Agree with your whole post but especially that.Quote:
Originally Posted by roundwars
Printable View
Agree with your whole post but especially that.Quote:
Originally Posted by roundwars
I thought it was blasphemy enough when Sonic (SEGA) whored it out the the gamecube after the Dreamcast's death. Way back when with the N64, I couldn't possibly have imagined a world where Sonic would walk hand in hand with Mario...
...Tails maybe.
The best way to program for the Saturn is through assembly not c. Anyways gamegenie you have soem of the most far fetched posts on here. I think a great 2D Sonic could've been done very successfully in 95. 3D was still in its infacy during that time. I do wonder why SoA went ahead and put out Bug instead of Sonic game. While I have never played Bug and have never thought so much about buying that game he was no Sonic.Quote:
Now if this could have been possible in some way for Saturn's hardware to do 3D similar to the way Nintendo 64 was able to do Super Mario 64, even if it comes up short for Saturn lacking dedicated 3D processors, maybe it would require that SEGA write the 3D processing all in software C language and utilize Saturn's dual CPUs to achieve 3D similarity close to Super Mario 64.
yeah, bug was stupid. Instead of lame new ideas like bug and ghen war, they should've stayed with Sonic, Knuckles, Sketch, Musashi, and Eternal Champions. Hell even Vectorman and Ecco would've helped keep the Sega name a household one from 95 to 98. Sega dropped all of them for the Saturn, as if the Genesis were a Virtua Boy sized failure, and they needed to erase that part of their past from existence entirely.
Embracing the 2d powers of the Saturn would have allowed the console to co exist alongside the ps1/64 better than it actually did.
Its always been my opinion that this is why Sega's empire collapsed like it did.Quote:
Originally Posted by shinobimusashi
They should have embraced their 16 (and 8) bit years, its what fucking put them on the map.
in retrospect when you look back Sega just got lucky with the Genesis,
they couldn't get the SMS to overtake the Nes and they fucked up the Saturn because they wanted to turn it into a PSX.
(Yes i said psx, thats what we called it back then!)
Sega just got to big for their britches. They stopped doing what they were good at which was giving everyone what Nintendo would not, consumers, sellers, third party publishers.
They filled a gap well early on with the Genesis and were a well oiled machine till about 92 or so. After that they stopped doing what they were good at. I don't think there early success had anything to do with luck. It was just great strategy.
I think they were successful because of their games. Their mid 80s to early 90s output was excellent and they could easily compete with Nintendo, Hudson, Capcom, Konami, Square, Enix, Namco and Taito in terms of quality.
And if you look at it from a Japanese perspective they steadily kept on building up their fanbase: With SG-1000 they tested the waters and it did okay considering the time, Mark III/Master System did better, Mega Drive did great, and Saturn did even better.
Sonic 4 should have been born on the Saturn..2D
Or look at Sonic Robo Blast 2... raycasting at a pretty good speed should have been feasible on the Saturn, perhaps significantly faster than a polygon renderer. (Doom is not an example at all if it really is a port of the PSX version -which is polygons and not ray casting, but I think Duke 3D on the Saturn might be a more direct ray casting port of the PC original)Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
They could probably have even relegated the SH2s to full-time rendering and used the 68k for game logic. (especially as the game logic/AI is a good deal simpler than a true 3D engine) Or even more so if the DSP was useful for any of that. (if it's the same SSP1601 core of the SVP, it could beuseful, but if fixed purpose for vertex calculations, not useful outside of polygons)
And either use high-detail animated prerendered CGI sprites or polygonal models for characters and enemies. (ie very sparing use of polygons) Depending on the speed they could manage, using more polygons to enhance the environments could help break the limits of a height mapping engine as well. (especially if you wanted the characteristic loops to be featured)
And they could go for more advanced ray casting with a more flevible height map allowing "voxel" terrain as well as the Doom/Duke3D like stuff. (the finer the voxel pitch, the more compromises made for speed though)
As it was SoJ didn't start Sonic Adventure until mid/late 1996 iirc, so that wasn't an option for SoA... but XTreme might have been a good interim. (especially had it made the 1996 deadline and not been delayed... -part of that was due to the Nights engine, had they never been offered it they could have saved a good chunk of time spent shifting to the Nights engine before shifting back, but there were other unfortunate incidents like the lead programmer getting overworked and ill to the point of being incapacitated in late 1996)
But even before that they could have been pushing a 2D/pseudo 3D (be it polygonal sidescrolling or prerendered stuff, or both) that could/should have been out by late '95, not to mention ports of Chaotix and Sonic CD as bonus stuff on top of the new games. (even without Naka they had plenty of resources for developers experienced in making Sonic games be it other Sonic Team/former Sonic Team members not busy with Nights -possibly some who were still at STI, Ancient, Aspect, etc)
There were other significant issues too though, like a weak Sega Sports lineup with the Saturn.
It makes perfect sense, considering the source. i.e. you nailed it.Quote:
Originally Posted by jerry coeurl
Anyway, the 'NiGHTS' engine, or the gameplay/graphics assumptions, may have been perfect for a Sonic game.
Same with what was done with 'Crash Bandicoot'. Speed it up, and add generally more dramatic terrain shifts, you might have a good base for a 3D Sonic.
Of course, the question remains as to whether the hardware could have handled those engines (to start, how closely the base of a game like 'Crash' could be followed) at Sonic speed.
SXT never looked particularly fast, either.
