General Project Thread & Feedback

Ahh, that makes more sense. The demo versions are... interesting, I'll grant you that. I personally thought they sounded slow, stretched out and rather terrible compared to the final versions, but to each their own. I'll readily admit to being biased on the music front -- I think the remasters Tee has done for us are some of the best takes on the Sonic 2 tracks that have ever been done, which is why we'll be using them.

 

Anyone expecting the 1 and 2 soundtrack demos to be utile for anything more than an informational resource and a piece of history was being... overenthusiastic, let's say.

Tee's tracks are the best choice for S2HD, and probably the best interpretations so far, especially considered as a whole.

 

I'm calling it! Demo Release will be at the 12th of December 2011 and news will be on Saturday revealing the release date and info

 

So, how is the project going? You guys still have any major hurdles, or is it all downhill now and just finishing?

 

Couldn't we even get a vague idea of where it's at? Are you still planning to make use of this forum after the release is made? As in... moreso than currently... I suppose this will just happen all over again for the next release? Periods of openness and communication and then the last months completely closed and silent? Or are there plans to overhaul how everything works around here? I can't see how at this point the development process could possibly go back to what it was before. It's become a whole different project. But the very fact that this entire forum still exists must mean you have something in mind? As it stands there is absolutely nothing to discuss, nothing to contribute. And judging by previous attitudes towards contributions, I don't see that there ever will be. So even if you can't answer all these questions now for whatever reason... could you at least verify whether we will be hearing more about your plans for the forum and future direction of the project come alpha release?

I'm just hoping we won't simply see a big release, everyone excited for awhile, and then more of this... nothingness.

 

I don't even see the purpose of having a forum anymore. The only posts that get made on this forum anymore is in this thread and the Facebook page gets more insight on the project nowadays than anywhere on this site. If they have major plans in the future for this forum, great but it seems useless now.

 

I don't want to speak of anything the team doesn't agree on, and I don't wish to give false hints at anything that may or may not be true about the current state of the project. These comments are my personal reflection on the project as a team member and isn't meant to be taken as an official statement on behalf of the team. In other words: I'll keep my comments carefully tamed.

With that said, I am currently happy with where S2HD stands right now having played it. There aren't many posts happening at this time because much of what's happening right now is at a micro level. Flashy graphics and similar assets are always going to get some reaction. There's less of that activity happening right now. I think the team probably wishes to protect the brand of S2HD by focusing more on detailed events that occur and less on the micro stuff. Any specifics on what is happening development-wise would be left up to the team leaders obviously. But I will definitely say it's turning out nice and that the silence isn't intended to be long-term or a sign that the team is ignoring the followers of the project.

Stay tuned, I'm sure the team will have more to say in the weeks ahead =)

 

Absolutely. All the team members are amazing, and what we've seen so far is everything I could have hoped for in a remake of the first console game I ever owned. I agree with steveswede - the artists must be doing something .

To put it simply... will there be any need for more than this one thread in future? An entire forum or just a single thread? If you feel like you still need the forum, then I don't see anything wrong with that. It's not a big deal either way... but it would at least clarify things a little. As it stands we've got threads for "contribution rules and guidelines", "character art", "music", "concept workbench" etc. etc. ... ghosts of the past :P.

I mean it's not that project anymore. Let's not pretend it's ever going to be.

 

Who said artists were slacking off? If we just put out every single asset we have, there would be nothing to look forward to in the future. Think of Sega in their marketing of Sonic Generations: they didn't just show you every level they were bringing to the game. Instead, they released teasers, bit by bit over a period of time. I understand you've been waiting a while, and that definitely shows your steadfast support for what we're doing. But we are not paid employees who work on this game 40+ hours a week. We do a lot of work, but we have real lives and real jobs to attend. The silence isn't because nothing is being done, it's because, again, a lot of micro work is being done; and to add to that, any other work being done isn't even ready to be shown off.

Look, internally we have milestones. We have hit quite a few of them lately. You heard about the sound code being completed on Facebook for example. We're brewing up a bunch of different things, but because development isn't a fulltime job, it takes us a while to have something major to show off. Collectively, we have done a lot lately, but these pieces are not of the same flavor.

 

My problem here is that I don't use Facebook, nor do I intend on doing so anytime in the future. The fact that most updates are being posted there I think is unfair. To be honest, the response of the fact that the Facebook page gets more attention is a piss poor excuse. What about people like us who don't use it and want to follow the progress?

Riddle me that, PR guys.

 

You can call Facebook getting the updates first a poor excuse, but there's close to five thousand people following that page, versus, at the absolute most, a few dozen here (granted that will change in a rather large way once we release the demo, but this is true at the present). When there are major updates, I post them here too, just like I've been doing up to this point. If anything, I've given the board here more of the nitty gritty and far less of the glamorous overview you'll see on the FB page.

If you want to see a chain of weekly posts from me saying, "We're making progress!", I have no problem doing that. I can't guarantee it'll be anything more than that, because like Saxman said, we're down to the last internal milestones that are entirely code based and I'm not going to ask our coders for an update every day just so it can be posted here.

What I will say is that the internal builds we've been testing of the game so far have come leaps and bounds recently. I can't think of more than a handful of bugs that haven't been fixed at this point. We also had an unexpected reason for delaying the demo release past November that I can't publicly comment on right now, but suffice to say we're back on track with where we want to be.

 

To be fair. I think this is my first post in anything S2HD related and I am incredibly interested in this project, so I imagine there are loads more out there like me who lurk around looking at progress. So it may be more than a few dozen.

I would love a weekly update. Even if it said "this week we haven't got anything solid done but we have planned x or we are implementing y". I think this would keep us all more informed and excited. I think part of the problem (I know I feel it) is that if I don't see an update for a little while, I feel the project isn't moving and kind of forget about it. I wasn't trying to sound negative because I know the project is always moving and everyone is putting in a lot of hard work.

Also, to view the facebook page you need an account (I think) but this forum is open for the public to see (again, I think) so can't you just tell everyone on facebook to visit this thread. Or, as an alternative, just copy pasta the updates from facebook onto this thread.

I'm still really excited for this project and I can't wait to see it.

 

This. It isn't hard to copy and paste and it would be nice if Facebook status updates were posted in this thread as well. The forum should not be out of the loop. >_>

 

Alright, I'll cc any updates from Facebook here as well going forward. FYI, you don't need a Facebook account to view the page there. Click the link to it that you see on my or any staff member's signature here to be directed to it.

 

Oh Ok, fair enough. I didn't realize I could view the facebook page without an account. I'm a fool.

Thank you for saying you will cc the future updates. I know I would prefer it like that and I'm sure some other members may as well.

Overall, thank you for listening to our suggestions and I cannot wait to see the progress and updates.

 

... do I have to ask again? This is reminding me of why I don't bother posting anything here anymore. Good job on doing something about the updates though I guess. Does it help if I say please?

 

I really don't see why this project should have its own entire forum, especially it turns out the updates on the project weren't even being posted here. It made sense when people were allowed to actually contribute, but now it's all behind closed doors so it's no different to the 432943284032 Sonic fangames in development.

To hide away on a facebook page seems like a kick in the teeth to me. Doesn't matter what the number of followers are - you've got a hosted subdomain here and this community pays to keep it alive. Doesn't really strike me as the nice thing to do.