[PikaCommando]

Recently I've been digging around the net in hopes of finding materials of SiN from 1997 when it was running on the Quake 1 engine (the switch to the Quake 2 engine is what made it a buggy mess, like what happened with Daikatana). My conclusion thus far is this; unfortunately there is no surviving footage of Quake 1 engine SiN (if any) when it premiered at E3 (even though surviving E3 1997 footage shows the SiN booth in the background, just behind the Quake 64 booth and Activision's Heavy Gear stand but right in front of the Hexen 2 booth). There's an official press kit somewhere out there, but the online version is obviously long dead. One of the screenshots in that link indicated the presence of a 1997 SiN demonstration video, which is probably what was shown at E3.


The biggest cocktease ever.

However, by extreme chance, I happened to find (what seems to be) a few Q1 engine SiN screenshots lurking around the old net. Apparently there's a lot more SiN 1997 screenshots in the past (obviously) and even a video recording of a Quake 1 SiN level (supposedly an earlier Biomech Factory level by ParadoX, dated August 4 1997) showing off the interactivity by letting the player destroy stuff and taking control of a Big Gun, but those are lost in time forever (please prove me wrong). Anyway, here's all the screenshots I found.

Here's PC Gamer UK's coverage on SiN's debut at E3 1997, dated August 1997: Page 1, Page 2

Other websites say that the enemies and weapons in the E3 1997 premier seem to work rather well. The only level showcased during the event is Geothermal Plant by Levelord and there's a weapon described as a "double-barreled grenade launcher".


Also here are some screenshots from E3 1998.

E3 1998 footage shows a near-completion game very similar to the final. Most of the levels such as Geothermal Plant and Dam looks mostly the same after the switch to the Quake 2 engine.


Hopefully someone can magically stumble upon the lost videos, as well as any other Q1 SiN media that I missed. Dig out your old gaming magazines or something. Or you could just enjoy these images of a babe worshipping Ritual Entertainment.

Is this actually in the final game?


Also, for those who are feeling nostalgic and wanting to play SiN but don't know how to get it to run properly on modern systems:

Download the SiNPatcher if you're using the retail 1.11/GOG version, or the SiNSteamPatcher if you're using the 1.12/Steam version. Just type in the resolution you want to run in the program then select 1152x864 in the game. Don't forget to go into the in-game console and type fov 106.27 if you're using 16:9 to get Hor+ aspect ratio. Otherwise it would be Vert- where the top and bottom of the view is cut off (you can check it by seeing if the weapon viewmodel is lower than it usually is). You might also want to set cl_maxfps 125 just in case so it won't stutter/lag/ear rape.

Next, download this unofficial patch that fixed certain bugs, reverting the censored textures back to the originals if you're playing the Steam version, adding Wages of SiN to the Steam version, as well as having fixed music scripts that adds in tracks that were left out (such as the final stage and boss music that were otherwise using the penultimate level's music).

nVidia users might have trouble selecting the widescreen-patched 1152x864 to due 3dfx being a bitch and reverting things to 640x480, so you might have to use nVidia Inspector to turn on an obscure little setting called Extension Limit that enables you to select Default OpenGL in game which lets you select the widescreen-patched 1152x864.

Happy SiNning!

[Marphy Black]

PikaCommando, on 12 March 2016 - 07:36 PM, said:

However, by extreme chance, I happened to find (what seems to be) a few Q1 engine SiN screenshots lurking around the old net. Apparently there's a lot more SiN 1997 screenshots in the past (obviously) and even a video recording of a Quake 1 SiN level (supposedly an earlier Biomech Factory level by ParadoX, dated August 4 1997) showing off the interactivity by letting the player destroy stuff and taking control of a Big Gun, but those are lost in time forever (please prove me wrong).

Here you go:
http://www.mediafire...1wd3rv/sin1.mpg

Also, several additional screenshots along with some promo materials:
http://imgur.com/a/Ez1ep

[leilei]

PikaCommando, on 12 March 2016 - 07:36 PM, said:

a near-completion game

gold

[Gambini]

Those screenshots! childhood memories!!

(late childhood i´d say i was 17 when Sin came out I think).

[PsychoGoatee]

"Blade's got a better attitude than Duke imo"




Random note, I did buy that Sin: The Movie, American produced anime thingy. It was fairly amusing.

[Micky C]

That was on the Quake 1 engine? Looks pretty similar to the final thing like you said. But how do they have coloured lights? I thought that feature was introduced in the Quake 2 engine, unless they added it in themselves like with Half Life.

[OpenMaw]

GL Quake could do colored lights.

