(SSGX Origins) Let's make a Wipeout game! This time for real!

Out of interest, why haven't you chaps considered going pro with this? There are a lot of games that somehow get made that are much worse. As you've stated, kickstarter is a viable option, as is gaining sponsorship from external sources, as is working with gaming development studios. Wipeout is a true vintage gaming series, I think that if you guys were to get your house in order and come up with viable plans there's a strong chance that you could attract some investment. The game itself needn't be particularly high budget and a small team could actually work together to create something really quite decent.

Even with a bit of additional marketing you may be able to attract an industry professional to your cause. Imagine just how much better everything would work if you had a keen modeler working with you? It's something that could well snowball. In terms of getting further funding, the industry is looking very favourably on 'indie' games at the moment, and it may be that you could work to get assistance from a studio.

For the record, I have worked as an independent software developer for the past few years, and have since moved into software analysis. I'd state that getting funding for projects is not as hard as it may first seem, it's just that a lot of organisation's marketing is poor and management direction isn't up to scratch, and they are two things that set alarm bells off from the perspective of an investor. Of course, I am willing to lend and share what I have learned over the years with yourselves.

Regardless, the above is just a thought; I don't wish to upset the status quo with your group, but I guarantee you there are a lot of people who would like to see another high quality wipeout game outside of these forums.

To be honest with you, we're only making the game for the fun of it. We have no intention of going pro. Our current life doesn't allow it, actually. We're enjoying the project a lot and we don't really want to pay some other studio to do it for us. ;)

That's cool, just wondered if there was a good reason behind it. :) Keep up the good work.

Wow, this project has come a long way since I checked in last! You guys are fantastic. I cannot wait to see this finished and play it :)

Donation sent :)

Wow dude :D Thanks alot. Donation received. Thank you very much for the contribution. We appreciate it alot! And yeah, we cannot wait to see it finished either :D A new demo is in progress btw ;)

We have a new video blog for your guys to check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzfcsP6I-HU
In there you can see zero3growlithe and me doing some coding on weapons, hope you will like it :)

Hey guys, been wondering how you been!
Of topic much ^

Pretty sure I know nothing now about how far you guys are but sure hope it's good!

All the best

Feisar rocket.

Hey man,

we're all doing good. Working hard so to say :D :D
TypeProton is delivering some sketches and reference photos of his track Hubian and dreadofmondays is modeling it and also takes care of some stuff on the website at the moment.
Xpand is modeling. He was working on the Zepher ZY [prototype ship] and now does some flying cameras in between.
BrunoDG, zero3growlithe and me are coding on menu, AI and weaponry ^^
And Hellfire_WZ is recording some information speeches for the teams.

A few tasks have yet to be done for the next demo, but we are on a good way.

Do you use Facebook? Lots of WIP pictures and screens get shared there, you could say daily :)

Haha I see @doc

Seems like everyone got something to do, haha.
The ship sounds like it'll be a sexy machine to hit the tracks! Is the next track coming nicely also??

What's left for the next build??

Of course I have Facebook Shamarski Simon, add me up!

Oh and like always, I'll like to read the track descriptions that's been coming in. Pretty sure they'll be a good read. :)

P.S. I hate the opera browser... It made me type this 3 times

Just a suggestion that would make many people's lives a whole lot easier: could you guys make the speed pads yellow and the weapon pad red like in TypeProton's illustrations of Hubian? Right now, they are impossible to distinguish until you are right upon them, which makes their placement hard to learn as well. Not trying to nitpick here, that would just make the game feel a lot smoother and save some eye strain.

That is a good point you brought up there. I also thing the pads should receive more color. I'll discuss this with the other guys, we also need to make sure this color shines at night time races so you can see it then aswell!

Yeah that would look really cool in night races, especially over the really dark sections. Thanks for considering my idea, you guys are doing a fantastic job. I found out about this project in June (which sucked cause I missed the Christmas TT) and I was just blown away by the level of detail you guys have put into your work. The ships and tracks look spectacular, I love the natural ideas with them, and it looks like you're moving steadily on toward the next demo. Keep up the great work guys, it looks fantastic!

Thanks alot for the kind words :)
Ideas and feedback is always welcome. But we are also curious^^ How did you find out about this project?

Well speaking of graphical detail we might be a bit limited by Unity Free [no camera effects, heat distortion etc.] but we try to compensate this with details in physics and environment. And besides, we are also collecting money through donations to get a licence of Unity Pro and then we can make the game even more eye-catchy :) The next demo is hopefully to be finished soon next month.

And in case you haven't had the chance to play the Xmas release, here is the link for downloading, dreadofmondays digged it out :)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/m3...dition+Fix.rar

How are your menus looking right now?

