Two underrated things about Jon's intro is that lovely pitch bend doppler effect at the very start, followed by the narration starting on the last chord of the first 4/4 progression every time, it's top tier presentation!
Audio nerd alert 🤓 haha I was just (re-)noticing the bend on the first note when I started watching this video. I actually don’t like it because it feels like it disrupts what would otherwise be a great infinite loop without any clear beginning or end. If it had been somewhere in the middle of a phrase, I would’ve liked that more. Small nit to pick though. I’ve heard this loop on other channels and I’ve always like it.
The pitch bend is simply how the song starts, that's not something he did manually. ("Is That You or Are You You" from Chris Zabriskie's album Reappear) But yeah, it's a good sound :)
@@Agnes.Nutter Experiencing heavy Mandella effect right now lol, I could have sworn earlier videos lacked the pitch bend and had only appeared recently. Good shout!
Dang, I always thought he had less videos than he did before but I never could figure out which one was missing. I wonder what happened to them. Gotta love legal BS...
What was the most troublesome/persistant bug/glitch you guys ever had to deal with? How did it come about, what did it do, and how did you fix it, if you did?
Given he always refers to it as Sonic 3D Blast, I imagine that is his preferred name, although it'd be interesting to hear his thoughts on region based name changes.
3D Blast for the Megadrive, and Flickies Islands for the newer release for me- PC version was actually the first I played before emulating the Megadrive game (that was a weird experience!)
Haven Call of the King was such a good 3d platformer, I remember my brother and I playing it when I was little. Sad to know it didn't sell well, but understandable considering the fierce competition at the time.
I applaud your efforts. You could also comment with a link to another one of his videos from the archives so maybe someone new will see it and increase more views.
Hi Jon, not really a question but just wanted to say I've been following your channels for many years and I love your content. Looking forward to future games from 10:10!
You can always tell when a programmer makes videos. Short, compact, concise, and to the point without wasting a single cpu cycle. A regular uTube content maker would have fluffed this up to over 20 minutes.
Seriously one of my favorite channels on here. I'm watched your playlist multiple times over. As for potential questions: a. With all the fantastic tricks and solutions you've showed (The perfect pixel collision, Sonic R's transparencies, etc...) was there ever a solution that got away? As in your were forced to downgrade an idea because there just wasn't enough time to figure out the 'trick' to get it to work / look / play the way you wanted? or b. If you were able to pick any retro / vintage game system to go back to with the programming tricks and knowledge you have now, which one would you go? And what would you be looking to push even further on the hardware (examples: Better 3D tricks on Saturn, more colors out of the Mega Drive, etc)? Keep up the fantastic work!
Would it be possible for you to do another Coding Secrets on ~somebody else’s game~? It was fascinating watching your analysis of the Sonic series, and I’d love to see you take a look at something like Alien Soldier, Gunstar Heroes, or Thunderforce IV/Lightening Force. (three absolutely wild mega drive games, off the top of my head)
So 'Back in the old days,' how would programmers learn these coding secrets? How would you find the undocumented functionality and in the pre-internet days, how would you expand on that?
@@parkerkrakowiak2990 people talked to each other even before the internet, and developers knew other developers, it's not a stretch to imagine that the info just spread around. The internet makes things faster but it's not like knowledge can't spread without it
@@axelprino the precise process is a good question. Where there books? Did they write letters to each other? Drinking beers at a trade show after party and randomly share "obvious" process and tooling things, that blow the colleagues mind? I think he mentioned in a "crash bandicoot" that they started changing sonys "do not touch" part of the libraries. Are there other instances of "the sign must exists because there is something interesting behind this point"?
Wasn’t that easy when Nintendo were douchebags and wouldn’t even give western NES developers sufficient technical info for the system or a dev kit, just made them try and figure out most of it themselves.
Mickey Mania SNES had load times because the SPC700 was super slow at loading the files needed for the sound. If you could somehow disable the SPC and see what happens, the levels probably would load pretty much immediately.
@@bangerbangerbro The load screens on the snes version are the snes cpu spending time to unload graphical assets from the rom and decompress them. They are compressed to save rom space. If they were stored uncompressed they would load significantly faster. Or could even be streamed from the rom.
Here is a question actually- in regards to the original Sonic 3D, what was the process in the rendering and modeling of the 3D graphics and importing them into the game?
I would assume it was done like how Rare did the Donkey Kong Country games - render them out as 3D models in advanced (for the time) computers, take stills of them doing individual movements, digitize those frames down to sprites, and then manually adjust color pallets to work within system limitations.
@@SatoshiMatrix1 you short answer is right. Very expensive computers to model, export the frames, use them into the game. Same with Rock n Roll Racing (Blizzard), and Mario RPG.
It's always fascinated me how you did Episode 3 in Lego Star Wars before the actual movie came out. Did they let you pre screen it? Hand you a general plot outline?
I think it's general practice for devs to get pre screenings or concept art. I remember in his stream where he showed betas of Transformers The Game that he talked about how he got to meet Michael Bay and discuss some stuff about the movie and they were given test shots and screenings and stuff to show what they wanted.
@@nemsis4149 this is correct. Having worked at the studio that did the Mad Max game, despite it not following the same plot, we were privy to details of the plot. In fact before it became what it was, the plan was to follow a similar plot and to have a linear story and gameplay. That turned out not to be very fun and in the end that idea was ditched. We leaned on our own story telling talents with lots of feedback from the director instead and totally rebooted the project. Really fun how plans change sometimes in this industry. :)
@@SK83RJOSH Woah! That's really interesting, I love hearing insight like this from people who are actually in the industry. Was the studio or director really tight on how you handled the Mad Max license or were you given much freedom with it? I've heard that film studios can sometimes be an absolute nightmare to deal with.
It's kind of random and specific, but I've been wondering this since I was a kid. What's the logic behind the money cap in the LEGO games? It isn't a round number like 10,000,000, but it's also not quite the limit for a 32-bit integer.
@@AntonioNoack WDYM by that? They asked why it wasn't 'a round number like 10,000,000', and your example of '1,000,000 is more natural to the players' is a round number. and these statements together don't make sense: 'Probably it's better to have a limit than to overflow.' -you 'but it's also not quite the limit for a 32-bit integer.' -original commenter due to the fact that putting the limit at the limit for an integer type would prevent overflows. ...'than something like 1,048,576' -you but the point of the original comment is that it IS a number 'like 1,048,576'. Overall it seems like you didn't read the original comment, or skimmed it, ignored the point, and spewed out some vague "awnswer" that doesn't adress any of the concerns of the original comment.
I know you are quite proud of many features in Sonic R, even though development was rushed. How does it make you feel when content creators use the game as a punchline or low-hanging-fruit?
When it comes to fan games and community driven reverse engineering projects, such as with Mario 64 and GTA 3, that exist to bring old games up to modern standards and introduce new features. Do you believe that publishers are morally within their rights to attempt to shut these down or should they really be trying to be more competitive instead? Also, are there any that you are particularly a fan of?
