Except the sky was light and Sonic was dark - the opposite of what is seen in the Mega Drive game. I posted this eons ago but once more won't hurt: I.e. it's not an HD interpretation of what the game actually is, but rather what their artists think the game should look like. And yeah it causes these tensions because people expect the product to be different things, and the top dawgs cut off their communication with these forums, because a message board founded on nitpicking Sonic 2 did some nitpicking of Sonic 2.
Thank you for that breakdown Black Squirrel. I don't expect it do be dead-on the exact same palette. I really don't expect anything to be honest; just happy to see this project is still alive and of top quality. I am sure there are many areas where deviation is actually necessary, if not required. I'm more alluding to the extent of the deviation from CPZ as opposed to EHZ, to what extent will the foreground deviate from the background in CPZ, and what the general art direction going forward will be. What is the intent?
CPZ's color palette is pretty monochrome aside from the background where all the buildings are. I'm sure they had good reasons for whatever changes they made. The lighter BG in EHZ for example looks more natural (I think it does any way). It may be something similar here, they're just changing things up so it looks as good as it possibly can.
There is a high change that the colours used in the original games were not what the artists desired to use in the first place. Apart from the limitation of 15 different colours palette for the terrain/background/objects, those colours were out of possible 512(9-bit) colours, and not the 24-bit standart with 16 million colours we have now. Yes the EHZ blue is a bit dark, but they probably didn't have a better option. I'm glad the discussions about art direction and style went private, as people on the forum were really focusing on the exact RGB values and if they matched the original. Who better knows what colours to choose if not the actual artists that have the experience and would actually put things to practice. There have been discussions in the past what is the 'true' blue of Sonic, and people were citing palettes from different games, and PAL vs NTSC vs Secam vs emulator. Nightmare at its finest.
I think we won't actually play the game but getting hypnotized by the amount of detail they give to the stages.
As far as actual levels go, I don't think the palette was a huge problem, but I do think they spent quite a bit of effort ensuring that Sonic didn't clash with the backgrounds. In Sonic 2, he's a little bit purple for a reason, and the skies are darker for a reason too. In fact they were still going for unnaturally dark skies in Chaotix so I think it was probably a design choice. Colour counts were more of a problem when it came to shoving all the characters and enemies on Sonic's palette line. Knuckles' shoes in Sonic 3, for example. I would guess the bottleneck was not being able to load enough tiles into memory so I suppose Chemical Plant Zone's background is a little strange. But I don't think they meant the grey bits to be green.
How hardware limitations, lack of colour options, etc., is a concept I understand. I am happy the S2HD Team is taking liberties to expand on the original assets, and I assume this is being done with the objective of fulfilling what the original artists had in mind. My personal interpretation of CPZ was never that it was dank and grungy though, but more ultra modern. Like this: I know this isn't about what "I" want, I'm just illustrating how I think the team approached CPZ differently, from how they approached EHZ. Would just be nice to hear their rationalization is all...
Yeah, I'm interested to see the whole background. Can't really tell by that tiny section. Sonic fan remix's Pelikan (?) done a pretty sweet concept for Chemical Plant if I remember correctly...
Via FB: 'Recently we've made a lot of progress in tying up loose ends in order to prepare for the next release of S2HD. Rest assured, we have exciting things coming up just around the corner. One of these goals which we've been working towards are fluid and vivid animations for the various elements of the Hill Top Zone boss. Now that these are completed, we are proud to present a time-lapse video documenting the animation and vectoring of these assets. Enjoy!'
Great animation, although one has to wonder why the tip's shape was altered to make it look less like a common blowtorch... since that was the point and all.
Has the new team always been doing raster art? I was a little surprised to see the entire thing being done at a fixed resolution in Photoshop when the previous did everything as vector art. It's not a big deal, but it just means that when more people start getting 4K displays in a few years that the game won't be able to take full advantage of them because they won't be able to re-export the art.
99% of the art is still entirely vector. The fire effects are actually vectored before we put them in the game. Basically, the same thing is happening here that happens with the other animations. raster sketch>vector clean up. The difference here is that Leo is animating them with color rather than outlines and his animations are always really clean. As for 4K... While the art is vector it there would be more to it than just scaling things up and exporting them. The artwork was designed to be viewed at the resolution it appears in the game so scaling them up often just doesn't look very good.
Besides, the project's called Sonic 2 HD, not Sonic 2 4K. *bricked* It's interesting to me that everything's still vectored. I'm sure that's another layer of time sunk into development; the labor of love going into this project is incredible. I enjoyed watching these new animations!
