Sonic 2 HD

Ok, WTF is this shit? I don't think you guys had any bad intention, but when I unzipped this thing, my Anti-Virus program immediately rang the bell, saying the executables contain Malware (TR/Crypt.XPACK.Gen).

As I said, don't think you have any bad intentions, so I will play it anyway. But you should get rid of this problem with the next release if you don't want to look like evil bastards in the eyes of other people who may not be like me and trusting you anyway.

 

I've listened to all of Tee Lope's music, and almost every piece he's remastered from the old games are slam dunks. He adds to them, but doesn't remix them per say. That being said, the boss music did sound odd cut short, especially given his attention to detail in most of his other work.

 

I would like to thank all of the people involved in this project for creating something that far exceeded my expectations. I am happy to have had a small early impact on it with the grass and bridges, which still echo what I had drawn all that time ago.

I struggle to find anything to complain about, so I'll leave it at that. Nice one guys!

 

Loving the Sonic 3-esq level transitions. Other than the physics that need fine tuning, great work lads!

 

I'm not actually going to play this, but that title screen made me melt. Who was responsible for that, and how long did it take to animate? On average, how much time was spent rendering each individual frame? It accounts for half of the game's development time, right?

 

Downloaded, enjoyed it. I didn't get any Virus alerts, using ZoneAlarm and AVG. One thing I will mention is when you are using a multi monitor setup (Surround / Eyefinity) the game will default to the left monitor, and full screen just blows the resolution up sky high without changing the aspect ratio to fit the screens. As far as I know, there isn't a way to move the windowed version either. Just a small niggle, nothing major, but I would like to be able to move the window to the centre. Or give us Surround support :P

Excellent job regardless guys.

 

Congratulations Sonic 2 HD team!

I can't fathom how many hours you lot have put into this. I can feel the desire for excellence bursting with every little artistic detail, whether it's the shapes, the colours or the animations – incredibly impressive stuff. LOst and Saxman, great to see the results of your combined technical efforts. Exciting to see a group of focussed passions collaborating closely together.

The original Sonic games are archetypes for all gamers. Sonic team should be familiar enough with this circle to know that there will always be a strong demand for classic Sonic. If Sonic Team decide to hire you to make this project official, I think it would be worth trying to convince them that there'd be greater profit in combining Sonic 1, 2 and 3&K into one product, rather than trying to sell each one individually. If classic Sonic had just one strong platform from which to express itself, its popularity could only grow more and more in the form of fan-made levels and online competitions. Archetypes never die; they just continue to sell again and again. In an era of digital distribution it would have the potential to be one of the most popular 2d games of all time. Factor in micro-transactions for obtaining in-game taunts during online races, individual character accessories, and extra characters like Fang, Amy, Chaotix, Metal Sonic, Eggman etc – there'd be great takings to be made. A level-editor – with instantly downloadable levels as soon as players connect – would make the project self-sustaining; the profit and popularity of such a cult would be never-ending.

However far you choose to take it, I wish the whole team success with the project and the best possible success with life ambitions and dreams, which matter more than anything else

 

Thank you kindly for the compliment Ritz. I actually had this completed over the course of a week during Christmas 2010 - as an aside, by January 15th 2011, all the art assets for the game were ready to go and it was just the coding that remained for the following year (much to my surprise) - sadly this was very much out of my hands. I roughed out the animation by hand in first (I.e. sketches, on "ones" at 30fps) in a day or so and then cleaned up and painted each sketch individually in Photoshop afterwards which was the time consuming bit (took about 2 days apiece for Sonic, then Tails). The emblem and those surrounding animations took me another day and then I comped the lot in After Effects and had it sent to LOst who faithfully put all the assets back together in-game exactly as I had demonstrated in my mock-up. Glad you finally got to see it at least .

 

Welp, I'm on a multi monitor setup with my main monitor on the right at 1920x1080, and it worked as you expect it would.

 

I hope that doesn't mean you've all retconed the idea of Tails flying and Knuckles being in the game. Because I was looking forward to that when online play was discussed.

 

I wasn't actually expecting a reply so quickly, or at all! Good man.

Shit, you guys are actually painting these now? Just the sprites, or has the Illustrator blending process been phased out entirely? I'd love to hear some insight on how you're getting this flawless airbrushed look in Photoshop. Don't tell me you're just using a soft-edged brush for everything, I'd die. Who else is working on this? I can tell you didn't do the background. You've raised the bar too high, rest of the team can't keep up. Glad you saved this project.

 

Seems like I can't play the game. The 32-bit immediately get's deleted because it's a trojan (I know it's not, but it says so anyway). But the 64-bit is there. My laptop is 64-bit, so I loaded it. The game loads up with a green screen, and just sits there, no matter what setting I change, and my drivers and etc is up-to-date.

 

Windows only? It's 2012 and it's time to embrace multiplatform. I (and I suspect, quite a few other programmers) would be open to porting or other code improvements and assistance.

You should provide some kind of information or overtures to technically capable people; embrace the people who are curious and want to help you instead of throwing up barriers.

 

All of the sprites are drawn in vector, using unique shading methods we have come to evolve over the course of the project. None of the sprites are actually hand drawn in the traditional sense, there all no brushes involved whatsoever! The process that these get created is this - animation guru scanline99 makes an animated rough sketch of a sprite if it's needed, then I convert it to Photoshop vectors and shade them using our special method. Color steps in illustrator was inane way of doing things, so when we joined the project we pretty much scrapped anything done in that style. We did this for everything you see in the game sans the grass, level blocks, and background elements. I'm very glad to hear that you can see how much work we've put into this, we are both very proud of what we accomplished and really taught ourselves a lot. So much so that we teamed up in the real world and created our own game development company. If you see a game coming out soon that shows our staple art style, you'll know it's us!

 

^--wow, timing

For the Title Screen Island and the HTZ clouds/islands.. etc., I used Photoshop with a tablet and normal round brush. varying softness.

 

Considering there were 3 (5 really) games based on physics where the smallest y-axis granularity was a giant pixel and hence movement across small bumps in an otherwise horizontal plane is extremely 'rugged' (for lack of better word), the only way to emulate that feel would be to similarly use giant pixels for physics calculation purposes to preserve the ruggedness.

It definitely doesn't feel like the originals, but I fail to see the Sonic Worlds comparison.

 

I still can't get the game to load on 64-bit. Pressing any jump button or enter makes the screen flash black but stays green after. I can't try 32-bit as it gets deleted automatically by my virus protector.

 

This is interesting. Good luck; game development is a ruthless market.

 

It is, and we're extremely fortunate that things have gone well for us so far.