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

[DDD113]

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.

[TM.Mordred]

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.

[Xpand]

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.

[rdmx]

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).

[Xpand]

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.

[Jonny]

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

[dreadofmondays]

Here's something interesting. A teaser trailer for our october demo.

Get hyped!

[rdmx]

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!

[Xpand]

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.

[AGSys]

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?

[Xpand]

Not without Sony's permission and SDK.

[vincoof]

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

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

[rdmx]

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.

[dreadofmondays]

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

[rdmx]

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

[vincoof]

The doujin game scene is well and alive in Japan.

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.

[rdmx]

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

[vincoof]

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

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.

[Xpand]

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.

[vincoof]

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.

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.