ANY NEW JAGUAR DEVELOPMENT?

[Thunderbird]

Hi Starcat!

 

As member of the UGD list since 2000, I know what it is about.

Thunderbird, I don't know what list you subscribed to, but it's certainly not UGD.

I have recieved thousands of e-mails from the group already. And there are very active discussions when something needs to be discussed.

For example the CD Bypass discussions and E2PROM discussions.

The group is indeed very friendly and supportive. And the member count is constantly growing.

That doesn't sound at all like the group I have located. It's too bad that this secret active group is not made more public.

 

Besides how can you expect a group of people to ask you how you work with your E2PROM when you don't even tell the people what you're working on. BSG was quite a surprise to everybody and nobody knew it included a CD bypass and also a 2 K E2PROM.

 

Unfortunately, not every idea can be openly discussed, as we have seen in the past. What amazes me is that even ideas that are officially announced (i.e. ScatBox) can be borrowed by other developers looking to cash in on a good idea.

 

Protector SE had both included after discussing the ideas with the group and fidning the best way to do it.

 

It sounds more to me like you're being too stubborn to admit that this is not the best way to do these things by far. Did you even look through this idea before adopting such a faulty standard? I don't know about you, but if I played through a game to set the highscore and reach a really high level I wouldn't want some poorly written EEROM code to come along and blow away all my save games because someone proposed a oversimplified specification and nobody had the guts to point out it's weaknesses.

 

If you have to keep everything secret, it shouldn't be a surprise to you that the people can't include your ideas in their discussions.

 

I don't care if they do or don't include my ideas in discussions, the idea of this topic is based on the fact that somehow ScatoLOGIC is wrong for not including this sub-standard standard. Frankly, I don't want to endorse it because it's potential for ruining the BattleSphere Save-Game Information on the same chip is far too dangerous in my opinion.

 

 

 

Besides the UGD scheme is great and easy to do for everybody.

The official games used the same idea, so if it was no problem for them, why should it be a problem in future games ?

 

The very fact you say the official games used this scheme tells me you don't know what I'm even discussing. No official games ever were intended to include a CD Bypass and run homebrew games that were supposed to share the same save-game EPROM. I don't know what official games you are talking about.

[Thunderbird]

I tried it and it wouldn't work for the ScatoLOGIC Music Player. Seems like this homebrew is too large for the 64K limit on the boot sector. :-(

 

(Yes, I know that some program larget than 64K will work for some reason, but it's a documented limit and very large software won't work with it)

 

If you know larger software works with it then why assume it's because the player is over 64KB? It's worked with several 64KB-plus programs for me, which leads me to point the blame at your code.

 

As an extreme example, Native works fine by this method, and at 1072KB I can't see it ever fitting under 64KB

 

If the documented limits are not always correct, maybe they shouldn't be trusted so thoroughly. Remember all the bugs that never made it into the dev manual? Well, maybe someone fixed the JagCD and never told anyone

 

Stone

 

The music player is 1.5MB, so it appears that perhaps there's a limit to the size one can use.

 

What bypass are you booting with? Perhaps one bypass handles the limit in ways differently than another. I made a native CD using your methods and it won't with with the B&C bypass or BSG bypass. I tried them both. It won't work in a developer CD either.

 

There's a reason the limit is there, and the fact it's in every revision of the CD docs makes me believe that it serves a purpose.

 

Heck... you can ignore the documentation and violate the GPU scoreboarding if you want too, but just because it works for a 5 minute test session doesn't mean I want to release something to the public with my name on it that crashes every 20 minutes...

[Thunderbird]

I have no intention of developing this into a Flame War, Tbird, i have neither insulted you nor called you names, and for you to resort to such childish behaviour (re: baghdad bob) is neither 'right' nor 'honourable'.  

 

Without doubt you have done some wonderful things for the Jaguar Community (Battlesphere, Scatbox, etc) and i applaud you for that.

 

Returning to your post, regarding my  comments about your misinformation I refer you to three recent cases:

 

In this very thread

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.p...ghlight=#267243

Post of Tue Apr 08, 2003 6:51 pm    

 

Also your above posts decrying the inactivity and lack of membership of a group about which you know nothing

 

In the Native thread, a post today

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24524

Tue Apr 15, 2003 6:18 am    

 

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

 

You are in a position here where, because of your illustrious history with the Jaguar, your word counts for a great deal.  

 

I only wish you would use it in a more responsible manner

 

Good Day.

