[Andlabs]

We have ensured that Sonic 2 HD as a package stands up against the finest presentational examples in this high budget HD-era of video games. To re-iterate Vincent, this has a resounding effect on the way we must go about revitalising Sonic 2's graphical assets, meaning that we cannot simply re-hash old sprites, but actually harness the additional resolution afforded to us to realise more accurately the vision intended by the concept artists as well as taking a degree of the creativity into our own hands where needed:

Thank you for finally taking a stand against the s-called "original pixel faggots." This project can't possibly be a true recreation in HD if this keeps going.

Wow. Just fucking wow. Now THIS is more like it! I absolutely love this new style and I hope that you take it all the way for the final release; it's not to what I had in mind for "Sonic 2 in HD," but it's so much better than before. Keep it up

I'm sorry, but for some reason, looking at the ground in that picture is disorienting. Maybe it's the way the edges of the grass blur? I don't know, but I'll have to see this in motion before I make a final judgment. I like that tree though; it shows a lot of the Hidden Palace emerald, which is always nice to see.

Over the last few months, the new Sonic 2 HD engine has been redesigned to deal with issues that the Tech Demo had, as were pointed out by many people here at Sonic Retro. The concern has been mainly on hardware requirements. We want the largest possible group of players to be able to access the game, and also a way to play the game without having to deal with slowdowns because of the massive HD graphics. The OpenGL render is used to bring more speed to more 3D optimized hardware such as the new Nvidia Ion chipset, but it will also work on older graphics cards such as the Nvidia Geforce 4 chipset.
The Sonic engine will be improved on several stages, and most of them will be modified with close Alpha releases in the future. Beta testing will follow the finished concepts.
The Special Stage will be added much later, when we have a couple of normal levels done.

Glad to see that you're actually taking the programming seriously. I will still hold my point as to the open-sourcing of this project, but I wish you good luck nonetheless.

All in all, good luck with whatever comes in the future. I'm no artist, I can't program OpenGL, and the music is already done, so this is really where I'm going to have to say that I can't contribute much anyway (unless you need some help in other areas of the code, like data structures/algorithms). But these announcements have definitely changed my opinion of this game.

[Tweaker]

Updates and progress seem relatively solid so far! Really liking the updated artwork, and that smooth walking animation makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Here's my one problem with this whole thing:

S2HD will now be considered a closed community project.

No. No, no, no no no. This is not how this forum's community project system works; you cannot just do all your little work in secret and make use of the community's resources and talent when you deem it appropriate. This is something that Project Retro tried to do when it was still known as Sonic 4 and I wholly denied its application to become a community project in the first place. When it comes to something like this, you take it all or you don't take it at all—period. I'm not saying you have to honor every single mundane complaint made by the people here who think they're artists but actually aren't, but at the very least I would request you actually update people on project progress on a consistent basis. This will not only give people a better sense of "community" in the project (even if it's falsified at the end of the day), but it will absolutely encourage people to contribute their talents towards your project. It is an absolute win-win situation on your end.

All of this complaining about the closed status of the project is not without basis. Again—you do not have to honor or adhere to every little complaint or change that people wish to make when you post work, but at the very least you should share it. When you just post goals for people and show absolutely nothing, you'll get just that—absolutely nothing. This is a big part of the reason why it's been two years and you're just now finishing Emerald Hill Zone—nobody thinks anything is getting done and doesn't give it their time, effort, and skill. I know this is a big reason I haven't tried to do any music for the project at all, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Provide incentive. You are not providing incentive; you're just doing marketing and promotion. And believe me—I know what that's all about because I do the exact same thing. That's why I'm telling you this kind of shit isn't going to fly. You can't keep doing this and keep maintaining your own subforum... and trust me, you want this subforum, because the kind of attention our forums give you is the entire reason why your project has come so far in the first place. Be smart about this.

[Mad Echidna]

elitist group.

Oh, for goodness sake. They've admitted it's not a community project guys. Case closed.

