[Guess Who]

Maybe there needs to be a bolded note in the OP saying that the antivirus notice is a false positive?

[HeartAttack]

I just came by to mention the false positive issue. I shared this release with another forum I'm on and got reamed by some idiot after his Microsoft Security Essentials flagged the game executable as a virus. I had to drill it into his head that it's a false positive and he's still being an idiot about it. I got the same red flag but obviously I knew better and ignored it. Malwarebytes didn't raise any red flags.

Is there any particular reason you can think of about why MSE flags the game .exe as a threat? I mean obviously people will be turned off by a red flag even if it is a false positive - and it definitely won't help the project any when people who are just now hearing about this project think it's just a virus :-/

This post has been edited by HeartAttack: 28 March 2012 - 06:17 AM

[Miles Prower]

Here's why MSE thinks it's a Trojan: obfuscated code.

http://www.microsoft...2FAnomaly.gen!C

Quote

Trojan:Win32/Anomaly.gen!C is a detection for malware that have had their purpose obfuscated in order to hinder analysis or detection by anti-virus scanners. They commonly employ a combination of methods including encryption, compression, anti-debugging and anti-emulation techniques.

[Falk]

HeartAttack, on 28 March 2012 - 06:15 AM, said:

Is there any particular reason you can think of about why MSE flags the game .exe as a threat?

obfuscated code

edit: man u sonic fans shure r fast lo0l

This post has been edited by Falk: 28 March 2012 - 06:23 AM

[H Hog]

Yeah, um. For the sake of credibility towards those outside of the Sonic-hacking community, I think it might be a good idea to hold off on sharing this with others until this issue is fixed.
I mean it's one thing for people within the community to trust eachother and go "Oh don't worry, it's just the way the program was written", but another to share it with others and have them go all "Ummmm nope, that's a virus, my computer says so :I"

This post has been edited by H Hog: 28 March 2012 - 06:32 AM

[erbuka]

Ok, I've played through it. First of all, let me say that I'm really impressed by the quality of the graphics and the details. Really, really good job, guys! Personally, the game experience is very close the the original Sonic 2... Yes, there are some physics issues, but I don't want to be annoying with this, since it has already been said.

So I focused on monitoring the performance over the full game playthrough. This is my current hardware:

Intel Core i7 950 3.07 GHz
NVidia GeForce GTX 560

The first thing I noticed is about the CPU usage:
Core 0 - 100%
Core 1-7: 0%

It seems the game runs on a single thread, and since the multicore architecture is very popular nowdays, it would be good to use it in this game, and could give a massive performance improvement even on older machines. Personally, I would split the game in 4 threads:
T1) Audio streaming thread
T2-T3) 2-pass rendering pipeline: T2 takes the input polygons and renders the colors buffers, T3 does post-processing and renders to screen. Note that this 2 threads can be parallel (when t3 renders frame X, t2 can render frame X+1), and they should run at the maximum frequency allowed (it will be forced to 60 Hz if v-sync is enabled)
T4) handles physics engine. I think giving it a maximum frequency of 200 hz or so, should be enough even for high-speed moments.

I understand that all these things are related and cannot be splitted into fully parallel threads, but with some smart locks it can be done.

The second thing is about video memory usage: I noticed that it increses over-time, hitting 430 mb (100 windows aero + 330 s2hd) at the end of act 2. This is not a problem for newer graphic cards, but maybe some textures could be released when they're not used.

Anyway guys, from a big Sonic fan, let me say it another time... GREAT GREAT WORK!

EDIT:: omg 21 sec speedrun :DD

This post has been edited by erbuka: 28 March 2012 - 08:35 AM

[Nova]

Thanks for making my working day that little bit more bearable. I'll be downloading this as soon as I get back tonight!

[Falk]

Hahaha, some of the youtube comments

"WTF YOU GAVE ROBOTNIK GOGGLES WAAAH"

Sonic fandom at its purest.

[Black Squirrel]

I don't really understand this project, because sometimes it wants to copy the game to the letter, while at others it decides to be its own beast.

