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

Somewhere, most likely yes.

 

It wouldn't hurt, not sure if there is anything useful for me in there, but it wouldn't hurt

In fact anything from July 1995 to all of 1996 would be good...

 

Isn't this alpha/prototype SUPER unfinished? Is it worth all the trouble?

I've never been a big sonic fan, But this does look interesting.

 

If you're expecting a super-fun playable game? No. If you're not a sonic fan this is unlikely to be of much interest to you.

If you're a general game fan it holds interest in it being one of the big mascots first attempt at proper 3D gameplay. Also it tries to do something very different with the fisheye lens, something that very few other game have tried.

If you're a sonic / sega fan, it shows a saturn sonic game! The console got no dedicated Sonic gameplay apart from an open world demo on Sonic Jam and some special stages on Sonic 3D. This was a game that sega started to preview heavily and then suddenly gave up on. It holds huge interest to the fans.

It's not going to result in a complete game (unless Andrew75 decides to dive in and rework it heavily), but it could possibly result in an engine test that loads multiple levels and gives a hint about how this game could have handled.

It will still be better than Sonic Boom and Sonic '06

 

THIS, and yes it will be worth the trouble.

To most this is a big part of gaming history!

 

Very didactic and informative post. Sonic X-Treme is indeed an incredible find, and its research will please both retro gaming enthusiasts and Sonic fans in general.

 

Yes it's an incredible find, I'm very excited at the prospect of playing it. This game seemed to go through so many iterations of 'what could have been'. Looks like we'll get a decent snapshot of what it is. We're very lucky it landed in JollyRoger's hands as most wouldn't have a clue on how to get this started.

It's been on my grail list for a long time!
My next big find would be a burning rangers proto. For me that'd be a similar level of excitement as this!

 

For anyone yet to see the new high quality encodes of those 1996 era videos that have just surfaced, they are truly revelatory - here are the all important links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdBKq7o6RTE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX5Tc-Flxqw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6nAM6oVwqc

P.S. Getting to play a Burning Rangers prototype would indeed be great, especially if we can get one from before development was restarted or even a later build with the planned co-operative and versus modes intact... at the very least, a version with fully working debug functions would be very much welcome!

 

Those encodes are miles better than anything previously. Shame there is a good chance this is an earlier build.

And as for BR, Anthaemia, you've already told me so much about the earlier versions Hope you can one day release your videos!

 

Those videos probably won't see the light of day (through me, at least) until next year, but I can assure you they are still on my "to do" list... I'm just so busy with real life commitments at the moment that I can't spend a fraction of the time I'd like to on gaming related activities. While it's great to finally see progress on the Sonic Xtreme and Resident Evil 1.5 fronts, I simply don't have the resources to spend as much online as I want to discussing every new development on these games in particular. *sniff*

 

Having just done the whole new house and engaged thing, I know what you mean...

 

Im sorry , but what videos are you referring to never seeing the light of day ?

 

As mentioned before, I've got quite a lot of footage showing the earliest prototype build of Burning Rangers ever seen by the public, dating from before the game's development was restarted - the clips in my file archive include various placeholder items, different HUD elements, the infamous removed co-operative mode and even "scratch" vocals by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi! I'll definitely get around to sharing these in the next few months...

 

Oh wow that's kick ass man !

 

Ok, some bad news and some good news.

The bad news first: it looks like the version of the engine we have does not contain the "paths" code, the snapshot of the code predates that feature. There is a fragment of a source tree (header files only) from June 1996 that has a "path.h" and all the other header files are also more recent than anything else we have; unfortunately that fragment has no source code at all, only header files, presumably a backup.
This means it will be essentially impossible to reconstruct the path functionality from the original code, unless we code it from scratch.

The good news: I FINALLY managed to build the Saturn version of the engine entirely from the source code, what a royal pain...
The code is in a bad state, clearly in the middle of development. The player controls are not active, as the code was being rewritten to reduce the memory footprint and increase the performance.
We do have the "original" player movement code though, so it will be a matter of finishing the conversion that was partially started, and that should give us a buildable version with controls, it will take some time though.

Jollyroger

 

Good work Jolly Rodger. Keep it up!

 

Sucks the paths won't be in there, but this is still infinity more than I'd ever expected to see anyway. Maybe now a build is 'out there' it might encourage certain parties to show their versions. The fact that you've got a version building is stunning and that you're going to finish some of the work to get it playing better is down-right amazing!

Look forward to seeing what you achieve. Thank you so much!

Yeah I look forward to the day that Anthaemia releases them, BR had quite a lot changed in its development. I already found the topic interesting, but then he told me about some of the earlier versions it got me excited. A co-op and 2 player mode would have really rounded the game out, it was quite ahead of its time, but people generally seem to ignore it.

Anyway this is quite off-topic, but I see it as telling stories around the campfire as we await updates ^_^

 

Slightly bad news and fantastic news. I'll have 'em both . Can't wait to see what else comes out of this.

What Energy says is very important. When jollyroger finishes up all of this, we could maybe reach out to people like Christina Coffin and see if they're willing to share with us. I believe the buzz about such a release might push them to share more. Or, you know, maybe not . Whatever the case, let us first enjoy what jollyroger is offering us .

 

This also has my attention.

Have recently re purchased Burning Rangers after never actually finishing the game and forgot how fun (and unique) it is.

on topic:

Considering how I think it's safe to say most of us NEVER expected anything like this of Sonic Xtreme to surface I think we're all very grateful for anything lol

 

Has anyone tried contacting Peter Morawiec regarding any builds of Sonic Xtreme (or the unrelated Saturn Sonic) that may still be in his possession? I'd also love to know if he's got a working prototype of that "Sonic Pool" bonus level concept we nearly got with the 32-bit version of Sonic 3D Blast/Flickies' Island until Sonic Team created a polygonal version of the special stage from Sonic 2 instead...