Sonic Colors: Ultimate - Announcement Trailer

[Soniman]

Don't know the point in a "which turd is shinier" debate when both just look kinda crappy for similar reasons. I will say Colors isn't st that level for me yet but Tropical Resort alone kinda outdoes any Of DX's levels in terms of a good butchering 

[Edward850]

4 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Like, come on. Can someone tell me what in the actual fuck is going on Ultimate? It's too dark to see anything. None of the dozens of lights in the area are actually lighting anything up. You can barely even see the trees! But the water is, for some reason, pretty bright. It's a composite of bad lighting through and through.

I'm having a tough time figuring it out. The light maps look the same in most places so all the original baked assets were obviously obtained fine. But then everything in the game is just darker and I suspect the bloom turned up to compensate, and I can't tell if it's deliberate or someone just isn't paying any attention to the original lighting theory.

I can understand some of the weird graphical issues, like the Planet Wisp skybox. Shit happens when moving assets to different rendering pipelines and they aren't always a priority to fix over other issues. But the bloom and light levels are driving me absolutely crazy and I'm constantly distracted by it, especially with how distracting the bloom is by itself. I can't figure it out and I can't think of a single reason for it other than some designer thinking that's how next-gen is supposed to look.

[azoo]

Coming from someone who heavily disliked SADX's changes, Colors Ultimate has done more damage in one level than DX did in almost any stage combined.

Speed Highway, Red Mountain and Ice Cap made some pretty weird lighting and texture changes that I think personally don't look as good, but they're ultimately just (unnecessarily) different. Tropical Resort looks outright bad, like bad bad, due to the new lighting and every other stage fares only a little better. There's a difference.

[Dr. Detective]

As someone whose only played SADX and not the original Adventure, the only thing that stood out to me was that the models looked a bit shinier. I still liked the newer models themselves more though. That's probably just me preferring whatever looks closest to the Modern aesthetic though. I didn't play Adventure until way after I was already acquainted with Adventure 2: Battle, Heroes, and Sonic X. If anything else was changed and I've seen it in the original footage I wouldn't have been able to pick up on it.

Having played the original Colors, I can tell the difference between the two Tropical Resorts way easier though. Truthfully, if it were just a new stage and not one we know to have been more colorful, I'd have thought it was cool. The park looks like it's not fully open yet. The idea behind that is kind of neat but that doesn't seem to actually be the idea here. It's just dark for no reason.

[VO.SUPER]

9 minutes ago, azoo said:

Coming from someone who heavily disliked SADX's changes, Colors Ultimate has done more damage in one level than DX did in almost any stage combined.

Speed Highway, Red Mountain and Ice Cap made some pretty weird lighting and texture changes that I think personally don't look as good, but they're ultimately just (unnecessarily) different. Tropical Resort looks outright bad, like bad bad, due to the new lighting and every other stage fares only a little better. There's a difference.

I can't say the other stages are only slightly above bad bad. They look passable as upscale fodder.

But again, I'm not gonna lie that Tropical Resort has been hit hard. 

Honestly, the only reason I harp on this point is that I prefer Colour's attempt for a dev team that clearly wasn't given the time and budget and tried to go small vs something like SA1DX where they wanted to bite more than they could clearly chew. 

Hell, to me Tropical Resort is the Devs overstepping themselves and trying to taken their own vision when they are clearly not ready for something that requires way more work than they are putting. Its the most SADX styled change to me. 

[azoo]

SADX definitely wasn't done on a lot of time or money, either. It was released mid-2003 by Sonic Team, during the same pipeline where they made Sonic Mega Collection, Billy Hatcher, Phantasy Star Online: Episode III and upcoming holiday / Jan 2004 release Sonic Heroes. That doesn't really excuse it's end quality, but it just proves they were in no better of a production schedule than Blind Squirrel. 

Both ports are of similar intent (upgraded ports with "better" visuals) with similar results (some decent additions for otherwise a total visual hack job) and what seems to be similar circumstance (tight production schedules and possibly inexperience).

