So yeah, this is going to be a gloat filled blog post about S3HD, a project that I personally wanted to see go down the drain, and something that I've been following in the background to be there when it all goes to crap.
This current ordeal started out with a blog post I did earlier this year that told MY history with the project, my beefs with it, and why I wanted to see it destroyed. After that post, I let it stew for a bit. I was positive that someone affiliated with the project would stumble onto my blog and the shitstorm would begin. I let it stew for 2 months, wanting to make sure that a discussion would be in full swing and that they'd be good and pissed. However, once I let it boil and stew and smolder and whatever type of snowball effect you want to say, I tried to check the site. To my slight annoyance, but great happiness, I found the site down. The last Wayback Machine crawl of the main site is from July, but I didn't want that. Unfortunately, the last crawl of the forums is from July 2012, almost a year before I even made the blog entry in question, so I can't see if they found it.
So that brings me to deducing what happened. Checking the facebook page shows that an "unknown problem" is plaguing the site and they're busy working to fix it. Personally, I think someone either got sick of Devinator and Gemster's shit and decided to make the site go bye-bye. Would I do something like that? Hell no. Why should I directly be the cause of their troubles when it's obvious that they're just going to kill each other, and by further extension, the project, in the end? I want Gemster and Devinator's idiocy and short-sightedness to the be reason this project dies, not an outside force or someone who thinks they're being funny.
Either way, it's still a pretty hilarious turn of events for these idiots. Let's hope they get their site back up so we can see them go at each other's throats and ruin themselves.
Because the forum and site are down, if you wish to let Devinator and Gemster know about good ol' Betaman and what he thinks of this whole thing, be sure to link this blog entry on their Facebook page:
Click me to go straight to the Facebook page!
And please link my first post too, just in case they haven't seen it yet.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Monday, July 1, 2013
Super Anjelo LAND 2: Anjelo's sporting a sequel
I'm going to be straight here: I HATE sequels. I hate sequels just like I hate remakes. It's not that I think the original is always better, it's that I can't review remakes or sequels because I feel I'm being unfair to it. Generally I tend to compare a sequel/remake to its predecessor to high hell, either over glorifying the sequel/remake for being ten times better than the original or blasting it unfairly because it's not what I expected the sequel to be.
To put it simply: I tend to judge sequels and remakes unfairly, generally forming a biased opinion.
However, when the creator of the Super Anjelo Land series, and a collaborator for my previously reviewed game: Anjelo's Province asked me to review the sequel he did to the original Super Anjelo land, I obliged simply because he was a cool guy and I was a supporter of his series. I suppose that I can't really hold this off any longer, so let's get on with the sequel to Anjelo Land 1:
Super Anjelo Land 2: Anjelo's Own World
Now for this review, I'm going to give points to both Anjelo's Province and Anjelo Land 2 because both have their good and bad points that I need to bring up and compare. I'm going to try and stay neutral as possible in my judgement, but I'm also going to try and draw connections between the two games, so excuse me if this gets confusing.
Our sequel expands from its predecessor in the color department and just slightly in the control. What it has not gotten better about, however, is the glitchiness. I hate to start this off on a bad note, but it's something that must be addressed before I can go on. The first game had a few glitches, but nothing that majorly detracted from the game play. This game is excessively glitchy in several areas, particularly the collision detection. I suspect that this is because of a different engine. (Pressing F1 during play will bring up the readme for the original engine, though the name of it isn't explicitly mentioned.) The slopes are my main gripe: They're only in 45 degree angles when they connect to the ground. Attempting to move up to a slope that steep from the ground will result in you either colliding with it like a wall or glitching through it, resulting in a death. Usually it's the latter, though I've occasionally glitched into an inescapable scenario through this. (I'm looking at you Vast Lands, level 2!)
The graphics for this are bright and colorful, which is definitely a plus considering the original was monochrome. (Though to be fair, because the original was making fun of Gameboy games, that was kind of the point.) Anjelo himself looks decent, though I don't like the flipping sprite he uses for his double jump. It's too basic, and could use a few frames that show Anjelo himself kind of curled up. Other than that, the environments look incredibly abstract and beautiful, while the enemies are just as clever looking as the first game.
For Anjelo's moves, he's gained a double jump that looks somewhat like a screw attack, and he can still fire bottle caps(I was right, those are bottle caps.), but he's lost the ability to stomp on enemies. While he also retains his ability to jump after falling ala DKC, it only works once, meaning you can't do a double jump.
