Not so much on the development kit. But I think I read the Lynx development system came with tools and libraries to help the coder and was the 1st. Not sure if that's true mind
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The cost of a Sega Saturn development kit back in 1995
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Not so much on the development kit. But I think I read the Lynx development system came with tools and libraries to help the coder and was the 1st. Not sure if that's true mind
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I find the Super Hitachi and especially the 68000 to be very easy to work with archietectures. That said, I've only ever worked with the SH4 which has a bunch of math opcodes which makes life way easier that I'm fairly certain the SH2 lacks.
But the 68000 is probably the easiest to work with microprocessor I've ever used. I would say it's way easier to grasp than a PPC.
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just random posts on many message boards, usually. Although I have a book on dreamcast development I've been working on for years now.
The one shame is that SEGA took so long to release their Sega Graphics Library/Kit 2 far too late in the Saturn's life, which would have helped devs get their head around Saturn's architecture and make it easier to develop for. Or so I am told
Cool. I guess it's not your focus but if you would compile a bunch of your posts about retro/game-dev I'm sure you would be able to fill up a decent site (or book) about it, hehe.
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More than all that, they should have shared their top engines and tools with other developers. That's the single biggest shift in philosophy at Sega between the Saturn and Dreamcast.
Check this out -- with the Saturn, Sonic Team basically threatened to quit if Sega of America used their NiGHTS into Dreams engine on a Sonic game. NiGHTS, at that time, was probably the single most advanced engine on the Saturn, only the things Yu Suzuki was doing at AM2 were more advanced. And not even a division that literally used to be co-workers with Yuji Naka, working on a Sonic game, were given access to that engine and tools.
By contrast, when the dreamcast launched, Sonic Team created the entire software suite for the Dreamcast. The Katana SDK that shipped with the Dreamcast, was secretly the toolsuite Sonic Team had made to create Sonic Adventure. This was mandated by Sega, they wanted the top tools be available to every developer who worked on the Dreamcast from the moment they signed up.
As a result, dreamcast development is dramatically easier. There's many reasons why, actually, but the world-class tools they put out is a big reason.
Such a strange turn from Yu Suzuki, being super defensive of his Nights engine and the Sonic Tech demo that came out of it, to suddenly helping everyone.
Edit - This is what we're talking about if anyone is interested.
We actually started our studio off the back of a Net Yaroze dev kit. As you say, you could only get so far even with some shady libraries and Action Replays, so after about 18 months we purchased a full performance analyzer "dev kit" (actually a massive PC card that took up multiple slots). From memory it cost, in 1999, about NZ$45k or about US$25k given the exchange rate at the time which was a huge amount for us at the time being 3 22-3 year olds. In bringing it into the country, we had to pay a large amount of import tax, which we got refunded because we were earning no revenue, which triggered an automatic audit by our inland revenue department. We were actually the first fully licensed PlayStation developer in the southern hemisphere, which still baffles us given we were just 3 guys in a flat in the suburbs in NZ at the time, but that fact managed to get us our first development contract.
We managed to avoid buying more expensive dev kits by buying the "unlocked" PSX test units which I think were about US$1500-2000 each and combining them with ActionReplays and hacker software.
Our first commercial PSX game was also our last for the platform. We went from that contract to do a couple of PC and web games, then jumped up to the PS2 and Xbox 360 (and have since done PS3, PS4, PSP, Vita, Xbox One, and Switch on just the console side).
Still have a bunch of hardware of all sorts sitting in our store room. Browsing through there brings back a lot of memories. No Net Yaroze though. That got stolen in a burglary of our flat and it was never recovered.
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She's putting out a new C64 shmup actually, if you follow her on twitter. Doing everything her self, it seems, music, art, level design, and coding. It looks super impressive, quite a bit like Space Manbow on the MSX.
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I had a chance to buy a Net Yaroze a few months back for about $900. It was a full kit, with that multi-colored CD binder they apparently came with. I wanted it badly, but couldn't justify spending that much for one, considering how limited they were. Were they able to actually use the entire PSX hardware for development, I'd probably have jumped on it, but then again, it probably also would have been more expensive haha.
