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Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by HEDGESMFG, May 27, 2021.

  1. Listening to the proto tracks after platinuming Origins today…

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  2. nineko

    nineko

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    Perhaps instead of (or in addition to) the letter about the music, we should launch a "let Stealth do his job" campaign.
     
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  3. Harper

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    I'm on board with this. Way more people would be willing to spread this compared to the music.
     
  4. This is one of the most frustrating parts about Sega because they genuinely cannot understand the appeal of Sonic and why he means so much to so many people. He's just a brand for them to sell as far as they're concerned and its so disappointing.

    They know Sonic sells, but they don't care enough about the IP to give the devs a reasonable schedule and an appropriate budget; it fucked them over in the late 90's, they fucked over BnB for Sonic Boom, and they fucked up the Sonic Colors Ultimate port.

    Any and all of these issues can be traced back to Sega of Japan but the developers are the ones who are scapegoated for their constant mistakes. It's so damn frustrating and nobody is satisfied except the top dog execs who are primarily concerned with lining their pockets.

    We've heard the horror stories from former Sega employees but its so sad to see it still happening to this day.


    This is supposed to be a day to celebrate Sonic, but its only a sad reminder that he'll never reach his full potential so as long as Sega continue run things the way they are, even if the franchise continues to sell regardless. And sadly, I feel like the latter part is the primary thing Sega cares about.
     
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  5. I will be really shocked if Sega actually doesn't wind up working on update(s). Surely the $40-$45 per sale allows a budget of post launch support to unfuck at least a couple of the severe issues the collection has
     
  6. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

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    That's a bad idea. Because then Stealth himself is going to be blamed. If he's the instigator of a protest campaign, especially one in his name, then intentional or not on his part, that's going to make him look even worse.

    Keep in mind, also, that he is definitely reading this thread. It's no coincidence that he put out that tweet about his relationship with Sega mere minutes after Retro users thought he was burning bridges. He may be invisible, but he's definitely paying attention to what Retro is saying.
     
  7. Hydr0city

    Hydr0city

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    Good to see this response. His reply didn't come off as much as a "I never want to work with them ever again" more as it did a "This is fucked up, me and my team deserve better and everybody knows this". I really don't think it'll result in any burned bridges, because he's being rather professional about the matter and simply expressing the crappy experiences he has had.
     
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  8. saxman

    saxman

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    Sorry, maybe I'm the one with the unpopular opinion here... it's one thing to talk about your frustration with the state of the product, but it's another -- and I'll say very unprofessional -- to start publically pointing fingers, which is exactly what he did there. Why should Sega work with someone who's going to throw them under the bus in a public way like that? And I understand the Mania thing people mentioned earlier. But how many times will they excuse this sort of thing?

    Unless he has zero interest in working with them again, I don't think this was a good move. He should have left out the finger pointing entirely.
     
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  9. Nik Pi

    Nik Pi

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  10. RikohZX

    RikohZX

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    Considering the internet hates Sega, I'd almost feel like they just wear their coat with the bus tread marks to work at this point.
     
  11. Vertette

    Vertette

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    It's not that bad, he basically just confirmed "Sega must have screwed up integrating, the issues weren't entirely our fault". Not the smartest statement to put out but he's made similar statements multiple times before and is still getting hired, so clearly Sega doesn't really care. That and he doesn't even know if he's actually allowed to fix the S3 remaster which implies a lot, so maybe the bridge was already burnt to begin with.

    Ironically for someone who calls himself Stealth he sure is bad at being stealthy heyo.
     
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  12. bookman the stinky

    bookman the stinky

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    Ok so

    I hastily took some notes on some differences I could point out when I was playing through S3 with Knuckles

    the opposite of the endless screen shake happens in marble garden
    if you run off screen before the driller despawns you get constant debris falling from the ceiling
    its come full circle

    spinning tops control way better (probably due to the borked speed code)
    the little spiked pillars that go up and down in marble garden have more frames of rotation animation
    like the second and a half delay before you can move on the tops is gone
    so you start rising when you're moving as opposed to reachinga certain acceleration level
    they made the long pits where you ride the top have character rotation as well
    bunch of unused sound effects being put to use i can tell
    the other games fade straight to black based on a 32 bit palette
    camera can't catch up with the speed of the players
    camera also positions itself a smidge differently and follows the player differently
    the long looping sound effects seem to have different loop points set (the ground moving sound in marble garden loops a bit later than the og)
    extra sound effects placed everywhere

    framing on some in game cutscenes is different
    you have like a second more time to get on the top path during the earthquakes in act 2 before the ground collapses
    crush collision is still funky from the retro engine being retro engine
    invincibility theme is noticeably more compressed than the other tracks
    invincibility itself lasts like a second or two longer
    camera doesnt cooperate with knuckles on his collapsing terrain area in act 2
    his act 2 boss fight actually uses the correct music instead of the act 1 theme
    speed up is a dirty in engine pitchless speed up
    you run up glowing tubes in cnz faster
    s3 big rings have more frames
    blue spheres still uses the 4-5 degrees of scaling on the balls as opposed to mania's smoother

