[Kogen]

[Ritz]

Canned Karma, on 29 March 2012 - 05:28 PM, said:

I honestly don't find any of these criticisms offensive. We made a game that we are proud of, and nothing you guys can complain about will change that fact as much as you'd like to think you can. 99% of people agree this is the best looking Sonic game that they've ever played

Whohohoa there, buddy. The sprites are nice and that's the only thing this project has going for it. I guess that's why you guys are so adamant against divulging your trade secrets, right? Because trying to hide things has already done this project so many favors! P.S. If your artists aren't outright lying and none of the methods I brought up are being used, it's no surprise coloring has turned out to be "a laborious and time-intensive process" when you're employing some painfully obtuse techniques in a program that really wasn't meant to accommodate them. At least tell me why you wouldn't use a vector program to create "vector" art.

So, anyone feel like wading through this thread and tallying up the number of people who've successfully ran this game, and have continued to do so without it breaking on them? The DRM is by far and away the least of the engine's problems. What are you people so chuffed about? Also this thread made me like Stealth and Gerbilsoft.

This post has been edited by Ritz: 30 March 2012 - 07:08 AM

[Elratauru]

Well, thanks to this topic I finally made a new signature



So good

[Ayu Tsukimiya]

I really hope this project doesn't die from all this. Get rid of LOst. Find someone else. Tell him to fuck off and get someone to fix "his" engine. Do whatever. Just GET RID OF HIM.

[JTE]

I can't seem to unlock debug mode. Pity. Perhaps it has something to do with beating it with ten lives instead or some such.

I rather do hate the idea that half the content is entirely undocumented secrets. I suppose Tails is cool, though. Yeah, Tails is a bro.

It's interesting today that videogames are made by artists, not programmers. The art is what you see, what you hear. The art is what's good here. I rather wish I were an artist rather than a programmer myself, sometimes.
It would be a lot less stressful to put in four hours to four days of work on a single piece of work and then be able to simply move on from it. Rather than having it develop into my baby, a big conglomeration of things I wasn't even asked to program to begin with. You just sort of go off on a tangent of ideas sometimes, the key is to have someone there to tell you what's a good idea and actually listen to them when they tell you what's not.

Reverse gravity, recolorable Sonics, multi-sonic replay support, with the camera switching all around, in an engine so protected its own programmer cannot stand the idea of patching in new content particularly often because he's made it to be so much work? ... You've programmed yourself into a corner, then attached shiny balloons to it, and then hidden those balloons such that people who find them have very little idea how. But you'll be damned if it isn't the best corner ever. I guess I can understand that.

I'd love to program a new engine for this, not because I hate LOst or DRM or whathave you, but because it inspired me, the potential for even greater good. One which can hold objects which use sprites of ANY size, animations with ANY number of frames, interchangeable to the point where one can simply drop a single file into the data folder and suddenly robotic monkeys populate the trees, akin to the end-user result of Bethesda's engines... Such a true infinity is a dream I hope to reach one day, completely regardless of open-source or closed-source nonsense.

But I suppose that day is not today. I have rather pressing engagements of my own to attend to this month. Other things I'm already expected to be programming, not to mention a huge slew of anime and gaming conventions to attend. ... I am quite mired in things I adore, and that is just fine. <3

Thank all you artists for this work, even if it's from last year or earlier. It has truly been a pleasure.
Brofist to Kogen, Ritz, Gerbilsoft, and anyone else who happens to recognize me. 'Sup.

This post has been edited by JTE: 30 March 2012 - 09:34 AM

[Puto]

<Puto> so, obvious question
<Puto> <Puto> why does everything in S2HD look like it's made of plastic

[Spanner]

I played this alpha release a few days ago, fortunately having no antivirus issues there. It is good that a project that is years in the making has finally had some sort of actual release, but unfortunately I believe that this could have been better if it wasn't for ridiculous decisions such as obfuscating code and adding DRM to a fan game of all things.

What annoys me further is the fact that because of LOst, this release was delayed for more than a year, the community project status was nothing more than an absolute lie (and everyone pretty much knew this), yet the staff at Sonic Retro were being mislead into the project status until just now. It was clear that this no longer had any community involvement of some sort a long time ago, yet things were still around. Hopefully the remaining community projects here will remain as community projects, and the staff at Retro will try and help with this.

But, at the same time of me downloading this alpha release, I was gifted Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I on Steam and even though that game is outright terrible, at least I can change some files to suit my own preferences, such as the texture mods available here. So if the S2HD Team is actually looking at real game development, lets hope that the same mistakes aren't made here, even that means developing without LOst.

That's just my opinion on this subject. I know everyone has done things to death about this, but I have not had the time to post my feedback on this until now.

[Aerosol]

Something's not right. If LOst is such a poison to the project, why even keep him around for as long as he has been? Did the rest of the staff truly feel like they had no other option? I mean, if I were working with somebody that kept dragging their feet for a full year, I'd just...get rid of them and look for help elsewhere.

[Miles Prower]

Elratauru, on 30 March 2012 - 08:31 AM, said:

Well, thanks to this topic I finally made a new signature

Why not.

[P3DR0]

AerosolSP, on 30 March 2012 - 10:35 AM, said:

Something's not right. If LOst is such a poison to the project, why even keep him around for as long as he has been? Did the rest of the staff truly feel like they had no other option? I mean, if I were working with somebody that kept dragging their feet for a full year, I'd just...get rid of them and look for help elsewhere.

