Sonic X-treme - Point of View - Info + help required

Hello everyone,

I recently acquired some material from tichua, and among it were some old disks from the defunct Point of View studio.

On the disks I found material on POV's work on Sonic X-treme, which I am now trying to resurrect.

Some code is supposed to run on Windows 95 (I have a full Win95 PC setup), and I found the required compiler, but it also requires a Diamond Edge 3D NVidia NV1 video card, which I am now trying to source; any help is appreciated.

The code also requires the NVidia NV1 SDK, which I am also trying to find.

Additionally there is some Saturn sources and two Saturn CD Emulator (Mirage) DSK files, with what I presume is POV's engine running some kind of Sonic X-treme demo.

I do have a complete Cartdev to test this, but unfortunately I do not have a Saturn System Disc/Key Disc, help is appreciated to find that one too.

As far as I know, very little is known about POV's effort to work on Sonic X-treme, and it would be great to add that part of the puzzle to the very complicated story, so I would kindly ask everyone to help me find the parts I need, so that I can work on this for a while and hopefully at some point create some sort of release, something for PC and something for Saturn.

Once again the three items I need to find are:

1) Diamond Edge 3D video card
2) NVidia NV1 SDK
3) Sega Saturn System Disc/Key Disc

Cheers,

Jollyroger

 

Please help this great man. He's doing the community a big favor by trying to resurrect this highly anticipated game and release to the public.

 

Check out this thread maybe for the NV1 sdk/docs?

http://www.assemblergames.com/forum...rite-a-wrapper&p=628479&viewfull=1#post628479

A Diamond Edge NV1 is SO old, will be tough on the open market to find.

 

Thanks, I had seen that thread already, and unfortunately the information contained in the archive is not sufficient.

You are right, the Edge 3D is hard to come by, I am hoping someone here can help sourcing one, I will gladly purchase it for the purpose of resurrecting these tech demos.

 

Wow, this is great! I haven't been interested in SX for years and You have changed that. As such, I really hope something comes out of this as soon as possible!
I do wonder, however, any chance You could share the code with the community?

Anyway, good luck!

 

I've just messaged Andrew75 who is pretty much the Sonic xtreme guy (he's remaking the game to a ridiculously high standard).

Hopefully he can help

 

I vouch for Andrew75's awesomeness . Does anybody know who PoV really where? AFAIK we never got any screenshots of their builds and I've never heard of them outside of Sonic X-treme. Where they another internal SEGA group?

 

I'll see what I can do about locating the NVidia NV1 SDK. I've also just started talking with a few programmer friends of mine who think that they may be able to figure something out by looking at just the code and materials.
Would there be any way to release something publicly or behind closed doors for preservation and or study purposes? I think these guys over here are dieing to tear into the rawness of what you have, as they are die hard Sonic x-treme fans.
As for me I'm mostly looking for art assets, I can open and convert a wide range of art assets that may have been used for the project.

 

I'm happy to talk preservation with you

 

The card! and boy is it pricy. I may be willing to throw in with someone to get you that card.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Diamond-Edg...708?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3a98e7690c

 

If theres a chance at sonic xtreme stuff I'd happily donate to the cause.

 

Someone please correct me if this is wrong, but my understanding has always been that Point Of View was brought in to help with the "Project Condor" vision of Sonic Xtreme based on Chris Coffin's boss engine technology. By this time, Ofer Alon and Chris Senn were busy working on their own prototype intended to be pitched for release on the Sega PC label, only the powers that be had no real interest in a new standalone title (not even one featuring the company's mascot!), preferring mostly Saturn and arcade conversions instead. Assuming this is right, those PC files are probably raw assets or even its core engine, with the Diamond Edge compatibility presumably used to test compatibility, since that card's NV1 processor has many similarities to the Saturn - in particular its native support for quadrilaterals as opposed to the now industry standard triangular polygon. Considering how protracted and troubled the game's development was, I'm still amazed by the lack of playable code yet to surface, though I've read from various members of the team at Sega Technical Institute that there was never an elaborate Saturn build, with most working copies single areas like that shown during the 1996 Electronic Entertainment Expo. Personally, I'm more interested to see what can be done with the PC version created by Alon and Senn because it seemed the most elaborate and technically ambitious. On the other hand, preserving anything from this mythical ill-fated project in its most well-known Saturn guise would surely be the more preferable to a lot of prototype enthusiasts. I can't wait to see if anything comes of this, as it's potentially far more of a find than the previous sole copy located a few years back...

P.S. Isn't this a screenshot from the Project Condor era?



EDIT: Since it contains a polygonal character rather than sprites, the screenshot I posted fits the description for Sonic Saturn, which is supposedly a separate entity to Sonic Xtreme. Still, doesn't the previously leaked prototype also date from the Project Condor period? I suspect there was a lot of crossover between the two different projects, including the concept of Sonic pushing balls into a portal, first seen in Peter Morawiec's Sonic Pool bonus game idea.

 

Okay, so I bought that GFX card for 259 dollars ... lets get this show on the road !

 

From what I can tell (based on the wording of that original message), it seems as if jollyroger has acquired more than POV's archive of what they did on Project Condor! Surely whatever there is won't just be 100% dedicated to just Sonic Xtreme, right? While I'm curious to find out what else they might have worked on, the most promising by far is the material relating to this game in particular, since they probably had assets from STI's previous efforts for reference purposes as well. Of course, that's assuming we get to see anything else, as it appears most of the attention is naturally on just that one title...

 

So dumb... that card isn't even worth half that.

 

x

 

What a fantastic, thought provoking comment!

 

Why thank you

I wonder, how can people be so naive and throw funds at someone who doesn't seem to have many hardware and software/programming/debugging skills hoping that installing 20 year old software and compiling a game in alpha state will magically produce a working and playable binary ... If one thing goes wrong everything is wasted.

There were two listings here recently, a lot of 6 NV1-based cards sold for 90 EUR and then this month a lot of 6 cards including one NV1-based one for the same price. How it was possible to amass the funds to pay three times that in USD is beyond me...

Lots of people on voodooalert and VOGONS own such cards and probably would have gladly helped out.

But OK, go ahead. Let's see where this goes

 

A friend 'Clover' brought this to my attention ....

Found here:
http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Sonic_X-treme

 

We are talking about the person who WORKED on parts of the Cell low-level system software library and early (pre-PS3) technical demonstrations of the hardware, then some large scale scientific simulation code on Cell. His dev setup is mind blowing and only a few people on here that can potentially matches what he has. The fact that I passed pretty much all of my hardware and software to him might suggest how qualify he is. Most of the well known members in this forum (even Assembler himself) know who JollyRoger is.

JollyRoger only checks this forum 1-2 times per day after work so please be patient with his replies. Thanks again for all your helps