Sonic X-treme - Cancelled Sega Saturn "nights" concept video

[ASSEMbler]

[/URL]<object height="480" width="640">

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VW_Pd-PTAtM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="480" width="640"></object>

This is a video of the concept "nights" version of Sonic Xtreme for Sega
Saturn. Looking to produce a concept for a 3D sonic, a Sega USA team
used the nights engine to produce a concept for demonstration. Upon
hearing about the use of their engine, the Japanese team had a fit and
forced the adoption of a different engine, the so called "fish eye" version
that was later canceled as unworkable.

This bickering lead to the cancellation of the only "Killer App" for Sega Saturn.

This video is from the only copy of the game in existence, which sold for
nearly $3000 in 2006.

HQ version torrent is up:
[url]http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/3706034/Sonic_X-treme_HQ_video.3706034.TPB.torrent (http://www.youtube.com/v/VW_Pd-PTAtM)

[Keiji Dragon]

Very neat. So thats what Mr. Wallis meant about using that particular engine. It actually looks fun.

I liked the BGM you choose for the video, ASSEMbler.

[ASSEMbler]

That music is on the game.

[hxc]

Nice to see :)

PS. Not to cause contraversy and just to let you know, the engine used here was Chris Coffin's engine, which is frequently seen in screenshots with Metal Sonic and Nack the Weasel and the like. Quote from my email conversations with Chris (it was also put onto wikipedia, by Chris, I will screenshot the email if I must):

"The boss engine never used the NiGHTS engine, never saw any code,tools or assistance from Sonic Team. Even one of AM2's own arcade teams from japan that was transplanted to the offices of STI and developed Dynamite Deka (known as Die HARD ARCADE) was not privelaged with any such knowledge or special support.
<script><!-- D(["mb","Teams had to pretty much fend for themselves which was evidenced by almost nonexistent 3rd party tools and support network for Saturn at that time.\u003cbr /\>A few months into Chris Coffin\'s involvment in Sonic Xtreme, the studio director Roger Hector showed Chris Coffin a playable pre release level of NiGHTS.\u003cbr /\>Chris Coffin fell in love with the game\'s look and feel of NiGHTS for Sonic Xtreme\'s boss levels, which may be why [[Yuji Naka]] himself threatened to quit Sega several months later because he assumed the Sonic Xtreme team had been given access to his game\'s source code and art which was not the case.\u003cbr /\>The boss level engine began to evolve into a game of its own using this new source of inspiration, trying to stay closer to its 2d roots by adopting a 3d but side scrolling viewpoint seen in games like Klonoa, Pandemonium and NiGHTS which was more fluid and lent itself to the fast moving gameplay of previous sonic tites.\u003cbr /\>The new boss engine gameplay prototype adopted a more pastel color scheme and organic flow of the inspirational NiGHTS game causing some divided opinions amongst team members inlcuding designer Chris Senn that originality was being compromised in the interest of appeasing Sega of Japan..&quot;\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>---- Jordan Grodecki <\u003ca onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\" href\u003d\"mailto:relinquished@gmail.com\"\>relinquished@gmail.com\u003c/a\>> wrote:\u003cbr /\>> Hey Chris, just checking you got the email quoted below?\u003cbr /\>>\u003cbr /\>> Hey Chris\u003cbr /\>> >\u003cbr /\>> > I personally don\'t work on the LostLevels website, although I vaguely know\u003cbr /\>> > the person that does, TheRedEye. Mike Wallis overlooked that article, as you\u003cbr /\>> > may have noticed from the timeline, if you say its wrong, would you mind\u003cbr /\>> > saying what you would correct? That article is pretty much taken as fact\u003cbr /\>> > now.\u003cbr /\>> >\u003cbr /\>> > I must say a big thankyou for replying and being willing to talk, unlike\u003cbr /\>> > some others *coughOferAloncough* It will be intresting to hear yet another\u003cbr /\>",1] ); //--></script>Teams had to pretty much fend for themselves which was evidenced by almost nonexistent 3rd party tools and support network for Saturn at that time.
A few months into Chris Coffin's involvment in Sonic Xtreme, the studio director Roger Hector showed Chris Coffin a playable pre release level of NiGHTS.
Chris Coffin fell in love with the game's look and feel of NiGHTS for Sonic Xtreme's boss levels, which may be why [[Yuji Naka]] himself threatened to quit Sega several months later because he assumed the Sonic Xtreme team had been given access to his game's source code and art which was not the case.
The boss level engine began to evolve into a game of its own using this new source of inspiration, trying to stay closer to its 2d roots by adopting a 3d but side scrolling viewpoint seen in games like Klonoa, Pandemonium and NiGHTS which was more fluid and lent itself to the fast moving gameplay of previous sonic tites.
The new boss engine gameplay prototype adopted a more pastel color scheme and organic flow of the inspirational NiGHTS game causing some divided opinions amongst team members inlcuding designer Chris Senn that originality was being compromised in the interest of appeasing Sega of Japan..""

