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[C.A. Sinner]

To be fair, it's a lot easier to remake an old game with prettier graphics than it is to design a new one.

I'd say it's actually the other way round in this case, considering it's two people who work in their spare time vs. a large team with corporate funding.

[moi]

To be fair, it's a lot easier to make a kickass one level demo without any commitments to ever release a complete game  than it is to complete a real game.

[Gimym TILBERT]

AND that, when this remake will be finished, there will be so much happy fan, with fantastic level design skill, that would import their level into that engine instead of hacking rom. The most important things is to have a good working engine.

But this one is not a one level demo, chemical plant is on the go.


You can still look at sonic fusion for a complete game with custom engine and level design, opening cinematics and various style of gameplay and level design aesthetic pick from different sonic era (which show a clear mastery of their principle while avoiding their pitfall). Pitfall? ripped graphic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vToH1ptLBtA (complete trailer with cinematics and many sample stage, skip the firt knuckle level and go to 3:04)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiqNZJUWEEM (a bit heavy on the visual, but awesome level design with interesting gimmick that made gameplay sense with speed like the inverted loop)
channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/Felik18#p/a/f/0/vToH1ptLBtA

It's just one of the many good fan game and it's one man made too.

EDIT:But since the advent of sonic 4 there was a sudden boom of quality project, they start alone and unaware of the community but when they release something they are quickly point toward the sonic retro community, they receive then feedback and help. The community organize itself to bring quality product and keeping track of talent (music etc...) There is a competition (sage: sonic amateur game expo) and there is wiki about everything, from gameplay, interview to story fact. They even have infiltrate agent into sega US.

[JamesGecko]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94Hn1XhyWB0
ON the topic of fan game that try to outdo sega. Some progress by a two man team.


Meanwhile sonic 4 (fancy cut trailers):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ndzzIryqNo

Is it bad that I think the graphics in Sonic 4 look a lot better? The contrast is kinda bad in that Emerald Hill trailer, and things aren't as abstract and stylized. Everything is in this blueish hue, and Sonic almost blends in with the background in places. It's harder to scan the screen at a glance and tell what's going on; the high level of detail works against itself, almost functioning as visual noise. (Although there were some earlier test trailers without the blue hue, and they were almost worse.) I'm not saying they can't make it work; just that it's not fantastic right now.

Ignoring debates about things like Sonics's run animation, Sonic 4 looks like it has a stronger visual direction. One more true to the (frequently colorful and saturated) classic games, in my humble opinion.

[Gimym TILBERT]

It's a video taken from a screen, you can see the curvature and other artefact (like the blueish hue) or maybe it's a filter that simulate that, they used the same effect in sonic LD which is 8bits hack of sonic MS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgvRphEquYQ (edit: capture video)

But you can check earlier screen or video for better contrast. I would not say it's perfect (it's kind of vusually busy), same aspect are pure taste and opinion (abstract non abstract? to me it's a good interpretation) but it does show more care than sonic 4 visually (bland style which clash against each other).

[JamesGecko]

It's a video taken from a screen, you can see the curvature and other artefact (like the blueish hue) or maybe it's a filter that simulate that,

It's clearly a filter; you can see the screen capture program's "trial version" watermark.

But you can check earlier screen or video for better contrast. I would not say it's perfect (it's kind of vusually busy), same aspect are pure taste and opinion (abstract non abstract? to me it's a good interpretation) but it does show more care than sonic 4 visually (bland style which clash against each other).

That was the video I referred to. I'm not sure it does show more care than Sonic 4's graphics. There's a lot of detail, sure, but it's not very refined. You'll note that Sonic 4 has several areas like this and this and this where there's a high level of detail, yet still enough contrast that an observer can easily tell what's happening. Even in the hyper saturated first act, there's a lot of contrast.

Contrast or detail or whatever or not; right now Sonic 4 is just easier to glance at and pick out the important details.

[Gimym TILBERT]

Yeah you are right
I was refering to splash hill zone since there no level to compare to from the fan remix

[SirNiko]

Wait, this comes out tomorrow?

[Golds]

Wait, this comes out tomorrow?

On the iPhone.  It comes out on Wii, PS3, XBLA later.  I think they're staggering the release to try and milk out more revenue from fans who'll shell out for the crappy iPhone port early, and then again when it hits on a .real console

On another note.  Just saw this trailer.  I think this Sonic 4 Labyrinth Zone art looks pretty good!  It also reminds me a bit of Spelunky XBLA

[SirNiko]

It's still pretty unexpectedly soon! It feels like it still should be way out there.

That video is great, because it brings back one part of Sonic I love - underwater stages where you can drown. They took those out in Sonic and Knuckles, and I missed them.

Now I need to decide whether to get it on PSN or Wiiware.

[Gimym TILBERT]

Let's compare more precisely and make some conclusion.







Fan show more care (at least in green trope level)

Better details
better lighting
better modelisation
more consistent look
Does not look like cheap modelisation

BUT should:

tone down saturation a bit (2 level for background, 1 level for environement)
Tone down dark contrast on environement
Use more mute color

Those things sonic 4 get them well

[Alevice]

tldr better art assets worse color balancing

[SirNiko]

Which fan game is this, and is it playable?

Perhaps you need to create a master list of Sonic fangames, sorted by quality, so that we can play them and debate the merits of each in comparison to Sonic 4.

[C.A. Sinner]

There was that one Sonic fan game that used the Doom engine. It was pretty fun as far as I remember.

[Pietepiet]

There was that one Sonic fan game that used the Doom engine. It was pretty fun as far as I remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMq_6N5RkCk ?