General Project Thread & Feedback

Yes, because the "other" project would also have the large community/fanbase to work on it, an engine, and the willpower, art skills, and determination to make another Sonic 2 HD.

As awesome as hat would be, that's just not happening

 

I think the art is amazing and the best direction. It's the only reason why I signed up to the forum to help with this.

 

All I'm seeing in response is basically;

• "We are amateurs" as an excuse for poor work
• "It's good enough as it is" as a justification for poor work
• "If you don't like it, do your own"

Well that last one would be fair enough were it actually worth the effort on one's own. It's not. What would the point be, exactly anyway? "Hey guys, welcome to my new project, the other HD Sonic project"? At which point it becomes silliness, when folk who like neither start their own other other other versions when they find they don't like the direction any of them take. Not worth doing.

I'll leave off it here. I tried, whatever. You guys obviously don't want to improve.

 

One question for you guys:

When talking about Online Ranking and Time Attack, Do you like a "ghost" feature as per Time Attack Races? (a la Mario-Kart? )
Having played some decent time on Mario Kart it's very useful to study and spot where you can cut some time from.

 

That would go down a storm. Also, could there be a no rings setting for that hardcore gaming.

 

Slagging off != helping

But whatever

 

I thought you weren't getting involved?

:3

 

I still like to stick my oar in, every now and then =P

No, behave! I was just stating my opinion from an outside perspective. However, I'll take my beeswax elsewhere =P

 

You were quoting my signature, which didn't represent the body of my posts. Since my signature can be blocked at the member's discretion, it is irrelevent. Sure smells like split/trash around here.

 

Okay, I'm gonna give my view on the project as a whole like I said I would in the Mockups thread.

Warning; text wall approaching, but please, please, PLEASE read this.

The item monitor animations are fantastic. Well, the one with the slight fuzzy animation on the item icon before it gets distorted and the black and white static kicks in. THIS particular item in the project is possibly the only thing I can see as taking the game to a different level, rather than just a high resolution trace. And that's what most of the sprites are, as well as all of the backgrounds. Sure, there are odd details that have been added to some of the sprites that couldn't have been added in the original, but that's not the point.

The point is this; after discussing with Jay about this particular project, we came to a conclusion; it's veering away from the thing that Sonic really was; a cartoon in videogame format.

This may or may not have been mentioned before, but fuck it, I'm gonna give my say on it independently. Now most of you might argue in saying that this does look like a cartoon, especially with it's somewhat abstract looking backgrounds/scenery, and the fact that Sonic doesn't look like a real hedgehog. And that is partially correct. But what is wrong with emphasising the cartooniness of the characters? If you don't know what I mean, I will explain;

Sonic's sprite at the moment looks pretty well shaded, and is quite a nice image. Now imagine him with a black outline around his form and his limbs. Doesn't that look more cartoony? I expect the response of "This is more of a serious themed game than a wacky one". This is my retort;

Fucking COME ON! The antagonist creates easily destructible robots, of which are powered by animals, uses some of the wackiest weapons when fighting him, and is called Dr Eggman for fuck's sake.

Not only would giving the characters a black outline help emphasise them being cartoon characters, but adding some detail in fine black lines (Similar in ilk to the sprites in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix) would give the art a bit more depth for the characters. Also, when I say try giving them black outlines, I don't mean outlines that are so thick that they'd stick out like a sore thumb. Something subtle enough would do to emphasise their wackiness AND not make them clash with the backgrounds.

One thing that Backbone should have done was add a few more frames of animation to make the HD sprites move smoother, and this is something the characters in this project ought to have, as it would look much better with a few more frames of animation in places.

Now then; the backgrounds...

The tiles that Sonic traverses on would need extra features that could give more depth to the scenery. Let's take, for example, Emerald Hill Zone's "soil" tiles. Yes, they seem very accurate to the originals, but what about giving occasional tiles a bit of overgrowth coming out of the cracks and gaps. Y'know, clumps of grass that grows, like on most cliff faces.

Speaking of the grass, it may look like the original, on higher resolution, but it could do with more depth. Adding grass like texture to the grass tiles would really help create some definition.

Another example I can think of is Chemical Plant Zone. Why not add a bit of rust here and there on some of the tiles? Not too much mind; just enough to add definition. And remember folks, this is the key word here; definition.

Don't get me wrong, the artwork does look nice. But I, along with a few others, think that you aren't pushing yourselves enough to give the art more definition that it so rightly deserves.

You people can do SO much better than what you're doing right now, and the item monitor shows this.

Seriously, look at the monitor that speak of for inspiration. Another source to look at for inspiration is, oddly enough, Sonic Heroes, as this is the first and only 3D Sonic game that goes back to it's root artistically. I mean, look at the cliff faces on Seaside Hill; they have a checkered pattern on them, and have some definition due to textures. This is the sort of thing that would help define some backgrounds Sonic 2, such as EHZ's soil tiles.

Like I've said before, the artwork is very nice, and is quite accurate to the original, but it needs improvement, as there a lot of depth in it.