If there is any other like, evidence that this was a Nights based game, I'll be happy to accept that though :)

[ASSEMbler]

Good to know

[GarethDE]

Hmm, what are the chances of getting this version of Sonic Extreme too?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftNgzZ3Ovig

[ASSEMbler]

I think they are trying to redo / opensource that.

The fisheye gives me a giant headache.

[CrAzY]

So awesome. I am really lovin' the BGM. :love:

[WolverineDK]

Nice video. Just sad, so much shit has happened around Sonic Extreme.

[Bramsworth]

I can't beleive it sold for $3000. I don't remember if that auction from back then stated how much gameplay was in it but if anybody knew that this was as much as you're getting I can't believe someone would spend that much for just 30 seconds before you've practically played the whole game.

Of course this isn't from a collectors point of view so... :shrug:

[GarethDE]

It's difficult to tell from the Flash video above, but it looks like STI were doing just fine without Naka's Nights engine if the one above really is Chris Coffin's creation. It even seems more fluid than the Nights engine, though of course with the addition of more effects, a more populated level and some NPCs with AI, I guess things could have been more balanced at the end.

On the other hand though since this is a demo and unlikely to have had any optimisation applied to it, maybe Naka should have been asking STI for their 3D engine and not the other way around? =P

[ASSEMbler]

Do me a favor and rate this on yourube, some disgruntled people are trying to give it a negative rating.

[Borman]

I think they are trying to redo / opensource that.

The fisheye gives me a giant headache.

If you are talking about Project S, its a new game inspired by Sonic Xtreme, it wont directly resemble it in any way really.

[madhatter256]

Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

[Mark30001]

Thanks for sharing. :)

[Codeman]

Great vid!
Probably has been asked before but.....

Since this first concept used the Nights engine, does the Sonic in Xmas Nights have anything to do with this?
How about Sonic Jam's engine?

[APE]

As far as I know all of those were seperate.

[Taucias]

Nice to see :)

PS. Not to cause contraversy and just to let you know, the engine used here was Chris Coffin's engine, which is frequently seen in screenshots with Metal Sonic and Nack the Weasel and the like. Quote from my email conversations with Chris (it was also put onto wikipedia, by Chris, I will screenshot the email if I must):

