Q&A with another Sega Vet (SegaNet etc) No more Geist talk PLEASE!

Not guaranteeing I can answer them all but will try.

 

10Six was a really great game carried over from Heat.net days. Really ahead of its time in many ways. The staff who were kept around for the game were very sharp but it was easy to see that the days of 10Six was limited with the focus on Dreamcast property (there was really no interest to continue to develop for PC at that point). A few former Heat.net staff remained w/ Sega.com but not many.

The code base for online not out there but it falls into a few segments. The browser was actually done for us by PlanetWeb in the US. I am not really sure why because the Japanese (in-house I think) browser was much better. Javascript was something we could not get PlanetWeb to do for us come hell or high water for some reason. Also note we assembled the discs for Dreamcast Magazine and dropped new versions (if available) of PlanetWeb for each issue. So PlanetWeb (defunct I think) has that codebase (they owned it we licensed).

The other side - a lot of work and effort went into creating a networking platform for all online games to be built on. It was ambitious and I knew a lot of the smart people who worked on it but it in the harsh light of reality really failed. The SDK did finally come out but it was in the dying days of the Dreamcast and was ported and used for Nokia products to my knowledge. It was a real shame as the idea had true merit. So most of the games that were online - the multiplayer client side was written from scratch by the developers of said games (and I think in some cases maybe server side for a while).

I will note our developers were critical in helping game developers build out their multiplayer (while continuing our own development effort).

Nokia owns the codebase which by now is radically different and targeting mobile devices specifically (though converting for console use again could be done).

I want to reiterate for those who never played it - 10Six was a great game and while I am pretty positive it would *not* have been a successful Dreamcast game I do have some wish it happened just to keep the game alive.

I think it was also the first game to use in-app purchases (or extensively)?

 

FYI monkfish there is an edit button Your 2nd or 3rd set of double posts I've merged now

Welcome to the forums though and any idea why browsing on the DC was still painfully slow with a BBA? I'm guessing due to crappy cache size and poor file format support

 

Thanks LeGIt - still getting used to the controls .

To answer your question - yeah the cache size was an issue but the difference between 10 Mbit and 100Mbit was huge (of course) as I recall there was a switch on the adapter. We had the old Japanese ones for a bit (10 Mbit only) and there was some midnight swapping on other people's Dreamcasts for a while to get the better newer one.

I gave mine away to a friend in the business (who still has it). I dont have one anymore! :|

Answering / appending a few of DonnyK's questions:

Sega Building (650 Townsend):
1) Used to be an old fashion mall. Turned into high tech offices. Weird space.
2) Sega of America was on the top floor.
3) Peter Moore had one of 3 or 4 spots for his Jaguar on the 6th floor. Most parking was on top of building (where I parked - didnt rate a spot by Peter).
4) As mentioned Sega.com was on the 5th floor. As was Sega Enterprises where we got to preview new arcade games which would (usually) become Dreamcast titles.
5) TechTV was on floor 4 (glorified cable access). I swear Kevin Rose burned his popcorn every month which caused the entire building to evacuate. Whoever did it was an idiot and it was always someone from TechTV.
6) Macromedia was also in the building.

Keyboard question

Japanese keyboards were definitely different. Less wide and cooler looking because of the characters. It was (and is) my preferred Dreamcast keyboard.

I am pretty sure the European ones were the same as US.

 

Did you converse with the people on the other floors or did you mainly keep to yourselves?

 

Dee Dee Planet
Dee Dee Planet was pretty much complete as I recall (we were testing it @ Sega.com). I thought it was scrapped because it was a bit too Japanesque. I thought the game was pretty cool (I think it was like a cannon angle / Worms type game?) but agreed that it would likely not be super popular.

I have a friend who has a copy. He also has a copy of Rez for Dreamcast (US).

Sega Channel Servers
No idea

Conversing w/ other Companies
Definitely, especially SoA. Though I will say (and I think DonnyK would agree) there was a *lot* of tension between SoA and Sega.com. Sega.com was getting a lot of attention and money and I think, no I know, Peter wanted to control us or have more influence (he didnt). Executive staff on both sides were pretty petty to each other and it was unproductive and not shining examples of leadership (I think Sega.com more than SoA but SoA was pretty bad as well).

Ah I think misinterpreted the question. Spoke to some people sure. We saw TechTV people a lot but they were amusingly impressed with themselves (E-list celebs) so they actually didnt say too much to us.

 

Hopefully you can answer a question I've had for a while now. What is the last known SDK you remember being available to developers? R11 seemed to be the one to really start pushing the online component, but wording in the readme suggested SEGA was ending support of the SDK since it was close to the time when they announced they were stopping production of the Dreamcast.

 

I got a question for you,would you happen to know anything about gunvalkyrie on the dc?Sega said it would have online co-op.Or was that canceled to early?Hopefully you can answer this.
Question 2,Legend of the blade masters,would you happened to know how it played online?From my understanding it was completed but never released.

 

Did you ever have anything to do with testing the Swatch Beat and its integration into Propeller Arena or any other online games?

 

First of all thank you for your time!

(standard) question: Any confirmable builds of unreleased games? Like DeeDee Planet, REZ (US) etc.

 

Ciao.

Not sure if you can answer but ...

