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Assembler games member has Sonic xtreme POV stuff

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Spinksy, Oct 21, 2014.

  1. Fantastic

    Fantastic

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    I'm fine with everything, though, a playable version of Xtreme would be spectacular! Which gets me wondering, how much do we know about the Saturn game Sonic Team was working on? I know it eventually evolved into being Sonic World, then Adventure, but is that pretty much all we know aside from a few screenshots? It'd be sweet if we got some more information on that someday.


    Wow, I totally forgot about the Windy Valley Beta. I have to get around to playing that someday.
     
  2. MykonosFan

    MykonosFan

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    Very proud of our members in rusted copper today, Godspeed gals and gents
     
  3. Lostgame

    Lostgame

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    So, just to be clear - there's absolutely no progress on anything so much as a screen shot coming out of this so far?
     
  4. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    I'll be providing a more in depth post on the subject after 7 pm cst.

    Long story short, there is still much to do.
     
  5. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    Fingers crossed that it'll all work out OK - I know everyone's excited to see anything that might come out of this! = )
     
  6. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    Typing up a longer post to detail what we talked about and what was shown, but to skip to the point for people on the edge: yes, this is real. I've seen the source, this is very much real.
     
  7. Fantastic

    Fantastic

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    There is so much happening right now. Sonic Boom 3DS Demo, more info on Sonic 1's beta versions, and then this. Keep up the great work, man! Very excited for what you have to uncover about the game.
     
  8. Im so ready for this. Years we have been waiting for a Sonic Extreme find, and we have had none since Chris showed all he had.

    UNTIL NOW.
     
  9. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    So alright, just a bit of background on this project, it's being worked on by a veteran of the industry, so when he gives estimates as to how long this will take to finally reach people, understand that it's an expert giving you those time frames.

    The problem with the release in possession is that it's a series of zip file backups from 1996 along with a clone image of a person's entire development PC. What's going on now is that we're piecing together the environment exactly as the people working on Sonic Xtreme had theirs so that we can build their code. If you're unfamiliar with what a development environment is or how one works, you might want to take a look at my Dreamcast game thread. I have neglected it (sorry, but I haven't forgotten!) so all that is there right now is a tutorial for building a development environment from scratch to build dreamcast games with.

    This guy is trying to piece together a Nvidia NV1 development environment the same way, only with infinitely less resources available to him. Even worse, he's jumping into someone's source code that is non-commented and undocumented and only half complete. Parts of the source, for example, expect files to be in exact locations on the computer - which is fine, but it takes time to set up his computer to build like that.

    He already has a skeleton build working, by commenting out basically everything he can build an executable that calls the NV1 library and does absolutely nothing. It's going to take a few weeks before we can build a fully functional executable, but the exciting thing is that we have everything possible to do so.

    The guy has an NV1 in the mail going to him, along with some saturn development equipment. This is a hobby for us, not a job, so keep in mind that getting this stuff to a state where anybody can play it will take time, but the most important thing is we have this in our possession. It will never be lost again.

    Now, onto the specifics of what I got to see - namely the source code. I can confirm with my own two eyes that this is indeed the real deal source and it's crazy. We have 5 builds of this from various states of Ofer's work. Early on, we have a partially completed build where Ofer was in the middle of transferring his work over from a software renderer he built to the actual NV1 hardware, which is where we think we can get the software renderer working again. Everything actually builds from the same source - saturn, PC, and mac - but it's the absolute thinnest abstraction layer you could possibly imagine. Functions like "draw polygon" overloaded with the brunt of the work being done in these sorts of calls, lol.

    So, midway through these builds, you can see the source transform into something more dependent on the NV1, and the build options whittle to PC and Saturn, ditching mac, and eventually to PC only. You can evidently get this running on a saturn no problem using a cartdev kit (the dsk images don't contain the actual binary, only the peripheral files to be loaded through the serial port on the saturn) but it runs at like 3 fps. Eventually, the build options whittled down further to just PC.

    Now, the craziest part - 4 months after the final build we have from Ofer, we have another build from POV of a never before seen Sonic title for the saturn. We don't think this title has ever been shown off or mentioned before. We don't even know what it looks like yet because we can't build it until the environment is complete. But there is likely at least one more major surprise in this find.