This is no different than ANY OTHER FANGAME OR hack. I wish everyone would stop trying to turn this into melodrama. No one who is working on this game owes us ANYTHING. We did not render payments for any goods or services. If you like it, fine. If you don't, dandy. But don't call the fucking ACLU on this.

EDIT: This has nothing to do with Tweaker's post, I like and agree with what he said generally.

This post has been edited by Mad Echidna: 15 March 2010 - 09:28 PM

[jasonchrist]

This is fantastic news guys! I hope your taking liberties approach will allow for new larger and more interesting layouts. But honestly? Whatever you do is going to be fucking great, simply because of all the love that's going into it.

That Sonic walk is as smooth as a waxed minge, I love it!

[Qjimbo]

Updates and progress seem relatively solid so far! Really liking the updated artwork, and that smooth walking animation makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Here's my one problem with this whole thing:

S2HD will now be considered a closed community project.

No. No, no, no no no. This is not how this forum's community project system works; you cannot just do all your little work in secret and make use of the community's resources and talent when you deem it appropriate. This is something that Project Retro tried to do when it was still known as Sonic 4 and I wholly denied its application to become a community project in the first place. When it comes to something like this, you take it all or you don't take it at all—period.

No offense intended but perhaps the reason people keep wanting it closed is because the other way doesn't work.

I hope you like my italics :D

[jasonchrist]

elitist group.

Oh, for goodness sake. They've admitted it's not a community project guys. Case closed.

This is no different than ANY OTHER FANGAME OR hack. I wish everyone would stop trying to turn this into melodrama. No one who is working on this game owes us ANYTHING. We did not render payments for any goods or services. If you like it, fine. If you don't, dandy. But don't call the fucking ACLU on this.

EDIT: This has nothing to do with Tweaker's post, I like and agree with what he said generally.

This, basically!

[Tweaker]

No offense intended but perhaps the reason people keep wanting it closed is because the other way doesn't work.

It absolutely works! The problem here is that the leaders think that with an open system you have to invariably take any suggestions or changes that people want to make to the project as law or have people vote on everything. This isn't true at all; in fact, that misconception is why it failed. Updating consistently on progress—posting completed frames and animations, works in progress, and overall letting people know where the project is whenever possible—is a good way to make people feel more involved. Allow them to leave feedback and even have someone to survey the general response; however, at the end of the day, stick to your established direction. Just because people suggest changes does not mean they have to be made. Read and consider them, sure—after all, that's the entire point of feedback—but don't let it slow down progress. That's the way to handle it.

I hope you like my italics :D

They made me so hard <3

[Mad Echidna]

No offense intended but perhaps the reason people keep wanting it closed is because the other way doesn't work.

It absolutely works! The problem here is that the leaders think that with an open system you have to invariably take any suggestions or changes that people want to make to the project as law or have people vote on everything. This isn't true at all; in fact, that misconception is why it failed. Updating consistently on progress—posting completed frames and animations, works in progress, and overall letting people know where the project is whenever possible—is a good way to make people feel more involved. Allow them to leave feedback and even have someone to survey the general response; however, at the end of the day, stick to your established direction. Just because people suggest changes does not mean they have to be made. Read and consider them, sure—after all, that's the entire point of feedback—but don't let it slow down progress. That's the way to handle it.

I hope you like my italics :D

They made me so hard <3

Yeah, this is pretty much how Open Source projects like Linux work. You have strong leadership and set people with commit status that figure out which work is worth incorporating. No sane person expects a product to come from complete chaos.

However, this "closed community" model doesn't sound much different from what RubyEclipse and SEGA are doing, frankly. How do you expect people to contribute if they can't see the current assets? You're setting up the community you supposedly value the input of for failure, as they'll be working off old stuff or not following the guidelines you've already set internally.

This post has been edited by Mad Echidna: 15 March 2010 - 09:39 PM

[jasonchrist]

No offense intended but perhaps the reason people keep wanting it closed is because the other way doesn't work.

