Outrun 2006, bringing it to DC!!

[Shinto]

Hey! If "SEGA" Could Make Puyo Puyo Fever for the Dreamcast which came out in "02/24/04" Why not make a Port of Outrun 2SP/Outrun 2006 for the Dreamcast? I'm Down! Sign Me up!

[Segata Sanshiro]

In case someone jumped directly to this page, you should know that there is a post from a member of Sumo Digital (the team responsible for the console conversions of OutRun 2) on the previous page.

[cube_b3]

Hello,

First, if you wanted us or Sega to convert the game over, you're going to have to consider it's going to cost quite a bit of money. We're talking somewhere in the region of thousands of pounds, maybe even half a million pounds, since this wouldn't be a short or necessarily easy project. So you'd either have to look to fund this yourselves, or prove it was commercially viable in order for Sega to fund it.

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SOL
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With the rescent turnover from games released for Dreamcast is authentic however it is clearly less then the reuired amount then again an old school shooter can not match the hype of a symbolic game like OUTRUN 2.

[Imerion]

Whoa! That was unexpected! Who would have known that someone from Sumo would post here. Thanks S0L for sharing your opinions! I was just thinking about one thing :

First the main one I could spot is memory. The Dreamcast only has 16MB of main RAM. For OutRun 2006 we are indeed doing a PSP conversion, but as you probably know, the PSP has 32MB of system memory to work with.

If I remember right, the PSP only has 2 mb of gfx-mem while the Dreamcast has 8 mb vram so that could probably compensate a bit. The DC also has hardware-based texture compression. (Perhaps the PSP has that as well? I don't know really...).

[MetaFox]

You also have to remember that Sega hasn't developed and published a game themselves for the Dreamcast since 2002, and that was a simple NAOMI port. They obviously don't see the system as a viable source of income themselves.

Since it's their own system, and they handle licensing - it won't be a matter of showing them how much the current releases sold. They obviously already know - and they still feel that the system isn't a viable release platform.

You also have to remember that the game won't be released for multiple regions. So, the profit margin will be considerably less. Also, if you want to convince them to put the game online, they will need to finance money to run the servers.

Realistically, it's doubtful any Dreamcast game will sell in the five figures, and it's doubtful that even a big name Sega title will either. As I stated before, the fanbase just isn't there.

Note that as the collector of petitions for the Melty Blood and Senko no Ronde petitions, I can tell you from experience to not expect more than a couple hundred hand signed petitions. That kind of petition works for those games since a couple hundred is a huge amount when you're only looking at selling a couple thousand. When you're looking at selling in the five figures, it's not even a drop in the bucket.

You have to Look at this from a corporate perspective, as we at Dreamcast-Scene have to view the viability of each thing we petition: will it make a profit for the company compared to the cost incurred?

In this case, the answer is a clear no.

[zyloj]

I'll continue with this topic a little while longer to see if there is more interest... i closed the topics at LikSang and DCS due to too much offtopicness and negativity.

I'd call it as a realistic point of view, instead of negativity. Dreamcast is not a mainstream system. Good luck to get the compromise of 10000 buyers of the game at 60$, but I doubt warezers will pay for it...

[Cid Highwind]

I doubt most warezers would have paid for it in the first place, even if the game would be $30,-

Maybe some kind of copyprotection can be used that will be hard to crack, and yes, I'm thinking about Bleemcast here

Again, I don't mean to be blunt, but when enthusiastic about a project I prefer to be honest and say what's on my mind.

[Rand Linden]

NB: I haven't read anything earlier than the last couple posts.

Please don't turn this into a huge off-topic discussion, but IMHO (with a good amount of empirical evidence), people will copy for free regardless of price.

As far as using the DC protection, it's a possibility.

If someone is in direct contact with them, feel free to suggest that they (the developers, publishers, whatever) PM me here with their contact info.

Rand.

[S0L]

Hi S0L,
its a very nice surprise to see someone from the OutRun 2 development team taking the time to participate in this discussion. I personally deeply thank you for that.