"The boss engine never used the NiGHTS engine, never saw any code,tools or assistance from Sonic Team. Even one of AM2's own arcade teams from japan that was transplanted to the offices of STI and developed Dynamite Deka (known as Die HARD ARCADE) was not privelaged with any such knowledge or special support.
<SCRIPT><!-- D(["mb","Teams had to pretty much fend for themselves which was evidenced by almost nonexistent 3rd party tools and support network for Saturn at that time.\u003cbr /\>A few months into Chris Coffin\'s involvment in Sonic Xtreme, the studio director Roger Hector showed Chris Coffin a playable pre release level of NiGHTS.\u003cbr /\>Chris Coffin fell in love with the game\'s look and feel of NiGHTS for Sonic Xtreme\'s boss levels, which may be why [[Yuji Naka]] himself threatened to quit Sega several months later because he assumed the Sonic Xtreme team had been given access to his game\'s source code and art which was not the case.\u003cbr /\>The boss level engine began to evolve into a game of its own using this new source of inspiration, trying to stay closer to its 2d roots by adopting a 3d but side scrolling viewpoint seen in games like Klonoa, Pandemonium and NiGHTS which was more fluid and lent itself to the fast moving gameplay of previous sonic tites.\u003cbr /\>The new boss engine gameplay prototype adopted a more pastel color scheme and organic flow of the inspirational NiGHTS game causing some divided opinions amongst team members inlcuding designer Chris Senn that originality was being compromised in the interest of appeasing Sega of Japan..&quot;\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>---- Jordan Grodecki <\u003ca onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\" href\u003d\"mailto:relinquished@gmail.com\"\>relinquished@gmail.com\u003c/a\>> wrote:\u003cbr /\>> Hey Chris, just checking you got the email quoted below?\u003cbr /\>>\u003cbr /\>> Hey Chris\u003cbr /\>> >\u003cbr /\>> > I personally don\'t work on the LostLevels website, although I vaguely know\u003cbr /\>> > the person that does, TheRedEye. Mike Wallis overlooked that article, as you\u003cbr /\>> > may have noticed from the timeline, if you say its wrong, would you mind\u003cbr /\>> > saying what you would correct? That article is pretty much taken as fact\u003cbr /\>> > now.\u003cbr /\>> >\u003cbr /\>> > I must say a big thankyou for replying and being willing to talk, unlike\u003cbr /\>> > some others *coughOferAloncough* It will be intresting to hear yet another\u003cbr /\>",1] ); //--></SCRIPT>Teams had to pretty much fend for themselves which was evidenced by almost nonexistent 3rd party tools and support network for Saturn at that time.
A few months into Chris Coffin's involvment in Sonic Xtreme, the studio director Roger Hector showed Chris Coffin a playable pre release level of NiGHTS.
Chris Coffin fell in love with the game's look and feel of NiGHTS for Sonic Xtreme's boss levels, which may be why [[Yuji Naka]] himself threatened to quit Sega several months later because he assumed the Sonic Xtreme team had been given access to his game's source code and art which was not the case.
The boss level engine began to evolve into a game of its own using this new source of inspiration, trying to stay closer to its 2d roots by adopting a 3d but side scrolling viewpoint seen in games like Klonoa, Pandemonium and NiGHTS which was more fluid and lent itself to the fast moving gameplay of previous sonic tites.
The new boss engine gameplay prototype adopted a more pastel color scheme and organic flow of the inspirational NiGHTS game causing some divided opinions amongst team members inlcuding designer Chris Senn that originality was being compromised in the interest of appeasing Sega of Japan..""

If there is any other like, evidence that this was a Nights based game, I'll be happy to accept that though :)

This is nothing to do with the boss engine though, according to Senn it is using the Nights engine:


Thanks for sharing that, ASSEMBler. If that is footage that accurately represents what was for sale recently by the nervous seller, that appears to be the code created by Chris Coffin's team during the "Project Condor" phase of Sonic Xtreme when Bernie Stolar provided the Nights engine from Sega of Japan to a small group at Sega Technical Institute (which, by then, was called Sega of America Product Development, or SOAPD... lol - FREEZE - SOAPD!). Two weeks this engine was available for them - then all production with it stopped when Naka Yuji got wind of it, at which point he vehemently opposed their use of his team's engine.

I had no involvement in this version, other than art directing Ross Harris in creating his Sonic and ring sprites. I can say with all confidence that this footage does not represent Sonic Xtreme. It can accurately be said to represent a build of one tiny phase of development, but that in no way says "Sonic Xtreme" to me - it's simply a terrain model with some rings and a Sonic sprite running around on it - and a backdrop with clouds behind it... that's not gameplay, it's a tech test of a Sonic sprite in the Nights engine. Good to see this - I'm curious about the "worlds" that are supposedly almost finished if they relate to this footage... because this is clearly not a world, nor is it anywhere near being finished! lol

http://www.senntient.com/ubb/Forum13/HTML/000047.html

[hxc]

The boss engine eventually became the base for the entire thing, after it was realized that Ofer's fisheye would not be able to be ported to the saturn, as shown by the screenshots of Coffin's engine I released myself recently (available http://www.projectsonic.com/1/ ). Although those show an engine with models.....

I'm suuprised actully, it may well be on the nights engine, I'll have to try and get that confirmed either way from a couple of people.