The levels are, like the graphics, bright and colorful. They feel somewhat non-linear, and they're full of little nooks and crannies that will net you more bottle caps or health pick-ups. You don't get the level names in game or in the readme file included, aside from the first, but I've found them out else where and I'm going to share them here:
World 1 is called Demon Field
World 2 is called The Vast Lands
World 3 is called MoonShift City
The artwork really fit the level theme, and try really hard to stand out from what you would normally connect with them. Demon Field ditches the hellish-type landscape normally associated with demons to go for more of a Green Hill Zone at night with ghosts flying in the back. Vast Lands tends to make you think an endless plain, but it's really a snowy level with precarious heights and a dark cave. MoonShift City however.... I think it's a little too loud with its palette and the way it's presented. Blue is fine, but you might want to make it a different shade or hue, like Cyan for the foreground and dark blue for the background.
Aside from this, I had one particular problem with Demon Field. The boxes littered throughout the level just can't seem to decide whether they want to be a background object or something a little more solid and interactive. In my opinion, I think that the level would benefit from having different types of boxes.
Music is kind of iffy for me, because it's not really consistent with the style, though that may be because the game is still in development. It constantly switches from a mixture of Chiptune and Rock to MIDI sounding instruments, to pure Chiptune. Sound effects themselves are okay, though any and all sounds found in Moonshift City are nothing but pure annoying. (I hate ANY type of high-pitched noise, so don't take this one to heart though.)
The enemies are, like I said before, imaginative and fun Anjelo's Province. Despite this, they are annoying as all hell to interact with, mostly because Anjelo cannot stomp on enemies anymore and has to rely solely on hitting them with bottle caps. In particular, any enemy that fired projectiles made me want to turn the game off in frustration just because of how annoyingly placed they are. They don't necessarily add challenge to the game, but that's mostly due to the fact that they only inflict 1 point of damage to your massive 10 point health bar. They're just placed in inconvenient spots/have annoying AI.(I'm looking at you, bats.) I was able to tank my way through almost every level, simply because: My healthbar was too big, the enemies didn't inflict a lot of damage, and there were health pick-ups around every corner. I know that they're early levels, and they're supposed to be easy, but they're a little too easy. Even the bosses are a little too easy, because you can just stand in one spot and fire bottle caps at the boss.
One final problem I would like to talk about is based around the bottle cap shooting aspect. The first time I played the demo, my bottle caps went down every time I shot them and went up every time I picked a new one up. The second time I played, the amount of bottle caps I had wouldn't go down when I fired, but they would still go up when I picked up the caps I'd fired. This allowed me to have at least 700 by the second level of Vast Lands.
However, what's the point of gaining bottle caps if they don't really do anything? All you really need to do is grab one and you'll have infinite ammo. There aren't any lives in this game, so you can't get a 1-up. There aren't any unlockables, as far as I know, so there's that.
So yeah, my final thoughts on this are as follows:
It's looking pretty good, but it could use some work, especially with the engine and the collisions. I think that the creator should take out Game Maker's default functions and place in his own. You can still access the default GM save features and the F1 information trick for starters. This should be replaced with an in-game save prompt and either an instruction manual of some sort or a readme file that actually tells everything you need to know about the game. Fine tune the graphics a bit and focus on making the enemies an actual challenge to fight and less annoying to deal with. And above all, make the game a little bit more difficult, please?
Oh, and one last thing to do if you've beaten the game and really want one last thing out of the demo:
Don't listen to the readme file, press the backspace key at the title screen. Trust me, you'll love it. I won't tell you, because I don't want to spoil the surprise for you, but definitely try it if you want to get the most out of the demo.
Like the previous review, I'm going to link to the demo for the game down below:
Super Anjelo Land 2 Demo 2
To put it simply: I tend to judge sequels and remakes unfairly, generally forming a biased opinion.
However, when the creator of the Super Anjelo Land series, and a collaborator for my previously reviewed game: Anjelo's Province asked me to review the sequel he did to the original Super Anjelo land, I obliged simply because he was a cool guy and I was a supporter of his series. I suppose that I can't really hold this off any longer, so let's get on with the sequel to Anjelo Land 1:
Super Anjelo Land 2: Anjelo's Own World
Now for this review, I'm going to give points to both Anjelo's Province and Anjelo Land 2 because both have their good and bad points that I need to bring up and compare. I'm going to try and stay neutral as possible in my judgement, but I'm also going to try and draw connections between the two games, so excuse me if this gets confusing.
