Its 1993, you're in charge of the Jag, what do you do?

[Gorf]

I personally had wished that Atari had just gone straight to CD and had forgone the cartridge option all together... Genesis had proved that CD's were really the way to go and offered immediate higher end game capabilities.

 

A cartridge port could've been included, but perhaps it would've been used strictly for a high score module, Mpeg expander module and perhaps other options.

 

However, the downside would've meant a system that probably would've had a $499 price tag, coming close to 3DO territory. The price of the 3DO and the various flavors by the several different manufacturers hurt the 3DO on one aspect (several other issues hurt the 3DO, but so did issues like weak developer tools for the Jaguar, hurt the Jag as well.)

 

 

Curt

 

I disagree a bit - for a console expandability wasn't actually that important. Putting the CD into the jaguar at the start ( so that there would be no fragmentation of the market ) would have been the best thing in my opinion. ( Having a lot more software would have helped at launch as well )

Maybe later a 'jaguar computer' could have been launched , with a hard drive and floppy as well as the cdrom.

 

I do agree on that as well, if any kind of expandability was included at all it should ave been as simple and affordable as possible, not something major like the CD. So perhaps RAM expansion if anything, and other rather standard things like the multitap. (if using CD standard, the slow cartridge bus might be useful for RAM expansion, it's slow, but would basically allow RAM to take the place of cart ROM) Maybe even make some games that could work without the expansion but still be enhanced when it was used. (like quite a few did with the N64)

 

As for a computer, that would have been a possibility except Atari Corp had pretty much dropped the computer line entirely by that point, and what was left was being phased out. If you really wanted to go into hypotheticals about that, you'd probably need to go back further and change other things... (Jack not retiring being a rather big one)

 

However, it is interesting, the Jag chipset modified and incorporated into Atari computer, like a successor to the Falcon, but how useful it would be would still depend on how you did that. (like if the Jag hardware was mainly used as a graphics accelerator on top of more conventional computer hardware) making it compatible with the Falcon would probably have been a mess though, so probably start fresh if anything. (maybe still go with a 680xx CPU or switch to PPC)Maybe they could have gotten back into that market, commodore would be gone and it would just have to fight as a niche competitor alongside Apple. Who knows?

 

The cartridge port could have been the same thing only as an expansions port instead. The CD would have been a better choice as far

as a medium for software. However, neither of these features would have solved the very poorly thought out bottlenecks of the system.

[Crazyace]

Plua anyone who knows even a little bit about hardware will tell you the 020 instead of a 68k

would have made a GIANT difference. GIANT.

 

I dont think it would have helped the games that much. Fixing the main memory execution and allowing GPU and DSP to both run 32 bit would have been better - as more people would have used C on GPU. ( At that point having a 68000 at all would be unnecessary, as C would be familiar for general game programmers )

 

( I know I'd prefer GPU+DSP , rather than a 68020 )

 

The DSP is not designed that way. If Tom had been a full fledged CPU then you could use the DSP at 32 bits.

As the design stands its does not work that way. The 020 would have added an extra processing unit that did

not hit the bus and allowed the DSP a true 32 bit to that main bus. the 020 would have hit the bus every 256

bytes worth and that would have made a grave improvement. All three processors would have been able to run in

parallel OFF THE BUS while the Blitter and OPL had the bus to themselves. There is no logical way to justify

it otherwise.

 

As far as the games: What you think does not align with the facts of the matter. If the 020 was there, the game

logic as well as the AI would have been better served by it than trying to split those processes across the GPU

and DSP that qould have better concertrated on GFX and SFX. Now if you want to argue folks just porting crap over

than yes, but with a much better design you would have seen more folks taking advantage of the 020. A local TRUE

cahce, a much better efficiency in external access as well as internally.

 

Thereis just no way to argue that away. Fact is if you are going to remove the host, then you need the TOM at very

least to be a true bootable processor and have both chips on sepreate buses. Otherwise is would have been no better

in the way of bottlenecks, haveing those two fight over bus time with the OPL and the blitter.

 

Yes - making Tom bootable wouldn't have been that difficult to do though. Jerry already has 32 data lines on the chip connecting it to Tom, so boosting the instruction fetch to get 32 bits at a time would be possible ( even if everything else was still 16 bit ) would also have been pretty simple.

 

It is all conjecture anyway, so we can have different opinions.

You want a more expensive processor and a complete redesign of the system to get separate buses.

I'm thinking of fixing the bugs in the system, ( main code exec. ) and making the gpu boot at 0 so that more money can be saved by dropping the 68000 completely.

Then adding a CD at launch - and having a GPU and DSP C compiler that works for all code. ( The DSP can run game code from main memory, and have sound running on interupt from local memory , and the GPU can handle the graphics as expected )

[Gorf]

Plua anyone who knows even a little bit about hardware will tell you the 020 instead of a 68k

would have made a GIANT difference. GIANT.

 

I dont think it would have helped the games that much. Fixing the main memory execution and allowing GPU and DSP to both run 32 bit would have been better - as more people would have used C on GPU. ( At that point having a 68000 at all would be unnecessary, as C would be familiar for general game programmers )

 

( I know I'd prefer GPU+DSP , rather than a 68020 )

 

The DSP is not designed that way. If Tom had been a full fledged CPU then you could use the DSP at 32 bits.

As the design stands its does not work that way. The 020 would have added an extra processing unit that did

not hit the bus and allowed the DSP a true 32 bit to that main bus. the 020 would have hit the bus every 256

bytes worth and that would have made a grave improvement. All three processors would have been able to run in

parallel OFF THE BUS while the Blitter and OPL had the bus to themselves. There is no logical way to justify

it otherwise.

 

As far as the games: What you think does not align with the facts of the matter. If the 020 was there, the game

logic as well as the AI would have been better served by it than trying to split those processes across the GPU

and DSP that qould have better concertrated on GFX and SFX. Now if you want to argue folks just porting crap over

than yes, but with a much better design you would have seen more folks taking advantage of the 020. A local TRUE

cahce, a much better efficiency in external access as well as internally.

 

Thereis just no way to argue that away. Fact is if you are going to remove the host, then you need the TOM at very

least to be a true bootable processor and have both chips on sepreate buses. Otherwise is would have been no better

in the way of bottlenecks, haveing those two fight over bus time with the OPL and the blitter.

