Shenmue Online

If you can find the filename(s) of the client / installer, that'd be a good start. I remember when looking through the old site stuff that there's seemingly no filenames present in any download links.
 
Looks like it would've been a thoroughly average MMO, but it's still a piece of Shenmue history and deserves to be preserved. It'd be really interesting to poke around the environments, in particular. I always thought Aberdeen in SO looked vibrant, but there was something about it that lacked detail compared to S2.
 
I get the feeling this is why we haven't seen the actual client files resurfacing:

View attachment 13184

Taken from here
I remember when I was reading translations yesterday somewhere said that they would have more recruitment after the first, so there could be a bit more than that atleast.
 
Ignoring the fact JCE approached Sega with their own engine... they sorta missed a trick not combining parts Shenmue assets with parts of PSO if they were going for a generic 2000s MMO..... :(

Shame they didn't use PSO to try competing at least a tiny bit back then, maybe not WoW but at least Guild Wars level of popularity. They had Blue Burst right there but never really pushed too hard iirc
 
Ignoring the fact JCE approached Sega with their own engine... they sorta missed a trick not combining parts Shenmue assets with parts of PSO if they were going for a generic 2000s MMO..... :(

Shame they didn't use PSO to try competing at least a tiny bit back then, maybe not WoW but at least Guild Wars level of popularity. They had Blue Burst right there but never really pushed too hard iirc
Judging only from the screenshots I'm going to guess ShenMMO was not of the caliber of PSO. So, it might have actually been a great idea to work with Sonic Team who had a ton of experience making a quality MMO game on this as opposed to some random Korean studio.
 
Judging only from the screenshots I'm going to guess ShenMMO was not of the caliber of PSO. So, it might have actually been a great idea to work with Sonic Team who had a ton of experience making a quality MMO game on this as opposed to some random Korean studio.

Uhm, looks pretty impressive enough for me. Don't really think they deserve to be called "random" as if a bad thing?

They obviously had lots of talent, a lot of fighting moves seem to translate over with just some typical MMO flare. Probably sink thousands of hours into Shenmue Online if was released
 
Uhm, looks pretty impressive enough for me. Don't really think they deserve to be called "random" as if a bad thing?

They obviously had lots of talent, a lot of fighting moves seem to translate over with just some typical MMO flare. Probably sink thousands of hours into Shenmue Online if was released
I guess it is my personal preference speaking. It looks like it would have been like WoW and I hate WoW's gameplay. I much prefer PSO, also random does not mean bad it means unknown or at least unknown to me.
 
It's almost like a lost media hunt :D It's actually kinda fun.
If we manage to track down the Client for Shenmue Online, Kawaki is yours


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Some Shenmue Online animations:
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4.gif

https://www.deviantart.com/superforce - Zach’s deviantart page
https://www.interserv.com.tw/tw/index.php - Interserv Games

“I got a detailed response from Zach about the development problems that plagued Shenmue Online. (Hellraiser)

"hello
Originally it was a korean company that worked on the project. but disputes over profit eventually lead to a bad breakup. It was then sourced to Interserv Taiwan, which meant that the Shanghai facility would end up working on the bulk of the project. I was the only American working at Inteserv Shanghai at that time. I had the notion that Sega treated the Chinese outsource workers at cheap labor, and had no problem changing their designs and layouts for the game on the fly. Since labor cost was so cheap, Sega thought they could get away with it. Normally you would not be able to get away with such things if it was an American Video game company, because any major changes would set back the project months, if not years, and cost an additional 2-4 million dollars more. (ie. Starcraft Ghost).

I worked on the motion capture and character skinning (binding the 3d model to max character studio bones). The motion capture (fight scenes) was a bitch because the Taiwan quick check lady kept on denying and returning our edited motion capture saying that it was inaccurate. The only reference the animators were given were videos reference of the motion capture actors. None of the animators ever played Shenmue on the old dreamcast. actually none of the animators even liked fighting games. Nobody seemed to know what the taiwan Quick checker wanted, (MAJOR communication problem), and Interserv was too cheap to fly her over to Shanghai and have a meeting with us. One of the Art directors ended up helping us, and even the mo caps he personally passed ended up being rejected by Taiwan QC lady.
I also talked with many of the environmental modelers and they all said the project sucked ass. What's worse was a coworker worked on the mini games, and he had to work overtime, midnight to even 2 in the morning, for a month. He looked like a zombie every time I saw him. And at the end the mini games were changed so his work was all for nothing. He was not one to lose his anger easily, but that time he almost lost it.

Anyway, I left Interserv on good terms about a year ago. Last I heard from my coworkers is that Interserv is no longer working on Shenmue. Interserv had aobut over 200 employees when I left. There was also a huge talent drain at Interserv because the workers despised the new manager, who took all the powers away from the beloved art director, and so a majority of the artists decided to all leave at once. I don't know if Sega is going to finish Shenmue online. But if it still decides to go on, do realize it will at first only be for the Asian markets.

regards
Zach

ps. 3d Studio Max version 5.x was used because Shenmue online was using an outdated older game engine. and max 5 was most compatible. during year 2005-6 the latest max version was max 7 and max 8. to prove I worked on the project here is a link in winrar of 2 generic characters and their CS bip files. Anybody that knows 3d Max CS will know what to do with these. www.yuandadaily.com/zach/shenmue.rar

----------------------------------------------------------

Zach posted at Sept 18th, 2007:

"I worked on the Shenmue online project in Shanghai at Interserv. The game had so many problems, from environment models, to 3d motion capture cleanup, to it’s mini-games. It was a real-time fighting game forced onto a online game, so you can imagine how fun it would be with lag. with the mocap it ended up with interserv using interns to help with the editing and skinning. There was just so many characters that needed skinning, and rigging, and then Sega decided to change the models, which resulted in all the characters needed to be re-skinned with max 5. hahah rofl.

Two words that described the failure of this game: ” POOR PREPRODUCTION”. You know, garbage in, garbage out, or like my art instructor said back in art college, ” if you don’t get the preproduction down right, you’re just polishing a turd.”"”

“Yu Suzuki's involvement:

"don't know. interserv for this project strictly was a work for hire. Completely kept in the dark. Sega tell us to jump, we say , "how high boss client?"”

Credits to @24Nathan and myself for these
 

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I mean if you guys find the client, I could work on creating a server emulator for it, which would enable us to play it the way it was intended, without the original server files :)
If this happens, we will refer to you as LemonGod from now on

Some Shenmue Online animations:
View attachment 13207
View attachment 13208
View attachment 13209
View attachment 13210

https://www.deviantart.com/superforce - Zach’s deviantart page
https://www.interserv.com.tw/tw/index.php - Interserv Games



Credits to @24Nathan and myself for these
Excellent work you guys.

Let's keep digging, i'm sure we're going to find gold sooner or later
 
Oof, feel bad for the crunched workers. Fuck Sega for thinking low of them and treating like shit :/
 
Yeah, outsourcing requires excellent communication between all parties. This sounds like it was a complete shit show. Doesn't surprise me that mid 2000s SEGA were bad at managing a project in the slightest, though.

Also yeah, MMO fighting game with mid 2000s online server tech...does sound like a recipe for horrible combat.
 
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