    I saw the code for the level editor, it's built right into the engine. The assets folder even includes icons for the level editor we never noticed before, but now suddenly make sense. They do things like map surfaces onto the cubes.

    This guy basically wants a buffer between the starving crowd of people and himself, mainly because he does this out of pure love for coding and preserving games. Jollyroger himself is a great guy, sounds passionate in the same ways I am passionate about games and development. He is weary of people getting upset that this release is taking too long and, you know, doing dick 4-chan stuff like finding out his email address and messing with him. So, going forward, Andrew75 and I will be the between guys for him and the community. All releases will go through us and if you have comments or questions, direct them our way. We will be the ones who eventually package and release these files, but not today. This will take a few weeks to get in people's hands, but we definitely want to share.

    I have some pictures but I can't share them at the moment because they're mainly of the source code itself. However, if my credibility has ever meant anything, trust me when I say that this is absolutely, 100% real. We finally have Sonic Xtreme, now we just have to prep it for release.
     
  10. Rockman Zero

    Rockman Zero

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    Videos for Hellfire Commentaries.
    Okay, now you have my attention. I'll be all over these builds when they are released!
     
  11. Willie

    Willie

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    Well, that's insanely exciting. I was thinking about sending a news tip to some sites about this, but would it be better for much of this information to be kept on the down low before release?
     
  12. Sappharad

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    Based on the content of Cooljerk's post, it seems like it would be best to keep it low key for awhile. We don't want anyone bugging them when they try to work their magic on this.

    Looking forward to this now, especially since we'll get to see another unannounced game out of it.
     
  13. I am VERY excited for this

    Especially if the level editor is complete enough that when it's all released the community can make an Xtreme "fangame" so we can get an idea for the potential this game had

    This and the Simon Wai Sonic 2 release are probably my top two most exciting releases I've ever seen for the scene
     
  14. Lanzer

    Lanzer

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    Holy. Fuck. This is just too damn awesome.

    Whats the ETA Cooljerk? I'm not rushing but I want to be here when this all goes down, Hell I will tell my work to fuck off just to see this within the second of release I'm that excited.
     
  15. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    I don't want to give any sort of time frame, but let's just say I was taken back by the amount of work that needs to be done. And I'm a game developer.


    That speaks volumes about JR's character, btw. This guy is amazing. Everybody owes him their respect.
     
  16. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

    "Our Life is More than a Side-Effect" Member
    Was PoV ever involved with the alleged NiGHTS engine version of the game? It's so weird that they would have an additional Sonic game at all. I'm so pumped for this!

    Cooljerk, it's awesome you and Andrew75 are going to be buffers here. Sonic fans can be insane. Looking forward to what'll come of all this!
     
  17. Falk

    Falk

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    So, I'm going to ask the question which has a blatantly obvious answer from a business/dev perspective (yet is probably subconsciously in everyone's mind)

    Were there any more fleshed-out music resources in the builds? I know that "final" stuff (e.g. not meant as temp for production) was pretty scarce as far as what we know from Chris went, but yeah. What are you guys doing for the final release? Howard Drossin and Chris's stuff were clearly not meant for prime time.
     
  18. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    POV came in on the very tail end of the project, so they wouldn't have had access to the NiGHTS engine. They were brought in to assist Ofer. Early on they took his software renderer and tried to abstract it into platform independent calls when Ofer couldn't, but after a few revisions it looks like they gave up and began building their own 3D engine entirely from scratch. This looks like it's the same 3D engine they used in other games they worked on, like Criterion on the Saturn.

    It's this hard fork in the development process that goes on 4 months after the last Ofer build. It looks like it became it's own completely different thing from the stuff in hand, but we haven't seen it running or anything.

    Yes, there are more assets than what Senn leaked, but more info on that will come later.
     
  19. Lanzer

    Lanzer

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    Thats fine, I just hope I'm here when it all happens. :)
     
  20. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    How much did you freak?


    Why would you even fancy such a thing?

    So...Andrew's game?