Yeah, right you are. When Sonic 2 HD were a community project there were a lot of people working and coding it like Endri said previously on this thread. I believe that L0st wasn't even necessary back then, I mean we're on a community dedicated to hacking Sonic games, so talented people isn't really hard to find in here. And perhaps if the game stayed that way, beeing a community project it could've been more polished on the engine (which is still very glitchy) and even have some better graphics (not trying to drag back to the previous discussion, just saying).

Also, I'm not into law stuff but this DRM thing couldn't get the people working on the project in trouble? I mean, they're not selling but they're taking property by something that they don't really own (Sonic related stuff).

Elratauru, on 30 March 2012 - 08:31 AM, said:

Well, thanks to this topic I finally made a new signature



So good

10/10 HAHAHA

This post has been edited by P3DR0: 30 March 2012 - 10:46 AM

[Rolken]

Hinchy, on 30 March 2012 - 01:00 AM, said:

Vinchenz, on 29 March 2012 - 11:26 PM, said:

He gets kicked off, the engine will probably be pulled away and nobody will want to re-create it.

There are other capable programmers and there are other engine projects. ESPECIALLY for a gameplay that, among us, is so well-understood and well-documented, a great engine suited to Sonic 2 HD's needs could be created.

Especially if it's open sourced. Too many programmers around here work completely alone. If a large handful of talented programmers got together with some sort of version control system in place, the best goddamn 2D Sonic fangame engine ever could get to a mostly-complete beta state in a few months.

Also, the HD graphics require almost no increase in programming skill from creating a game at a smaller resolution. If you have the high-resolution assets, you can make your game's resolution whatever the hell it wants to be. (It's not hard to create resolution-independence either, something that S2HD sorely lacks.)

I want to work on this project.

[Cyberblade]

Okay, so there's not much I can add to all the drama that's already been said. DRM sucks, it's even more retarded than usual in this case, and its ridiculous that it's a big part of what's been holding this fan project up. Now, I know people have suggested the artists leaving and finding another programmer, but why the fuck hasn't anybody suggested we just get a bunch of other artists and programmers together and do it all to the original intent? There quite really is nothing from stopping any of us from making a competing Sonic 2 HD, or going even further beyond that.

Its just fucking hilarious that we're all taking all this time and energy to criticize the S2HD team in much the same way we all criticize Sonic Team and DIMPS, yet we're stopping there just because its a fan project. Hypocrisy at its finest from both sides. Just because its a fan project means we need to respect it enough not to make a copy? Bullshit. If we can create all sorts of Sonic clones and remakes from official sources, what makes the unofficial ones different? Damnit Retro, when we find something to bitch about with Segas games we start tearing them apart, 'fixing' them, and remaking them, there's no difference here.

And for fucks sake, all of you, on both sides, get off the "Physics/graphics not pixel perfect, raaaagggeee~ " thing that you all get so stuck on. Be willing to tweak the graphics and physics in ways that make them BETTER. Theres a key word there that everyone, fans and SEGA, seem to miss all the freaking time. The physics changed between Sonic 1, 2, and 3&K, as did the graphical style. There was nothing wrong with that then, and there isn't anything wrong with doing it now. Street Fighter 2 HD Remix is probably the true inspiration for this game, far beyond that Death Egg pic, and they changed up plenty. Some levels had graphics changed and altered for more depth, the characters had extra detail, and startling enough they altered and changed a number of the games mechanics to improve the game. There is nothing wrong with it, and it still looks and feels so much like the game it is re-making without feeling like a waste of time and money. There is nothing 'sacred' about the games, they're just games and need to be treated with the recognition that, hey, maybe those guys 20 years ago didn't know what they were doing either.

[Overlord]

Quote

And now, it's been discovered that the DRM goes even further. Found within the S2HD executable is the following text:

UPGRADE NEEDED
THE ONLINE SERVER COULDN'T VALIDATE YOU GAMEPLAY. ITS RESULT DIFFERED FROM YOURS.
UPGRADE YOUR SONIC 2 HD GAME TO FIX THE PROBLEM!

.......an online activation server, constantly running, for a remake of a 20 year old game that you don't own any rights to. This is beyond hypocrisy, this is outright disgusting. The fact this was even considered should have been reason enough to throw LOst off the team, never mind anything else.

[Andlabs]

Which is what irks me about the whole thing. Why didn't the rest of the team do or say anything when LOst refused to cooperate? Who's the project manager? I can understand the urgency of the release, but... I don't know. I read some stuff Sonica said a while ago and I got the vibe that there were problems within the staff — and though some members told me otherwise, it still worries me the most about the project.

This post has been edited by Andlabs: 30 March 2012 - 01:50 PM

[saxman]

I would ask that posts hilighting code and other tidbits from the game be trashed immediately. Some people got banned or warned for stealing other artwork, editing another fangame, etc. This is publicizing code that, for all intents and purposes, was supposed to be private. I don't advocate anything happen to these members, just their posts. We do not own Sonic or Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but the code used is still private property.

I think too much emphasis has been put on the encryption issue. And while it's perfectly legitimate criticism and something I feel should probably be changed, it almost entirely misses the bigger picture: we have this game that has just been released, and the graphics are stunning. The physics are nearly identical, and it you get all of this stuff in one package. It's far more work than any one person could do alone, and mind you, few could do this well. I'm celebrating this release! It's not just because I'm a team member, but it's also because I've seen the blood, sweat, and tears these people have shed to get this far. I am impressed, and I know all the people I've shown it to so far are also highly impressed!

We've heard a lot of criticism on these forums aimed at maybe one or two things. But I'm curious to know what things you like about it best, because that counts equally! Please let me know!

This post has been edited by saxman: 30 March 2012 - 01:55 PM