[PikaCommando]

Marphy Black, on 12 March 2016 - 10:18 PM, said:

Here you go:
http://www.mediafire...1wd3rv/sin1.mpg

Also, several additional screenshots along with some promo materials:
http://imgur.com/a/Ez1ep

Damn, son! Where'd you find this? Would you happen to know the video where this shot came from too?

Micky C, on 13 March 2016 - 01:27 AM, said:

That was on the Quake 1 engine? Looks pretty similar to the final thing like you said. But how do they have coloured lights? I thought that feature was introduced in the Quake 2 engine, unless they added it in themselves like with Half Life.

It's the same thing with Half-Life. However, it seems that they can't do the "different weapons in hand" that the Quake 2 engine featured until after the switch to the Q2 engine (meaning the images with the HUD are from the Q2 engine version of the game). The alpha version of Half-Life (when it was more Quake 1 than Goldsrc) and Daikatana suffered from the same "gun is modeled into character" thing too.

PsychoGoatee, on 12 March 2016 - 11:59 PM, said:

"Blade's got a better attitude than Duke imo"

*image of disapproval*


Random note, I did buy that Sin: The Movie, American produced anime thingy. It was fairly amusing.

I think Blade's interactions with JC and Elexis made him a funnier guy than the one-liner fountain that Duke was. It's a shame they completely stripped Blade of any personality in SiN Episodes though.

The movie is generally fine for the usual ultra-gorefest that 90s anime are known for, but I'm a bit pissed at how they killed off JC

[OpenMaw]

PikaCommando, on 13 March 2016 - 03:21 AM, said:

It's the same thing with Half-Life. However, it seems that they can't do the "different weapons in hand" that the Quake 2 engine featured until after the switch to the Q2 engine (meaning the images with the HUD are from the Q2 engine version of the game). The alpha version of Half-Life (when it was more Quake 1 than Goldsrc) and Daikatana suffered from the same "gun is modeled into character" thing too.

Are you talking about "visual weapons" as in what you see the player model holding?

Quake 1 does have some rudimentary vwep stuff. The player model will hold the axe when the axe is selected. Someone at one point did do a QC code thing where the player model held every weapon in the game (and it had custom models to represent that.)

Quake 2 was more or less the same tech as Quake 1. (No skeleton models yet) and the way id got around the large (for the time) memory required to show the varied weapons in the character models hand, was to animate them as one, and then export the weapons into their own model that would then be displayed.

When Half-Life came around the functionality behind sub-models, and using a skeleton rig really helped to enhance the way this worked. (For one thing your characters could animate a run cycle on the lower half of the model, and the upper half could be depicted holding any of the weapons or attack and running at the same time.)

And now we have games that utilize "Full Body Awareness" where the difference between the first person model and the world model is almost nonexistent.

[leilei]

Micky C, on 13 March 2016 - 01:27 AM, said:

That was on the Quake 1 engine? Looks pretty similar to the final thing like you said. But how do they have coloured lights? I thought that feature was introduced in the Quake 2 engine, unless they added it in themselves like with Half Life.

Adding colored light support to Quake is just a matter of adding *3's in all the right places.

Adding it to the toolchain however... Valve simply used id's qrad for their bsp30 maps. I'd imagine Ritual did the same

Sin went the extra effort and did colored lighting in software which is also nicely possible. Unfortunately this was the cause for some of the infamous long loading times as it had to generate a whole bigass lookup table and palette for each level for the colored lighting to look right

[Tea Monster]

Derp! I always thought it was on the Q1 Engine.

[leilei]

You'd know it's not Q1 with everyone moving at a fixed 10hz rate for animations, logic and physics; I can't stand id Tech 2 games anymore for that reason

[Tea Monster]

I downloaded that video. Those destructable environments are pretty trippy. I can see on a practical level why they aren't used, but it's still sad to see that and not be able to play with it.

[Marphy Black]

PikaCommando, on 13 March 2016 - 03:21 AM, said:

Damn, son! Where'd you find this?

This particular avi came from here:
https://web.archive....e.net/files.htm

This is only a fan site mirror, though, and many of the files weren't archived.

Quote

Would you happen to know the video where this shot came from too?

I haven't found that video in particular. The fan site above does have a "sin.avi", but the alternate sin.mov version which is archived and can be downloaded reveals that it's just a small snippit from the original sin1.mpg.

