Sonic 2 HD

* Why is the music way worse than the commnunity submissions from before?
* Why does the music clip?
* Why does the music sound like it was converted from 128kbps MP3 to WAV?

* Why did the old old old alpha builds play better and feel more like sonic 2?
* Why does full screen not work properly? why is there a white bar on the right?

 

I can't play it. After fighting with Comodo antivirus to actually let the files extract, now it says "can't find s2hd64.dll" (or s2hd.dll, depending on which exe I try to run), even though they're right fucking there:

 

You forgot to mention "Why is the boss music missing the section at the end?" the most jarring thing for me, personally.

Also, if resources are a concern (trololol), why not just use .ogg format?

 

Uh. I don't know about you, but a) when is a CRT exactly "NTSC", and b) I have never seen any sort of greenish tint you are talking about. Not even on RF...

 

I had the exact same problem, even with Comodo.

 

Soo... Why does Robotnik have his head lights on? It's day time.


I haven't been able to download it yet, but from what I see it looks amazing. When I was looking at it I wasn't paying to much attention, but then I saw the intro... The animation is spectacular, I never expected it to look like that (one thing I would like too know is why you changed it from the original?) And the shading just tops it off and makes it really seem alive. The rest was just as amazing.

As far as Sonic goes, I think you should make him brighter. He always looked like more of a baby blue, He looks that way in the official art (though the official art has a lot of contrast usually). I may be wrong as I haven't looked recently, but I do believe he is meant to be brighter. Other than that he lacks depth that the original had, I like the current one most, but some of the changes from the last one make him look odd.

Other than that, Sonic's falling animation (the new one.) looks a little odd and unnatural. Same with his looking up, actually I know the problem with this one, when he looks up the lighting stays the same it should change when he looks up.

The environmental animations look good, but they're a bit repetitive though since this is clearly cartoon it may fit. and finally, the foreground flowers bobbing up and down looks strange again, it may fit with the cartoon style I think it really just takes some time getting used to...

___

Using Photoshop's vector tools? Hmm... I've never used them before...

 

I don't even know why you are being so patronising about my point Oerg866, it's like you're purposely misreading my post to make me look foolish. I mean exactly what I say - I've found that the tinting issue is typically more noticeable on a CRT (less pronounced on an LCD, or other flat panel probably due to better signal processing) being fed an NTSC signal. I may live in a PAL territory, but this is something I've noticed by default when playing an NTSC device on a dual standard CRT TV and something which friends living in NTSC territories have observed to me when playing Sonic for years on a TV and then moving over to an emulator on PC and comparing the two.

In the end, I'm merely stating an observation and making a postulation on why the developers may have made Sonic more purple to begin with. It's just a theory based on my own experience and it may well be entirely incorrect, but I would appreciate it that if you choose to respond to my point, then a little more tact and respect would be nice. I think we may as well put this line of debate to bed.

Regarding why we didn't use .ogg Volpino, believe me, it was a big question on my mind too prior to this release and one which is better answered by our programmer (hint).

 

I really wish this damn thing would start up properly. Originally it got to the title screen no problem and would remain black without loading EHZ, and now it doesn't even get to the "S2HD Team" screen.

 

I agree with that one, I have to say that I don't like that new animation in the least...

 

* Why is the music way worse than the commnunity submissions from before?
Subjective. Not going to comment either way on this one other than the fact that I think it matches the visual style very well.

* Why does the music clip?
Yeah, this is an issue. I mentioned in my earlier post that the music was way too loud, but I assumed that was just an engine mix issue. The files themselves are clipped beyond all acceptable level. The arrangement is excellent, the mixing is decent (and I don't throw out praise for mixing easily, even for my peers who have careers producing commercial shit) but the mastering on this is atrocious. Get someone who knows how to master tracks in the pipeline and nip this in the bud before it becomes a problem later on in production. (And just so it's clear I'm not talking about 'herf derf put new soundfonts on da musix call it a master lul' community misconception of the term, I'm talking about properly processing the finished stereo mixdown so that it's of distributable volume and balance without being a distorted mess)