Our sequel expands from its predecessor in the color department and just slightly in the control. What it has not gotten better about, however, is the glitchiness. I hate to start this off on a bad note, but it's something that must be addressed before I can go on. The first game had a few glitches, but nothing that majorly detracted from the game play. This game is excessively glitchy in several areas, particularly the collision detection. I suspect that this is because of a different engine. (Pressing F1 during play will bring up the readme for the original engine, though the name of it isn't explicitly mentioned.) The slopes are my main gripe: They're only in 45 degree angles when they connect to the ground. Attempting to move up to a slope that steep from the ground will result in you either colliding with it like a wall or glitching through it, resulting in a death. Usually it's the latter, though I've occasionally glitched into an inescapable scenario through this. (I'm looking at you Vast Lands, level 2!)
The graphics for this are bright and colorful, which is definitely a plus considering the original was monochrome. (Though to be fair, because the original was making fun of Gameboy games, that was kind of the point.) Anjelo himself looks decent, though I don't like the flipping sprite he uses for his double jump. It's too basic, and could use a few frames that show Anjelo himself kind of curled up. Other than that, the environments look incredibly abstract and beautiful, while the enemies are just as clever looking as the first game.
For Anjelo's moves, he's gained a double jump that looks somewhat like a screw attack, and he can still fire bottle caps(I was right, those are bottle caps.), but he's lost the ability to stomp on enemies. While he also retains his ability to jump after falling ala DKC, it only works once, meaning you can't do a double jump.
The levels are, like the graphics, bright and colorful. They feel somewhat non-linear, and they're full of little nooks and crannies that will net you more bottle caps or health pick-ups. You don't get the level names in game or in the readme file included, aside from the first, but I've found them out else where and I'm going to share them here:
World 1 is called Demon Field
World 2 is called The Vast Lands
World 3 is called MoonShift City
The artwork really fit the level theme, and try really hard to stand out from what you would normally connect with them. Demon Field ditches the hellish-type landscape normally associated with demons to go for more of a Green Hill Zone at night with ghosts flying in the back. Vast Lands tends to make you think an endless plain, but it's really a snowy level with precarious heights and a dark cave. MoonShift City however.... I think it's a little too loud with its palette and the way it's presented. Blue is fine, but you might want to make it a different shade or hue, like Cyan for the foreground and dark blue for the background.
Aside from this, I had one particular problem with Demon Field. The boxes littered throughout the level just can't seem to decide whether they want to be a background object or something a little more solid and interactive. In my opinion, I think that the level would benefit from having different types of boxes.
Music is kind of iffy for me, because it's not really consistent with the style, though that may be because the game is still in development. It constantly switches from a mixture of Chiptune and Rock to MIDI sounding instruments, to pure Chiptune. Sound effects themselves are okay, though any and all sounds found in Moonshift City are nothing but pure annoying. (I hate ANY type of high-pitched noise, so don't take this one to heart though.)
The enemies are, like I said before, imaginative and fun Anjelo's Province. Despite this, they are annoying as all hell to interact with, mostly because Anjelo cannot stomp on enemies anymore and has to rely solely on hitting them with bottle caps. In particular, any enemy that fired projectiles made me want to turn the game off in frustration just because of how annoyingly placed they are. They don't necessarily add challenge to the game, but that's mostly due to the fact that they only inflict 1 point of damage to your massive 10 point health bar. They're just placed in inconvenient spots/have annoying AI.(I'm looking at you, bats.) I was able to tank my way through almost every level, simply because: My healthbar was too big, the enemies didn't inflict a lot of damage, and there were health pick-ups around every corner. I know that they're early levels, and they're supposed to be easy, but they're a little too easy. Even the bosses are a little too easy, because you can just stand in one spot and fire bottle caps at the boss.
One final problem I would like to talk about is based around the bottle cap shooting aspect. The first time I played the demo, my bottle caps went down every time I shot them and went up every time I picked a new one up. The second time I played, the amount of bottle caps I had wouldn't go down when I fired, but they would still go up when I picked up the caps I'd fired. This allowed me to have at least 700 by the second level of Vast Lands.
However, what's the point of gaining bottle caps if they don't really do anything? All you really need to do is grab one and you'll have infinite ammo. There aren't any lives in this game, so you can't get a 1-up. There aren't any unlockables, as far as I know, so there's that.
So yeah, my final thoughts on this are as follows:
It's looking pretty good, but it could use some work, especially with the engine and the collisions. I think that the creator should take out Game Maker's default functions and place in his own. You can still access the default GM save features and the F1 information trick for starters. This should be replaced with an in-game save prompt and either an instruction manual of some sort or a readme file that actually tells everything you need to know about the game. Fine tune the graphics a bit and focus on making the enemies an actual challenge to fight and less annoying to deal with. And above all, make the game a little bit more difficult, please?