I remember reading about the Net Yaroze when it was new and drooling over it. Aside from the Dreamcast, which was the very first retail console I got to run my own code on (which felt like the greatest accomplishment in the world at the time), the first time I had a console I could code for was the GP32. The GP32 is hands down one of my favorite machines ever because of how wide open it was. It was built FOR homebrew. It had a full port of SDL 1.2. It could even link up with the Dreamcast for homebrew. Amazing, amazing machine, I spent so much time writing funky little programs that no one ever saw for that machine lol.
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Small correction, Yuji Naka. Yuji Naka was the head programmer of Sonic Team and producer of Sonic Adventure. Yu Suzuki was the guy behind Virtua Fighter, Shenmue, Space Harrier, Outrun, Hang On, texture mapping in general, etc.
Yu Suzuki actually wanted to make his engine available for others to use, the Saturn port of DOA supposedly uses some Saturn VF2 code.
I think the push for the Sonic Adventure SDK to become the Katana SDK came from Isao Okawa, president of Sega at the time who had personally invested his fortune to launching the Dreamcast. When the boss of the entire company is spending his own dime to launch the product, you don't get to say no.
For companies like Sega and Nintendo, which were ("is" in the case of the latter) game company at heart with a console business, it was only natural to be protective and proud of your own work compared other third-party licensees.
In a way owning the ecosystem was a way for Nintendo and Sega to dominate the other game software houses.
For Sony it was different, from the beginning they had the vision of a platform holder because they were coming from totally different fields.
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Sega of America saw things differently since the Genesis days, it was really Sega of Japan that held everything back. From the get go, Sega of America had the mindset Sony did regarding courting developers. That's why they would make licensing deals with companies who would defeat their copy protection, because they needed all the third party support they could get.
Sega of Japan was the better developer by far, but Sega of America had much, much better business acumen.
Maybe at the start and mid the 16 Bit Era but towards the end of the 16 bit days SOA made many bad calls and spent money like there were no tomorrow
Let's remember the only reason the likes of Codemasters or EA were given development kits was that their Teams had already the Mega Drive and beat SEGA's security
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Many of SOA's bad calls, stem from problems from SoJ. Like supporting the genesis well until 1996 like SOA wanted to do was a great idea, but poor execution in the 32X stems from a lot of weird cross talk between Sega of Japan and Sega of America about how to do that. All of which was muddied by SoJ outright wanting to drop MD support because it bombed in japan.
The company was simply divided in goal, a unified sega all pulling together would have been a much better, stronger company. Sega destroyed itself with in-fighting.
EDIT: Regarding sega's "security" -- I've actually talked to lawyers and it seems the TMSS was actually tested in court and defeated. It's been a source of confusion about whether TMSS wasn't actually a case of trademark infringement only in the US, or worldwide, because the Saturn and Dreamcast use similar TMSS-like systems to ensure boot. Which is weird, because, again, they weren't at all any legal protection in the US.
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Basically the story of her development career. I started following her because of her C64 game. Then saw her one day talking about soul star, and then looked up who she was, and blew my mind. She worked on so, soooo many amazing CORE titles. Clearly a genius developer.
That is just an internet myth much like how VF3 TB on the DC is a terrible port. Sonic Adv started life on the Saturn in early 96 but very much like with Shenmue the day FF7 demo hit Japan was the day SEGA lost Japan and even SEGA Japan knew it had to look to the future. So I can understand why the call was made to move them and also Skies of Arcadia to Dreamcast. I would have also liked to seen Deep Fear moved to DC production for an early launch
Also too much is made of the NiGHTS engine with Sonic X. That game spent 2 years in development and was being developed on up to 3 different systems by 2 lines with-in the same Team. No way should a game in development for 2 years by your all start team need to look to an outside engine debug unit more so when SEGA Japan never shared tech with their own inside SOJ, Teams never mind a western team
Like Kat's Sato, Andy Mee (ex SEGA PR Rep) and also confirmed by Jon Burton. Sonic X was canned because it wasn't very good at the end of the day
One of the few developers outside Game Arts and Malibu Interactive to actually make great use of the ASIC chip inside the Mega-CD. Soul Star smoked the hardware and put to shame the efforts by many bigger developers even SEGA Japan
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I actually was part of the team that released Sonic Xtreme, haha. There's much in the story about why it turned out how it did that is owed to corporate fuckery. There were actually multiple teams and more than 3 different systems being worked on at once.