I was just looking for some concept art from the cancelled ps4 WipEout game, and I came across this forum. I looked at some of the threads, and I was intrigued by the one that talked about a community-led AG racer, so I clicked on it and I have been hooked ever since. I have the Christmas TT and over the course of the past 2 months I have improved my original time of 3:13:63 (I sucked SOOO bad) to 2:08:77 after some hours of dedication. You know, at first, I really didn't like how narrow the tracks were, but once I got a good feel for the ship handling, I really like it. The WipEout tracks are so wide that it's not even a challenge to post a perfect lap at top speed, but that is not the case with SSGX. I always love a challenge and I love that the tracks bring out the best and worst in players, and make racing line crucial. I think it will be fun to try to set up passes on AI, and the weapons are looking spectacular! I cannot wait for the next demo! :)

Hey! Glad you liked the game. The track in the Christmas TT is probably the hardest or second hardest of all in the game. So it added to the shock of being used to Wipeout and then playing SSGX. We don't really want the game to be too easy. We want players to actually try and better themselves instead of playing the game through once and then abandon it.


Just to clear up something you said: the "PS4 Wipeout game" wasn't really cancelled because it wasn't a game, it was fan art made by one user of this forum. If you notice it has a lot of elements from Wipeout 3, the Feisar ship being the most noticeable one since it was made using Wipeout 3 concept art. Guess this stunt tricked a lot of people! :D

Oh, yep, I just Googled 'WipEout Deceit' and found Max Fraundorfer's page. It had a convincing look to it, and some future ties to WipEout Fusion (Katmoda Project, Overtel). Well, I have to commend him for his work, it looked good. Thanks for the heads up so I don't make a fool of myself somewhere else! :) Yeah, now that I've gotten used to the track width, I actually like it better than WipEout because it presents more of a challenge; something to strive for, even in TT mode. It also makes it so hard to hit every speed pad and not hit a wall, making the Christmas TT still fun to play just to try and improve my time. Can't wait to tackle the AI, and the prototype ships look amazing. Do you have any ideas for a Logos Prototype yet? Anyway, it's coming along great. Keep up the good work!

Hehe well at the first moment I also thought these are first concept arts for a new WipEout :D His work is amazing!

And yeah, the track width is something that is really tricky, it not only makes it harder to navigate the ship, but it is also not so easy to use straight forward weapons like the Cannon or Tractorbeam. Actually I for myself can only fly really good when using the controller, the keyboard is not sensitive enough for me :D

Modeling of the Logos prototype didn't start yet afair, but Xpand already had some sketches drawn. Why you ask? You have any ideas you like to bring in? If so, never hesitate :D

Alright, well I put a little time into designing a craft that hopefully will catch your interests in a good way. Eager for some feedback on this one! :)

Top View
Attachment 7792

Side View
Attachment 7793

Compared to standard Logos
Attachment 7794

I’m not good at perspective views so I didn’t do one here. As you can see, the ship has a hole in the middle of it and the very front of the cockpit extends into this gap. I think this fits the Logos team well because their ships are made for speed and this would reduce weight. Also, the craft's rear wings do not extend as far, which as well would be more aerodynamic, yet still reduce handling. I know I'm not the best artist and you can take my designs and modify them and then re-post them. You can smooth out the corners, or make the hole more jagged instead of smooth. Also, you might want to make the cockpit blend into the body a little better (Just noticed that compared to the standard Logos). This ship is shorter and slightly wider than the standard Logos, and also has less weight. It retains the sleek look and speed-centered ideas of Logos. Pleas give me your feedback and opinions! I'm eager to hear them! :D

- - - Updated - - -

I couldn't stand that cockpit now that I noticed it. Here's the fixed version:

Fixed Side View
Attachment 7795

Looks much better now, eh? It sure reminds me more of Logos! :)

Hmm, I don't really agree with the stubby wings and the hole in the center.
To be honest it look a bit WO Pure Goteki-ish.
The profile view is more reminiscent of LOGOS, though...

These are the two possibilities we have. As of now we're thinking of making the top version:
Attachment 7796

Well thanks for looking anyway. I took my inspiration from pure's Goteki. I know it was kind of a radical idea, but I figured you already had something like this, so why not throw it out there! I love the bottom drawing you guys made (you guys are much better than me! :)) it reminds me of the modern Icaras ships. It looks sleek and sharp and definitely fits the Logos style. The top one's good too, it's just very similar to the stock craft. The bottom one has a different body style, but keeps the sleek Logos vibe. I like that alot. If you ever make a SlipStream GX 2048 I would have some more credible ship designs from that style. :)

hey guys, i've been watching your progress for quite some time now, and i like how it's turning out!

some input i'd want to put in:

i'd hopefully like to see some ship damage, be it an altered 3D model or just a simple texture change. Given that all of the fan-created car models for the game TrackMania 2 are required to have damaged versions, it can't be that difficult to pull off.

one more thing:

i've been hearing that the PlayStation Vita is becoming quite the safe haven for indie games, given the huge success of games like Thomas Was Alone on the platform. ;)

We talked about damaged ships one time and we came up with two possibilities:

Display damage by warping ship's mesh via vertex manipulation.

