PC Gamer Interview with D3T about bringing Shenmue 1 & 2 to PC/back to life.

[AnimeGamer183]

I see what you are saying spud, I just think that waiting 3 months until the japanese release date to form a conclusive opinion about this after its already been out in other territories is asking way too much and unrealistic. its the time frame in which everything has happened and the warning signs we have seen so far and everything thats going to happen between now and then that has me worried, if what we have seen so far is any indication. We know the original games are the greatest games of all time, and nothing will ever change their perfection but that article just seems like its trying to hide all the skeletons in the closet from this "much to be desired" launch so far via PR non sense.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

I don't think they're hiding anything. The answer about the code being hard for their team to translate to English was pretty honest. I believe it, too. I am hoping Sega will now provide some additional support now that we're looking for a comprehensive patch.

 

[spud1897]

I see what you are saying spud, I just think that waiting 3 months until the japanese release date to form a conclusive opinion about this after its already been out in other territories is asking way too much and unrealistic. its the time frame in which everything has happened and the warning signs we have seen so far and everything thats going to happen between now and then that has me worried, if what we have seen so far is any indication. We know the original games are the greatest games of all time, and nothing will ever change their perfection but that article just seems like its trying to hide all the skeletons in the closet from this "much to be desired" launch so far via PR non sense.

I hear you and looking at it they should have waited to release the game, they were trying to get the jump on other games and capitalise on the Shenmue 3 announcement.

I do think there is more to the story, strained relationships with SEGA maybe? I think SEGA Japan pulled rank on it and said its not coming here until its fixed, hence the Nov release.

As long as they keep patching then it's ok. If they pulled support I can imagine the outcry and rightfully so. Unfortunately we can't control what comes next. The delay of the patch for consoles isn't ideal but say they release a V4 patch for PC next week and consoles mirrors that with the majority of issues fixed things should be more positive. What didn't help was the silence from SEGA initially.

And yes the originals are the best games ever & technical marvels that i'm still learning about today.

 

[AnimeGamer183]

I don't think they're hiding anything. The answer about the code being hard for their team to translate to English was pretty honest. I believe it, too. I am hoping Sega will now provide some additional support now that we're looking for a comprehensive patch.

They are hiding the patch drama, down playing the amount of bugs there are, talking like they have actually done a good job, although I wont argue they have put a ton of work into this, but its just not the desirable outcome from what we have seen so far and all of that is being ignored and they are praising these broken ports. This is the fakest form of honesty there is, that article is really something else given the current situation, its like for every honest bit in there there is something equally important that goes unsaid. And I think it builds on what John has told us, Sega told reviewers a patch would fix the bugs by launch day, it didnt, this article almost seems like they are talking about a version of the game that does not exist as of today or the time of that interview, and are making promises in the future before hand, like what they told early reviewers, its the same thing.

 

[高野和泉]

As I learn more about the technical marvel this game achieved back in 1999/2001 I'm starting to think SEGA must have wizards and Time-Travelers @ their HQ working for em during the peak of its gaming empire.

 

[pilman]

Reading small tidbits like this always surprise me.


Credit/source PCGamer.

"
Did you find anything interesting in the source code?
The moon in Shenmue 2 is not a texture. It’s an actual 3D object in the distance correctly lit by the sun direction. This produces accurate phases. We were surprised by this level of detail! The Lucky Hit games adjust the physical behaviour of the ball based on the weather and temperature, calculated by the time of day. For cutscenes, the game switches to high definition heads and hands, which allow for more expression. In Shenmue 1 the game logic is all written in a scripting language. For Shenmue 2 they got rid of it and wrote the logic in C code directly."

The freaking moon!! I mean that's just crazy. I do recall in the OG xbox version not seeing the moon but I did see it replicated in the PC version.

 

[pilman]

Well I suppose the language barrier could add some significant time to this process, so 2 and a half years is the answer. And we know why so many aspects are so poor, I find it jarring that the whole interview they dance around the fact that it has been controversial, and fans have been upset, the first paragraph says "quality port" which is a bold statement. The dev mentions "all the positive feedback" which is just hilarious considering reality.

So Google Translate and poorly reverse engineered audio? Does that mean the music and audio issues are here to stay? This is what they came up with and thought was ok to release to the public? I may just stick to my Dreamcast and Xbox versions of Shenmue, this is too much. d3t clearly were not the people for this job, why couldnt we get a japanese dev for this port? At least someone whos first language was japanese since the code sounded very complicated. Who chose d3t and why?