* Why does the music sound like it was converted from 128kbps MP3 to WAV?
Really? I mean, REALLY? Granted, like mentioned above the harshness/distortion due to improper mastering stage is pretty obvious, but mp3 encoding generally exhibits several faults: Loss of clarity of highs, smudginess, loss of stereo seperation, none of which are present in the track. Especially the loss of highs. I'm going to assume you wouldn't actually be able to tell what an encode sounds like despite your observation, so let me give you a little visual help (Left = EHZ.wav, Right = encoded to 128kbps mp3, very audible loss btw) I thought our little chat on IRC would have calmed you down enough that you didn't make yourself look like an ass with hyperbole, but I guess you're too worked up.

Furthermore, literally no game nowadays ever ships with pure wav for a soundtrack, the limitations of disc based media and/or bandwidth considerations are too great of a pressure, so your expectation for a CD quality stream for use during gameplay is kinda dumb.

 

I still don't get why the music has to be in WAV format, having lossless formats like FLAC.

 

Well, Saxman has continually touted his audio engine being able to play looping oggs (!@!@!!@!!@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WOWWWWWWWWW) so I'm assuming wav is a temporary measure to get the alpha out the door.

 

What about .ogg format?

 

I'm more concerned about why the boss theme was short. I myself don't have any problems with Emerald hill, and I'm not one who can detect mastering issues easily (or without headphones and paying close attention at least) so...

But yeah, that's the biggest error as far as music is concerned on my end really.

 

Played it. Just a few things.

This is a pretty solid effort. I really like the animation for the title screen. The gameplay feels spot on with the Megadrive games. Music was okay and I'm happy that you guys decided on lossless formats for the sounds and stuff.

Besides the DRM and licensing (probably the biggest laugh I had all year so far), I have some issues with it. I understand that this is an alpha release but there were some things that could've been done better. The game client itself barely works half the time - hangs before the title screen, hangs before the level loads, hangs before the disclaimers, etc. All of this also comes with about 99% of CPU usage when they occur. I also have a problem with getting the game to run in fullscreen, at least with the 64bit executable. The manual says that the graphics need to be very high and what not, but the option to go fullscreen is grayed out. Not sure what's going on there. In fact, the whole method for changing options is kinda dumb. There should be a separate launcher for advanced options or some kind of text editor friendly file for editing settings. I really dislike changing graphic options while the game is running. Besides the client itself, one thing I don't like is how you handle the rotating graphics for Sonic running up a ramp or on a loop. The extra frames for Sonic going up the ramp should be drawn instead of just scaling the graphic like what the Advance series does. It doesn't really fit that well and seems pretty jarring for some reason.

All in all it has promise. But why it took so long to push this out the door is beyond me. Hope things get better from here.

@IceKnight, I think having the music in FLAC format would require more processing power to pull off. Having WAV files would be a bit better in that regard.

 

For some reason my Norton 360 removed the basic (assuming 32-bit) Sonic2HD.exe off my computer saying it was a Trojan.Gen.2, but the 64-bit Sonic2HD.exe ran flawlessly. It was phenomenal. I can't say how amazing everything looked and ran. Yeah, it's just EHZ, and yeah, it's not entirely perfect, but damn it was amazing. I know it took them a long ass time to give this to us but I don't care. I love the fact that there are people out there with the patience and expertise to make something like this. I applaud the S2HD team for this, it's visually appealing and plays pretty solid. Amazing Job.

 

I haven't been able to play this yet. All I'm getting is a black screen, but I'll try some more. Why does it take so long to quit?

 

-_-

 

It's easy to find mastering issues in the music.





This happens alot due to amateurs believing louder is better.

Personally I would like Falk to master the music for this if he's willing and if the S2HD staff are cool with it because by the sound of it he's a mastering engineer.

 

Let me just clarify right off the bat, I'm not a professional mastering engineer by any stretch of imagination; I know the process, the pitfalls, etc but I don't have the golden ears that let people like Bob Katz charge good money for their craft. I can definitely do competent mastering passes for my own stuff (herp loudness war, etc) but my main craft has always been core music production/mixing.

And in this context, none of us in this community technically are professionals (no offense intended) so I'd be happy to assist.