[Gambit]

Oh, yeah. There are still waterfalls that overlap him.

[McAleeCh]

To add clarification to my previous post about Sonic's leg; skewing the furthest leg so that the bottom (where it meets the sock) is in the same position as it currently is, but the top (where it joins the body) is four pixels further in seems to produce a good result - at least if the poor 2-second Photoshop job I did to see how it looked is any guide. Just makes his stance look slightly less rigid and a little more natural.

[LOst]

The waterfalls won't change in appearance, but yeah, they'll distort any characters that stand behind them.

Sorry guys. That is not possible.

It is visually possible but it would be too heavy compare to the rest of the visuals (it is my job to not make that happen). It is possible to do it like Sonic 4, where everything behind the waterfall gets distorted, but what about the waterfall itself? If you have a waterfall behind Sonic like how it is in the original (waterfall behind, and effect sprite on top), that waterfall animation will get distorted too (and I will not walk over the waterfall artist, distorting his work!), and if you remove the waterfall tiles behind Sonic (by editing EHZ's meta data, to Gambit's horror where he would have to spend hours adjusting grass/wet grass), you still have the issue where you have to put a semi-transparent waterfall on top of Sonic so you can see him, which breaks the art style of S2HD (making it cheap looking, as we SHOULD only use transparency in the art itself, keeping the artists in charge, and not the 3D hardware). I can't get around these issues. It eventually leads to changing the art style (some will look like cartoon waterfalls, and others will look like realistic particle waterfalls), making the animation look wrong or out of place, or slow down the framerate temporarly to make a super cool effect on Sonic alone in a range of approzimately 192 pixels where most people never stop, but run through quickly so they won't notice any distortion anyway, only possible lag.

I am not normally addressing these issues outside the staff, or the artist in question. Don't expect me to justify these arguments here.

[Hamneggs]

(by editing EHZ's meta data, to Gambit's horror where he would have to spend hours adjusting grass/wet grass)

...WET GRASS!!!!? Seriously cool!

[Gambit]

Yeah, sorry about that bit of misinformation. I was under the impression that would work out. Also yeah, we have wet grass now, and it is pretty sweet.

[Rokkan]

Why don't we just use the Sonic 4 effect on both waterfalls that are behind and in front? But the ones behind would distort the layers behind, and not the foreground, characters and objects. I guess it'd be walking over the waterfall artist, since all waterfalls would be distorted, but having the distortion for me would make a lot of difference in the end result (in a good way obviously)

This post has been edited by Rave: 26 January 2011 - 07:12 PM

[Aerosol]

Honestly, great art gets cut in games all the time. If Sonic 2 HD is gonna be all it can be, I'm opting for Sonic 4 style waterfalls as Rave described also. Maybe it's just me, but I think that if the game's designers/programmers had access to technology like that, they wouldn't have used palette shifting to simulate a waterfall at all.

At the very least, Aquatic Ruin better have Sonic 4 waterfalls

[LOst]

Both AerosolSP and Rave have good points about Sonic 4 and its waterfall. Just remember what I said about the art style we have choosen to follow. At one point in time, we must decide on a graphics style, and go with it. And we did that in March 15 2010, even if we knew some people would dislike it. Take a look at Sonic 4's (very beautiful) waterfall, and ask yourself if it looks cartoony enough with the rest of the style Sonic 2 (or Sonic 2 HD) uses. Personally, I see a very realistic theme to Sonic 4's waterfall, which rather fits Sonic 3's style more than Sonic 2. Just because Sonic 2 HD doesn't choose to use Sonic 4's waterfall doesn't mean that Sonic 2 HD's waterfall will be better than Sonic 4's waterfall. And I totally love that fact! I have faith in our artists! And also I have faith in the concept artists at this forum, because they set Sonic 2 HD in the right direction!

[Neo]

At one point in time, we must decide on a graphics style, and go with it. And we did that in March 15 2010, even if we knew some people would dislike it.

Oh god damn it are you kidding me. Where is Endri, he's gonna flip.

Uhh, right, on topic. I think water distortions might look okay, I dunno. It's impossible to know without even trying. In any case, Emerald Hill is the only level with waterfalls that overlap the player, isn't it?

[Rokkan]

It is true that the distortion effect might look too distant from the artstyle that the project's going for, but I also thought that without the effect the waterfall might look too artificial and outdated, but I suppose depending on how the waterfall is illustrated and animated there might be no need for this effect. It really all depends on how it'll actually look in action so that we can decide whether the distortion clashes too much with the rest of the graphics or if the lack of them will make the waterfall look too outdated/artificial.

This post has been edited by Rave: 26 January 2011 - 09:06 PM

[Hamneggs]

At the very least, Aquatic Ruin better have Sonic 4 waterfalls

I vote for this too. ARZ assets haven't really been started yet, so there is plenty of room to work this in, and in this level, the waterfalls would only distort the background, and then only slightly. Also, why hasn't there been any discussion of the combination of the two art styles? On a related note, I would hope that there is some sort of underwater effect in every zone with water. If there is one thing that Sonic 2 did weakly, it was the under water style. Perhaps that (god forbid) Sonic 3 wave, maybe a distance fog, aquatic life (FISH, gosh darnit. I WANT FISH!!!!!), bubbles made by sonic swimming and/or A SWIMMING ANIMATION?

[Canned Karma]

We won't be having Sonic 4 style, "realistic" waterfalls because of the reasons LOst just gave. Mimicking that style goes well against the art direction that has been set. There hasn't been any discussion around 'combining art styles' because there's nothing to discuss: the art style is finalized. That was an executive staff decision that will not change. Is it possible that we'll play around with seeing what can and can't be handled in the game after the first release? Certainly. Same goes for any sort of water effect. I'm not making any guarantees on what will and will not be done graphically for those aspects because we have quite a ways to go before that zone is even being built, much less playtested.

Sonic will not be swimming, sorry Hamneggs

[Lapper]

Waaa. So other than that, could we incorporate the cartoony ripple effect from NSMB when you jump in/out of the water, along with the splash? That'd be cool.

This post has been edited by Sonica: 27 January 2011 - 10:25 AM

[Canned Karma]

Those are both things we've discussed, and the result is almost exactly the same is what I previously posted. Any sort of ripple effect would be driven by the computer's hardware, and until playtesting is being actively done, we're not going to be putting in features that will make the game heavier on systems that it needs to be. Having a splash effect doesn't quite fall in the same category given that it's art based; the only technical side of that would be th positioning of the splash centered on Sonic. Sure, we'd like to have something like that available or we wouldn't have talked about it, so it falls into the, 'probably feasible, but not a priority' category for the first release of ARZ.

[Lapper]

Ok, it's nice to know you're putting a lot of thought into things.