Oh, and one last thing to do if you've beaten the game and really want one last thing out of the demo:
Don't listen to the readme file, press the backspace key at the title screen. Trust me, you'll love it. I won't tell you, because I don't want to spoil the surprise for you, but definitely try it if you want to get the most out of the demo.
Like the previous review, I'm going to link to the demo for the game down below:
Super Anjelo Land 2 Demo 2
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Anjelo's Province review: This game...Just this game.
Hey, I'm finally using this blog as it was intended! Whoop-de-doo. Let's start off our reviewing right with an excellent little game that I found on GameJolt:
This game is called Anjelo's Province: Anjelo Land 1, it's a collaborative effort between a user called CrazyRiverOtter and someone called IndieAnjelo. And before I even start, I'm going to be straight with you guys:
I did not like this game in the slightest. I absolutely loved it.
Another little digression I'd like to make: I should mention that this game is a remake of another game titled "Super Anjelo Land", which was created by IndieAnjelo. I haven't played the original and I won't right now. If I play it, then I'll start comparing the two and I don't want to develop a biased opinion towards either, so I'll just look at the remake.
Now then, on with the review.
There is SO much I can say about this game and I still wouldn't be telling you everything. The game itself seeks to parody handheld titles, and the way it does so is fresh and fun. While the game plays more or less like a rip-off of Super Mario Bros., it doesn't FEEL like a Mario Rip off. Slight tweaks have been added here or there to keep the game from being too much like Mario though, such as the ability to jump in mid-air if you've fallen and the ability to shoot...things...you've collected right off the bat. (I don't know what they are, but they look like bottle caps, so I'm just going to call them bottle caps, kay?) While the ability to use your bottle caps as weapons is there, the game doesn't entirely rely on you to use them, and in most cases a stomp to the head is better than wasting your bottle caps with shooting. The enemies are cute and fun looking, ranging from a literal cartoon bomb on wheels to mice that throw brick looking blocks in a large arc.
Anjelo controls similar to Mario if you took out the run button and replaced it with a shoot button. Shooting works fine, being a straight shot that doesn't arc; but the shots are relatively weak, taking two or three shots to kill an enemy as opposed to one good stomp on the head. Jumping works like a combination of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Donkey Kong Country, in that you can hold it when stomping on enemies for a slightly higher jump and you can jump in mid-air if you fall off of a cliff respectively. Aside from this, the controls are really smooth and it stops the game from feeling cheap. If you mess up, most of the time it's YOUR fault, not the game's.
That being said, there are a few negative things to be said about the game.
There are a few spots where the game feels cheap. Mostly in castles, there are ledges that are incredibly close to the ceilings. There are these bomb enemies that explode shortly after being stomped, and sometimes they're placed on these ledges, and it's difficult to get past these bombs. This isn't really an issue if you shoot at them, but in the first castle, there are NO bottle caps to collect and shoot!
Another issue is that the music loops are somewhat messed up. When the music loops back to the beginning, the game freezes while the music loops. It's no more than one or two seconds, but it can really be jarring when you're in the middle of avoiding something and you suddenly freeze for a few seconds, only to unfreeze and immediately drop downwards.
My final issues has to deal with the bosses. They're great, but I found a glitch on the first one where he immediately spawned on top of me after I stomped him, and I got stuck on a wall on the second boss.
_______________________________
Other than that, I have no issues with this game and I recommend it to anyone that enjoys a challenge.
I will place a link to the game's page on GameJolt for you to download below. See you guys next time!
--Betaman
LINKS:Anjelo's Province Game Jolt page
This game is called Anjelo's Province: Anjelo Land 1, it's a collaborative effort between a user called CrazyRiverOtter and someone called IndieAnjelo. And before I even start, I'm going to be straight with you guys:
I did not like this game in the slightest. I absolutely loved it.
Another little digression I'd like to make: I should mention that this game is a remake of another game titled "Super Anjelo Land", which was created by IndieAnjelo. I haven't played the original and I won't right now. If I play it, then I'll start comparing the two and I don't want to develop a biased opinion towards either, so I'll just look at the remake.
Now then, on with the review.
