My Sonic 2 8 bit remake thread

[John43]

I do hope you enjoy this version of Sky High Zone. I had a lot of fun making this tileset. Unlike the UGZ tiles which were based on modified opensurge maps, this one has been completely drawn from the ground up, using paint, gimp and a digital art pad. I am rather pleased with the result. 

Not only do I have this video, but I have also updated the demo at SFGHQ to include this playground so you can see it in motion (without youtube's compression). The demo also contains a number of adjustments to make the game smoother. And also the fire shield can now use it's dash ability.

Download it here

SAGE 2020 Demo+

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Neat wit hthe trees moving in the wind, nice detail.

[SmashWere]

@John43Can you maybe show your art process?

it would be kind of nice to see.

because i could study it and draw something in your style.

[John43]

Sure thing.

What I used to do when on paper was to draw using big thick outlines, and anything for animation would get drawn separately. Then I'd use the threshold tool in GIMP to make those outlines black against a white background. Then I'd use paint to manipulate and colour. The closer something is to the screen the blacker and thicker the outline should be. This was a time consuming and messy method which lead to that janky look of the demo.

Now I have a digital art pad, things have become much more streamlined, easier and fun. I can now draw directly onto paint (zoomed out 50% at 4K) with the thickest pencil and scribble my sprites, using the original as reference. The colours are taken from the original palette and now I can make additional frames using copy and paste which works out very smoothly. I scale these frames using gimp and turn them into a tidy sprite sheet which I can then code into the game. I am especially proud of this water drop animation.

I hope this was informative

[SmashWere]

Yeah, that would be useful

but i mean like, drawing the character.

maybe in a video form or something?

i dunno

 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

I finally got around to playing the demo. It's so fun! The level design is great, the music rocks, and the visual style is appealing. I think Sonic's sprite needs some work to look more consistent, but other than that I don't really have any major qualms.

[John43]

I just finished streaming a playthrough of my demo since there has been a lack of updates lately but still some noteworthy changes to show off. Forgive the stream quality whenever Sonic goes fast, I think it was a neat stream nonetheless

 

 

[John43]

Long overdue but I have started work on redrawing the sprites again! As a bonus I decided to stream it for those interested in the how. Forgive the audio quality I didn't realise my mic was in an awful position.

By the end of the stream I managed to port a single idle frame from Procreate on my iPad to OpenSurge on my PC. Here is a screenshot of the Sonic I ended up with.

What do you think? I think this Sonic looks cleaner than my old version, i'm not sure if I should increase the line thickness of every body part or just keep a black outline consistently for all sprites on the player's plane. No matter what I decide to do, next up will be a complete overhaul of Under Ground Zone, to clean it up and get rid of those ugly messy textures and black outlines in the environment. Before the next stream I will get the entire idle animation ported to the game and hope to have decided on a final art style (again).

Here's a comparison between the two:

 

[John43]

 

[John43]

Under Ground Zone is looking better now. Still got some touch ups to do and other tiles to redraw like the rails and lava. Somebody in a stream said they were disappointed that the sun is just a ball, so I will attempt to give it an Oil Ocean Zone style animation too. Everything is still being drawn by hand via Procreate. It is then "digitised" the same way they used to do it for Mega Drive games like Disney's Aladdin.

I really do feel like we are approaching a nice and unified final art style!

(Edit: I included some before screenshots from the same locations for comparison)

Edited June 14, 2021 by John43
Added old screenshots for comparison

[John43]

Hello again! I think I should take a little break before carrying on with Act 2. I was so excited to see my version of Under Ground Zone change over the last week.

Let me know how you think the new "sun" looks! I did say previously that an Oil Ocean style one would be nice, but I've been listening to this song a lot while drawing these assets. I love the way they did lense flares in the adventure games. I hope I pulled it off well.

 

[charmsb]

Wow! Its my first time seeing this. It looks so clean and smooth. Keep it uppppppp

[John43]

So on my "break" from drawing I decided to learn some more scripting. And as a result I have improved the first boss since the demo version. Only thing missing from Act 1 now is an event where Eggman picks up Sonic and drops him into the arena, like in the original, but cutscenes will be one of the last things I will implement into the game.

[charmsb]

Wow that's working pretty well it looks like! I'd say though that Eggman looks a lot smaller than Sonic. 

