General Project Thread & Feedback

If Knuckles is going to be playable, his super form probably wouldn't qualify as a 'new feature' given that it was available with S3&K locked onto Sonic 2 if memory serves.

 

I will explain better the new development plans we have the following days, anyway:

Let's start talking about the new "Level Art Style":

Since we upgraded to million colors, 256 color limit don't exists anymore.

HD stands for "High Definition". Any upscaled / hq2x filtered original 4X art, with few color shades or details will be not qualified.
For this reason, being inspired by the "Original Level" feeling, you can picture and add as much details as your creativity dreams of!

However, there are


NEW CONTRIBUTORS GUIDLINES:

• Vector Art is Required. Your program of choice must be able to save Layered and Unrasterized files (Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop, Inkscape..).
  Layered work save us time to redraw parts from scratch and if exported correctly, we can easily put them into the engine.
  
  
• All new Level Art attempts must be posted on "WIP General Art Topic"(Level objects - BG - Foreground or altoghether).
    
• After different ideas, Art and examples have been gathered, S2HD Staff will decide and specify which idea will be worked on.
    
• S2HD Staff will upload the "Approved Idea" image on the Database, and communicate the parts to be "officially" remastered on the Current Project Targets topic, splitting the "Required Level Art". (ie: Grass, Tubes, specific Level Objects)
    
• Contributors must publically state their desired "Required Level Art" which they want to remaster, BEFORE working on it. (Avoid redundant work)
    
• If any Art piece is discontinued by the Contributor for ANY reason, it must be publically stated!(or privately to S2HD Staff members)

DRAWING STYLE

• Start a new base by tracing over the original 4X Level Art shapes*
  
  
• You can *with caution* use gradients on metal plates to make them look right!
  
  
• We accept textures if they feel perfectly integrated into the level
  
  
• To produce it faster and better, using "grid" helps ALOT in "tiling it"
  
  
• Place this "New Sonic Frame"into your level art to test the IN-Game feeling.
  
  ****Mini-Tutorial****
  
  Part 1
  1 - Import the Original 4X art, than Lock it.
  2 - Create a new Layer, and by clicking on the "Layer spot" (or layer properties) change its opacity by 75%
  3 - Draw!
  
  Part 2
  1 - To properly check the results, you can switch back the opacity to 100% by selecting again the layer properties.

 

Hey Vincent. To be entirely true I didn't know much about the style of art you were looking for in Sonic 2 hd. But I have been working and I have hand drawn (No tracing I started from scratch.) Sonic in his 'stage beaten' pose with straight lines. Using the warp tool to get the features right In photoshop CS2. I don't have illustraitor but I beleive Ihave got it right. There's is just one thing I want to know. How do you shade? Do you draw it in of is there an effect that applies the shading for you? Just wanted to know because I would really like to help make some sprites for game.

 

Erm, there's a massive character art page, that shows the exact style that is being done.

Anyway, here's a picture of the style.



And no, you have to do all the shading by hand. But the sprites are going to be remakes of the real ones, and sonic 2 had no end level pose.

 

<!--quoteo(post=231417:date=Oct 3 2008, 11:36 AM:name=Polygon Jim)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Polygon Jim @ Oct 3 2008, 11:36 AM)

And no, you have to do all the shading by hand. But the sprites are going to be remakes of the real ones, and sonic 2 had no end level pose.[/quote]


Ah, Shading is done by had. I know Sonic 2 had no ending pose, this was just a test to see what I could to with vector art. Thanks for the help though. Ill go check out the character art tutorial now.

 

As you have noticed we are using a new system for contributions, in order to be officially accepted in S2HD's new releases.

This process, resumed in a few words:

-Posting your art into WIP General Art
-Refine it until S2HD staff officially approves it
-Once approved, provide the source file into the Database*
-Move further refinements into the relevant Approved Art Topics: Level Art - Badnik Art - Items

Our "S2HD Contributions Manager" is Canned Karma.

He will be managing the approval process and specify in the Current Project Targets - Approved WIP Art List who is "officially working" on X contribution to avoid useless and redundant work.
Follow his instructions and notify him of the status of your contribution, so we can all work at best!