Anyway, I realized I did a horrible job of going through my SiN archive. Here are the rest of the images I missed the first time:
http://imgur.com/a/SL7RQ

Here's the original high resolution 2700x3300 image used for the PC Games cover linked above:
http://www.mediafire...wx/pcgcover.zip

Also, here are two additional video trailers:



And here's Levelord at his desk with a beer:

[leilei]

That destructive bit in the video is just func_breakable choreography; nothing geomoddy about it. It's as real as DNF98's obviously func_'d up destruction. If they had kept that in the final game as consistent as that video, all those edicts would be eaten up like crazy and looking at orthographic views in Radiant would make mapping much less comfortable, and of course the vis cost and extra lightmap data required.

Let's not forget Sin's hype levels just for being a project with Levelord. After Scourge of Armagon it surely couldn't fail right?!

[PikaCommando]

Marphy Black, on 13 March 2016 - 08:30 AM, said:

stuff

What about the big wide shot of all the characters in your first post? The only place I saw it on is as a thumbnail on Gamasutra's article on SiN. Here's a higher res of the Bloody SiNday poster. Do you have a higher res of this one? The one I found have the sides cut off.





Where and when did you get the stuff in your SiN archive? Cool that you found the concept art for the old Dark Captain. You should try looking for higher res version of the few thumbnail-sized screenshots there. I found higher res version of three.


2
3
I can't tell if these are from the Q1 or Q2 version of the game.

Also, you missed this from that fansite

[Marphy Black]

PikaCommando, on 13 March 2016 - 09:08 AM, said:

What about the big wide shot of all the characters in your first post?

That came from here:
https://web.archive....tic.com/images/

Also a cornucopia of other images there as I see I've been monumentally lazy with keeping my SiN archive thorough.

Quote

Do you have a higher res of this one? The one I found have the sides cut off.

Unfortunately, I don't have the image handy, but I know there's a high resolution version of this image around. I think it was presented as a wallpaper.

Quote

Where and when did you get the stuff in your SiN archive?

The SiN stuff I have is just a collateral collection I've been gathering with other members of the Half-Life community while researching information for the Combine OverWiki. Our non-Valve archives are far from dedicated or thorough.

And who the heck is this "Charlie" guy?

[Person of Color]

Thank you so much, now I have awesome beta footage and the raddest lock screen and desktop backgrounds on the planet.

[Cage]

PikaCommando, on 13 March 2016 - 09:08 AM, said:

Oh hey, I recall seeing that screenshot in the press back in the day, the JC shot too.

[PikaCommando]

It seems that the old SiN page on Ritualistic has every screenshot published online from the E3 1997 shots up until release (probably). Needless to say, they're all broken. I see thumbnails for a few interesting ones we don't have, but those are just as broken when trying to get into too. Their file names give clue to what levels they're supposed to be (Oil Rig and Chemical Plant, for example). It seems that the jungle screenshot with Blade in a jeep is most likely a Q2-era screenshot seeing as how there's two other 1998 screenshots showing that same area, but is that area actually in the game? However, there's also a 1997 Reconah screenshot showing off an earlier version of Jungle Pass' starting area.

Also here lies every official SiN video published (probably), including the E3 press kit ones as well as a gameplay video preceding the Biomech demo and also recording of the Bloody Sinday event (but they're all broken, obviously). These files might be mirrored on those game file sharing websites, but they're all dead now. I remember reading from an old Activision page that says one can buy a special SiNday T-Shirt, but I can't find that page again. Is that true?

[Player Lin]

PikaCommando, on 12 March 2016 - 07:36 PM, said:

*screenshots about worshiping women*
Is this actually in the final game?

Yes,

Spoiler

It's on BIOMECH FACTORY: PART 1 level's secret area.

As you see those screenshots taken in the final game.

[PikaCommando]

Wow, can't believe I didn't realize this before, but that Biomech level in sin1.mpg is reworked into BioDM (Midnight) in the final game.




Other levels that I think were kept from the Quake 1 engine days were sindm6 (Deconstruction Zone), gluttony, pride, oilrig/oilrigdm (Greed), whatever, and skeen (Dreddful!). Actually, given the short development time frame, it's possible that all the DM maps are from the Q1 engine era except spool (Brain Pain), railroad (Tunnel of Love), and paradox (due to them having tricks that I don't think the Q1 engine is capable of).

Anyway, I found the article on the Sin demo event. I wonder how those Sinday T-Shirts look like? Also, I heard that a map or two in Wages of SiN; 2015dm1 (Do Not Try This At Home) iirc; is based off a map in Quake. Is that true? There's a section in hbdm3 (Industrial Heck) that looks like hipdm1(The Edge of Oblivion), but it's also kinda different. There's also 2015dm7 (Clusterfunkopolis) that has a similar name to DM2: Claustrophobopolis, but I don't see any resemblance in layouts.