There is SO much I can say about this game and I still wouldn't be telling you everything. The game itself seeks to parody handheld titles, and the way it does so is fresh and fun. While the game plays more or less like a rip-off of Super Mario Bros., it doesn't FEEL like a Mario Rip off. Slight tweaks have been added here or there to keep the game from being too much like Mario though, such as the ability to jump in mid-air if you've fallen and the ability to shoot...things...you've collected right off the bat. (I don't know what they are, but they look like bottle caps, so I'm just going to call them bottle caps, kay?) While the ability to use your bottle caps as weapons is there, the game doesn't entirely rely on you to use them, and in most cases a stomp to the head is better than wasting your bottle caps with shooting. The enemies are cute and fun looking, ranging from a literal cartoon bomb on wheels to mice that throw brick looking blocks in a large arc.
Anjelo controls similar to Mario if you took out the run button and replaced it with a shoot button. Shooting works fine, being a straight shot that doesn't arc; but the shots are relatively weak, taking two or three shots to kill an enemy as opposed to one good stomp on the head. Jumping works like a combination of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Donkey Kong Country, in that you can hold it when stomping on enemies for a slightly higher jump and you can jump in mid-air if you fall off of a cliff respectively. Aside from this, the controls are really smooth and it stops the game from feeling cheap. If you mess up, most of the time it's YOUR fault, not the game's.
That being said, there are a few negative things to be said about the game.
There are a few spots where the game feels cheap. Mostly in castles, there are ledges that are incredibly close to the ceilings. There are these bomb enemies that explode shortly after being stomped, and sometimes they're placed on these ledges, and it's difficult to get past these bombs. This isn't really an issue if you shoot at them, but in the first castle, there are NO bottle caps to collect and shoot!
Another issue is that the music loops are somewhat messed up. When the music loops back to the beginning, the game freezes while the music loops. It's no more than one or two seconds, but it can really be jarring when you're in the middle of avoiding something and you suddenly freeze for a few seconds, only to unfreeze and immediately drop downwards.
My final issues has to deal with the bosses. They're great, but I found a glitch on the first one where he immediately spawned on top of me after I stomped him, and I got stuck on a wall on the second boss.
_______________________________
Other than that, I have no issues with this game and I recommend it to anyone that enjoys a challenge.
I will place a link to the game's page on GameJolt for you to download below. See you guys next time!
--Betaman
LINKS:Anjelo's Province Game Jolt page
Monday, June 3, 2013
Sonic 3 HD: My story
Last post I said that Sonic 2 HD failed for numerous reasons such as:
Here's another project that's doomed to fail because it's following in Sonic 2 HD's footsteps: Sonic 3 HD. Unlike Sonic 2 HD, I was actually part of the team for a short time, so I'm here to share my side of the story on the whole situation.
I was a part of Sonic 3 HD back in 2011 some time after I joined SFGHQ. Back then, it was a simple project: Make an HD version of Sonic 3 and Knuckles as a response to Sonic 2 HD. Headed by Devinator and Gemster312, things seemed to be going okay.... kind of. They were misguided in attempting to start with the Sonic and Knuckles half of the game, and not straight from the start. Myself, I originally applied as a level artist for Angel Island Zone, but was forcefully moved to Mushroom Hill because that's the only zone they were working on. This was back when they were using the Sonic Dash engine on Game Maker for the engine. It was sloppy, shoddy, and it just didn't feel right. I of course, went to work on the piece of art they asked me to do: A multi-layered parallax background for the level. At the time, I also contributed a few little concepts that are still in-place today: such as the inclusion of some other level bonuses, which Gemster shot down. It was about that time that I noticed a little something about Gemster, and Devinator too.
They're fucking control freaks.
Every suggestion that strayed just a little too far out-field or wasn't identical to the original game was immediately shot down because "it wasn't accurate enough to the original." Lots of great ideas were lost completely that way. They also always wanted to "handle" the project by keeping it out of public forums such as Sonic Retro and SFGHQ.Pretty soon after dealing with all this, I got fed up and due to some conflicts in my life, I left once, blaming it all on Gemster. This was near the end of 2011, and I returned around the summer of 2012, apologizing for everything. By the time I'd returned, some things were still the same, and some things had changed. Most notably, a user by the name of Mike Berry, a user that also got fed up with Devinator's way of "handling" the community and the project was banned because he made a post calling out Devinator on his bullshit. I was, once again, tasked with creating a new background for Mushroom Hill, because no real progress had been made on the zone since I had left. (And the entire resolution of the game had changed, rendering my earlier work useless.) My second and final departure was simply because I lost interest in the project and didn't want to be associated with those people. Nowadays, I'm not even a legitimate member there, my account was most likely deleted because I was inactive.
Then I learned of ALL the projects that particular community were trying to start.