    barrel goes down a lot farther
    i think knuckles running animation is a smidge different (moving the shine every other run fraome)


    crouching on slopes is a bit more forgiving (can charge a spin dash on more of an incline than the og)
    (not pictured, me climbing all the way up the mountain in icz1)

    knuckles gets an extra frame or 2 on his sliding down animation (water slides)
    the crushing pillars have a small shake of anticipation before they drop
    you can't just indiscriminately run into the ice spikes with an electric shield (i don't remember if you could just do that before tbh)
    the spring sound twangs on till it's done (every other sound effect is like this, sfx have been recorded either on og hardware or nuked)
    feels like being launched off the purple catapult pads takes a few more frames

    foreground layering is broken
    knuckles will pass behind one ice pillar while enemies pass infront of it
    snowflakes have transparencty

    the zoom tubes in launch base make the sonic cd spin sound now
    doors make a asound when they close
    head is cocked upwards when riding the cup
    they didnt replace the palmtree behind the act number
    the quarter loop pipes make the dash release sound from cd
    hitting the snailbot makes the small bumper ball sound from collision chaos
    frog balls make sounds when they drop
    launch base music doesnt seem to loop at the loop point continuously, rather looping once then looping back to the very start

    dont think knuckles uses his proper underwater palettes
    these new tracks aren't bad in game but the mixing issues need to be resolved
    everything outside of the jingles almost sounds like it was re-recorded on an emulator with accurate sound emulation but not accurate timing
    new sound effects fucking EVERYWHERE
    game itself no longer spergs the fuck out when you go in and out of water quickly (a result of how the game changed the palette for the water mid screen)
    rings seem to bounce harder when they scatter
    flying animal capsules float of fscreen

    Mhz2 has leaves blowing where the air currents are
    The airship sound is busted. Long sound effects (the ones you need to retrigger in sound test to play fully) confirmed not working right

    Launch slopes shit themselves if you roll through them

    Fireballs in lava reef make the wrong sound

    Moving crates in lrz aren't properly made transparent on the corners
    Super mecha sonic turns around faster on the air
    The ring shot is a different sound
    Eggrobo pops like an enemy after getting destroyed and gives you 100 points
    If you kill ms while hes dashing his sparks stay on his sprite

    My verdict after finishing a campaign: there's a lot of extra detail added that almost completely balanced out the jank for me and I thought it was cool as shit.

    I don't wanna talk about the other games cause what I've noticed from playing them for a short while is kinda....why/how did that even happen lmao
     
  13. Josh Cristan

    Josh Cristan

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    Stealth said what he said with bollocks and integrity, even knowing it could burn his bridges with Sega. If so, then fuck it, so be it massive, massive respect to him!

    The message couldn't have been more clear after Mania - more of this please! Besides, they'd probably be forced to shoehorn in Green Hill and Chemical Plant anyway. One things for sure though, I'd rather run the risk of not getting what I want, than be bribed into buying substandard shite in order to one day maybe get it.
     
  14. saxman

    saxman

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    It could have been worse for sure. Damage is done. I guess we'll just see what happens in the coming days and weeks. I can't imagine they wouldn't want him to still fix the S3&K bugs.
     
  15. LockOnRommy11

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    I think that what Stealth has said has mostly been fine, but his first tweet could perhaps have been worded a little clearer.

    I don’t think there was really any doubt within the community or elsewhere that the issue was that the game was in “crunch time” and that yet again, SEGA would rather put out any game for a release window rather than delay it to make sure that it could be the best it could be. Who really cared about getting it on Sonic’s 31st anniversary? All they have done now is release an incomplete game with loads of bugs and questionable content, pissed off fans, and caused stress to their own internal teams.

    Hey, it’s almost like this sort of thing has happened before, back in the 90’s…. :gene:

    Stealth, Headcannon, all the team, if you’re reading this…

    Don’t stress, we all know that you did all you could. We hope that SEGA urgently jumps into arranging patches and revisions and allow you more time to do what you set out to do.
     
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  16. Turbohog

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    Sega sure has an obsession with rushing games to capitalize on Sonic's "birthday", don't they? I thought they'd finally learned their lesson when nothing was released last year (the 30th anniversary), but I guess not.
     
  17. unAWARE

    unAWARE

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    Well, per Stealth himself, it looks like my assumption was more or less right on the money.

    C'mon SEGA, let Stealth and his team help bring this project back up to an A+ rating. The potential for it is clearly there.
     
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  18. The Deleter

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    Basically this.

    Like everyone has said, it's not the outright worst thing that he could have said. But specifically opening up the thread by pointing the finger at the only other team on the project, and publicly stating what terms he will work with the company, in spite of being hopeful in the same breath - it's the smallest pebble being thrown possible, and for any other company it might have gone over well, but this is still the SEGA we've known for years, and I don't have faith that they'll view that tiny pebble as anything but a boulder launched in their general direction as a traditional business.
     
