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There have been a lot of Wipeout games released since the 1995 original, including Wipeout HD and the Omega Collection, but only the original has the distinction of having its Windows port source code leaked by (since defunct) archive Forest of Illusion.
Dominic Szablewski grabbed that code before it disappeared and set about creating a version that’s not just a port. He rewrote the game’s rendering, physics, sound, and generally “everything everywhere.” He documented the project, put his code on GitHub, and has some version of a justification. “So let’s just pretend that the leak was intentional, a rewrite of the source falls under fair use and the whole thing is abandonware anyway,” Szablewski writes.
Most of the code seemed to come from Wipeout ATI 3D Rage Edition, a “lackluster port for Windows” that was bundled with ATI GPUs, Szablewski wrote. It is a mess. There are fragments of code versions from DOS, PlayStation, Windows 95, and Windows 98, with lots of things shakily patched in, including some kludgey 25-to-30 frames-per-second physics calculations in moving from European PAL to North American NTSC. The result was bad geometry, sluggish performance, and even goofed text rendering.
Not that he doesn’t have sympathy. “The code may not be pretty, but the result justifies it all,” he wrote. The PSX launch title braved unseen hardware and 3D models and physics and holds up today. But this pack-in version “is some caffeine induced nightmare code written under immense time pressure. The 5000 lines of if else that handles the menu state is a striking witness to this insanity.”
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The menu seems so simple, you'd never guess it was once 5,000 lines of code. Psygnosis / Dominic Szablewski
Cruising along, hearing someone in a British voice mutter "Missile" at me, as if he was shopping for one at Tesco. Psygnosis / Dominic Szablewski
The first-person view in Wipeout is like a little difficulty boost. Psygnosis / Dominic Szablewski
Your author will not be completing this game for full review, as it is both nearly 30 years old and also he is bad at it. Psygnosis / Dominic Szablewski
As he digs into the specifics of his work, Szablewski takes the reader on a tour of PSX dev kits and how they handled z-levels, how to translate yesterday’s triangles to today’s OpenGL, breaking the 30 FPS cap on a game that explicitly forbade that, and more. He takes the code from 40,699 lines to 7,731, and notably loved an excuse to work in C. “I had an absolute blast cleaning up this mess!”
Szablewski’s Wipeout rewrite can be compiled for Windows, Linux, Mac, and WASM (Web Assembly). You can even play it in your browser, on his server (please be gentle). I spent some time in it this morning, and let me tell you: I am not ready for anti-gravity racing in the year 2052. It was a struggle to even get to fourth place, but those struggles were due entirely to skill, not system. The web version feels buttery smooth, even when you’re continually clunking into walls. I had misremembered this game as having a lot more to it, but it’s all feel: the trance/prog music, the physics, the controls, and the sense that you’re always just slightly out of control.
What about Sony and their legions of lawyers? Szablewski writes that Sony has “demonstrated a lack of interest in the original” Wipeout, so he doesn’t expect to hear much. “If anyone at Sony is reading this, please consider that you have (in my opinion) two equally good options: either let it be, or shut this thing down and get a real remaster going. I’d love to help!”
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Original Article Published at Arstechnica
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