[VO.SUPER]

4 minutes ago, azoo said:

SADX definitely wasn't done on a lot of time or money, either. It was released mid-2003 by Sonic Team, during the same pipeline where they made Sonic Mega Collection, Billy Hatcher and ported Phantasy Star Online: Episode III. That doesn't really excuse it's end quality, but it just proves they were in no better of a production schedule than Blind Squirrel. 

Both ports are of similar intent (upgraded ports with "better" visuals) with similar results (some decent additions for otherwise a visual hack job) and what seems to be similar circumstance (tight production schedules and possibly inexperience).

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Both are clearly rush jobs. I just prefer a rush job that doesn't halfass greater ambition. Such as only really revamping 4 models to modern standards if they're not gonna do the rest. 

Ultimately neither product is the ideal of what a good low budget remaster could do, but I'll take a general "eh" over mish-mash.  And if Tropical Resort wasn't the hot garbage it was now id even be content with Colours Ultimate. 

[azoo]

SADX isn't blurring up visual coherence with blur, bloom and overexposure, so I can't in good faith just call that worse than Colors Ultimate. That's my point; DX is altering the aesthetic to a different (arguably not as good) one, CU is actively ruining its existing aesthetic. 

[VO.SUPER]

Just now, azoo said:

SADX isn't blurring up visual coherence with blur, bloom and overexposure, so I can't in good faith just call that worse than Colors Ultimate. That's my point; DX is altering the aesthetic to a different (arguably not as good) one, CU is actively ruining its existing aesthetic. 

Well I think we exhausted our points here at least. I think we can both agree, neither is ideal even if we don't on which sucks less. Haha. 

[Dr. Detective]

Not knowing what's so bad about DX is starting to frustrate me actually. I don't know why.

It shouldn't matter but I'm starting to get really upset now. I think I might want all the technical knowledge concerning these games to just be injected into my brain at this point because this always seems to happen whenever a new game rolls around. Everyone starts talking about technical stuff down to the most minute details and laying into them and I'm left wondering what the big deal is, often until it's too late like with Forces.

Where did you all go to study up on this stuff? SADX looks fine to me. Should it not? It sounds like it's common knowledge that it shouldn't and I feel stupid. 

[Sonictrainer]

Did they already mention what the Soleanna Coins do?

[Edward850]

Something more damning than the lighting, honestly; If the sales page is correct and the Switch port isn't 60FPS, then frankly consider my mind blown. As that would mean that they had a literal Wii game, a platform that was only barely more powerful than the Gamecube it was based off of, and somehow couldn't make that perform any faster on the Nintendo Switch at all.

They should have focused on that first rather than graphical changes. Yikes.

[shdowhunt60]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Not knowing what's so bad about DX is starting to frustrate me actually. I don't know why.

It shouldn't matter but I'm starting to get really upset now. I think I might want all the technical knowledge concerning these games to just be injected into my brain at this point because this always seems to happen whenever a new game rolls around. Everyone starts talking about technical stuff down to the most minute details and laying into them and I'm left wondering what the big deal is, often until it's too late like with Forces.

Where did you all go to study up on this stuff? SADX looks fine to me. Should it not? It sounds like it's common knowledge that it shouldn't and I feel stupid. 

There's a whole blog that goes into the nitty gritty details of it all, and even has a guide to mods that restore how the game originally looked on Dreamcast.

https://dreamcastify.unreliable.network/

It's a very complicated subject, but the thing with comparing Sonic Colors Ultimate to Sonic Adventure DX is that Sonic Adventure used a LOT of specific tricks on the Dreamcast to achieve what it did, and the reason why Sonic Adventure DX ended up in the way it did was that so much of it simply couldn't be replicated on the GameCube.

It's worth mentioning that this also affects Sonic Adventure 2: Battle to some extent, but Sonic Team did a much better job mitigating the impact of what that all might imply, all the while adding a lot of improvements to the game to make it hold up better on the GameCube that they didn't do for SA:DX. I know someone in this thread mentioned that it would be ridiculous if they made Lost Colony a lot darker, but that originally WAS the case. 

