I managed to view it with the help of IGN's app. The speed shoes music isn't the best. It's a bit boring, but it's not bad. You can definitely hear the CD inspiration in it.
Agree with the music. It's not bad, but not nearly as good as the rest of the music. I love the afterimages when you have the Speed Shoes, though.
Two awesome music tracks studiopolis and Mirage Saloon Two and a half mediocre music tracks speed shoes, invisibility, and title screen I vote that invincibility music should instead be a remix of Can You Feel the Sunshine to help even things out
They're definitely going for a CD vibe with the speed shoes. I'd honestly rather just have the current level's music speed up though. I always liked that way of handling the speed shoes music better. It just feels more natural and polished.
I love the speed shoes music. The only jingle that needs to be changed is the goofy Sonic 3 1-up jingle. I never liked it, and it doesn't fit well with the other jingles so hopefully that's just a placeholder until a new jingle is made.
The issue with that though is that if you speed up sound, the pitch will sound higher. The reason the Megadrive got away with this is because the sound is basically a synth and the samples used are single cycle waveforms. The only way to achieve what you ask for is to have some live time stretching program like Melodyne which unfortunately is some arcane technology. I would love for this to be implemented but I get the feeling Sega and co don't want to pay out to licence that technology.
It's why games like Generations, Sonic 4 and Rush Adventure (invincibility in this game, but that's arguing semantics) use entirely different tracks for speed shoes, and personally I don't mind the technique. The resulting tracks can be made to be extra interesting little remixes in their own, which then blend back into the regular track almost seamlessly when done right. Although it requires an extra track for at least every level where Speed Shoes might appear, so it's a bit of extra work. Going for a universal Speed Shoes track is cool too though. The SA1/2 track is one of my favourite jingles in the series. I like that the Mania title-theme makes up both the Invincibility and Speed Shoes jingles for a good bit of consistency. The Invincibility track is particularly cool imo.
This isn't necessarily true. If you have a sped-up version stored as a separate track, it's not too difficult to switch to that track when you get the speed shoes. You determine what part of the track to start based on where you are in the normal speed, and then go back after a set amount of time. A little bit of math and mixing is needed to make the transition smooth and prevent pops, but it's nowhere near impossible.
Those are just bodge it and scarper techniques IMO. Years ago when I was doing music for S2HD I experiemented with live time stretching and got some acceptable results. I had to put the audio files into their own channels but overall it was a success. If Sega really wanted to achieve the authentic and natural feel of the sped up music then they need to at least put some money into the technology.
It's certainly possible to have the speed shoes music be the normal music sped up, but there isn't really a good way to do so with the kind of sound design they're using that isn't hacky and comparatively expensive from a compute standpoint, since they're using pre-baked audio. You could speed up the music on the fly, but then it's almost certainly not going to sound as good as one track that you know works. As Mania is sort of trying to be "what if a new 2D Sonic came out on Saturn", this could be a conscious design choice anyway, since it's likely that the game would use Red Book audio and thus have a separate track for the speed shoes a-la Sonic CD.
Live time stretching is old technology, goes all the way back to early 2000's so in terms of will it be heavy on CPU is really a non factor now. Melodyne has for few years been able to change chords in pre recorded music long thought to be impossible so that should give you an idea on just how far the technology has come. With higher sample rate you can even lower artifacts like alising and even more with an excellent sound engineer. It's not impossible to do, it just requires some finesse.
I'm liking the fast shoes track a lot more than the invincibility theme. I like the title screen jingle but I think the invincibility music sounds too similar? Whereas the fast-shoes track gradually becomes more urgent which fits the limited use of the fast shoes quite well. Sonic CD NA soundtrack did it best because the fast shoes and invincibility tracks are completely different from each other (whereas the these two tracks in the Jp soundtrack sound very similar). I've never particularly liked listening to zone music sped-up because it never sounds as good as the normal speed. I think a totally different piece of music is far better. Regarding the footage; In Studiopolis we got a good look at the "Tails assist" move. Looks easy enough to use. Wonder if they've tweaked this move from the remasters. It was funny watching the chicken badnik chasing Knuckles in Mirage Saloon and keeping up with him! It's pretty awesome a badnik has the drop-dash move. Would love it if they give another badnik the spindash or super peel-out.
lol wut? It's called Roller. It's an armadillo and doesn't look anything like a chicken. That said, yeah it was actually quite funny to see that. A badnik that potentially poses a minor threat through a fun attackin strategy. It's a clever evolution.
Regarding the whole conversation of the technical feasibility of having sped-up music for speed shoes... You guys seem to be forgetting that Taxman has already done it, and it was done correctly. The Sonic 1 and 2 mobile ports use pre-recorded music and speed shoes music speeds up flawlessly there. No starting over, just a seamless transition to the fast version. It's accomplished via 2 audio files, TrackName.ogg and TrackName_F.ogg, where it switches to the fast version at the correct place. It would be kind of neat if they did that for Mania, but I'm guessing it won't happen since Tee Lopes already made a speed shoes theme.
You're right. I am forgetting that. In which case, go with intentional SEGA Saturn design choice, then :v:
I thought it's been around since the 80s? For both pitch correction uses (ie. 24>25fps films in PAL regions), and changing pitches in pre-recorded samples without speeding or slowing them.
The keyword is "live". There are lots of time stretching methods, but until recently it couldn't be done in real time.
Maybe it's just easier for now to use a separate track for the speed shoes because the game (and it's music) is still in development? When all the game's tracks are set in stone they will use sped up versions of level tracks instead? I'd prefer sped up versions of level tracks instead of separate speed up music myself.
