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Never before seen build of Sonic X-treme Leaked!

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Andrew75, Apr 23, 2015.

  1. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

    "Our Life is More than a Side-Effect" Member
    Hot dang, that actually looks great. I always thought X-Treme could have been really cool if it had level design that focused on primarily 2D progression with options to move forward and back on the z-axis for certain level portions. This build of Jade Gully mixed with PoV's engine looks like it was trying to go in that direction, and I like that lack of fish-eye a lot!

    I have a hard time believing that this engine went unseen by Sega when it was running this well on Saturn hardware. Any hypothesis' as to why this version may never have seen the light of day when it looks to be at least close to on-par with Alon's eventual New Worlds Demo iteration of the engine?
     
  2. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Artwork and looking for post-grad work...
    How on earth is it that the guys who showed a still image of Sonic on a checkboard as a demonstration of their skill when first introduced to the game's development process, decades later turn out to be the same people behind a unknown build of X-treme that actually trumps most (if not all) of the STI builds that we know exist?

    The game actually looks like a proper (if still incomplete) level, rather than a bunch of incomplete platforms strung together into what could technically considered a level. It actually reminds me of LBP in the sense that it's a 2D platformer but had multiple 3D planes to move in-out of it...which considering that the Saturn was primarily designed to handle 2D games instead of 3D games, would had suited the game a lot better.

    Can't help but wonder what the outcome would had been if this build (if it existed at the time) was what was shown to the Japanese Sega execs, instead of the porting disaster of Ofer's engine...

    As always, excellent work and kudos to those involved in having this build --along with the others-- see the light of day.
     
  3. Borman

    Borman

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    Hope you guys have been enjoying some of the videos I've been putting together along with Andrew75 and JR. If anyone is curious, the video was captured using a micomsoft sc-512n1, which pulls in the 240p RGB video :)
     
  4. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    It should work on your US Saturn, as it works on both of my Saturn's (Japanese and US Saturn.)
    In the past I burned it with other burning programs , and it worked on emu but didn't boot on Saturn.
     
  5. Sparks

    Sparks

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    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. :)
     
  6. 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.
     
  7. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    Once again, amazing work and thank you for making it possible to preserve this piece of video game history! :thumbsup:
     
  8. Andrew75

    Andrew75

    Technical Artist Member
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    They have been used in AXSX lol

    https://youtu.be/pawNmPAchg4?list=PLjVabxmQnqww7mMPnD0FSq5JwX1Rtswsr
     
  9. Jollyroger

    Jollyroger

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    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
     
  10. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    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:
    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:
     
  11. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

    "Our Life is More than a Side-Effect" Member
    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.
     
  12. upg

    upg

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

  13. How did I not spot that before! Ha :v:

    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.
     
  14. Jollyroger

    Jollyroger

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    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
     
  15. Spinksy

    Spinksy

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    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?
     
  16. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    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.
     
  17. Lostgame

    Lostgame

    producer/turnablist. homebrew dev. cosplayer. Oldbie
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    Hey, with regards to the multi-boot thing, there's a great resource here:

    http://www.rockin-b.de/saturn-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!
     
  18. Andrew75

    Andrew75

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    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.
     
  19. 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...
     
  20. 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.com/watch?v=HLPk2rGgg7s
    Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hePIWmjV4bg
    Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?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.