Idk about morally but legally a company needs to enforce their ownership of IP or risk losing it. That being said, some companies don't particularly seem to mind allowing fan games and such (SEGA) but I guess Nintendo in particular have Disney-esque lawyers.
Competition is the answer. If you make a thing but someone else makes a better version of said thing, you shouldn't be able to force people to use your inferior thing just because you made it first, you should take inspiration and improve the original and not be threatened by some free stuff people made in their free time that is probably gonna crash 90% of the time and never see completion. Nintendo and T2 need to realise that they aren't protecting their profits here, just making themselves look bad while blocking peoples ability to show off their talents and hampering their career prospects.
@@jeronimomora4956 Oh absolutely. The reason I was asking from a moral standpoint is that it's more subjective and it would be interesting to hear a seasoned develoiper's take on the matter. Part of me wonders if there are aspects of it that aren't all that obvious as a consumer. Honestly the reverse engineering side of things is more intriguing to me since developers are usually wise enough to avoid distributing copyrighted material and instead require the end user to provide it. Unless I'm mistaken, this is essentially how that Sonic 3D Blast update worked.
@@jeronimomora4956 companies don't lose IPs. They can only lose trademarks and that only if they don't defend the teademark against commercial use or they don't have evidence that they use their own trademark.
Hey Jon, big fan. My questions are: What do you think was the most clever code you've written? (a sort of visual trick, a crucial optimization, etc.) From your perspective, what console was the most difficult to develop games for? (complicated hardware design, insufficient documentation/development kit, etc.)
I've been watching your channel for years and have only ever heard your voice. The person I imagined while listening was so far different than the actual you!
Do you have a game idea that you've held onto for years, maybe as a passion project? Either because of time, legal (copyright), financial restraint or maybe wanting it to remain personal? If so... Is there anything you don't mind sharing about such a project? Theme, mechanics, creative workarounds you're proud of that we haven't seen... Thanks for the videos now and the games then and now.
I have some questions pertaining to ways that assets were inserted into games during development back then. First of all, what was the process like for importing music into games on the Mega Drive? What was it like to program sound - specifically, what was it like to create synth presets? Did you make dedicated tools to test functions of the sound engine? Secondly, I would like to know more about how pre-rendered sprites were made. How were you able to resize a set of sprites and unanimously limit their palettes without getting any anti-aliasing pixels between the object and the background? Also, how were you able to get such vibrant colours on these sprites? Did the limited set of colours available for use on the Mega Drive affect the way these sprites were rendered? Lastly, what were tools like for making hand-drawn sprites? Did they automatically optimise sprites to utilise less memory (i.e. by re-using certain tiles of the sprite in multiple animation frames and such)? Sorry for the abundance of questions, but I'm just really curious as to how the process of making a game on such a system in the past compares to now, especially with the advancement and accessibility of modern development / creative tools.
I got a question: What's your opinion on modern game engines? Do you think it's better to code your own engine from scratch or use one of these? Or would it even matter?
Life is short, and we only have so much time to make things. If the result will be the same with the engine, then use the engine. If you just want to make the engine yourself because you think it will be fun, then make it yourself.
Yeah game engines are huge endeavors these days. With things like cross compatibility across console hardware and even generations, big testing between all that, features, etc. It's too expensive and time consuming to make a bespoke engine like they could back in the day.
Given how evolved engines are these days it's better to make games from the established engines then then move to engine development in your later years. Engine dev is extremely important however they should ideally pick from pools of game coders to move over as the things they would have liked to have make it into the engines making it again more evolved.
I have an unpopular opinion. I always felt it's better to write your own engine depending on the game you're trying to make. Sure, using a well established engine is all well and good and makes life easier, but if you're just trying to make a small 2D game for example, learning unreal engine 4 or unity and getting it to run a 2D game well enough is probably as much effort as simply coding it directly. But this is based on my limited experience with game development so what do I know. Plus, I always felt that when you learn a game engine, you don't really learn how games work, youre simply training yourself to use a tool with all its limitations. If you write your own game engine, you undersrand what really goes on under the hood and it gives you the freedom and capability to do whatever you like
@@9a3eedi Programming your own engine used to be very important due to hardware limitations, where things like memory and resource management were very important. These days however, just programming a tile system or texture page system would likely take you about as long as making the actual simple game. I'd compare it to building furniture. It's about what you do with wood, but it doesn't make things faster to cut down massive amounts of wood yourself and process it, and somebody who's building a shelf doesn't need to know how to do so.
Given you mentioned the demoscene, would it be possible for you to perhaps explain how certain things in Titan Overdrive demos for the Megadrive (original and Overdrive 2) were achieved?
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That's already done. There is 'part 1', find it on the channel. However still there is place for continuation.
❓QUESTION: How long did it take for you to go from tinkering and programming to creating your first game. I.e. What was the journey from knowing nothing to Leander❓❓❓
How did you initially get into game programing and the games industry? Also, can you tell us about any of the "edgy" humor from Lego Star Wars that had to be cut?
@@paulgraves1392 Well I think he was just one of the many people that got into programming with the spectrum and was into games, as there are a few he said he sent off to try to get published but were not, then at some point managed to start his own company?
Do you think that as technology gets faster there's less focus on optimizing code and programs just brute force through everything? I always admire how much could be done with old consoles and games written mainly in assembly, but nowadays there's much more high level tools for game development that might add a lot of unnecessary overhead
A decent compiler eliminates or even improves the overhead inherent in high level programming languages, assuming the code is competent enough. Most SNES games were written in C, and many Genesis games were too. The real issue is less which language you use and more the fact that if you give someone tons of memory to work with, they're going to use as much of it as they want. Clever asset use is way more important in that regard than low level things like manual memory allocation. Sonic 3D Blast was made possible by optimizing the hell out of the assets. The code, while often just as clever, held it all together.
I think you are not updated with recent game reviews. A lack of optimization is a constant problem in modern games. Ghost of Tsukushima is loved by some people because it have short loading screens in comparison with any other open world game. In the other side of the spectrum, we have games like Cyberpunk 2077, Control, and Red Dead 2 whit theirs "why da fuc***???" so long loadings.
@@Bainemo When you interact with some modern devs, you can't shake the impression they are lazier, especially when you're talking performance problems. Either you upgrade your hardware or go something else, because they're not gonna optimize anything.
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@@Bainemo Interesting! I would have expected SNES to be still mostly assembly, and not C.
@ The two languages are very similar, but C does most of the extremely low level stuff for you. Most if not all games would still have critical sections that were coded in assembly where every last bit counted, but there's really no reason to write simple, basic code in assembly. What C could do in 50 lines, assembly might do the exact same thing in 500.
Hello, good day, thanks for this video... well, the question i have is: How much did you knew about the development of Sonic Xtreme at the time? Also, glad to see Lego Dimensions here, specially the Wii U version, love that machine.
