Falk

Did you mean the DWM feature? You can actually capture that, then use Virtualdub to crop. Camtasia studio does allow to record a section of your desktop, but performance is piss-poor. For reference I get more FPS recording my desktop at 1920x1080 with Fraps than I do with Camtasia recording a 640x480 window. Then again I push 30fps constantly at 1080p in graphics-heavy games like Batman: AC and BF3 so...

The problem with AA at the pixel sizes retro games have is that they stop looking like AA and start looking like an intentional border. Half the reason S3&K's Sonic looks so doped up are his pupils :/

Pink. Looks a little older than retro sonic, but not awkward like the bug-eyed failed-antialias-pupils S3&K.

They're checkboxes, not radio buttons. They're not supposed to be mutually exclusive.

Is there anything wrong with Dropbox really, it's convenient, cross-platform and never gets taken down due to copyright infringement or inactivity.

Prior to reading the post/title I would have figured a stage Silver or Blaze or someone who wasn't on the long end of the morose scale (i.e. a lot of distortion/bitcrush/glitch for Shadow), but nice job!

More or less every single piece of music software I own are full licenses. In fact many distributors which don't specifically show student prices on their sites/distributions are willing to give cuts, which is why I always tell people to e-mail and ask. I guess when we're talking about sample banks and such it's clinically different though since it's raw materials as opposed to the means to manipulate them, but even moving up to DAWs and hardware (yes, student prices, or at least factory prices for those exist) the situation is the same. edit: funny you should mention that last sentence. The fact that Pro Tools is -still- touted as the industry standard and shoved down students' throats here has been a point of personal amusement for more than a few years now. :V

Depends. A lot of companies find that getting people at the start of their careers using their products instead of a competitor's is worth the 'loss' of a student price. Many software suites are essentially on the same EULA for a student version, pegging on the hopes that the user sticks with the product through updates and future revisions. There are always exceptions, of course.

Seconding Dust Hill being awesome

But this year is 2012. Not this year makes it not possible to end in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_%28video_game%29

I'm sorry that this community is so elitist and stuck up that we're all collectively hiding the super secret button that magically creates 2D 'rips' out of 3D assets that utilize shaders and alpha mapping.

I'm not too sure about dropping the HP that much though. A greater buffer allows you to go a little crazier with enemy/boss design while maintaining accessibility which in turn makes good plays shine all that much more. Dragon Valley is the first act in the game and already subjectively quite 'hardcore' as far as introductory levels go. I'd say throwing a bone in the form of 10-12 hp slots would be better than nerfing difficulty because I'm really liking what I see designwise and wondering how much more complex it goes from here. Maybe another layer of petals behind/between the current 6? That'd make 11 and you could come up with some concept of how 11 is a personal lucky number. 11 petals also give you 12 hits from full to death which is a pretty versatile number since it's divisable by 2/3/4/6, if you want to get creative with how much damage bosses do with a single mulligan petal somewhere on the screen that lets you take an extra hit from the boss

Strained my wrist right after new years (doing laundry of all things) which put me off finishing off Star Shores Act 1 for BTS (It's a little more acoustic, was supposed to lay down guitar/bass tracks). In hindsight I really should have worked on some electronic/retro/8-bit stuff in the interim but I decided to be a lazy ass and enjoy Steam sale loot instead. Stuff coming up though, and it should be going full-speed ahead soon! (Not that I'm going to reveal everything though )

I've had an observation on retro Sonic art direction for a while. There are two very distinct methods of lightcasting the environment: The first is the 'embossed' look, where two directions (generally top and left) are lighter than a surface facing the player, while the other two (bottom and right) are darker. This was how Sonic art started out, really. The vast majority of Sonic and a good portion of Sonic 2 uses this. In the Green Hill shot, observe lighting carefully. Everything that is symmetrical doesn't have the same lighting on its left and right halves. Even the shading on the center of that sunflower thing sources light from top left. Chemical Plant sources the light from top and slightly to the right instead of top left. The second is the 'closer is brighter' method, which works 'okayish' with rounded objects and really badly with faceted ones. Very rarely do you have a surface facing off to the left or right which is brighter than a surface facing the camera. It loosely translates into a 'light emits from the camera' look. S3&K moved more into this territory with its graphical overhaul. Obviously surfaces which are curved vertically still have brighter top than bottom surfaces, but if you compare to the Chemical Plant shot the difference is obvious. -None- of the shading/art on CPZ's cylinders and rounded objects are vertically symmetrical. Now, considering that retro graphics aren't all that realistic in the first place and cartoony by nature, suspension of disbelief will help 'make sense' of clashing light sources (Look at the shot of Mushroom Hill, the bigger trunks are literally sillhouetted, implying the light source faces the camera instead of the opposite suggested by the rest of the graphics) And obviously sprites will have sourcing coming from the wrong direction when mirrored, but I think for the purposes of maintaining a cohesive art look and feel, you'd want to pick one or the other and stick with it for as much of the art assets as possible. Personally I really can't jive with S3&K's art style, as awesome as the game(s) is(/are). I'm one of the guys in the camp that feels the franchise lost something artistically in the transition from S1/S2/SCD. edit: In the midst of typing up a long post in order to look like be a snooty know-it-all, I totally forgot to say: I'm liking the new stone pillars heaps! It still looks enough like SSH to be an obvious homage, yet fits in with the artistic direction of the level.

http://www.sweetwater.com/expert-center/glossary/t--TempScore :V

I really, really dig this. The first few levels for BTS fit well for what they were - it was quite the refresher as to how retro Sonic handled (I know Sonic Worlds isn't 100% accurate to the Genesis phyiscs, but it's still closer than Generations), sort of like a warm-up. ATS goes out the gate at full speed in comparison and that's awesome- It's sorta like how MW3 just did away with the 'boot camp! dis is how you aim down the iron sights, and now knife this watermelon hurr durr" since the devs figured the vast majority of people already played the prior games. The thing that really stood out to me vs BTS was enemy placement. It really felt like the badniks were out to stop Sonic rather than just chilling out like they usually do in Sonic games. Granted, BTS had some really memorable ones, don't get me wrong! (mini-speedy-motobugs and Ryuniks come to mind)

I draw your attention to MLP...

One thing that I can think of off-top-of-head that has square-ish stones would be Labyrinth Zone. There's 1-pixel highlights along the tops and very pronounced shadows along the bottom.

Pretty sick choices. Can't wait to hear what you guys cook up.

I'm digging it. One thing I could suggest though, is to try to bring out the chords a little more. What set Sonic CD apart during its time was the really unconventional (back then) progression choices, and the full effect came from hearing all the chord tones vs tensions vs borrowed accidentals. It may be a little bit of a mix issue, but for example in TT-Present, hearing the dissonance of the melody vs the chord changes was what made the original outstanding. When the lead line is miles louder than everything else, that effect is somewhat muted. I hope that makes some semblance of sense. D:

I used the hell out of the thing back before I got the xt... I totally get what you mean hahaha, most of the time the guitar stuff sounded decent when buried really far back or doubled out the nose. Been looking at an AxeFX2 myself, but 1) I'm poor 2) That bass expansion set aaaah.

Widescreen support yeayeayeayeayea!

Oh heyyyyy let's be friends Used to use a POD2. Now I'm terrified of this xt breaking down because it's got a killer bass module add-on/expansion set, and the new HD units and beyond don't support it.

D:! not my intention at all! Thanks for the compliment though! Have some Sonic CD JP. ;p