What I'm afraid of with Sonic 2 HD is that it seems there's more work on the artistic part than the playable. I mean, it's very interesting the HARD work done on all the sprites and graphic elements, but as they do all these super-detailed explanations of the sprites I would like to see some similar content about the game itself.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean. The gameplay doesn't really need updated or remastered, just recoded to run in a modern engine that supports the new art. I think super-detailed explanations of max run speeds and air momentum would at best retread the Sonic Physics Guide and at worst be really, really boring for all but a few people. Graphics posts and videos are flashy and exciting, and you don't need any understanding of the game to get something out of them, y'know?
Personally, I think that such would be really interesting see. But regardless, I'm not sure that that was the point. We've seen little of S2HD in action. It would be nice to see that the engine is coming together with some screenshots or video clips.
Even if there are gameplay improvements, it might 'wow' only the core players and speedrunners that know how it feels in an emulator. And to the general public it might be hard to convey with words, videos and screenshots the same way you cant really show what 120fps videos looks like on a 60Hz screen, or how better OLED/IPS are over TNT , or SSD vs HDD etc. You need to see it to believe it.
A video showing how they recreate the levels, the physics, the sound, etc. Would be flashy and exciting for me. :P What I meant with my message is that almost all we see is a "making of" of the graphics. I would like to see the same content refering to the other aspects of the game. That's all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0InfFpa2tY Well there is this timelapse from a while back. Information about the engine is a lot harder to convey than just showing some art assets I think.
I'm gana nitpick the rexon! Sorry guys! The textures themseleves look fine, but if it were me, I would split the body in half (kinda Vertically) and hide the Neck Ball behind the opening at the front of the body. It just looks so bad with the ball overlapping the hole like that. The second Nitpick is with the fireball , when it comes out of the mouth, it just looks odd seeing it peak out at the bottom corner of the lip. I would make it so the ball was smaller initially and maybe grow after it leaves the mouth area. I think doing that would also add some more feeling to the fireball's animation. (edit) looking at the concept art and the actual sprites themselves, there is a little gold nub (gun thingy?) inside the mouth, it seems that is where the fireball should be generated from, the current animation shows the ball coming out from its throat before that gold nub. I think maybe some additional frames of animation showing the fireball being generated at the gold nub would look even better.
Also, the rear end in the concept art round out smoothly, while here it ends in a point, which just looks bad, imo. Otherwise, of course, this is fucking orgasmic :specialed:
This. There's definitely some layering issues going on with that animation. It also looks a little... jittery? If that makes sense. That said, the art itself looks great. I like the adherence to the lava theme with the glow and the new projectile animation. The projectile looks like it's fiery now instead of just glowing, which is just awesome.
You guys could also make the mouth open wider when the fireball comes out, that would give the animation a little more depth also. But than again it may look even more goofy. lol (Edit) I fixed him ! ( oh oh ,,,, oops ! crap...... I think he's dead now !)
The perspective is wrong. Note how in the original sprite, the eyes and mouth are tilted at the same angle. Here only the mouth is. It's a well-known trick in cinematography to create a more aethetically pleasing image and probably has a name - look it up. This is pretty elementary stuff, lads. See you in two months time!
I agree that the head has some perspective flaws, and also that the flameball growing up instead of just appearing would improve it even more. All the rest looks gorgeous although some more frames would be grateful.
We actually tried to do that but, yeah it looked weird. d: He is constantly shooting so if you make him open his mouth when he does it looks like he's chewing on something.
My nitpick: The eye in the back was partly visible in both the sprite and the original art, but not here. Also agree with the fireball not being venerated at the right place. In any case, awesome work!
One solution would be to have the mouth open and close in the idle animation rather than the mouth being open all the time. Spice things up There's missing teeth too. When firing, the animation can show the teeth before he fires when the player is within range. The top end of the muzzle could be less pointy at the tip and more rounded as it looks dolphiny-ish but apart from that, nice job!
Based on the artwork, it doesn't look like the teeth should be visible from the angle the sprite is shown. They don't appear to extend to the outside of the mouth, what we see on the artwork looks like the inside of Rexon's left side, which completely covers the teeth. Now, that animation looks REALLY jittery! The higher the neck section is, the worse it gets. Maybe this won't be so noticeable in game, but by itself, it doesn't compare well to all the smooth animations that have been shown so far.
Maybe it would look better if the "coils"/tube parts were rotated, stretched and skewed with the neck's movement.