The most fascinating feature of The Wrath of Cortex is the inclusion of Crunch - the idea of Cortex retooling the concept of Crash to create an even stronger adversary is an awesome one. I even liked how the boss fights consisted of just himself using one of the four Elementals, it's a breath of fresh air from the previous games' formula of "2 minor henchmen, 1 major henchman, second-in-command, big bad". How did all of these ideas come about? Were there any other scrapped plans or ideas for Crunch during development?
When making the LEGO games, was there a general structure the engine followed so it could be easily ported to other consoles and PC? If so, how has the engine changed over time?
In more modern games, sometimes the grind is made worse so customers pay extra cash to skip things like that. Do these kinds of things come from publishers? How do game makers feel about such things? Do they know how us consumers feel about being ripped off and it looks like we are being tricked into paying more for the same games?
I'd asked about this in the AMA announcement, but I'll go ahead and repost it here cause I'm still VERY curious. For the Lego Star Wars games how does the lightsaber combat work? Specifically the parts involving lightsaber collision and button timing. My brother and I used to spend hours fighting eachother in the early PS2 version of 1,2, and 3 (The one with the shoot-em-up gunship level everyone hates) and it was surprisingly indepth.
I am now going down a Genesis/Mega Drive tech demo rabbit hole. It's absolutely mindblowing what that system is still capable of. Thank you for mentioning these!
Interesting video, hope you get around to the questions I submitted in the last video. Always nice to hear from the guy who built my childhood (pun intended).
Hi Jon, I'd love you to talk about your days as a coder in 'SAE' and how it came about, I was really young when I got Amazing Tunes 2 (I thought it was excellent!) The dancing person and the speakers was cool. Cheers, Aaron
If you could go back and remake a game that you think didn't quite work so well now that you've opened a new development studio, what game would that be? i personally think Rascal would be an intriguing option, though I'd love to hear your input!
How was it possible that games that ran on such different hardware as the SNES and the Genesis, and were developed by completely different teams (like Mickey Mania), looked so incredibly similar?
ot: Whenever I watch a video of your channel and it has this track in the background, I think of "Charly Lownoise ft. Mental Theo - Wonderful Days ", which throws me back into a spiral of old songs from my childhood.
I also got a question. Is there something you wanted to create/code but couldn't do? Because it wasn't possible or took too much time (especially on the older consoles)?
I'd wished i knew about this AMA! would loved to ask a question here. If this is alright with you asking one here, my biggest question would be is why didn't you guys make a 3D platformer Sonic game back on the Sega Saturn when you guys made a perfectly good one for the Bonus Stages only? made no sense honestly and felt like a kick in the bum for those wanting that to be the full game instead being stuck to little bonuses/mini games only.
I noticed one TT Oxford game wasn't noted, so my question is Did you have any part in TT Oxford's Super Monkey Ball Adventure? If so, how was the task of scripting? Noticed it used AutoLab
How interested or involved are/were you in the demoscene? What was your favourite platform for demos? You showed the Titan demo at the end, figured I'd expand on that idea :)
It was A LOT of fun playing the Director's Cut of Sonic 3D Blast on my Mega EverDrive Pro on my Analogue Sg, eternally grateful that he did that and released it to the public. If he were to launch a Patreon or a Kickstarter for such a project I would back it in a heartbeat.
Not a dev myself but from my understanding I'd have to say no. The dual CPUs were apparently the exact same as each other (there were also 6 other processors for various functions) but I must presume that one of those was acting as the master and the other a slave (there's some 'politically correct' way of saying that now but I don't care, it's an apt description of the process). The master would run the scheduler and would send commands to all of the other processors. Sending commands to the identical processor would have a performance hit since the master would have to process data that it's sending to the slave, I'm not super familiar with Saturn hardware so maybe they overcame this somewhat with shared memory but there's always at least some hit in a true multi-processor setup. For the fastest performance of things that could be handled by the main processors it was probably best to just run it on the master while the slave would run slower operations. In a modern multi-core setup one of the cores would probably run the scheduler and send commands to the others but it's far more autonomous and efficient. Each core will generally have equal access (to my understanding) so there won't be any real advantages to running one core over the other. Modern systems and languages also tend to handle that stuff for you, you just specify that you want to run some part of the code in a different thread and the scheduler will figure it out (there's still some thought involved as you can easily create issues if 2 threads are working on the same data at the same time and especially if one of the threads was expected to have modified some data before the other thread started using it). On the Saturn I presume they were still doing a lot of low level code and probably specified exactly which processor should run what code (this wouldn't be too different from what they were used to since they had a lot of different processors to send code to anyway). Modern hardware tends to have just a couple of processors to worry about and modern operating systems help to abstract things to a point where you don't have to worry too much about what hardware you're running on so long as it follows certain conventions. I think we do still technically have separate sound processors but I also know that a lot of the functions for reading sound files are handled by the CPU and in fact modern CPUs usually have built in mp3 decoder functions to speed up the process. Math processing also used to be done by separate chips but those are also integrated into the CPU now (GPUs also have integrated math capabilities that are specialized towards various functions). Modern GPUs are actually a lot like old systems in that they have many different cores with different capabilities while modern CPUs tend to have just a few cores that are bigger, have many functions, are higher clocked and all offer the same functions. (More cores means more complex which means more heat, which means the cores have to run slower).
One game I am very curious about in particular was Toy Story 2. How much freedom did you have into that project? Also I believe you've only worked on the PlayStation version, but I should probably mention a variety of differences between the different console ports, most notably things like a few misplaced sound effects, or Woody's face texture on the final level. Do you have any idea of what might've happened or what caused them?
Question for a future video: What helpful resources and documentation were available for coding on older consoles? Was there any Internet communities you had access to at the time for asking coding related questions or did you have to solely rely on the official documentation provided by SEGA as an example?
Can you show off a build of Sonic R that was around E3 time? There seems to be 3 songs from around then that didn't make the cut (some kind of hip hop percussion beat, a Super Sonic Racing variation (with early vocals) that sounded like a menu theme and the version of Super Sonic Racing that was sung by an internal Sega employee, if I recall correctly), as well as Resort Island being set in a nice orange sunset while the final version was just in daylight (weather effects were only in newer releases on other platforms). If that's not possible, I totally understand.
that would be interesting, but I wonder if he has all the hardware necessary and is legally allowed to showcase the full process. The next question is, if he still has the "muscle memory" to do it. I know that firmware development (which every old school game basically is) is somewhat annoying to setup and try to force to speed up setup times, leading to messy documentation, that is filled with messy update and changes notes, meaning: It is hard to recreate as the setup is a mess in it own right.
I think that what David meant was whether there is anything you know about Nintendo or Sega in the 90's that you wouldn't know otherwise were you not a game developer in that era, and with an emphasis on things that Nintendo or Sega wouldn't be too happy to let regular people know. I imagine that they wouldn't let you know about such things either!
