I hope whoever's in charge really gets the U.S. soundtrack (yes I prefer the U.S soundtrack, bite me) for a later patch. Not only that, I hope they will use the "full" versions of the songs found on the Sonic Boom CD. Oh, just thought of something... Do you think there is a chance we may get an even higher resolution of Sonic CD cutscenes? Theres nothing more that I want then those cutscenes shown in a higher crisp resolution.
They'll probably be the same ones we've gotten since Mega Collection, only slowed down a little so they're not running like crazy all over the place.
That was another concern I had. I didn't like the increased frame-rate they applied to the ending cutscenes.
You can get a slightly better result if you tinker with the settings, Fusion is dumb in that regard in that there's no access to the plugin's options menu: (why yes I did go through the trouble of retaking the screenshot in Gens/GS)
Seems to me that hq2x et al. are only really good for smoothing edges, whereas they can get confounded by intentional dither, etc. and might end up making them look worse. I always tended to play using unfiltered graphics, but I started giving Kega's filter a shot recently; I think I'll end up sticking with that or one of the available TV/NTSC modes.
The problem with those filters is that they blur the output -- sure, you get all the cool transparency effects, but at the cost of the entire game being blurred, which is a bit annoying, at least to me. I guess it's unavoidable.
The NTSC filter is pretty neat, mainly because it shows how game graphics were specifically designed around it (and as a result look better with it, as shown by the water). It seems to be the intended vision of what the game designers had in mind graphically. I think the only problem people have with it these days is it seems a bit fuzzy and not super high quality.
The slight blur wouldn't be a "problem" (no more than plain gradient corruption, anyway) if such a filter was activated by a different button combination than the other one, so it could also be enabled and disabled at will. In any case, I need to stress that while the hq filter artificially improves some of the shapes, the NTSC filter just makes things look like they were originally intended to (take a look at the water in Neo's pic, there's many new, gradually brighter, yellow shapes in the water that can't be seen otherwise). Adding this filter could also ideally allow for other games that use these effects (like Vectorman or even Sonic 1) to get the most faithful ports ever to the original designers' views, if they decide to continue using the Retro Engine. Taxman, please take this into account, even if it's just for future updates. After all, SEGA has said that they're now listening to feedback, you're our only hope. =( By the way, I wonder what would happen when applying an hq filter on top of the NTSC one.
That last sentiment is exactly what I was thinking of when I first saw the comparison between the NTSC/CRT filters available and the hq2x (or higher) filters. Owning Sonic games on the PC and GCN, the first few years of Sonic games were the only ones where I actually played them as intended to be viewed, ala the CRT monitor, but being so young, I didn't really notice those transparency effects that I can see now. That said, my main experience of Sonic was really through the newer TVs and emulators that were at least composite/component or higher resolutions, so having the hq filters never really bothered me. Perhaps one could look at all the assets with and without NTSC filters, and determine which were meant to utilize the effects and which weren't and only have a NTSC filter for those while a hq filter for everything else? Or would there be some easier, more efficient way of doing that? Now I'm curious...
Rather than that: implement transparency properly, since it's no longer a gargantuan task as in the olden days. Then use an upscaler on everything else - if you must, assuming redrawing's not an option!
...I don't think that mixing perfectly smooth shapes with sligthly blurred pixels would look too good, but having both filters as options would make every Sonic CD fan happy. EDIT: As for redrawing the original graphics into transparencies, etc, see: Sonic 2HD. =P
Not quite what I meant. But yeah, suggesting relatively minor enhancements like that risks a snowball effect, so that lends blanket filters such as hq2x some of their appeal.
Personally after just buying SFIII Online Edition, having something similar to the crisp filter in that would be a great choice but other than that I agree with dsrb that some real transparency would be a very good idea and I feel that redrawing the artwork to take out the pixel sharp edges would be the best, nothing like S2HD as that level of redrawing is in a different league.
Holy shit. Im just late to the party it seems :v: ! So I guess I'll resume all my thoughts: This is gonna be awesome. Day 1 Purchase in Steam to me. And to Taxman: You're way too epic. I remember the trailer you made long time ago about the engine and stuff, and it was pretty impressive. I REALLY hope that someday in the future every other classic game get a port like this one, using this engine and stuff.
