Il stay a awake for a while and post any new videos that come up. Have also been archiving all the videos too
From Ross Harrris on these videos "I don't really have much to add from what I post here. These videos are old files I have randomly lying around that have survived several home PC's. They are an interesting bit of history that I thought might be interesting to some people, but I have no interest in the topic more than what I'm already doing. I don't have enough free time to pursue all the new and exiting ideas I want to pursue rather than revisit old defeats! ;-) But to be honest, after 20+ years the simple truth is that I've forgotten so much that I really have no development details to add that haven't already been said on the subject. I will say one thing however- the 'official' story has mainly been voiced from the perspective of one side of the drama. The SonicX team was woefully inexperienced and understaffed (I was the most experienced with 10 years of videogame development under my belt at the time) for such an important title. Management was at fault letting the title slip time and time again, although none of us were slacking- if anything we were working too hard, just not very efficiently. I was lead artist, but all I worked on was the 3d characters and animations, not the environments. Some people have been painted as villains in the drama, unfairly so. The simple fact was that the game was to be delivered as a launch title for the SEGA Saturn console (yes, initially it was considered for the 32x) only. The PC version was either just a happy accident of the development process Ofer came up with, or a misunderstanding of the core mission. Ofer is a very bright guy, the fact he came up with Zbrush after SonicX proves this. But he wasn't a console programmer, and that's who made console games back then. Any 'attempts to steal the game away' was simply the more senior management and technical staff trying to get the game running on the target hardware. I won't say there wasn't conflict or political infighting or that everyone was nice to one another, but that was just the unfortunate consequences of facing some hard truths. No SEGA exec flew in from Japan to see a PC version. The Saturn was the only hardware they cared about, which shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone on the team. I was sort of in the middle, being neither on one side of the other so I missed most of the drama unfold so I can be more objective in my analysis; being on good terms with both sides at the time. But to summarize without the need to point fingers, the game was too ambitious for the size of the team and the time and resources available to succeed. In hindsight, it was doomed to fail. Simple as that.?" The xtreme story is so sad Compiled more of the new frames into a longer one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wga1T6l9o58&index=2&list=PLkMwiQUdhra1luvJuWHz48Y5oGNSLgImR&t=29s
Quoting Ross on one of his replies from youtube. This one is pretty interesting. I don't really have much to add from what I post here. These videos are old files I have randomly lying around that have survived several home PC's. They are an interesting bit of history that I thought might be interesting to some people, but I have no interest in the topic more than what I'm already doing. I don't have enough free time to pursue all the new and exiting ideas I want to pursue rather than revisit old defeats! ;-) But to be honest, after 20+ years the simple truth is that I've forgotten so much that I really have no development details to add that haven't already been said on the subject. I will say one thing however- the 'official' story has mainly been voiced from the perspective of one side of the drama. The SonicX team was woefully inexperienced and understaffed (I was the most experienced with 10 years of videogame development under my belt at the time) for such an important title. Management was at fault letting the title slip time and time again, although none of us were slacking- if anything we were working too hard, just not very efficiently. I was lead artist, but all I worked on was the 3d characters and animations, not the environments. Some people have been painted as villains in the drama, unfairly so. The simple fact was that the game was to be delivered as a launch title for the SEGA Saturn console (yes, initially it was considered for the 32x) only. The PC version was either just a happy accident of the development process Ofer came up with, or a misunderstanding of the core mission. Ofer is a very bright guy, the fact he came up with Zbrush after SonicX proves this. But he wasn't a console programmer, and that's who made console games back then. Any 'attempts to steal the game away' was simply the more senior management and technical staff trying to get the game running on the target hardware. I won't say there wasn't conflict or political infighting or that everyone was nice to one another, but that was just the unfortunate consequences of facing some hard truths. No SEGA exec flew in from Japan to see a PC version. The Saturn was the only hardware they cared about, which shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone on the team. I was sort of in the middle, being neither on one side of the other so I missed most of the drama unfold so I can be more objective in my analysis; being on good terms with both sides at the time. But to summarize without the need to point fingers, the game was too ambitious for the size of the team and the time and resources available to succeed. In hindsight, it was doomed to fail. Simple as that.?
