After about a year and a half of absence, the Retrocast returns with monthly installments! In this month’s episode, discussion over Sonic 4: Episode 2 and Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed takes place.
Two months ago, we posted some very promising videos from a triad of gifted Retroites working to import Sonic Unleashed‘s stages into the PC version of Sonic Generations, because despite Sega’s apparent new-found love for all things computer, Unleashed never got the chance to pop up. And those videos? They were nothing short of impressive work.
The trio–Dario FF, Twilightzoney, and Chimera–are happy to show you the fruits of their labor since then as Sonic zips around locales like Mazuri, Empire City, Shamar, and the original Spagonia to name a few. The team not only managed to get collisions working on the stages, they’ve been able to successfully import breakable objects and even the Global Illumination Ambiance lighting effects of the original stages so that they look like their original selves.
Oh, and a much-requested golden streak of light makes his in-stage presence felt as well.
Check out the gallery for more photos and the trailer below to watch their efforts in motion. Of course, from the looks of things, the team is only getting warmed up with Unleashed levels and have set their sights to other areas…
The Sonic 2 HD team announced today amidst the flurry and confusion of an alleged “keylogger” being detected in the program that it has decided to move on without their head programmer, LOst.
The decision comes on top of several allegations from team members that LOst held the project hostage through the inclusion of DRM, public feedback of a bloated engine running an otherwise simplistic game, and other behind the scenes issues. The final straw was the massive negative reception after reports of a keylogger were detected by various antivirus software.
After some careful examination by forum member Guess_Who, the “keylogger” was confirmed to be benign and a false positive, revealing that it was a result of shoddy DirectInput programming. This is how the program was able to register key presses even when the window was not selected and running in the background. In other words, it’s like how CW Cheat can trigger antiviruses as a trojan horse, despite having no malicious software behind it.
The following is a documentary created by forum member and Sonic Cult founder Phugolz, providing an opinionated analysis of Sonic’s 20 years on Earth so far. Lots of swearing and toilets around, so viewer discretion is advised.
(The following is a guest editorial written by forums member Guess Who, because frankly, someone needed to say it.)
Starting in the late nineties, a sizable community formed around reverse-engineering Sonic games. Thanks to the work of this community and its extremely talented individuals, amazing feats have been achieved. The original Sonic titles have been disassembled into their raw Motorola 68000 assembly code and thoroughly documented, allowing for substantial modifications; Sonic Adventure DX has similarly been torn apart, allowing for the creation of useful tools such as level and model editors; even the brand-new Sonic Generations has already been hacked wide open for creating custom levels, porting levels from Sonic Unleashed, and importing music. One thing all of these accomplishments have in common is that all of them are the result of collaboration. Many people worked for days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years to acquire and share the knowledge necessary for all of these technical marvels to come to fruition. Sonic Retro has always fostered a collaborative environment thanks to its forums, wiki, and Mercurial repository, and consequently has become the de facto hub for all things Sonic hacking.
So in March 2008, when Sonic 2 HD was announced, it was hailed as a shining example of the collaborative community environment that’s been so crucial to the Retro community. Media outlets like Kotaku covered the game’s announcement with great anticipation. It was given its own forum where members could contribute their own assets to the game, whether it was art, music, programming talent, or just general feedback. The engine, coded primarily by long-established community member LOst, was built using the disassembled code of the original Sonic titles (you know, that code collaboratively reverse-engineered and documented by a number of community members?) as a basis for its physics. The original Sonic 2 HD board received a whopping 14275 replies, mostly from members offering their own work or feedback for the product.
You waited for nearly two years. You questioned whether this project was still alive and kicking. But with time comes development, and to show you that things ARE getting done, the Sonic 2 HD team has released a new playable demo.
Being an alpha release, it’s understandable that not everything is perfect and things can (and likely will) go wrong. But what we do have is an impressive feat of love and creativity from a group of fans with a passion to give Sonic the Hedgehog 2 a visual spit shine and touched up music.
However, a small bit of controversy around the project is the nature of it being listed as a Sonic Retro Community Project, despite being a rather closed operation. Project Manager Canned Karma addressed this further by confirming the project will continue a closed development cycle.
“With the game’s Alpha Release, this means our involvement with Sonic Retro’s Community Projects also comes to an end as, in all honesty, S2HD hasn’t been a community game for a long time,” Canned Karma said. “In line with this, we’ve now closed out the topics in the Community Project sub-forum in favor of a single discussion thread here.”
Currently, the demo only supports Windows operating systems from Windows XP through Windows 7.
Updates and downloads on the project will continue to be posted on the team’s official website. For now though, big props go out to the team for all their work so far and we look forward to seeing the project grow and mature even more. Let them know what you think of the game so far in the comments down below.
Chances are the small percentage of you that picked up the PC version of Sonic 4: Episode 1 have gotten a small update to the game. Upon trying the game out, you might have also noticed that your settings were all gone and that your save file was gone as well.
While we could take yet another potshot at Sonic 4, let’s focus on fixing that issue. What this last update did is create a second executable file: one for Windows XP and one for Windows Vista/7. To restore settings, you’ll need to run the settings application included with the game. As for the save file, it’s still there with all your hard work. It just needs a little renaming.
To do so, head into your Steam folder located in Program Files, click on the folder named “steamapps” and then “common”. Click on the Sonic 4 folder and you should see a file named “Sonic_save.dat”. Simply rename this to “Sonic_vis_save.dat” and all your hard work will be restored.
Over the years, Sonic fan games have certainly evolved from the days of Klik & Play. Back in 1995, Sonic Boom started it all, with collecting apples and avoiding bees… it was an amazing feat, being the first noted Sonic fan game, and today’s major fan games still provide that same sense of amazement only on a much bigger scale! As of recent, Sonic Fan Remix took center stage on the fan gaming scene. It ultimately changed the way fan games were thought of previously by the public; disposable projects on par with fan fiction. It caught the immediate attention of major gaming blogs, companies, and developers, so much in fact that Sega’s representatives requested Megaupload, the site which hosted the download file, to take down the file because they believed it would disrupt the sales of the then upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1.
