+CyranoJ Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Excuse my utter ignorance on this, as not a Falcon owner, but could someone give me some idea why Falcon has a 'version' of Quake (no idea how it stands up) yet no-one seems to have attempted a version on Jaguar?. Maybe because the Falcon is far more powerful than the Jaguar. 68030 14mb RAM A real DSP with 96k and actually useful commands @32Mhz For someone who spends all day, every day researching stuff, you could have google'd that in 10 seconds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 Yes, i did actually look at the Falcon vs the Jaguar, but as i said earlier the technical side of things is'nt my area what so ever. I did CNC coding for my job 20 years ago, but that's hardly relevant. I've no issues with researching stuff either, so not sure what's meant by that comment. Was'nt so long ago part of that research was on your behalf, was it?...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Maybe because the Falcon is far more powerful than the Jaguar. 68030 14mb RAM A real DSP with 96k and actually useful commands @32Mhz For someone who spends all day, every day researching stuff, you could have google'd that in 10 seconds. CJ, the stock Falcon has big trouble running Doom at a decent framerate. After years of hard work DML has finally gotten it up to 15fps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint Thompson Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Isn't the graphics chipset or claimed to be the main CPU (not the 68k) on the Jaguar far superior than that of the Falcon? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 I'm going to say this:I'm not ashamed of actually putting in the time to research topics i've an interest in, nor to say i know bugger all about the technical aspects of hardware, let alone hardware from Atari i never owned so, thus have no idea what the damn thing came with as standard, Ram wise, let alone could pull off for games.... But when i'm approached to spend some of my free time looking into areas for other peoples projects, due to the contacts i've made, 'thanks' to the time i've spent researching and building up a network of sources from within the industry, sarcastic comments come across a bit rich. I honestly respect the work you do CJ, but your attitude, going back to when you thought i was someone else (and a bit of research on your part there would'nt of gone amiss) sometimes does'nt do you any favours....that last post was one of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Sorry it touched you the wrong way, and thanks for doing that a while back, but really... if you can put so much effort into all these bits of information you could have answered that question with one simple Google line. It wasn't that you asked the question, its the now inevitable eleventy-billion posts from other people harking on about the untapped potential in the Jaguar that will follow. It's been done to death. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 :-) CJ, i could of had the entire Falcon hardware development team flown in and explain the Falcon hardware to me, via sock puppets, the lot.Like i said technical stuff on computers/consoles is way above me. I'm an ex-Mechanical Engineer, so whilst i spent a lot of time (20 years ago) involved in Computer Aided Design and programming CNC Lathes, Mill's, Punching Machines, Lasers, Press Brakes etc, it is like 12 Trillon miles apart from the areas you guys perform such fantastic feats in, week in, week out. Chalk and cheese? more like stone clubs and Phased plasma rifles in terms of worlds apart. I cannot, realistically forsee how anyones posts are going to follow mine, hell the reason i put a lot of research into the shit i do, is, because lets be blunt here, for fucking years now, UK magazines i paid damn good money for, feed myself and other paying customers a crock of fucking shit!. As the latest insights proved, it was standard practice it seems to pass off mock shots as real mcoys.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 thus 'birthing' all these self proclaimed bloody 'Experts' in the field of Atari, who peddled shite based on shite given to them in promo.material from magazines like EDGE and it's bloody moral high horse and not 1 of these 'experts' ever seemed to question it, just lumped it on their CD's for sale for Jaguar CD or youtube video's proclaiming BEHOLD the Lost Jaguar game proof you were looking for. And yes, it does still niggle tro be thought of as a banned from here poster, posting under a new username, espically considering my research is going on more sites/magazines than ever these days:Unseen64/GTW/ST Gamer/Classic Console Gamer/Pro-Atari and Return Magazine, let alone sharing info with this site and Atari-Forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I cannot, realistically forsee how anyones posts are going to follow mine. Some of us have been in this forum a lot longer We know what's coming. Oh look, JC already posted one 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 You try doing shift work, days and nights, see how much you feel like doing or trying to unwind for a few days after.Trust me, spending a few hours online each day researching for various communities is often all i physically feel like doing. I was more than happy to enquire on your behalf regarding certain matters, my only regret is despite best efforts we never got very far and i never heard anything back from at least 2 of my sources, but at least i tried. Anywho, baxck on topic: Tomb Raider Jaguar CD-Edge lied... As for why certain other games turned out the way they did? trust me, i've asked key people over past few days, just waiting for results to come back from them. Now if you'll excuse me, i'm off to bloody bed.Body clock is to crap as it is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 :-) CJ: My body clock has no idea if i should be going to bed or bright eyed and bushy tailed (10 years of shift work, sadly does'nt get any easier on the 11th) and my head feels like there's a Frenchman living in it... The Forum shall have to wait. Sorry for the colourful comments all..