Lol thats what i said up top. he also said this on one of the 32x running animations "No, this was an earlier meeting. I don't recall the reaction, or even if it was shown (I've forgotten a lot of this). I worked with Christina on the art for boss engine demo as it was the only version of the game running natively on the Saturn. Sonic Xtreme was initially a 32x title but soon switched to the Saturn. The PC version was a later idea by Chris Senn and Ofer Alon after they had left the team, as the game was already running on the PC. All the boss footage out there is from the Saturn, all the non-boss stuff was from a PC intermediate version. It was supposed to then be converted down to the Saturn but I never saw a version that was. I heard rumors, possibly something I read on the internet long after I left that the Saturn ports ran at 3 frames a second. There's probably some truth in that as back then you wrote natively for the console hardware (as Cristina did) instead of on a MAC then porting to the PC and finally porting to the Saturn. The last version of Sonic X was the project Condor version, but as far as I know nothing survives of it. I don't even recall if anything playable ever existed. But I knocked up this hacky vid in a couple of hours the night before. None of the cinematic videos are polished, they are purely internal concept pieces done in whatever free time I had, not polished stuff to send to marketing.?" Shame everything with Condor is lost forever as it would have been nice to see the fruits of Coffins work as he worked so hard on it it nearly killed him (supposedly)
All this talk of xtreme has inspired me to go through my old school projects from way back and found some of the boss recreations i made. Their not the prettiest but where some of my first animations Most of these where Sonic Mars boss ideas that i simply made, even fully made the final eggman fight but seems to have been lost to time
Yes that's correct, the only things we have are the 718 build and a few screenshots of some random levels Backin the good old days of Senntinet
Stumbled across a magazine article of Xtreme i have never seen before, was wondering if anyone has read it to see if there is any new juicy info in the article https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/intelligent-gamer/intelligent-gamer-issue-1/
Welllllll.... this year has been very slow going for AXSX, We had a baby, and also i had been renovating the exterior of my house, we even got a new roof put on the place. here is some of the work i did on the house. Peeled paint and sanded after heating up with Inferred heat lamp. ( i used a EPA approved Heppa vacuum to clean up the mess and also attaches to power sanders.) Inside view of lamp Paint caked into Beed Board Cleaned out beed board (Left side groove is sanded and right side non sanded to show before and after) It was a real bitch to sand all that bead board! Finished view Much of the paint had failed Peeled and sanded (Looks new ehh?) Painted and Roof done, (background Siding not painted at time of photo) Wow this wood is so rotted ! Rebuilt using Epoxy and sandpaper to reshape I'm not done with the house work yet. I figure it's got another maybe 1 or2 years work to go, but i got the most important stuff done which was preparing the house for the roofing job. i reached the checkpoint for house work this past November 1st! ( no more house work for awhile !) meaning i'll be taking the next 6 months to work only on AXSX in whatever freetime i have available ! After house stuffs was done, I had started working on upgrading for my PC's water cooling system in early October, the plan was to add a second radiator to the modular radiator system that i already have. Besides the Radiator, other components needed for the upgrade consisted of a new Pump, Reservoir, hose fittings, barbs, 12 140mm fans, and cooling blocks for the motherboard to help with better overclocks. (since i only water-cooled the CPU before) Took a full month for some parts to fly in from Germany. In the meantime, I knew that this new setup wouldn't fit inside even the monstrously huge Cosmos 2 tower, So i had to plan for a wall mounting set up for the Radiator. Res and pump connected into 1 unit! Got to love this modular Stuff ! ( in the background you can see the Radiator being assembled) Must have filter ! New Power Supply upgrade to power all the new fans and to help more stable overclock. Examples of ways you can connect the modular radiators, side by side, end to end, or top bottom, you can even connect all directions at once lol. Since this was to be mounted on the wall, where everyone can see it, I wanted to go for some kind of interesting theme, And steampunk is kind of in these days. SSSOOoooOo I started by building a backsplash out of rustic barn wood styled planks. The radiator is damned heavy and very long measuring in at 36 inches ( when 2 are connected end to end), and it needed something sturdy to hold it in place which allowed for good airfloew. So next was to sweat together (Solder with blowtorch) lots of copper piping! And after that was done, I felt that the Soldered joints didn't look right in silver. I wanted to darken them, and thought paint was not the way to go, but decided not to because it could peel and wasn't very realistic. So i had to do some research, and found a metal Patina solution that hobbyists use to change metal color on stained glass work. I applied it to the solder and copper pipes to give them the aged look you see in the pictures. I also left plenty of room for another row of Radiators and if i want to do a complete PC build on the backsplash mounting a motherboard ect ect. Coper pipes freshly