By the way, I know it's just pure coincidence, but the plasma weapon shown in Q1 SiN reminds me of the Plasma Bow in Wages of SiN:

[PokeThePower]

PikaCommando, on 14 March 2016 - 12:51 PM, said:

Their file names give clue to what levels they're supposed to be (Oil Rig and Chemical Plant, for example).

Nice... those are from the versions of the levels before I took over Oilrig and Matthias took over Chem2. Oilrig was completely scrapped except for the purple/black light table thing near the end right before you go out to the helipad.

PikaCommando, on 24 March 2016 - 10:48 PM, said:

Wow, can't believe I didn't realize this before, but that Biomech level in sin1.mpg is reworked into BioDM (Midnight) in the final game.

BioDM was always BioDM... even in Quake 1. One of if not the very first DM maps playable for the game. It stayed pretty much the same layout as it was in Quake 1 even after the switch to Quake 2.

PikaCommando, on 24 March 2016 - 10:48 PM, said:

Other levels that I think were kept from the Quake 1 engine days were sindm6 (Deconstruction Zone),

Built from scratch after the switch to Quake 2... BUT... the screenshot that is making you think it was from earlier partially inspired the creation of it. That screenshot blew me away when I saw it before actually working there.

Quote

gluttony

Built much later by Berenger Fish who was a fairly late addition to the project.

Quote

pride

Started while the transition to Quake 2 was in progress. Was one of two maps I was working on when daydreaming about 200 people in deathmatch. I was actually not planning to ship the map but someone else went in and added weapons/items and this was in the day of "why not... if nobody likes it nobody likes it... ship it!" Most of the map was scrapped but originally it had ridiculously large open spaces inspired by Jedi Knight and was completely unfeasible for the Quake engine. Some of the JK inspired stuff that survived is the silver looking S shaped "vent" thing you can drop down. Don't know how to describe it better than that since the map is so abstract.

Quote

oilrig/oilrigdm (Greed)

Rebuilt near the end of the project from scratch. The original was completely different in style... more like a sci-fi fortress.

Quote

whatever

Built near the end by Matthias. That was built when the SP content was pretty much "done" and we had spare time to work on MP maps in between the 12-24 hour compiles for the SP maps. I was working on either railroad or oilrigdm at the same time. Probably both... we usually had more than one going.

Quote

skeen (Dreddful!)

That one I'm not sure. I don't recall playing it until we were well into Q2, but Richard might have had a version of it in progress long before then.

Quote

Actually, given the short development time frame, it's possible that all the DM maps are from the Q1 engine era except spool (Brain Pain), railroad (Tunnel of Love), and paradox (due to them having tricks that I don't think the Q1 engine is capable of).

Very little geo from the Q1 days survived, and most of the game was built post Q2. BioDM was one of the most resilient. We could build spaces extremely quickly... compiles were the killers. That's why Matthias and I could afford to build some CTF maps for a Quake 2 CTF pack at the same time... and why I could build a SiN CTF map while working on DNF. Also we more or less had no lives outside of making maps. It was close to heaven on earth for boys as baffled by real live girls as we were back then.

Marphy Black, on 13 March 2016 - 11:47 AM, said:

And who the heck is this "Charlie" guy?

*cringe* "definately" ... BTW SiN totally has 16 bit art. You'll notice. Hardcore.

I look forward to shaking my head at my 2016 obliviousness.

At least now I know better than to do interviews and leave a public recor... damnit.

[PikaCommando]

Wieder, on 25 March 2016 - 12:11 AM, said:

awesome stuff

Thanks for the amazing insight! If you don't mind a quick question or two; how different were the weapons compared to the final? The shotgun, rocket launcher, and the magnum had different models but is still the same in concept as the final's whereas the plasma weapon and the twin-barreled grenade launcher is unlike anything seen in the final game, aside from using the same type of ammunition as their final counterpart.



Special mention goes to the Magnum that keeps alternating between red and black. The black Magnum, while having its color changed to red early on and completely gone in 1998 screenshots, still show up in promotional media in place of the red Magnum. Also, the gun that Elexis holds in some loading screens never show up in game.



Also, would you happen to have the E3 1997 SiN press kit (more specifically, the video) backed up somewhere?


By the way, I found concept art for the weapons, which are all different than the ones we saw in the actual game save for the Magnum. The shotgun concept art is the same as the old shotgun model in 1997 screens.

[PokeThePower]

PikaCommando, on 25 March 2016 - 09:15 AM, said:

how different were the weapons compared to the final?