Thanks for that :)

That was a very old quote from waay back when all the drama first started, plus the fact that Senn was never directly involved with this version, he worked almost exclusively on the fisheye with Ofer., if you read the latest Edge article, which is on X-Treme, it says they had the engine for a couple of weeks, with quotes from Mike Wallis and Chris Senn... I'm still not convinced this was made with the NiD Engine... is 2 weeks enough to make something like this?

Direct quote from the article says they had it for 2 or 3 weeks where they got familerized with the engine., before Naka threatend to quit and all. I guess the demo could possibly have been done in that time. I'll keep an open mind till I get a real answer.

I'll get back to you with confirmation....have emailed Mike Wallis, producer to get a confirmed answer to this.

[SaviourDC]

Man that runs really well on the Saturn..... I think I can understand a possible reason why Sonicteam would be pissed about this...that would be that some other company making the first true 3D Sonic game.

[Taucias]

If you look at the ground deformations etc. it is almost exactly the same effect you would see in NiGHTS. Unless they were aiming for a similar effect with a new engine it almost certainly must be the NiGHTS engine test that Chris Senn has mentioned during his chronicles of the Sonic Xtreme project.

An R&D department could easily knock up a basic level like the one shown in this video in 2 weeks, especially if they already had some of the graphical assets available to inject into it. It's a pretty simple process assuming the engine is well documented (which might be the natch here, with it being in Japanese and pretty much pinched from Sonic Team without their knowledge).

[hxc]

Mmm. Makes sense indeed. Just trying to get everything cleared up by asking someone directly about this. Coffin usually takes a long time to reply, Mike should know and will get back to me within 2 or 3 days maximum.

Senn said he couldn't confirm/deny either way, emailed him earlier today.

Mike says "The Jade Gully demo was not using the Nights tech--it was using
Coffin's boss engine tech modified for the main game."

[Taucias]

It must be using something from the NiGHTS engine though. Why else would it feature the land warping/deformation weirdness of the NiGHTS engine otherwise?

[hxc]

Yeah, that puzzles me also..... will look into it. Do note that it is only for the the water in the river area shown, and not the entire terrain, could well have been programmed in to attempt to make the water look more real? I dunno, until Coffin replies to me I can only really go on other's words.

[ASSEMbler]

If I remember correctly the ground moves up and down like that in nights, doesn't it?

[hxc]

I can't remember actully, my memory is a bit hazy of NiD and I can't be bothered to setup all my saturn to check ;p

[APE]

The ground does move a bit but since the majority of the game you fly around it's hard to say as to how much and where.

[Nitrosoxide]

Well something that really interesting as pointed out by andrew75 on the Senntinet Fourms. Is that it seems that this level was built on top of the metal sonic level.

I'll let his post explain it better

http://www.senntient.com/ubb/Forum13/HTML/000194.html


Originally posted by Andrew75:
I found something interesting in that video.

at around between the time of 3:10 and 3:05
( the time counts back words on my youtube player so this is in the first quoter of the video.


anyways you can see a Texture of metal sonic's Boss stage floor.

also the clouds look like they came from Metal sonics boss stage also..
they have a purple tent to them.
but because of the screen grab quality and the background colors the clouds seem a bit diffrent color wise.

so perhaps this level was built on top of a copy of metal sonics boss stage? and most of the stages graphics were deleted? and the new level was built here as a engine test?

I'm just taking a guess..
anyways here's some pictures to support my theory,


(http://imageshack.us)

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/3121/bosstexture2bs7.png (http://imageshack.us)

http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/5492/metal5vf9.png (http://imageshack.us)

(http://imageshack.us)


[edited June 03, 2007 by Andrew75]


This picture in a subsequent post really shows the connectionhttp://sanik.hacking-cult.org/08.jpg

[CrAzY]

Wow. There does seem to be a connection there.... :thumbsup: Thanks for sharing it here.


and unrelated news. This video has been Kotaku'd

http://kotaku.com/gaming/clips/sonic-x+treme-nights-version-265872.php

[APE]

Hmm this will be interesting in the coming weeks.

[Yakumo]

The "breathing" floor only appears on one stage in NiGHTS which is Soft Museum. Even then it's not breathing but bends as NiGHTS passes over it because it's meant to be made of rubber. Why on earth the floor breaths on this Sonic demo I don't know.

Yakumo

[APE]

Probably a left over bit of code. I've seen such things before in random betas that use other engines/games as their basis.

