[Jeffery Mewtamer]

As a prominent member of Chao Island who has been following the bit of SA2 modding some of its members have done(mostly in regards to the Chao Gardens naturally), and the one who suggested Sonic Retro as a good source for information on the more technical side of things, I can say this much:

Several people over at Chao Island have expressed interest in any mods that might improve the look and/or feel of the game, but few have any idea even where to begin with doing anything(myself included, and I am further hampered by lacking access to a Windows (Virtual) Machine and vision that would be needed to contribute anything.
-One Chao Island Member(forget his screen name off hand) has completely redone the textures for the Chao Gardens and given his permission to bundle them with any larger reskinning project. I have no idea what the results look like, but the guy has gotten several compliments over at Chao Island. I have no idea if this person is interested in making further contributions.
-Overall, I feel like most of the people who are actually interested in doing the work are more in the "learning how to do the basics" phase as far as their own contributions go, and it probably is a little early to try recruiting help.

Still, I like the idea and wish my vision would allow me to do more to contribute.

I will agree that a good first step from an organizational standpoint would be to arrange the textures into more manageable groups that would be manageable for a particular artist. As I said above, someone already reskinned the Chao Gardens, and making the reskin of each level its own sub-project would make a lot of sense. Player Textures, Emenmy Textures, Item Textures, etc might make for other good modules. I also like the idea of possibly backporting textures for levels that were reimagined for Generations, and even made a similar suggestion over at Chao Island.

Though, considering as others have mentioned that re-texturing, even if done right, will only go so far in improving the look of the game, I have to ask:
What, if anything, we know about SA2's lighting system as it is implemented in the Steam version? Is it handled by data files that one could edit without touching the executable or is it hard coded and would require a SA2 mod loader compatible DLL to be functional?
Do we know anything about the SA2 model format beyond it being related to the SA1 model format while still being different enough to render tools for the SA1 format useless?
How difficult would it be to increase draw distance?
And please excuse my ignorance, but what is bump mapping?

Also, considering the modularity of SA2 mods and the potential to stack mods, have there been any mods showcased here, that, even if not bundled with whatever this project produces, would supplement it nicely?

Honestly, I have my doubts this project will ever get anywhere near a proper HD remake, but hey, if we get a few better looking baniks or a level or two gets a fresh coat of paint, I would say that was something gained from the effort.

[KingofHarts]

CADANAMAN, on 13 March 2014 - 05:04 PM, said:

If I feel that a lot of people are down to try this out, then I might give this thing a go. Maybe I'm not the best person to lead this kind of thing, I mean I don't have the best machine to run SA2 at advanced settings. For example, people have Nvidia plugins for ambient occlusion, which by itself makes the game look so much better. I'm gonna have to take a while to think about this.

I normally hate threads like this myself... but I can understand the enormity of the project... and think that with the right team behind it, is worth giving a try. With a concept like this, I think it's good to gauge feedback from people who know the game well and/or better... and seeing as this is the HACKING forum, it seems (?) like the right place to do so, so I don't see WHY anyone would be up-in-arms about it... though it would be nice to perhaps see even an early texture or something.


Anyway, if you are ever in need of a tester of any kind in the future, I run a brand new Alienware 17 that's more than capable of running SA2 on advanced settings. Fuck I can run Generations on advanced settings... I'll be more than happy to test and give feedback... though I can't promise I'll consistently be 100% available to do so... I've been tight on time to do much lately.

I wish you the best of luck in getting this going!

This post has been edited by KingofHarts: 14 March 2014 - 09:54 AM

[CADANAMAN]

You're right, thanks for the advice man.

People didn't really seem to understand what I meant when I said this thread's purpose is to see how many people would be interested, but some people are still just like "why isn't it done yet" or "do it, classy gentleman" lol.
I mean I really could just do every last texture myself, I mean I have photoshop and an art tablet, and it's not like it would bore me. I could really just change the textures to my liking and see if people like it. Who knows.

Well I guess I got a pretty good idea of what people think about this, so I might just go ahead and do that. Thanks for the input everyone, this is actually my first thread here. Maybe I'll stick around. ;3

[KingofHarts]

CADANAMAN, on 14 March 2014 - 09:08 AM, said:

You're right, thanks for the advice man.

People didn't really seem to understand what I meant when I said this thread's purpose is to see how many people would be interested, but some people are still just like "why isn't it done yet" or "do it, classy gentleman" lol.