Hey, Jon. I’ve been a big fan of your games since I was a kid. Being a huge fan of Pixar, I have several questions based on the games you developed for their films. What was your relationship with them like when developing games based on their films? Did you ever consult with Pixar staff, story crew, or animators (John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Joe Ranft) directly during any games’ development? What film production materials did you have when developing the games? (storyboards, partial or completed animation, concept art, any of Pixar’s 3D assets? ) Did you ever develop anything based on material that was ultimately cut or drastically changed in the final film (like the Jedi Temple level from LSW)? What was it like working with Pixar again after 15 years on LEGO Incredibles? I loved all the Easter eggs to Pixar’s history, my favorite being the unicycle from Red’s Dream on a monitor in one of the levels. I apologize for all the questions. I’m really fascinated with production processes behind the scenes, and especially the collaborative process. Thanks for making some timeless classic games, and I look forward to seeing the work you create with 10 10.
These days making cutscenes are easy with animation tools within game engines. I can't find any info on how people code sequences for retro consoles and in tech demoes. Can you share knowledge of how it's done?
When you say cutscenes you referring to animated intros (like in Sonic 3D) or characters walking, talking (like RPG's)....? Each one have a different answer.
Piggybacking off the last question of this video: Is there a game you developed in the past that you think you could go back to make some optimizations now that there is more information in regards to developing on the older consoles? For example, optimize/condense code so you could add more content, or optimize the code so the game runs better.
Recent subscriber here. Really cool hearing all of you have to say. If I may, as someone who's not a native english speaker, your mic was a bit echoy and hard to hear at time. Love your content and happy to see more :)
In the future would you consider showing off more Prototypes of older games, such as from the PS1 or PS2 erra. These are my favorite videos. I just find these erras of gaming very fasinating and seeing Prototypes or unreleased game is always a treat.
I'm not sure if this is relevant but it's been bothering me for some time and I hope you can shed some light on it. Some emulators allow for refresh rate changing for both NTSC and PAL and since most games rely on these for either 30 or 60 FPS output changing these could change the actual output FPS. For some games, they still work fine and can output 144 FPS and even more without any issues but others (mainly older games for older consoles) regardless of whether game speed is tied to FPS or not they speed up specifically when going above 50 or 60Hz. Why does this happen? Is there any way fix this with a script or with the emulator's cheat function?
A lot of emulators make the entire emulation run faster at speeds over 50 or 60, instead of requesting visual output more often like modern games, mostly because the games did work like "update internal workings, update current scanline". Granted, some games even now are still developed with frametime, so running them at 120 FPS instead of 60 would double the game's speed.
Old games would just add fixed numbers to the positions. for example, if the game is set to 60 FPS and they want the character go 60 pixels to the right per second, the game will add 1 pixel per frame, but this fails when the frame rate is under 60 (or over 60). Newer games either create a separate timer for physics that will count at 60 FPS regardless of how slow the video is, or will use delta timing, where you measure the frame rate, and use it compared to the target frame rate to increase/decrease numbers to get a constant speed. Like on the example above, if the target is 60 FPS, but the system is delivering 30, you divide 60 by the frame rate and you get a 2, and when you add this 2 to the position instead of 1, you get the same speed you would if the frame rate was 60
This is based on how well the game engine decouples the logic rate from the rendering rate. A proper decoupling will allow the render rate to go at whatever pace and still have a fixed logic rate. A common practice today is to use an accumulator of elapsed delta times from the last main run loop, and then take away chunks of tick time from the accumulator and produce a logic tick. This can result in multiple ticks in one runloop or no tick if not enough time has elapsed. Some clamping is required to not let it go out of hand at the price of slowing the logic simulation down.
@@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire Isn't Doom 2016 along those lines? I remember seeing the speedruns and most play at higher-than-normal FPS to allow for physics to go a bit weird to propel the player upwards?
@@FuzzballRenakitty Yeah, while most of it is delta time, extreme values can still really mess with physics or give a tiny boost that normal speeds wouldn't get.
David probably means any unusual or unflattering(but otherwise perfectly legal) business practices that you were privy too or forced to comply in hindsight. Thats usually what those type of questions are looking for because of how common knowledge NOA's maturity content filter policy was up through MK1.
We know about a lot of code you're proud of, but what game design idea did you bring to the table when working on a game that you were particularly happy with?
Two underrated things about Jon's intro is that lovely pitch bend doppler effect at the very start, followed by the narration starting on the last chord of the first 4/4 progression every time, it's top tier presentation!
You know you raise a good point. Never considered that.
Audio nerd alert 🤓 haha
I was just (re-)noticing the bend on the first note when I started watching this video. I actually don’t like it because it feels like it disrupts what would otherwise be a great infinite loop without any clear beginning or end. If it had been somewhere in the middle of a phrase, I would’ve liked that more. Small nit to pick though. I’ve heard this loop on other channels and I’ve always like it.
I was west headphones and thought a low thunder rumble was occuring, it is raining here after all.
The pitch bend is simply how the song starts, that's not something he did manually. ("Is That You or Are You You" from Chris Zabriskie's album Reappear)
But yeah, it's a good sound :)
@@Agnes.Nutter Experiencing heavy Mandella effect right now lol, I could have sworn earlier videos lacked the pitch bend and had only appeared recently. Good shout!
Ahaha, I knew my question was a doozey. Thank you for answering it anyway, big fan of your work and your channel!
Yeah his reaction/answer was great. lol
Dang, I always thought he had less videos than he did before but I never could figure out which one was missing.
I wonder what happened to them. Gotta love legal BS...
most interesting crossover I've ever seen
What was the context for this question? Were there videos on the channel which are now gone?
@@LoLAimAtMe Thanks. :)
What was the most troublesome/persistant bug/glitch you guys ever had to deal with? How did it come about, what did it do, and how did you fix it, if you did?
Trick question, Jon codes with every possible possibility in mind and therefore has never had any bugs in his games.
@@KaylaJoyGunn yes but this would include games where Jon isn't programming and therefore can't do that.
What's the real name of the game? Sonic 3D Blast of Sonic 3D Flickies Island? Or, more importantly, why was the name changed for the other region?
I second this question.
Given he always refers to it as Sonic 3D Blast, I imagine that is his preferred name, although it'd be interesting to hear his thoughts on region based name changes.
Sonic 3D Blast is the official name, Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island is a regional name.
@@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire this, same situation with StarFox/StarWing/Lylat Wars
3D Blast for the Megadrive, and Flickies Islands for the newer release for me- PC version was actually the first I played before emulating the Megadrive game (that was a weird experience!)
Haven Call of the King was such a good 3d platformer, I remember my brother and I playing it when I was little.
Sad to know it didn't sell well, but understandable considering the fierce competition at the time.
This comment is here to boost your standing in the youtube algorithm
I applaud your efforts. You could also comment with a link to another one of his videos from the archives so maybe someone new will see it and increase more views.
This comment is here entirely to gratify my ego. Any egalitarian effects percieved by others are either imagined or unintended.
Hi Jon, not really a question but just wanted to say I've been following your channels for many years and I love your content. Looking forward to future games from 10:10!
I cannot stress how fantastic this channel is! Always a delight to see a new video, and an AMA is just the icing on the cake.
You can always tell when a programmer makes videos. Short, compact, concise, and to the point without wasting a single cpu cycle. A regular uTube content maker would have fluffed this up to over 20 minutes.