It absolutely works! The problem here is that the leaders think that with an open system you have to invariably take any suggestions or changes that people want to make to the project as law or have people vote on everything. This isn't true at all; in fact, that misconception is why it failed. Updating consistently on progress—posting completed frames and animations, works in progress, and overall letting people know where the project is whenever possible—is a good way to make people feel more involved. Allow them to leave feedback and even have someone to survey the general response; however, at the end of the day, stick to your established direction. Just because people suggest changes does not mean they have to be made. Read and consider them, sure—after all, that's the entire point of feedback—but don't let it slow down progress. That's the way to handle it.

I hope you like my italics :D

They made me so hard <3

Yeah, this is pretty much how Open Source projects like Linux work. You have strong leadership and set people with commit status that figure out which work is worth incorporating. No sane person expects a product to come from complete chaos.

However, this "closed community" model doesn't sound much different from what RubyEclipse and SEGA are doing, frankly. How do you expect people to contribute if they can't see the current assets? You're setting up the community you supposedly value the input of for failure, as they'll be working off old stuff or not following the guidelines you've already set internally.

Hey, if it's good enough for the US government.

[RAMPKORV]

How do you expect people to contribute if they can't see the current assets? You're setting up the community you supposedly value the input of for failure, as they'll be working off old stuff or not following the guidelines you've already set internally.

Exactly this is what's so puzzling to me. I see no reason whatsoever for how keeping such things secret does any good to the project. If anything, this is an effective way to break the engagement of the rest of the community, not encouraging people to participate.

This post has been edited by RAMPKORV: 15 March 2010 - 09:55 PM

[Conan Kudo]

No offense intended but perhaps the reason people keep wanting it closed is because the other way doesn't work.

It absolutely works! The problem here is that the leaders think that with an open system you have to invariably take any suggestions or changes that people want to make to the project as law or have people vote on everything. This isn't true at all; in fact, that misconception is why it failed. Updating consistently on progress—posting completed frames and animations, works in progress, and overall letting people know where the project is whenever possible—is a good way to make people feel more involved. Allow them to leave feedback and even have someone to survey the general response; however, at the end of the day, stick to your established direction. Just because people suggest changes does not mean they have to be made. Read and consider them, sure—after all, that's the entire point of feedback—but don't let it slow down progress. That's the way to handle it.

I hope you like my italics :D

They made me so hard <3

Yeah, this is pretty much how Open Source projects like Linux work. You have strong leadership and set people with commit status that figure out which work is worth incorporating. No sane person expects a product to come from complete chaos.

However, this "closed community" model doesn't sound much different from what RubyEclipse and SEGA are doing, frankly. How do you expect people to contribute if they can't see the current assets? You're setting up the community you supposedly value the input of for failure, as they'll be working off old stuff or not following the guidelines you've already set internally.

I had a nice long post about this, and I lost it thanks to stupid Refresh in Chromium and my touchpad...

Thankfully, Tweaker seems to have got the point across quite well.

I'll just stick to talking about the engine then.

If you want to accelerate work on it, I'd suggest open sourcing the engine as a general engine project outside of Sonic Retro (Put it on Google Code or SourceForge, or something like that). Then go to places that open source developers hang out in, like Phoronix, doom9, Linux.com, gamedev.net, etc.

Lots of Linux people are developers, and some may be skilled at what you need. As an open source game engine, you can attract these kind of people. With Linux users having a higher ratio of developer users to non-developer users, you are more likely to find help with what you need.

Developers may not fall out of the sky, but you might be surprised at what might happen.

Failing that, go to other Sonic fangame sites and poke around and request help with the engine. Sonic Retro doesn't seem to be all that tuned for 3D stuff, so the 3D skills may not be in abundance here.

But the idea of making Sonic 2 HD a "walled garden" project just isn't going to fly.

This post has been edited by King InuYasha: 15 March 2010 - 10:03 PM

[Blue Streak]

I'm generally pleased the art direction here. The palm trees had been bothering me for a while, and I'm glad to see that smoother animations are officially in the cards.