Soldered, and mounting Radiator for a fit test. For the finishing touches on the black splash , I went with an Edison style wall fixture, at first it was solid black, and well that didn't mesh well with the rest of the aesthetics. I wanted a realistic metal finish so...to start off, I spray painted it with hammered copper spray paint. But the result was not very believable, as it looked spray-painted... eww so than the next step was to apply a coat of antiquing paint from Hobby Lobby. (It's a kind of translucent coffee color) Adding that antiquing color really helped with giving the fixture a really believable metallic finish. Inside the case, not going fancy with clear hose or hard pipes here, This wont be seen most of the time. Quick Disconects for disconnecting PC from wall mount hoses. Close up View of hand painted light fixture, chemically aged pipes, and the pump + Reservoir modular combo. Next, the Box Tabble! (actually i built this before the backsplash) Had to build a stand for the Tower so that the water cooling hoses and wires didn't need to reach so far down the wall, I went with the same rustic Barnwood styled wood that was also going to be used for the backsplash. I aged it with a wirebrush to remove grain and to give a bumpy texture, than smoothed the burr with sand paper, and stained it with Minwax wood stain in 3 different colors. This damned Crate shaped table was a pain to build, each piece of wood had to be measured exactly so that they would all fit together like a glove for using the offset planks so that they interlock together to hold the endcaps in place. The endcaps can be removed to gain access to the inside of the box. In total the box table thing took a little over a week to finish. Table showing the break away sides After that was all done, it was a bitch to set up the piping that went from the Wall mount components to the back of the tower so as to hide wires. ended up having to order more Sata, USB and other extension power cables. getting all that to fit in the pope was next to imposible so the pipe had to be taken apart so that the wires could all fit without getting stuck in the bends. Picture of the complete setup minus monitors and desk, ( will post that later when everything is said and done) At the end of November....Just when i had Completely Finished, and tested everything with a 2 day drip test. And with the same overclock i had used prior to the upgrade that had temps in high 80s C on load, now with temps in the high 50s on load. (i was very very happy with the results!) Had to break down the Radiator and completely dismantle it to fix a leak where the 2 radiators join, what a pain! Before i could put my desk and monitors back in place....Bad luck Struck! The kind of bad luck that Bricked the motherboard......A power outage happened while flashing the bios to the latest version! ! ! OMFG ! ! ! I'm still waiting on the motherboard replacement, hopefully that wont take too long. hope to have it before December 14th at least. After the bad luck, i just couldn't take waiting to get back to AXSX, so I had to set up a laptop that is almost never used, the damned thing has had major overheating issues in the past, I decided to apply new thermal past, but before i did that i wanted to see what the temps were so i downloaded OpenHardwareMonitor, and what i saw inside blew my mind ! Temps of high 80 to low 90 on idle ! ! OMG So i ripped open the system, which was a pain cause its a laptop, removed the thermal compound from both the CPU and GPU, and applied some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste, I use this past for overclocking my systems. it can net you 10+ degree lower temps vs your standard CPU compounds and i feel its the second best past on the market temp wise vs using a liquid metal compound which literally is a liquid metal. its about 2 degrees C lower than that, which is insane ! my old favorite compound IC diamond 24 carrot was about 5 to 6 degrees hotter than the liquid metal. Laptop pictured here for temporary AXSX use! Some thermal pasts that i use for PC various builds. ( depending on type of build) I have one more task to tackle before getting fully back into AXSX,,, I am attempting to recreate the Sonic 3 title screen model for a friend who i had promised......I don't have faith that it can be done to be 1:1 if comparing it to the original model renderings, Its just an odd reference to use to model by. Hope i can finish it soon! (oh yesss:::: Picture of Before the watercooling loop upgrade.....) Don't think im putting the retro monitor or NV1 PC system back since im done with research on what PC builds of Xtreme we do have. If someday we get our hands on other NV1 builds than ill break that shit out of storage !
Great job on the roof and house! looks mighty fine. was also going to ask about the project as you said a while back that you have free time in November but though it be best to wait until you posted something. Hope development goes well :specialed:
Thx guys ! My main tower should be up and running on the 13th hopfully. WOW! What a number! Hope its not more bad luck for getting the PC getting back up and running lol Working on the laptop isn't so bad, but it sure does feel kinda slow!
Hey Andrew, is your conputer up and running yet? Cool to see the work you've been doing on your house! I love reading these types of posts, it's very interesting seeing the progress made on people's projects, reminds me a lot of the Galaga project. Hopefully you can release a video on your YouTube channel soon, just in time for the one year anniversary of your latest video! Lol, in all seriousness good luck with the baby and make some good progress on AXSX!
