[High Fidelity]

Sparks, on 06 May 2015 - 05:23 PM, said:

It's amazing how unlike a lot of builds, this actually looks like a stable and playable platformer. It really just needs those iconic loops and slopes Sonic is known for, then zoom out the camera a bit (right now with how close it is to Sonic makes the ratio feel like a Game Gear game.

Great work to everyone involved.

Yeah it really does look like this engine was almost ready to start developing a full game!

Although I'm thinking the reason Sega didn't run with it is because it dosen't really scream 'next gen' like the fisheye and speedier movement of the STI build. This looks like it has allot in common with 'Bug!'

Those animations sure are lovely though. Would love to see them used in a fangame.

This post has been edited by High Fidelity: 06 May 2015 - 05:52 PM

[ICEknight]

Once again, amazing work and thank you for making it possible to preserve this piece of video game history!

[Andrew75]

High Fidelity, on 06 May 2015 - 05:48 PM, said:

Sparks, on 06 May 2015 - 05:23 PM, said:

It's amazing how unlike a lot of builds, this actually looks like a stable and playable platformer. It really just needs those iconic loops and slopes Sonic is known for, then zoom out the camera a bit (right now with how close it is to Sonic makes the ratio feel like a Game Gear game.

Great work to everyone involved. />/>/>

Those animations sure are lovely though. Would love to see them used in a fangame.

They have been used in AXSX lol

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/paw...0FSq5JwX1Rtswsr

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 06 May 2015 - 06:16 PM

[Jollyroger]

I am glad you all like this, in my opinion it shows that the team at Point of View was much more capable than they have been credited, at least by the Sonic X-treme community, and credit is deserved.

The code the way I found it is essentially a setup of POV's Saturn game engine, with some specific additional code dedicated to implement the Sonic gameplay.

The engine itself provides 3D graphics, clipping, sprites, animation, has a full cooperative multitasking model (very good, especially for the time).

The level converter was written ad-hoc to convert the DEF + PCX data structures that STI's engine works with in a much more streamlined binary format, which includes collision data, and groups graphics entities in batches, so that the camera transformation routines operate on a smaller amount of vertices (no duplication of vertex transformation of adjacent cubes).
This sacrifices some flexibility, as in STI's engine cubes can added and removed on the fly, but it makes the code much more streamlined, considerably faster and general purpose.

I had to tweak a few things, one of them being that the POV build system used the PsyQ tools, which are incompatible with the Sega Cartdev + Mirage development system. I worked a little on the code, which was setup to load all assets from the PC host through the PsyQ SCSI interface, rather than from the CD (or the CD emulator).

Once that was fixed, I had to find a way to change the build scripts so that they would output something other than PsyQ's proprietary CPE format, so that I could test on the Cartdev.

Then I had to find the raw data and reconstruct the build environment with the correct tools to build the actual binary data that goes on the disk.

After I was able to run everything, it was downhill, a couple more fixes to the code and the build ran just fine...

Enjoy!

Jolly

[Andrew75]

So yeah , I've been speaking with Mike Wallis (Sonic xtreme's Producer) by email.
and!
I asked if he remembered the POV build from this video and if he could give us some behind the scenes information related to the build.
https://youtu.be/2snIoULkLlg

Mikes response:

Quote

Just checked out your video. />/>/>
Yep! That's the POV version running there. Very early, no fisheye lens, but still 30 fps.

Some of the information in Chris' FAQ listed about is incorrect. POV was not brought in that early--they were only working with Robert Morgan to port Ofer's PC version maybe 2 months prior to that build being shown to Irimajiri-san. They also did not have access to the STI artists--they used content from what had already been produced either by Ross Harris or by Senn himself. POV worked very much independently until the unveiling to SOJ... then it was cancelled because Irimajiri told us to go with Chris Coffin's boss engine technology for the entire game.

POV was brought in to port the build to Saturn because Ofer could not do it. His original attempt ran at 2-3 fps with 4 colors. He had no concept of how to optimize the performance to run well on the Saturn.

-Mike

Next I asked him if he could tell us anything about this particular v40 build for Saturn that was found by Jollyroger in the POV assets he had acquired. (as featured in the video.)
https://youtu.be/Fvuxpv9-J1o

Mikes response:

Quote

Ha! Wow... I haven't seen that in forever!

I *believe* that is the test level that Ofer/Senn put together to test the fisheye view. That port to the Saturn clearly doesn't have the animation engine in, which is why there's popping between the limited # of frames.

I don't know if that is POV who ported that to Saturn, or if that is actually Ofer who ported it. I don't believe it is Ofer who did the port, because immediately after he showed his first initial port on the Saturn, he abandoned all efforts of Saturn development to focus on the PC version. Therefore is it likely POV's port of the test level.

