It has been twelve days since the last update, a rare occurence here at the Nexus blog. However, it was intentional, as the work being put into the new content has been taking quite some time. I have super cool previews for you guys to look at. Since this post is the sprites’ first public showing, and that there are well-known thieves lurking around the Sonic fangame community, I have watermarked and horribly enlarged all images. Sorry, honest folk, but that is how it is going to be. They are indeed 100% original, after all (sans MMZ’s grass, which is from Chaotix). Anyway, to begin…
Jonathan has been getting acquainted to the new Retro-Sonic language and is currently making some awesome strides. He has been working on boss implementation for Sunset Shore and, for a first zone boss, it is a doozy. The boss is called the “Egg Protector” and it was sprited by Ryan Cordel, one of our most valued team members, from scratch:

Recently, we added a new spriter to the Nexus fold. Neostalker, a guy that Damizean found at another forum (and by that, I mean not SFGHQ), has proven to be incredibly gifted at spriting and animation. As a test, we gave him the task to draw up and animate some original foliage for Sunset Shore. Then, after he passed with flying colors, he hit us with Robotnik’s latest escape vehicle, the Egg Cycle.


In the level art department, SkyLights, Rael, and I have been revamping Dusky Deposit, Magma Monoliths, and Cosmic Chaos, respectively. We have some foregrounds for you to gawk at, however, I want to hold off putting Cosmic Chaos on display. I feel that I can make more tweaks to it. Regardless, here is DDZ and MMZ:

That is what has been going on. We are certainly not dead and never will be. Some clown decided to post that in the comments over the weekend and I got rather offended. Although we want our project to have a professional end result, it is still technically a hobby for us. Even with our college schedules, we are managing to get this much done, so I think we are doing just fine. Also, this guy pointed out that I deleted his comment, because it was “negative.” I don’t mind constructive criticism at all, but I will not tolerate flaming in the comments area. I want to avoid drama at all costs. If your comments got deleted, because you were responding to him, you did nothing wrong. I was just cleaning up. All of you guys have been really cool, so I do not think that I will have to worry about it too often.
A few more notes: There is a Desigin’ & Profilin’ article coming Wednesday that will discuss tile placement and its effect on momentum. I have told Jon to hold off on Badnik articles and such in order to concentrate his focus on finishing the work on his plate. Finally, Hunter might finish a few more songs soon and a playlist can coincide with it. You never know what is going to happen at the Nexus blog.
Later, guys.
-Flick