 

 

I never called you that. I said I -would- have to call you that if you kept insulting me, which you did by calling me a liar (I believe you accused my of spreading false information) I challenged you to back up this claim with some proof, but you posted some threads which have no false information or facts which I state which are incorrect. (In fact you said you had three examples and only provided two, and both were not in any stretch of the information "misinformation". Your so called "cases" were nothing more than splitting hairs).

 

By the way, where were you when Stone was going around stating a price for BattleSphere Gold that was $180? Now THERE is a blatant falsehood ($180 is over $20 too high). Why not go sink your teeth into some real misinformation?

[Thunderbird]

Hi Richard:

 

Can you give me any example of what has been leaked in the past, as I am not aware of the "Underground" list ever being party to information from you or about your projects, either 1st-hand or 2nd-hand.

 

I can say that there's a member right now who is working on an idea involving a popular chip which he has told me in confidence and expressed a desire to have it kept a secret, yet I have seen two occasions where the subject has been mentioned openly in this forum or on JI2. I also have had contacts from a couple people warning me not to talk about things in public because someone in that group is inclined to take other developers ideas as their own.

 

As the information is about leaked information in the past it cannot now be secret and I could then identify these supposed bad apples we have.

 

Even if it was leaked information, I promised not to talk about the exact project with anyone else at the request of the people involved, so I can't mention it specifically. You should know the hardware project I am talking about, and if you read these forums you would have seen the project come up. You will know the incidents of which I speak.

 

I would be pleased to hear an elaboration on this, and we can take your input even now, after all we already suggested the "TINY" slot that could be subdivided by you at your pleasure for these tiny save projects.

 

What are you going to do with the fact that a errant write can corrupt the entire file system? There's no protection against failed writes in the sector headers, which can hose the whole thing.

 

It wouldn't be too difficult for one sector to suddenly glom onto several subsequent sectors with just a single bad write. This is not good.

 

Well you know how to communicate with us, you know that all of the known developers are in the group, only the secret developers working with Scatologic are not. You've been invited before and turned us down.

 

When was I supposedly invited? What was my reason for turning you down? Who invited me? Please elaborate.

 

Well I'm been part of the same active UGD-JAG group since about 1996, and you've never joined that group at any time, I'm not sure what you did join but it wasn't the UGD-JAG group, and that group has only moved twice (by group member consensus) twice over that period anyway.

 

I'm not even sure HOW to join your group. I've never seen a link to it, or an ad for it, so it's no wonder I never joined that specific group. As Gordon said, it seems to spread by word of mouth. That alone backs up my feelings that you guys seem to intentionally hide the group except from people who are specifically asked to join. The group hosted by Gordon is the last one I ever heard discussed. I was told about it last summer and I send emails to the address 2 times to try and subscribe and never heard anything back, so I assumed it was moved or disused. I'm sure a lot of people here would like to join, but it seems impossible to do so unless you know someone on the inside already. Like a country club where you have to get a member to sponsor you if you want to join.

 

As to being disused, how many hundred messages per month are required, if up to 20-30 a day is disused, then it is. However, whenever anybody has a question, or a problem, everybody helps them, friend to friend, and constructive criticism on individual projects is always given.

 

This amount of traffic is a far cry from the groups I have seen. See my previous postings regarding the groups I visited today.

 

So you mean that you won't ever agree to work on compatibility with the other developers that exist now if it is based on this standard, even if the reserved space is made for these various unknown Scatologic projects?

To me your specification is fundamentally flawed, and handicaps coders.

How can I handicap anyone when I don't force them to do anything? I left the space totally open for the future and any/all possible improved standards and/or ideas that came along. I didn't tie it down to any possible format and didn't force anyone to have to do anything they didn't want to do. How handicapped is that?

 

Team is the point, your posts about "sides" are unfortunate as at the end of day we are coding for an old machine with limited resource, because it gives us pleasure, and that is why a solution has to be open to everyone.

 

This is true. But you have to see if from my point of view. You're writing code which has to work and co-exist with my hardware. If you force everyone to adopt a standard which can mess up my hardware then it could appear as though my hardware is to blame. This makes my company look bad in the end. I don't think I've ever had a complaint of anyone losing their saves in BattleSphere for no reason... but the way this is being handled could cause this to happen. The player may not notice this until the next time he plays BattleSphere sometime later, and all his data is gone.

 

Alternatively, a bad write could mess up the joypad settings or the skill levels or ship parameters or AI parameters stored in the EEPROM (this data is validity checked but there still exists the potential for corruption within legal limits) this could make the game super easy or super impossible to play, or control poorly or some other side effect not obvious to the player that the EEROM is corrupt... this in effect ruins the game for the player and reflects poorly on the work put into the game and the controls by Scott and myself.

