Earlier this week, SEGARPGFAN revealed his latest Saturn online project in development, a ghost car portal website for Sega Touring Car Championship! This site connects directly to SEGA Saturn’s Netlink or Xband modems through the Netlink Tunnel using a 5-digit PIN code. Once connected you can upload your STCC time attack ghosts and/or download other user ghost cars directly to your Saturn to race against. All submissions are even ranked with an active leaderboard!
If you see a red banner behind the car it means it was stock, blue means tuned.
STCC launched on Sega Saturn in November 1997 about a year after the arcade original. The game included online functionality in its North American and Japanese release, but unlike other Netlink titles that offered real-time head-to-head play over phone lines, STCC launched with more modest capabilities.
Modem owners could submit their times for Arcade Challenge mode, as well as three special global events, and check the leaderboard rankings directly from a built in browser on STCC. Participants in the ’90s could also submit their times in the form of a password emailed to SEGA, using a computer app found on the STCC disc.
Xiden brought the leaderboards back online in 2022, allowing Saturn users to email their game saves to him through the Netlink Tunnel, which he would then verify and update the leaderboards site. This is a great way to compete with others, but limited to the original events.
Promotion for the first global event from the Japanese STCC full color game manual.
STCC did not originally use the Netlink to upload and download time attack ghost car data with other users. Since the file size is too large to save on the internal Saturn memory, you would previously need to use a Saturn memory cart to back up your ghosts to share with others.
A nice workaround for sharing ghosts online was to use a program like the Save Game Manager to extract and insert the ghosts from your Saturn memory cart to your ODE’s SD card. This process is a bit tedious, not to mention finding others willing to swap ghost cars with, which is why SEGARPGFAN felt called upon to whip up this new online ghost car portal.
“With this modified version of Sega Touring Car, you can download another user’s ghost and race against it in Time Attack mode, or upload your ghost to the leaderboard for others to race against. Because ghost files are normally saved to the RAM cartridge and you can’t have that plugged in with the modem, this does direct read and write from the live Saturn RAM. This is not uploading any previously saved ghosts, if you want to upload a ghost you must generate one in the current play session. The existing browser was the obvious entry point to inject custom code and that’s exactly what this does.”
— SEGARPGFAN
Request access to the beta disc image here
- To connect your Saturn, go to the Records screen and press Y to enter the upload screen. Choose “Check the Ranking” to connect. This will generate a PIN code to use on the portal site.
- Watch the status messages in the top right until connected and a PIN is displayed.
- Navigate to the portal, select “Pair Saturn” and enter the PIN.
- Once paired you can select “Upload Ghost” if you have a ghost generated or navigate to an entry in the leaderboards and choose “Race Ghost” to download one.
- When you’re done press the Disconnect button and the Saturn will hang up and game will soft reset.
- If you downloaded a ghost it will now be available in Time Attack mode.
- Ghosts will not survive a power cycle, they are live for the current boot session.
“The challenge lobby is also up for testing. There are two challenge game modes, Battle Royale and Duel 1v1. In Battle Royale everyone submits ghosts, you get a race animation and the winner is declared. In Duel, you race once and submit a qualifying ghost. Then it automatically downloads your opponent’s ghost, which you race against and re-upload. If one player bests the ghost, they win. If both best it, better margin determines the winner. This is probably the next best thing to live racing.”
— SEGARPGFAN
Challenge lobby ghost race animation idea for a future update.
SEGARPGFAN said:
“For full disclosure, this project is nearly all AI implemented using chatGPT. I know the use of AI comes with reactions running the gamut from wow that’s cool! to pitchforks and torches. I spent countless hours passionately working on the current Saturn online infrastructure without any AI tools and I’m extremely proud of that work. In the past year I’ve begun to overcome my skepticism and learn to more effectively work with AI tools. AI has allowed me to see some of my more creative ideas come to light. Working with AI can be exhausting in its own way, but it still amazes me when something does work out. I’m not in the habit of putting something out that I think is sub-par or buggy. I’ve done my best to be targeted and intentional throughout this project to avoid anything that could be called ‘AI slop.’ With all that being said, I think this ghost portal is already slick AF and if you choose to use it, I hope you enjoy it.”
“I’m at the point where I’ve done what I can testing solo, but multi-user testing is sure to surface bugs I’ve overlooked, so that’s why I’ve shared it as a public test. What does work reliably is upload/download of ghosts and leaderboard population. The challenge lobby is a work in progress and a big conceptual challenge for me that I want to get right. I haven’t created anything like that before and I can’t trust that AI will just figure it out and architect it correctly. So although I still plan to use AI to code it, I want to have a solid grasp on the lobby model and what I’m asking it to do.”
The first STCC NETLINK NIGHT will be tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern Time to test out the challenge lobby, so if you have a Netlink or Xband Saturn modem come touring with us on the SHIRO! Discord!
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