That Project Condor screen sure does look like it's based on Nights. Those ring hoops look a bit suspect! People are definitely interested in this Andrew, but I think it's like the AXSX thread where people tend to think to themselves 'that's awesome' but don't actually post so you never know how many people are interested. Don't get disheartened. @GeneHF I think X-treme is like Marmite, people either love it or hate it. Seeing screens when I was a kid got me pretty excited as it promised another battle between Sonic and Mario but now in 3D. I quite liked the art too, compared to Spinball's which I fucking hated :v: . I didn't like the way SOA treated Sonic in the 90's, to me it felt a bit too much like it was just about making money, where as the Japanese had a stronger creative vision for Sonic.
Yeah I think this is also a massive problem with X-treme. So many engines etc. as far as we've known up to this point, little build iterations, etc. -- and we're still waiting for further development. It sort of feels like we still don't have the big picture of all that transpired in one nice story with pictures, file attachments and so forth. Do the staff make a front page post with every single new Sonic X-treme PC build? Every Saturn build? Every version? It's a big deal in the general sense of the retro Sonic timeline but it still seems to be unraveling since we originally got the "NiGHTS" engine which is several several years ago now.
I'm interested, but my interest is bottlenecked by an inability/laziness to play the builds on real hardware. Unlike an md or gg prototype which can be thrown staight into an emulator and pulled apart in a hex editor, playing saturn betas requires a bit more dedication - burning a cd, installing a modchip or breaking your hardware with the hotswap trick. I'd say many people are in the same boat, or may not even have a saturn to try these on. I mean, who uses optical media anymore, amiright? [/firstworldproblems]
Okay so yeah Got a reply back from Mike, and he's confirmed that there was never any Sonic X-treme running inside the Nights engine. They never got that far. He also says that the screen above is from Coffin's tech.
To be honest I was really excited when I saw Xtreme screenshots in a magazine as a kid. Now I realize it's was gonna be kinda shitty but nevertheless you guys did an excellent job. This will go into the museum of Sonic history.
It could be argued now that the POV build had the potential to be better than Saturn 3D Blast, if it had progressed further (from the current build that looks barebones, I'd say simply slap on some proper momentum physics mechanics and someslopes, loops and other typical Sonic elements. Disregard most the pre-POV gimmick elements like Fisheye and razorspin and focus on simply making Sonic work as a 3D platformer....).. Perhaps it would have still been a disappointment, but at least then Xtreme would have come out and people would have bought it on the name and hype alone, thus the Saturn's reputation wouldn't be stained with "Never had a proper Sonic title."
Yeah I was the same, I loved looking at screens and reading all the hype as a kid, Maybe one reason we never really had any leaks is because the guys who worked on the game are toooo ashamed to release anything. (I'm not really seriously thinking that btw lol) Having a mystical status is better than having what we are perceiving here. But I think it's good to see these builds come to light, to give some of us who have been waiting 19 years a bit of closure. Hmm,,,,I believe if the project continued another year or so , maybe we would have got something a little more refined to judge. No mater which team's version was chosen to continue.
Now I need to get a modchip for my Saturn to play this POV build! I have no interest in doing the swap-trick. Even if it's supposedly easier to perform on a Model 2 Saturn, which I have. Keep up the great work JollyRoger and Andrew75! PS: When I am able to play this on my Saturn I'll have to play Space Queens in the background to complete the experience!
I think it's unfair to just assume this game was going to suck. I mean, it never got anywhere close to a finished product. I think, had things gone...basically the opposite we could have had a pretty solid game. If POV managed to get the game looking like Ofer's late PC builds, but with properly built levels that had flow to them (not just test levels), than this game would have smoked Sonic 3D blast. There were seriously some promising elements in those test levels that would have blown me away in '96 (or '97 if it came to that). In fact, depending on how well they designed the levels, I could see myself enjoying it more than the Sonic Adventure games. On a side note, does disc swapping actually damage the Saturn? Is there some sort of explanation rather than just "it will break your Saturn"? I mean, yeah, no shit if you do it constantly it can cause extra wear to the motor, but that's the only conclusion I can really come to. No thread derailment, if you don't know for sure, then don't answer. I'm just curious since I can't find it actually explained on a technical level.
I really do believe that PoV's non-fisheyed engine and that particular version of Jade Gully had the makings of being a legitimately good Sonic game for Saturn. A primarily 2D experience but with an added z-axis that would allow for alternate paths and exploration. Pull that camera back a bit and continue with that line of level design, and I do see this iteration of X-Treme being a successful Sonic game. I would love to see an off-shoot of Andrew75's AXSX project exploring this approach without fisheye, or even just seeing custom levels done in this particular engine. Which reminds me, since PoV's engine is its own thing and not Ofer Alon's, is there any issue with releasing the source code for this particular build? Wasn't the only reason behind not releasing previous builds because we were respecting Alon and Senn's wishes?
AXSX has Fisheye both ON and OFF Modes, we can even adjust the fisheye power on the fly if we wanted.
I also kind of wondered about this - don't get me wrong I have no clue about using source code to mod etc but I know theres people on this site that would work magic on this. (and thats something I'd really like to see). Like how people were starting to port SX levels into one of the previously released builds.
I love every bit of work that's been done on these protos so far. The fact that we have them is downright incredible... But I'd love to play those latter PC versions where we have videos that show proper level design a heck of a lot more. The ones they refuse to release (within their rights of course). You know, something that's not barely functional as an actual game. Still, don't misunderstand. These protos are really interesting and I'll take every one released that we can get, but I think the so-so response from the general public mostly stems from the fact that the protos simply aren't very functional, no matter how technically impressive their recovery/porting is. It kills a lot of X-treme hype to see how rough the game truly was throughout these stages of development. Your average player would be left wondering if the game was 'ever' any good at all. By all means, keep making them though, please. You're doing a true service to us all!
Also I think part of the lack of interest is the fact that the source is not public. Imagine the level of progress when it eventually gets out somehow! Then I think everyone's gonna be into it, for sure.
I'm baffled by how well this runs, how good it looks, and how stable the framerate is, it's just incredible. Never in a million years did I expect that we would get a version of Xtreme that was this stable. But was this the farthest they got or did they edge a little closer? EDIT: By "closer" I mean beyond minor changes.
Here's a little video I did for this build. I'll put this here if anyone's interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odJj1zuwPFQ I managed to jump off the map, I was surprised that there wasn't an invisible wall to stop me from running away from the level. Also, Sonic gets a tad glitched when stuck on the bottom (hence the "moonwalk")
They may have gotten a little bit closer than this I think . This POV build did not incorporate cube resizes for the bridge posts among other cubes as would have been seen if ran in STI's engine build v42. I would assume they had gone a bit further than what we released here. Only time will tell....