[John43]

Okay, stay with me on this one. I recently started streaming on the channel, as you know.

As a fan of Dark Souls, I took the plunge and tried it's troubled sequel. After 40 hours blind, we finally completed it and it was such a great accomplishment it's given me the confidence to do more streaming.

So instead a boring normal drawing stream, I decided when it was time to come back to the art for this game, I'd put a spin on it:

During these two streams, I finished the new art for the Antlion Master Robot! Here are some of the 8 Frames in HQ.

I cannot express how much fun it was to switch between Dark Souls and drawing, very much suits my odd attention span, I hope to do more again soon!

[John43]

Sonic, you animal

[John43]

Here is a new look at an updated Under Ground Zone Act 2 with redrawn assets and palette changes, and an explore of the final level design for Sky High Act 1. I have written more about what is being shown in the video's description.

I have been building Sky High slowly but steadily over the course of the last few months, while I weave in and out of my other hobbies. Building Sonic levels is by far the hardest challenge for me in the whole development process. Harder than animating. Harder than the actual scripting! But I hope I have another fun original map here! It certainly feels fun to me, even on my 200th run of it. But you too can test it out by following this link to the opensurge forums where I have posted an updated demo (different to the SAGE 2020 version).
https://forum.opensurge2d.org/viewtopic.php?id=2057

[John43]

 

[John43]

Two things! I have recently revamped the game's page on the SFGHQ website because it got archived and lost all of it's media in the process. There is a new demo build dated August 20th, with a complete Sky High Zone to play.

https://www.sonicfangameshq.com/forums/showcase/another-sonic-2-remake.706/

Also had a very messy Dark Souls and Chill stream where I show off a completed Aqua Lake Act 1 tileset and I add to the indoor tileset!

 

[John43]

"This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one."

I'm so sorry that it's been a while, I explained on my channel in a separate video.

I hope you enjoy this progress report:

 

[John43]

Development is going quite nicely.

I am very proud of this bosses refined AI, gone are the bugs from the first demo, pausing the game no longer messes with this fight. He has a difficulty curve. I hope this is a good way to honour the original game's difficulty while giving a dynamic rematch to the Master Antlion.

You also get a small look at the game's finalized UI and HUD that I spent last week perfecting in an attempt to unify the entire game's presentation.

[John43]

Posting my two latest update videos. The first of how Sky High Act 1 plays in the latest build (at the time). This includes many redrawn and replaced graphics and tweaks to level design based on watching non sonic gamers try to complete them (bless my housemates). The bosses graphics have been cleaned up and it has been given a pinch mode!
 

The next showing a sneak peek at the game's Title screen, main menu and opening.

I hope to see you at SAGE!

[John43]

Expect me to spam my own thread in these weeks prior to SAGE as I crunch on level design. It's been a lot of fun working with Green Hill's assets and level design themes. We really do take this zone for granted you know, and it's crazy that back before the original Sonic released, Sonic Team spent 9 months perfecting Green Hill. I finished this simple level design for a prologue level to ease the player in. I wanted to honour GHZ's original philosophy while adding my own spin. I think when it comes to designing Green Hills (the 8 bit sonic 2 location), I will take what I did for this level and crank things up to 11! New to the opensurge engine I have created standard motobugs (a Pallette swap of the harder motobugs from the main game), Chompers (based on the 16 bit sonic 2 design, since they weren't in the original), spinning spike bridges and bonus points for those who recognise this guy:

Thanks for checking by, next update will be when I finish Sky High Act 2

[John43]

 

[John43]

I hope that my housemates can test the hell out of this one because it's my largest level to date. Unfortunately in the SAGE demo it wont have a boss fight. Quite frankly I have absolutely no idea how to recreate the original boss fight yet. It involves checking to see if 2 different sets of eggs have been destroyed and that is beyond my knowledge for now.

Over the next week , though I think I'm taking a break this weekend, I will be finishing both acts of Aqua Lake Zone, including their bosses. That means that the SAGE 2022 demo will contain 7 full playable levels and 5 boss fights. I am very much looking forward to seeing the Sonic YouTubers try it out!

I'll leave you with this teaser I've never played a Sonic level where the water rises and falls every 10 seconds like in a NSMB game...