[SANiK]

Sonic Saturn info, from hxc's interview with Peter Morawiec:

"Sonic Saturn (or Sonic3D) was a different project, which Adrian and I started at STI Burbank in early 1996. It was supposed to be a 3D Sonic game for the Saturn – those concept images I sent you previously are from that game. Adrian had a very nifty and fast spherical renderer going on for it, for things like bodies and heads. This game was going for a more realistic rendition of Sonic’s world, but Naka didn’t like it so the project was axed. (Ironically, the subsequent Sonic game for the Dreamcast was much more realistic). Following that, there was a slight chance of salvaging our tech and assets to create a bonus game for the Travelers Tales developed Sonic 3D Blast, although we will never know just how seriously this was ever considered. Nonetheless, we quickly whipped out a prototype, which we called Sonic Pool, but it never went past that."

Pictures for the Sonic Saturn project, from hxc's interview:
http://xtreme.projec...r=PeterStuff%2F

I think that pretty much answers what Sonic Saturn was... but if Sonic X-treme got renamed to Sonic Saturn and why Sonic Pool (Sonic Saturn) was considered as a bonus for Sonic X-treme is for Christina Coffin to explain =O

This post has been edited by SANiK: 21 June 2006 - 10:58 PM

[Sazpaimon]

Which is essentially what the question was. I'm not sure if the last 3 pics are from the same game or not.

[ChristinaCoffin]

'sonic saturn' that was worked on by peter/adrian was a completely seperate game project and was considered a satellite office of sti by most.
However that sonic head wrapped with the saturn 's' on the 1st page was made by ross harris on a whim for the xtreme project and used as a loading splash screen.
That screen was inferred to mean 'sonic on the sega saturn' - not be the new or tenative title of our game.

Harris also was responsible for modeling the 3d sonic and other objects in 3d studio/soft image that were rendered into 2d sprites and did other pieces of artwork for xtreme.
Back when I was using the sprite sonic in xtreme, harris agreed to my 'experiment' by modifying the original sonic model into amy sonic since it wasn't going to really require any extra animation/skeleton work. It only took a couple days work to model the new shoes,eyes and ribbon and render all the sprite frames out. I wonder if those sprites will ever surface because she came out awfully cute. It was basically a sprite swap in game to play amy in the boss engin= I never got around to modifying the spindash/spinslash/jump/running speed mechanics in the hopes we could make the game play differently if we ever allowed people to play as amy. Having amy in the game was not chris senn's original plans but something I explored myself - I figured if we were going to add more playable characters amy would be the easiest one to prototype for obvious reasons.

[Eric Wright]

—I know it's been said a bunch of times already, but Christina, just want to extend a thank you for bothering to come here and humor a dying breed of Sonic fans :)
—Also want to specifically thank you, simply for hearing how much work you put into learning how to circumvent a lot of the Saturn's graphic "problems"; your work that tricked the hardware, that begat real transparencies, etc etc... (and the fact that you were completely aware at how god-awful the gridded polygons looked when people tried to do pseudo-transparencies like in shadows or glass and stuff...I thought programmers were completely oblivious to this and how Playstation was trouncing the Saturn with its capabilities.) I'm a rather large Wipeout fan too, so hearing anything about how they managed to get the poor Saturn to run the game is icing on the cake. It's unfortunate Sega didn't have you on their Saturn front sooner. ....and I especially like the fact that you and Naka didn't exactly get along ;3
—Sorry to clog the flow of posts, but it's not often I get a chance to have my words read by someone who worked on two of the most influential aspects of my childhood (X-Treme and the Saturn itself); as sad as it may be, the prospect of X-Treme as it was in development, and my personal experience with the Saturn in general are both very sentimental to me....You are/were part of my 'karass', if you will :P ("Cat's Cradle" reference).

PS: the US Sonic CD music wasn't that bad... ¬_¬
EDIT: sorry again to type so much, did not realize an immediately following post would deluge you with questions.

This post has been edited by Eric Wright: 22 June 2006 - 01:08 AM

[SamIAm]

Greetings, Christina Coffin, and thank you so much for taking part in this community. Your recent insights and information alone are proving to be some of the most fascinating and exciting things ever to surface in the Sonic Xtreme investigation. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you something.

To me, the most interesting part of the Sonic Xtreme saga isn't the game itself - that was never finished, after all - it's the people and history behind the project. There is a lot of information out there about what happened to this game, and as you probably know, much of it conflicts. At least as far as the programming is concerned, you seem to have the clearest memory of what happened, and I am going to guess that you have a very good idea of what events surrounded the development of this game. If you have any kind of plan to write your own account of what happened, then by all means, carry it out. If you do not, however, I wonder if you might start by taking a look at this (never mind the article about Xtreme on the site, it has all sorts of errors).

