Sonic the Hedgehog Remake announced - 60fps goodness using the retro engine

[TheSonicRetard]

Naka was an idiot to keep the NiGHTS engine for himself. He should have been thinking about what was best for the company, but instead he was holed up in his office jerking off and playing NiGHTS.

A few other teams at Sega had their engines used all around. Obviously the VF2 engine was licensed by Tecmo for the Saturn port of Dead Or Alive (which, incidentally, ran on Model 2 hardware). Wipeout 2097 uses the Manx TT engine. However, the best engines on the Saturn really should have been used everywhere. Team Andromeda's Panzer Dragoon Engines were really too specialized to be used all around, unfortunately. And Naka was notoriously protective of his engine.

Their tune changed by the time the dreamcast came around, though. The Sonic Adventure toolset became the Dreamcast SDK. All early dreamcast games were built using the tools Sonic Team made to make Sonic Adventure.

[TheSonicRetard]

Why should he let others leach it ?

...because it ultimately ruined the company? How is this even a question?

This is a practice many major development houses use. You share your technology in-house.

[Vector2013]

Can you at least answer my other questions. Also, I doubt mainly that "ultimately ruined the company", they should of had better management decisions (for many things for many years) and figured out a Saturn Sonic 3D engine/game out before hand, yes ? Not be in a pinch then say, "hey let us use your engine". I can understand it though if he should have (as you state), or refused (like he did).

[TheSonicRetard]

Why is that, imo the Sonic Xtreme clips I saw looked really cool or do you mean something else ?



I can understand that, but Sonic Pool/Saturn Sonic/Sonic Team asked him for engine right (?), wasn't he and Nights people apart of Sonic Team too ??? I didn't realize Xtreme was canceled before all that.

I saw the Xtreme clips. I played 3D World in Sonic Jam. But are clips or screenshots of this "later Sonic Team 3D Sonic game for Saturn" available ?

There is only one Sonic Team. Naka headed it. Chris Senn's team at STI was making Sonic Xtreme. Sonic Team had nothing to do with Sonic Xtreme. NiGHTS was made by Sonic Team.

There is one working build of Sonic Xtreme from when it used the NiGHTS engine:



Digging through the assets, you can find the arena where the Metal Sonic boss was shown off included inside. It never progressed beyond this build.

The more commonly seen engine would be this one:



This was never running on a Saturn, it was running on a PC. Senn's team never got it actually working on saturn hardware. Late in development, the team realized it would be impossible to make the game run on the saturn and decided to switch the target platform over to PC, before the plug ultimately got pulled (when Senn himself got violently ill and almost died).

The engine for the PC version is lost, but everything else from that build has been released - all the textures, art assets, level formats, etc. jman and I cracked the level data format, and SANiK built a world viewer. The level data format is ridiculously simple and it's obvious the engine they had produced wasn't very far along. No actual levels exist, they are all text worlds thrown together in minutes as the engine developed. As such, they feature no real level design nor do they have any sort of rhyme or reason.

The engine that was developed was so rudimentary that it didn't really play like Sonic. Sonic Xtreme wasn't going to be a good game. Every piece of info that was fed to print outlets was selected to give the illusion that it was further along than it was. The game never reached a working beta state. The final builds didn't play or look anything like Sonic.

Saturn Sonic, similarly, wasn't very impressive either.

Sonic Jam 3D world runs on a brand new engine Sonic Team was making with their expertise knowledge of the Saturn hardware. NiGHTS and Burning Rangers both run on the NiGHTS engine. No other games use the NiGHTS engine.

Can you at least answer my other questions. Also, I doubt mainly that "ultimately ruined the company", they should of had better management decisions (for many things for many years) and figured out a Saturn Sonic 3D engine/game out before hand, yes ? Not be in a pinch then say, "hey let us use your engine". I can understand it though if he should have (as you state), or refused (like he did).

I don't really care what you doubt, because it doesn't seem like you're very well versed in this anyways. Naka pulling the NiGHTS engine created a domino effect that doomed the company. It's well documented.

[Vector2013]

Thanks, great info.

[Vector2013]

I don't really care what you doubt, because it doesn't seem like you're very well versed in this anyways.

Saw your edit putting in that cunt remark above. It's your assumption that I don't know a lot about what caused there down fall, even though it's obvious that multiple things lead to it. I don't know a lot about the unreleased Sonic stuff, hence my questions. I never asked that you should care what I doubt though, being that you can't comprehend question marks or assume people say things they don't anyway. However thanks for answering my questions, even though your being an asshole about it towards the end of that post.