Sonic Xtreme was canned mainly because Ofer got sick and nearly died and couldn't continue his work on it, and the never-seen-before-we-released-it build by PoV was basically an entirely different game at the time. Also, that NiGHTS engine build, from what we have, was super, super early in the development process. The engine got taken away from them before much was done. When the project was started, it was assumed they'd have access to the engine from the get-go.
Regarding VF3tb on the Dreamcast: it plays well, but there is a fundamental difference between how the Model 3 and PVR2 core works that would make the Dreamcast never able to match the visuals. The Model 3 could, essentially, do some form of shader work!
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Check out Night Striker, dunno who handled the Mega CD port but it's mind blowing.
SEGA Japan wanted to drop support for the MD and that's what should have happened it was after all a system that had been on sale for over 5 years by 1993. Too many gamers were bored of the 16-bit era and wanted to move on the market was oversaturated with games, sales were in decline across the board even Nintendo saw its profits drop off in 1994. I get why SOJ saw 3DO and even the Jaguar as threads and looked to make an Upgrade Mega Drive but when they flopped SEGA should have been looking at moving all their lines to 32 Bit production for Saturn and getting the teams and pipelines up to speed
Instead, SOA continued to pump loads into silly FMV games on the SEGA CD, miss handle the Multi-Media Studio( which ScotBayless joked outside of ILM had the most amount of SG-L systems) mishandle Sonic X (which started life on the MD) and SEGA as a whole look to support market and developer for the Game Gear, Mega Drive, 32X, Arcades, Saturn all at the same time. Just sheer madness more so when come considers the actual size of SEGA even back then.
Even Sony or Nintendo had issues when trying to support more than one platform at the same time
Let's face it the game was crap that why it was canned. After 2 years on endless systems hardly anything of a game was finished or where you had a level playable from start to finish (with boss and enemy placements) and needed to look out to the NiGHTS engine (not that would have made much difference to the gameplay IMO).
I really didn't get why the need to go for the NIGHT's engine you had the latest SGL system from SEGA and actually the boss engine IMO looked more impressive than NIGHTS even the VDP II sections looked better with some nice reflections too
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The game wasn't really a game, nothing outside of camera, basic collision detection, and some controller polling stuff was done, so who knows how it'd really play. The version we got our hands on isn't the latest version ever made -- ours doesn't have the ability to create dynamic paths like some of the ancient videos Ofer posted does, but it's still pretty close to the last build. For the things it does, it does them adequately, like the camera is cool and snappy. The collision detection is a huge mess, and obviously no level layouts ever were made.
But all this stems from the project being rebooted twice. It's kind of hard to make progress, when you have to throw everything out and start from scratch a couple of times.
Also, regarding NiGHTS, the thing they showed off had sloping hills, deforming terrain, etc. All that stuff is much more well fitting for a Sonic game than the showy-but-not-fun stuff they showed off in the Sonic Xtreme builds that we released IMO. The NiGHTS engine at least could display very complex, large pieces of level geometry (loaded in chunks mind you, but still).
I very much doubt Sonic Xtreme, down the path it was heading, would have ever turned into a good game even with all the time in the world. But I blame the path it was heading down on head people at Sega making some really dumb calls. Like, seriously, it was supposed to have been a flagship title for the Saturn, they should have allowed the developers whatever resources they wanted to make such a game.
EDIT: Also, working your main and ONLY programmer nearly to death is some awful, awful project management lol.
I had both and you could hardly notice any difference other than the horrible low res static backdrop in the DC version a few glitches with shadows and collision detection and clothing not moving quite as nice. It really was a nice port for less than 6 months of work on a incomplete development system
Yet Genki was able to get over 1.2 million polygons out of the DC with VF3Tb on its launch. Far too much is made of it and most of it down to silly reviewers giving a low score for a lack of a 2 player mod when like with the Arcade version you needed to push start on the 2nd pad for 2 Player mode Or even people comparing VF3 on Model 3 and not VF3TB on Model 3 to the DC version which used different colours Ect
That tells one all you need to know. After 2 years still no game.
I'm not doubting your coding skills here too BTW
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You can spot the kind of differences by looking for the types of shader effects you'd expect would be missing from the DC version. Like the blue moon hue in Jeffery's stage.
The DC version uses modifier volumes in the game, where the Model 3 version uses some sort of shading technique that allows for for much more granular control.
