[Andrew75]

Related threads:
POV Saturn Build thread: http://forums.sonicr...opic=34255&st=0
Original Retro Leak thread: http://forums.sonicr...showtopic=33545
Original Assembler Leak thread: http://assemblergame...required.54194/
Assembler Release Thread: http://assemblergame...v-builds.55713/
Modding Thread: http://forums.sonicr...showtopic=34041


== V037 SONICBOOM Sonic X-Treme Level Editor ==

kudos to JollyRoger on another fine release!
This is another "AS IS Release" so there are lot of bugs and issues as how it was found.



NOTES:
If you are missing a DLL, you may need to download the C++ x86 Redistributable. https://www.microsof...s.aspx?id=40784
The readme file has a little more information on how to work the editor.
We had initially planned to do a PDF guide with illustrations, but seriously lack the time to do something like that these days.
Hoping we can get someone to write up an instruction guide and also someone to do some bug reports. ( there are a lot of issues that need to be documented)

SonicBoom "Sonic X-treme" Level editor for v037 levels. Release 001:
Mega
Hugefiles



== V40 Engine for PC And SEGA SATURN ==

K guys !
2 new simultaneous releases for Engine v040! The First Release is for the PC. And YES SEGA SATURN TOO!!!! (Again lets thank JollyRoger for his hard work)
Both releases Support Fisheye ! YES I said it Fisheye and SEGA SATURN together! Did I say Fisheye with good FPS! ? !
The PC release generally looks better with more frames of animation for Sonic, enemies and the rings. The PC ver Also sports higher res with better color than the Saturn version which looks a bit washed out, but that is to be expected. Improvements for both 040 versions are planned including frame rate improvements and more frames of animation for sprites like rings for the Saturn build among too many other improvement to list.

Here is the video for 040 running on Sega Saturn!


The video shows the engine essentially unmodified from the way it was found.
As you can see, this is a very early build of the Saturn version. The v40 engine is very different from v37: many features had been removed or simplified to streamline portions of the code and data structures to increase the performance, so that it could run on Saturn at an acceptable speed.
The engine was clearly in the middle of heavy refactoring and basic functionality such as player control and collisions were disabled. The code for those features had not been ported to use the new data structures and functions, and was completely commented out, so it had to be partially rewritten/ported.
The engine was also prone to constantly crashing due to several bugs, so the code has been altered further, but only to make it more stable, no other changes were made to its appearance or functionality.
The level displayed is a test level that was used to debug the engine, and it is the only level that was found with this particular version of the engine. The engine only loads and displays one animation frame every eight, this explains the mostly non-existent animation.

Please keep in mind that there are visual differences between Saturn and PC build of v040 so try them both if you can.
PC Engine Ver. 040 Release 001:
Mega
Mediafire

SEGA SATURN Engine Ver. 040 Release 001:
Mega
Mediafire

I used ImgBurn for burning the iso.
If attempting the swap trick or installing a Mod chip , please be careful not to bust your Saturn, all parties involved with this release are not to be held accountable.



==== V37 Engine for PC: ====


After you get the game, Please people, read the included Readme file for additional info and how to set up the alternate level with un-modified physics)

First Release Trailer :
for JollyRoger's port of STI's V037 engine.



Mini Documentary about this port of v037.
Credits to Borman.
https://youtu.be/YdEqYplS6v8


Before we continue I'd like to give my appreciation and display credits to all who were involved.
Thanks to JollyRoger putting in massive amounts of Blood Sweat And tears to port the original assets over to modern windows making this release and future releases possible for us to experience.
Thanks to Tichua for contributing the source materials.
Thx for Bormon for taking the time to do a mini documentary video in regards to the release.
Also Thanks to Sonic Retro and assemblergames.com for hosting the leak.
And myself for other miscellaneous tasks.

I Don't know about you guys but for me personally, the past 19 years has been a very long wait to be able to play This game, Sure its not finished and only a very early build, and yes that aspect really shows!
However, I believe that if X-treme were finished, It may have been a whole other game than what this early beta portrays. (who knows)
*************************************************************************************************************

Now for the description:
Sonic X-treme's Version 037 engine has been painstakingly ported to Modern Windows and Open GL by JollyRoger, from Windows 95 that also required the NV1 Graphic's card hardware..
This is the real Sonic X-treme, as JollyRoger had acquired it. ( Not some a Fan game) This is a restoration project meant for preserving historical accuracy as closely to how it was found as possible. However If released in the original state the game basically would have been beyond unplayable as code had to be massaged back into a working state.
Basicly this is an almost as is port of the engine (Almost as how the original developers had left it, A snapshot in time "if you will".

And Guess what ?!
This port of X-treme is out there right now! Ready for YOU to download and enjoy!
Go to www.assemblergames.com FOR YOUR VERY OWN COPY!

However, We'd like to point out that this is a single level release.
This first public release consists of a Jungle level, which I like to refer to as "The E3 Jade Gully level" since it was shown in one of the E3 96 Promo videos.
Other levels are playable and all , but they are not featured in this teaser release. Rest assured they will be released in the final release that also addresses some bugs.

Fun Facts:
*The next port to be done will be of version 040 which has the fisheye lens effect. V040 can also run on Sega Saturn hardware. ( with a good FPS mind you) There is also a mysterious build by the now defunct Point of View studios. POV's build version is for Sega Saturn as well and uses 100% original code separate from the STI's code.

*JollyRoger had to massage much of the code back into place to restore functionality since some code had been commented out due to being in mid engine re-wright by STI or POV.

*The game ran on the NV1 GPU by Nvidia, supported true Quad polygons (Like Sega Saturn) instead of quads made up of 2 triangles.
http://en.wikipedia....rocessing_units

*Currently this port of v037 lacks true quad polygon rendering, *check out the sides of slopes where the textures look distorted*
Future releases may or may not incorporate true quad like rendering to fix the issue.

*The level data file itself had to be edited to improve physics to the point of playability, As well as remove ring collisions so the level could be explored properly. ( rings would push sonic off ledges if he walked near them)

*The Bouncing ball effect when sonic Lands can be disabled. Which allows for better playability, but in this case it was kept to better match the E3 Videos.

*You guys can tweak physics quite easily by opening the .def files in your text editor of your choice.

*I had attempted to fix up the Sonic Magnetic effect so as to help Sonic better when rotating the level in ball mode. This was tried so that it wouldn't sling shot sonic over the edge of sharp angles when rotating the levels.
I did have it fixed so that the slingshot no longer happened, but it caused other issues with Gravity, and gravity relative to jumping (causing low jump heights), Jumping near walls and celling would cause sonic to stick to objects incorrectly.
Many of these could be remedied by counter balancing with other tweaks, however after 3 days worth of trying, I just could not find a sweet spot that replicated the feel of the E3 video gameplay clips without the rotation sling shot flying issue.
(so we had to give up fixing the Magnetic level rotations in favor of better play Mechanics. ( perhaps one of you may be able to find that sweet spot)

* More Builds and levels to come !

PC Engine Ver. 037 Release 002:
•Fixed palette management
•Initial implementation of scrolling backgrounds (no quadratic distortion)
•Fixed foreground objects transparency issues (For when Sonic moves behind objects like rocks)
•Gamepad Support Added
•Windowed mode EXE added
Mega
Anonfiles
Hugefiles
Mediafire

PC Engine Ver. 037 Release 001:
Mega
Anofiles
Hugefiles
Mediafire


NV1/Win95 (The Original) 037 Release 001:
Notes:
*Old Win95 computer with NV1 Diamond Edge 3D graphics card required.
*The archive needs to be unzipped directly on C:\, so that it decompresses into a folder called "SONCBOOM".

Edit: Updated links to include unmodified level files that will work with the original engine.
Mega
Mediafire

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 06 June 2015 - 02:15 PM

[Neo Hazard]

This is huge... nice work! Can't wait to give this a try!

This post has been edited by Neo Hazard: 23 February 2015 - 08:09 PM

[Dark Sonic]

Well it's incredible that after all these years I got the chance to play a demo of Sonic Xtreme, but good jebus is this game confusing as hell, just as I thought.

Controls surprisingly ok though, didn't expect that.

[Arique]

Holy shit.

[Shadow Hog]

Can somebody mirror the thing? I'm not interested in signing up for an Assembler Games forum account.