 

Yes - making Tom bootable wouldn't have been that difficult to do though. Jerry already has 32 data lines on the chip connecting it to Tom, so boosting the instruction fetch to get 32 bits at a time would be possible ( even if everything else was still 16 bit ) would also have been pretty simple.

 

It is all conjecture anyway, so we can have different opinions.

You want a more expensive processor and a complete redesign of the system to get separate buses.

I'm thinking of fixing the bugs in the system, ( main code exec. ) and making the gpu boot at 0 so that more money can be saved by dropping the 68000 completely.

Then adding a CD at launch - and having a GPU and DSP C compiler that works for all code. ( The DSP can run game code from main memory, and have sound running on interupt from local memory , and the GPU can handle the graphics as expected )

 

The GPU can execute instructions out of main now with out any redesign. You just have to be careful and the tools could have been made to handle that. Yes a more expensive processor would have added a ton more value to the system. Im talking with the current chipset now, with no changes.

It would have been the simplest and the most practical. Conjecture or not, an 020 would have made it a simple way and a very practical way.

[+rdemming]

With the CD, Atari should also have increased the internal RAM. Since the CD is too slow to load data on the fly, graphics/sprite data must be read into ram. With the graphics capabilities of the Jaguar, 2MB is not much. Especially with high/true color graphics.

With more RAM, CD games such as Primal Rage could have bigger sprites and more frames of animation resulting is a smoother game.

 

In short, with more ram (and more ROM in case of cart games), Jaguar games could have NEO-GEO quality graphics and animation but then in high/true color.

 

Robert

Edited October 8, 2009 by rdemming

[Gorf]

With the CD, Atari should also have increased the internal RAM. Since the CD is too slow to load data on the fly, graphics/sprite data must be read into ram. With the graphics capabilities of the Jaguar, 2MB is not much. Especially with high/true color graphics.

With more RAM, CD games such as Primal Rage could have bigger sprites and more frames of animation resulting is a smoother game.

 

In short, with more ram (and more ROM in case of cart games), Jaguar games could have NEO-GEO quality graphics and animation but then in high/true color.

 

Robert

 

This is not directed at Robert alone but everyone else that thinks the Neo Geo is even in the same league as

Jaguar hardware wise(and software wise).

 

This Jaguar vs Neo Geo is just beyond annoying and wishful thinking at best.

Jaguar as it stands now can out do the Neo Geo handily and in more colors without the Cd drive.

 

Processors 68k 16bit(12 hmz) and Z-80 8 bit(4 mhz)

vs

two J-RISC's at 32 bits(26.59 mhz)(with locals to run in parallel),

68k at 16 bits(13.3MHZ),

OPL at 64 bits and Blitter at 64 bits(26.59 mhz)

The slower link in clock speed is faster than the fastest in the Neo Geo.

 

RAM = 214k < 1/4 meg. vs Jaguars 2 megabytes 8 times the RAM

 

Display resolution: 320x224 vs Jaguars 800x240

Color palette: 65,536 (16-bit) 4096 colors max vs Jaguar's 24 bit 16.7 million all of which can be used at once

 

Max sprites 384 vs Jaguar's unlimited

Max sprite size: 16x512 vs Jaguar's unlimited size

Maximum sprites per scanline: 96 vs Jaguars unlimited per scan line

Background layers: 0 vs Jaguar's many many

 

Yamaha sound chip with 128k sound ROM only 32 k used vs Jaguar's unlimited DSP abilities

with effects and wave rom

 

No contest. The neo Geo was blessed with developers willing to go the extra mile to use what they had.

Put those guys on the Jaguar and it's a complete ass whooping all over Neo Geo.

 

Let's see Rayman in full color on Neo Geo...oops can't.

Let's see trevor McFur's colors on Neo Geo...oops can't

Let's see any of the 3D games in spite of slower frame rates on the Neo.. oops no way.

 

Let's see Phaze Zero or Battlesphere or doom or Wolf 3D...oops once again

 

If you want to argue better and more popular titles for Neo fine but even there that's a matter of opinion.

not to mention the $800 vs $250($400 with CD drive)

 

Now lets get back to our senses folks....compare the system with the 3DO(maybe) or PSX or Saturn.

Anything before the Jaguar is not even close.

[kool kitty89]

This is not directed at Robert alone but everyone else that thinks the Neo Geo is even in the same league as

Jaguar hardware wise(and software wise).

 

Yeah, that's kind of a no brainer once you know a bit about it. I beleive the Jaguar's even more of a 2D powerhouse than the Saturn. (depending on programmers and hardware utilization, the Jag is certainly more flexible, plus the Saturn has some bugs as well, like with transparency)

Did the Neo Geo even use 256 color subpalettes? (or just a whole lot of 16-color subpalettes) Either way, the master palette is 65,536 colors, which is the same as many Jag games used on-screen. (I seem to remember that the Jag was actually most effecient using 16-bit color)

 

I think what he meant though was Neo Geo/arcade quality sprite animations, which requires a LOT of stored frames of animation, hence the RAM expansion on the Saturn. The Neo Geo was a ROM monster above anything else. (RAM monster for the Neo CD) You did mention previously though that (at least for cartridges) you could have the data compressed and use one of the J-RISCs to decompress it on the fly, something like 14x compression being possible. (making a 6 MB cart into something to rival the largest Neo Geo carts) This would still be a problem with CDs though, inless you loaded data compressed into RAM and decompressed that on the fly.

 

If you want to argue better and more popular titles for Neo fine but even there that's a matter of opinion.

not to mention the $800 vs $250($400 with CD drive)

 

Don't forget the Neo Geo CD though, I think it launched at $300 in 1994, so far more affordable. (especially in terms of games, with ~$50 CDs rather than hundreds of dollars for the massive carts)

 

 

With the CD, Atari should also have increased the internal RAM. Since the CD is too slow to load data on the fly, graphics/sprite data must be read into ram. With the graphics capabilities of the Jaguar, 2MB is not much. Especially with high/true color graphics.

With more RAM, CD games such as Primal Rage could have bigger sprites and more frames of animation resulting is a smoother game.