  19. Naean

    Naean

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    So, after checking out various bits 'n' bobs in my copy of Origins on Steam, I finally played it proper and went through a bit of Story Mode. I completed Sonic 1 with all Chaos Emeralds and Sonic CD with all Time Stones, then left it at the very beginning of Sonic 2.

    Here are my detailed and most prominent thoughts:


    Out of those 2 games, Sonic 1 was definitely the more consistent experience.

    I've never properly played with Sonic 1's Special Stages using smooth rotation, so that was an interesting difference to tackle, but nothing that I found too problematic. Generally speaking, I think the Sonic 1 Special Stages will always be kinda wacky and funky to navigate through regardless of their rotation being smooth or staggered, it's part of their charm I guess you could say.

    Speaking of Sonic 1's Special Stages however, this leads me to the music, and it's here that I have significant problems. The Special Stage music in Sonic 1 sounded notably off to me; perhaps because it's one of the smoother-sounding tracks originally it stood out to me more, but its recording sounded distinctly crackly / with some sort of unpleasant artefacting which I struggle to describe accurately. It just didn't sound smooth like the original, almost like the track was constantly quivering / shaking a bit.

    Additionally, I can't not mention the Speed Shoes music in Sonic 1; it sounds quite badly distorted and low quality, the percussion in particular takes a bad hit in clarity, rather unsatisfying and uncomfortable to listen to.

    In general, the music quality in Sonic 1 wasn't the worst, but I feel that whatever hardware recordings they did use could and should have instead been from a much higher fidelity source. Whatever they did with speeding up the music was a mistake, because it sounds bad.


    My experience with Sonic CD was much more inconsistent, and that's all in the audio department. I used the Japanese soundtrack for my playthrough.

    Right off the bat I have issues here. The title screen track sounds pretty awful; low quality, relatively low volume, and like its gone through some seriously shoddy compression, riddled with artefacts. Not nice to listen to.

    The new intro cutscene with Amy is great, a really nice addition that I enjoyed. What I didn't enjoy was the tremendous volume difference between the new intro cutscene and the old intro cutscene. This is Sonic Adventure 2 tier bad with the volume mixing here. The new intro is relatively medium volume, then afterwards the old intro kicks in full-blast loud and it's a ridiculously, almost humorously bad volume difference. The contrast is in-your-face (or rather ears) obvious, to the point where I was actually scrambling to quickly turn down the volume after the old intro began. How that could be green-lit as acceptable volume balancing is beyond me.

    Sadly, things don't fair too better for gameplay either. After the overly-loud old intro ended and the gameplay began, I turned the volume up again as the level music is more a medium volume. Most of the regular level tracks sounded roughly the same volume level, however the Invincible, Speed Shoes and Level Clear tracks are all significantly quieter. Additionally, the Special Stages track is notably louder than all of those prior mentioned gameplay tracks. Furthermore, the final boss track sounded significantly quieter than the regular boss track.

    The old outro / credits sequence music and the new outro cutscene suffer from similar issues, again with the old content being stupidly louder than the new content. The new outro cutscene itself is really nice though, a great tie-in for connecting with Sonic 2.

    All of the volume differences substantially hampered my enjoyment of Sonic CD, as I felt compelled to frequently be adjusting my headset's volume level up and down throughout my playthrough. This is simply ridiculous and should not be an issue. I get the strong impression that SEGA chucked Sonic CD's soundtrack through a software's pre-set equalisation template in a batch automated process and called it a day, without any fine tuning, manual adjustments or double-checking to compare each track afterwards. It screams half-arsed audio handling to me.

    Also, Sonic's Drop Dash in Sonic CD uses a very different landing / dashing sound effect compared to all of the other games in the collection, it sounds wrong and a jarring mismatch.


    In terms of gameplay itself, Sonic 1 and Sonic CD went by without a hitch, and I don't remember encountering any particularly unusual behaviour nor any glitches. My time playing Sonic CD was sadly frustrating however due to the aforementioned audio problems; the inconsistencies between quiet, moderate and high loudness levels is an unpleasant listening experience, tainting my entire playthrough as a result by quite a margin.


    Next, I'll continue Story Mode and see how I fair in Sonic 2, then Sonic 3 & Knuckles. If that Tails problem is any indication though, I'm in for a Sonic 2 audio ride which really rivals Sonic CD.
     
    Last edited: Jun 24, 2022
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  20. Mana

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    Am I the only one who's NOT worried about them fixing the game up at a later time?

    They did for Colors Ultimate and even Mania wasn't really done when it first came out which is why we got Plus and the free update for the base game as well. I just think we need to give them time.

    We just have to accept that modern games don't come out complete anymore, they get fixed up in a post launch patch. It's just the way things are now.
     
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