The thing with Sonic Colors Ultimate is that this isn't the case today. The game CAN be ported without messing up its art direction due to breaking effects, and we know that through Sonic Generations ports, and that's just thanks to the fact that modern graphics hardware is just way more flexible than it was 20 years ago.

This Sonic Generations mod does a WAY better job of preserving the art direction that went into Tropical Resort on the Wii. So there isn't an excuse this time around for Sonic Colors Ultimate to be looking as bad as it is.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I feel like the idea of Tropical Resort wasn't to convey the park was closed (although it probably is apart of it) - but also to try make the neon colouring and such stand-out more. In the original Colours, while looking nice - things that were meant to be 'neon-lit' didn't really stand out because they didn't really give it any lighting that makes it stand out much from the rest of the stage.

The idea here to me seems to be they attempted to darken the stage in order to achieve the same effect (the neon lighting standing out and being the highest source of light in the level) but they massively screwed the pooch by taking this approach, instead of simply redoing the lighting from scratch for the neon lights.

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, shdowhunt60 said:

There's a whole blog that goes into the nitty gritty details of it all, and even has a guide to mods that restore how the game originally looked on Dreamcast.

https://dreamcastify.unreliable.network/

Oh Thank goodness. Looking through this, it's fairly obvious what the differences and problems are. I guess it really was just a matter of having not played the original.

I worry about this shit because I sometimes can't tell if it's me being stupid or me just not having all the right context and that hinders the ability to join in on a conversation about the technical stuff. 

[VO.SUPER]

5 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

The thing with Sonic Colors Ultimate is that this isn't the case today. The game CAN be ported without messing up its art direction due to breaking effects, and we know that through Sonic Generations ports, and that's just thanks to the fact that modern graphics hardware is just way more flexible than it was 20 years ago.

This Sonic Generations mod does a WAY better job of preserving the art direction that went into Tropical Resort on the Wii. So there isn't an excuse this time around for Sonic Colors Ultimate to be looking as bad as it is.

The thing still is time and resources for a dev team vs a modder. Modders may do incredible things, but getting it looking as good as it did didn't happen overnight, and they weren't doing an entire game. Yeah I'm not disagreeing with you that it can't be done. The evidence is there that it can, but it's clear the time isn't there for the whole studio who are primarily doing this for a paycheck first and foremost amongst probably other projects breathing down their necks, on top of COVID to make it this Generations level of good.

At that point they would have been better off just keeping the original art style and forgetting about all the bloom nonsense that they clearly weren't going to use effectively. And it falls into the same problem I say DX did in that it bit more than it could chew.

[shdowhunt60]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Oh Thank goodness. Looking through this, it's fairly obvious what the differences and problems are. I guess it really was just a matter of having not played the original.

I worry about this shit because I sometimes can't tell if it's me being stupid or me just not having all the right context and that hinders the ability to join in on a conversation about the technical stuff. 

It just isn't common enough knowledge. The Dreamcast wasn't a super popular console, and most people know about Sonic Adventure through SA:DX, not to mention that communication when it came to console games wasn't super well developed yet. Add into the marketing that SEGA did that Sonic Adventure: DX was the better and more definitive experience, it's just relatively recently that people are starting to document this sort of thing.

6 minutes ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

The thing still is time and resources for a dev team vs a modder. Modders may do incredible things, but getting it looking as good as it did didn't happen overnight, and they weren't doing an entire game. Yeah I'm not disagreeing with you that it can't be done. The evidence is there that it can, but it's clear the time isn't there for the whole studio who are primarily doing this for a paycheck first and foremost amongst probably other projects breathing down their necks, on top of COVID to make it this Generations level of good.

At that point they would have been better off just keeping the original art style and forgetting about all the bloom nonsense that they clearly weren't going to use effectively. And it falls into the same problem I say DX did in that it bit more than it could chew.