 

I think more RAM would be too much on top of an added CD drive (even 1x speed), especially in conjunction with an added 68EC020 (even a 16 MHz rated one). However, there's the cartridge bus to use for expansion, so you could later release a RAM cart to use for such games. (maybe even make games that can play without the aded RAm, but are considerably enhance with it, higher res+more animation etc)

Edited October 8, 2009 by kool kitty89

[sd32]

This is not directed at Robert alone but everyone else that thinks the Neo Geo is even in the same league as

Jaguar hardware wise(and software wise).

 

Yeah, that's kind of a no brainer once you know a bit about it. I beleive the Jaguar's even more of a 2D powerhouse than the Saturn. (depending on programmers and hardware utilization, the Jag is certainly more flexible, plus the Saturn has some bugs as well, like with transparency)

Did the Neo Geo even use 256 color subpalettes? (or just a whole lot of 16-color subpalettes) Either way, the master palette is 65,536 colors, which is the same as many Jag games used on-screen. (I seem to remember that the Jag was actually most effecient using 16-bit color)

 

 

kool kitty89 is so badass, that he once went to the Sega-16bit.com forums and told those sega fanboys that the Jag was quiet capable of giving the Saturn a run for its money in 2d. Of course, people there would hear non of it and treated him like a lunatic jagfanboy. The topic of discution there was about which console from the mid 90s had the best 2d capabilities including sprite scaling like in Segas arcade machines. Most there agreed that Saturn was the best at 2d, some mentioned FM Towns Marty, Neo Geo, NEC PCFX, and kitty mentioned the Jaguar, and they laughed, and i was too scared to back him up .

I hate that whenever i mention the Jag as a 2d powerhouse most people act like i am crazy. I dont have the hardware knowledge to back my claims, only what i have learned from guys like Gorf on his posts .

[kool kitty89]

kool kitty89 is so badass, that he once went to the Sega-16bit.com forums and told those sega fanboys that the Jag was quiet capable of giving the Saturn a run for its money in 2d. Of course, people there would hear non of it and treated him like a lunatic jagfanboy. The topic of discution there was about which console from the mid 90s had the best 2d capabilities including sprite scaling like in Segas arcade machines. Most there agreed that Saturn was the best at 2d, some mentioned FM Towns Marty, Neo Geo, NEC PCFX, and kitty mentioned the Jaguar, and they laughed, and i was too scared to back him up .

I hate that whenever i mention the Jag as a 2d powerhouse most people act like i am crazy. I dont have the hardware knowledge to back my claims, only what i have learned from guys like Gorf on his posts .

 

Hey and I'm not even a Jaguar fanboy. Actually I don't even own one, I just fine it very interesting and one of the few more obscure consoles I actually knew about before I really got into retro gaming. For that matter I didn't own any Sega console when I joined Sega-16 either, I did start collecting for that more recently though, actually got one with a Sega CD. I'd consider getting a jaguar, but their a lot less common and have gotten rather expensive recently and there's not a lot to really that much to collect for it, especially in the way of exclusives, or the best versions of multiplatform games, plus some better CD only games and rarer/more expensive games in general. If I'd gotten into this 3-4 years ago it would probably be another story. For the same reason I'm not planning on getting a Saturn really. (although that does have a larger library, the it tends to be even more expensive to collect for, and some of the best games are import only)

 

I guess that's the reason though, I'm kind of equal opportunity retro game fan (retro electronics in general really), I grew up with Nintendo along with PC games (we actually had a 2600 packed away but I didn't get to play until ~2000), but don't feel particularly biased toward any (except a little bit of negativity against the PS1 and PS2), so I'd rather judge them by individual merit.

Edited October 8, 2009 by kool kitty89

[sd32]

kool kitty89 is so badass, that he once went to the Sega-16bit.com forums and told those sega fanboys that the Jag was quiet capable of giving the Saturn a run for its money in 2d. Of course, people there would hear non of it and treated him like a lunatic jagfanboy. The topic of discution there was about which console from the mid 90s had the best 2d capabilities including sprite scaling like in Segas arcade machines. Most there agreed that Saturn was the best at 2d, some mentioned FM Towns Marty, Neo Geo, NEC PCFX, and kitty mentioned the Jaguar, and they laughed, and i was too scared to back him up .

I hate that whenever i mention the Jag as a 2d powerhouse most people act like i am crazy. I dont have the hardware knowledge to back my claims, only what i have learned from guys like Gorf on his posts .

 

Hey and I'm not even a Jaguar fanboy. Actually I don't even own one, I just fine it very interesting and one of the few more obscure consoles I actually knew about before I really got into retro gaming. For that matter I didn't own any Sega console when I joined Sega-16 either, I did start collecting for that more recently though, actually got one with a Sega CD. I'd consider getting a jaguar, but their a lot less common and have gotten rather expensive recently and there's not a lot to really that much to collect for it, especially in the way of exclusives, or the best versions of multiplatform games, plus some better CD only games and rarer/more expensive games in general. If I'd gotten into this 3-4 years ago it would probably be another story. For the same reason I'm not planning on getting a Saturn really. (although that does have a larger library, the it tends to be even more expensive to collect for, and some of the best games are import only)

 

I guess that's the reason though, I'm kind of equal opportunity retro game fan (retro electronics in general really), I grew up with Nintendo along with PC games (we actually had a 2600 packed away but I didn't get to play until ~2000), but don't feel particularly biased toward any (except a little bit of negativity against the PS1 and PS2), so I'd rather judge them by individual merit.

 

Yeah, i have noticed your unbiasness in your posts, its quiet refreshing, hehe .

We should get buddydudies to send you a Jaguar for free, he must have tons of spare consoles . I would have never guessed you didnt have a Jag, hell at times i tought you might be a Jag coder since you seem to have some nice knowledge of the Jags hardware, but i think you have already adressed that.

[Gorf]

I hate that whenever i mention the Jag as a 2d powerhouse most people act like i am crazy. I dont have the hardware knowledge to back my claims, only what i have learned from guys like Gorf on his posts .

Just send them here....that's if they have the balls.

[Gorf]

I think what he meant though was Neo Geo/arcade quality sprite animations, which requires a LOT of stored frames of animation, hence the RAM

 

Like I said...the Jaguar has 8 times the RAM so even at twice the color bits it could outdo handily the Neo Geo.