It's very cool that you guys got that running. You should definitely show Coffin and Senn!

-Mike

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 07 May 2015 - 12:34 AM

[TheKazeblade]

So PoV did in two months what the STI team struggled with for nearly two years. PoV has definitely obtained a pretty bad rap in this whole debacle, and I think it's time to make sure the wiki and history remember them for doing some pretty dang impressive stuff considering what they had to work with.

The evidence of these builds plus that response Wallis gave seems to imply the biggest bottleneck in terms of X-Treme's development was Alon trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

That still begs the question of, while having a legitimately solid build of the game, SoJ decided to shift gears in a way that killed the project. If PoV had been allowed to continue down this path, it seems we may have gotten maybe not a great main-series Saturn Sonic game, but at the very least an okay one.

[upg]

Amazing work! Keep doing your thing, this is awesome!

[High Fidelity]

Andrew75, on 06 May 2015 - 06:10 PM, said:

High Fidelity, on 06 May 2015 - 05:48 PM, said:

Sparks, on 06 May 2015 - 05:23 PM, said:

It's amazing how unlike a lot of builds, this actually looks like a stable and playable platformer. It really just needs those iconic loops and slopes Sonic is known for, then zoom out the camera a bit (right now with how close it is to Sonic makes the ratio feel like a Game Gear game.

Great work to everyone involved. />/>/>/>

Those animations sure are lovely though. Would love to see them used in a fangame.

They have been used in AXSX lol

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/paw...0FSq5JwX1Rtswsr

How did I not spot that before! Ha

Also, I didn't know that the POV build was to eventually implement the famous fisheye cam. Interesting.

Great to hear that the original creators are on board with what you are doing.

[Jollyroger]

Quote

That port to the Saturn clearly doesn't have the animation engine in, which is why there's popping between the limited # of frames.

Actually the engine has the same animation code as the PC one, it just loads a smaller amount of frames to make it quicker to load and test, and to use less memory...

Jolly

[Spinksy]

Good to see Mike Wallis's response.

I think if you get in touch with Christina Coffin about this you should maybe mention the Metal Sonic thing again, possibly even worth setting up a charity donation or something to try and motivate her to release something?

[Andrew75]

Spinksy, on 07 May 2015 - 07:50 AM, said:

Good to see Mike Wallis's response.

I think if you get in touch with Christina Coffin about this you should maybe mention the Metal Sonic thing again, possibly even worth setting up a charity donation or something to try and motivate her to release something?

Shes really hard to contact, I had contacted her in the past , she said that shes very busy and usually does not reply to Sonic Xtreme related messages very often.
but she did say to send her some AXSX updates threw e-mail even if she didn't always respond. At that time I got information on how the boss engine handled gameplay wise.
But yeah I sent her 2 or 3 more AXSX progress updates threwout the years since, and never got a response back. I can try again, but who knows she may not even check that email account any longer.

[Lostgame]

Hey, with regards to the multi-boot thing, there's a great resource here:

http://www.rockin-b....turn-atlas.html

I've got a Saturn dev setup on my TinyXP install, I'm going to try to compile it tonight when I get off of work. If you need help modifying it to contain the game files let me know and I'll be more than willing to lend a hand. Cheers!

[Andrew75]

I've Sent an e-mail to Christina, Lets see if we can get lucky here!
Please lets not send anymore and bombard her with a million emails.

[Kiddo Cabbusses]

Lostgame, on 07 May 2015 - 11:42 AM, said:

Hey, with regards to the multi-boot thing, there's a great resource here:

http://www.rockin-b....turn-atlas.html

I've got a Saturn dev setup on my TinyXP install, I'm going to try to compile it tonight when I get off of work. If you need help modifying it to contain the game files let me know and I'll be more than willing to lend a hand. Cheers!

This sounds like what I had in mind. It'd be great to have a set going from the ol' proof on conept from way back to those STI builds to this new PIV build, and maybe someday those boss engine builds will come along...

[Polish Pete]

That's very nice of Mike to respond to your question and give some more of his insight on those builds.

Now out of curiosity, do you think he's ever seen miiyouandmii2's three-part video documenting the development process of Sonic X-treme?

Part 1: https://www.youtube....h?v=HLPk2rGgg7s
Part 2: https://www.youtube....h?v=hePIWmjV4bg
Part 3: https://www.youtube....h?v=zIP6GlmyXuI

I think it's a pretty nicely made video and it definitely shows that there was effort and research put into this. It'd be nice if Mike could tell us if there are any facts that this guy got wrong or if there's anything Mike would like to add to this that we don't know yet.