This post has been edited by Shadow Hog: 23 February 2015 - 08:35 PM

[Andrew75]

Shadow Hog, on 23 February 2015 - 08:35 PM, said:

Can somebody mirror the thing? I'm not interested in signing up for an Assembler Games forum account.

I posted links above. Hope its okay with retro!

[Jaseman]

Wow, holy heck good work guys! This is incredible

@Shadow Hog, yeah, I had to register for an Assembler account to get the links, but the thread has a Mega link

EDIT: Ninja'd on my first post in like a year.

This post has been edited by Jaseman: 23 February 2015 - 09:26 PM

[.Luke]

Shadow Hog, on 23 February 2015 - 08:35 PM, said:

Can somebody mirror the thing? I'm not interested in signing up for an Assembler Games forum account.

Same here, although it's tempting to register anyway on the chance it disappears before I can download it. I've been wanting to play around with the real Sonic Xtreme prototypes, not just the Nights engine adaption, since I was a kid. The wait is killing me.

Second Edit : Wow that was fast! Got it from the Mediafire link, hope it likes my notebook.

This post has been edited by .Luke: 23 February 2015 - 08:44 PM

[Falk]

Man, Andrew, it's been one helluva journey for you lol

[Shadow Hog]

Andrew75, on 23 February 2015 - 08:39 PM, said:

I posted links above. Hope its okay with retro!

Cheers.

[Xeal]

*squeals*

Wow. Just wow. Great work guys. This is wonderful. To have this brought back after all these years is astounding.

[Andrew75]

Falk, on 23 February 2015 - 08:44 PM, said:

Man, Andrew, it's been one helluva journey for you lol

Hell yeah, its been one hell of a Journey, not just for me , but for everyone else waiting for another build! Now we just need the other Boss engines ( Besides the green hill like level that leaked a few years back(Project condor) and Offer's later build, I think after that point we can almost close the door on X-treme.
And yeah JollyRoger has a lot more engine versions to get working and out the door. I'm actually excited about the POV build now that we've seen some screens of it.
Sonic sprites display 8 run directions instead of just 4 as seen in build 037, Rings are also collectable from my understanding.

Anyhow Modding the .def file is very easy and simple. I'm sure someone will figure out all the ins and outs just as I have threw modifying some parameters.
You can Cancel Sonic's Landing bounce effect for example which really helps playability of the level. If you guys get a good physics setup going, please do share here. I'm very interested to see what some of you come up with.

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 23 February 2015 - 09:07 PM

[.Luke]

Heads up for anybody with a modern Intel GPU hoping for playable speeds, considering the age of the engine : Nope, just nope, you better try this on a machine with something that wouldn't break a sweat over Half-Life 2.

Lag aside, it was mind-blowing to finally see for myself how the game handled in those old captured videos of the prototype on YouTube, and playing with world rotation. What really struck me as strange was that none of the quarter-angle sprites are present in this build, so it felt more slippery than it should have with only the compass direction angles in there.

JollyRoger, Andrew, and everyone else involved, thanks for making this happen. It felt good playing around with an example of STI's work. I can't wait to see what else comes of the restoration project.

[Adamis]

Amazing work, this is a dream come true, thank you so much guys.

[Jollyroger]

.Luke, on 23 February 2015 - 09:15 PM, said:

Heads up for anybody with a modern Intel GPU hoping for playable speeds, considering the age of the engine : Nope, just nope, you better try this on a machine with something that wouldn't break a sweat over Half-Life 2.

Lag aside, it was mind-blowing to finally see for myself how the game handled in those old captured videos of the prototype on YouTube, and playing with world rotation. What really struck me as strange was that none of the quarter-angle sprites are present in this build, so it felt more slippery than it should have with only the compass direction angles in there.

JollyRoger, Andrew, and everyone else involved, thanks for making this happen. It felt good playing around with an example of STI's work. I can't wait to see what else comes of the restoration project.

Thanks for the comments :-)

As for the performance, the engine as-is makes rendering with a modern card quite challenging (slow), and I am using some very old OpenGL features that may not work properly on Intel GPUs, so the driver may well be resorting to use software rendering, which is extremely slow.

I will work on fixing inevitable bugs and having greater compatibility with a larger variety of GPUs, right now the priority was to get SOMETHING out there... I just need some more time to tweak the rendering and it will be plenty fast enough on Intel GPUs too, one way or another.

Jolly