Sonic 2 HD

[Semi-colon e]

I'm actually glad I didn't bother downaloading it now. The sheer audacity of the whole "intellectual property" thing of a FAN REMAKE is just bullshit.

[Blue Blood]

This is utterly hilarious. Wow. Fuck this project to high hell.

[BlueTidalGamer]

Wow. This is pretty bad for the development team. Glad I heard the news. Just deleted the files now and running a virus scan. I think I should be good. (Hopefully)

Edited April 10, 2012 by BlueTidalGamer21

[Solkia]

Do me a favor guys, Spread the word on the whole Issue with LOst and post the editorial along with it on whatever gaming press site you go to and you see the article pertaining to this. Luke's word warping is going to be one of many idiot journalists who are going to make it look like Retro are the evil development team who are putting keyloggers in fangames and trying to steal data when we all know thats not the case.

Unless you hate/have a bias against Retro, then just sit back and enjoy the show.

I don't like Retro, and even I'm not going to participate in that stupidity.

I like to think the people here are better than to participate in petty squabbles with idiot writers.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Solkia

[Candescence]

It's incredibly depressing how all this shit is happening because of one idiot programmer with an ego the size of the sun. LOst can go fuck himself for all I care.

No question, he needs to be thrown off the team, and they need to get a competent programmer who DOESN'T have his head up his ass.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Masaru Daimon

[Scar]

That editorial's a pretty good read.

I'm not gonna get involved though. Let the madness insue.

Needless to say, this is pretty fucking hilarious to me. Obviously, its not to everyone who put in all the hard work with the artwork and music, only to get royally fucked by L0st.

I mean, he put DRM (and a keylogger) on a game which was, based on a mascot owned by SEGA, created using shit that he himself hacked from an actual game release so that nobody would hack his engine. Didn't he see any hypocrisy in all this? What a bafoon of a man. It'd pretty interesting to be a fly on the walls of his house to see how he's reacting to all this....

[Blue Blood]

I don't like Retro, and even I'm not going to participate in that stupidity.

I like to think the people here are better than to participate in petty squabbles with idiot writers.

The point he's making is that it's very possible that bloggers will cite Retro as the collective creators of the project, with intent to distribute malicious software. It's a measure to stop people from blaming Retro for something which we had nothing to do with, There's quite a reputation at stake. So if you see an article saying Retro is to blame, it's well worth pointing out to them that we had absolutely zero part in it. And of top of that, there's no way to prove really that the key logging was even intended maliciously (but it's still bad and lOst should feel bad).

[Tornado]

So after all that time of being told that HD didn't have anything in it that it justifies all of the Anti-Virus messages it was throwing out, and that it was just to idiotic DRM system, it turns out that it does? And a fucking keylogger, no less?

Jesus Christ this game is such a clusterfuck. I hope this doesn't destroy the goodwill that the Sonic CD remake had built up.

[Solkia]

The point he's making is that it's very possible that bloggers will cite Retro as the collective creators of the project, with intent to distribute malicious software. It's a measure to stop people from blaming Retro for something which we had nothing to do with, There's quite a reputation at stake. So if you see an article saying Retro is to blame, it's well worth pointing out to them that we had absolutely zero part in it. And of top of that, there's no way to prove really that the key logging was even intended maliciously (but it's still bad and lOst should feel bad).

I want to know how and why it happened before I make any judgements. Though I also doubt it was a malicious intent.

But a keylogger of all things? What the hell?

Edited April 10, 2012 by Solkia

[Blue Blood]

I want to know how and why it happened before I make any judgements.

Fuck, I think you're as misinformed as the journalists here. Sonic 2 HD is not a community project.The community has has absolutely no part in the making of the game since the earliest days, and nothing submitted back then is being used now. The rest of the S2HD staff have been working on music, art and concepts. LOst, and only LOst, is the one that has been programming the game. He is responsible for the keylogger.