No probs - thought I'd pop by and pitch in with some info

On the other hand I'm sure that as a developer you (as a team) would be interested in the challenge to recreate this masterpiece for a slightly older and weaker system. It would be a test for self reassurance and proof of your skills as artists and programmers, but of course we all have to eat and feed our families and its too big of a sacrifice to do it just for the love of games.

I'm sure if we had spare time and the hardware we'd have a go - just right now we've got our hands full with 4 platforms worth of OutRun, and a number of other projects in the works. We just don't have time!

It is most probable that this project would turn into a fan based game in honour of OutRun (of course without using or copying any official assets like art, code, licensed vehicles, level design or music).

This is probably a better idea, there are plenty of good DC scene coders and artists - I keep an eye on the scene

As for the technical side, it is my belief that OutRun can be recreated on the DC, of course there will be a visual hit, but given your skill and tools (what we have seen so far) indeed a good port can be done. I personally was thinking about the Daytona USA engine because there are various similarities in how both games render the graphics... The Daytona engine is highly optimised (60fps even for 2 player split screen with visible traffic on screen), it can display large number of vehicles on screen (with almost unnoticeable LOD change), it can render large outdoor areas without pop-up, the vehicle highlight/shading system is solid, its loading times are quite fast... of course, I'm not comparing it directly to your OutRun 2 engine, just drawing parallels.

The Daytona Engine is very good, but is based on holding the levels in RAM, OutRun on the other hand loads each stage as it is required. It's a fair amount of data to load - and you've only got the length of the junction to get it in. The Daytona engine could probably be adapted - but it's a large change - remember you're still playing the OutRun when it's loading, unlike Daytona which can take a breather and drop out the Front End.

This is certainly true, nevertheless with skill and workarounds good visuals can still be obtained from the DC, for example this small level was made for a tech demo for a homebrew 3D Dreamcast engine... it is around 3000 polys and all the 52 textures occupy 4Mb (please don't feel offended by the quality, its an example).

That looks very good indeed! I'm not sure of the poly counts per level on OutRun, but I would estimate it's more like 30,000. The game doesn't draw all these at once of course but it gives you an indication of size. I don't think most of the current PSP C2C assets would fit in the DC, not to leave you room for code certainly! The compression we've used on PSP would be comparable if not better than the DC - but bear in mind whilst the PSP assets are fine for a small LCD, they wouldn't look quite so hot on a 32" TV Going back to streaming, you'd probably need to stream the level in parts to get round the memory - which solves part of the problem but not all of it.

Thank you again for posting, and good luck on all future SUMO projects from OutRun fans worldwide.

No problems. Have a crack at it though, I look forward to seeing how you get on Besides, I'm sure you all want to prove me wrong now!

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S0L
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[S0L]

If I remember right, the PSP only has 2 mb of gfx-mem while the Dreamcast has 8 mb vram so that could probably compensate a bit. The DC also has hardware-based texture compression. (Perhaps the PSP has that as well? I don't know really...).

The 8MB VRAM would help, mostly for textures (which would need to be larger than the PSP resolution so they'd be nice and clear on the big screen) but you'll still need main RAM for the course models, music, LOD's, collision data and game code.

The PSP's texture compression is as good as if not better the DC's - so you won't be making too many savings with it to fit the rest of the game in.

As I say, the key would be to look to stream the levels in - only loading what you need. That gets around most of it - but it'll be a pain to do

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S0L
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[Smurph]

Whoa! That was unexpected! Who would have known that someone from Sumo would post here. Thanks S0L for sharing your opinions! I was just thinking about one thing :

First the main one I could spot is memory. The Dreamcast only has 16MB of main RAM. For OutRun 2006 we are indeed doing a PSP conversion, but as you probably know, the PSP has 32MB of system memory to work with.

If I remember right, the PSP only has 2 mb of gfx-mem while the Dreamcast has 8 mb vram so that could probably compensate a bit. The DC also has hardware-based texture compression. (Perhaps the PSP has that as well? I don't know really...).

16?! I thought it had 40! I was probably thinking of the cube, lol.