This timeline was made by Mike Wallis in the sonic-cult forums some time ago. However, his memory seems hazy, and some things he says in this timeline conflict slightly with things he says in this interview. For example, when did Bernie Stolar come on as head of SoA and influence the project? When exactly did the NiGHTS engine fiasco happen? When did the SoJ president come and request that the game be executed on the boss engine?

If you could comment however briefly on this timeline, and perhaps add some of your own perspective to it, I think it would give us a terrific idea of how the Sonic Xtreme story goes.

Thank you for anything and everything!

This post has been edited by SamIAm: 22 June 2006 - 01:09 AM

[Meat Miracle]

What I'd like to know is - how in the heck did you make proper transparent, non-meshed polygons on the Saturn?
Can you take pictures of that?

Were they drawn with the vdp1 or were they just the tricks used in Burning Rangers where explosions were drawn on a seperate VDP2 field which was all-transparent?

[Heran Bago]

Thanks so much for all the answers to these mysteries Chris! I owe ya.

Here's another one. Graphical similarities have been pointed out between the Saturn Sonic projects and Sonic's Schoolhouse for the PC (that edutainment game). Is there any connection at all, like could graphics have been re-used?

[SANiK]

Made screens of the Saturn 3D model bug Christina was talking about, and how they took advantage of it:

This post has been edited by SANiK: 22 June 2006 - 10:37 AM

[Eric Wright]

THe visual helps a HELL of a lot... maybe now people will stop criticizing me when I say STI kicked fucking ass :P *cough Nik cough*

[Rarmander]

Wow that's really cool. A smart way to use a bug.

[ChristinaCoffin]

I tried to use the quad bug in other gameplay objects in the world as well - like that cannon gizmo in boris's .gif sig, as part of enemies to show you should spindash into their sides instead of jumping on top of them, and terrain hazards like spike pits and such.

I think there's a magazine shot out there showing a bunch of koosh-ball type objects in a small arena with sonic standing near them, those were rendered using the same bug as well.

If I had the saturn sdk and hardware reference docs I could probably explain some of the tricks alittle better.

This post has been edited by ChristinaCoffin: 22 June 2006 - 12:44 PM

[hxc]

ChristinaCoffin, on Jun 22 2006, 09:44 AM, said:

If I had the saturn sdk and hardware reference docs I could probably explain some of the tricks alittle better.

The Saturn SDK with those models is available, if you would like it. Uploaded it here: http://projectsonic.com/SSSDK.zip

I think Don Goddard has an original copy of the docs, but is busy right now. Borisz (in IRC) said they might be here: http://www.segaxtrem...umentation.html

[SANiK]

WTF is wrong with you guys? It's been 10 years, and we've finally landed an interview with Christina Coffin, and now there's been like a full day of silence in this topic!

There's so much to ask from the programmer perspective!

The lighting - how was lighting accomplished at the time? You said that three lights could be used max at the time.
The Red Shoe Diaries (link: http://xtreme.projec....php?dir=rsd%2F )talked about Fang tossing a grenade and how it gave off light as the grenade travelled. Did this use dynamic lighting? Vertex lighting? Gradient tricks? Or did it use a craftily made particle engine?

Transparency - you mentioned transparency before and said that you employed the VDP1 to pull it off. I'm basicly asking the same question as Borisz which was probably missed:
"What I'd like to know is - how in the heck did you make proper transparent, non-meshed polygons on the Saturn?
Can you take pictures of that?"

Transparency is said to be super-slow on the Saturn, and I'm wondering if you devised a new means to achieve it that was faster, or if you used the same old method =O

(Borisz, in your avatar the thing that shoots Sonic seems to be transparent so it might count as an 'example')

AI - ah yes, something that even the game of Pong couldn't live without. I remember reading how you took great joy in playing around with the AI and bringing characters to life, but I wondered how advanced was the AI? Did the AI follow a pattern and eventually always allow the player to hit it (e.g. all Sonic game bosses), or was it more like a fighting game like Sonic Fighters or Street Fighter?

Logo - And finally, is there a higher res. version of the Sonic Saturn logo by any chance =O

This post has been edited by SANiK: 23 June 2006 - 11:42 PM

[Vangar]

SANiK, on Jun 24 2006, 02:58 PM, said:

Logo - And finally, is there a higher res. version of the Sonic Saturn logo by any chance =O

I don't think so, he ripped it from the game, not from his art. Unless he has art of it seperately.

[hxc]

Vangar, on Jun 23 2006, 10:52 PM, said:

SANiK, on Jun 24 2006, 02:58 PM, said:

Logo - And finally, is there a higher res. version of the Sonic Saturn logo by any chance =O

I don't think so, he ripped it from the game, not from his art. Unless he has art of it seperately.

*she.