In its days as a community project, Retro was that community. Nobody had any clue about the malicious coding except LOst. This isn't about making a judgement, the fact is that nobody else from Retro nor the rest of the S2HD staff had any part in this. Retro is only getting the blame because it was originally fronting the entire endeavour. So do you understand now why it's unfair for Retro's reputation to be tarnished by this? Especially if you consider that the 2011 remake of CD is credited to Retro member Taxman, it's got every chance of destroying that goodwill as Tornado said.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Blue Blood

[RedYellowBlueCR]

I really doubt that the development team will let this stop them in the long run. They have come to far for some idiot to stop them dead in they're tracks. The project is amazing and I only wish I could had half the talent each of the members have. But Lost needs to go, and I don't blame them for closing they're doors to the rest of the public during the rest of its development. There are too many idiots out there that will twist and manipulate they're words. I'm sure people are already having a hey day with twisting this new information.

[Scar]

Fuck, I think you're as misinformed as the journalists here. Sonic 2 HD is not a community project.The community has has absolutely no part in the making of the game since the earliest days, and nothing submitted back then is being used now. The rest of the S2HD staff have been working on music, art and concepts. LOst, is the one that has been programming the game. He is responsible for the keylogger.

In its days as a community project, Retro was that community. Nobody had any clue about the malicious coding except LOst. This isn't about making a judgement, the fact is that nobody else from Retro nor the rest of the S2HD staff had any part in this. Retro is only getting the because it was originally fronting the entire endeavour. So do you understand now why it's unfair for Retro's reputation to be tarnished by this?

Pretty much this.

Retro did absolutely nothing wrong here. Its just that one lone fuckpuppet that's ruining everything for everyone. I can't imagine how thoroughly pissed the rest of the development team, that is to say artists and musicians, are that the game they spent ages and hours of effort into building is now being written off, and they're getting part of the blame for it. For no real reason at that. I can't also imagine how pissed Scarred Sun must be, that the site she and others have spent ages building is now having the entirity of its reputation dragged through the mud by ignorant gaming press, because of this ridiculous, infantile individual.

[Solkia]

Fuck, I think you're as misinformed as the journalists here. Sonic 2 HD is not a community project.The community has has absolutely no part in the making of the game since the earliest days, and nothing submitted back then is being used now. The rest of the S2HD staff have been working on music, art and concepts. LOst, is the one that has been programming the game. He is responsible for the keylogger.

In its days as a community project, Retro was that community. Nobody had any clue about the malicious coding except LOst. This isn't about making a judgement, the fact is that nobody else from Retro nor the rest of the S2HD staff had any part in this. Retro is only getting the because it was originally fronting the entire endeavour. So do you understand now why it's unfair for Retro's reputation to be tarnished by this?

Ah. I see now.

Well, this cleared up a lot for me, I thought this was a community project up until LOst decided to be a dick about it.

[goku262002]

Thats what I meant, don't start a war with journalists but if you see mis-guided information that looks like its causing fear and paranoia against Retro or the Sonic fanbase in general, see to it that it gets fixed by letting the journalist know or posting a comment with the right information.

[Candescence]

Canned Karma, the head of the project, had this to say over at Retro:

All of us had the exact same reaction everyone here did, and we're actively looking into it to the best of our abilities. That said, we've heard just as much from LOst as anyone here has lately, so I'm not sure what, if anything, we'll be able to find that corroborated or refutes what's been brought to light. I will say this though. LOst is no longer a part of S2HD. I'll have a more in depth response soon. We're just as pissed off about this as the community is.

I think we can all agree that LOst getting the sack is definitely a good thing.

[Semi-colon e]

It looks like LOst... finally got lost.

YEAAAAHHHH

No but really that's good news. While I hate some of the knee-jerk "fans are better than Sega" responses that are prevalent with this, I really hope they do well regardless. It's a shame LOst almost fucked everything up forever, and it's probably done a fair bit of damage to the reputation of Sonic Retro even though it was just him.

[goku262002]

^^^god, beaten again.

I am in no way defending LOst here (indeed we are really pissed at him), but where are the sources on the keylogger article? Who is "professional antivirus employee"? We all know that the exe trips virus scanners and all, people were getting warned all the same. Why publish this article with no proof at all?

I can confirm that the game accepts input when the game isn't in focus, but that is because we used to test it with multiple instances, like having 4 games running at HD just to see if I would get slowdown. Is this what is showing up? Who knows.