First it was Sonic 1 HD, headed by a member of Sonic 3 HD, then there was Sonic CD HD, which was also headed by a different member. Now they're trying to pick up the pieces of Sonic 2 HD and make that a thing again, and I've even heard claims of a Knuckles' Chaotix HD. This madness has to end! Devinator even tried to control those projects too by yelling at everyone that was more interested in S1HD to come back because they signed up to work on S3HD first and as such were still obligated.
Personally, I can't fucking stand the community and I can't wait for the project to either get cancelled or blow up in their faces. I mean, look at the project forums, you've got all sorts of madness:
Posts from long ago are missing completely, and the most WayBack Machine will show only allows a few recreations of the old forums. Any "announcements" that are too old are simply gone forever, making the history of this project a bitch to find out, and the community is nothing more than a ghost town. Then again, maybe Devinator is just trying to cover up drama. Members constantly leave the project or lose interest to go pursue other idiotic ventures(At least when I was part of the community anyway.) and in the 3 years I've been watching, they haven't finalized any zone art, and released only 1 alpha demo. This is almost as bad as Sonic 2 HD when they worked for 5 years, 3 of those being a closed community due to incompatibility with the open community's art, and by the time of the first alpha, only had 1 zone fully complete.
In short, this project is nothing but a mess that's begging to die. And I'm calling it right now, just like I did with S2 HD:
This project is doomed, just like Sonic 2 HD. The entire community is doomed to fail and they will never finish their abundance of HD sonic projects, simply because they have the mindset of "It has to be identical to the original or else it's no good.
- The art being a mere trace over the original graphics
- The fact that LOst thought it was a good idea to keep the targeted community from reverse engineering an engine that he made from a guide that was made by the same community.
- The fact that for no less than 5 years they squabbled over the graphics, wanting original pixel perfection.
Here's another project that's doomed to fail because it's following in Sonic 2 HD's footsteps: Sonic 3 HD. Unlike Sonic 2 HD, I was actually part of the team for a short time, so I'm here to share my side of the story on the whole situation.
I was a part of Sonic 3 HD back in 2011 some time after I joined SFGHQ. Back then, it was a simple project: Make an HD version of Sonic 3 and Knuckles as a response to Sonic 2 HD. Headed by Devinator and Gemster312, things seemed to be going okay.... kind of. They were misguided in attempting to start with the Sonic and Knuckles half of the game, and not straight from the start. Myself, I originally applied as a level artist for Angel Island Zone, but was forcefully moved to Mushroom Hill because that's the only zone they were working on. This was back when they were using the Sonic Dash engine on Game Maker for the engine. It was sloppy, shoddy, and it just didn't feel right. I of course, went to work on the piece of art they asked me to do: A multi-layered parallax background for the level. At the time, I also contributed a few little concepts that are still in-place today: such as the inclusion of some other level bonuses, which Gemster shot down. It was about that time that I noticed a little something about Gemster, and Devinator too.
They're fucking control freaks.
Every suggestion that strayed just a little too far out-field or wasn't identical to the original game was immediately shot down because "it wasn't accurate enough to the original." Lots of great ideas were lost completely that way. They also always wanted to "handle" the project by keeping it out of public forums such as Sonic Retro and SFGHQ.Pretty soon after dealing with all this, I got fed up and due to some conflicts in my life, I left once, blaming it all on Gemster. This was near the end of 2011, and I returned around the summer of 2012, apologizing for everything. By the time I'd returned, some things were still the same, and some things had changed. Most notably, a user by the name of Mike Berry, a user that also got fed up with Devinator's way of "handling" the community and the project was banned because he made a post calling out Devinator on his bullshit. I was, once again, tasked with creating a new background for Mushroom Hill, because no real progress had been made on the zone since I had left. (And the entire resolution of the game had changed, rendering my earlier work useless.) My second and final departure was simply because I lost interest in the project and didn't want to be associated with those people. Nowadays, I'm not even a legitimate member there, my account was most likely deleted because I was inactive.
Then I learned of ALL the projects that particular community were trying to start.
First it was Sonic 1 HD, headed by a member of Sonic 3 HD, then there was Sonic CD HD, which was also headed by a different member. Now they're trying to pick up the pieces of Sonic 2 HD and make that a thing again, and I've even heard claims of a Knuckles' Chaotix HD. This madness has to end! Devinator even tried to control those projects too by yelling at everyone that was more interested in S1HD to come back because they signed up to work on S3HD first and as such were still obligated.
