Honestly, I think this is the best that could come out of this situation. I'd rather have something playable than the project just die and only leave a bunch of screenshots and videos as its legacy. I also hope that after playing this demo Sonic Legends team will include XG level(s) in their game in some capacity
Nothing from XG stage-wise is making the cut and that's mainly due to the fact that the current iteration of XG is for the most part being worked on by people within the Legends team so it'd essentially be the equivalent of double dipping on our part and as a result I personally don't really think it's appropriate. Since this appears to be the go-to thread now instead of the one Taxman started, I do want to get a few things off my chest regarding the project that would probably be of some importance. Most notably: We're internally aware about the leaks that have happened and why they happened, as well as the sudden surgance of all the mods to "XG Classic" (which was done by a friend of the team with slight contributions from a few of us) and outside of that one we have had no involvement with stuff like Community's Cut or whatever other off-shoot of "Classic" exists on GameJolt or Archive nowadays. They are strictly the endeavours of the people working on those projects and are not related nor do they represent our iteration of XG on practically every front. The build "Classic" itself is based on was an unfinished build from that era of the project, so some Zones didn't get all that far into development and cut off prematurely, meaning creative liberties had to have been made to make them somewhat operable. While I'm at it I might also mention this as well regarding coherency within XG currently: There's a big push for current XG to dive into a bigger pool of influence, especially outside of Sonic. While not directly using them as a base, a number of things that are currently present are also influenced by the previous merger attempts during the game's romp through the Retro Engine. This is something in particular we are currently seeking to match and eventually surpass. This holds true on every front, from plot, to zone order and everything in-between. The best example I can give currently would be within the user interface (because it's ONE of the things we consider final at this point). In this example, we have taken the previous main menu that was shown in the older thread and applied it with proper dark-memphis aesthetics so it would better fit XG's general style. This makes it more in line with the title cards to boot! Spoiler Pretty spiffy, huh? Obviously the rest of the UI elements follow suit in this regard, with some being brand new additions that still stay true to this aesthetic style of XG. Retro Sonic Nexus in particular seemed to had gone into a different direction, predominantly using more lighter greys for its title card for example, but we're sticking to what people know best and provide more of a "best of both worlds" scenario where applicable. This is basically the long version of me saying "It's still being worked on, we just have other stuff to work on as well". Joe is basically MIA as far as I know and while Euan does pop in from time to time, it's mostly in-between his job, so it's mostly down to the rest of us to finish the job. Thankfully, a good majority of us are REALLY passionate about XG and for about half of us it's part of the reason why we are standing where we are today so to just let it rot again would blow massively. I may be complete nuts for saying this but I'd take this game into my damn grave if I have to. Hope this answers some stuff and I REALLY hope I can get to be more transparent about the project once we've got few more pieces moving, but I suppose that's for whenever the time is more appropriate..
