Levels & Items Art

Vincent and I were discussing your Knuckles artwork and we were very impressed Jonna.

If you have a desire to produce more character sprites Jonna, please feel free to do so, but they must be in vector as that is the standard that has been set by Vincent's Sonic frames.

Taxman, being one of few to have produced a working Sonic engine in the last 8 years or so of Sonic fan gaming, has recommended using the 16x16 chunks, and for good reason. It saves an enormous amount of space, making the project workflow more efficient. The levels will also look more congruent, since the blocks will all be constructed from the same tileset. As far as I'm concerned, Death of Rats has set the standard for this and I see no reason to depart from that.

Edit: As for Badnik art in raster, let's wait for Vincent to return so we can discuss it further.

 

Do we really need to worry about space issues? I mean, what's to say we can't make this game take up 3-4 GB? Like most current generation games. I just feel that using the 16x16 chunks would be really limiting, though I guees it would be more accurate to the original.

 

Here is a quick mockup I did while making dinner. This was done using one of my SVG tiles as a base and took a total of about 10 minutes inbetween dashing to the kitchen.



SVG of original tile on left. My varient on the right (though now that I've looked at it at 100% instead of 800%, I'd make the borders slightly thicker).

For the same reason we stick to a palette, the developers of Needlemouse and the graphics engine want it to run on pretty much anything.

 

Well, PC, 360, PS3, GCN, PS2, and DC can all handel large games. If it were ported to the DS or PSP the graphics would all need to be scaled down and take up a lot less space anyway. (Though, I don't really see a point to porting a HD game to portables...)

 

What about the eee PC and it Atom based equivalents? or maybe a much older PC?

You have to take into consideration VRAM/RAM space used to store the blocks during play for instance.

 

Just wondering about the sudden 'change of heart' with the way things are flowing here...

From the amount of work [and hours of work] people have spent on this project, isn't it a little late to change our minds on this - even if we did want to do as suggested?

IMO, I think if people start chipping at the foundation of what they've all accomplished, I'd say *that* could probably be the very thing that could lead to it's downfall.

Any project as big as this being done without teamwork, will most certainly fall. May I suggest people put behind their differences, and actually *finish* the work, before we can go onto the next stage?


One step at a time folks

 

Since we're on art styles - why not use the Sonic Battle art sty*shot dead*



Back to the serious side, here's a pair of questions:
How many of you decided not to help because of the vector-only policy?

How many of you decided not to help because of the fear-of only seeing the project fail in the end?
Are you fears due to the engine programming failing, or other misc. reasons?

How many of you decided not to help because of the palette policy?

How many of you decided not to help because of the dedication required?

How many of you decided not to help because of "unclear" project art direction?

 

My Reasons:
the vector-only policy
the fear-of only seeing the project fail in the end
the palette policy
"unclear" project art direction?
You.

 

Vector-only policy?: didn't like it, but I adjusted

Fear-of only seeing the project fail in the end?: this is a major worry of mine
-Are you fears due to the engine programming failing, or other misc. reasons?:I haven't seen anything solid enough to make me feel like this project is going anywhere. We can make all the art we want, but it's all no good without an engine.

Palette policy?: I really don't like this nor do I see it working

Dedication required?: not really

"Unclear" project art direction?: Yes.

I work on my projects when I am able to, but I don't always make it a point to do so. When I do get to that point it's because I feel like 'if I can get the EHZ enemy's done that will somehow bring up everyone's spirits up enough to get an actual game started," but honestly some of you really seem all over the place. Saying how they want things done and then reneging on the style or standard that they themselves set or endorsed just because something they saw something cool. It's all too much.

I am definitely not giving up on this project as I still want to see it realized. I personaly just need a bit more security to that my work won't for nothing.

Edit: I just checked out the programing thread and it made me feel a little better about the engine's progress.

 

My reasons:
- Full time art and multimedia director in real life (Yes, I do get paid to do it)
- The fact that people are being over critical and it drives me insane, I can't keep saying that sega wouldn't and isn't that critical to pixels.
- There's no set goals, telling people "huur finish EHZ art" is not a goal. But I've been raped of the project and I really don't care how you guys direct it anymore.

 

Hey Trunks.

Let it go.

I haven't contributed, but I'm not going to start or willing to with the stupid palette policy. That and the fact that not one, but two programmers have dropped from the project already and I have no god damn idea what's going on the programming front.

No point in wasting time if the project hasn't something to use all this new material. As far as I see this forum, it's just a place where Vincent post pretty pictures.

And as Vangar mentioned, some of you guys are way too fucking critical over the smallest of things in regards to the art. Criticism is fine, but when you start arguing over a fucking pixel then come on man.