I seriously hope this doesn't fall on deaf ears. I seriously want to see this project as a successful one, and this is my way of supporting it; by giving you guys advice on how to improve the artwork, because I can envisage this thing being amazing. But if the direction doesn't change slightly, my dreams of this will be shattered, as well as many other people's.

And please, don't take this as me picking a fight, as I'm not. I'm offering some artistic guidance.

I hope that people will understand where I'm coming from with this text wall.

So, a recap on what I'm trying to get across;

- The character sprites could do with more definition and have some emphasis on their cartoony nature included, as well as extra frames added for smoothness.
- More details (Such as clumps of grass, grassy and rocky texture and rust) should be added to the background tiles for more depth and definition.

Thank you for your time.

 

The black outlines on Sonic might be interesting, though I'll have to see a test of that before I make a judgement on that. As for the level art stuff, I think adding a texture to the blocks and grass might be a little overkill, though the grass growing in random spots might be interesting. However, I feel that Emerald Hill should be kept clean looking, and so random grass growing here and there through the blocks might make it lose that clean feeling. Now, grass growing between blocks in Aquatic Ruin Zone, that might be worth seriously looking into once we get to it.

The backgrounds, well, those have been. "Updated."

We still haven't actually decided on a final art direction for Chemical Plant Zone, but we do like what Compsense was doing with those last submissions of his in another thread. We may go with that or base it off that if it works well enough.

 

You know that if anyone here really feels that it could be done better then they should do some artwork or music themselves. You don't have to be spot on with your art but you could always do rough mockups to get your idea across or edit the WIP art, unless that's too much effort.

There is art that I'm not particularly fond of but I know if I want to put my idea across then I best get my head into making it. There's music that's been confirmed that I think "meh", but know if I feel that strongly about it being changed then should have ago myself.

I'm more for the way the monitor animates in the original Sonic 2, I like this new concept but if I'm that bothered, I should get doing my own edit.


Maybe if anyone has their little nags when the game is finished they could edit what they like, or just stick to the originals.

 

Here's the thing; adding bits of grass growing out of random gaps/cracks wouldn't make it look unclean, and neither would adding a stoney sort of texture. It'd just define it a bit more. Same goes for adding texture to the grass tiles. It wouldn't be overkill if it was done right. I'm not saying add massive amounts of detail, but enough to give it some depth. Subtlety is the key, but if it's too subtle, then it's pointless even attempting this sort of technique. Subtle enough so that there aren't dirty great dark areas in the texture, but not too subtle so that it looks defined and doesn't look like a flat block with different colours painted on.

Whilst I think of the grass growing out of gaps and cracks in random places, don't limit it to just one zone. Try this technique with all of the zones that have grassy areas, rather than limit it to ARZ.

As for CPZ, if a final art direction hasn't been chosen, please consider this suggestion I made as a starting point as well as looking at other submissions. The last thing that this project needs is to look flat and bland.

I'm just thinking of ways of adding more to this project's art direction. You don't have to just stick to what's already been laid out in the original. The original is as it is due to time constraints AND hardware limitations, and now it's more of a starting point to what could be something AMAZING.

There are so many ideas that me and Jay have discussed about concerning this project that I could go on forever about. At the moment, it seems like the group here is holding back on their full potential, and are too scared to try things out and experiment with different things that could improve the original's artwork vastly.

There is so much potential to be realised here, and yet, it seems like everyone fears that their experiments will stray too far from the original vision, when it is actually possible to create artwork that DOES improve on the basic foundations that were laid. It seems to me that people here need to just feel that fear, and do some experimentation anyway, and see how it comes out.

It would help if I had a graphics tablet, as I would definitely do some experiment images to show you what I mean.

As for the idea of emphasising the cartoony nature of the characters, I'm glad this idea interests at least one person in the team.

Seriously people; don't be afraid to try and add more depth.

EDIT:

@steveswede; I know, and I would be happy to. As soon as I get a graphics tablet, I shall give some rough examples of what I mean.

 

Hmm, is this the kind of look you're talking about, or is this too much? Also, it's very possible (and easy) to create slightly different textures for it, so that 2,3,4+ etc. different versions exist.

 

You know Distroya, this is the only very respectuful, mature, positive and constructive criticism that actually I want to spend some of my developing time into, and I really thank you for this post, which I hope to be the standard of discussion we love to interact to.

• About Character art and outlines:

After one year of drawing our beloved hedgehog on single alpha pixel control, I've added all the details I could, but at the same time paid attention not destroying the "original" feeling the original artists had intended to, keeping intact the very same Sonic we all grown up to love.

Let's take one example to illustrate my method of adding new details on HD remasterings, basing off the original frames: (this part comes after about 2 hours to get the shapes drawn and pixel aligned)

(zoomed version to see the manual shading & details)

The low resolution there, was incredibly difficult to interpret and chain to the most difficult animation I've ever drawn yet.
Every small detail you add, need perfect and pixel alpha consistency. Every single pixel you see there, trough vectors, had been adjusted to look right in the following Animation:

*never seen before*
http://i661.photobucket.com/albums/uu340/s...taff/ULoopA.png
*never seen before*


Now, in regard to the outlines I highly disliked them on 2D, as they always gave me the impression of some kind of bad attachment to the environments.
But let's get on the application of S2HD:

Outlined
Current

The only way of them to look right is to actually outline most of the art, but then it becomes one kind of pastel world, like Super Paper Mario.