[Da_Shocker]

A few other teams at Sega had their engines used all around. Obviously the VF2 engine was licensed by Tecmo for the Saturn port of Dead Or Alive (which, incidentally, ran on Model 2 hardware). Wipeout 2097 uses the Manx TT engine. However, the best engines on the Saturn really should have been used everywhere. Team Andromeda's Panzer Dragoon Engines were really too specialized to be used all around, unfortunately. And Naka was notoriously protective of his engine.

Their tune changed by the time the dreamcast came around, though. The Sonic Adventure toolset became the Dreamcast SDK. All early dreamcast games were built using the tools Sonic Team made to make Sonic Adventure.

Where did you hear that from in regards to DoA for the Saturn?

[TheSonicRetard]

An example of the engine's data format:

//================================================== ==============================
========
// TXR0223
//================================================== ==============================
========
NEW_TEXTURE "TXR0223"
{
Value 001,TXTR_FLAT_FILL //Flags
Value 002,AutoTrans //Rendering Flags
Value 010,"SYS_FrontShading" //Weight Range: -256 -> 256
Value 017,Color(224,088,000) //Fill Color
}

That's how the engine knew where to shade from level files. The actual levels themselves were stored uncompressed in a ridiculously simple format:

You PMed me earlier asking about level layouts, right? Specifically how they're stored... I take it you figured it out? They're stored in PCX files where each cell is 1 block in size on the Y axis, up is Z+, down is Z-, Left is X-, and right is Y+. Each color corresponds to a cube definition defined in the def files.

You can read more here: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.p...pic=18538&st=0

[TheSonicRetard]

Where did you hear that from in regards to DoA for the Saturn?

I've spoken with Satoshi Fuyuno before personally. He was one of a handful of programmers for the saturn port.

[MrSega]

Me and Mr Sega discussed this last year about certain Saturn games never released on another forum, but like I said imo the Sonic Jam 3D World part looks like the Sonic in Nights XMas and Sonic Xtreme clips I saw on youtube, so I thought they just threw part of it in Sonic Jam to give the fans something. Again, thanks for additional info Sonic Retard and others.

Sonic Jam did inspire the Adventure Field hub engine & design when Sonic Team had started development on the
unamed Sonic project for Saturn in the summer of 1997. Now granted Katana didn't start taping until late '97 so Adventure didn't begin development until March 1998 when Katana/NAOMI's prototype was finally completed.

[TheSonicRetard]

Sonic Jam did inspire the Adventure Field hub engine & design when Sonic Team had started development on the
unamed Sonic project for Saturn in the summer of 1997. Now granted Katana didn't start taping until late '97 so Adventure didn't begin development until March 1998 when Katana/NAOMI's prototype was finally completed.

No, Adventure was developed concurrently with the Dreamcast. Its tools are the tools that built the dreamcast. Its development started on the Saturn not the dreamcast.

It's disingenuous to lump the Katana and Naomi together. The Naomi came AFTER the dreamcast, it's simply a beefed up dreamcast.

EDIT: And saying it began in March 1998 would imply the game, without any SDK, was built in a matter of months. Completely impossible.

[Da_Shocker]

I've spoken with Satoshi Fuyuno before personally. He was one of a handful of programmers for the saturn port.

Then why did no other 3rd party do that? I mean every other 3rd party 3D Saturn fighting game looked like absolute trash in comparison to Sega and Tecmo's effort. Hell I remember Kalinske bragging about how great Toshinden Remix was gonna be and well all seen how that turned out.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I've heard the NiGHTS engine story of Sonic Xtreme is actually more of a myth, and that the supposed NiGHTS build actually doesn't use the NiGHTS engine at all. I'm trying to remember where it was though as it was a while ago. I want to say it was mentioned either here or SegaSaturn.co.uk.

[TheSonicRetard]

Then why did no other 3rd party do that? I mean every other 3rd party 3D Saturn fighting game looked like absolute trash in comparison to Sega and Tecmo's effort. Hell I remember Kalinske bragging about how great Toshinden Remix was gonna be and well all seen how that turned out.

Presumably because tecmos relationship with sega was better than takara's. Sega had already licensed out the model 2 hardware for the arcade version of doa. Itagaki was, and still is, a big sega fan.

[TheSonicRetard]

I've heard the NiGHTS engine story of Sonic Xtreme is actually more of a myth, and that the supposed NiGHTS build actually doesn't use the NiGHTS engine at all. I'm trying to remember where it was though as it was a while ago. I want to say it was mentioned either here or SegaSaturn.co.uk.

I know what you are talking about, but I'm on my phone at the moment. I'll give you some links when I get home. You are confusing two builds. The nights engine was intended to be used only for bosses, while the main game used another engine. When sega heads saw the boss build they demanded the whole game use the engine, so the previous work was thrown out. Then when the nights engine was pulled, the team had to start over yet again.

Such a troubled development history.