Panzer Dragoon Saga's Source code

The rumor is it was lost, but I've never actually read any interview or article saying that it was. Does anybody know 1. if that's true and 2. if it is not true where this rumor may have come from.

 

Yukio Futatsugi confirmed it was lost (or something happened to it) in an interview he did with 1UP.

He also pretty much said that Orta's entire plot was a bunch of nonsense. Which was awesome because I had been saying that since Orta's release but everyone always disagreed with me. But those people apparently never understood what was happening at the end of PDSaga.

 

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I did look it up.

But allrighty, reading this now.

 

Prior to development of Shenmue being completed, it's claimed that the original Panzer Dragoon was the most expensive game ever, but despite this I've never actually seen an exact figure quoted for how much it cost - does anyone know for certain? Also, considering the improvements made in its immediate follow-up, surely this had an even greater budget? Then again, maybe Team Andromeda didn't need to spend as much since they'd already created a working engine they would use again for the sequel. However, I'm fairly convinced that PD Saga must have been an even more expensive venture, though by that time Shenmue was already quite far into production and therefore may have taken the title for itself by then... I'd love to have specific details about this series, assuming somebody out there has the answers to such questions, that is!

 

One of the reasons I made this thread, I was actually inspired to make this by the VF3 Saturn thread.

 

Oh, don't get me started...

 

I like your anecdotes.

I don;t have any of the Panzer Dragoon games on Saturn yet, Just Orta on XBOX. Saga is on my list....once I can get a back up of my soul

 

I can't say I'm too surprised by this. Harddrive space was at a premium even in 1995 and floppies are easily destroyed. Someone being careless is a great way to misplace an entire box as well.

 

I just find it odd that the source was completely lost. Like, there is no version of the code ANYWHERE?? I'm interested though, I have Orta and it's an excellent rail shooter, but Saga just has so much praise and it launched so close to the Saturn's death that I really want to try it once I get a Saturn.

 

Well there were some rumours of angry staff being partially to blame, but part of the reason why there's little surprise that the source code is gone as these things were very often not seen as a valuable commodity or necessary once the game went gold and they knew they'd be moving onto something different.

Storage of data and administration of such things were certainly not strengths of the games industry a few years ago, a few companies were meticulous but most were rather messy.

 

I might be wrong on this, but I'm sure it was mentioned somewhere once that Sega had a policy of storing its Saturn era game assets - including all source code - on magnetic tapes stored in a vault at its Japanese headquarters, so Panzer Dragoon Saga would either have been misplaced or deliberately wiped. Whatever really happened, the fact is that a few years after the original release they went to locate all data in preparation for a possible emulated version and found significant holes in their archives from this period, with PDS one such casualty (I believe some Model 2 titles also went missing, such as Virtua Fighter 2).

If I remember correctly, Sega bought the rights to Giri Giri Project and planned to issue this with NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Dragon Force as its first wave software line-up. In the end, only NiGHTS saw the light of day, later being rebuilt from the ground up by a Chinese outsourcing team for the PlayStation 2 as well. Dragon Force and the original Panzer Dragoon soon followed, but Saga remains elusive... now if only they'd licensed SSF instead, since it seems to run this particular title near-flawlessly from my past experience.

Actually, would a console like the PS3 or Xbox 360 be powerful enough to run SSF at full speed? I know it works rather well in multi-core processing setups, so maybe it could prove useful in getting future Saturn games issued under the recently unveiled Sega Heritage label? A collection of the entire 32-bit Panzer Dragoon trilogy, Game Gear spin-off Mini and even Orta would make for a great package, plus one day the powers that be could even turn their attention to titles announced back in the day that were finished or close to being complete, like Saturn Virtua Fighter 3 or Shenmue? Better yet, how about finally giving the troubled tale of Sonic Xtreme's creation a happy ending by letting Ofer Alon and Chris Senn dust off the promising-looking work they'd done on the PC? I can dream!

 

Next Gen Consoles might be. Although I've heard murmurings that Saturn Emulation is up on the Open Pandora which isn't close the power of the PS3 and 360 so it's possible to emulate.

I do have a flawless rip of Panzer Dragoon Saga for use in SSF but no USB-Saturn Converter to accurately enjoy it.

Is this why PS2 nights isn't as fluid as it is on the Saturn? Now that I've played Nights the way it was intended there is just all sorts of things wrong with the PS2 release.

I hope they get fixed for NIGHTS HD.

 

Probably had little to do w/ HD space, and a LOT to do with organization, plus incorporating all your dev houses into their own companies, and then remerging them into one again. Source code control was immature (and still takes a lot of work today).

 

Who kept source code long after a game is published? Like nobody. How often are old games ported to new consoles from their source code? Like never. So what does it matter? It doesn't as long as the system can be feasibly emulated. Luckily the Saturn can be emulated. Today's games on the other hand are approaching unemulatable (well, in the interpreted sense, static recompilation and HLE everything will be essential).

It's difficult but entirely possible to disassemble PDS today and derive workable source from it, it just wouldn't be worth the many man-hours. Even if the source had been kept it seems unlikely the game would see a rerelease, it still takes significant effort to rewrite platform-specific engine code.

 

1000s of games still have the original source code.

Prince of Persia's source code is out there for the taking.

 

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Not sure if Panzer Dragoon was the most expensive game made at the time, but I doubt Saga and Zwei were, as Team Andormeda split up into two teams to make both games concurrently (obviously, PDSaga took longer, it being an RPG and all). So they certainly weren't throwing the full might at either Zwei or PDSaga.

 

We actually know nothing about the Panzer Dragoon Saga source code for certain. To quote the 1up article:

To me, this suggests something much deeper. It's possible that perhaps Sega had some other company develop the game, or co-develop the game, and that other party lost the code or resources. Another possibility is that Sega only had the rights to publish the game on the Saturn, and the mysterious other party wanted them to pay them more to use their code in a remake on another platform.

Along those same lines, it could be that someone else involved with the game is preventing a remake from happening. As you may have heard, the reason Sonic Extreme was never finished was partially because of in-fighting at Sega. The Nights team didn't want their engine in the Sonic Extreme game. Perhaps someone else has some control over the IP and isn't allowing a port, or someone important at Sega is protesting and Sega doesn't want to loss them.

The 1UP interview says quite clearly is that there is much more to the story. The lost code excuse could be a total cover. At the very least, it's not about hard-drive space. It's also something Sega wants to keep secret, which could be telling of something.

It seems to me that Sega could have made a remake quite a while ago. If they made Nights, I don't see what is stopping them. Although the game is much longer, the turn-based style of Saga should be much easier to re-create than the high-speed acrobatics of Nights. And I remember the Saga geography being much more sparse than a level in Nights. They need to decompile the game, gather up all the assets they can, and start the recreation.

 

Dysfuntion might as well be Sega's name remember when they stopped Streets of Rage 4 from being made becuase they thought nobody remembered it?
Or how 1 producer at Sega is behind the You Tube Takedown notices on Shining Force III because he's jelly of the game?