Nice video! I look forward to seeing it again under multiple channel names.
Seriously one of my favorite channels on here. I'm watched your playlist multiple times over. As for potential questions:
a. With all the fantastic tricks and solutions you've showed (The perfect pixel collision, Sonic R's transparencies, etc...) was there ever a solution that got away? As in your were forced to downgrade an idea because there just wasn't enough time to figure out the 'trick' to get it to work / look / play the way you wanted?
or
b. If you were able to pick any retro / vintage game system to go back to with the programming tricks and knowledge you have now, which one would you go? And what would you be looking to push even further on the hardware (examples: Better 3D tricks on Saturn, more colors out of the Mega Drive, etc)?
Keep up the fantastic work!
your voice and the background music are just so soothing and calming, I love it.
Thank you for continuing to make these videos, they are always a joy to watch and listen to.
Would it be possible for you to do another Coding Secrets on ~somebody else’s game~? It was fascinating watching your analysis of the Sonic series, and I’d love to see you take a look at something like Alien Soldier, Gunstar Heroes, or Thunderforce IV/Lightening Force. (three absolutely wild mega drive games, off the top of my head)
So 'Back in the old days,' how would programmers learn these coding secrets? How would you find the undocumented functionality and in the pre-internet days, how would you expand on that?
it's a plot hole that any two people knew the same thing before the internet tbh
@@parkerkrakowiak2990 people talked to each other even before the internet, and developers knew other developers, it's not a stretch to imagine that the info just spread around. The internet makes things faster but it's not like knowledge can't spread without it
@@axelprino the precise process is a good question. Where there books? Did they write letters to each other?
Drinking beers at a trade show after party and randomly share "obvious" process and tooling things, that blow the colleagues mind?
I think he mentioned in a "crash bandicoot" that they started changing sonys "do not touch" part of the libraries. Are there other instances of "the sign must exists because there is something interesting behind this point"?
Iwata talked about this, basically you just had to know people.
The internet has made people pretty antisocial tbh
Wasn’t that easy when Nintendo were douchebags and wouldn’t even give western NES developers sufficient technical info for the system or a dev kit, just made them try and figure out most of it themselves.
Watching this video while I develop my game for GBA. Thanks for your answers, for your insight, and for coding my childhood!!!!
Loving this channel! Keep up the fantastic videos!
Mickey Mania SNES had load times because the SPC700 was super slow at loading the files needed for the sound. If you could somehow disable the SPC and see what happens, the levels probably would load pretty much immediately.
Modding the rom so the assets were uncompressed would probably do it too.
@@wishusknight3009 Why?
@@bangerbangerbro The load screens on the snes version are the snes cpu spending time to unload graphical assets from the rom and decompress them. They are compressed to save rom space. If they were stored uncompressed they would load significantly faster. Or could even be streamed from the rom.
@@wishusknight3009 oh yeah saving ROM not RAM my bad.
@@wishusknight3009 "stored uncompressed" though they would load faster, that would likely mean they would look glitchy onscreen.
Here is a question actually- in regards to the original Sonic 3D, what was the process in the rendering and modeling of the 3D graphics and importing them into the game?
I would assume it was done like how Rare did the Donkey Kong Country games - render them out as 3D models in advanced (for the time) computers, take stills of them doing individual movements, digitize those frames down to sprites, and then manually adjust color pallets to work within system limitations.
@@SatoshiMatrix1 you short answer is right. Very expensive computers to model, export the frames, use them into the game. Same with Rock n Roll Racing (Blizzard), and Mario RPG.
It's always fascinated me how you did Episode 3 in Lego Star Wars before the actual movie came out. Did they let you pre screen it? Hand you a general plot outline?
I think it's general practice for devs to get pre screenings or concept art. I remember in his stream where he showed betas of Transformers The Game that he talked about how he got to meet Michael Bay and discuss some stuff about the movie and they were given test shots and screenings and stuff to show what they wanted.
@@nemsis4149 this is correct.
Having worked at the studio that did the Mad Max game, despite it not following the same plot, we were privy to details of the plot. In fact before it became what it was, the plan was to follow a similar plot and to have a linear story and gameplay. That turned out not to be very fun and in the end that idea was ditched. We leaned on our own story telling talents with lots of feedback from the director instead and totally rebooted the project.
Really fun how plans change sometimes in this industry. :)
@@SK83RJOSH Woah! That's really interesting, I love hearing insight like this from people who are actually in the industry. Was the studio or director really tight on how you handled the Mad Max license or were you given much freedom with it? I've heard that film studios can sometimes be an absolute nightmare to deal with.
It's kind of random and specific, but I've been wondering this since I was a kid. What's the logic behind the money cap in the LEGO games? It isn't a round number like 10,000,000, but it's also not quite the limit for a 32-bit integer.
Probably it's better to have a limit than to overflow. And 1,000,000 is more natural to the players than something like 1,048,576
@@AntonioNoack WDYM by that?
They asked why it wasn't 'a round number like 10,000,000', and your example of '1,000,000 is more natural to the players' is a round number.
and these statements together don't make sense:
'Probably it's better to have a limit than to overflow.' -you
'but it's also not quite the limit for a 32-bit integer.' -original commenter
due to the fact that putting the limit at the limit for an integer type would prevent overflows.
...'than something like 1,048,576' -you
but the point of the original comment is that it IS a number 'like 1,048,576'.
Overall it seems like you didn't read the original comment, or skimmed it, ignored the point, and spewed out some vague "awnswer" that doesn't adress any of the concerns of the original comment.
@@Jake28 this is too LONG..... get it? No?
@@Jake28 The first paragraph would have been fine on its own.
@@theninjascientist689 I was trying to point out that the whole reply was flawed, not just the first part of it.
I know you are quite proud of many features in Sonic R, even though development was rushed.
How does it make you feel when content creators use the game as a punchline or low-hanging-fruit?
Lol "content creators".
@@bangerbangerbro Exactly. More like content regurgitators.
@@XbandTv a lot of content creators that "critisize" are just dumb people
When it comes to fan games and community driven reverse engineering projects, such as with Mario 64 and GTA 3, that exist to bring old games up to modern standards and introduce new features. Do you believe that publishers are morally within their rights to attempt to shut these down or should they really be trying to be more competitive instead? Also, are there any that you are particularly a fan of?
Idk about morally but legally a company needs to enforce their ownership of IP or risk losing it. That being said, some companies don't particularly seem to mind allowing fan games and such (SEGA) but I guess Nintendo in particular have Disney-esque lawyers.
Competition is the answer. If you make a thing but someone else makes a better version of said thing, you shouldn't be able to force people to use your inferior thing just because you made it first, you should take inspiration and improve the original and not be threatened by some free stuff people made in their free time that is probably gonna crash 90% of the time and never see completion. Nintendo and T2 need to realise that they aren't protecting their profits here, just making themselves look bad while blocking peoples ability to show off their talents and hampering their career prospects.