 

"with the stupid palette policy."
-The target consoles are: Dreamcast, PS2, PSP, GameCube, XBOX, XBOX360, PS3, and PC
-Therefore palettes are an artistic limitation, not a technical limitation
-The reason behind the palettes is to limit the shading so that the style is cartoonish/anime based
-If you can maintain the cartoonish/anime based look without overdoing the shading (step based gradients instead of full-range-gradients), then feel free to do non-palette based art

"That and the fact that not one, but two programmers have dropped from the project already and I have no god damn idea what's going on the programming front."
-An engine can be created within a week
-But no engine will be released until the art's done.
-Why?
-S2HD is only an art upgrade; If you were upgrading the gameplay as well, it'd be something different
-But since this is an art only upgrade, I don't really see why many of you want to test gameplay

-Therefore, the only things that will be be released are tools which assemble non-playable visuals (like the level viewer I released - check the programming topic)
-Don't expect to see any playable engine releases till the end of the project
-Don't worry about the programmers - just keep on working on the art

 

I won't be helping; although I am working on a mockup of how I think this project should look like, in order to possibly give better focus (Something I discussed at length with Vincent and I think Blue Streak over PM). My reason is mainly the fact that a proper top-down design approach has not been adopted at all; an example I gave was that whereas a professional designer would design a website based on the whole, this group are basically perfecting button by single button without understanding how the pieces will fit together.

Admittedly, we have a strong base to work from: The 16-bit Sonic games were pretty much renowned for their strong art direction. But simply remaking everything "in HD" isn't actually creating anything, and for what it's worth most simple, average people wouldn't appreciate the effort going on here; it may as well be HQ2X for all they'll care.

But the main reason is, I'm a qualified designer (National Diploma in Multimedia Design, I have no idea what the US equivalent is, but it's one step below getting a university degree) and I have worked professionally as an illustrator; the way this project is being handled is frustrating to say the least, there's no wonder some people are unsure of what the goals are.

The issues raised by SANiK are important ones. From the top, my opinions.

The Vector Decision
From what I gather, this was a decision purely made out of scalability for different resolutions. Whereas this is good on paper, in reality vectors are unable to display the fine sort of detail you'd see in, say, Aquatic Ruin Zone, without being comprised of so many different shapes they would potentially make even a high-end computer start to crawl when redrawing every frame - since vector graphics are merely data the computer uses to draw with - and this sort of defeats the point of scalability for those people with lower-spec computers.

Then of course, I heard that we're merely using them to draw the initial sprites with, then converting them to raster for use in the game. This is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. If we're using pixel-based graphics (And indeed arguing over pixel-perfect discrepancies), we draw them in pixels. This is so far from rocket science it's not even funny.

The Project Failing
Well this is where we are now. This kind of heated discussion about the 'direction' of the project is what will make or break it, and could have simply been avoided HAD WE AGREED ABOUT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Before people all started throwing their graphics around (No matter how competent. I've repeatedly said that there has been some great work here. Because there is, and it would be a crying shame to see it all go to waste.) we all really needed to make concept pictures, based on the various ways we could render this. Again, a professional designer would make several mockups based on his stronger roughs and gradually weed the selection down to the strongest, often based on peer review.

My opinion (And it can be disputed, it is only a suggestion) is that we should stop at the point we are at to re-assess.

Is the current direction the best one in terms of results?
Could we explore other art styles?
Could we explore other methods? (For example, I'm not seeing an awful lot of traditional work as it seems to have been ruled out without even seeing how well it would work)
Most importantly, what would we honestly like to see?

Are my fears due to the programming failing or other reasons? Hell no. There's enough talent on these forums to make Sonic 2 HD way better than anything Sega has done in the last decade, I truly believe this. However, this is if the talent is applied properly. One of the reasons I'm being so strongly opinionated about the project are my passion for seeing the best possible result, and I believe this isn't happening, mainly due to the lack of a top-down approach (Sorry to be a stuck record, but this is one of the main weaknesses).

The palette policy
If we were to make a rasterized Sonic engine of 2 background layers and sprites running at 60FPS in 32BPP colour, it would take less computational power than rendering the exact same thing in vectors. I honestly don't see what that decision was based around. Simply limiting the palette of the vectors wouldn't help this an awful lot.

Restricting the palette of raster graphics would help in terms of RAM, but I don't see any reason why we should go anything less than 16BPP (Which is half the RAM requirement of 32BPP if I'm correct). I can't imagine that much of the PC-owning world (Especially those who are inclined to search the internet for a remake of an ancient game) have less than 1GB memory each -- we're not aiming at 486-owners here, this is 2008, not 1998! Similarly, a resolution of 1024x768 should be treated as the standard average, because it pretty much is.

