Wipeout (PSX and Windows Source)
illusion.64history.net
illusion.64history.net
[1] https://phoboslab.org/log/2015/04/reverse-engineering-wipeou...
Last year I decided to finally break out of the browser and get into actual PS1 homebrew. Unfortunately the state of the scene wasn't, and to some extent still isn't, that great: most homebrew games are still made using what's basically a modded version of the original Psy-Q SDK, which is rather limited in many ways. I started contributing to an open-source PS1 SDK instead [1] by first adding a dynamic linker, then revamping the build system entirely and now building a custom high efficiency FMV playback library (totally not inspired by pl_mpeg of course) that combines the hardware accelerated MJPEG-like decoder with the GPU's alpha blending capabilities. I'm also working with a few other people on reverse engineering one of the most famous PS1-based arcade systems, the Konami System 573.
It's a shame the PS1 isn't receiving the attention other consoles are getting in the homebrew scene. The hardware is architecturally simple yet powerful [2], but I guess nobody wants to fiddle with 120mm polycarbonate circles anymore.
[1] https://github.com/Lameguy64/PSn00bSDK [2] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation
And from a developer perspective, it's not all that constraining enough to be interesting. It's just low-res and slow. The architectural simplicity works against it. There's not all that much to do by cleverly arranging tiles and sprites or banging hardware registers like on the earlier 2D consoles. And nobody is really going to be impressed by any 3d lighting or animation wizardry that's still going to fall short of what even the N64 can do. The PS1 dominated its market at the time, but that market just moved on to the newer generations rather than capturing much nostalgia.
I also disagree that there isn't "much to do", many popular games remain exclusives to the PSX and this is reflected in the prices they fetch:
It's why, amusingly, the PS1 game that is probably the most highly regarded today is a 2D game (Symphony of the Night).
3D games just age like milk and people have no interest in old ones.
That said, I do feel the mix of 2D sprites and basic 3D that many of the JRPGs (like Xenogears) went for did age well and works best at that resolution, without texture filtering.
I love your comment on your original post.. it was like you were tempting fate. I'm actually surprised the source wasn't leaked the day after you finished your code. That's the sort of annoying thing that reality always throws at me.
"I wonder how big the original WipEout sorurce is. It's quite sad that probably nobody will ever see it again, considering that it now belongs to Sony."
Then advertisers went bat shit insane
You cant hear about it from David himself in this podcast: "The Making of Earthworm Jim with David Perry - The Retro Hour EP319" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzETRBuzfWY
part about advert gaming is at https://youtu.be/UzETRBuzfWY?t=3820
How did they fit so many songs on the 1990s media?
Here's a Youtube link to the original game's soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmkdRG7MQm4
Fluke also used Wipeout imagery for their "Atom Bomb" video.
The instrumental version of Firestarter is forever embedded in my memories ;-)
Everywhere, except the United States.
I know, because I was a States-resident techno-head and I had to go "underground" to experience this stuff with others.
I don't know if it was the echoes of the disco backlash triggered by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night (one of my earliest memories), but electronic music was extremely niche in the US at least until Deadmau5 lit up the Jersey Shore circa 2010. And to this day, if you go to certain places like New Orleans, any request for anything electronic will have someone redirect you to the "gay district" (the cultural/musical co-delineation is oddly strict down there)
And then what is invariably the next question: "Is... is there any other music like this?" Me: "Hmmmm, well, there's the rest of Prodigy, but maybe check out this album 'Vegas' by The Crystal Method, like maybe Cherry Twist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLkQ2eLrUMs or Vapor Trail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNXLCDOC9NQ ... or hey how about Snapshot by Fluke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOWB4sbZnrg ..."
Hooooooo boy.
Certainly one of my favorite experiences in life is sharing an appreciation for something and just watching as it happens in realtime. It's rare but wow. And now I have a 9 month old son so I get to do it all over again...