The sharp-colourful world of S2HD is made of both metallic and realistic-cartoony style, which ultimately will allow for hand painted BGs and textures to blend in altogether.

• About the Level Art tiles,

As you know we are actually dealing and remastering a basic HD tileset for EHZ based on the original S2 tile layout.
Due the resolution increase, where originally one single pixel could tile in perfectly with completely different blocks, now 4 pixel green shades can cause a mess on other metablocks.
With this premise that I love the current polished style (which is fantastic with the new BGS), we indeed plan to add new tiles and metablocks.

However and very logically, given we don't want a Paper Mario, Disneyworld or anything radical which will completely deviate from the original concept, before adding fancy stuff like new smaller flowers, growing grass (which I like alot!) bulbs and maybe some additional general lease of stuff, we'll need one solid tileset first.

• About the General Project Feedback:

We really, really enjoy and love working as a team on S2HD.
It won't come in a surprise we don't get even one penny out of it, just loads of personal gratification and excitement to be able to actually CREATE our "Good" future vision of Sonic the Hedgehog Megadrive game, in HD standards and with Online Multiplayer (+Custom Levels) plus whatever we'll have in store for laters.

It sounds ambitious, it sounds crazy at times to think such aim could be even possible, for a bunch of person in their free time to achieve.
We started our road seeing step cliffs of difficulties everywhere:

Who will draw all this Art with such alpha pixel precision? How much time will it be required? How I need to schedule my free time to achieve this goal?
Needless to say, nobody of us had ever attempted something like this, we studied by ouselves the best remastering approaches for everything, knowing much of the first booths would had been partially to waste for a good cause.

But S2HD Staff never abandoned the challenge.

And we always had the door open for the new contributors to be part of S2HD Staff, showing their art skills to prove how great their idea was, then being ready to tweak it until it was ready to be included.

Growler, Compsense, and all of S2HD Staff me included, had done this.

So how can you really help us on creating S2HD?

Artists produce Art, and we need Art.
Stop actig like Tim Burtons wannabe, or claim marvellous professional artist visions with.. TEXT!
Wanna change my idea on *Springs*? Illustrate me, and convince me how it would be viable to do.

Yes, critique is allowed if properly and respectfully exposed.
Immature Bar Chat of the lines: - OMG I've got one idea! - Baww I want it different! - Or you're shit making shit - posts, will be considered waste of our time, certainly better spent in development and therefore ignored.

Other than this, we're preparing a jusciy surprise for all Sonic Retro members in those weeks!


-Vincent

 

Well said Vincent.



@Compsense



I really do love the work you have done on this. I wonder is it possible to have some animation:-

RED:- The blue lights flashing.

GREEN:- The dials moving left to right when the base moves up and down in CPZ. Like if the pressure increases when it's moving up.

YELLOW:- These look like discs and I think it would look amazing if they had some motion like they were spinning.

 

You're still following the original sprite too closely, I can barely even tell what I'm looking at. The form of the original sprite was defined by the resolution, often something would have to look a certain way or else there wouldn't be enough pixels for it. The original sprite was hideous, Sonic's body parts seem to be randomly strewn about, and making it sharper is only making it worse.

 

As explained above Phos, that's an extremely long and complex animation, and not a static frame.

The way each spike looks, the light cast or the way Sonic body is strangely angled, are keyframes for the following parts to give out a particular rotating animation effect.
Despite that I've fixed, changed & added tons of shades and details, which in the original were not even referred (check the hands definition, the spikes now fixed number, the spotlights, the smiles) and was able to properly animate them with such huge resolution, and alpha pixel blending.

(You can compare side by side the frames)


As another interesting note, here was the prepared frame, BEFORE the Uber version with details:

Original TD Uber

See the difference?

If you're still not satisfied, then by any mean.. SHOW ME!
Propose your idea of a better alternative on this animation, and you know what.. It might get in!

 

I told you that it would look better to draw his quills as cones instead of fins. You said it was too much of a departure from the original. I would have thought that making Sonic look like some ort of dinosaur would have been too divergent, but your the art director.

His quills aren't oriented correctly. They're parallel to the view, Sonic is not. It really only gets worse from there. One particular frame has Sonic's quills pointing in seemingly random directions.

None of this would be a problem if you weren't tracing the old frames.

And I just noticed something:

What's the deal with Sonic's background leg? His ankle seems to be emerging directly from his body.

 

@ Compsense: That is EXACTLY what I was talking about. Thank you for having a go at it, as it looks amazing.

Thank you for praising my criticism.

As regards to your illustration of an outlined character, that's not really what I had in mind. It's not just the outside area of the character that I thought should be outlined; it's the WHOLE of the character that I was thinking. Problem is, I can't currently show you what I'm talking about, of which annoys me, so that demonstration will have to wait for now.