Using the ROM cart ont he Jaguar with compression would be all you needed. It's the lack of coders really wanting

to push the system in a time where C code was taking over assembler and many developers were spoiled rotten on it

by then. Laziness on the developers part and inept decisions on Atari's part more than anything killed the Jaguar.

[JagChris]

With the CD, Atari should also have increased the internal RAM. Since the CD is too slow to load data on the fly,

 

Robert

 

That's not exactly true, Ken Rose came up with a technique where the JagCD was basically loading data on the fly in BIWN.

[kskunk]

With the CD, Atari should also have increased the internal RAM. Since the CD is too slow to load data on the fly,

 

The RAM is the most expensive component in the Jaguar at about $50 (raw cost, before PCB space/assembly/test/rework/etc). Doubling to 4MB would add $100 minimum to the retail cost. Would it be worth it?

 

One thing that's often overlooked is that memory prices were fixed in the early-90s, so that $100 disadvantage would live on until at least 1996 when memory prices resumed dropping.

 

The JagCD is as fast as the Playstation. There are plenty of PS1 games that demonstrate how memory constraints can be overcome with on-the-fly loading. (Crash Bandicoot and Gran Turismo, for example.)

 

On the plus side, Tom has some special performance features that are only available with 4MB. Tom's DRAM controller supports two open pages at once if there are two memory banks, which greatly accelerates texture mapping and other blitter operations, or GPU execution from main.

 

But realistically, there are much more affordable ways to improve performance than doubling memory.

 

- KS

[sd32]

How good is the Jag at sprite scaling?, i loved those Sega games from the late 80s early 90s that ran on arcade boards specialized on sprite scaling. Apparently those arcade systems were so good at it that even the Saturn couldnt handle arcade perfect ports of:

Galaxy Forxe 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaLRLo2yB04

Power Drift

In the case of Power Drift, it took a Sega Dreamcast port to finally do that game justice on a home console.

Being an owner of Super Burnout , i can tell that the Jag is very good at it, but not being a tech guy, i cant tell if the Jag is just really good at sprite scaling and rotation, or if it was an amazing job by the coders of that game.

By the way, anybody here remembers wishing that Sega ported Power Drift to the Sega CD because of its sprite scaling and rotation capabilities?, and we tought it would be able to do it justice!, ha. Hehe, little did i know back then that the Sega CD hardware was way, way, way weaker than Power Drifts arcade board!

[philipj]

How good is the Jag at sprite scaling?, i loved those Sega games from the late 80s early 90s that ran on arcade boards specialized on sprite scaling. Apparently those arcade systems were so good at it that even the Saturn couldnt handle arcade perfect ports of:

Galaxy Forxe 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaLRLo2yB04

Power Drift

In the case of Power Drift, it took a Sega Dreamcast port to finally do that game justice on a home console.

Being an owner of Super Burnout , i can tell that the Jag is very good at it, but not being a tech guy, i cant tell if the Jag is just really good at sprite scaling and rotation, or if it was an amazing job by the coders of that game.

By the way, anybody here remembers wishing that Sega ported Power Drift to the Sega CD because of its sprite scaling and rotation capabilities?, and we tought it would be able to do it justice!, ha. Hehe, little did i know back then that the Sega CD hardware was way, way, way weaker than Power Drifts arcade board!

 

 

You must not have heard of "Soulstar" for the Sega CD... Well there's also a Jag version that was never officially released. And then there's "Supercross 3D" that's somewhat impressive that neither the Sega arcade system or the Sega CD can do. Here's a couple of links...

 

Soulstar:

Supercross 3D:

Edited October 9, 2009 by philipj

[JagChris]

How good is the Jag at sprite scaling?,

Being an owner of Super Burnout , i can tell that the Jag is very good at it, but not being a tech guy, i cant tell if the Jag is just really good at sprite scaling and rotation, or if it was an amazing job by the coders of that game.

 

 

Here is a couple comments from Oliver Nallet who did SB on the Jag, see whether he thinks it maxed out the Jag or not.

 

Trying to keep up with the questions.

 

A little history (just to show how different things were back then .

When we started SBO we didn't have a contract with Atari. Elysee (project leader) had some contact with a company named Virtual eXperience that was developping on Jaguar.

They agreed to lend us their dev kit every week-end (so they could still develop their game during the week). So every friday night we grabbed the dev kit in their office, I worked crazy hours during the whole week-end, then monday morning we gave them the kit back. The artist Kheang Tan was able to work during the week on Amiga, but for me as programmer,

I needed the console to develop the game and put graphs / sounds / data together. Needless to say that was tough. Especially that our "main office" was Elysee's bedroom

During the week I was going to the university to study my BSc.

Within 6 months our week-end project was further along than VX project that started before ours, so VX decided that it would be their best interest that we had one of their devkit full time. It coincided with the end of my university cycle, so then I continued full time on SBO and had to stop university.

 

I believe that Atari saw the demo and was very iterested, Jack Trammiel came to see us, and we started the contract with Atari at around that time.

They gave us 3-4 months to polish the game and we finally shipped. IIRC it took 12 to 14 months total between having the kit the first time in hand and shipped the product.

The first 6 months were not as productive as the middle obviously, there is so much you can do during the week-end without sleep

The last 4 months were not very productive as well, we were trying to convince Atari that "No, we cannot have leaves falling from the trees with the wind, etc.." plus some tests like the jaglink, a couple of cheats, more bikes, etc... At the end we were not doing much, waiting for Atari to approve the final build.

With the money that we got, we created the company Shen Technologies, and unfortunately had no other deal with Atari anymore (they loved us though as we had specs for the jaguar 2 and this kind of stuff), but they died while we were developping our next game Nexus, so we had to switch to another platform.

 

About the 2 players mode, I actually don't remember the details but if I can guess (or maybe imaginating the past), we had to play 2 set of bikes for the two players and it may not have been enough CPU cycle to play these plus the music. Also note that the DSP had lower priority on the bus than the GPU. In 2 player mode we actually display more sprites,

although I may have split the display list, the costly zone was around the horizon line as that's where we had most sprites in a single line.