All the patches in the world arent going to erase the past couple weeks and none of that explains why the release couldnt wait to get more polish which the dev even confirms it needed and also confirms they were aware of bugs and still went through with everything. This is a sad and perplexing story, and I have a feeling it pretty much comes down to It was either this or nothing, heart breaking.

In all fairness, I highly doubt you will find someone shit all over their own work. With that negative attitude, how do you think that would make the workers/developers feel? They want the game to succeed hence the patches coming out. Clearly this was prepared in a way to at least challenge some of the propaganda. We all know the game has some issues, D3T admits that and they also acknowledge that the music is "ok". You can't expect good work with low morale, what needs to be done is to be optimistic and to allow the feedback for patches to fix these issues. Almost every game that has been released the last couple of years has gone through serious glitches, bugs and especially with open world games. While Shenmue is not a "full" open world game, there are alot of factors that can impact how the game plays. Yes we could have had a Dreamcast wrapper/emulator as the official release, but those emulators were not perfect either. The emulation came with all the additional baggage such as the slowdowns and additionally had limitations to what was designed for those emulators.

Look up the development and release of any other open world games, Kingdom Come: Deliverance comes to mind which I was part of the beta team, they have now ironed out everything to where the game is a beauty. Just be patient.

There was a lot of propaganda and lies that some were spreading claiming the game was a simple port or that it was just released in a very quick sequence due to sega not wanting to spend the money. It's one thing to make a claim with factual evidence, another claim to claim opinion and speculation as material fact without any evidence to back up the statement.

Mind you, the game could have been 100 % and someone still would have complained there was something wrong with the game. If you understand anything about corporate politics, trade negotiations and contractor agreements, NDA's, all that fun stuff, you'd understand that the contractor simply is obligated to follow what the client is requesting.

 

[spud1897]

In all fairness, I highly doubt you will find someone shit all over their own work. With that negative attitude, how do you think that would make the workers/developers feel? They want the game to succeed hence the patches coming out. Clearly this was prepared in a way to at least challenge some of the propaganda. We all know the game has some issues, D3T admits that and they also acknowledge that the music is "ok". You can't expect good work with low morale, what needs to be done is to be optimistic and to allow the feedback for patches to fix these issues. Almost every game that has been released the last couple of years has gone through serious glitches, bugs and especially with open world games. While Shenmue is not a "full" open world game, there are alot of factors that can impact how the game plays. Yes we could have had a Dreamcast wrapper/emulator as the official release, but those emulators were not perfect either. The emulation came with all the additional baggage such as the slowdowns and additionally had limitations to what was designed for those emulators.

Look up the development and release of any other open world games, Kingdom Come: Deliverance comes to mind which I was part of the beta team, they have now ironed out everything to where the game is a beauty. Just be patient.

There was a lot of propaganda and lies that some were spreading claiming the game was a simple port or that it was just released in a very quick sequence due to sega not wanting to spend the money. It's one thing to make a claim with factual evidence, another claim to claim opinion and speculation as material fact without any evidence to back up the statement.

Kingdom come had some game breakers in it. I know I bought it but now it's great and selling lots.

 

[Billkwando]

All the patches in the world arent going to erase the past couple weeks

Not if you don't download them, no.


If you're saying you're scarred for life, then you have bigger issues. I dunno if folks are trying to prove they are #1 Shenmue fan by refusing to get down off the cross, but it's getting really old.

We know now it wasn't a rushed port, and that d3t is doing their best. A lot of people around here clearly haven't ever seen a game get broken worse by patches, or they're too busy plugging their ears and going "La la la".

It is absolutely worth the wait to get it done right, rather than done wrong.

 

[pilman]

Kingdom come had some game breakers in it. I know I bought it but now it's great and selling lots.

Indeed, and I admit some of those game breaking bugs were a nightmare like the polearms bug and some of the sidequests being completely broken. Kingdom Come Deliverances dev team did what they could to release patches and work with the feedback. The game now is a complete gem and a wonder and very solid.

 

[Billkwando]

May I suggest the new hashtag #ShenmueHDScarredMeForLife ? It's sure to trend considering how many people share your opinion.