Since the Saturn was only a 32-bit console, wouldn't the name of this game be Sonic 32? Just like how I like to call the 32X's flagship title Knuckles 32X.
According to Lobotomy and, damn I always want to call him Ezra after the whiskey, but his last name is Brooks, Powerslave, Duke 3D and Quake on Saturn are using quads no rays casting. I think the custom levels that some of them have even have rooms over rooms in Z-space but I'm not sure about that.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
I don't think this is correct. I think the 3D "engine" wasn't solidified until after NiGHTs, which itself was probably more of a demo from Sonic Team (Sonic 1 started out as a tech demo remember). Obviously the "Adventure" name wasn't around in 1996, and neither were the level designs or gameplay. I think Burning Rangers, Sonic Jam's 3D world, and Sonic R are all other offshoots of "Sonic Adventure's" development. I know you have found that Traveler's Tales used an F1 engine for Sonic R, but I recall multiple editorials referring to Sega lending the engine to TT for and aiding its development.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Perhaps after Sonic Xtreme's cancellation, and relative lack of success of the Bug! games compared to Crash Bandicoot (Sept 1996), Sonic Xtreme/Adventure moved to a totally new level.
As for the viability of a fully 2D Sonic game on the Saturn, I think we are underestimating how effective Sony's marketing of 3D was back then. To this day journalists, and apparently even former Sega employees like Bayless, consider the Saturn "just a 2D system with modest 3D capabilities." They of course disregard most of the Saturn *and* Playstation's 1995-1996 libraries to assert this, but the stigma remains.
Somehow the Saturn being better at 2D as a small percentage of its library made it "only good at 2D" in these people's minds. A full production scale 2D Sonic in 1995 would only have helped if its popularity stopped the absolute turnover to 3D games in the process.
Correct, it apparently caused quite a bit of difficulty when porting.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
Interesting, that would imply that VDP1's quad rendering was faster than software rayscating, although it would also depend on other factors of how the hardware was utilized. (ie if they considered using the 68k for game logic, if the DSP could aid with ray casting, etc -let alone the possibility of hybrid height map/polygon engines)Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
What part of it?Quote:
I don't think this is correct. I think the 3D "engine" wasn't solidified until after NiGHTs, which itself was probably more of a demo from Sonic Team (Sonic 1 started out as a tech demo remember). Obviously the "Adventure" name wasn't around in 1996, and neither were the level designs or gameplay. I think Burning Rangers, Sonic Jam's 3D world, and Sonic R are all other offshoots of "Sonic Adventure's" development. I know you have found that Traveler's Tales used an F1 engine for Sonic R, but I recall multiple editorials referring to Sega lending the engine to TT for and aiding its development.
I'm basing it on the interview TA posted here: http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread....584#post295584
He also addressed earlier on that page how Sonic R was totally unrelated. (based on a renderer for an F1 racer, Sonic Adventure would have been all SoJ and built on the Nights engine, Sonic Jam was the resulting demo of that work before moving on to the DC game)
Xtreme had a rather convoluted development with 2 teams and several renderers and Nakayma coming in and disliking the Saturn Team's main game engine and only liking the boss engine (while not even seeing what the PC team had created), and they switched to the Nights engine following that with Nakayma's support, but then had that pulled out from under them and were forced to fall back to the PC based engine and boss engine from the original Saturn team's project.
Sonic Xtreme was canceled because it didn't make the christmas 1996 deadline based on that interview. Sonic Adventure was totally separate and not even started until 1996. (and that's likely a big reason Naka was upset about the Nights engine being used for SoA's project)Quote:
Perhaps after Sonic Xtreme's cancellation, and relative lack of success of the Bug! games compared to Crash Bandicoot (Sept 1996), Sonic Xtreme/Adventure moved to a totally new level.
Yes, but I meant for '95 and I never said full 2D (DKC, Toy Story, and Yoshi's Story were considered 2.5D by many as much as Clockwork Knight).Quote:
As for the viability of a fully 2D Sonic game on the Saturn, I think we are underestimating how effective Sony's marketing of 3D was back then. To this day journalists, and apparently even former Sega employees like Bayless, consider the Saturn "just a 2D system with modest 3D capabilities." They of course disregard most of the Saturn *and* Playstation's 1995-1996 libraries to assert this, but the stigma remains.
Full 2D would only be for added games like a Sonic CD remake/port and Chaotix. (and any Sonic game would likely get far more interest than something like Astal due to the sheer brand name recognition)
It made 2D its strongest point but also a reason it was far less cost effective, but it was capable in 3D (the issue was managing to push the performance and optimization), and the cost issue was more tied to the general design and not to 2D emphasis specifically. (it would have been cheaper with the 2D centric stuff cut out, but it could have been more cheaper still regardless of that had they aimed at a far more consolidated and unified system like the Jaguar or N64, or various other tradeoffs for lower cost)Quote:
Somehow the Saturn being better at 2D as a small percentage of its library made it "only good at 2D" in these people's minds. A full production scale 2D Sonic in 1995 would only have helped if its popularity stopped the absolute turnover to 3D games in the process.
The focus on Sonic since the Genesis days has been FAR too much on speed. There are too many automatic portions to levels in those games. Press forward and never stop. The platforming element was totally lost. There were plenty of times in the Genesis era Sonics where you were actually punished for going too fast by falling to a lower route.
At that time period, a Sega console almost HAD to have a Sonic launch title.Quote:
(it probably shouldn't have been a launch title, for one thing),