My first AMA - your questions answered Is That You or Are You You by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommon...) Source: chriszabriskie.... Artist: chriszabriskie....
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@Triple-Q3 жыл бұрын
Ahaha, I knew my question was a doozey. Thank you for answering it anyway, big fan of your work and your channel!
@ansonx103 жыл бұрын
Yeah his reaction/answer was great. lol
@AiOinc13 жыл бұрын
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...
@palegrass61683 жыл бұрын
most interesting crossover I've ever seen
@JosephDavies3 жыл бұрын
What was the context for this question? Were there videos on the channel which are now gone?
@JosephDavies3 жыл бұрын
@@LoLAimAtMe Thanks. :)
@youngwaveaudio93903 жыл бұрын
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!
@NaokisRC3 жыл бұрын
You know you raise a good point. Never considered that.
@nickwallette62013 жыл бұрын
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.
@grizzgo3 жыл бұрын
I was west headphones and thought a low thunder rumble was occuring, it is raining here after all.
@Agnes.Nutter3 жыл бұрын
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 :)
@youngwaveaudio93903 жыл бұрын
@@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!
@Nimta3 жыл бұрын
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?
@KaylaJoyGunn3 жыл бұрын
Trick question, Jon codes with every possible possibility in mind and therefore has never had any bugs in his games.
@Nimta3 жыл бұрын
@@KaylaJoyGunn yes but this would include games where Jon isn't programming and therefore can't do that.
@redhotsonic3 жыл бұрын
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?
@Roebloz3 жыл бұрын
I second this question.
@tomysshadow3 жыл бұрын
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.
@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire3 жыл бұрын
Sonic 3D Blast is the official name, Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island is a regional name.
@SullySadface3 жыл бұрын
@@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire this, same situation with StarFox/StarWing/Lylat Wars
@FuzzballRenakitty3 жыл бұрын
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!)
@CullenCraft3 жыл бұрын
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?
@bangerbangerbro3 жыл бұрын
Lol "content creators".
@XbandTv3 жыл бұрын
@@bangerbangerbro Exactly. More like content regurgitators.
@kamiloalvarez58008 ай бұрын
@@XbandTv a lot of content creators that "critisize" are just dumb people
@normconel29073 жыл бұрын
This comment is here to boost your standing in the youtube algorithm
@martinperry18433 жыл бұрын
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.
@SineN0mine33 жыл бұрын
This comment is here entirely to gratify my ego. Any egalitarian effects percieved by others are either imagined or unintended.
@JamesJacksonKFPDad9993 жыл бұрын
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!
@entity80193 жыл бұрын
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.
@gravious3 жыл бұрын
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?
@parkerkrakowiak29903 жыл бұрын
it's a plot hole that any two people knew the same thing before the internet tbh
@axelprino3 жыл бұрын
@@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
@sarowie3 жыл бұрын
@@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"?
@FrecklesOpenMic3 жыл бұрын
Iwata talked about this, basically you just had to know people. The internet has made people pretty antisocial tbh
@Prizm443 жыл бұрын
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.
@BuddyCorp3 жыл бұрын
your voice and the background music are just so soothing and calming, I love it.
@GameRaveTV3 жыл бұрын
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!
@warmCabin3 жыл бұрын
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?
@nemsis41493 жыл бұрын
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.
@SK83RJOSH2 жыл бұрын
@@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. :)
@nemsis41492 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@FuzzballRenakitty3 жыл бұрын
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?
@SatoshiMatrix13 жыл бұрын
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.
@cesarkopp23 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@oodatoodat13 жыл бұрын
Nice video! I look forward to seeing it again under multiple channel names.
@dammonbutler69513 жыл бұрын
Thank you for continuing to make these videos, they are always a joy to watch and listen to.
@shroomologist3 жыл бұрын
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?
@jeronimomora49563 жыл бұрын
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.
@talibong95183 жыл бұрын
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.