[Segata Sanshiro]

The Daytona Engine is very good, but is based on holding the levels in RAM, OutRun on the other hand loads each stage as it is required. It's a fair amount of data to load - and you've only got the length of the junction to get it in. The Daytona engine could probably be adapted - but it's a large change - remember you're still playing the OutRun when it's loading, unlike Daytona which can take a breather and drop out the Front End.

I've had this idea for some time now about how to fool the player into not feeling the loading time that much if the engine cant stream the data: After the choice is made either left or right road, the camera changes perspective to a 3/4 focusing on the car... something like this



still giving the impression of movement there is a piece of scenery repeating continuously (or simply by shifting the texture UV to fake speed) not revealing farther than a few meters of road around the car, while the next level is loaded. To take the players attention off this, we can display stage times, a map or a dialogue. While this is crude and in no way comparable to the seamless transition found in OutRun 2, its an idea of how to load the next track without breaking the flow of the race.

[Segafreak2]

Hello,

Greetings from Sumo!

I came across your petition via RMLLUK - and I thought I'd drop by to go over a few problems you might face

First, if you wanted us or Sega to convert the game over, you're going to have to consider it's going to cost quite a bit of money. We're talking somewhere in the region of thousands of pounds, maybe even half a million pounds, since this wouldn't be a short or necessarily easy project. So you'd either have to look to fund this yourselves, or prove it was commercially viable in order for Sega to fund it.

Lets say hypothetically though, that money isn't a problem. What development issues would you face?

First the main one I could spot is memory. The Dreamcast only has 16MB of main RAM. For OutRun 2006 we are indeed doing a PSP conversion, but as you probably know, the PSP has 32MB of system memory to work with.

So you'd have to squeeze the game quite a bit. As it is, we're compressed the format of the 3D models, textures and audio significantly to get it into the PSP - without starting to lose detail I'm not 100% sure how you'd get it down much further. So you'd have to be prepared to take a visual hit.

Thats the single biggest hurdle - though by no means the only one. The next would be deciding on the framerate to aim at. With reduced detail in there, you would have to make some further sacrifices to the quality in order to acheive 60fps. So you'd have to decide on whether the visual quality or the framerate took priority. I can imagine the arguments you'd get in here discussing that!

Aside from the development, you also have to consider the issue of licensing. Since the game uses official representations of Ferrari's, you would also need to obtain the Ferrari license. This will also incur a cost, and require time to ensure your game assets are approved. Time you have to pay artists and programmers for

That's just a few issues. Please understand I don't want to be seen as raining on your parade - one of the reasons we put so much time and effort into OutRun2 is that we are big fans too.

Just bear in mind that it might prove to be very difficult to get an 'official' conversion.

All the best,

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S0L
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Hey, great to see that someone cares about the DC! Thanks a lot for posting

I don't think I am wrong in thinking that the PS2 has 8MB of RAM, so surely a DC release would be possible. Also, because of this the DC is able to match the PS2s on-screen polygon generation capability, so wouldn't it be theroetically possible?
I don't know much about this, but there are a few ways of generating revenue:
Say every copy of the game cost ?35. If 10,000 copies were sold then thats ?75,000 for you if you get 25% per game. If every new Japanese game has sold out (or almost sold out) and the average price of these games on eBay is ?60 a piece. Then the price increase is about 200% (they cost around ?30 each import). If you sell 200% more copies than 10,000 then you get 200,000 (200,000*30/100*25) copies; thats ?150,000. Twisted logic there though
Estimates:
Japanese market: 20,000
Import Market: 30,000 (this is the world)
50,000 - ?375,000.

Have you tried advertising on the games themselves? (bill-boards and cars??)

[Cid Highwind]

There is no way the DC can match PS2's polygon calculation, also the PS2 has got 4mb of video memory and 32mb of main ram. The only things the DC has got over the PS2 are texturing capabilities, FSAA, and the fact that it's much easier to code for.

Speaking of PS2, would it become a problem for DC concerning the size of its medium? The GDrom only holds up to 1gb afaik.