The only vid I ever knew of them having was this one, it was on a compilation VHS of music videos which had a pair of these prismatic glasses to wear while watching it so that every light source shimmered everywhere [1]. It looks like there's some more official ones they've done on search.
The whole proper electronic music scene was too busy throwing parties to do music videos. I think that was more of a eurodance thing.
Seeing Lifeforms on TV is my earliest memory of a CGI music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDSDeyfYJ5M
then they did videos for Cascade, Amoeba, Snake Hips pt 1+2, Smokin Japanese Babe, My Kingdom, We Have Explosive, maybe more.
I think most electronic tracks that charted in the 90s got a video? At least in the latter half.
He did the actual in-game music of Wipeout and the non-Playstation versions of Wipeout 2097.
It's got tons of TDR work in it, in addition to several other studios / designers. I could definitely see the TDR aesthetic resurfacing with all the 00s revival stuff going on right now.
The packaging and manual alone still feel fresh after almost 30 years IMHO:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/wipeout/cover-art/gameCoverId...
You can see the little "I love my DR" logo on the back cover:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/wipeout/cover-art/gameCoverId...
https://www.mobygames.com/game/wipeout/cover-art/gameCoverId...
It truly felt like "an experience from the future" back in 1995 - and to some extent still does, for this fan at least :)
This fan as well. Really fantastic, innovative stuff.
We'll never know for sure, but I've always thought that the success of the franchise really stemmed from their influence at the beginning.
So fresh in 1998/99
However there is also a code path for drawing using a proprietary ATI CIF hardware accelerated 3D API in winati.c - support for RAGE cards only.
I'd never seen the proprietary ATI 3D calls before.
I dug up some more info here: https://drew1440.com/tag/ati-cif/
Boy some good vertigo memories come with that game.
I worked on this game at exactly the same time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Proje...
That game was supposed to be 2D, but was switched to the characters being 3D, so I brought my whole DOS software 3D engine and ported it to DirectX over the course of 2 weeks.
I'm going to dig into that drawpoly.asm! There was a lot of competition in the early->mid 90s for poly blitting. I would say I had one of the very top ones. I was doing demo coding before I became a commercial video game developer.
LOL.. reading DRAWPOLY now...
; Draw flat shaded poly
; IN: EDI->polygon data
; OUT: Polygon appears as if by magic in buffer
The real blit code is in 3DPOLY.ASM. Doesn't look like it does perspective-correction on the texture-mapping, which isn't unusual for the time. I don't remember the PS1 well enough, did it do correction in hardware?Just a fan, not associated with it
There is hope for the future :P
Who is 'we'? Is this legal?
What sticks in my brain was the fact that mines, caltrops, etc. would persist throughout the game unless somebody actually hit them. This meant that jumping out to first immediately wasn't always a good strategy as somebody behind you could drop a bunch of stuff in a pattern at a corner and a lap later the person in first would be the person to hit all the stuff.
The rocket-powered explosive skateboard was also amusing as if a couple people dropped them all at the same time you could effectively close down all but a small width of the track when they came flying around.
I wish I could remember what it was.
edit: somebody else got there while I was searching! And we can't both be wrong
Edit: I got the timeframe right but the multi-player wrong. Apparently the game I was thinking of was "Deathtrack" but I merged that with the later games that were multi-player.
It's getting more common nowdays that the source code of abandonware games have been released by insiders.
I kinda hope someone can make this build in a modern system. Nice to see iconic games like these to be preserved.
(i never actually owned any games myself, but psx 1 units and games were common at certain types of parties and bars back then. my psx 1 was for caetla only!)
after opening Wipeout98.sln VS 2019 migrated it somehow, fixed #includes paths - use relative "..\PSX26" instead of full "\WIPESRC\.." - added missing int type to previously allowed implicit int where needed, and added _USE_32BIT_TIME_T #define to Release config (it seems it's the only config present..) I was greeted with 'missing CD drive' dialog
didn't pursued it further
I wrote this in VC++ 6:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Proje...