Personally, I can't fucking stand the community and I can't wait for the project to either get cancelled or blow up in their faces. I mean, look at the project forums, you've got all sorts of madness:
Posts from long ago are missing completely, and the most WayBack Machine will show only allows a few recreations of the old forums. Any "announcements" that are too old are simply gone forever, making the history of this project a bitch to find out, and the community is nothing more than a ghost town. Then again, maybe Devinator is just trying to cover up drama. Members constantly leave the project or lose interest to go pursue other idiotic ventures(At least when I was part of the community anyway.) and in the 3 years I've been watching, they haven't finalized any zone art, and released only 1 alpha demo. This is almost as bad as Sonic 2 HD when they worked for 5 years, 3 of those being a closed community due to incompatibility with the open community's art, and by the time of the first alpha, only had 1 zone fully complete.
In short, this project is nothing but a mess that's begging to die. And I'm calling it right now, just like I did with S2 HD:
This project is doomed, just like Sonic 2 HD. The entire community is doomed to fail and they will never finish their abundance of HD sonic projects, simply because they have the mindset of "It has to be identical to the original or else it's no good.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Sonic 2 HD: 1 Year Later
Roughly a year ago, I started this blog up as a means to review a few fan-games and hopefully get a bit of popularity. I see this as a more lighthearted side to my other blog, Betaman's Sarcasm Playtime Variety Hour, and I'm going to focus on happier things here.
After I'm done with this one tiny post full of criticism and anger.
You see, I followed Sonic 2 HD since it was still a community project on Sonic Retro. This was over 5 years ago, back in 2008. I had watched it on and off, liking what I saw, up until 2009 when I decided to see how they were doing as a community.
I did not like what I saw.
The entire community was pretty much just arguing about miniscule pieces that had been done nearly four or five times over and still wasn't good enough. I understand that things shouldn't clash, but they don't have to be absolutely prefect. Once I saw that they were all having an all out fight over the design of RINGS, I said to myself that the project was doomed and stopped paying attention.
In 2010, the open community aspect of the project died and it shifted to an internal team, which failed to produce anything of considerable interest until Spring 2012, when they released their abysmal S2HD alpha. All that was located in the alpha was Emerald Hill Zone, an early Hill Top Zone, and Miles "Tails" Prower. as a playable character. 5 years for a full alpha to be released and they only had one full zone completely finished from start to end. You might ask what they were doing, well it turns out that LOst was busy putting DRM into the engine while the rest of the team was busy trying to get a hold of him.
DRM that at one point wanted to keep users from taking screenshots and video of the game. DRM that, combined with faulty programming in LOst's part, caused anti-virus software to view it as a keylogger.
And sure enough, once they got fed up with LOst's bullshit, kicked him out, realized that they no longer had a programmer, and they cancelled the project.
I called it. I fucking called it all the way back in 2009 after seeing the community bitch over insignificant bullshit.
But the best part about it is the fact that the project was doomed from the start. It never had a chance and it never will.
There will never be a Sonic 2, Sonic 1, or Sonic 3 HD. They will all fail because they focus less on actually re-creating the game with a high-definition artistic style and are more determined to take upscaled pixel art and make it look pretty with Adobe Illustrator. Rather than having the entire art department dedicate themselves to actually hand-drawing artwork or doing some actual original work on their part, the art directors of the project will follow Sonic 2 HD's example for the rest of time with having the entire art department trace over resized versions of the original graphics.
I was on the Sonic 3 HD team, and they were pulling the same stunt, with an administrator that was SO focused on making everything look identical to the original graphics that nothing got done because he would shoot down any new ideas. Funnily enough, that same group is also dedicating themselves to pick up the broken pieces of Sonic 2 HD and make a Sonic 1 HD at the same time using the same staff and the same approach. There have even been mentions of attempting to re-create Sonic CD in HD and Knuckles Chaotix. They're trying to re-create every game they can in this misguided direction and I can only predict that it will all fail unless they set themselves straight and take a more original approach to their games.
Then again, maybe its better that they fail.
These are, after all, free re-creations of games that are still being sold through digital media. The Taxman just released a widescreen HD port of Sonic 1 for mobile phones and is currently working on Sonic 2. These are being sold by Sega and Sega's making money off of them. If they're popular, they might even release these ports for computers. If a so-called "HD" remake to these games is released for free, would you buy the Taxman's port or would you go for the free "HD" option? It's taking profit away from Sega and the Taxman, who has pretty much done this all for fans. I'm not saying that Sonic fan-games in HD (at least what they call HD.) should exist. I'm saying that if you really want to make one, make up something original and don't try to remake an existing game, especially if it's still being sold.
Here are some links to will take you to projects I have mentioned
Sonic 2 HD homepage - In case you want to download and see for yourself.