 

Can you understand why we are protective of the saved data? Do you see why I take this subject so seriously?

 

Great care was taken in BS/BSG to protect against failed writes, and that all is for nothing once this proposed format is used on the same EEPROM chip.

 

Well you indeed describe a group which has no relation to that which I know. I have known the members in most cases for years, and what you describe about private dissatisfaction about the group agreements suggests that you are talking to people that are not even IN the group. In our group everybody can voice their opinion without any back stabbing.

 

Maybe I'm talking about the other group that was formed when some members got ticked off because everyone was talking about stupid things like printing and plastic shells for games and they decided to start their own group that didn't care about these trivial matters. All I know is that there have been a few cases of discontent discussed now and then. I'm not sure what group it applies to. I'd guess that there are people belonging to more than one group who might know.

 

Well please substitute the words "learn about" for "investigate". If there is a new standard agreed with you, privately discussed, I'd like to learn about it so I can modify my code if that proves beneficial. I'd like to learn about things that the "top developers" (who are they?) have discussed.

 

So, you're telling me that there's not even a library available for everyone to use the existing standard?!?!? Why is everyone so resistant to changing the standard if they have to write their own code anyhow????

[Thunderbird]

Since nobody ever recruits new members either, you should do that as well (like here on AA).

 

Not true. New devs usually gravitate towards us; if not, they get invited. Simple. Not that you would know, of course, since you admit yourself you aren't a member

 

Stone

 

it seems like a lot of the members (present company included) seem to harbor a lot of animosity towards ScatoLOGIC and myself, so what motivation would I have for gravitating towards you?!?!?

[Thunderbird]

[quote name="StoneAs an extreme example' date=' Native works fine by this method, and at 1072KB I can't see it ever fitting under 64KB

 

If the documented limits are not always correct, maybe they shouldn't be trusted so thoroughly. Remember all the bugs that never made it into the dev manual? Well, maybe someone fixed the JagCD and never told anyone

 

Stone[/quote]

 

 

I gave your sample code to two fairly bright nonprogrammers to read the instructions and tell me if they could make a CD. They both called back and told me that they didn't think they understood the instructions and they would have to be more clear.

 

I stand by my statement that someone with no programming skills would find it difficult to make a CD for the Jaguar.

[MacGurl]

Thunderbird, are you talking to yourself again?!

[walter_J64bit]

MacGurl wrote:

Thunderbird, are you talking to yourself again?!

 

 

lol

[Thunderbird]

Thunderbird, are you talking to yourself again?!  

 

It sure seems like it at times!

[Atari-Jess]

is it Fight Circle?

is it Challenge Ball?

 

hmmm there seems to be a storm outside....

[42bs]

Anyway, I think you're one "Stupid white man", and I can deal with it.

 

People who express such sentiments usually get back what they send out.

 

Does that help you understand why you may have seen me say something negative towards you in the past? I'm surprised you even had to ask.

 

Dig your mind, boy. _You_'ve been starting that on BJL and me in the past. Before that, I had no _sentiments_ at all about you, even was visiting regulary the BS homepage and follwoing the WIP.

 

Basta

42BS

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

Now I can see some misunderstanding...

 

The final group is called Jaguar homebrew, and I recall signing on to this one about 2 years ago and quitting after it never took off. I believe that Richard himself is the moderator of this one. This board averages 3.25 messages a month. I can't see them messages, so I have no idea if they are real or robots posting them.

 

This group was started with the EXPLICIT purpose of being a low-

bandwidth group intended only for announcements of new Jaguar

home-brew games and tools, and for minimum discussion between

ordinary Jaguar home-brew players and Jaguar developers. So in

that respect I think it is fulfilling the stated objectives admirably...

It is NOT, and NEVER WAS intended as a Jaguar developer forum!!!

 

 

I don't know why this group is in "stealth" mode. You'd think they would want to get the word out. In all the Jaguar sites I go to, I don't think I ever saw a link or a banner ad for any of these groups. Nobody ever emailed me and asked to put an ad up on the ScatoLOGIC site.  

Well the group is for developers, and does not "advertise" anything,

we're not selling anything, or boasting about our work. One of the

self-imposed rules is to keep the group "hype free" generally, as

Jaguar fans we've seen enough vapourware come and go. We are

not a team, we are just individual developers helping each other...

Nobody competes with each other, and membership is by invitation.

 

 

The only thing I ever was asked to do was put a link to the Jaguar Console Developers Webring on www.buyjugs.com, which I happily did do. Other than that, nothing.

