You have a point. Don't think for a second I have never thought about releasing everything. Having developed games for a decade myself, I understand that some people have no problem releasing everything they do, while others want to keep their work to themselves. For this reason I intend to respect the desire of the original author, who the code actually belongs to. At any rate, the engine as-is is very inadequate for the Saturn architecture, so in order to make a decent "game" it would take pretty much rewriting everything from scratch, which is precisely what POV was doing, and pretty much what AXSX is about (albeit not for Saturn). When you say "I'd pour dozens of hours into this if I could", I would like to understand what would you actually do. Would you modify the existing code to improve it or write another engine, with only some knowledge taken from the original one? Or something else? I am curious to know what in your opinion would happen if the code was ever to be actually released. How do you think it would be used? As a starting point or as a pure reference? These are genuine questions, I am not trying to be sarcastic or irreverent. Jolly
Which is why I voted No. If you're going to go to all that effort to port it over to the Saturn, and port it well, it may as well be an open source community project. Regardless of what the original source actually is. As nice as a Saturn build would be, if all that effort would have to be put in, into something the community can't even use for it's own whim, it's nothing more than a tech demo with too many manhours behind it.
I tend to agree with you, especially given that all assets of the game have been already released. The point of my releases has been to give some snapshots, some glimpses of what the project actually looked like while it was being developed at different points in time, and make them accessible to as many people as possible, that is the reason for porting the engine to OpenGL. If people want to have a proper Sonic Xtreme on Saturn (and if SEGA doesn't shut it down), I would strongly recommend starting from scratch, reusing the data but not the code. My question to the community is mostly about whether there is an interest in seeing anything more done with the original engine, considering its limitations. I don't want to make this into a different question, such as "do people want more Sonic Xtreme stuff at all?" Jolly
There is definitely interest in your work Jolly. Great to see you here by the way. As I've stated the idea of this new project is worthwhile, holds merit and is potentially super interesting and therefore worth the time, energy and effort. Personally I'd definitely be interested in seeing more and I think most of us feel the same way too. Though there are a few "No" responses in this thread the overwhelming majority is "Yes". I'd say you should go for it.
I voted no, and here's why. I would love to see a playable version of Xtreme, even on the Saturn. By playable, I mean to the extent where we can at least experience things to the extent that they became when the game was originally in development, to get a sense of what the completed game may have been like. But asking a forum full of fans of the series if they want to see a playable prototype is like asking a fat person if they want a free cake. You should've known what to expect before even asking the question. There are two reasons why. The first is how much value would there be in doing this. Very few people would be able to play it on hardware, and the number of people who would play it on an emulator would be rather limited as well. If you're going to do development work to recreate what was previously done, it makes sense to target the platform with more potential users and much faster and easier development due to better hardware and software. I just don't think it's a valuable use of time. If JollyRoger wants to do it for fun, then he should do it because he wants to, not because other people want him to. The second reason is AXSX. It seems like that would fill this need, then possibly create enough interest for #1 to actually be a bit more worthwhile. On a side note, if you want the source code released without releasing the source code, port it to something that can easily be decompiled like C#. I'll take care of the rest for you.
Thank you everyone for your perspectives. My main interest in this whole effort has been to play with the very broken code archive I found and with the Saturn, which I find a fascinating platform, if needlessly complex at times. Pushing the original codebase further would be pointless and I don't have time, nor I am enough of a Sonic fan, to write a whole new Xtreme game engine from scratch to create an impression of what this game may have been, AXSX fulfills that role very well already. That said, I think I have released everything I could with a sane amount of work, trying to give to as many people as possible what I found, without compromising on the sensitivity of the original authors. Interacting with this community has been interesting and fun, and I am happy to have contributed to shedding some more light on this very unfortunate game. I will stop working on Xtreme for the time being, so while I may for fun still play with this codebase, please don't expect any future releases. Thanks everyone for understanding. Jolly
JollyRoger, you've done more for Xtreme than anyone else post-2006. That said, I don't see a significant payoff for this project, particularly since it will undoubtedly require many more manhours. People definitely want more Xtreme stuff though, particularly the semi-finished lost PC engine seen in the videos that have been around for years. EDIT: Black Squirrel said it better than I could.