Thus having 2 players reduced the quality of the sound. We didn't have the time to change the music to reduce the number of voices to fit, so we prefered to cut the music instead of having the same phasing effects than other Jaguar games. (Also 16 bikes at the same time + music was particularly noisy and saturated).

 

BTW as that time I believe SBO had one of the best music player on Jaguar. We were able to play music 10 voices at 32 Khz with the best quality, no phasing, almost regardless of the number of sprites during the game with bikes, voices - ok, beside 2 players mode . Funny to see that at that time most of the games were struggling even to play 4 voices when there had an average number of sprites on the screen, doom was a perfect example of that.

In the main menu, because there was no bike to play and almost no GPU usage, we were able to play 16 voices at 50 KHz, the sound was really clear.

 

Anyway, I still do remember some of the technical details so if you have some questions don't hesitate, maybe my experience can help some new Jaguar developper

 

and this...

 

I don't know how often I'll be able to come back here, but hey let's continue to chat...

 

>>1. Was there any build (albeit unstable) that included the buggy network feature that has somehow survived all these years?

 

Nope, I don't think so. I don't even have the sources anymore of SBO. Because this game has been released it may be possible to reverse engineer the code, the network code might just be simply deactivated, but I don't think it's worthwhile though.

 

>>2. What happened with Shen Technologies?

 

The company died in 1999, one year after I left.

 

>>3. The game you worked on after SBO, which you say was called "Nexus" sounds pretty cool. Is there anything you can tell us about it? I'm assuming it was to be for the Jaguar? How far along were you guys able to get on it before Atari said "bye bye?" Does Nexus exist today in the form of either early builds or ports to other platforms?

 

Same thing as SBO, I was not as careful on the archives at that time Funny that I just saw some screenshots of SBO with "Stellar X" on it, and that was the first name of Nexus (I forgot that).

Kheang gave a great interview explaining a bunch of details (and I forgot a lot of them). But it's in French.

We had a big portion of the assets, a couple of levels done. In short, we were trying to reproduce Raiden with much more animation, details, several moving backgrounds with choreography, more agressive artistic design with prerendered raytraced objects displayed on 2D. I'm still proud of that code (maybe more than SBO actually, although there are a couple of good tricks in SBO as well .

 

IIRC, on the code side, everything was developped with the DSPs, nothing with the 68000, except just boot and VBL sync.

Because there was only 4 KB of memory on the GPU, I was hot-swapping portions of the assembly code, modules by modules, trying to reuse as much as possible the cached memory (something that is also done commonly on PS3 SPUs).

Everything worked well together and I'm pretty sure I still had CPU cycles left even with more than 1000 sprites on the screen.

By the way, I was displaying the 1000+ sprites on Jag with a trick on the display-list.

The Jag was a killer in 2D (ok, at that time , but the only downside was that if the display list contained too many sprites, it actually ate bandwidth on the sprites to display,

creating sometime this wobbling effect on some line (due to the fact the jag didn't have screen buffer but was diplaying everything on the fly, nice design to save expensive memory

but with some constraints

So the way I resolved that was to actually use the branches of the display list, by having 3 levels of branches I was actually able to split the screen in 8 horizontal bands of 30 pixels or so.

Then I just had to fill each of the sub-display lists separatly, thus I just had 125+ sprites per display list, but 1000+ total displayed on the screen.

That way each horizontal line had almost full bandwidth to display the sprite.

The nightware was on the GPU side though, every single sprite had to be split in pieces to be placed on the proper horizontal band with the propoer offset initialized. Sometime sprites like bosses could be split over the whole 8 bands. Everything was displayed with that, even the multiple level of tiles for the background.

 

I thinks there's more somewhere around here.

[kool kitty89]

Like I said...the Jaguar has 8 times the RAM so even at twice the color bits it could outdo handily the Neo Geo.

Using the ROM cart ont he Jaguar with compression would be all you needed. It's the lack of coders really wanting

to push the system in a time where C code was taking over assembler and many developers were spoiled rotten on it

by then. Laziness on the developers part and inept decisions on Atari's part more than anything killed the Jaguar.

 

Yes, but Neo Geo had those massive, multi-bus ROMs to work with, and conversely the Jag has the resourses for fast decompression from ROM. (using tons of ROM and relatively little RAM, mainly just work RAM) With the Neo Geo CD it needed over 7.6 MB of RAM. (and the Jag CD would be pretty similarly limited without the cart ROM to stream and decompress, albeit you could do a bit of on the fly loading from CD and maybe store data compressed in RAM and decompress that on the fly, assuming no expansion) Mainly animation frams that are the issue, again like on the Saturn. (and in at least one case there was a ROM cart used on the saturn for this purpose rather than one of the RAM carts)

 

The RAM is the most expensive component in the Jaguar at about $50 (raw cost, before PCB space/assembly/test/rework/etc). Doubling to 4MB would add $100 minimum to the retail cost. Would it be worth it?

 

One thing that's often overlooked is that memory prices were fixed in the early-90s, so that $100 disadvantage would live on until at least 1996 when memory prices resumed dropping.

 

later offering RAM expansion would have been better in that respect as well, a 1-2 MB cart released in 1996 should be fairly practical. (using the existing cartridge bus would be somewhat limiting, but still useful for some things, for a CD based console at least)

 

On the plus side, Tom has some special performance features that are only available with 4MB. Tom's DRAM controller supports two open pages at once if there are two memory banks, which greatly accelerates texture mapping and other blitter operations, or GPU execution from main.

 

But realistically, there are much more affordable ways to improve performance than doubling memory.

 

Like double buffering the Blitter?

Edited October 9, 2009 by kool kitty89

[+rdemming]

This is not directed at Robert alone but everyone else that thinks the Neo Geo is even in the same league as

Jaguar hardware wise(and software wise).

 

I think what he meant though was Neo Geo/arcade quality sprite animations, which requires a LOT of stored frames of animation, hence the RAM expansion on the Saturn. The Neo Geo was a ROM monster above anything else. (RAM monster for the Neo CD) You did mention previously though that (at least for cartridges) you could have the data compressed and use one of the J-RISCs to decompress it on the fly, something like 14x compression being possible. (making a 6 MB cart into something to rival the largest Neo Geo carts) This would still be a problem with CDs though, inless you loaded data compressed into RAM and decompressed that on the fly.

