Lost Panzer Dragoon Saga code?

What said Anthaemia is true. Sega almost always recicles things, but, it's also true that between the years 1998 - 2000 with all the changes, Sega lost a lot of things on the way...

 

Too bad it has no paragraph breaks.

 

lets be honest guys - would the code be useful now other than for nostalgia?
With all the hardware updates its best to start from scratch.
I backup all code that I can though

 

Well as stated in the interview they thought by using the original source code from the first game it would be easy.

As it turned out it became more difficult than they expected. As for certain areas of sonic adventure running at 60fps, I really don't remember that occurring at all.

The GC port did, but it it wasn't consistent and constantly dropped at below 30fps.

Anyway, I'm sure at that time they didn't think they were going to release the game ever again.

I mean after all at that time the saturn was about dead.

 

There was an interview w/ the guy that ported PD to the PS2 (is that what you're referring to, sayin999?). Why not look at it this way: The original code will never hurt.

I'm sure certain routines would definitely be easier if you could look at how it was done originally.

 

I have spent years in and around software development processes and it never ceases to amaze me what kinds of obvious precautions and backup procedures simply don't get done. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the source material for PDS really is lost.

After about 2000 I think a combination of litigation and the legitimization of the phrase "Intellectual Property" has made a lot of us start thinking about code the way the record industry had to start thinking about priceless old recordings that were lost to carelessness. But before that, it was just the post-it notes you worked your thoughts out on and threw in the trash.

(Nintendo has always been excessively paranoid about their code, so they're not really a good example to go by.)

As for what good it would do, although the acutal machine code wouldn't help unless you were planning on including an "original mode" in the update for nostalgia, having the text already translated, and the audio already recorded would seriously cut down on development time. Even if the text and audio were due to be revamped, having the timestamps already laid out, and having the audio in a clean file would shave valuable time off of such a project. Even the smallest scrap of reusable work would bring such a project that much closer to feesibility.

Remakes aren't generally expected to be big sellers - their appeal to producers is a quick turnaround time with minimal investment of development resources - a fancy way of saying slap some polish on it and shove it out the door. Having to do a manual dump of the existing text and/or fight to get audio tracks that are clean (and not cluttered with sound effects or voice) could add enough cost to a project to make it too expensive for Sega to consider.

That being said, I hope that Sega does one day realize what an awesome gem they have just gathering dust in their "intellectual property" basket, and either sell the rights to an interested 3rd party or plan a full-blown remake with all the trimmings.

 

Actually it was the interview 1up did with the panzer dragoon saga guy that brought on this topic.

In it he stated how that when they were using the source to port panzer dragoon to ps2 for ages 2500 as it would be faster and wouldn't really cost that much to do.

However it ended up still being very difficult to do since the game was originally programed for the saturn's complex hardware. Funny thing to was he also stated it made the games budget go over what was allowed for a ages 2500 release.

Probably explains why that phantasy star collection and bare knuckle 2 remake never panned out.

Btw Gaijin, do you know of any site that posts translations of the sega ages 2500 interviews?

 

I remember there being an interview that suggests a straight port of Virtua Fighter 2 for the PlayStation 2 (as part of the AGES 2500 budget series) would have been impossible due to some code from the arcade original going missing, which suggests the rumour about Sega being less than precautionary in its backup policy might just be true after all...

As for the suggestion that Sega lost more during the transition period between Saturn and Dreamcast, that is great news for collectors since the likes of "Sonic World" - see my last message - and the 32-bit "Shenmue" date from this time. Finally, wasn't the PC version of Panzer Dragoon built from scratch, or was this just a clever port of the Saturn code? If the answer is the former, why didn't Sega just use this as the basis for the AGES remake, albeit with a few cosmetic enhancements?

P.S. In retrospect, I must apologise for the non-utilisation of paragraphing in my previous post here - the sign of a rant, if ever there was one!

 

That's all speculation. No one really knows what Sega's policies were or even are, as no one here has worked for Sega. Especially not in Japan.

However, I would find it hard to believe that no backups remain for a project so big as PDS. It is possible that those backups and archives were damaged or lost in some incident that we are not privy to.

 

I read an interview w/ the guy that was in charge of the ports... didn't think he had anything to do with Azel. I don't recall any mention of whack source code. I'll check though...it's an issue of Sega Voice. But anyone thinking Saturn to PS2 source is going to be easily transferable needs to get off the crack pipe.

??? -- Phantasy Star Collection is still listed as a go
http://ages.sega.jp/lineup.html

I've done two
http://www.gamengai.com/cmnt_ix.php?type=translation&l=e
They were both Meisaku Album features that coincided with SA2500 releases: Gain Ground & Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box. I was going to do the PD one but got all busy and shit. I did sum it up somewhere.

<looks>

Beautiful, huh?

Here is the interview. Tomohiro Kondo.

EDIT:
Here's a snippet:

Was there any difficulties in development when trying to recreate the Saturn Mode

To put it bluntly, it made me want to cry (laughs). We started by analyzing the original source. For some parts, we made a special converter to recreate data, and other parts (I can't say so too loud) we did something like reading from a retail disc (laughs). I think if we set out to do it all in emulation it would've been much easier, but we also wanted to put Arrange mode in there, so we had to endure some pain. Yes.

<snip>

 

To be honest, even the source code at this point would prove useless for a number of reasons.

Today's technology could allow the faithful recreation of Azel gameplay-wise within an all-new shell.

The elements used to animate the original are obsolete and mostly incompatible - and as we know, a Saturn emulator is not that easy.

That said, considering that SSF 0.8 R11 runs Azel just fine on my single core P4 2.7, a 360 port wouldn't surprise me, especially with the use of parallel processing disciplines applied.

 

Original source code is never useless. It can, however, be used in very poor ways.

 

"Original source code is never useless."

Amen to that.

 

I've seen ports/conversions which were done without any regard for the original source code (including physics, game mechanics). Has anyone here played Sonic Genesis on the GBA? That game makes me vomit. It uses 360-degree geometry instead of the original 256-degree, multiplication/division instead of bit shifting, it's just plain awful.

I would say more, but it would turn into a cry about how nowadays people don't understand what they are coding

 

x

 

I've heard rumors someone in the US has a working Saturn Shenmue.

 

Huh?

 

Yeah, What? Whether or not you like his games, he contributed greatly to the 16 and 32 bit eras, created a lot of games people enjoy and love.

If you're mentioning the Sonic Xtreme debacle, I can pretty much see his point: if anyone within your company can take your code, give it to anyone else without your permission or even knowledge, I'm assuming you're gonna be pretty angry. I don't see why he'd have any problem with STI, he worked with them, but I assume he wanted to make a point that the boys at Sega can't just take his shit without him knowing and pass it around to other parts of the company and world.

 

You don't own the code you write for money as a programmer, usually.

 

What's with all the Sega Hate?