Wasn't this done already. I seem to recall going through the motions with this before - attempts to make Sonic X-treme less crap and/or work on modern systems, and there were two or three awkward topics and everything was blurring together and it was really difficult to maintain some sort of interest in the whole thing. All I know is that there are raw builds of the game that have still not been preserved and documented. This knowledge is no good hiding on computers or in people's heads or across 438290403 message boards - this should explain everything. A page for every prototype + details + screenshots - this community used to be great at this sort of thing. It's far more important to know what the game was than what the game could have been. I don't like all these wobbly fan fixes and remakes and people trying to insert their internet personas into history taking precedence over the real deal. I understand that there's politics getting in the way, but the priority really needs to be to resolve that. Not to discredit anything that's been done mind you. I'm just really meh about the whole thing when so little is in the public domain.
I'd first study the crap out of it, hopefully along with a couple others, and we'd have a more serious answer to that question. Absolutely both. The 'starting point' would have course probably be a new Saturn engine from scratch, as it would most certainly be easier to implement bits that we like onto a new engine rather than attempting to fix what's there. They're good questions. :P
Good answers. I intend to retain the sources for the time being, unless Ofer declares that he doesn't care anymore. Jolly
This is moot now, but I never read this poll as coercion for JR to do something he wasn't already interested in doing, which is how you seem to be reading it. I still want to play Sonic X-Treme on a Saturn, novelty or not. Maybe somebody else will do it for fun in a decade or so.
I have always worked on this only for the fun of doing it, especially coding something on the Saturn. I asked Andrew75 to have a poll just to see how niche this game is; my time for hobby projects is very limited and I wanted to see if makes sense for me to work on Xtreme some more or move on to something else, this is all. Jolly
Good question, I like a variety of activities, too many in fact to have time for any. Sometimes I like to write some simple games for iOS and/or Android. Some other time I like to (or used to) hack camcorders and digital cameras firmware to make them do more than they were originally intended to. Alternatively I like to play with a variety of game console development kits, doing some experiments to see if some effects can be obtained by using the hardware in creative ways. Also studying obscure hardware architectures, writing emulators, and a whole lot more. I am not young, so at some point in time I have done all of the above, as well as many other legitimate software development related activities... Jolly
Hacking camcorders? That's a new one to me. What can you make them do? Matter of fact don't tell me, I'll look it up myself. Have you written any emulators we might know about? Or were they all personal projects that you did to see if you could? Actually, here's a better question. Got a blog I can follow? I want to see what you get up to.
Heh, together with a friend we wrote an old emulator named "Modeler", which was supposed to emulate the Sega Model 1. We eventually settled on System32 emulation due to total lack of information of the Fujitsu DSPs in the Model 1 at that time. The bulk of the CPU core (NEC V60) we wrote for Modeler was then contributed to MAME a long time ago. I also wrote other small clock-accurate emulators of small microcontroller architectures, for people who could not afford an ICE, or to help me trace code executed by camcorders firmware. I sent the full source code of an emulator for the TX19A processor (one of the CPUs inside the Canon HV camcorder series) to Hex-Rays, the company behind IDA Pro; they apparently used it as a reference for their own implementation. No blogs for me, I prefer not to advertise what I do. Jolly
Best of luck with all of your future projects Jolly. You seem to be quite the exceptional coder and we appreciate all the energy and effort you've applied thus far. If you ever intend to return to Sonic Xtreme one day then please let Andrew or us know. Would love to see more of your work.
Oooh Modeler, I remember Modeler. I think I stumbled across it while I was trying to find a way to play Sonic the Fighters. That's cool shit. Too bad about the blog. Sure you won't reconsider?