I suppose this sums it up fairly well

The ground tiles are so similar that they're practically the same colour as they were in 1992. But the background clearly isn't. It's been lightened, and the flowers... simplified, and the result is something that looks a bit gradient-heavy. The rings are shinier, but Sonic isn't (and in some frames I'm sure the back of his head gets too big). Also I'm sure there's was previous iteration of Sonic that looks closer to what you would expect in game. I don't want to criticise it too much since clearly a lot of effort went into producing this, but a lot of the "ARTISTIC LICENSE" doesn't really work, and many are probably going to ask questions as to why it's there in the first place.

And again, as great as Tee Lopes is as a musician, the music doesn't sound very Sonic-like to me. And there's a few instances where the composition is wrong. And it sounds worse because it's wrong.


Seriously when taking inspiration from the original game, don't play it in super sharp graphics modes with super crisp audio, because that's not how it was meant to be witnessed. Shove it in Kega Fusion (or whatever), turn on the CVBS and sound filters and then give it a go, because the experience is ever-so-slightly different to what you get from the raw output. The music stops being as squeaky, and it's a bit easier to hear what they were going for.


But the engine is very impressive though. Didn't expect it to run so well on this setup. And Tails seems about spot on.

[Falk]

Black Squirrel, on 28 March 2012 - 08:08 AM, said:

And again, as great as Tee Lopes is as a musician, the music doesn't sound very Sonic-like to me. And there's a few instances where the composition is wrong. And it sounds worse because it's wrong.

I've been pretty much a critic on the side of "why bother" especially when that kind of effort being put into original content would in my opinion be so much more well invested, and I agree with the graphics being a little too... gradienty for the sake of being upscaled, but I dunno, the music is stylistically pretty spot on. It's what I imagine the soundtrack would have been like conforming to the style and expectation of that era without being limited to the chipsets. You're definitely 100% right on the transcription errors though, those kinda stick out like a sore thumb if/when you want to nitpick about it.

[Selbi]

Ok, WTF is this shit? I don't think you guys had any bad intention, but when I unzipped this thing, my Anti-Virus program immediately rang the bell, saying the executables contain Malware (TR/Crypt.XPACK.Gen).

As I said, don't think you have any bad intentions, so I will play it anyway. But you should get rid of this problem with the next release if you don't want to look like evil bastards in the eyes of other people who may not be like me and trusting you anyway.

[diplomacydog]

Falk, on 28 March 2012 - 08:15 AM, said:

Black Squirrel, on 28 March 2012 - 08:08 AM, said:

And again, as great as Tee Lopes is as a musician, the music doesn't sound very Sonic-like to me. And there's a few instances where the composition is wrong. And it sounds worse because it's wrong.

I've been pretty much a critic on the side of "why bother" especially when that kind of effort being put into original content would in my opinion be so much more well invested, and I agree with the graphics being a little too... gradienty for the sake of being upscaled, but I dunno, the music is stylistically pretty spot on. It's what I imagine the soundtrack would have been like conforming to the style and expectation of that era without being limited to the chipsets. You're definitely 100% right on the transcription errors though, those kinda stick out like a sore thumb if/when you want to nitpick about it.

I've listened to all of Tee Lope's music, and almost every piece he's remastered from the old games are slam dunks. He adds to them, but doesn't remix them per say. That being said, the boss music did sound odd cut short, especially given his attention to detail in most of his other work.

[Sonica]

I would like to thank all of the people involved in this project for creating something that far exceeded my expectations. I am happy to have had a small early impact on it with the grass and bridges, which still echo what I had drawn all that time ago.

I struggle to find anything to complain about, so I'll leave it at that. Nice one guys!

This post has been edited by Sonica: 28 March 2012 - 10:06 AM

[Amethyst]

Loving the Sonic 3-esq level transitions. Other than the physics that need fine tuning, great work lads!

[Ritz]

I'm not actually going to play this, but that title screen made me melt. Who was responsible for that, and how long did it take to animate? On average, how much time was spent rendering each individual frame? It accounts for half of the game's development time, right?

This post has been edited by Ritz: 28 March 2012 - 10:52 AM