Spoiler-free Sonic Mania discussion thread

Perhaps with this delay I can bug Taxman about implementing a 240p mode :P

This delay sucks, but things could be a lot worse. I'm disappointed, but not particularly upset.

 

You're right, that would be the *more* unprofessional thing to do, but letting it come to the point where you have a faulty product 4 days before release is pretty bad in itself. Between releasing it as is or fixing it, no question about it, fix it, but the point is that this decision shouldn't have to be made.

 

I think the mistake came in giving out release copies that *still had a game-breaking bug*. Perhaps the testing budget was wack because Sega cheaped out.

 

You know...we don't exactly KNOW what the issue is. It very well could be something they could have only even caught just now, in relation to performance on certain PC's. I'm upset about the delay too, but let's not turn this into a matter of incompetence or anything.

 

You have to be kidding...

I preordered the Steam version because the CE edition for the Xbox One will arrive at the end of the month because of my location and the PC version was the only one i could play it at launch date..

So now i have no other way to play this game at launch date...

 

I didn't ask for holidays to play the game, I'm not really worried about spoilers, don't mind other platforms getting the game on time, and I just ignored the gift Sonic 1 (better if they gave me Sonic 3D or Spinball, I haven't those), but it's been really hard for me to stay hyped for so long, and now it's even longer; I feel like a donkey chasing for the carrot attached to its head, always seeing it but never getting it, no matter how much the animal runs. It makes me anxious.

And that's all, now moderators can trash all of our previous countdown posts, or change their date. I'll start again: "Come on, guys, 18 days and the game's out, can wait to play it!" :v:

 

Really not happy with this news, especially with this bombshell being reported just a few days before the game's release.

The only reason I got the PC version is because it's literally the only version of the game I could actually support and had access to. Most of the time, I play games on consoles, I didn't even have a Steam account prior to June; but because I don't have a PS4, Xbox One, or Switch, getting the game on Steam was and still is my only option. And now the only version of the game I can play is the only one that gets pushed back.

I also share bewilderment with Laura and the others about the reason for the PC versions' delay being "optimization issues". This is a 2D pixel-sprite game emulating Saturn-level graphics, running on Taxman's Retro Engine. Mania could literally run on a toaster. For there to be optimization issues with a title like this, indicates to me that someone somewhere along the line made a colossal mistake was made during the process of getting the game to Steam.

What if you paid for a meal at a restaurant with your friends, the waiter told you at the last minute that you had to wait three hours before you would receive your food, and when you express disappointment, someone tells you "be grateful you're even getting a meal in the first place"? You think that's absolutely fair?

Sega is a business, they're not some non-profit charity. They sell products, customers buy them. If there is a problem with the product, people absolutely have the right to voice their complaints. How long Sega has been in the PC business is completely irrelevant to that.

Mania could Sega's first PC game they've ever published, and it wouldn't make a difference to the actual point that the PC version --a version people were either planning to buy or have already paid for-- will now be released two weeks after the consoles versions have been released, and after people will be able to learn and share/spoil everything they can find about the game. Blaming the customers/fans for the very thing that disappointed them is terribly misdirected salt in the wound.

 

I don't have any other versions pre-ordered, and infact I can't even liberally spend extra money right now, much less wanting to bother with buying more than one copy of the game I already own. Waking up to finding out the game has been delayed for me by two weeks is a tremendous kick in the nuts, and bloody everyone has Sonic 1 on Steam or some other means at this point, making its consolation worth.. nigh meaningless. Trying to make up for cutting Sonic 1 from Generations on PC six years ago or something, SEGA?

I still really, really want to play the game, and won't childishly cancel my pre-order, but the pressure of evading spoilers is already massive and I refuse to double-dip on principle.

 

Yep, literally on a toaster, well the closest thing to one anyway.

 

Man I'm extremely upset and annoyed with this setback and to add even more salt into the wound Sega are like "they lets give them Sonic 1 (steam version) that'll please them", not like we own a billion copies of the damn game. Luckily I own a PS4 so I can still enjoy it on it's actual release day but this has just been one huge **** up. I understand the other side of the coin of delaying the game but still, it really stings. I'd wish they'd give out a full and proper reason to why it was delayed, not just "optimisation".

Oh well and I even bought an adaptor for my PC so I could plug in my Mega Drive pads, gah!

 

#1 is something I plenty understand, because I made sure to disable retweets on more people to control what I might see when I browse Twitter. Social media stinks, but depending on your platform of choice, there's a lot you can control or mitigate when things like this happen. (Twitter has a word filter now, so your notifications/feed could ignore any post with the word "Mania" in it, if you wanted.) I also have two YouTube accounts, so YouTube shouldn't suggest anything about Mania on my alt that I don't want to see on my main.

I'll give you the second point. The new release date puts me in a sticky spot too, because I'll be back in college by then. (Whereas I would have been totally free to play it on the previous date.) Now this means I'll have to play it and beat it overnight when Mania unlocks, then take a nap when I get home later that school day. Although I've had worse problems with PC games, so I'm (mostly) okay with this. Others here in the thread definitely don't feel the same as me about it.

And the only thing about the Sonic 1 gift thing that bugs me is I wished it was Sonic 2, since I already have Sonic 1. At least it'll be giftable in my case, so I can overlook that.

My comment was more "These things happen and no amount of anger is going to change that" and less the words you thought I implied. I understand you're mad about this, but please, putting words in people's mouths isn't healthy for good discourse.