@@jeronimomora4956 Oh absolutely. The reason I was asking from a moral standpoint is that it's more subjective and it would be interesting to hear a seasoned develoiper's take on the matter. Part of me wonders if there are aspects of it that aren't all that obvious as a consumer.
Honestly the reverse engineering side of things is more intriguing to me since developers are usually wise enough to avoid distributing copyrighted material and instead require the end user to provide it. Unless I'm mistaken, this is essentially how that Sonic 3D Blast update worked.
@@jeronimomora4956 companies don't lose IPs. They can only lose trademarks and that only if they don't defend the teademark against commercial use or they don't have evidence that they use their own trademark.
@@jeronimomora4956 thing is reverse engineering projects are 100% original code so they cant claim ip ownership from it
Hey Jon, big fan. My questions are:
What do you think was the most clever code you've written? (a sort of visual trick, a crucial optimization, etc.)
From your perspective, what console was the most difficult to develop games for? (complicated hardware design, insufficient documentation/development kit, etc.)
I've been watching your channel for years and have only ever heard your voice. The person I imagined while listening was so far different than the actual you!
"10•10 games"
Ive never heard a more on the nose title
Did you ever develop for the PS3, and if you did, what did you think of the PPE / SPEs in the Cell processor?
This is not an answer, but he did, he mentioned that in the video about Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart
Do you have a game idea that you've held onto for years, maybe as a passion project? Either because of time, legal (copyright), financial restraint or maybe wanting it to remain personal? If so... Is there anything you don't mind sharing about such a project? Theme, mechanics, creative workarounds you're proud of that we haven't seen... Thanks for the videos now and the games then and now.
This was great! More of these pls. Also, really like your other style of content as well. Enjoy the channel.
I have some questions pertaining to ways that assets were inserted into games during development back then.
First of all, what was the process like for importing music into games on the Mega Drive? What was it like to program sound - specifically, what was it like to create synth presets? Did you make dedicated tools to test functions of the sound engine?
Secondly, I would like to know more about how pre-rendered sprites were made. How were you able to resize a set of sprites and unanimously limit their palettes without getting any anti-aliasing pixels between the object and the background? Also, how were you able to get such vibrant colours on these sprites? Did the limited set of colours available for use on the Mega Drive affect the way these sprites were rendered?
Lastly, what were tools like for making hand-drawn sprites? Did they automatically optimise sprites to utilise less memory (i.e. by re-using certain tiles of the sprite in multiple animation frames and such)?
Sorry for the abundance of questions, but I'm just really curious as to how the process of making a game on such a system in the past compares to now, especially with the advancement and accessibility of modern development / creative tools.
I got a question: What's your opinion on modern game engines? Do you think it's better to code your own engine from scratch or use one of these? Or would it even matter?
Life is short, and we only have so much time to make things. If the result will be the same with the engine, then use the engine. If you just want to make the engine yourself because you think it will be fun, then make it yourself.
Yeah game engines are huge endeavors these days. With things like cross compatibility across console hardware and even generations, big testing between all that, features, etc. It's too expensive and time consuming to make a bespoke engine like they could back in the day.
Given how evolved engines are these days it's better to make games from the established engines then then move to engine development in your later years. Engine dev is extremely important however they should ideally pick from pools of game coders to move over as the things they would have liked to have make it into the engines making it again more evolved.
I have an unpopular opinion. I always felt it's better to write your own engine depending on the game you're trying to make. Sure, using a well established engine is all well and good and makes life easier, but if you're just trying to make a small 2D game for example, learning unreal engine 4 or unity and getting it to run a 2D game well enough is probably as much effort as simply coding it directly. But this is based on my limited experience with game development so what do I know.
Plus, I always felt that when you learn a game engine, you don't really learn how games work, youre simply training yourself to use a tool with all its limitations. If you write your own game engine, you undersrand what really goes on under the hood and it gives you the freedom and capability to do whatever you like
@@9a3eedi Programming your own engine used to be very important due to hardware limitations, where things like memory and resource management were very important. These days however, just programming a tile system or texture page system would likely take you about as long as making the actual simple game. I'd compare it to building furniture. It's about what you do with wood, but it doesn't make things faster to cut down massive amounts of wood yourself and process it, and somebody who's building a shelf doesn't need to know how to do so.
Great video Jon. Thanks for sharing.
This will be an awesome series!
Given you mentioned the demoscene, would it be possible for you to perhaps explain how certain things in Titan Overdrive demos for the Megadrive (original and Overdrive 2) were achieved?
That's already done. There is 'part 1', find it on the channel. However still there is place for continuation.
❓QUESTION: How long did it take for you to go from tinkering and programming to creating your first game. I.e. What was the journey from knowing nothing to Leander❓❓❓
Yeah noticed you asked this before would love to hear what the journey was like
Why doesn’t this channel have more subs? It’s educational and a lot of fun to watch!
Noticed Nemesis/Gradius playing on your X-arcade in the background. One of my all time shoot'em'ups! Good memories! 👍😍
How did you initially get into game programing and the games industry?
Also, can you tell us about any of the "edgy" humor from Lego Star Wars that had to be cut?
If I recall correctly, I think he got his start programming Amiga demos, which probably paved the way for way for Genesis/MegaDrive programming
@@paulgraves1392 Well I think he was just one of the many people that got into programming with the spectrum and was into games, as there are a few he said he sent off to try to get published but were not, then at some point managed to start his own company?
You've done a ton, and it's super interesting to hear your stories.
Do you think that as technology gets faster there's less focus on optimizing code and programs just brute force through everything? I always admire how much could be done with old consoles and games written mainly in assembly, but nowadays there's much more high level tools for game development that might add a lot of unnecessary overhead
A decent compiler eliminates or even improves the overhead inherent in high level programming languages, assuming the code is competent enough. Most SNES games were written in C, and many Genesis games were too. The real issue is less which language you use and more the fact that if you give someone tons of memory to work with, they're going to use as much of it as they want. Clever asset use is way more important in that regard than low level things like manual memory allocation. Sonic 3D Blast was made possible by optimizing the hell out of the assets. The code, while often just as clever, held it all together.
I think you are not updated with recent game reviews. A lack of optimization is a constant problem in modern games. Ghost of Tsukushima is loved by some people because it have short loading screens in comparison with any other open world game. In the other side of the spectrum, we have games like Cyberpunk 2077, Control, and Red Dead 2 whit theirs "why da fuc***???" so long loadings.
@@Bainemo When you interact with some modern devs, you can't shake the impression they are lazier, especially when you're talking performance problems. Either you upgrade your hardware or go something else, because they're not gonna optimize anything.
@@Bainemo Interesting! I would have expected SNES to be still mostly assembly, and not C.
@ The two languages are very similar, but C does most of the extremely low level stuff for you. Most if not all games would still have critical sections that were coded in assembly where every last bit counted, but there's really no reason to write simple, basic code in assembly. What C could do in 50 lines, assembly might do the exact same thing in 500.
I miss playing Haven!!!
I love your videos so much. I could listen to these stories all day!
