Sonic 2 Recreation - Part One

Great Gate was probably the best level, imo. I didn't encounter very many frustrating moments (though that's probably because I was Tails), and the crumbling sequence is a good example of those Sonic 3-styled stage events that are surprisingly rare in Sonic hacks. I really like the use of Wacky Workbench's past music for it; Made me feel bummed out that the song was muffled out for most of the stage due to the underwater effect. xD

 

I just retested the level and discovered that area was a bottomless pit, so that's my mistake, but I have to say that's the worst place possible to have a bottomless pit.
Coincidentally though I just verified the below camera death bug somewhere else. Right here, before this spring, is a high speed section leading down that wall. If you're going too fast, Sonic reaches the below the camera just before he reaches the spring and dies. This happened to me multiple times.

 

For the below camera death bug, RHS, may I suggest taking a page out of what I did for Sonic 1? THIS is what I applied to my Sonic 1 engine.

It's the quickest fix that takes the least amount of work, and causes the fewest (ZERO) problems... ALSO you won't have players dying in thin air if the camera y limit is to rise while the player is down low. This was my fix to the S tunnel bug and may be able to serve you well also.

Mr. Lange, and others, will be able to run down the wall at high speeds, and all will appear the same, only Sonic won't die. Running past the camera is a cool effect and my fix will allow you to retain that without causing ANY other issues.

 

I may as well make my feelings about this hack known here because I'll be damned if it gets any attention on SSRG.

I said what I felt about this hack in Tuesday's podcast around 30 minutes in, but I don't think it's going to get as much attention as this forum post, so here's my wall of text explaining why I don't like this hack and don't want it winning any of the community trophies!

Let's start off with the subject that pisses me off the most, which naturally as a musician would be the music. It's not at all the greatest work ValleyBell has done, to be blunt. The first thing I did was scroll through the sound test; I was extremely disappointed. ValleyBell, who won most of the SMPS contests on SSRG, who Oerg says is one of the few SMPS people that actually can use it properly, a person I quite like because of his extremely handy toolchain and talent. It doesn't show. Chaos Angel's tracks were the 'best', of sorts, and even then the timpani in the first and second acts annoys the hell out of me. The instrumentation isn't the best and the arrangements are by a long way away from making good capability of the hardware. It's not nice, but hey, when I feel passionate about someone and when someone I look up to doesn't exactly deliver what I was expecting it's not exactly a pleasant feeling. The worst track by far is the invincibility theme. Most of it is missing. Might be all there arrangement wise but mix wise it feels extremely empty and just sounds awful. Lastly, while the idea is neat, the underwater mode is pretty unnecessary and I don't feel it added anything except making the music even worse.

Moving on, let's talk about the game itself! The level layouts themselves felt bland and uninteresting (bar the crumbling section in GGZ2) and with plenty of dickmoves and fake difficulty (lovingly pointed out by Mr Lange) and I just didn't find much enjoyment from the levels at all. I felt lost in areas from lack of direction and in others I just wanted to shut the emulator down. The bosses as well had an excessive 16 hit count. May I ask why? It doesn't add anything but irritation and artificial length to something. I can't wrap my head around why you'd double the hit count; pinch mode is not a valid reason in my book, either, considering other Sonic games have had bosses with pinch modes and 8 hits. The boss edits also felt bland and cheap. The original boss with the balls was fun, however, very unique, but again the amount of hits was excessive.

Graphically speaking I liked what I saw. It wasn't the best looking stuff on the Mega Drive but what I saw suited what you were trying to convey (and in StephenUK's case Great Gate looked really polished; best in the hack, I feel). Hats off, it's a lot better than what I could do, even if it's Advance art it still looks nice. The HUD as well is neat, with the icons flashing in the bottom right a fantastic touch.

The optimisations themselves are technically impressive, but the description of the hack and all these added optimisations seem like it's dick waving. Modesty is useful in spades, hinder-some in other cases. In this case I think a bit of modesty would have made this hack a lot better; you threw a lot of expectations out there and it fails to deliver on most of them for me. Sorry, but I feel like this was massively overhyped, and there's more deserving hacks of the community and proper trophies in the hacking contest.

 

Just to give an insight into my position in this hack, I think it's only fair to say that I have neglected my role in its production badly. I have not worked on it for a long time until a couple of days ago and I haven't tested it at all. The reason for this, as only a couple of people know, is that just over a year ago I was diagnosed with an incurable and potentially life threatening illness which has not left me in the right condition, physically or mentally, to work on this hack. I won't be going into any details about the condition as I don't feel talking about it is necessary.

As a result of all this though, I do take quite a bit of responsibility for the unfinished state in which it has been released. In the near future, I will have some all new zones created, as all the concept work for them is done. Before I do that though, I'm going to systematically go through each zone one at a time and update all the art and layouts, as well as helping code new features in to make them more exciting to play. One of the reasons this hack saw a release now in an unfinished state is that RHS and ValleyBell didn't feel motivated to work on it, and as I wasn't giving them anything new to work with, I take blame for that.