^That we don't know how to do in Unity3d. Don't even know if it's possible.

Display damage as texture paint.

^Most likely option to go with.

Damage models are out of question because they're a resource sinkhole. Too little damage models and the damage becomes repetitive and stupid, like the right side being damaged when the ship hits on the left side. Too many damage models and the game will weight n*18 playable ships*2MB (average space occupied by a single ship model) times more, being "n" the number of damage models if we don't count texture damage.

But as of now we're not really thinking about implementing damage in the near future or if we're going to do it at all. We're more interested in finishing all ships and menus and all the basics in terms of game modes and etc.

Reading through your website, it dawned on me how odd the 'Zepher' backstory is.

The Japanese team are named after a Greek god of wind, despite Japan having no shortage of meaningful words or gods. It wouldn't be so odd if there wasn't also a Greek team (LOGOS).

Three of the teams have greek names: Solaris, Helios, LOGOS and two of them come from countries other than Greece.
Zepher (not Zephyr) is just a variation of a greek name. Amphithere also has its model name in Latin: Amphithere Draco Americanus Model 14 (Amphithere AM14)

It's just a preference for classic mediterranean civilization names.
Plus Zepher's backstory was made a long while after the ship and team was thought of and done. So I think that inconsistency is a product of that. But honestly, it's just a name. Like I said, many other teams have names that don't relate to their country of origin.

As a weak example:van-Über.
"van" is the dutch word for the german "von",that means "of/by"

Here's something interesting. A teaser trailer for our october demo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPj6VmulOvI
Get hyped!

First 3 seconds - those light flares are rendering through the building and the ships.

Also it'd be good if you could make the camera FOV adjustable if possible. I don't think I'd ever normally say this, but the default is a bit too high. Looking forward to trying it though!

Yeah, unity has a problem with light flares. They WILL shine through any non-collision objects. The problem then is that making them detect collisions is useless to the gameplay but it also weights on the performance.

WHOAWOWOWOWOWO. I'm nothing short of amazed (x3) at this point at what this game is shaping up to be like. It looks stunning! It also seems to carry on that traditional WipEout sense of speed, oh man I seriously can't wait to play it. Do you guys think you could port it to PSP/Vita or PS3 by any chance?

Not without Sony's permission and SDK.

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Originally Posted by AGSys

Do you guys think you could port it to PSP/Vita or PS3 by any chance?

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TL;DR: almost everything is possible if you put the money and effort into it, but I guess it won’t make it in the near future (or even in the distant future) because of many parameters, including —but not limited to— the SSGX budget, the SSGX development process, the console hardware, the Sony developer license agreement and the Unity business model. And maybe because of copyright issues too.

While I’m not a SSGX developer, I am a developer in real (?) life and I think the question could deserve a topic for itself as many fellow wipers here would be very happy to see this game coming to the PS Store (or whatever means could allow us to play this game on PS consoles). I’m too lazy to read again the 300+ pages of this topic but I’m also pretty sure this question has been asked before. Please note I am not affiliated to the SSGX development team (even though I strongly encourage the game development as many of us here) and this post only reflects my point of view.

Technically, on the software side, today this is not really possible to port the game unless you rewrite all the SSGX code for the Playstation consoles, which is not reasonable considering the SSGX team already has alot to do… and they don’t have alot of money to help them. As far as I know SSGX is developed using the Unity engine and porting an Unity game to PS is not possible yet. Fortunately, Unity and Sony announced recently (march 2013) they were working on an addon for Unity which is called Unity for Playstation and is "scheduled to be rolled out this fall". I know I know, fall has arrived and the addon is not ready yet. Unfortunately, the addon in itself doesn’t bring the game instantly to the consoles. Please note the addon probably won’t be free (and the SSGX team, unlike my tailor, is not rich) and the addon is designed to run games on PS3, PS4 and PS Vita but not the PSP or any of the former consoles.