Also, looking at the registry entries, it is in the correct Hive, (Where other legitimate games put keys) and the keys are:

-a hash labeled stats - probably a method of storing and obscuring your own status of beating the game and unlocking things.

-controller information.

This is hardly evidence of anything suspicious(in the registry).

So the "Keylogger" was a testing thing when they were putting the game through stress tests. Still doesn't forgive the team for knowing about this but not being upfront about it when we all downloaded it. On top of everything now Retro is going to be known for spreading false infomation. God damn it...

[Cola]

Lotta shit is going down right about now.

I feel sorry for the team, LOst just fucked up all their hard work.

[Gaming Misfit]

You know, this just isn't worth it.

I got interested in this project because I thought it would be neat to play my favorite game on the Genesis in HD. However, it's just been too long and too bumpy of a road at this point. The game has taken forever, and I'd imagine it will still be a very long time until it's finished (not to mention this has slowed it down even MORE), then there's the issue with LOst (who has seriously screwed this whole thing over), and it's just too much.

With that in mind, anybody who wants to blame Retro, or any of the other S2HD staff are being completely ignorant to the real culprit here.

Thank God the guy is off the team, but I'm out. Sorry S2HD, you'll just remain a dream for this Misfit.

[Autosaver]

If I remember correctly, the S2HD staff originally kept LOst because he pretty much coded the game. Even with pressures to remove him, they just couldn't. It was too much of a risk.

Now that they sacked him, where will this project go now? Will someone else step in? Will it fall down to become another failed project?

Edited April 10, 2012 by Autosaver

[Burnt Ash]

Well, I just found this on Retro from Polygon Jim:

http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=28367&view=findpost&p=677996

So, does this mean that the keylogger isn't a keylogger?

[Badnik Mechanic]

So about that Sonic 2HD, anyone else think that the people in charge of the official site/game should like... oh I dunno... remove the download links until the DRM/keylogger is completely purged from this build? Maybe even put a new warning message up saying how it contains a keylogger?

It's the least they can do since their trust right now with some people in the wider gaming community is probably at zero right now.

People I feel sorry for in this is Retro, up until I did last weeks Sum Up Sunday (which looking back on what I wrote about S2HD, it's somewhat ironic now.) I didn't know that this wasn't a community project, let alone that Retro more or less has nothing to do with it (and to be fair I'm still not sure on this point, mainly because I don't follow fangames and I have no idea who works on what... ... .. much like the majority of other people... what? Am I wrong with that? Or is it wide knowledge who works on what outside of the fangame circles? This isn't a criticism on anyone, just stating what I suspect is what the majority is aware of.)

But anway, Retro needs to distance itself from this as much as it can, I've seen websites listing Scarred Sun as official spokesperson for Sonic 2HD (again I have no idea if this is right but I don't believe it is) but this is usually this is followed by 'Sonic Retro's 'Sonic 2HD.' I've also read on several forums like this one that many people thought this was a hoax, I wish I could find the link I had a moment ago, but one forum user actually made the absurd alligation that it was Retro putting out a hoax because they didn't get along with the S2HD dev team.

As for this project as a whole... it's over. The Fat Lady is not only singing but she's practically being dragged off stage by her DRM elasticated bra at this point. Nobody outside of the Sonic community sites is going to support this (news reports/articles etc) in the future because of all the security concerns about the game. One loony might have put the dodgy stuff in, but just look at all the problems behind the scenes with this as a whole and the fact you can STILL download the game... seriously why has the Sonic 2HD site not removed the download links yet?

[Gaming Misfit]

I thought about that as well. They really should either remove the links or at least post a little warning.

As for Retro's involvement with the project, if I'm not mistaken at one point Retro did work as support for the fangame, but around the time it stopped being a community project they gave up on that. That's just what I've been told though.

[Kuzu]

Ok, I never really cared about this in the slightest so I have no idea what's going on, can someone fill me in?

[Your Vest Friend]

Ok, I never really cared about this in the slightest so I have no idea what's going on, can someone fill me in?

I think it's pretty much died.