Hopefully now we can work together properly and make this hack live up to the hype that has (for whatever reason) surrounded it.

 

I know I'm the one that said it in the comments section of this hack's page on the SHC website. I didn't mean it personally or too literally, but rather loosely based on the current state of the hack. At first, the hack seemed to be on track to receiving the Hidden Palace Community trophy. So I decided to give the hack a go, and well, I was extremely disappointed. I didn't feel that the hack deserved to win anything.

Trust me RHS, you don't know me and probably couldn't care less to, but I have a lot of respect for your work. I've followed your coding and every thread you've opened for each individual Sonic 1-3 bug fix you stumbled upon to share with all of us. To me, you are one of, if not the best coders out there. Many would probably stop and disagree with me right here, but I couldn't care less. The one thing that sets you apart from most tech members is that [in a weird way, considering its all done in text on a forum] you show how much you love doing all of this. I never see that from others, regardless of how good they are as hackers. They don't seem as enthusiastic about it as you. I look up to you as a hacker, so when I played through this hack, I expected a lot more and felt let down.

I'm no asshole, I'm just critical of things at times. However, I'll take responsibility for what I said, and I want you to know I'm sorry for what I said and how I made you feel. I went out of line and your efforts don't deserve to be shot down. You guys are the true hackers. I'm just a learner. You're the ones sacrificing your own time to put something together for us to enjoy at your expense. So you don't deserve anyone's shit, especially not mine.

 

I have a lot of respect for that. Hacking isn't easy and everything you just listed takes a lot of work, and the subject itself is very difficult. On the other hand though, this doesn't excuse letting slide the areas of the game that need development. All of those bugfixes and features and behind the scenes improvements don't mean anything if the gameplay is broken.
Also, just reminding what I said before about the spinners. Their collision needs SERIOUS work.

 

I'll echo my sentiments I posted before. This hack has come a long ass way from 2009. I first played this in 2010 and thought it was a shit hack that was never going to be touched again.
There are a lot of things that could be done differently, and I've the utmost confidence that Team Recreation (KoH-coined) can and will continue to improve on this.

I don't believe this hack is one of the best hacks in Retro right now, but I certainly believe that when it is finished, it will be. It definitely has the potential.

 

Sounds good then. I'm looking forward to this game's next iteration.

 

I still mean what I said above, though. But alright then, I'm looking forward to what comes next.

 

Don't beat yourself up! I think a lot of it has to do with the quality of the entry turnout last year among other things; I don't recall there being much entries to ring home about. This year has had a massively improved turnout and in addition I feel the bar in level layout design has been raised since a year ago.

I'd put it back to 8 and have pinch start at 4 or 6, honestly. 12 hits and higher should be reserved to important late game bosses, not the general end of zone ones. The ARZ boss I think was explained in Johnny's stream and it's much better than what I'll say now, but I think it's to do with the rate of the arrows, water and the spikes on the totems. I can see why you've done all this, but it seems a bit overwhelming considering it's still early game. I'd remove the water rising part of the boss and lower the arrow fire rate for pinch mode. In addition, instead of spikes on the totems, why not raise the totems themselves? Make it impossible to climb up after the pinch but you don't get penalised for standing somewhere.

If you'd like I'd happily contribute myself if you asked. It's not like I have a project of my own that I'm 100% focused on, but who knows. Keep at it, there's potential in this I feel but it's just not being achieved.

 

I didn't find the ARZ boss to be particularly bad; The only thing that remotely bothered me was the number of hits required to defeat him. You're not the only one to do this; I've noticed quite a few technically impressive hacks that make their boss battles long. (At least in this case I find it a bit more tolerable due to Robotnik's amusing cries of OUCH and YOU LITTLE when you hit him. xD)

That being said, I would welcome the change DalekSam suggested where you raise the totems instead of the water.

 

We played it right here:


REALLY enjoyed it! Unfortunately, the site was down, so I had no idea why a red Sonic kept showing up. xD

 

So I gave this hack a go last night and I must say while there are some dick moves in some of the layouts they aren't too bad IMO. I have yet to play all 4 levels (I stopped after Level 2 act 2 iirc...)Honestly the only thing that is rather "meh" in this hack is the music. Some songs are out of tune, others are fine though. The underwater filter is a cool effect I must say though so awesome work on that Valleybell but I thought that the remix of Wacky Workbench Past was the track that was pretty out of tune more so than the others. The artwork is beautiful and I love how Sky Chase has become the Special Stages, a interesting twist that no one else has done before. Overall this hack gets a 5/10 but since you guys will be working more on this to fix different flaws that people have mentioned then I will keep an eye out for the next release.

 

Hello:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MnZkSihMXo

MegaGwolf reviewed your hack for the Sonic Hack Showcase!