Hello, good day, thanks for this video... well, the question i have is:
How much did you knew about the development of Sonic Xtreme at the time?
Also, glad to see Lego Dimensions here, specially the Wii U version, love that machine.
Love this channel, keep up the good work!
The most fascinating feature of The Wrath of Cortex is the inclusion of Crunch - the idea of Cortex retooling the concept of Crash to create an even stronger adversary is an awesome one. I even liked how the boss fights consisted of just himself using one of the four Elementals, it's a breath of fresh air from the previous games' formula of "2 minor henchmen, 1 major henchman, second-in-command, big bad".
How did all of these ideas come about? Were there any other scrapped plans or ideas for Crunch during development?
When making the LEGO games, was there a general structure the engine followed so it could be easily ported to other consoles and PC? If so, how has the engine changed over time?
What a handsome fellow! 😎👍🏻
Keep these AMAs coming, brother!
In more modern games, sometimes the grind is made worse so customers pay extra cash to skip things like that. Do these kinds of things come from publishers? How do game makers feel about such things? Do they know how us consumers feel about being ripped off and it looks like we are being tricked into paying more for the same games?
I'd asked about this in the AMA announcement, but I'll go ahead and repost it here cause I'm still VERY curious.
For the Lego Star Wars games how does the lightsaber combat work? Specifically the parts involving lightsaber collision and button timing. My brother and I used to spend hours fighting eachother in the early PS2 version of 1,2, and 3 (The one with the shoot-em-up gunship level everyone hates) and it was surprisingly indepth.
I am now going down a Genesis/Mega Drive tech demo rabbit hole. It's absolutely mindblowing what that system is still capable of. Thank you for mentioning these!
Was there any point in the development of Sonic R where vehicles or karts were considered because of the popularity of that genre in that Era?
wow its good to have a face to go with the voice, in my mind every programmer looks like Dennis Nedry until proven otherwise
Interesting video, hope you get around to the questions I submitted in the last video. Always nice to hear from the guy who built my childhood (pun intended).
I don't see the pun.
@@bangerbangerbro Legos, building.
@@destronlaserwave9566 ok
Hi Jon, I'd love you to talk about your days as a coder in 'SAE' and how it came about, I was really young when I got Amazing Tunes 2 (I thought it was excellent!) The dancing person and the speakers was cool. Cheers, Aaron
Have you ever considered participating or participated in a game jam to get the old "working with limitations" magic back?
If you could go back and remake a game that you think didn't quite work so well now that you've opened a new development studio, what game would that be? i personally think Rascal would be an intriguing option, though I'd love to hear your input!
You worked on LEGO Dimensions?
That was very recent!
How was it possible that games that ran on such different hardware as the SNES and the Genesis, and were developed by completely different teams (like Mickey Mania), looked so incredibly similar?
Hey! What kind of advice or comment would you give to modern indie game developers?
I was surprised to find out how strikingly handsome Jon looks. I thought he would be some portly balding man rocking a dad sweater.
ot: Whenever I watch a video of your channel and it has this track in the background, I think of "Charly Lownoise ft. Mental Theo - Wonderful Days
", which throws me back into a spiral of old songs from my childhood.
I also got a question. Is there something you wanted to create/code but couldn't do? Because it wasn't possible or took too much time (especially on the older consoles)?
10 10 games sounds like an interesting project. I'll have to keep my eye out.
I'd wished i knew about this AMA! would loved to ask a question here.
If this is alright with you asking one here, my biggest question would be is why didn't you guys make a 3D platformer Sonic game back on the Sega Saturn when you guys made a perfectly good one for the Bonus Stages only? made no sense honestly and felt like a kick in the bum for those wanting that to be the full game instead being stuck to little bonuses/mini games only.
These questions are about the LEGO games in particular, but which licensee had the most restrictions? Which licensee had the least?
its crazy seeing what you look like! .. congratulations you look better than i expected :p
I noticed one TT Oxford game wasn't noted, so my question is
Did you have any part in TT Oxford's Super Monkey Ball Adventure? If so, how was the task of scripting? Noticed it used AutoLab
How interested or involved are/were you in the demoscene? What was your favourite platform for demos?
You showed the Titan demo at the end, figured I'd expand on that idea :)
this song absolutely perfectly fits the Coding Secrets series
That PS2 game. I will have to check it out.
What was the most fun/challenging hardware you developed games for and why?
You should develop more games for older hardware. Especially the Genesis.
It was A LOT of fun playing the Director's Cut of Sonic 3D Blast on my Mega EverDrive Pro on my Analogue Sg, eternally grateful that he did that and released it to the public.
If he were to launch a Patreon or a Kickstarter for such a project I would back it in a heartbeat.
They probably won't. What a shame. He was a good console.
Is developing for modern multi-core systems similar to developing for the multiple processors on Saturn?
Not a dev myself but from my understanding I'd have to say no. The dual CPUs were apparently the exact same as each other (there were also 6 other processors for various functions) but I must presume that one of those was acting as the master and the other a slave (there's some 'politically correct' way of saying that now but I don't care, it's an apt description of the process). The master would run the scheduler and would send commands to all of the other processors. Sending commands to the identical processor would have a performance hit since the master would have to process data that it's sending to the slave, I'm not super familiar with Saturn hardware so maybe they overcame this somewhat with shared memory but there's always at least some hit in a true multi-processor setup. For the fastest performance of things that could be handled by the main processors it was probably best to just run it on the master while the slave would run slower operations. In a modern multi-core setup one of the cores would probably run the scheduler and send commands to the others but it's far more autonomous and efficient. Each core will generally have equal access (to my understanding) so there won't be any real advantages to running one core over the other. Modern systems and languages also tend to handle that stuff for you, you just specify that you want to run some part of the code in a different thread and the scheduler will figure it out (there's still some thought involved as you can easily create issues if 2 threads are working on the same data at the same time and especially if one of the threads was expected to have modified some data before the other thread started using it). On the Saturn I presume they were still doing a lot of low level code and probably specified exactly which processor should run what code (this wouldn't be too different from what they were used to since they had a lot of different processors to send code to anyway). Modern hardware tends to have just a couple of processors to worry about and modern operating systems help to abstract things to a point where you don't have to worry too much about what hardware you're running on so long as it follows certain conventions. I think we do still technically have separate sound processors but I also know that a lot of the functions for reading sound files are handled by the CPU and in fact modern CPUs usually have built in mp3 decoder functions to speed up the process. Math processing also used to be done by separate chips but those are also integrated into the CPU now (GPUs also have integrated math capabilities that are specialized towards various functions). Modern GPUs are actually a lot like old systems in that they have many different cores with different capabilities while modern CPUs tend to have just a few cores that are bigger, have many functions, are higher clocked and all offer the same functions. (More cores means more complex which means more heat, which means the cores have to run slower).
I RECOGNIZE TRIPLE-Q
Flintstones
One game I am very curious about in particular was Toy Story 2. How much freedom did you have into that project? Also I believe you've only worked on the PlayStation version, but I should probably mention a variety of differences between the different console ports, most notably things like a few misplaced sound effects, or Woody's face texture on the final level. Do you have any idea of what might've happened or what caused them?