Well on that note, if you follow the web-ring, you will find who are

the other Jaguar members, and you will find out about any projects

that they are willing to talk about. Incidentally I also asked if maybe

Scatologic would have a web-ring link, and you referred me on, but

nothing ever came of that. Now you maintain it, and BuyJugs is now

no more, perhaps you could add a link to the Scatologic site instead.

 

 

Regards,

Richard / JustClaws.

[Stone]

The music player is 1.5MB, so it appears that perhaps there's a limit to the size one can use.

 

OK, that's quite big. Still...works for Native...

 

What bypass are you booting with? Perhaps one bypass handles the limit in ways differently than another. I made a native CD using your methods and it won't with with the B&C bypass or BSG bypass. I tried them both. It won't work in a developer CD either.

 

Well, that's interesting...I'm using a flash cart and the binary cdbypass.rom which has been floating around for a bit.

 

I'd be curious to know exactly what's going on here; I'll probably get to test JagFree with some of my own CDs soon enough so I'll see what happens.

 

Stone

[Stone]

By the way, where were you when Stone was going around stating a price for BattleSphere Gold that was $180? Now THERE is a blatant falsehood ($180 is over $20 too high). Why not go sink your teeth into some real misinformation?

 

I defy you to explain exactly when and where I said that.

 

Stone

[JagChris]

Damn, It looks like my thread turned into one big free for all. Sorry folks. Didn't intend for that to happen. Maybe they can all get together and agree on the savegame parameters so we won't have to worry about future releases erasing our saves.

 

Uh, by the way, I think my question was answered. Somewhere in there probably.

[Thunderbird]

By the way, where were you when Stone was going around stating a price for BattleSphere Gold that was $180? Now THERE is a blatant falsehood ($180 is over $20 too high). Why not go sink your teeth into some real misinformation?

 

I defy you to explain exactly when and where I said that.

 

Stone

 

Sorry Stone. It was Gunstar who just said that yesterday. I typed the wrong name. I was thinking about your messages at the time and typed your name. No hard feelings.

[Matthias]

Hi!

 

Damn, It looks like my thread turned into one big free for all. Sorry folks. Didn't intend for that to happen.   Maybe they can all get together and agree on the savegame parameters so we won't have to worry about future releases erasing our saves.  

 

Uh, by the way, I think my question was answered. Somewhere in there probably.

 

Hmm, but wasn't "probably" what we all knew before?

 

Matthias

[Starcat]

Hi Thunderbird !

here's a group called ejagteam which claims to be for European programmers. It's members only, and since I'm not from Europe, I wouldn't have tried to join in the first place. (Ironically, this group has the fewest members, but is the most active. It averages about 12.2 messages per month)  

 

There's a group called jaguar community united, which I don't believe I ever signed up with because the messages are public and I figured I could lurk and subscribe if a topic of interest ever popped up that I needed to respond to. This is the second most active group with 3.56 messages per month average. In looking through the messages though it seems that the average is skewed somewhat by the fact that the group auto-generates messages on a regular basis to post reminders of calendar events. I'm not sure we should count this as real activity.  

 

The final group is called Jaguar homebrew, and I recall signing on to this one about 2 years ago and quitting after it never took off. I believe that Richard himself is the moderator of this one. This board averages 3.25 messages a month. I can't see them messages, so I have no idea if they are real or robots posting them.

 

Ok, I can explain this:

 

Jaguar Community United is a PURE Fan group. It was created after old the website was taken offline. So they decided to move to yahoo.

 

EJagTeam are European coders, but NOT UGD. Afterall UGD also has just as many US members as european.

 

Jaguar Homebrew is the same as the Jaguar Playtesting list. It's for fans with a hobby dev kit that would like to test new binarys that developers release to the group sometimes. It's no developers list.

 

Regards, Lars.

[Matthias]

Hello Thunderbird!

 

Hello,

 

just want to say "Thank you" for the interest some guys here have shown in Jagmania. Unfortunately i started using Jagmania as a test-platform for several new technologies and this includes the SaveGame / SaveLevel options(You know up to 16 levels can be edited and stored on E2prom).

Everything was fine before the day people started selling CD-bypass cards with "big" E2proms with the intention that several CD-based games should share the space.

 

Matthias

 

People using BattleSphere / BattleSphere Gold can always make use of the "Read/Write EEPROM" functions built into JUGS to upload and download the EEPROM contents, instead of fussing around over the limitations of the EEPROM hardware.

 

1. I didn't knew that JUGS allows to download/upload E2prom-data. This is the first time i hear about it.

2. Do you really want the user to save or to restore the E2prom-content each time he/she wants to change his favorite CD-based or JUGS-uploaded game?