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Some of us have been in this forum a lot longer We know what's coming. Oh look, JC already posted one You know I love you CJ, youse is my boi! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Decent ARM chips and RAM cost peanuts these days. This printer probably has better specs on CPU and RAM than the original PSP. Running Doom on this is a fun hack, but it's not technically really impressive. And Doom uses a raycaster. Tomb Raider is a whole different story. Dude, don't take my post too serious. All I wanted to say is: With enough dedication you can do crazy stuff a system isn't supposed to do, but it is pointless. It wasn't meant to be a message like "if a printer can do this, a Jag can do that". It meant: Bored people do crazy stuff. I could have posted the videos of Doom for ZX Spectrum instead, but everyone knows those, so I thought the printer was funnier.^^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_J64bit Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Dude, don't take my post too serious. All I wanted to say is: With enough dedication you can do crazy stuff a system isn't supposed to do, but it is pointless. It wasn't meant to be a message like "if a printer can do this, a Jag can do that". It meant: Bored people do crazy stuff. I could have posted the videos of Doom for ZX Spectrum instead, but everyone knows those, so I thought the printer was funnier.^^ I've seen that video of that ZX Spectrum run DOOM! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 On the 32X, games like VF, Metal Head, and Darxide might have pushed the actual DRAWING of polys close to their limit, but nothing else at all. Even Sega's poly drawing code says right in the comments that it isn't optimized as much as it could be. First gen titles never hold a candle to what you see in later gen games. Many more optimizations remained, among them using the second SH2 a LOT more, optimizing the 3D math for the SH2, and figuring out the best balance between 68000 use vs RISC use (same issue as Jaguar games). Audio on the 32X was nowhere close to pushing it. All 32X games used a slightly modified Genesis driver, playing FM music and using interrupt-driven PWM to play four extra 8-bit PCM channels on the SH2. I think I've pretty much demolished the view of 32X audio with my demos on MOD, XM, Ogg-Vorbis, and MP3 audio on the 32X, using DMA to play buffers of audio decoded/mixed using the second SH2. I think if it had survived to a second gen of titles, we'd have seen at least MOD/XM/MIDI music used in 32X titles as opposed to the FM seen in the first. Had Doom not been pushed out for an xmas release, the music probably would have been more like the SNES Doom music, only better (not limited to 64KB of samples, and no heavy compression "muffled" sound). They would have also had time to test the later levels, so we'd have seen at least all the same levels as were used in Jaguar Doom. Saxman already made a converter that allows using processed forms of other wads like the Jaguar Doom wad in 32X Doom, so current 32X gamers can finally play all the different Doom levels the original lacked. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Dangerous Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 current 32X gamers can finally play all the different Doom levels the original lacked. Sorry a little off topic here but can you do this on actual hardware(and if so how?) Just played through 32x doom myself recently.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Sorry a little off topic here but can you do this on actual hardware(and if so how?) Just played through 32x doom myself recently.. You need a Genesis flashcart, like the Everdrive. Works for 32X games too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 You need a Genesis flashcart, like the Everdrive. Works for 32X games too. Yeah, although if you have the money, I recommend the Mega Everdrive. It's got a lot more going for it. It uses ram instead of flash to hold the games, so you don't have to worry about flash going bad. It uses an FPGA for the logic, so you can do more through changing the "OS" for the MED cart. For example, the current OS for the MED has all the normal flash cart features, like supporting all the different SMS mappers for playing SMS games on the Genesis, the ability to replace the CD BIOS, support of 8 and 10 MByte flat rom images like that Mortal Kombat hack, and SSF2. Not only that, he has a special mode meant for hacks and homebrew that allows you to use all 16 (or 32) MBytes of ram on the cart as Genesis ram, read/write the SD card, read/write the USB port, as well as a hardware multiplier and divider that can do a 32x32 multiply or 32/32 divide as fast as the 68000 can write the args and read the result. That recent Genesis game (Battlecity) that can be played across the internet is using that mode of the MED along with a PC app to handle the internet connection across the USB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent X Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I know Crescent Galaxy started out on the Panther, but regardless of what platform it was running on, it lacked the basics in terms of gameplay design, it felt like nothing more than a game coded by engineers (showcasing what Panther, then Jaguar could do) rather than actual gamers. I agree. It's great if you view it as a graphical tech demo, but it falls woefully short in so many other areas. The sound suffered with wimpy sound effects and no in-game musical soundtrack. The gameplay suffered with fairly basic level design. While the game offered a large assortment of weapons, many of them were worthless, and switching between them was awkward in the heat of battle. I'd have preferred a smaller but more focused selection of weapons, each of which could be useful and had certain gameplay situations in which their advantages could be best utilized. What's even more shocking is that the game was produced by Atari's in-house development team. On most systems, games from first-party teams are often portrayed as examples of how to wring the best performance out of the hardware. The result should be a finely-tuned game that demonstrates excellence in technical and/or gameplay