, commands, definitions, and file handling, it's an evolving thing that came from me creating a system in like 1997 that would allow me to code without recompiling (which was a major pain in the ass at the time), and eventually, to run the same code cross-platform given that the base engine had been ported to it. It's highly specialized for dealing with game objects and events in a way that I understand no-one is or can be familiar with right off the bat. This sort of thing isn't actually uncommon by "industry" standards, though, and as an example, the most major difference between Headcode and the RSDK script used on the remasters is actually just punctuation and spacing I admit to the only documentation so far being a humongous technical manual, and that I got in over my head trying to teach anyone to use it in its current state while I wasn't able to give it 110% of my attention. Clearly, it wasn't going to work and it's something that I needed to learn. I apologize for the extent to which it came at the expense of anyone else It did have its moments, and I also hope that we can all do better eventually, whether it's together or separately
I'm up for that, there was some good shit there. Would be cool to get some feedback on what we had, for future reference.
That's all totally up to you guys. With the game concept coming from Chimpo and Ritz, I imagine what they have to say about it might carry more weight. Personally, I'd love to see the game finished one way or another, and I think the non-code assets that had been developed so far are still viable beyond HCGE. At the same time, I'm personally ready to release or have released anything directly related to the project that its author wants out there
I've got no objections. I wouldn't even mind starting it up again in the future in HCGE,or just reusing those same assets for another project.
How about we just start up a topic and dump it all in there? It might spark off some interest and kickstart a new project or at the very least be something interesting to look at.
So, Stealth, weird almost off-topic question that you may not be able to answer due to NDAs, but it'll probably get lost if I ask in the Sonic Mania thread... About the PC version of Sonic Mania, are you guys going to be doing the PC version yourselves, or is it going to be a half-assed third-party port of the console version like with Sonic CD?
To make a long story short for the books, I missed all those chats, and my job sucks and has soul consuming hours. Id quit if the pay wasnt obscenely good. The rest will come in pms EDIT: oh. There were no PMs. And here I thought I went off the deep end again...
Hey Stealth. Apologies if this is a naive and idiotic question but what's stopping you and MarkeyJester from continuing work on Sonic Megamix once your contract with Sonic Mania is finished? Yes it's in the distant future relatively but surely you could just place Megamix on hold until your more important duties are fulfilled? You've already posted detailed replies extensively in this thread (which I have read) so apologies if you've already answered this and I missed it. Just curious and I'm sure others are too.
Also for all reasons he listed earlier and I'm sure that it's probably frowned upon to do Sonic Fan Hacks when you've worked on an officially licensed game. In other words, he can't go into specifics, just know he (likely) can't and won't.
Probably the fact that the hack was abandoned by virtually everyone except Stealth and possibly MarkeyJester.
First and foremost, I want to say that Sonic 1 Megamix is easily one of the best hacks in Sonic games and even one of the best hacks in overall. I guess I do not need to mention all its advantages and features. What I would like to discuss is that these 3 versions out there - the stable, the newer beta and the newest leaked one - are in my opinion almost all equally good. That being said, aforementioned versions are enjoyable on their own and there is thus no ultimate version for me; I am keeping all these ROMs in my PC. Why? After playing aforementioned versions recently, I have came up with some reflections. Let me explain: The 'complete' stable 3.0 is the first version I have played. I had such a "wow" experience while playing first acts. So magnificent that it feels like a major hack in terms of GFX, despite having only pallettes changed. Major overhaul of level design as well as nifty control features like Hover attack (alt. Jump Dash) and Light Dash makes this game very replayable. It has some quirks though. Because it is the only version for Genesis while two latter are for Sega CD, it makes the 4th zone a struggle with many slowdowns. Moreover, enemies and spikes are at some places very unfairly placed, leading to occasional frustrations despite the greatness of this hack; whether played with classic or megamix control scheme. The 4.0b version fixed the unfair placement of badniks and even spikes. We have new gfx for the 1st zone and new, remade boss in the 2nd zone. The level design of the latter zone is entirely changed in exchange for the new, gimmicky platforms. But it is understandable and, like the 3.0 counterpart, equally enjoyable. I also like the audiovisual revamp of Special Stages - each of them have their own BGM and background. Because it is an unstable version, graphical glitches do occur, but all aforementioned advantages overshadow this disadvantage. It creates thus a fair, "jack of all trades" experience among 3 versions. Too bad only that Eggman can be defeated with just one hit during the last fight. I discovered recently the leaked, so called 5.0 version. I would say we should thank the fate.. or 'coincidence' that this version has been made to the public. I love the choice between FM and CD music. The latter BGMs, included in this ROM, are very enjoyable to listen. Some zones have also new gfx and level design revamps anew. While this hack has the most "wow" factors, it has also the most quirks unfortunatelly. After all, it is a leaked version. Among those cons, some levels are incomplete - player is forced to play other levels in Time Attack and checkpoints in levels become thus obsolete. While some GFX are really impressive, the "complexity" of another ones creates a messy visuals during the play and is thus not pleasing to the eye. For instance, look at 3nd and 5th zones. And foremost, there is only one Special Stage which even freezes the game whether you succeed or fail. But on other side, it is very original and playable which has the vibe of Sonic CD Special Stages. In short, all of these versions are good and I keep replaying one after another, in the similar fashion I love to replay vanilla levels of Genesis Sonic series but with different characters like Tails in 1 or Amy in 3&K. If someone asks me which version should he or she play, I would say this: - if you want complete as well as most vanilla, stable experience, choose 3.0, - if you want a fair and easygoing experience in terms of gameplay, choose 4.0b, - if you want just to check how very cool experience may Sonic Megamix offer (once Stealth releases the bugfixed version after he is done with Mania, I sincerely hope) regardless of bugs and glitches, choose the leaked '5.0'. Maybe too long to read and nothing new or groundbreaking, but I had just a mood to write this little essay. I hope you enjoyed reading my work as much as I had the pleasure writing this. What is your opinion about this, folks?
