So we're leaking Sonic Xtreme....

[Krejlooc]

I've been keeping an eye on this board, wondering if anybody would make a topic... guess not. I assume people haven't been keeping up with the news? Long story short - we have the source code in hand, saturn and PC builds, plus level editor, runs on NV1 hardware, maybe possible to get software rendering going, no ETA on when we can actually release the files (because we have to build them).

Some screenshots:



Level editor



running on Saturn (well, SSF, crashes on real hardware currently)

5 different sources in our possession chronicling several different builds. Feel free to ask any questions.

[irixith]

That's pretty cool.

How is what you have (that's playable) different from the Assemblergames release from a few years back?

Obviously if you have source code and a level editor you're in a different ballpark, but what are playable differences between what's already out there and what you've got?

[Krejlooc]

That's pretty cool.

How is what you have (that's playable) different from the Assemblergames release from a few years back?

Obviously if you have source code and a level editor you're in a different ballpark, but what are playable differences between what's already out there and what you've got?

This is what Assembler leaked a few years ago:

This is what we're leaking:

in addition to that, we have a build from 4 months after the project was killed, which hasn't been seen before.

We have basically a year's worth of source code in various states of backup. We can step through the development of Sonic Xtreme. We have not only the source but also the source for all the tools they had made to develop extreme. One of the images I posted is the level editor, which we built today.

[irixith]

Wow...that looks insane...or...xtreme as it were. Looking forward to more updates!

[Krejlooc]

So to explain the above, the assembler video is all of his leak. It was 1 "stage" that infinitely looped and was sort of isometric but made of polygons. It basically got scrapped and completely rewritten. That's not the Sonic Xtreme people remember.

The video I posted above is the rewrite. It was made by Ofer Alon for the PC. This is the Sonic Xtreme from the magazines and E3 and all that stuff. This won't run on just any PC, either, but a PC equipped with a Diamond Edge NV1 Sega PC card. Those things are extremely rare.

Late in development, a company called POV was brought in to port Ofer Alon's engine to the Sega Saturn so the game could, you know, run on the saturn. We have all their builds in addition to all of Ofer Alon's builds. We don't know how far POV got in porting Alon's content to the saturn, but Alon's engine on the PC got very far along.

I mentioned we have the tools they used to build levels, and we also have hundreds of small test levels they built. We even have the complete set of assets for several zones. The above video is just one of many levels thrown together for this build, and we have the tools to make more. We're not sure if we can get those test levels running in the Saturn versions or not. But what's really exciting is two things:

A) Originally Ofer Alon wrote a software renderer for Sonic Xtreme before switching over the NV1 accelerated 3D card. We think we might be able to get this renderer working to provide a software mode so anybody can run the PC versions.

B) At one point, POV decided they couldn't port Ofer Alon's engine over to the saturn and abandoned his source, and began development of an entirely new, never before seen build of Sonic Xtreme. We have builds up to 4 months after Alon stopped working on his engine from POV. When we eventually get these source codes built, we'll have uncovered yet another, never-before-seen version of Sonic Xtreme.

Some additional videos of the PC build:





That's Sonic Xtreme at E3 1996. We have all this stuff.

[ZeroAX]

Thist just made me go


Please keep us updated.

[AppleQueso]

Very cool. Always exciting when stuff like this gets released to the public.

[aaron]

this is seriously so awesome!! i have wanted to play this for years. i remember being so excited when the assembler build leaked, then once i played it, i was really underwhelmed. it didn't look like the fisheye pictures from the magazines i had been used to seeing. you guys are seriously making my day right now, thanks for posting this!

happy to see this be relevant again, too

[Tanooki]

Not been a fan of sonic games since the duo of them on Dreamcast, but this I'd love to take a crack at if you really can use the software renderer to get it going. That right there is the gateway depending just how complete the game is between the versions of code you have there. Keep this up to date as this is just fascinating something this huge has been lost this long to now finally kind of rear its head.

[Krejlooc]

So just some things I've noticed from these builds and looking at old xtreme footage:

some of the most grainy footage might have been from POV's saturn port all along. There are number of videos that are extremely poor quality, like they were recorded off screen, than exhibits the behavior from the saturn build, namely the way the Sonic Sprite is pasted over objects in front of him, where, in the PC version, those objects merely become transparent.

Ofer's engine would automatically make obfuscating pieces of geometry transparent if they got in between sonic and the camera, see here:



the saturn build we have exhibits different behavior:



We see that same behavior in some of the stranger footage for Xtreme, example:



In footage from this area, we also see Sonic jump repeatedly, multiple times in the air (as in, more than twice). Also, in this footage, when sonic jumps, he becomes a blue sphere, where in the PC footage, when he jumps, he displays individual frames of jumping animation. I'm not sure if this is just a case of frames being missed in the video capture or not, however. Also, in the above footage, Sonic can't collect rings, just like the Saturn build, but unlike the PC build.

Obviously any actual art or test levels they got would have been created by STI. I'm merely talking about footage of the saturn engine... potentially. I think the above that I pointed out is from POV.

Of course, it could also just as easily be from an earlier version of Ofer's engine and the quirks I'm pointing out in the saturn build were lifted directly from Ofer's work...

we won't know till later, I guess. Just interesting to go back and watch the old footage.