This leads us to the next problem(s). First, another technical problem, on the hardware side this time. Consoles are much less versatile than Personal Computers. It is very common to have a game that runs more or less smoothly on a PC depending on the price you want to spend on the computer. Most games give you options to raise or lower the quality of the game (mainly graphical settings) to adjust how smooth or how good looking you want to run the game. In the console world this is not acceptable, especially for a racing game where you have to display the game as smooth as possible. I for one could not play a racing game running lower than 30 fps, especially not a WipEout-like game (and I have yet to thank Sony for making WipEout HD running at 60 fps). Making SSGX to run smoothly on e.g. a PS3 would mean that the level designers and ship designers should adjust the polycount, the texture resolution, the shader quality and things like that for every track, every ship, and every other effect around (like weapon effects). It would take a huge amount of effort from the team to get even an acceptable quality, or even to make it work at all, and they would have to do it again every time they include a new ship, a new track, a new weapon… not to mention they would have to do it for every gaming console the game would be ported to. Sometimes they may need to remove some visual effects because the hardware couldn’t render them smoothly or couldn’t render them at all. From a player point of view, all these things would obviously hurt the gameplay experience. From a developer point of view, this also means the team would need to store different versions of the ships/tracks/etc which would add logistics complexity as they would support new consoles.

Secondly, from a licensing point of view, Sony doesn’t grant the right to create a game for their consoles to every developer that wants to create one. Like many other console manufacturers (if not all), you need to "prove" Sony that the games you want to create will respect a minimum quality standard. I don’t know the specifics of the Sony License Agreement, but I know this just adds up to the long list of things that the team already has to deal with. Maybe someone who already released a game on a PS3/PSVita can give more information about that.

And at last, but not least, releasing the game officially on a Playstation console could raise some copyright concerns, even if all material (graphics, sound) is built from scratch. If I recall correctly, this type of software development is forbidden in Japan. I’m not sure if this is a legal issue or a cultural one but I think the SSGX team will run into it if they try to reach the Sony environment. As a reminder, Sony Computer Entertainment headquarters are located in Tokyo, Japan.

With that said, I know my point of view may look dramatic but I’m definitely not trying to discourage the game development. Once again I wish all the best for the game team which is doing a great work so far. The October Trailer is astounding! I don’t have the words to cheer the developers up but I’m pretty sure they know how grateful we are for their continued hard work.

PS. sorry for the long post

Well written Vincoof.

I'm curious what you mean by "this type of software development is forbidden in Japan." The doujin game scene is well and alive in Japan.

The Japanese have a notable history of abusing and misinterpreting fan actions, especially those of western fans. As an example, I can't confirm which game right now, but some months back they shut down a fan game tribute claiming it was damaging the franchise. We don't want that to happen to us

Ah I see what you mean now. I think the games you're thinking of are Chrono Resurrection, Streets of Rage

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Originally Posted by rdmx

The doujin game scene is well and alive in Japan.

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The dōjin games, like many other types of fan gaming, flies under the radar as long as they remain quiet. At best, copyright holders tolerate these games because they fill a gap, providing content for the fan community. I don’t recall seeing any dōjin title being available to the PS Store though, not even the best ones.

Should I clarify my statement, what I wanted to point out is that the Japanese gaming world is very different from the "West" gaming world. Maybe readers from Japan can tell us how they feel about it, but I feel that we need to double-check the project would be fine before poking our nose into the Japanese video game industry which, in my opinion, is inevitable if the game is ported to a Sony console.

You're right. I think Gundemonium and Acceleration of Suguri are on there, but they'd be the exceptions to the rule.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rdmx

You're right. I think Gundemonium and Acceleration of Suguri are on there, but they'd be the exceptions to the rule.

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Both of these games were dōjin games initially but they didn’t include copyrighted material from other sources, that certainly explains why Sony himself (more specifically Sony Online Entertainment) participated in the development of these titles.

I could go on and develop what I understood from what I’ve read and what people told me (including people from Japan) but the more I think of it, the more I say to myself that I’m no lawyer and I would confuse everyone if I go too deeply into the discussion. Suffice to say, the copyright law of Japan is different than the copyright law of e.g. US, thus the SSGX team should be careful before releasing something to Japan.

A while ago we actually contacted Sony Europe to make sure we could use direct references to the Wipeout universe. They replied and said we couldn't directly use Wipeout references (or any of its intelectual property), but they didn't say anything about using innuendos, which is what we use on our storyline, since it goes on in the same universe. They also didn't refer to anything specific about the game mechanics. About distributing to Japan, we're just thinking about putting it available to download, we don't know who the downloaders are or from what country they are.

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Originally Posted by Xpand

About distributing to Japan, we're just thinking about putting it available to download, we don't know who the downloaders are or from what country they are.

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I think it will be fine. :) My concern begins only when putting the game to the PS Store, which IMHO is unlikely to happen in the near future because of the reasons I’ve thoroughly presented.