 

 

Gorf, of course I'm aware that the Jaguar is much more than a sprite pusher and I'm not debating that. The processing power of the Jaguar is much bigger than that of the NEO-GEO. Period.

And indeed kool kitty, I'm talking about the elaborate sprite animation and backdrops that make NEO-GEO games stand out at that time.

Hi-color graphics & CD quality sound takes up a lot of space. It is great that you have hardware that can move around megabytes of data per frame. But if you don't have the storage space to store all those data.....

 

I'm talking about CD games because creating NEO-GEO sized carts was way too expensive. For games where you can predict what graphics is needed, you can indeed use 'loading on the fly' techniques. E.g. a scrolling shoot-em-up can load background/sprite graphics that is coming further up in the game (SWIV on the Atari ST/AMIGA even uses this). But games like a beat-em-up can't predict what graphics is needed because you can't know what move a player is going to make. So all frames of animation for all moves must be in memory.

 

If you have a beat-em-up with big sprites, lets say 96*96 pixels big, then a single frame in 16-bit color would cost 18KB. With 2048KB RAM, you could store almost 114 frames of animation or 57 frames of animation per player. Not much frames if you have dozens of moves.

Of course you can optimize the number of sprites needed by building the player of several parts that can be reused for different moves or on the fly decompression (It would have been great if the OP could display compressed graphics directly).

But you can't use all the 2048KB for sprite graphics, you also need space for your code and sound effects/samples. The sound effects must be in RAM as well. CD quality audio (44KHz 16-bit) costs almost 86 KB per second or around 24 seconds if you could use the whole 2MB. Not much so you probably need to settle with lower quality sound samples.

 

So 2MB is certainly not much for the Jaguar's graphics and sound capabilities. Remember that the Native demo is using on the fly graphics decompression and still has not enough space to include sounds.

 

 

The NEO-GEO CD compensated the lack of ROM by adding lots of RAM:

- 2MB dedicated to the 68000

- 4MB dedicated to graphics

- 1MB dedicated to sound samples

- 512KB VRAM (graphics)

- 64KB dedicated to the Z80

 

PlayStation also had more RAM and also a data decompression engine in hardware that outputs the result via DMA to the GPU:

- 2MB main ram

- 1MB graphics ram

- 512KB sound ram

- 32KB CD-ROM buffer ram

 

And the Sega Saturn also had more RAM:

- 1MB SDRAM

- 1MB DRAM

- 1.5MB VRAM (video)

- 512KB audio ram

- 512KB CD-ROM buffer ram

 

Even the 3DO had a little more RAM:

- 2MB main ram

- 1MB video ram

- 32KB CD-ROM buffer ram

 

 

I understand adding more RAM was too expensive at that time for a home game system. I'm only saying that to have lots of animation and sound effects in CD games (as used in NEO-GEO games), you need lots of RAM. The lack of RAM can be partly compensated with clever tricks made possible by the Jaguar's processing power but is that enough to replace the 5.5MB extra RAM the NEO-GEO CD had more than the Jaguar?

 

Robert

Edited October 9, 2009 by rdemming

[Gorf]

 

Gorf, of course I'm aware that the Jaguar is much more than a sprite pusher and I'm not debating that. The processing power of the Jaguar is much bigger than that of the NEO-GEO. Period.

 

The NEO-GEO CD compensated the lack of ROM by adding lots of RAM:

- 2MB dedicated to the 68000

- 4MB dedicated to graphics

- 1MB dedicated to sound samples

- 512KB VRAM (graphics)

- 64KB dedicated to the Z80

 

Just the 2megs with compression will stand up especially at 14:1.

so 2megs is like 28 megs or 4 times the memory. But lets say

we put aside 1 meg for code and sound and just use 1 meg for gfx.

You still have 14 megs effectively with compression. Twice that

of Neo Geo CD in a stock Jag.

 

The OPL does not need to use comperssion directly...the GPU is more than processor enough.

 

After all that is what the Neo Geo CD has to do(bank switch) at a much slower speed with no compression abilities.

 

Jaguar can use up to 4 extra megs RAM on the cart and up to 6 megs of ROM on cart as well....before switch banking.

Neo Geo CD 7 megs vs Jaguar's 4+2 megs RAM + 6 megs ROM = 12 megs + 14:1 compression....boom! Now you have an effective

168 megabytes per cart...they would then cost as much as neo geo carts or more.

 

Add all this in Jaguar with the memory and compression and again it's not a contest.

 

PlayStation also had more RAM

Sega Saturn also had more RAM:

3DO had a little more RAM

 

A much more reasonable comparison of systems generation wise.

 

The 3DO as able as it was still would not have the abilities of the Jaguar at full working ability.

The rest of the systems were years after Jaguar and much more reasonable to compare to. The 3DO had

to have more RAM as it did not have much in the way of compression if any at all.

 

Saturn was about equal with a bit better T-mapping ability.

 

The PSX also had tons more development money in Sony for it's hardware. (Actually so did Sega at the time.)

 

Neither 3DO, Saturn, Sony or Nintendo were able to deal with pixel and vector based primitives as well as Jag.

Neither would have handled voxels anywhere near as well. Saturn would have been better than PSX at this though.

 

The PSX's biggest asset was the brilliant multi bus set up. Put the Tom and Jerry in a similar

multi bus set up and it would have been as good if not better than PSX.

 

The Jaguar was designed around cheapness and a low budget and a couple years before PSX with no help from

MIPS or other technologies.

 

Jaguar's biggest down fall was programmer laziness and Atari idiocy and unwillingness to have real tools developed.

With the right tools the Jag would have stood a chance much longer with these systems than it did. Dont forget that

Sony, Nintendo and Sega went around and bought off all the Jag developers too.

[Gorf]

Also...even if you just ported Neo Geo games and used the same color depth, the games would be as good and room left

for them to be better WITHOUT the CD rom.

