Sonic Talk The 13th: “Keep it on the download”

These past two weeks, I’ve hardly played a thing on disc as so many great games have been making it to the download scene. Now, Sonic’s got a few downloadable games out or coming out himself. This week, we’ll be talking to Community Manager Kellie Parker and Brand Manager Mia Patrino on Sonic Adventure 2 HD. Meanwhile, me, Nux and GX will be discussing the just released Sonic Jump along with exciting news over the new features in the upcoming Sonic The Fighters. As always we’ll have discussions on Sonic news, the recent comics. Plus Sonic music interludes and more! Youtube link will be available later.

[Download]

Click to comments for the full shownotes.

News:

Sonic Jump springs onto iOS devices.

Sonic the Fighters rerelease gets a playbale Honey the Cat, Eggman, and Metal Sonic with online play.

Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed on 3DS and Vita delayed to December 12th.

Nintendo announces a demo for SAASRT will be coming soon.

Texture swap time! MeeMee joins SAASRT.

Sonic Underground gets a finale in Sonic Universe #50

Sonic Generations is now available for download on 360.

Ristar to be the flagman for Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed.

Interview: Kellie Parker and Mia Patrino discuss Sonic Adventure 2 HD.

Comic Talk:

The Sonic Encyclopedia

Sonic #241

Sonic Universe #45

Game Talk: Sonic Jump

P.S. Sorry for some of the poor audio quality. I once again have my fan too close to me at times and Nux can’t seem to stand still for two seconds.

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13 responses to “Sonic Talk The 13th: “Keep it on the download”

  1. Greg says:

    To the guy who said online play for Sonic Adventure 2 would be different than Sonic the Fighters, you have no idea what you’re talking about. It would be the same thing, just say Jim and Bob have an online race, Jim picks Sonic and Bob picks Shadow. Jim’s input is controlling Sonic on his machine AND Bob’s machine, while Bob’s input is controlling Shadow on his machine AND Jim’s machine. There doesn’t need to be any new code to keep track of xyz. So stop talking out of your ass and stringing together words like processing and variables when you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Even if your logic was correct,(which it definitely isn’t) I’m pretty sure the characters in Sonic the Fighters can move too……

  2. GX Echidna says:

    Ha! I love it. I truly do.

    Anywho, what a beautiful world we would live in if netcode was that easy. Everyone could do it, and Nintendo would have zero excuse not to anymore.

    Sadly, though, this is not the case, considering that we’re demanding two computers to yell at each other over several thousand miles.

    Shooters, racing games, and most MMOs have it a little easier. If they need to fudge you a few meters to the right to properly sync your game with the session, no biggie. For fighting games, things get a tad trickier. Online play usually introduces at least some level of controller lag for the sake of the two systems trying to sync each players’ actions and determining what the result of that would be. Then there’s the thing Sega tried with their initial run of a la carte Genesis games (Sonic 2, Streets of Rage, et cetera…) where the host -usually- plays pretty fine, and the guest suffers the wrath of ping numbers.

    NOW, if Sonic Adventure 2’s engine were built to allow some kind of online play from the start, then Sega would have already addressed the issues and we could all be spamming Amy Rose’s special attacks by now, but it wasn’t and isn’t. Which means IF they wanted to add online, they’d have to find a way to do it. The way you suggested is a bit similar to the fighting game style, but it fails to take into account those nasty variables that I don’t understand, like every other piece of the level that isn’t the character, let’s say the cars in City Escape or the exact position of the spinning spiked sphere in the mech battle levels. That’s a big pile of data to send from one console to another, and it -won’t- be a reasonable trade-off until Google takes over the country’s ISP infrastructure and we can all yell terabytes at each other every other second without repercussion.

    The alternative is to ignore everything but character movement input, which creates its own problems since, unless the physics calculations of one console match up perfectly with the calculations of the other (and no, they won’t), best case scenario is characters getting stuck, desyncing, and possibly dying with one player and not the other, or worst case scenario being game session crashing.

  3. Greg says:

    You still don’t get it, both players are running IDENTICAL CODE ON EACH MACHINE. SONIC DOES THE SAME THING ON MACHINE A AND B, THEREFORE THE FREAKING CARS DO THE SAME THING. SONIC KNOCKS INTO A CAR ON ONE MACHINE, THE SAME FREAKING THING HAPPENS ON THE OTHER. ALL IT IS IS TREATING THE OPPONENT AS PLAYER 2 AND VICE VERSA.

  4. Greg says:

    They don’t call rand() when Sonic hits into a car to determine how far it flies…… Learn how to actually develop games from the ground up like I know how to do. Then start talking sense instead of pretentious garbage.

  5. Greg says:

    *knocks into

  6. Greg says:

    And I’m not saying there won’t be lag, but the results on each machine will still be the same. Sega has no excuse for no online in SA2. A bunch of professionals can handle netplay for a shitty gamecube port.

  7. GX Echidna says:

    XD I enjoy how bizarrely passionate you are about this game’s multiplayer.

    I think we’ve reached the point where there is no argument I could make against which you can and likely will respond “Well, they could do this way I have in my head and it will definitely work because I say it will.” I feel it’s a presumptuous oversimplification of how netcode works, but I’m not a programmer and don’t have the vernacular to better defend my point, so I will clarify my technical point and add a design point.

    I don’t think giving this game online is impossible. It’s very possible to give online to any game with multliplayer. However, that does not mean that said multiplayer is justifiable. Let’s say for a second that they did implement a system similar to what you described: Simple sending of button commands across systems. You acknowledged there would be lag, but considering the nature of the game, would any bit of controller lag be acceptable? Final Rush is a daunting mutha’ effer to begin with, I think any lag introduced into that would directly cause impact between my controller and television.

    I’m also going to reinforce the context of this game’s release. My interpretation of your saying that “Sega has no excuse for no online in SA2” is that you feel they have a responsibility to buyers to have it in. That part is patently not true. They never advertized that feature or made it a selling point. It would have been a nice surprise, but one would have to be pretty naive to simply expect it. I don’t think I’m brash in believing the scope of project Sonic Adventure 2 HD was to take Sonic Adventure 2, make it HD, give it some kind of DLC for the sake of having DLC, and toss it up on digital platforms at a price the market would likely be fine with. If true, they certainly achieved that because that’s why most people (I’m assuming), myself included bought the thing. If the multiplayer were the primary draw of the game, then perhaps one could argue that the value proposition of the $10 price was poor, but it isn’t. I don’t feel slighted for having purchased the game at the price I did, but if you purchased it and do feel slighted, then I’m not sure what you were expecting from it in the first place.

  8. GX Echidna says:

    That is to say, “but it isn’t,” referring to multiplayer being or not being the main draw of the game.

  9. Greg says:

    Alright let’s call a truce. I’m sorry for being rude, I had a really bad day on the same day I listened to the podcast so I guess I decided to take it out on a stranger. Please forgive me for my abruptness. (And I could have illustrated my point without insults like you did, I commend you for keeping cool when I was being a jerk).

    • GX Echidna says:

      XD No prob. I enjoyed the thought exercise. That, and the irony that, as the person on the podcast with perhaps the most critical attitude towards Sega, the one time I was giving them the benefit of the doubt was the moment someone got ticked off.

  10. humayun says:

    lame lame lame lame its boring yaar

  11. Nux says:

    Your listening to this a little late XD

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