Sonic 3 HD Homepage - They've been in development since 2010 and seem to be following in S2HD's footsteps of getting anything done. I'll be mentioning them very soon.
After I'm done with this one tiny post full of criticism and anger.
You see, I followed Sonic 2 HD since it was still a community project on Sonic Retro. This was over 5 years ago, back in 2008. I had watched it on and off, liking what I saw, up until 2009 when I decided to see how they were doing as a community.
I did not like what I saw.
The entire community was pretty much just arguing about miniscule pieces that had been done nearly four or five times over and still wasn't good enough. I understand that things shouldn't clash, but they don't have to be absolutely prefect. Once I saw that they were all having an all out fight over the design of RINGS, I said to myself that the project was doomed and stopped paying attention.
In 2010, the open community aspect of the project died and it shifted to an internal team, which failed to produce anything of considerable interest until Spring 2012, when they released their abysmal S2HD alpha. All that was located in the alpha was Emerald Hill Zone, an early Hill Top Zone, and Miles "Tails" Prower. as a playable character. 5 years for a full alpha to be released and they only had one full zone completely finished from start to end. You might ask what they were doing, well it turns out that LOst was busy putting DRM into the engine while the rest of the team was busy trying to get a hold of him.
DRM that at one point wanted to keep users from taking screenshots and video of the game. DRM that, combined with faulty programming in LOst's part, caused anti-virus software to view it as a keylogger.
And sure enough, once they got fed up with LOst's bullshit, kicked him out, realized that they no longer had a programmer, and they cancelled the project.
I called it. I fucking called it all the way back in 2009 after seeing the community bitch over insignificant bullshit.
But the best part about it is the fact that the project was doomed from the start. It never had a chance and it never will.
There will never be a Sonic 2, Sonic 1, or Sonic 3 HD. They will all fail because they focus less on actually re-creating the game with a high-definition artistic style and are more determined to take upscaled pixel art and make it look pretty with Adobe Illustrator. Rather than having the entire art department dedicate themselves to actually hand-drawing artwork or doing some actual original work on their part, the art directors of the project will follow Sonic 2 HD's example for the rest of time with having the entire art department trace over resized versions of the original graphics.
I was on the Sonic 3 HD team, and they were pulling the same stunt, with an administrator that was SO focused on making everything look identical to the original graphics that nothing got done because he would shoot down any new ideas. Funnily enough, that same group is also dedicating themselves to pick up the broken pieces of Sonic 2 HD and make a Sonic 1 HD at the same time using the same staff and the same approach. There have even been mentions of attempting to re-create Sonic CD in HD and Knuckles Chaotix. They're trying to re-create every game they can in this misguided direction and I can only predict that it will all fail unless they set themselves straight and take a more original approach to their games.
Then again, maybe its better that they fail.
These are, after all, free re-creations of games that are still being sold through digital media. The Taxman just released a widescreen HD port of Sonic 1 for mobile phones and is currently working on Sonic 2. These are being sold by Sega and Sega's making money off of them. If they're popular, they might even release these ports for computers. If a so-called "HD" remake to these games is released for free, would you buy the Taxman's port or would you go for the free "HD" option? It's taking profit away from Sega and the Taxman, who has pretty much done this all for fans. I'm not saying that Sonic fan-games in HD (at least what they call HD.) should exist. I'm saying that if you really want to make one, make up something original and don't try to remake an existing game, especially if it's still being sold.
Here are some links to will take you to projects I have mentioned
Sonic 2 HD homepage - In case you want to download and see for yourself.
Sonic 3 HD Homepage - They've been in development since 2010 and seem to be following in S2HD's footsteps of getting anything done. I'll be mentioning them very soon.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Welcome to my world
Hello traveler, I'm Betaman of TEAM OMEGA. Welcome to my humble corner of the internet, where I'm going to review fan works of all types. As a gamer, I'm a fan of all types of genres, mascots, and styles. I'll be reviewing fan games from series such as, but not limited to: Megaman, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Streets of Rage, Street Fighter, and many more.
The works reviewed will range from completely original titles, to hacks and mods.
All rights are reserved to the original creators, as well as the creators of the fan-work.
Please note that reviews WILL be brutally honest and totally in my opinion. Don't freak out if my opinion differs from yours.
My first review will be: Sonic 2 HD's alpha release.
The works reviewed will range from completely original titles, to hacks and mods.
All rights are reserved to the original creators, as well as the creators of the fan-work.
Please note that reviews WILL be brutally honest and totally in my opinion. Don't freak out if my opinion differs from yours.
My first review will be: Sonic 2 HD's alpha release.
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