1- Have you seen or heard anything about the dreamcast version of Dark Eyes ?

2- What happened to Paradigm Enterteinment's Skies ? Was a dreamcast version ever in real production or was it just an hollow announcement ?

 

Hello and welcome I am very excited about reading your answers to the myriad of questions that are going to flood your way!

I don't personally have a question (although I am VERY interested in any answers regarding accel99's Gun Valkyrie question) but was hoping if you do still have contact with other members of Sega you may recommend the site to them so they can share their memories/insights with us all as well. The more the merrier!

Thanks again

Rob

 

SDK
Re: last SDK version I know someone who knows and will tell me (I think). Let me check and get back to you on it.

Gunvalkyrie and Legend of the Blade Masters
Anything online was tested by Sega.com (and I believe SoA?). I was so busy I didnt get into the testing area too much (though it was cool when I did). If I find out I will tell you.

Sidebar
On testing btw, it seems / sounds like a fun job and it can be (meet developers, free games, E3, swag, cheap Christmas gifts) but it gets pretty hard. Specifically when you have to test that last level in Ecco the Dolphin for that bug that is there but really hard to replicate. The testers would videotape their games so the developers could see the bug (smart). The developers would *not* put in jump points so the testers had to play a game all the way through to retest a bug on final level, etc. (not so smart). I talked to the dev teams about that a few times but they never did anything about it.

Swatch Beat
We put the Swatch Beat in a few places - a few games, main site, immersion site (specific to game). Propeller Arena was being tested after I left. Not a super big deal - simple API call to a Swatch server(s).

I am personally a Swatch fan and saw the potential (especially when you mess with GMT a lot like I have) but it really never caught on at all.

Rez, Dee Dee Planet
Happy to be here and answer questions
I know someone who has the final (to my knowledge) or at least last builds of both localized for US. We played Dee Dee Planet a decent amount (well some did more than others - as in they had more time ). I saw DD Planet a lot - mainly black with white, very Japanese aesthetic. Very sharp and modern. Rez I didnt see the Dreamcast version for though I bought the PS2 version and had the massagers (whatever they are).

Dark Eyes / Skies
Dont know anything about Dark Eyes.
I looked up Skies. Paradigm didnt do any Dreamcast releases. Skies was supposed to be on Heat.Net so it was a PC game. If it was Windows there is some possibility they could've done a Windows CE port if their code was fairly progressed. BUT it is a whole different deal to build to Dreamcast (non-VGA) v. computer. Resolution drop is obvious, so it is not a completely trivial endeavor. Given numbers and eventual drop of the Dreamcast (I think 1.5 years later? - still staggering to think of they ended so soon). Paradigm could've decided against it given licensing costs (which werent too bad I heard) and investment to develop on a new system (staff training, Katana boxes, etc.). For a smaller dev house a lot of commitment. Soo... I think it was a hot air announcement to gauge interest at best or at least reconsidered after understanding what would go into it.

Sharing
I have a ton of friends still in the gaming industry the people I knew... some are still @ Sega others are at Konami, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Sony, etc.. I will share the site with them - as serious gamers (like me) I think they would be as excited as I am to read the stuff that all of you know (it is pretty staggering, seriously).

Other notes - EA
EA did a *lot* of damage to us by deciding not to be on Dreamcast. It might actually be the single most damaging act (that we didnt do ourselves). I was never a fan of EA (still am not) but their sports property brings the boys to the yard as it were. I think it was a stupid move on their part as well as their support would've sold more units and extended the base in which they could sell more. Also it created 2K Sports which was actually a bit of a problem for them (especially when they went out of Dreamcast only). EA did the whole sports licensing snatch up (NFL) to monopolize. I would watch when that license drops because 2K Sports has a genuine bone to pick and when allowed to compete I am confident they will crush the lazy tards @ EA.

 

Did you ever see anything of Half Life?

 

do you happen to have the tech specs or maybe the pin out for the dreamcast BBA or the expansion port?

the pin out would be quite useful for people who wanna try DIYing a BBA

 

I asked in the other thread but I guess it's better to ask here... (also, thanks for taking time to answer these questions!)

Two unreleased games I'm curious about are Castlevania and Far Nation/Farnation (?) -

There are photos of the Sega archive in N.America and there's a disc labelled Farnation so 'something' must exist in some form. Do you have any memories/info at all about this elusive title.

Ditto for Castlevania - There are so many confusing rumours about it that it's hard to know what is true. Again, any info (at all!) would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Thanks for checking, Monkfish.

For the jump point issue with the developers, even if it was just because they didn't want to do it because it was extra work for them, it was still the right thing to do.

Bugs are often times not developed at the point of error, but are the result of a long chain of events. It's possible something at the title screen or stage two filled a certain area of memory that later on stage fifty is accessed by a buffer overflow, causing a specific type of error to occur.

(PS: I've also sent a PM when you have the time.)

 

Hey Dreamcast,

Realize that re: bugs (I should note that I have developed software a looooong time though not games).

Jump points are useful for testing bugs that have been submitted (especially if there are problems quashing) then followed with thorough full regression testing. Doing run throughs of any real significance daily (beyond initial) wasn't a really great use of QA time especially with all of the games that had to be tested (also impacts overhead / cost significantly).