Thanks


*You can send privately to Canned Karma or Vincent the source file so we can directly register it to the Database.
(Alternatively, you can upload it by yourself, but remember to add it as *APPROVED* -Name- !)

 

An announcement to everyone involved in the Sonic 2 HD project:

I'm sad to say that I am leaving the Sonic 2 HD project staff. I am no longer in a position to divide my attention - the work I do in real life occupies all of my thoughts and requires me to devote all of my time and energy.

I am honoured to have helped bring the community together in this endeavour, which I believe will be one of the greatest achievements in the history of the Sonic research and hacking community. It has been a personal gratification of mine to see like-minded individuals in this community working together. The talents of those working within this great project never cease to amaze me. I hope that in time that more and more talented Sonic fans will come together and continue to collaborate with the positive mind-set that has already been set.

It has truly been both a pleasure and honour to organize various aspects of this project's development, and it has been a joy to encourge and leave feedback and advice to the many gifted contributors involved. I will be sure to play the finished product! I wish all those involved with the project my blessings and best wishes. My special thanks go to LOst and Vincent for making this project a reality with their determined attitudes and amazing talents.

God bless!
Athelstone

 

I get that you're busy and all, but can't you just, like... take a break to concentrate on your real life affairs instead of leaving the staff team entirely? I mean, I haven't seen Blue Streak in god knows how long, but I'm sure he's still just as dedicated to the project whenever time allows him to.

No need to make a dramatic exit, but thanks for letting us know you won't be around for a while.

 

As already said, Today S2HD staff loses the most important Project Coordinator and friend I could ever have asked for.

But in life, to achieve dreams and goals we need to chose how to invest the given time in the best efficient way, an sometimes we need to make rough decisions. I understand you perfectly as I myself realized them in my past, and am doing now with S2HD.
I really would like to express again my deepest gratitude for all the difficulties we've been trough and the great organization behind.

Pursue and achieve your dreams now! ^^


-Vincent

 

That's a shame Athelstone. From someone who's keenly observe this project from relativity early eays, I feel you was a great assist to mangement. Good luck with your endeavours whatever they may be!

 

I propose (as many others do as well) that Sonic 2HD, our COMMUNITY PROJECT be open sourced so that the COMMUNITY will be able to make productive additions to the code. You will still have the final say in what goes in, but come on, there are a lot of people that could do this project some justice, but you aren't willing to let them do said justice. In fact, if you ask others they will say the same thing: release the source. (I say this in behalf of just about everybody, oh and (you) is referring to lost)

Edit: I almost forgot, it will help port to other platforms as well, since there are people in the community that can edit the code to run on mac and other unicies.

 

I second this. Especially if it leads to a S2HD that doesn't need some sort of supercomputer to run at full speed with all graphic effects.

 

If there will be an Open Source release, with the necessary editing tools, it will appear only at a later stage of development.

Why? Because we don't want to have thousands of S2HD subprojects, created by random fangamers, stealing the hard work and getting credit from S2HD, thus distracting any potential community artist in other soon-to-be-forgotten fangames.

About bugfixes, less ram use and portability is something we are working on now. (thanks to the 2 TD releases)

Have patience and contribute with Art guys! It's all we request! :D

 

I know that open sourcing the code is a big decision to make, and although I am usually pro-open source, I have reservations against this methodology in a gaming context, and thus support the decision to keep access to the code out of access to the general public.

However, If I'm not mistaken, I thought that once the tech demo was going to be released that ability to contribute to the programming side of the project was going to open up, in so far as to say that there would be an opportunity for people to sign up and join the currently one-man exclusive programmers club with the obvious implications that code must not be shared outside of that group. If you don't need any additional programmers then I guess that's fine, but I think it should just be announced that no help is wanted to clear up any misconceptions that the programming was going to be also community driven as has been the art.

 

Yes Magitek,

You are perfectly right about this.
If there are any potential misunderstandings about the nature of contributing code to our engine, it's the correct time to point them out:

There is no specified need for programmers at this stage of development.
When and if this will be changed in the next future, it will be publically stated with specific positions and programming language requirements.

That's it! ^^

 

Actually, Sonic Action was written in C and it got modded, so watch out =&

 

Cool. Thanks!