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Lol I had nothing to do with coding Sonic Xtreme, I'm part of the group that built and released the binary to the internet. Doesn't hurt my feelings at all to talk frankly about Sonic Xtreme :)
Although, knowing Chris Senn and knowing what Ofer went through, I do feel very bad for them and how Sega treated them. Both are talented people, had the project been managed better, they could have done something neat. I really, really put Sonic Xtreme down to poor management.
SEGA America should never been allowed to handle to project. It really should have been the Sonic Team or at the very least the
Chaotix team (total mess up by SEGA Japan) and SOA also need to take the blame for allowing its member to work himself to Hospital.
When it was clear the project was in that mess it really showed have been given to Real Time Associated who did some nice stuff with BUG or Traveller's Tales in the UK who no doubt would have done a better job and stick to a decent time frame
That goes without saying. I doubt any team sets out to mess up or make a bad game. It clear to me the NiGHTS engine wouldn't have made any difference to the game. That said SEGA Japan should have mandated Sonic Team make Saturn Sonic like how it's always the Mario Team that develope the main new entry in the series
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Keep in mind, Sonic Team as an entity basically didn't exist until NiGHTS into Dreams. Prior to NiGHTS into Dreams, the entity that was Sonic Team was a part of Sega of America, under STI. Yuji Naka quit SOJ after Sonic 1, and it's only because SOA acted quickly to hire him that he stayed at Sega period. Sonic 2 was developed at STI with a joint American/Japanese staff. Sonic Xtreme was originally supposed to be handled by STI staff that had worked on Sonic 2 and Sonic Spinball. It's just that, by the time Sonic Xtreme actually began development, it was a completely different staff.
So, from a certain perspective, SoA was just as much "Sonic Team" has the one in Japan at that point, having been behind 3 Sonic releases already.
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Wound up buying the SGI O2 :D
Not the one I bought, but a stock pic online:
Great talking to everyone ITT, btw.
Not the one I bought, but a stock pic online:
Great talking to everyone ITT, btw.
Whatever the CS Team number was that should have been the line that made the Saturn Sonic games or at least use part of the team and some of the best CS Team programmers to make a game (like with Sonic CD) instead SEGA Japan had them making Chaotix
I haven't much time for Naka-san myself other than his coding skills I don't think he was a team player at all. TBH rather than BUG II (which I really liked) it would have been better to use that team and the Bug II engine to make some half-decent 3D Sonic game as some of the levels in Bug did also remind me of Sonic X.
It really would have been better if SEGA had STI make a 24bit Colour Saturn version of Comix Zone with 2 Player mode and a CD-DA soundtrack too. I think SEGA America looked to keep the Mega Drive line's running too long. SEGA really should have left that to 3rd parties or close developers like TT while SEGA In-House teams were put towards Saturn development and getting their pipelines up to speed
Hahah you absolute mad man!Wound up buying the SGI O2 :D
Not the one I bought, but a stock pic online:
Great talking to everyone ITT, btw.
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I kept looking at the Cart.Dev manual and seeing it reference SGI, and the indigo is sitting right next to me, killing me. I finally caved and contacted the dude and paid for it. Gonna pick it up later on.
Need to find out if I need some sort of weird monitor connector, though.
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Ahh, so it was the Indigo 2 I was thinking of then.
Thanks for the insight. The early-mid 90s were really crazy for their development cost spike weren't they! No wonder so many small time developers dropped out of the industry throughout this era (especially on the Japanese and European side)
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Indigo, O2, and the Indy are all mentioned in the N64 literature, it seems. The Saturn one only mentions the Indigo 2.
Well in the 00s it was unheard off and garage type devs were not even considered as anything but derisively like that guy who made his GBA game from scratch and wanted Nintendo to publish it for him.
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It's funny because things had progressed to that since the 80's and 90's, at least in the west. Back in the 80's and 90's, bedroom coders was a large part of the porting force for western computers. Then you look at companies like Sega in the early 90's who were very interested in publishing small studios (like, famously, Toejam & Earl). Granted, this was all basically exploitation, not really a happy symbiotic relationship, but that period where breaking through to retail game publishing got hard was actually a historical anomaly.
Of course, on the PC side of things, indie games have always existed. I remember downloading and playing things like "Catch...if you can" from BBSes in the mid 90's. One of my favorite "indies" of all time was an impressive double-dragon style party fighting game called Little Fighter 2: