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Unused enemy sprites by Sonic 2 artist Tom Payne

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Fred, Apr 17, 2019.

  1. This is my favorite piece of concept art ever.
     
  2. LocalH

    LocalH

    roxoring your soxors Tech Member
    I don't know what shipped with PC versions of DeluxePaint, but that particular color bitmap font (or "ColorFont" in Amiga parlance) was commonly seen associated with DeluxePaint III on the Amiga. Speifically, it's called "CHISELserif", as part of the Kara Fonts Headlines pack.
     
  3. Fred

    Fred

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    I know, right? I love how it's been on the wiki since 2009.
     
  4. I have to admit after the Yasuhara presentation, the other Betas released recently and some of the concept art in the Cook & Becker Sonic Book I thought we had bottomed out and hit the limit on Sonic 2 related materials. Then a holy grail of information drops. Keeps this community interesting at least.
     
  5. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    Was that Sonic style guide not in the wiki already? I could only find it in the 2009 topic.

    Oh ok, it's here. I see the scans are the exact same ones, by the way...


    Is there anything new in the newly released scans?

    EDIT: The style guide in the wiki has "scan152", "scan153", "scan154" and "scan155" missing, as well as a few half-broken images and one obviously repeated page.

    Also, maybe they shouldn't be labeled as "page x", "page y", since there may be missing pages as suggested by the missing frames in the title screen's animation.
     
  6. All these unused and incomplete Badniks are an amazing find. Now let's see how the sprites look next to my versions.
    [​IMG]
     
  7. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    I think that goes in "fan works", this is about researching official material...
     
  8. Oh I've showed off the spritesheet before over there two years ago. This is just showing how mine compare to these as all I had was the concept art for reference.

    It's funny how many versions of the pig was done. Another thing I noticed was that Roller has a fourth frame for it's rolling attack that was never seen in the final game.
     
  9. steveswede

    steveswede

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  10. Pengi

    Pengi

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    This page is new, and it's fascinating.

    [​IMG]

    It's basically the Sonic 1 box art, but with "LIVE UNDER THE SKY '91 OUT OF THE WORLD" in place of "THE MOST FAMOUS HEDGEHOG IN THE WORLD. Live Under The Sky is an annual jazz festival held in Japan.

    So what's the connection to Sonic/Sega? As far as I can tell, none whatsoever! At first I thought this was the Sonic 1 box art edited into a promotional poster for the festival or something, some kind of sponsorship deal - but that's not the case at all. This looks to actually be an early mock-up of the box art, using the actual Live Under The Sky '91: Out Of The World logo as a placeholder. The Sonic 1 box art designer (Akira Watnabe?) must have liked the look of the logo and decided to do something similar.
     
  11. Miles Wolf

    Miles Wolf

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  12. RyogaMasaki

    RyogaMasaki

    0xffffffff Oldbie
    I completed my implementation of the spec that Rich came up with. The source is up here:
    https://github.com/RyogaMasaki/ds2png

    My version works a bit different than Rich's Noesis version. Instead of rendering all frames to a 'canvas,' I have opted to export each frame as an individual image. This essentially ignore the x/y position of each frame, though this information is logged in the accompanying information file that is generated. I may add a 'canvas' mode like Noesis in a later version.

    The output images are indexed PNGs. You can also specify palette entry 0 as transparent with the -t option.

    Also the code is pretty inelegant as I rushed through it in the last 24 hours or so. Should be useful for Linux users. Not sure if it compiles on Windows, though it should so long as libpng is linked in.

    In related news, I also found this old thread: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=22220
    Which links to a copy of the Columns for Game Gear demo source code. In that zip, in the CHAR directory, the US_TITLE file is a Digitizer file in the same format. Running it through my tool, we get the expected output:
    [​IMG]
     
  13. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

    no reverse gear Wiki Sysop
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    Have we got a disc image for the Spinny & Spike CD?
     
  14. Well excuse me for not having the entirety of Sonic the fucking hedgehog knowledge memorized.
     
  15. Fred

    Fred

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    Apology accepted

    But what I was getting at is that we shouldn't forget the effort of those who worked to scan and preserve the same documents ten years prior. I'd never fault someone outside Sonic Retro for thinking all of this is new, but if we don't preserve the history of that knowledge, no one will.
     
  16. drx

    drx

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    The CES ballhog!
     
  17. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    I just went through every scan released in 2005, 2009 and 2019 and here's what's actually new:

    The level maps split into many scans here were stitched together into full maps for the 2009 release.
    As for the scans already in the wiki, I suggest replacing them with these, since they come straight from the source and lack any kind of brokenness present in some of the 2009 ones.


    I've also noticed that the 2009 batch was missing a couple of things which were already at my site:
    • Snail by Yasuhara: SCAN0217
    • Unannotated Bubbler + Mother Bubbler by Yasuhara: SCAN0215

    EDIT: Removed Bubbler sketch, which was indeed in the wiki.
     
  18. Rich

    Rich

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    Well done. :)/> Just so you know, though, Noesis defaults to non-canvas mode. I've just been exporting stuff with -dig3canv or -dig3mincanv because it makes sense, there are no overlapping pieces that I noticed except that one bit of art on the bob disk. (which seems to expect the canvas behavior) Noesis also has some generic options to set png transparency by palette index or color, if you're interested in mass-exporting stuff, and you can export to .tspr to auto-generate a bunch of paletted png's while generating a frame list. I also have a script to scan recursively for dig3 files and shove .dig extension on them for identifying these files en masse. Just let me know if anyone wants any of this stuff or has any other feature requests.
     
  19. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    Looking at the "screen maps" I've noticed that the grids use an aspect ratio that resembles the lower resolution mode in the Mega Drive and Master System... which Sonic 2 only used for the Special Stages.

    It seemed to unnecessarily make drawing simple circles more complicated than it should, leading to some inconsistencies in shapes:

    [​IMG] [​IMG]


    Really useful for the Master System Sonics, though.
     
  20. MarkeyJester

    MarkeyJester

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    I was wondering about the square size too.

    Maybe it's meant for mimicking NTSC 60Hz which appears stretched vertically.