@shroomologist3 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@S41t4r43 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@valletas3 жыл бұрын
@@jeronimomora4956 thing is reverse engineering projects are 100% original code so they cant claim ip ownership from it
@blakasmurf3 жыл бұрын
❓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❓❓❓
@mariosuper20503 жыл бұрын
Yeah noticed you asked this before would love to hear what the journey was like
@GladeSprayAllDay3 жыл бұрын
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.)
@Qwerbey3 жыл бұрын
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.
@AntonioNoack3 жыл бұрын
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
@Jake283 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@cixlo3 жыл бұрын
@@Jake28 this is too LONG..... get it? No?
@theninjascientist6893 жыл бұрын
@@Jake28 The first paragraph would have been fine on its own.
@Jake283 жыл бұрын
@@theninjascientist689 I was trying to point out that the whole reply was flawed, not just the first part of it.
@GadgetUK1643 жыл бұрын
Loving this channel! Keep up the fantastic videos!
@OGdadpool3 жыл бұрын
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.
@XBladenoJutsu3 жыл бұрын
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.
@wishusknight30093 жыл бұрын
Modding the rom so the assets were uncompressed would probably do it too.
@bangerbangerbro3 жыл бұрын
@@wishusknight3009 Why?
@wishusknight30093 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@bangerbangerbro3 жыл бұрын
@@wishusknight3009 oh yeah saving ROM not RAM my bad.
@ExtremeWreck2 жыл бұрын
@@wishusknight3009 "stored uncompressed" though they would load faster, that would likely mean they would look glitchy onscreen.
@RahanPlays3 жыл бұрын
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)
@BenRK903 жыл бұрын
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?
@Kyrieru3 жыл бұрын
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.
@AltimaNEO3 жыл бұрын
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.
@salaciouscreations43233 жыл бұрын
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.
@9a3eedi3 жыл бұрын
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
@Kyrieru3 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@enn_4a3 жыл бұрын
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.
@ICONICMUSIC3 жыл бұрын
This was great! More of these pls. Also, really like your other style of content as well. Enjoy the channel.
@jchambon3 жыл бұрын
Did you ever develop for the PS3, and if you did, what did you think of the PPE / SPEs in the Cell processor?
@futabamajima3 жыл бұрын
This is not an answer, but he did, he mentioned that in the video about Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart
@dew-drop3 жыл бұрын
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!
@mysteriouscreature10933 жыл бұрын
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?
@paulgraves13923 жыл бұрын
If I recall correctly, I think he got his start programming Amiga demos, which probably paved the way for way for Genesis/MegaDrive programming
@bangerbangerbro3 жыл бұрын
@@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?
@izzieb3 жыл бұрын
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?
@r.u.s.e35863 жыл бұрын
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.
@enigmaxaero3 жыл бұрын
What a handsome fellow! 😎👍🏻 Keep these AMAs coming, brother!
@worldofretrogameplay69633 жыл бұрын
Why doesn’t this channel have more subs? It’s educational and a lot of fun to watch!
@Schimnesthai3 жыл бұрын
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.
@bizwize29652 жыл бұрын
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.
@destronlaserwave95663 жыл бұрын
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).
@bangerbangerbro3 жыл бұрын
I don't see the pun.
@destronlaserwave95663 жыл бұрын
@@bangerbangerbro Legos, building.
@bangerbangerbro3 жыл бұрын
@@destronlaserwave9566 ok
@j.c.denton59673 жыл бұрын
You should develop more games for older hardware. Especially the Genesis.
@IronMan35823 жыл бұрын
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.
@AltimaNEO3 жыл бұрын
They probably won't. What a shame. He was a good console.
@Baegus3 жыл бұрын
I love your videos so much. I could listen to these stories all day!
@nomad_20XX3 жыл бұрын
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
@Bainemo3 жыл бұрын
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.
@cesarkopp23 жыл бұрын
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.
@BrunodeSouzaLino2 жыл бұрын
@@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.
2 жыл бұрын
@@Bainemo Interesting! I would have expected SNES to be still mostly assembly, and not C.
@Bainemo2 жыл бұрын
@ 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.
@rpavlik13 жыл бұрын
You've done a ton, and it's super interesting to hear your stories.