[philipj]

Well the Neo Geo, if I recall, used sprites that were broken up into 16x16 or 32x32 sizes to be streamed from a cartridge to my presumption some one can correct me if I'm wrong. Most of the Neo Geo fighting games didn't use tile mapping in the traditional sense the way the Geny or the SNES used it were the sprite-tile-images were stored in RAM, but rather it was reliant on streaming sprites from cart to RAM then immediate on-screen display very similar to how streaming video works. If the Jag be more powerful then the Neo Geo then Jag is more then capable to do similar task it's just a matter of images being handle one bit-block at a time, which makes for very potent image processing. That was what I've admired about the Neo Geo and how it was used. Consider Soul Star for the Sega CD... Most of the sprites were straight foward and not very animated, however presentation really made this game stand out as not only fun, but addictivly playable. Another game comes to mind and that's "Silpheed for the Sega CD," which I believe used FMV for it's 3D background or it used streamed 3D data for from the CD as it was being rendered I never found out exactly how it was done.

 

The Jag was a programmers nightmare. But then so is the PS3 so I heard, but I think the difference between the PS3 and the Jag is that programmers are now realizing the PS3 potential where as the Jag really just didn't have that kind of opportunity for that... until recently. I think it was just a matter of keeping images small and learning lessons from Neo Geo by making sure that all five processor remains potent in it's image processing versus trying to store large chunks of images in RAM this way the system is never really tied up. I believe that is what set Neo Geo apart from the rest of consoles so how much more can the Jag do?

[Gorf]

Well the Neo Geo, if I recall, used sprites that were broken up into 16x16 or 32x32 sizes to be streamed from a cartridge to my presumption some one can correct me if I'm wrong. Most of the Neo Geo fighting games didn't use tile mapping in the traditional sense the way the Geny or the SNES used it were the sprite-tile-images were stored in RAM, but rather it was reliant on streaming sprites from cart to RAM then immediate on-screen display very similar to how streaming video works. If the Jag be more powerful then the Neo Geo then Jag is more then capable to do similar task it's just a matter of images being handle one bit-block at a time, which makes for very potent image processing. That was what I've admired about the Neo Geo and how it was used. Consider Soul Star for the Sega CD... Most of the sprites were straight foward and not very animated, however presentation really made this game stand out as not only fun, but addictivly playable. Another game comes to mind and that's "Silpheed for the Sega CD," which I believe used FMV for it's 3D background or it used streamed 3D data for from the CD as it was being rendered I never found out exactly how it was done.

 

The Jag was a programmers nightmare. But then so is the PS3 so I heard, but I think the difference between the PS3 and the Jag is that programmers are now realizing the PS3 potential where as the Jag really just didn't have that kind of opportunity for that... until recently. I think it was just a matter of keeping images small and learning lessons from Neo Geo by making sure that all five processor remains potent in it's image processing versus trying to store large chunks of images in RAM this way the system is never really tied up. I believe that is what set Neo Geo apart from the rest of consoles so how much more can the Jag do?

Tons more than the Neo Geo with or without the CD. Again....try a game like Phaze Zero or Battle Sphere on a Neo.

 

In fact try to code BattleSphere for the PS1 with only one processor....it aint happening. It will look a lot better but

play like ass. One Mips is not going to out think two J-RISCs and a 68k. It will out draw the JAg but it wont out think

it. Just look at Krazy Ivan Vs either IS game. KI is boring with nice graphics. IS is great game play and still decent

gfx even with very nice textures.

[kool kitty89]

Well the Neo Geo, if I recall, used sprites that were broken up into 16x16 or 32x32 sizes to be streamed from a cartridge to my presumption some one can correct me if I'm wrong. Most of the Neo Geo fighting games didn't use tile mapping in the traditional sense the way the Geny or the SNES used it were the sprite-tile-images were stored in RAM, but rather it was reliant on streaming sprites from cart to RAM then immediate on-screen display very similar to how streaming video works. If the Jag be more powerful then the Neo Geo then Jag is more then capable to do similar task it's just a matter of images being handle one bit-block at a time, which makes for very potent image processing. That was what I've admired about the Neo Geo and how it was used. Consider Soul Star for the Sega CD... Most of the sprites were straight foward and not very animated, however presentation really made this game stand out as not only fun, but addictivly playable. Another game comes to mind and that's "Silpheed for the Sega CD," which I believe used FMV for it's 3D background or it used streamed 3D data for from the CD as it was being rendered I never found out exactly how it was done.

 

According to the commonly sited technical details overview, the Neo Geo could have sprites of 16x512 maximum (well into overscan for vertical, so effectively 16x224), with the smallest possible tile being just 1x2, so a lot of flexibility, this would also explain the often used 304 cliped display (of full 320x224) as 19 of the largest sprites would then fit as a single background layer.

What I'm more curious about is the palitiezed color arrangement used for the Neo Geo, jst saying 4,096 colors doesn't mean much, like saying 64 colors for the genesis or 482 for TG-16, both of which use 16-color subpalettes. SO does th eNeo Geo use 256x 16-color palettes, 16x 256 color palettes, or what?

 

As for Silpheed, th ebackground is definitely streaming video (the main reason the game uses hardware synth music rather than CD audio), it's done very tactfully with objects rendered in a Genesis freindly color palette so no nasty lo-color transitional problems, though looking a bit bland. (and having the side effect of tricking many into thinking they were hardware rendered in realtime) The contension comes in how the enemies, active objects, and player are generated, and from what I understand that's done by rendering them beforehand and storing them as animation tiles in RAM and then outputting them on sprite tiles, along with using the CD ASIC to scale them. (I beleive the "polygon test" in options rendered that in realtime, and shows many more frames of animation than used in-game as well)

Stellar Fire would be the best (if not only) example of a (realtime rendered) polygon based game on the Sega CD.

 

The Jag was a programmers nightmare. But then so is the PS3 so I heard, but I think the difference between the PS3 and the Jag is that programmers are now realizing the PS3 potential where as the Jag really just didn't have that kind of opportunity for that... until recently. I think it was just a matter of keeping images small and learning lessons from Neo Geo by making sure that all five processor remains potent in it's image processing versus trying to store large chunks of images in RAM this way the system is never really tied up. I believe that is what set Neo Geo apart from the rest of consoles so how much more can the Jag do?