So this will be a different kind of insight than you were probably expecting... but I have no real idea. Honestly I just used whatever was available at the moment and as new weapons became available I used them. I'm not really sure what process they went through.

I actually got into an argument with one of the owners/art leads about one of the new weapon models at one point because it just appeared in game and I thought it looked poor. I sent an email to the entire company complaining about it and got an earful back. Rightfully so. It was poor form on my part and one of my "growing up" moments. Of course at the time I tried to blame shift because I was still a spoiled rotten child who thought he was cool because he manipulated X,Y,Z coordinates. But I was wrong in how I responded and thankfully was able to improve rather than double down. The person in question and I have had many great interactions since then.

PikaCommando, on 25 March 2016 - 09:15 AM, said:

Also, would you happen to have the E3 1997 SiN press kit (more specifically, the video) backed up somewhere?

Not a chance. I actually wiped out everything "interesting" I had regarding previous employers years ago, even if it was publicly available.

Without going into details... this was a very wise decision.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Wieder, on 26 March 2016 - 07:46 PM, said:

I actually wiped out everything "interesting" I had regarding previous employers years ago, even if it was publicly available.

Without going into details... this was a very wise decision.

Wow, that must have been pretty freeing to say goodbye to that stuff. You've been a developer for nearly 20 years now, right? Quite a bit of history there!

[PokeThePower]

2016 is year 20 of receiving money in exchange for what I would be doing for free otherwise... yeah.

It was both painful and freeing. There is a lot of stuff that the people here would have enjoyed having available to dig through.

I can only hope the aliens and/or NSA properly cloned my drives.

[leilei]

On one hand i'm glad that's cleared up before the inevitable clueless "give me beta's" part of the thread begins

[PikaCommando]

Wieder, on 26 March 2016 - 07:46 PM, said:

So this will be a different kind of insight than you were probably expecting... but I have no real idea. Honestly I just used whatever was available at the moment and as new weapons became available I used them. I'm not really sure what process they went through.

I actually got into an argument with one of the owners/art leads about one of the new weapon models at one point because it just appeared in game and I thought it looked poor. I sent an email to the entire company complaining about it and got an earful back. Rightfully so. It was poor form on my part and one of my "growing up" moments. Of course at the time I tried to blame shift because I was still a spoiled rotten child who thought he was cool because he manipulated X,Y,Z coordinates. But I was wrong in how I responded and thankfully was able to improve rather than double down. The person in question and I have had many great interactions since then.


Not a chance. I actually wiped out everything "interesting" I had regarding previous employers years ago, even if it was publicly available.

Without going into details... this was a very wise decision.

Hearing about your 20 years of experience is interesting indeed. As for the old stuff, I guess it couldn't be helped. Say, how did you guys came up with SiN?


(gonna add this to the OP later)
Also, for those who are feeling nostalgic and wanting to play SiN but don't know how to get it to run properly on modern systems:

To get widescreen resolutions, download the SiNPatcher if you're using the retail 1.11/GOG version, or the SiNSteamPatcher if you're using the 1.12/Steam version. Just type in the resolution you want to run in the program then select 1152x864 in the game. Don't forget to go into the in-game console and type fov 106.27 if you're using 16:9 to get Hor+ aspect ratio. Otherwise it would be Vert- where the top and bottom of the view is cut off (you can check it by seeing if the weapon viewmodel is lower than it usually is). You might also want to set cl_maxfps 125 just in case so it won't stutter/lag/ear rape.

Next, download this unofficial patch that fixed certain bugs, reverting the censored textures back to the originals if you're playing the Steam version, adding Wages of SiN to the Steam version, as well as having fixed music scripts that adds in tracks that were left out (such as the final stage and boss music that were otherwise using the penultimate level's music).

nVidia users might have trouble selecting the widescreen-patched 1152x864 due to 3dfx OpenGL being a bitch and reverting things to 640x480, so you might have to use nVidia Inspector to turn on an obscure little setting called Extension Limit that enables you to select Default OpenGL in game which lets you select the widescreen-patched 1152x864.

Happy SiNning!

[leilei]

PikaCommando, on 27 March 2016 - 07:32 AM, said:

nVidia users might have trouble selecting the widescreen-patched 1162x864 due to 3dfx OpenGL being a bitch and reverting things to 640x480

well duh. nVidia Geforce cards isn't 3dfx Voodoo2 (supporting 800x600 max alone) so don't go trying to use special minigl drivers obviously intended for other non-nVidia chipsets.

Any "advice" suggesting use of those MiniGLs is crap advice, misguided and wrong. Those are intended for early generation hardware (pre-1999 before decent OpenGL ICDs were standard) only.