@b0rg10103 жыл бұрын
Noticed Nemesis/Gradius playing on your X-arcade in the background. One of my all time shoot'em'ups! Good memories! 👍😍
@nahumgardner3 жыл бұрын
10 10 games sounds like an interesting project. I'll have to keep my eye out.
@acos213 жыл бұрын
This will be an awesome series!
@evgeniy70153 жыл бұрын
Hey! What kind of advice or comment would you give to modern indie game developers?
@SourceSSB3 жыл бұрын
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?
@cinemint3 жыл бұрын
Watching this video while I develop my game for GBA. Thanks for your answers, for your insight, and for coding my childhood!!!!
@ukdeathwheel3 жыл бұрын
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?
@MrNamegame3 жыл бұрын
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!
@soviut3033 жыл бұрын
I'd love to see an episode about debugging on hardware.
@sarowie3 жыл бұрын
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.
@soviut3033 жыл бұрын
@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.
@MrDmoney1563 жыл бұрын
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.
@TalkSickMass3 жыл бұрын
I was surprised to find out how strikingly handsome Jon looks. I thought he would be some portly balding man rocking a dad sweater.
@richp46983 жыл бұрын
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!
@vmproducties3 жыл бұрын
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)?
@m00028563 жыл бұрын
What kind of games are you a fan of today, and what kind of games would you be interesting in working on?
@8bitgamerC643 жыл бұрын
Good Luck with the new Studio. Please update us (if you can) on any new projects.
@sling-b3 жыл бұрын
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?
@yaosio3 жыл бұрын
Is developing for modern multi-core systems similar to developing for the multiple processors on Saturn?
@grn12 жыл бұрын
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).
@iamdarkyoshi3 жыл бұрын
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 :)
@SonikkuAtrue3 жыл бұрын
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
@MaskedGuyCh2 жыл бұрын
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.
@tjmichael3 жыл бұрын
Have you ever considered participating or participated in a game jam to get the old "working with limitations" magic back?
@alexatkin3 жыл бұрын
LEGO Dimensions was insanely expensive, but awesome. Just sad it never got a next-gen patch or PC release for 60fps.
@CxR22623 жыл бұрын
Love this channel, keep up the good work!
@sonickun953 жыл бұрын
Hey, man. This was a great video and just wanted to give my thanks for the cool stuff you've shown us. While knowing close to nothing about coding myself, I've always been interested in seeing how games are made and how parts of them work, even the workarounds when it came to hardware limitations. I hope we get to see more neat content from you in the future. Keep up the fantastic work! I don't think it was asked in this video but I've been curious about if there was any platform you had way more problem coding for compared to others and if so, what was it that made it so much more cumbersome?
@jamess.78113 жыл бұрын
this song absolutely perfectly fits the Coding Secrets series
@Mviews-hb4ib3 жыл бұрын
its crazy seeing what you look like! .. congratulations you look better than i expected :p
@peterjwest3 жыл бұрын
Great video Jon. Thanks for sharing.
@Moryo73 жыл бұрын
What was the most fun/challenging hardware you developed games for and why?
@solarcrystal54943 жыл бұрын
wow its good to have a face to go with the voice, in my mind every programmer looks like Dennis Nedry until proven otherwise
@mrcynicallyred20073 жыл бұрын
Congrats on the new studio. Will you create brand new IPs of your own, or be a studio for hire? Also, will you continue pushing hardware and impressing with the games released, like you have for so many years.
@MusicIsKnowledge3 жыл бұрын
Awesome video!
@thepirategamerboy123 жыл бұрын
What was the process for doing the translations for Japanese versions of games such as Mickey Mania?
@cesarkopp23 жыл бұрын
Kotaku have a series called "Lost in Translation" about Final Fantasy games. You should check it out.
@DrWakey3 жыл бұрын
More of this! So here is another question: What was the technical challenge you had that you most enjoyed conquering?
@legoboy1214studios3 жыл бұрын
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.
@vivas5553 жыл бұрын
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 :)
@wrapdump3 жыл бұрын
This video felt like it was 60 seconds long not seven minutes. Great stuff
@GreenSwede3 жыл бұрын
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?