aspects. Ironically enough, when it comes to the Jaguar, most of Atari's in-house games achieved neither goal. Atari's first-party developed Jaguar games were almost all in the bottom 25% of the library. I think it's fair to say that the last time the Atari that remained to produce the Jaguar had talent that matched the hardware was with the Lynx. They were clearly overmatched for whatever reason with the Jaguar. I think, regardless of budget, it would have been up to third parties to really push the system had it become inexplicably popular. That's true. Going back to Crescent Galaxy for a moment, that was clearly an early game, and one that was rushed out the door to make the launch window, but a few of the people who worked on that also managed to crank out some really fine games on the Lynx. It was just sad that they couldn't continue the tradition on the Jaguar. Crescent Galaxy looked like it was influenced by Gates of Zendocon on the Lynx. If it were given more time and love, it could have formed the foundation of a great sequel or remake of that game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major Havoc 2049 Posted January 11, 2015 Share Posted January 11, 2015 While we know that among the Jaguar's best games are titles like Tempest and Wolfenstein 3D, what is generally considered it's most technically impressive of the released games? For me, it's a game like Zero 5. I assume that even that made heavy use of the 68000. Zero 5 was just a port of an Atari STe/Falcon game that already took advantage of the Atari Power Pad, so that didn't really push the Jaguar hardware. Besides the speed, Zero 5 looks like a low budget first Gen Jaguar game from a small euro developer that made Atari 16/32-bit computer games (and that's what it is), instead of something we would see from the big AAA euro developers of the day like Core and Psygnosis. While the Jag didn't have a Tomb Raider style game, I do feel that Highlander is comparable to Alone in the Dark. The 2nd Gen Jaguar games that pushed the hardware were games like Hover Strike:UL, Battlemorph, Iron Soldier II and Skyhammer. While G-Police was on CD and had a big AAA budget for nice looking CGI cut scenes and voice acting, I feel that in-game, Skyhammer holds its own against G-Police. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 (edited) Zero 5 was just a port of an Atari STe/Falcon game that already took advantage of the Atari Power Pad, so that didn't really push the Jaguar hardware. Besides the speed, Zero 5 looks like a low budget first Gen Jaguar game from a small euro developer that made Atari 16/32-bit computer games (and that's what it is), instead of something we would see from the big AAA euro developers of the day like Core and Psygnosis. While the Jag didn't have a Tomb Raider style game, I do feel that Highlander is comparable to Alone in the Dark. The 2nd Gen Jaguar games that pushed the hardware were games like Hover Strike:UL, Battlemorph, Iron Soldier II and Skyhammer. While G-Police was on CD and had a big AAA budget for nice looking CGI cut scenes and voice acting, I feel that in-game, Skyhammer holds its own against G-Police. I'll grant that Highlander was cloning Alone in the Dark, at least as much as the developer's skillset allowed for. Unfortunately, the core technology is so bad that it makes it seem like the Jaguar can't handle Alone in the Dark. It's a shame there are no other examples that prove that it's not something with the memory allocation with the CD drive that makes even an Alone in the Dark-caliber game too much for the Jaguar to handle. Although it's hardly a performance leader, I think Alone in the Dark on the 3DO looks and performs leagues better than Highlander does on the Jaguar. In Alone in the Dark's defense, it was a port. Highlander was being made specifically and solely for the Jaguar CD. Unfortunately, to my eyes, I just don't see those games you mentioned as pushing the Jaguar. I can't help but feel their game designs are masking technical deficiencies. Edited January 12, 2015 by Bill Loguidice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zerosquare Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Zero 5 was just a port of an Atari STe/Falcon game that already took advantage of the Atari Power Pad, so that didn't really push the Jaguar hardware.That makes absolutely no sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Unfortunately, to my eyes, I just don't see those games you mentioned as pushing the Jaguar. I can't help but feel their game designs are masking technical deficiencies. I just want to clarify... I think a game like Iron Soldier 2 is impressive, but I can't help but think that the technology has informed the game design, i.e., a giant mech that moves slowly because it can't move quickly. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christos Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Zero 5 was just a port of an Atari STe/Falcon game that already took advantage of the Atari Power Pad, so that didn't really push the Jaguar hardware. Besides the speed, Zero 5 looks like a low budget first Gen Jaguar game from a small euro developer that made Atari 16/32-bit computer games (and that's what it is), instead of something we would see from the big AAA euro developers of the day like Core and Psygnosis. Atari Jaguar Atari Falcon 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 (edited) Zero 5 was just a port of an Atari STe/Falcon game... Nope. Read the interview with the coder, he specifically didn't even look at the older game in order not to let it affect his work: >16)What kinds of improvements were made over the Falcon game? It's a completely different game! It shares the title, parts of the storyline, and a few graphics (such as the 8x8 font!), but in general it's a different game. I wasn't even allowed to see the ST-E/Falcon version when I first started at Caspian, in case I got the wrong idea about what was wanted for the Jag version! http://justclaws.atari.org/jagudome/zero-view.html ...that already took advantage of the Atari Power Pad, so that didn't really push the Jaguar hardware. Edited January 12, 2015 by sh3-rg 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.