Modders are subjected to resource constraints to a far greater extent than a professional studio. AS far as I'm concerned Blind Squirrel has far less of an excuse than even the SA:DX team did, and I wasn't excusing them there either: SA:DX was a botched effort. And Colors Ultimate is looking to be as well.

[Dr. Detective]

Sure would be nice to play all those Dreamcast games I missed out on.

Perhaps in some sort of collection of sorts. 

No. What am I saying? We need at least six more compilations of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2. Nevermind.

[VO.SUPER]

8 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Modders are subjected to resource constraints to a far greater extent than a professional studio. AS far as I'm concerned Blind Squirrel has far less of an excuse than even the SA:DX team did, and I wasn't excusing them there either: SA:DX was a botched effort. And Colors Ultimate is looking to be as well.

Modders at least have time and in theory should have more modest plans, like working on a single stage instead of a full game in the span of what was probably barely more than a year. 

Granted. Blind Squirrel is still a studio vs a modder, you're right. But they certainly don't have all the talent of SEGA in the early 2000s. 

Edit: Oh for God's sake Soniman is right. The hell am I even arguing about at this point?

[Sonicka]

1 minute ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Not knowing what's so bad about DX is starting to frustrate me actually. I don't know why.

It shouldn't matter but I'm starting to get really upset now. I think I might want all the technical knowledge concerning these games to just be injected into my brain at this point because this always seems to happen whenever a new game rolls around. Everyone starts talking about technical stuff down to the most minute details and laying into them and I'm left wondering what the big deal is, often until it's too late like with Forces.

Where did you all go to study up on this stuff? SADX looks fine to me. Should it not? It sounds like it's common knowledge that it shouldn't and I feel stupid. 

Despite all the issues that SADX has, If you still enjoyed it then it really doesn’t matter. So I wouldn’t feel silly about it, especially if you hadn’t played it on Dreamcast originally.

As previously mentioned the porting job with SADX was just a part of the times and the limitations/technology used when bringing this over from the Dreamcast to the Gamecube. 

With Sonic Colours it’s different. It’s not like these changes/updates are breaking the game or making it unplayable, it’s just superficial things that are irritating certain parties of people enough that a nitpick quickly escalates into a rant. (Note: that’s totally fine by the way if you feel that way!).

I find that talking about Sonic Adventure DX isn’t really a suitable/comparable example to be perfectly frank because the approaches needed between that port and the requirements of Sonic Colours needs are entirely different. 

For one thing Sonic Team weren’t porting SA1 up 2/3 generations onto the latest available console 10 years later, and SADX also didn’t have to concern itself with the requirement of upscaling itself to High Definition standards either like colours is currently dealing with. 

I agree that Perhaps this team could do a better job with their creative liberties on the graphics and lighting in certain areas for this Sonic Colours Remaster, but talking about SADX and trying to use it as a comparison is pretty irrelevant IMO.

[iambitter21]

Ironically, the Xbox port was the only version of SA1 I have played. It honestly wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.

[shdowhunt60]

3 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Sure would be nice to play all those Dreamcast games I missed out on.

Perhaps in some sort of collection of sorts. 

No. What am I saying? We need at least six more compilations of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2. Nevermind.

Yeah, would be nice, but it seems like the few games that even got ported in the first place come with a mile long list of caveats. Crazy Taxi is another one with a bunch of really, really bad ports.

Capcom also released a bunch of winners for Dreamcast like Power Stone, but man Capcom just doesn't seem interested in any of their older 3D games let alone the ones they released on Dreamcast.

6 minutes ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

Modders at least have time and in theory should have more modest plans, like working on a single stage instead of a full game in the span of what was probably barely more than a year. 

Porting an already existing game isn't that huge of an undertaking as you're making it to be, especially when you likely have access to all the tools and resources that were originally used to create it. Colors is a Hedgehog Engine game. We know those already work on modern consoles.

Blind Squirrel is supposed to be a professional studio where it is their job to actually do the job of porting the game. I would assume that professionals would be more capable than someone who is just doing it as a hobby on their free time for no financial compensation.