@Eltro9203 жыл бұрын
I was suspecting the SNES version of the Mickey Mouse was more of a nightmare to optimize. Not just for the slower CPU, but also the dev environment.
@TURBOXLR3 жыл бұрын
I was impressed with the Directors Cut mod you made for Sonic 3D (which I want to thank you for doing that in your spare time) is there any other games you made you wish you can find time to make another Directors Cut to improve it or make it better? Also when did you leave Traveler's Tales/TT Games and what was the last project you worked on there?
@keinermehrfrei013 жыл бұрын
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?
@wilburcobb89903 жыл бұрын
"10•10 games" Ive never heard a more on the nose title
@NeZversSounds3 жыл бұрын
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?
@cesarkopp23 жыл бұрын
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.
@NeZversSounds3 жыл бұрын
@@cesarkopp2 sequences of animated events. Most of the tech demos are like that too.
@AaronAzan19793 жыл бұрын
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
@thatanimeweirdo3 жыл бұрын
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.
@polar-star643 жыл бұрын
What's your favorite part of the development process for games?
@futabamajima3 жыл бұрын
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?
@dededigiorno16533 жыл бұрын
These questions are about the LEGO games in particular, but which licensee had the most restrictions? Which licensee had the least?
@f.k.b.163 жыл бұрын
I really liked this video! It was fun! God bless!
@NickJayj3 жыл бұрын
35 year old programmer here and a lifelong Sega fanboy :) I'm really sad i missed the AMA but i do have some questions i always wondered. 1. How long was the average development time? And was "Crunch" as common as it is today? (harsh working environments, lots of overtime etc) Or was it more "chill" back then? 2. How did you deal with documentation? As a programmer myself i know that going back to code you worked on weeks or months ago can he hard, but now we have comments and separate documentation we can share easily with each other. I guess that wasn't really a thing back then? So just write on alot of notepads, notebooks, post-it-notes? 3. How did you work with the artist? If i'm not mistaken, all sprites are coded with the color for each pixel, so did the artist just send you the code or was it up to the programmer to translate the image they sent into pixels and then insert them in the code? 4. When you worked on the game, was everything just in one giant file? Or was there multiple files? 5. How did you survive without source control? 😅 Did you have hundreds of copies of the code spread everywhere, did people work on their parts and then you had to manually "merge" everything by copying and pasting or how did it work?
@satrethuel_productions3 жыл бұрын
There is a character in Lego Batman named "Snowman" a lot of people are confused about who this character is. To my knowledge, it does not appear anywhere else. But great job on Lego Batman! The Lego games where the only games I played growing up and they where all I needed.
@proboscis-2slegogamechanne6352 жыл бұрын
Why do LEGO Star Wars III GHG models show up invisible when loaded into LEGO Batman 2?
@Lu9_ST3 жыл бұрын
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?
@ABlob3 жыл бұрын
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.
@rn_72x693 жыл бұрын
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?
@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire3 жыл бұрын
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.
@dan_loup3 жыл бұрын
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
@Main2673 жыл бұрын
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.
@FuzzballRenakitty3 жыл бұрын
@@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?
@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire3 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@RaRa-eu9mw3 жыл бұрын
A more awkward question would be asking him about the multiple allegations of abuse of employees by this horrible man.
@Psythik3 жыл бұрын
Holy shit; why does nobody else seem to be as excited about the face reveal as I am?
@thebootknifer3 жыл бұрын
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.
@sebastian61213 жыл бұрын
Hey Jon which were the most innovating and amazing new capabilities you saw each generation of consoles?
@EriknocTDW2 жыл бұрын
I believe there were at least 2 secrets Nintendo didn't want people to know. 1. The SNES gamepad, among other input devices, are backwards compatible with the NES. 2. The SNES was capable of reading alternate SNES input devices in controller port 1, but they prohibited developers from doing so.
@RamLaska3 жыл бұрын
4:50 The 65816 (SNES) couldn't hold a candle to the 68000 (Genesis). NOT wanting to start a flame war - they were both amazing machines and amazing CPUs, but the Genesis had an incontrovertible advantage in raw CPU performance.