We're stuck weathering this situation whether we like it or not. I know I don't, if only because my friends are going to be like "OMG HAVE YOU PLAYED MANIA YET IT'S AWESOME-" and my response will have to be "Nope, still waiting on the PC version." I'm expecting it to be hard for friends across different platforms to not accidentally spoil something for the other person. I've accidentally let stuff slip before and it's no fun.

I'm not saying nobody can be upset about this. However, it might make things a little easier on the devs to go easy on the flamethrowers and not demand some haste, or figure out which direction to aim that anger. (For instance, maybe Q&A missed something?) Because chances are, this wasn't an easy decision for them. Dream Daddy's devs' hearts were heavy when they had to delay their project recently; appreciably very open and transparent about it. (Their game was only delayed by another day or so, though.)

 

So I've cooled off a little from earlier. It's bad news but it's not game destroying or anything. Immensely disappointing but I'm feeling better than earlier.

I've been thinking of plan Bs for the last few hours and it honestly looks like a cheap second-hand Xbox One is my best option. It's the console I was going to get anyway for Halo and Doom amongst other games so I guess I'll just attempt to bring my purchase forward for Mania. I absolutely can't afford one right now as I said earlier but at about £140 for a used one with Game about five minutes away from me (plus the money for Mania again on Xbox) it might be possible for around the release date. Probably not bang-on but close to it.

I'm waiting on some important money news next week as I've outlined earlier. I could hear as early as Monday or Tuesday so if I get confirmation the cash injection is coming in, then fuck it. It's a trip to Game on Tuesday or possibly later in the week and then a cheap Xbox One and Mania. Anyone know the policy on Steam refunds? Pre-ordered the game around a week ago. Is it 14 days to request a refund or am I fucked in that regard? Could have sworn I read something about "withdrawing my right for a refund" but that can't be right.

Plan C is just fucking wait until August 29 though I'm going to do my best to avoid that if possible. Anyone else have a contingency plan they've thought of?

 

This delay isn't to fix mechanical or stage issues, which is what people would have rather happened in the past (and in fact, Mania's first delay was supposed to be for exactly that, and people took that fairly reasonably).
but the game is on schedule on other platforms, so that's right out

and traditional responses to PC issues in general have historically involved releasing with a note about certain configurations having and then patching it after, which is going to be less of a PR hit than a full out delay unless this affects the wide majority of machines they've tested it on other than the ones they used to develop the game, which seems unlikely
take note that since I don't have a game on Steam, I don't know what the details are with patching there

also, gifting Sonic 1 is enough of a total joke that it's actually rubbing people the wrong way (you know, one of the most ported games ever -- I have like six devices in arms reach of me right now with official ways to play Sonic 1), not to mention that people are still a bit miffed that there's no Taxman S1/2 steam release and they have to resort to Bluestacks or whatever

There's all kind of issues that can pop up on PC, particularly regarding timing sensitive applications like games. Things like the framerate limit loop are likely suspects, where on certain configurations, the game ends up waiting much longer than it needs to and even though the machine could probably run the game at 10-15x full speed, it's only getting 45 out of 60fps or frames aren't drawn because of when the buffer is sent to the screen (I've seen both of these a lot). This is guesswork, but it's also stuff I've actually seen before. People who do console development hate PC development for shit like this, and "works on my machine" (but not on someone else's) is a common problem throughout PC development in general, gaming or otherwise. On consoles, you don't need to test on a bunch of configurations -- there's just the dev unit and then the retail unit.

and then there gobs of fairly simple 2D games that were developed on high-end machines and then when they ran it on something remotely slower, they got frame drops since the game wasn't particularly optimized in the first place, although this is much more common in shit like Game Maker (extremely common in GM in fact) and I doubt this is the reason rather than what I wrote above

 

Sorry man, I was adding bits to Sean's comment, wasn't directly answering to you. I was particulary upset reading tweets like this one. I shouldn't have included your post in the quote, apologies.

Nevertheless, while I'm still pissed at the "apology", I kinda went "meh" and moved on, whatever.

 

^ I've been playing Sonic Adventure DX recently, also on Steam. It's a contingency plan because playing the oldest modern game right before playing a classic game simulating it was released just before the dreamcast title allows for direct comparisons and locates Mania better as another "classic" that "was" good before they started releasing 3D crap (We're pretending Mania was a 1996 title, aren't we?)

EDIT: I was answering to 360, but got ninja'ed. XD

 

I'll be over here with two helpings of irony, then, whoops. Sorry about that.

The apology gift is odd to me too, but "It's Better Than Nothing™" :v:

From what I understand, it's possible to push patches on Steam without any approval process. Stores like GoG, however, have an approval process that might or might not be lengthy. It's one reason why Freedom Planet 1 handled updates mostly on Steam, then GoG and Humble got the update after a new patch was tested by enough people.

 

People are theorising that they may be intentionally pushing the game back on Steam so as to dissuade piracy on release day. I really hope that's not the reason, but it's a possibility.

I hold to my idea that they fucked up registering it on Steam or something. I did find it weird that Steam were vague on the release date time (I heard something like that was happening).

Either way, I don't accept for one second that there was a problem with PC optimisation. Unless we get very specific info that makes sense, I cannot fathom how this game can't run on PC. This isn't Game Maker or MMF2, it's Taxman's Retro Engine, which has run perfectly on PC.

As Taxman said, it ran on a notebook. What was so horrendous that they suddenly discovered it didn't run on PC so close to release date. And then madly dashed around on social media, with Webber being haphazardly thrown into meetings.

I'll put my name to it, they fucked up registering it on Steam.

 

Not really an option for those of us living in countries where the video-game market is absurdly expensive. We don't have stores like GameStop around here, and an used current gen console costs more than a brand new one does in the US.