 

I seem to recall that the PS3 is actually less problematic in this respect than the PS2. (or rather the PS2 is even worse in this respect)

 

 

 

Oh and Gorf, I think the Neo Geo AES/MVS has even less onboard RAm than you mentioned, you posted 214 kB, but from what I'm seeing listed online, it looks like 140 kB, 64 kB for 68k, 2 kB for Z80, and 64 for video 8 kB palette data and 2 kB "fast video RAM". I think the problem comes in that the video memory often gets listed twice, one as 74 kB, and then as 64+8+2 directly below, hence the extra 74 kB. So the Jag has almost 15x as much RAM than the Neo Geo. (albeit on a single bus, excpet for tom and jerry's scratchpads) And in fact, that's only 4 kB more than the Genesis has (and its Z80 has 4x the work RAM), and quite a bit less than what the SNES has. (this doesn't necessarily mean much on its own though, and each of these consoles can do some things the other can't, some of which due to RAM limitations)

Edited October 9, 2009 by kool kitty89

[philipj]

Tons more than the Neo Geo with or without the CD. Again....try a game like Phaze Zero or Battle Sphere on a Neo.

 

In fact try to code BattleSphere for the PS1 with only one processor....it aint happening. It will look a lot better but

play like ass. One Mips is not going to out think two J-RISCs and a 68k. It will out draw the JAg but it wont out think

it. Just look at Krazy Ivan Vs either IS game. KI is boring with nice graphics. IS is great game play and still decent

gfx even with very nice textures.

I think Nintendo tried to fool everyone with that game... Then, I actually believe that the up comming N64 was going to dish out the kind of graphics KI was flaunting. It wouldn't be until later I learned better, but it certainly had me thinking a lot about it... But if there was no Jag there probably wouldn't have been no N64; it was like Nintendo picked up where Atari left off and they just ran with it. Neo Geo tried the 64bit thing with the

but by that time the PS2 and the Dreamcast was on the horizon so that was a no-go.

 

According to the commonly sited technical details overview, the Neo Geo could have sprites of 16x512 maximum (well into overscan for vertical, so effectively 16x224), with the smallest possible tile being just 1x2, so a lot of flexibility, this would also explain the often used 304 cliped display (of full 320x224) as 19 of the largest sprites would then fit as a single background layer.

What I'm more curious about is the palitiezed color arrangement used for the Neo Geo, jst saying 4,096 colors doesn't mean much, like saying 64 colors for the genesis or 482 for TG-16, both of which use 16-color subpalettes. SO does th eNeo Geo use 256x 16-color palettes, 16x 256 color palettes, or what?

 

Those guys were the 2D kings... It wouldn't surprise if they used different pallets at different points of sprite display. Having worked with 16 colors on an 386 PC myself I know for a fact that there's always a way to beat the color processing system or at least make the best of it with a work-around... I got to respect what they were able to do with the Neo Geo.

 

As for Silpheed, th ebackground is definitely streaming video (the main reason the game uses hardware synth music rather than CD audio), it's done very tactfully with objects rendered in a Genesis freindly color palette so no nasty lo-color transitional problems, though looking a bit bland. (and having the side effect of tricking many into thinking they were hardware rendered in realtime) The contension comes in how the enemies, active objects, and player are generated, and from what I understand that's done by rendering them beforehand and storing them as animation tiles in RAM and then outputting them on sprite tiles, along with using the CD ASIC to scale them. (I beleive the "polygon test" in options rendered that in realtime, and shows many more frames of animation than used in-game as well)

Stellar Fire would be the best (if not only) example of a (realtime rendered) polygon based game on the Sega CD.

 

I remember renting that game back in the day (Steller Fire)... It sort of reminded me of Silpheed but it was more free roming, but not as detailed as Silpheed. I think Cybermorph and PhaseZero really shows off the Jag and I also thing the Sega CD could've seen a little bit more 3D action, but I understand that back in those days 3D probably wasn't consider to have been feasable or profitable for the Sega CD at that time... "Racing Aces" for the Sega CD showed a lot of promise though.

 

I seem to recall that the PS3 is actually less problematic in this respect than the PS2. (or rather the PS2 is even worse in this respect)

 

Well the word is that Sony was thinking future wise with the system not being as easy to program as the 360. I forget where I found that webpage, but they saying that PS3 developers have more leverage over the system then they did in the past so now the PS3 is future proof now that all of that raw power is available. I think as long as people keep buying the systems and the games, the programmers will keep pushing the PS3 to it's limits. If only the Jag had that sort of opportunity... Well there's always us homebrewers.

Edited October 9, 2009 by philipj

[sd32]

How good is the Jag at sprite scaling?, i loved those Sega games from the late 80s early 90s that ran on arcade boards specialized on sprite scaling. Apparently those arcade systems were so good at it that even the Saturn couldnt handle arcade perfect ports of:

Galaxy Forxe 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaLRLo2yB04

Power Drift

In the case of Power Drift, it took a Sega Dreamcast port to finally do that game justice on a home console.

Being an owner of Super Burnout , i can tell that the Jag is very good at it, but not being a tech guy, i cant tell if the Jag is just really good at sprite scaling and rotation, or if it was an amazing job by the coders of that game.

By the way, anybody here remembers wishing that Sega ported Power Drift to the Sega CD because of its sprite scaling and rotation capabilities?, and we tought it would be able to do it justice!, ha. Hehe, little did i know back then that the Sega CD hardware was way, way, way weaker than Power Drifts arcade board!

 

 

You must not have heard of "Soulstar" for the Sega CD... Well there's also a Jag version that was never officially released. And then there's "Supercross 3D" that's somewhat impressive that neither the Sega arcade system or the Sega CD can do. Here's a couple of links...

 

Soulstar:

Supercross 3D:

 

 

philipj, actually i am a big fan of Sega CD Soulstar, dont get me wrong, Sega CD had the best scaling and rotation capabilities from its era (dunno if the Marty and CD32 top it in that regard, though), but the Galaxy Froce 2 and Power Drift arcade boards were just superior. Some great examples of the Mega CD capabilities are Soulstar, Thunder Strike, Jaguar Racing, Batman and Robin, Batman Returns, Pugsy, among others.

About Super Cross 3D, i think it is using polygons for the tracks, right?, its no all scaling sprites. There is also Val D Isere Snowboarding on the Jag, which is very fast and smooth, but not quiet on the level of Super Burnout.