Planet Ring

[segafreak2]

Hi everyone, I'm new here.

I read recently on the OC forums that there were videos of planet ring for the dc on youtube, so in search of nostalgia I checked them out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dbH4XaF-KA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q8DhpMo ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIVHsWpS ... re=related

Not that noteworthy really you might say, but If you take a look at the first video of Ball Bubble, you'll see that there's a guy called 'BirdMode' who claimed to have written the game. In a belated attempt to get more info about why the game went down when it did and to try and find out what happened to the server info, I sent him a message, and got, unexpectedly, a reply!

Re: Planet Ring

I think there's already a group who are working to get Planet Ring working again.

I didn't work on the server side, but one of the other programmers who did (Tom Szirtes who wrote the messenger system and 'Kosejik') kept all the code and I believe he's passed it on to them. I'm pretty sure it was all custom coded for Planet Ring by Takuya Matsumoto, although I believe he might have brought some of that code with him from the Sonic Team code base when he moved from there to work in Europe with us.

I only wrote Ball Bubble, and the matchmaking was already set up when my part launched, so I didn't get involved in the rest!

Cheers,

Elton

I don't know how noteworthy this is, but I'll try to get more info. How great it would be if it were possible (however remotely) to get this game back online.

SF2

[segafreak2]

Reply from Elton:

Re: Re: Re: Planet Ring

I don't have any details or the Planet ring revival group handy, I'll have to dig around for it. They contacted me quite a while ago now.

There was a plan to expand Planet Ring with new games, but that would have required a new disk version to be sent out to people. I think the plan was to bundle such updates with new releases of DreamKey (all these old Dreamcast names are bringing back happy memories! haha!). The implication made in the game, that new contect could appear on the server at any time, was a bit of a con to be honest, as it wasn't ever technically possible.

I do wonder if I could sqeeze an iPhone game out based on my Ball Bubble game.. I wonder if Sega would take any action if I did, I did invent it after all?? And I'm really not sure why Takuya hasn't revisited Dream Dorobo as a concept with his Artoon team. it had a lot of potential now voice is an integral part of online gaming.

Cheers,

Elton

[mazonemayu]

seems like he has some good memories of the dc, invite him over to the forum