Wow sorry to repeat your sentiment, which I hadn't read yet. Great minds thing alike?

I will say again that we can't rewind time, so there's no need to keep crying over spilled milk. Wait until the patch and cry then, if warranted.

 

[spud1897]

Indeed, and I admit some of those game breaking bugs were a nightmare like the polearms bug and some of the sidequests being completely broken. Kingdom Come Deliverances dev team did what they could to release patches and work with the feedback. The game now is a complete gem and a wonder and very solid.

They've done a fine job since I must say. The game is solid and plays nicely. They listened and it's paid off and I'm sure the same will apply here.

 

[ys.]

Great interview. I wondered about those moon phases and the physics behind Lucky Hit before. An interesting fact is that they tried to add What's Shenmue and the Passport disc but couldn't find the source code. And as I suspected before, some issues were likely due to business decisions instead of developers not caring. It would have been great if Sega assisted more with translations of developer notes, more manpower, etc.

It also seems that my guess regarding emulation and audio was correct (after @Kodama had wondered if claims that it wasn't emulated were valid).

The Dreamcast hardware had some features which would prove difficult to emulate, particularly the audio and graphics systems. The audio on the Dreamcast is mainly driven by a completely different chip to the main CPU. This chip is loaded with different programs defined by the original developer, specifying things such as loop points, reverb, volumes, envelopes, etc. We didn’t have the source data for this, which meant a lot of reverse engineering to get it sounding okay.

Could it be that certain parts needed to be emulated though? The Dreamcast did have a dedicated sound processing unit with hardware decompression, XG MIDI, DSP for chorus, reverb, pitch change, ... On PS4, not much is known about audio processing (except that it's part of an APU I think) but I doubt that it has built in MIDI since there's no real need for it. Bluray discs have enough capacity for regular audio. So there would be no hardware to use in this case. And the DSP is different which could mean different reverb, pitch etc. within the game. Just guessing of course.

 

[pilman]

They've done a fine job since I must say. The game is solid and plays nicely. They listened and it's paid off and I'm sure the same will apply here.

The other issue is that I think some players don't understand the difficulty of releasing the patches on consoles. PC especially on Steam is very quick but there is a whole authorization period for example via Sony/PS4 and Microsoft/Xbox which takes a long time for it to be approved. This was affecting Kingdom Come Deliverance which is also why it's affecting Shenmues patches.

 

[spud1897]

The other issue is that I think some players don't understand the difficulty of releasing the patches on consoles. PC especially on Steam is very quick but there is a whole authorization period for example via Sony/PS4 and Microsoft/Xbox which takes a long time for it to be approved. This was affecting Kingdom Come Deliverance which is also why it's affecting Shenmues patches.

Very much so and it makes more sense to do one larger one on consoles than several incremental ones. They will all get caught up so why not have a big one and release it also at less cost as each release costs to push.

 

[Kodama]

It also seems that my guess regarding emulation and audio was correct (after @Kodama had wondered if claims that it wasn't emulated were valid).

lol, crazy to think that when I brought that up I was accused of making "misguided conspiracy theories about it being emulation for the sole purpose of artificially manufacturing more outrage"... and by a mod of all people...

But it's cool we got a bit of confirmation on that front. Here's hoping D3T keeps working and making this better. After reading this interview they seem to be more capable than I thought, and are just pressed for resources by the publisher...

 

[Mystere]

It is absolutely worth the wait to get it done right, rather than done wrong.

Bit ironic Bill. That's precisely why it shouldn't have been released yet.

Anyway, I found the interview fascinating, particularly the details of oddities within the source code. Looking forward to the patch.

 

[punkmanced]

There’s an incredibly interesting thread dealing with the game’s audio here;
I wonder what @pyrokineticdew will have to say about all this when the time comes.

 

[GYO6161]

Really good read. Makes me appreciate the work put in much more. Despite the bugs this is still a impressive project.

Seems like the Source code of the original Shenmue has been lost? Alongside the Dreamcast version of 2?
Only the Xbox version Source code survived. So that means porting Shenmue 1 must have been one hell of a project of reverse engineering a retail copy. Really impressive but also sad that Sega did not take care enough of their archives to preserve the code of such a important IP of theirs.

 

[xatruio]

I think the sound had to be emulated and source for What's Shenmue and Passport were lost. Not the whole first game, though.