[S0L]

Hey, great to see that someone cares about the DC! Thanks a lot for posting

I don't think I am wrong in thinking that the PS2 has 8MB of RAM, so surely a DC release would be possible. Also, because of this the DC is able to match the PS2s on-screen polygon generation capability, so wouldn't it be theroetically possible?
I don't know much about this, but there are a few ways of generating revenue:
Say every copy of the game cost ?35. If 10,000 copies were sold then thats ?75,000 for you if you get 25% per game. If every new Japanese game has sold out (or almost sold out) and the average price of these games on eBay is ?60 a piece. Then the price increase is about 200% (they cost around ?30 each import). If you sell 200% more copies than 10,000 then you get 200,000 (200,000*30/100*25) copies; thats ?150,000. Twisted logic there though
Estimates:
Japanese market: 20,000
Import Market: 30,000 (this is the world)
50,000 - ?375,000.

Have you tried advertising on the games themselves? (bill-boards and cars??)

I've still got my DC, it gets pulled into service for Rez!

PS2 has 32MB of RAM so we've got the memory to play with, which is why I'm pointing it out as one of the interesting things that would need to be overcome in order to do a DC port. Even this is a reduction on the original Xbox version which has 64MB of RAM to run in. We've had to pull all manner of tricks to get it into the PSP and PS2, so I wouldn't envy the task of getting it smaller still.

You reckon you'd be able to sell 50,000 copies of OutRun2 on DC then? You should work in marketing

Advertising wise - remember this is Sega's baby - we only do the conversions to the home platforms. I think we might upset them if we started adding in advertisements!

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S0L
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[Juan]

I'd start focusing all efforts to plan B - fan based game.

[S0L]

I've had this idea for some time now about how to fool the player into not feeling the loading time that much if the engine cant stream the data: After the choice is made either left or right road, the camera changes perspective to a 3/4 focusing on the car... something like this



still giving the impression of movement there is a piece of scenery repeating continuously (or simply by shifting the texture UV to fake speed) not revealing farther than a few meters of road around the car, while the next level is loaded. To take the players attention off this, we can display stage times, a map or a dialogue. While this is crude and in no way comparable to the seamless transition found in OutRun 2, its an idea of how to load the next track without breaking the flow of the race.

Yep it could work, and is one work around, breaks a bit from the Arcade though - people get funny about that

As I've said though, to keep the detail and have a shot at the same framerate, the best way would be to look at streaming each level in a number of pieces, if you could crack that, you've sussed the big one.

Bear in mind that you can't go backwards in OutRun, and once you've passed some scenery, you don't need to see it again.

Anyway - you'll need to assemble your crack team of coders and artists - good luck!

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S0L
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[Cid Highwind]

About the advertising: Sega might agree on having Sega games advertised in the DC version, Sonic stuff for example. I don't know if you've played Shenmue 2 on Dreamcast, but it had Shenmue billboards along the road.

And if it's going to be a homebrew game, we can add all kinds of DC homebrew scene adds in the game, in a fun way, as some kind of tribute to all the hard work of homebrew devvers

[Segata Sanshiro]

I'm absolutely for this, in the outrun world (and in every racer) there are tons of real of fantasy advertising, of course we will put the most relevant homebrew and emulator projects for DC... About real sega assets, like sonic, etc.... I don't think that's such a good idea, because we could get in trouble. I work in advertising and I'm familiar with the legalities involved in trademark graphic material.
Of course while the project is freeware/open-source we wont be taken so seriously and can get away with a few sonic, nights, etc images, but if by any chance the game gets published we'll get burned.

expect an early wip of the website soon

[evanft]

My view:

1. This is 0% chance of happening. Our efforts should be focused on getting games made for Naomi ported to the DC, since doing so would be relatively easy.

2. It seems pretty obvious from SOL's posts that any conversion of Outrun 2006 for the DC would take a considerable graphical hit over the PS2 and Xbox versions. Frankly, I don't want a substandard version of a game when I can get a much better version. I'm sure most of us own a PS2 or Xbox, so there's really no point to push for a DC version.

3. It's just not a financially sound idea to release Outrun 2006 for the DC. The only people likely to buy it would be the hardcore, dedicated Dreamcast fans (i.e. us). That group isn't going to be large enough to make up for the cost of porting the game.