To be fair, the reason why people normally do tackle down and smother threads like this... is because they USUALLY end up being all style and no substance, all sizzle and no steak, all show and no go, all... AND you get my point.
It's almost instinct for this community to pounce on threads like that... this isn't the GMC after all.

That being said... I think the community DOES, in fact understand what you meant, and people have been rather tame, and in some cases, even receptive to this thread... fairly unusual for an idea thread. I think it goes back to what I stated in my previous post.
Again best of luck and can't wait to see something come out of this.

[Strife]

For what it's worth, I would have had a stroke a long time ago if I had put serious thought into how much work I'd be doing for my indie game. Sometimes it's better to just go ahaead and do stuff and not think any father than the next immediate task. You'd be surprised how much you get done that way.

In this case, maybe start with, say, aiming to upgrade all the Chao World textures. Put everything else on the wayside and when you're done with that, move on to an action stage.

[Covarr]

CADANAMAN, on 14 March 2014 - 09:08 AM, said:

People didn't really seem to understand what I meant when I said this thread's purpose is to see how many people would be interested, but some people are still just like "why isn't it done yet" or "do it, classy gentleman" lol.

It's not that people expected it to be done before posting about it. Over the years, there have been so many threads that usually amount to "I have an idea for something I want, now who wants to do it for me?" with the thread-starter taking some vague lead role such as "project manager" that doesn't actually do any of the work. The reason we like at least some progress before these threads are started is because if someone has something to show, even if it's not a lot, they're far more likely to put in a good chunk of the work throughout the life of the project, and maintain motivation to keep going.

Not that it always works out this way. But it happens often enough that virtually everyone here has an instinctive reaction to threads that don't have something to show from the very beginning.

[MainMemory]

Jeffery Mewtamer, on 14 March 2014 - 08:08 AM, said:

Though, considering as others have mentioned that re-texturing, even if done right, will only go so far in improving the look of the game, I have to ask:
What, if anything, we know about SA2's lighting system as it is implemented in the Steam version? Is it handled by data files that one could edit without touching the executable or is it hard coded and would require a SA2 mod loader compatible DLL to be functional?

I don't have the slightest clue how lighting in SA2 works. I hardly know anything about SA1 either.

Jeffery Mewtamer, on 14 March 2014 - 08:08 AM, said:

Do we know anything about the SA2 model format beyond it being related to the SA1 model format while still being different enough to render tools for the SA1 format useless?

The "SA2 model format" is the Ninja Chunk Model format described in the Dreamcast Katana SDK, alongside the Basic Model that SA1 uses. My attempts at reading, writing and displaying chunk models using the information in the SDK has been less than 100% successful for reasons unknown to me.
SA2B's levels, on the other hand, use another format which is a combination of Ninja and Nintendo's BMD format. Since it's a mashup of two different formats, there's some things that aren't identical to either format, so I've had to reverse engineer quite a bit myself, and some is still a mystery.

Jeffery Mewtamer, on 14 March 2014 - 08:08 AM, said:

How difficult would it be to increase draw distance?

If you can find the structures (don't ask me how, I have no idea) it should be easy. However you'll likely run into the same problem as SADX: you can only increase the draw distance so far before models start being obscured by the skybox anyway.

[CADANAMAN]

DarkyBenji at Chao Island is the one that has already completely redone the Chao World, and he told me he's fine with it being part of this whole thing.

And Nah, screw the whole "project manager" thing where people just sit there and "organize" the project or whatever, I mean I've already done Sonic, Tails(chao world), Knuckles, and some of pumpkin hill.
I'm not going to make any before > after images yet, but still that's what I've done so far.

[ICEknight]

CADANAMAN, on 15 March 2014 - 09:50 AM, said:

I've already done Sonic, Tails(chao world), Knuckles, and some of pumpkin hill.
I'm not going to make any before > after images yet

Why? That's what people want to see.

[KingofHarts]

I'd ask... at least let us see one character. Even if incomplete... it'd be cool to see a glimpse of what you have in store.

[Metal Knuckles]

I'd say, wait until you have something you feel you want to show us. Too many people here are clambering for evidence that this you're actually doing this, rather than an invested interest in how well it's being done. Those that fall into the latter category should have no problem waiting until you come up with a decent image showing off several of your changes at once.