Since I'm no programmer, and only have a basic understanding of it, I would say that if we need to cut the palette, it should be no less than 16BPP.

The dedication issue
Personally, this isn't an issue. But I'll be more inclined to work with a group who are tackling this project in a balanced, professional manner.

Unclear art direction
With this, a nail is hit on the head. I've stated about a jillion times, we'll be more sure of this when we have examples and mockups. This is what we should have done before diving straight into the graphics. Since not a single zone's art has been completed, it's not too late to do this either -- and it will seem more exciting to make a mockup than to simply do the donkeywork of redrawing tile after tile after tile, and who knows what we could simply pull straight off any mockup we love the style of? This approach will save work in the long run. Rather than arguing over single pixels (Which, if it is important, should be one of the last stages, not the first -- it's a process of refinement and perfection, not a core visual concept), at this stage we should be arguing over more fundamental things.

I reiterate though. If there is any dispute about the general direction of this project, it is a dispute to be solved sooner, rather than later.

 

I agree with love.self.hate on most of what he has said. There is also, however, the problem that we were given a spec for the graphics and so far any attempt to discuss or change it has either ended in an argument or silence. This is a point where the artists AND the people behind the graphics engine to be used need to talk. I haven't seen a single post about the graphics engine since CoolJerk said he'd make it, so we have no idea what it can and can't do, or whether we are wasting time.

I don't agree that the engine is the last thing to be made and will take only a week (I'm no programmer but I tried and after two months I still only had the basic collision detection and movement done). In game design, the engine is the first thing built after concept. We have the concept 'Sonic 2 HD', now we should be building the core engine and drawing the concept art (or, as I've been doing, preparing basic resources for testing and improvement).

We need more communication with people other than the artists. Even the people working on music need to keep checking the progression of the art so that they can see if their music still fits with the mood created by the art.

 

Looks like the core engine is getting there. This is a good thing.

 

Cooljerk's absence is a little worrying. We're really not sure where he's gone, he hasn't posted anything on the staff forum either. But there are various things that seem to be happening on the programming front. More info to come hopefully.

 

The engine is also another area where a top-down approach would be beneficial to what seems to be going on. I don't know - what's happening right now, a bunch of people all announcing they'll make an engine? We only need one. Of course, if a coder has a specific talent for say, sound programming (Just an example), that's where they work on the engine primarily.

 

We have to keep our options open at this time.

What's happened in the past with this project is that we've had 2 potential programmers who have stated that they'd like to work on the engine for S2HD, and then they've opted out. So by keeping our options open on the programming front we're not putting all our eggs in one basket. This is a temporary state of affairs until we find what's best for the project.

Thanks for your work on the spring Exodus. You can get an account on the database by clicking the register button on the top right and sending a PM to Sanik:
http://sanik.hacking-cult.org/inker/index.php

About the gradient, you could try one with a gradient and one with shades. Then we could compare them to see what would work best.
It's looking great so far, nice job.

 

"I don't agree that the engine is the last thing to be made and will take only a week (I'm no programmer but I tried and after two months I still only had the basic collision detection and movement done). In game design, the engine is the first thing built after concept. "

When I coded my engine, I duplicated what the Genesis could do plus some extra functions.
Yes, I could in a week basicly port the Sonic 2 disasm to C code - and it'd work with 4x since the API is similar.
I'd get rid of the decompression routines and replace them with direct file read routines, etc.

But I am not gonnah do this, since it's a last resort thing.
And you guys don't really need it - you need tools - not gameplay engines at the moment.

No gameplay engines will be released till art's done
With that said, legally - this project is the Sonic 2 HD Fan Art Project

Plus - I'm the tool guy, not the engine guy.
Someone else is doing the engine.

 

I have a question about the badnik art. I realize that in the original game, the sprites just flip horizontally when they turn around. But don't you think that maybe we should add a frame for turning around? Just a frame where, for a split second, it faces the 4th wall before changing direction? It would be a nice little feature to have. Plus, not all of the Badniks turn around.

Only 10 Badniks that turn around (on screen):

Buzzer - Emerald Hill
Coconuts - Emerald Hill
Grabber - Chemical Plant
Grounder - Aquatic Ruin
Chop Chop - Aquatic Ruin
Whisp - Aquatic Ruin
Crawl - Casino Night
Flasher - Mystic Cave
Aquis - Oil Ocean
Slicer - Metropolis

Technically, Spiker from Hill Top also turns around, but it barely changes the direction it's facing.
And Crawlton's segments also change direction, but given the nature of that enemy, it's negligible.
So in total, that leaves 14 enemies that don't need a turn-around animation.

So do you think you could implement something like this, or would it be too unfaithful to the original game?