EDIT: This was my 666th post....not that anybody cares.

This post has been edited by Blue Streak: 16 March 2010 - 11:33 PM

[nineko]

Everything that I wanted to say has already been said by someone else. My position towards S2HD shouldn't be a secret by now, if it's not a "community project" it doesn't deserve a spot in the "community projects" subforum, so I'd agree with Tweaker if he'll decide to cut this space.

That said, I'll try to provide feedback and contribute as long as this is going to be around, as I always did. I'd still love to see S2HD finished, even if I disagree with the current directions.

[Conan Kudo]

The staff would like to note that we've seen instances of original work from S2HD taken without permission and used for promotion, intentional or otherwise, of other properties. We would greatly appreciate it if this would end immediately. It's not fair to the artists who have labored to create the work for the project.

You can't request this AT ALL. You have NEVER declared a license for the artwork that is publicly available. As it states on the Creative Commons website, copyright by default is to give everyone ALL RIGHTS. The only one who can change that is the creator of the artwork himself.

Sonic 2 HD project never stated something like: "We want all artwork submitted to us to be CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0, in order to protect everyone's rights and ensure proper legal attribution."

Without something like that, it is only up to the individual artwork makers to say something like that.

This post has been edited by King InuYasha: 15 March 2010 - 10:05 PM

[jasonchrist]

No offense intended but perhaps the reason people keep wanting it closed is because the other way doesn't work.

It absolutely works! The problem here is that the leaders think that with an open system you have to invariably take any suggestions or changes that people want to make to the project as law or have people vote on everything. This isn't true at all; in fact, that misconception is why it failed. Updating consistently on progress—posting completed frames and animations, works in progress, and overall letting people know where the project is whenever possible—is a good way to make people feel more involved. Allow them to leave feedback and even have someone to survey the general response; however, at the end of the day, stick to your established direction. Just because people suggest changes does not mean they have to be made. Read and consider them, sure—after all, that's the entire point of feedback—but don't let it slow down progress. That's the way to handle it.

I hope you like my italics :D

They made me so hard <3

Yeah, this is pretty much how Open Source projects like Linux work. You have strong leadership and set people with commit status that figure out which work is worth incorporating. No sane person expects a product to come from complete chaos.

However, this "closed community" model doesn't sound much different from what RubyEclipse and SEGA are doing, frankly. How do you expect people to contribute if they can't see the current assets? You're setting up the community you supposedly value the input of for failure, as they'll be working off old stuff or not following the guidelines you've already set internally.

I had a nice long post about this, and I lost it thanks to stupid Refresh in Chromium and my touchpad...

Thankfully, Tweaker seems to have got the point across quite well.

I'll just stick to talking about the engine then.

If you want to accelerate work on it, I'd suggest open sourcing the engine as a general engine project outside of Sonic Retro (Put it on Google Code or SourceForge, or something like that). Then go to places that open source developers hang out in, like Phoronix, doom9, Linux.com, gamedev.net, etc.

Lots of Linux people are developers, and some may be skilled at what you need. As an open source game engine, you can attract these kind of people. With Linux users having a higher ratio of developer users to non-developer users, you are more likely to find help with what you need.

Developers may not fall out of the sky, but you might be surprised at what might happen.

Failing that, go to other Sonic fangame sites and poke around and request help with the engine. Sonic Retro doesn't seem to be all that tuned for 3D stuff, so the 3D skills may not be in abundance here.

But the idea of making Sonic 2 HD a "walled garden" project just isn't going to fly.

Great idea!

In fact, one thing you could do to accelerate the progress of this project huuuugely is by using some capitalist exploitation genius and going on elance.com or bestjobs.ph to find coders, programmers and artists. You'll get all kinds of people in the far east working for you for peanuts (you won't actually believe how cheaply they'll work), and working FAST too. It makes alot of sense considering that there's no way you guys can do this full time.

If necessary, I'm sure I can chip in for some work, and others probably can too.

Give it some thought.