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, Son-icka said:

Despite all the issues that SADX has, If you still enjoyed it then it really doesn’t matter. So I wouldn’t feel silly about it, especially if you hadn’t played it on Dreamcast originally.

As previously mentioned the porting job with SADX was just a part of the times and the limitations/technology used when bringing this over from the Dreamcast to the Gamecube. 

With Sonic Colours it’s different. It’s not like these changes/updates are breaking the game or making it unplayable, it’s just superficial things that are irritating certain parties of people enough that a nitpick quickly escalates into a rant. (Note: that’s totally fine by the way if you feel that way!).

I find that talking about Sonic Adventure DX isn’t really a suitable/comparable example to be perfectly frank because the approaches needed between that port and the requirements of Sonic Colours needs are entirely different. 

For one thing Sonic Team weren’t porting SA1 up 2/3 generations onto the latest available console 10 years later, and SADX also didn’t have to concern itself with the requirement of upscaling itself to High Definition standards either like colours is currently dealing with. 

I agree that Perhaps this team could do a better job with their creative liberties on the graphics and lighting in certain areas for this Sonic Colours Remaster, but talking about SADX and trying to use it as a comparison is pretty irrelevant IMO.

Well, I checked out the differences in the original Adventure and DX and now I'm even more upset. At SEGA/Sonic Team this time. I still like the DX models more but almost everything else I saw in the link providing the comparisons really cheesed my onions.

Then again, being upset at the people in charge of Sonic isn't anything new but it's all starting to pile on now. I kind of wish I remained in the dark about it now because I'm realizing more and more that they just seem to suck when it comes to ports and "ultimate" editions of things. 

What would happen if we actually did get those Adventure remakes? I'm gonna need Rangers to show me what Sonic Team proper has or hasn't learned in the past 4 years because I want some reassurance about... something. Anything.

The silver lining here is that they didn't do this Colors Ultimate thing themselves. It was some other studio and it happened during the pandemic. I can at least pretend that's some sort of silver lining I guess but right now I'm just bothered by it all.

Be careful what you wish for. I understand now and I wish I didn't anymore. I was happier 10 minutes ago when I was ignorant. Oh, that dreaded Monkey's Paw. It's forsaken me yet again.

[Natie]

38 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Oh Thank goodness. Looking through this, it's fairly obvious what the differences and problems are. I guess it really was just a matter of having not played the original.

I worry about this shit because I sometimes can't tell if it's me being stupid or me just not having all the right context and that hinders the ability to join in on a conversation about the technical stuff. 

Its funny, I was in the same boat until I tried the dreamcast conversion mods on the Steam version and kept going "What the fuck?? This game used have lighting, color design and texture work that actually holds up??" in every area I entered.

 

Its a shame that with most remasters and remakes so many artistic details of the original get overlooked. Outside of Tropucal Resort, most remaster levels looked fine to me until I saw comparisons with the original and found so much to nitpick.

[shdowhunt60]

24 minutes ago, Natie said:

Its funny, I was in the same boat until I tried the dreamcast conversion mods on the Steam version and kept going "What the fuck?? This game used have lighting, color design and texture work that actually holds up??" in every area I entered.

 

Its a shame that with most remasters and remakes so many artistic details of the original get overlooked. Outside of Tropucal Resort, most remaster levels looked fine to me until I saw comparisons with the original and found so much to nitpick.

It would be pretty great if we got something like a DF Retro on Sonic Adventure, because a lot of the art direction indicates that Sonic Team was thinking about things like global illumination like... 10 years before Sonic Unleashed came out. It's a shame when discourse comes up about the visual identity that it has, it usually amounts to "yeah but Sonic looks super out of place in these realistic environments" when the game didn't originally look that way, and so much of it comes down to "how does the lighting in the environments relate to the characters in them".

Sonic Colors Ultimate is doing the same thing again with the changes to lighting. It's not just how dark the environments are looking, but Sonic looks weirdly bright in relation to those environments, and thusly looks out of place. It looks less bad in bright environments like Sweet Mountain, but there's just still that slight disconnect like Sonic is just being lit by nothing.