[Bramsworth]

Is this by chance the video that was supposed to be put on www.sonicxtreme.com ? That site's been sitting there forever now and I've been waiting for something to happen, and just assume it had a link to this demo that's being shown here.

[ASSEMbler]

Yes, it was.

[Kami68k]

Very interesting footage :) Thanks

[GarethDE]

Hey hxc, how you doing? I would have thought that you had joined this forum a long time ago and was pretty surprised to see how recently you did join.

Nice resource of images you have on that site. May I ask which ones are Saturn ones if I can assume that all the others are from PC?

Cheers

[hxc]

Hi. I did join this forum a rather long time ago, but due to some problems that occured I was banned, it has all be sorted now, with my thanks to ASSEMbler.

If you are refering to xtreme.projectsonic.com... well its rather disorganized, I'm in the process of rearchiving everything, but anything Chris Senn uploaded (denoted by sxc_ at the beggining of file names) will be from the PC version he worked on.

The thing about the metal sonic floor was noticed a long while ago by my friend SANiK, and Coffin, the programmer of this gave an explanation, I will try and digg it up if people are interested.

Cheers.

PS. Found that post I was thinking of Coffin talking about this build

"Yes that image underneath the polygon terrain is the vdp2 plane for the metal sonic boss fight stage. Its 'just there' most likely because i just needed something to help align the vdp2 plane with the vdp1 polys and I wasn't concerned about having the right vdp2 tiles loaded.
Its appearance is tinted blue because the other vdp plane thats drawing that vista-pro style rendered mountains(programmer art lol) extends all the way down the screen with a blue gradient and transparency between both layers was enabled. That bottom 3d plane in later builds was aligned and transformed properly to link up with vdp1 polygons in the game with 3d sprites along the horizon to extend the apparent rendering distance of the world. Using some vdp1+2 tricks you could also cut out holes or make apparent dips+valleys in the vdp2 plane to make things more interesting visually.

If you look at a game like NiGHTS, what they did was draw their base heightfield terrain layer out alittle father, fogged it and made it hilly and downward sloping before they stopped drawing it so you wouldn't have such an unsightly horizon in your game. This is what xtreme did as well because it looks good, hence all the parallels and speculation that we had NiGHTS source.

That build is a very old one and its what I call a tester app which only has a fraction of the game's source in it because I would do a lot of tweaking/compile/rerun to refine the look of the game which didn't require everything in a level to be loaded. Surfing around in the sn debugger to mess with things could actually take longer than just a compile+rerun. cd emulators were slow too which is why alot of sega model formats spit out data in .c and .h files so you'd sacrifice ram during development by compiling in your biggest assets for the sake of less load time.
Think of that version as kind of like a little sandbox for sonic to play in, just contains the ability for sonic to move around, collect rings and a few other things. I used some code overlays which made that possible and it saved me alot of time."

The first part referes to the Metal Sonic arena underneath, and the rest to the rest of the demo :)

[Taucias]

Sounds like a right bodge job, but such is the life of an R&D guy I suppose :lol:

[ASSEMbler]

Well it would have been hard to do better with no real sdk or
support.

[madhatter256]

So the question now is if there is an interactive prototype hidden somewhere.

HL718 usually posts with some clarification when it comes to stuff like this. I haven't seen him post in a while.

[Wolfrider]

Looks great. The whole story behind SE is fascinating, you could make a decent mystery/adventure game out of it. :P

[Soda]

I'm surprised you would post a Sonic X-treme video, Assembler. What with all the shit Sonic X-treme has caused you in the past. I must say it was a very interesting video to watch.

[ASSEMbler]

We have our own agenda here, regardless of any external influence.

[Pumpsta]

Agenda? Does this involve releasing the game to the public at some point?

[Yakumo]

Probably not and if it did I doubt it would be any time soon.

Yakumo

[opethfan]

Probably not and if it did I doubt it would be any time soon.

Yakumo

I don't think ASSEMbler even has the copy, right?

Or should I not bring up bad memories?

[Lyris]

Where was I hearing rumours of some sort of release on July 4?

[APE]

Where was I hearing rumours of some sort of release on July 4?

It's the 5th (6th in some places) and I don't see a release.