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Sonic 2 HD General

Discussion in 'Fangaming Discussion' started by Lanzer, Jun 24, 2014.

  1. steveswede

    steveswede

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    Fighting against the Unitary State of Europe
    You know a 3D version of Hill Top Zone would be amazing to explore. It like the terrain is made up of tectonic collisions between two continents over millions of years, pushing blue marble and stone high up into the atmosphere, filled with multiple volcano's and springs spraying material into the air to give a cloudy atmosphere.
     
  2. 360

    360

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    Sonic Neon
    He's a very talented artist. The concept art is vivid, beautiful and wonderful. Sonic 2 HD being rebooted with such an amazing and committed team is the best possible thing that could have happened to this project. Loving the updates also. It's reassuring to hear so consistently that the project is moving forward and progressing well.

    Amazing work and I look forward to seeing more.
     
  3. OMG I CAN'T WAIT TO PLAY THE NEW DEMO! This game is looking fantastic! Good Job!
     
  4. TheOcelot

    TheOcelot

    Scooty Puff Jr sucks! Member
    The concept art looks lovely, especially Hill Top.

    I've always felt that visually Hill Top is one of the most boring looking levels in Sonic 2. So seeing this kind of attention to detail is refreshing. Makes the stage look much more interesting.

    Are you guys thinking of adding Hidden Palace to the game? Maybe in the design of the original or StealthTax's version?
     
  5. Tichmall

    Tichmall

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    The Hill Top artwork reminds me of planet Diamondus from Jazz Jackrabbit. Which is a good thing to my eyes.
     
  6. Willie

    Willie

    Each day the world turns Laugh 'til it all burns Member
    Congratulations. You guys turned Sonic 2's arguably most boring stage (Hill Top Zone) into something beautiful. Gorgeous concept art.
     
  7. Atendega

    Atendega

    Lesser Sea Sponge Member
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    I've always loved Hill Top Zone. Its got this real nice atmosphere, especially with the music, and a whole bunch of fun gimmicks!
     
  8. VectorCNC

    VectorCNC

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    Wow this is great! I'm using both these wallpapers right now. One at home, one at the office. Would be nice if all the S2HD members provided links to places like deviantart where they post their work. Or at least in a convenient list...
     
  9. via Sonic 2HD Facebook page:

    We've had a number of updates on the art side, but nothing on the engine side. S2HD runs on on a custom engine called SonicOrca, written in C# due to its portability, power and speed of coding. Our lead engine programmer has created a timelapse video showing off a behind the scenes view of what goes into coding a single boss battle in S2HD. In his words:
    "The first thing I did was setup the animations so that correct parts of the boss texture were displayed at the right time. I then wrote the code to compose the different parts of the boss together and make sure everything was offset correctly. After that I played around with the animation logic until it looked good. Then I wrote the rest of the gameplay logic of the boss by examining the original disassembly and the original game to understand how it works and use accurate numbers."

     
  10. This is just astounding. Amazing work.
     
  11. Sparks

    Sparks

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    Sondro Gomez / Kyle & Lucy
    That also pretty much confirms that a lot of Chemical Plant Zone appears to be done. Hopefully this means a demo is coming soon? :v:
     
  12. Tanks

    Tanks

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    This is the shit I wanted to see. Congrats guys. Faith in S2HD fully restored.
     
  13. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    I still have faith. :O
     
  14. It's really looking quite incredible now! That Sonic sprite is just perfection.
     
  15. Beltway

    Beltway

    The most grateful Sonic fan of all time this week Member
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    Artwork and classes
    Speaking as someone whom the most advanced program I've written in C# / made in VisualStudio is a basic data information collection program (and it was for a college course, not in their spare time), that is some seriously phenomenal stuff.
     
  16. Falk

    Falk

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    C#'s... an interesting choice. But having done one game in it myself, I can't point fingers :V
     
  17. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    I think it's a great choice. A lot of popular indie games use it, and I'm not sure that people realize it. (Fez, Bastion, Transistor, and Axiom Verge are the first examples that come to mind.) Most of them are built on clones of XNA, which are available for not only Windows, Mac and Linux, but also PS Vita, PS4, and of course Xbox. I may be biased though, my job requires me to use C# on a regular basis, and I've used it a lot outside of work recently. I think C# is a lot quicker to develop in, usually more readable, and easier to port to other platforms than C++ is right now.

    I'm excited about the news since it likely means a native OS X version. Edit: And they can't do it themselves, just open source the code and I'll do it for them.
     
  18. Lilly

    Lilly

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    Shang Mu Architect
    I was about to object to C#, until I read how far outdated my knowledge of the language is, thanks to the posts above me. :v: When it did it go from all those "unsafe" coding jokes and being Windows/XBOX only, to being multi-platform and a rising alternative to C++ in the industry?

    So that makes me both amazed by C#, and the faithfulness by the team to the original game's accuracy. This is leaps and bounds above the original project, I'm happy.
     
  19. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    C# has been possible on Mac and Linux for a number of years via Mono, but that was a clone / reimplementation of it which slowly improved over time. Several years back, a company started commercially supporting C# via Mono on iOS and Android, and it was supported well enough that Sony basically paid them to bring it to the PS Vita for Playstation Mobile. (And then PS4 a year or two later.) About a year ago, Microsoft announced that they would be open sourcing the core parts of .NET (the framework behind C#) and officially supporting Linux and OS X. (This would be the not user-interface parts of it.) They also announced a new open source compiler for it. At this point, large portions of it have been open sourced, and the most recent version of Mono for Linux and OS X replaced a lot of their re-implemented "Works like C#, but not official" code with the actual code from Microsoft. Microsoft also recently released a special version of Visual Studio targeted to web-development for Linux and OS X. Oh, and the Unity engine (which other recent popular games like Cities Skylines were built with), also supports C# as one of it's scripting languages.

    In short, it's a combination of number of factors that built up over the years. There was enough demand for it that other companies were supporting it unofficially outside of Microsoft platforms, so MS eventually decided to open source parts of it and bring it to other platforms officially. The Linux, Mac, iOS, PS4, and Android ports of C# applications are all based on Mono, but parts of it are slowly being replaced by official code. Since there are several projects to re-create XNA on other platforms, a handful of games require fairly little work to port. In some cases, no code changes are needed at all.

    It's not going to replace C++ for a number of reasons, but it's a fairly decent alternative.
     
  20. Lilly

    Lilly

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    Shang Mu Architect
    That clears up a lot of confusion for me, thanks sonicblur. I find it interesting how Microsoft decided to make a move like that at all. (It'd still be wishful thinking to hope they'd throw a bone or two for the WINE project.) Good to know C# has matured enough for applications and games to be produced with it; I never thought anything could pretend to be a proper alternative to using C++.

    All of this is especially good news for Sonic 2 HD. It's not using C++, but it's not relying on Game Maker either. (Which would be a terrifying idea for HD games on Sonic's scale.)