So back in the hayday of my Sonic fanaticism days, Sega SPLASH! Golf had come out and I had to play it because "Sonic"... Well, I took some notes back while the game ran (I was unaware of more advanced techniques at the time, much less trained to handle those techniques anyway), and lo and behold almost 10 years later I basically have access to the MMO's texture files... Along with several backups of builds, full client installers, and experience of playing the game first hand I have screenshots and videos as well. Being such a niche game, and probably few other English speakers (sup CulT?) played, would it be worth my time to document any of this 10 years on? The Sega Retro article on it is surprisingly poor, and the cameo article the Retro wiki could be expanded, I suppose... I have just been so nervous about releasing content like this before...
Of course it would (plus I was the only one to remember the game thus getting the page made by like Andlabs way back when)! I've always been interested in this game, but just like The Matrix Online, basically no one played it that's still around so ANY documentation is welcome.
I played this. And because I don't usually delete things from my website... All of the screenshots I took are still up. Sounds like you kept a lot more than I did. I still have the soundtrack, because some of the music was decent. I can share that too if there's interest. I don't see why they'd be upset, the game was free and you can't play it anymore. I probably got rid of the installer though, since there was no chance of ever playing it again.
Indeed, we did. I actually found the game to be pretty soothing and feel-goody. I can only assume the only other English player in my screenshots is you. If I can get the executable running again, I'd like to sniff what it's trying to ask for over at splashgolf.jp. I remember saving a lot of images from the time period too, a few screenshots of the UI maybe as well. We will have to see I guess once I sort it all. Is there an apploc for Win10? Such a cute game, and it expanded so far into SEGA lore too. It was really Sega Hard Girls before Hard Girls... EDIT: I forgot how entirely HUGE this game became towards the end of it's life. Just a little searching revealed that 2ch (the Japanese original 4chan bbs) archives reveal they discussed the game and link to many news articles and NicoNico videos, such as this one: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/nm5314506 Dead link These characters were during the "FINAL" campaign. I was sad to see it go: OUTFITS!
I'd definitely love to see whatever you can share about this game. I'm especially interested in hearing the music again, since there was never a soundtrack released for this and I liked a few of the tracks. I played it during the beta period, but sadly I didn't feel enough of a pull to play much when the regular service started. Still would've liked to see Sega retool this one into an offline game, but that never happened. If you could back up the client and builds somewhere that'd be cool too, since I'm sure this data is really rare, and maybe others would like to poke through it.
Funny you should say that. What I would like to do is indeed retool the game for offline use if possible, and mimicking the original launcher, perhaps be able to launch versions of the game from the same executable. ... but I'm most likely dreaming here, lol... :v: I don't really have any hosting though to put all this. It is a tremendous amount of data compressed. My original 7z file from early 2010 clocks in at about 6 gigs.
Late reply, but have you tried splitting the 7z into parts and uploading it onto a Mega.co.nz folder? Alternatively, you could upload it on Google Drive.
I'd rather have a project started first with a few people helping me work on it before we release the data. The ultimate goal would be to have it playable before the data is released. Also, just found a few more shots:
I wonder if some smart cookie can packet sniff what it's trying to do and get a basic server running. It might be too late since there's no receiving end to look at the return packets though ..
I'm fairly certain there's a single player "debug" mode built into the clients. That's beyond my skills to figure out, however.
That's one of mine: http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/sprashgorf.jpg Did you even use WindowBlinds? Your screenshots are all native windows UI. In case you care for some reason, all of the other images in that folder: http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071108_085606.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_091956.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071108_085654.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_092928.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_091203.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_092955.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_091536.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_093527.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_091621.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_093814.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_091641.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_094528.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_091917.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/splash_error.png http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/SplashGolf_20071109_091922.jpg http://www.sappharad.com/images/golf_beta/sprashgorf.jpg
We now have an unpacked, and gameguard free build of the last Sega SPLASH! Golf client I had installed before the service closed down. I can't guarantee it's the last build released, but it should have most, if not all, released content. A reverse engineer with much more experience than me has whipped up a quick challenge/response python script which allows us entry to the main menu: This is very much in the early, early research stages, but we are combing through early closed beta logs which had a lot of information I had not noticed. Local play, and even net play, may be possible soon.
This is fantastic. Thank you for all the work you and the other reverse engineer have put into this. Never played this back then but would love to do so now.
Enough of the server has been emulated to get us into "Single Mode', however, it's hard-coded to one stage and settings. This was even true when the service was live.
Some sad news, I've gone through my emails and it's revealed SPLASH! Golf officially launched on April 23, 2008 and service was terminated on February 12, 2009. The "FINAL" campaign started on January 28, 2009. The build I am running is from October 28, 2008. Sadly it's far from final and missing content that a much later build would have, and I doubt anyone else in the world still has any remaining data...
That sucks to hear, but at the very least we have a build! It would have been far worse if you hadn't backed up your build in the first place.
It's been brought to my attention by my colleague that a version of the Splash Golf site exists enact! The original website seems to only have html saved, but this site has a lot of graphics!
This is a stupid take, IMO. You're playing a Japanese game that was never released in English, and you're discussing it in an English speaking community. There are probably a good number of actual Japanese players who still have the game data on old computers that haven't been touched in years. Of course, there's a lack of community overlap that makes finding such players difficult.
The size of the game was fairly large for 2008 standards. I highly doubt it would be kept for sentimental purposes but I can only hope I'm wrong. I am doubtful anyone had archival in mind as searching for SG clients yields absolutely nothing.
