Ristar

it's like the mona lisa... is there any real expression in that face? looks like he's holding in a bad bout of diarrhoea or something.

why don't sega just release a sonic game where you just look at concept art. at least it wouldn't be a let down.

there's too much evidence to call it anything but fake. it seems like a good attempt at a hoax but he's cocked up a few important details. plus some of the mega-nerds have picked apart the collision detection and other boffiny details.

it's an octave note slide. you've started on the right note, just needs to slide up an octave.

try binning all the reverb and delay effects and concentrate on programming the midi data for each instrument. you shouldn't really be adding any reverb or delay till you've finished the song. you're already halfway there with the transcription, the intro is off though. Listen to it carefully. I don't use FL Studio so I can't really help with anything else.

just been playing about in photoshop. the problem is you have too many colours shared between the foreground and background. You'd benefit a lot if you made the purples in the foreground a touch lighter and changed most of the background buildings to blue.

if you lost a lot of the darkish purple in the foreground, it would stand out more.

you could try DarkBasic Pro or DarkGDK.NET for C# I'm a total retard when it comes to coding and even I managed to make a little platforming box with DB.

yeah I put those in a week or two ago as I thought they might help me shake my thang to any indie developers wanting to make a NES-ish game. Only sucky thing about Vibedeck is that it doesn't sync to Soundcloud, so I have to delete the set and re-import it every time I add something over at Soundcloud. also: http://soundcloud.com/tunners/sets/soundtrack-work new stuff here, I'll update vibedeck later on.

also the majority of the big review sites get little handouts from game developers anyway (Kane and Lynch lol). when I want a decent review of something I go for Classic Game Room and CGR Undertow because they generally tend to be fair as well as putting a light spin on everything. most games I've bought in the past year or so have been bought on Mark's good word.

I'm too nice, that's my problem! But yeah, I don't think I've ever played a Sonic game that had a plot I gave a shit about. Like Rawr says, just make the game good; then think about a plot. Does it even need a plot? Thing is, once people have played the game and stopped laughing at the fact that Eggman is now best mates with Dr. Wily only to find out a fucking Pokemon was deceiving them both they will probably facepalm 2dmaxx. I can assure you right now, no one will be positively astounded by this twist. Don't aim big with your plot. It's not important.

no. is it absolutely necessary to have a crossover?

I've noticed you're using both blue and grey to shade the sugar, I don't think it works. I would stick with one or the other or go for a bluey/grey colour. Same thing with those grey bricks, the blue just seems out of place.

I dunno whether I enjoy games I've worked for more or whether I just try harder at them. I bought Dynamite Headdy off the Virtual Console well before I installed HBC and I spent AGES trying to finish the game. Before that I just had a naughty version of it on my computer alongside about 400 other megadrive games that I never really bothered with. Same with the Ultimate Megadrive Collection I bought to play on my girlfriend's PS3 whenever she's working; I have versions of those games on my PC but because I'd bought this collection I actually tried a lot harder (I mean, why would I ever play Super Thunder Blade?)

I rarely impulse buy, I'm too much of a tightarse. I bought a new bottom lcd screen for my DS Lite and a guitar rack. The joys of minimum wage.

read this yesterday http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm blew my mind. can be applied to pixel art too as it echoes my tips as to not include all the details in a tiny sprite.

last pic made me think of this:

Sugar Spring? Sweet Sluice? Frosted Fortress? Delicious District? How about Sugar Sierra? So is this lake made out of syrup or something?

I have no beef with remixing other people's stuff; like Falk says, it can bring a fresh new perspective to tracks. Also, I wouldn't be TOO worried about (composition-wise) the tracks sounding really different because if a main melody or chord progression is kept in mind then there will still be a link. Look at Hydrocity Zone, act 2 is almost a different song altogether apart from the use of act 1's lead melody. Having done Act 1's 2's and 3's a few times before, I know that you can get seriously sick of the same theme, so someone else working on it can be a big help. Anyway! "Glycolysis Glacier"? I'm not a fan of the dithering on the snow (or sugar). It makes it seem dirty; a cleaner, "block" shaded style would look loads better. A bit like: http://ristar-cluster.info/fun-stuff/hints/freon-freeze.png and http://www.gameosaurus.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/sonic3.jpg

try GraphicsGale or even Paint.NET - both of which are about a zillion times better than Ms. Paint

that's collaborations though; loads of games use a few musicians, many of which use different methods. Sonic 3 & Knuckles, for example, had more than 5 different songwriters working together and I think that game had an amazing soundtrack. I think best idea for a cohesive soundtrack is to have 1 or 2 people mixing/mastering it. Falk's right with the wav stem idea; though I'm not sure DAWs like FL Studio can output wav stems. we're all mixing and writing on our own audio systems which may be radically different (I'm using ESi Near05 Classic monitors) so the mixes will sound miles apart. If one or two people mix everything then the sound differences will be less drastic.

Yeah it is! It was for Sonic Exogenesis (http://www.sonicfangameshq.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7349) about 40% of them are for fangames, others are projects I set for myself to fatten up my portfolio. could do with a puzzle game or an RPG now I think about it; there's a lot of Sonic in my portfolio atm

I think when you have so much original content in terms of level design and graphics, it can be a bit of a step back to use non-original music for the game. megadriving the tracks would work pretty well as we're all used to seeing sonic whilst listening to some bitchin' YM2612 tunes. sonic is looking pretty fly though, only thing is that when he looks up it seems like he's bending his neck at a freaky angle. because it's a 3/4 view of his face it needs to resemble knuckles' look-up sprite a bit more. (http://www.spriters-resource.com/genesis/snk/knuckles.PNG third row)

heyy I have that mic! it was a christmas present from many moons ago; it is a stage vocal mic though, so it won't handle the signal the same way an SM57 or other dynamic/small diaphragm condenser mic would. I'm not sure how freeamp works, but you can use a distorted signal and use the cabinet modelling features of the vst in order to give it that mic'd sound. You could also try buying a POD or V-Amp and bypass the whole mic/DI thing altogether I have a Marshall TSL-60 sitting under a bed somewhere and I feel like I'm cheating on it every time I go for the whore-like conveniece of my POD

Ahhh right. What mic are you using? If you don't already have one I'd advise picking up a second hand SM57 and a wee stand as that's going to provide the most natural sound for your mix If you're DI-ing your amp though, you can run the signal through an amp/cab simulator VST such as FreeAmp which will smoothly take off some of the treble and fatten up the overall sound.