1:20 I love how the picture chosen is for the Wii U version of Lego dimensions.
Good Luck with the new Studio. Please update us (if you can) on any new projects.
Question for a future video: What helpful resources and documentation were available for coding on older consoles? Was there any Internet communities you had access to at the time for asking coding related questions or did you have to solely rely on the official documentation provided by SEGA as an example?
Can you show off a build of Sonic R that was around E3 time? There seems to be 3 songs from around then that didn't make the cut (some kind of hip hop percussion beat, a Super Sonic Racing variation (with early vocals) that sounded like a menu theme and the version of Super Sonic Racing that was sung by an internal Sega employee, if I recall correctly), as well as Resort Island being set in a nice orange sunset while the final version was just in daylight (weather effects were only in newer releases on other platforms).
If that's not possible, I totally understand.
I'd love to see an episode about debugging on hardware.
that would be interesting, but I wonder if he has all the hardware necessary and is legally allowed to showcase the full process.
The next question is, if he still has the "muscle memory" to do it.
I know that firmware development (which every old school game basically is) is somewhat annoying to setup and try to force to speed up setup times, leading to messy documentation, that is filled with messy update and changes notes, meaning: It is hard to recreate as the setup is a mess in it own right.
@Guy Dude Thanks, I've seen this one before (but I'm sure others have not). It would be cool to see more of this used in situ.
I think that what David meant was whether there is anything you know about Nintendo or Sega in the 90's that you wouldn't know otherwise were you not a game developer in that era, and with an emphasis on things that Nintendo or Sega wouldn't be too happy to let regular people know.
I imagine that they wouldn't let you know about such things either!
What kind of games are you a fan of today, and what kind of games would you be interesting in working on?
Hey, Jon. I’ve been a big fan of your games since I was a kid. Being a huge fan of Pixar, I have several questions based on the games you developed for their films.
What was your relationship with them like when developing games based on their films? Did you ever consult with Pixar staff, story crew, or animators (John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Joe Ranft) directly during any games’ development?
What film production materials did you have when developing the games? (storyboards, partial or completed animation, concept art, any of Pixar’s 3D assets? ) Did you ever develop anything based on material that was ultimately cut or drastically changed in the final film (like the Jedi Temple level from LSW)?
What was it like working with Pixar again after 15 years on LEGO Incredibles? I loved all the Easter eggs to Pixar’s history, my favorite being the unicycle from Red’s Dream on a monitor in one of the levels.
I apologize for all the questions. I’m really fascinated with production processes behind the scenes, and especially the collaborative process. Thanks for making some timeless classic games, and I look forward to seeing the work you create with 10 10.
What was the process for doing the translations for Japanese versions of games such as Mickey Mania?
Kotaku have a series called "Lost in Translation" about Final Fantasy games. You should check it out.
Awesome video!
These days making cutscenes are easy with animation tools within game engines. I can't find any info on how people code sequences for retro consoles and in tech demoes. Can you share knowledge of how it's done?
When you say cutscenes you referring to animated intros (like in Sonic 3D) or characters walking, talking (like RPG's)....? Each one have a different answer.
@@cesarkopp2 sequences of animated events. Most of the tech demos are like that too.
What's your opinion on ECC RAM being still in 2021 considered a premium professional product not intended for general public?
Decompression times also exist in the Super NES/SFC version of Acclaim's _Batman Forever._
Why do LEGO Star Wars III GHG models show up invisible when loaded into LEGO Batman 2?
More of this! So here is another question: What was the technical challenge you had that you most enjoyed conquering?
Piggybacking off the last question of this video: Is there a game you developed in the past that you think you could go back to make some optimizations now that there is more information in regards to developing on the older consoles? For example, optimize/condense code so you could add more content, or optimize the code so the game runs better.
I kind of want a Psygnosis t-shirt now
Recent subscriber here. Really cool hearing all of you have to say. If I may, as someone who's not a native english speaker, your mic was a bit echoy and hard to hear at time. Love your content and happy to see more :)
In the future would you consider showing off more Prototypes of older games, such as from the PS1 or PS2 erra. These are my favorite videos. I just find these erras of gaming very fasinating and seeing Prototypes or unreleased game is always a treat.
I heard there was a planned GB Advance Version of Haven. Could you tell something about it?
I'm not sure if this is relevant but it's been bothering me for some time and I hope you can shed some light on it.
Some emulators allow for refresh rate changing for both NTSC and PAL and since most games rely on these for either 30 or 60 FPS output changing these could change the actual output FPS. For some games, they still work fine and can output 144 FPS and even more without any issues but others (mainly older games for older consoles) regardless of whether game speed is tied to FPS or not they speed up specifically when going above 50 or 60Hz. Why does this happen? Is there any way fix this with a script or with the emulator's cheat function?
A lot of emulators make the entire emulation run faster at speeds over 50 or 60, instead of requesting visual output more often like modern games, mostly because the games did work like "update internal workings, update current scanline". Granted, some games even now are still developed with frametime, so running them at 120 FPS instead of 60 would double the game's speed.
Old games would just add fixed numbers to the positions. for example, if the game is set to 60 FPS and they want the character go 60 pixels to the right per second, the game will add 1 pixel per frame, but this fails when the frame rate is under 60 (or over 60).
Newer games either create a separate timer for physics that will count at 60 FPS regardless of how slow the video is, or will use delta timing, where you measure the frame rate, and use it compared to the target frame rate to increase/decrease numbers to get a constant speed.
Like on the example above, if the target is 60 FPS, but the system is delivering 30, you divide 60 by the frame rate and you get a 2, and when you add this 2 to the position instead of 1, you get the same speed you would if the frame rate was 60
This is based on how well the game engine decouples the logic rate from the rendering rate. A proper decoupling will allow the render rate to go at whatever pace and still have a fixed logic rate.
A common practice today is to use an accumulator of elapsed delta times from the last main run loop, and then take away chunks of tick time from the accumulator and produce a logic tick. This can result in multiple ticks in one runloop or no tick if not enough time has elapsed. Some clamping is required to not let it go out of hand at the price of slowing the logic simulation down.
@@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire Isn't Doom 2016 along those lines? I remember seeing the speedruns and most play at higher-than-normal FPS to allow for physics to go a bit weird to propel the player upwards?
@@FuzzballRenakitty Yeah, while most of it is delta time, extreme values can still really mess with physics or give a tiny boost that normal speeds wouldn't get.
LEGO Dimensions was insanely expensive, but awesome. Just sad it never got a next-gen patch or PC release for 60fps.
David probably means any unusual or unflattering(but otherwise perfectly legal) business practices that you were privy too or forced to comply in hindsight. Thats usually what those type of questions are looking for because of how common knowledge NOA's maturity content filter policy was up through MK1.
What's your favorite part of the development process for games?
We know about a lot of code you're proud of, but what game design idea did you bring to the table when working on a game that you were particularly happy with?