 

Don't forget that even if we would use this upload/download-functionality we would have to change some part of the program to access the 2K-Eeprom instead of the 128byte-Eeprom. And if we change this, why shouldn't we try to solve this inconvinience (the need for upload/download) at the same time?

 

Regards Matthias

[Matthias]

Hi!

 

Hello' date='

Well let me explain. As the Underground developers had talked about

future cartridges using larger E2PROMS in future cartridges for some

months, (in fact years,) before BattleSphere Gold was released, and

nobody realised it would have a bigger E2PROM too a standard was

created that everybody in the Underground agreed, "by consensus".

[/quote']

 

Unfortunately, the underground contains a large number of super great people but have mixed in with some bad apples who have proven in the past to be unable to keep a secret (and still are leaking thinkgs even today). Not every idea can be discossed in an open forum otherwise there could be someone there to try and take the idea or the credit for it.

 

The Undergound-mailing list consists of very few people, but perhaps these few people are the majority of active Jag-developers (ok, this might have changed during the last months). For me, as a group-member since 1996, this gives me much more confidence that an idea discussed there will not be stolen by group-members.

 

This is interesting' date=' I hope that these "top underground developers"

communicate the nature of the "consensus" to the UGD-JAG group

very shortly, in fact I've kicked off a UGD-JAG thread to investigate.

[/quote']

 

You make it sound like the underground is an unfriendly place where people work around behind the backs of everyone and argue or persecute everyone with different views. Just the term "investigate" makes it sound like a crime for someone to go off on their own and discuss with people outside the group things like standards and such. I hope this is a misconception.

 

Did you run into the PC-trap?

 

 

Bye,

Matthias

[Matthias]

Hello again

 

If you're pleased wit ha system in which a single bad write can corrupt the entire contents ov every saved game on the EEPROM then that's fine for you. I would have put more thought into the system.

 

And if you think a bad write is not possible, think again. All it takes is for the user to power down at the right time and BOOM! There goes the EEPROM.

 

This is something i don't understand: At what point would a wrong write corrupt the whole E2prom-content? And much more interesting: Why shouldn't this not happen with your system?

 

And BTW: Have i mentioned today that you might have had corrected this claimed failure since 8 weeks?

 

It would also have been nice to have smaller sector sizes. I have simple games that need 16-20 bytes to save their info, and it's a shame to hog a whole 128 byte sector for such a tiny amount.

 

This 128byte-chunk concept is based of the idea that many programs already were able to use the 128byte-E2prom of the Atari-cartridges.

 

But if you're in love with the standard, go ahead and use it. Just don't say I didn't warn you when people complain about losing ALL their saves.

 

As said above, i don't see where ALL the data may get lost.

 

Regards

Matthias

[Matthias]

I don't know where you get your information from but here's a quick check I did:  

 

I went to the Yahoo Groups page and did a search for Jaguar Underground, which returned three results.  

...

I don't know where you get these huge numbers of messages you claim you are getting from the underground groups. It's certainly not obvious to me where they are coming from. I was told that there was a mailing list somewhere for the Jaguar Underground, but I could not find a reference to any active mailing list in any search that I did. That's not to say there isn't one. I just have not been able to find an active one or one that had any traffic. I sent emails to several list servers asking to "subscribe", including one that a developer told me about and never got any mails in return.

 

Again, Doug, i can't understand why you insist that you don't know how to become a member of the mailing-list. I can understand that you had your "problems" before february 2003, but not after this.

 

 

Matthias

[Matthias]

Hello Tbird!

 

Okay, smartypants, you tell me how to make a Native CD using your simple instructions and then you can say it doesn't require any programming.  

 

The boot track of the Jag CD has a documented size limitation of 64K, so you're not going to take just -any- homebrew program and make a CD out of it.

 

Many homebrews are quite large.

 

As you say, their might be reasons that Atari has documented the 64KB-limit.

 

But from my own experience (which includes converting homebrew files with sizes up to the size of Native ~= 1080 KB), it doesn't hurt to ignore this limit. And i know a lot of people with the same experiences.

 

Matthias

[Matthias]

Hello Doug,

 

i'll take this as a humorous expression.

 

But if you mean it serioulsy, then i hope you'll remember your own words and don't bash my release of "GameX: Part I" which will come on a PCB looking like a triangle with a single 2MB-FLASH-chip (and an E2prom of course) with an estimated price of 12.95 USD (Sorry, the Dollar is weak currently) send to customers without box, manual or Joypad-overlay.

 

1) Where can i get plastic shells and at which price?

 

Who cares about shells! People want games!!!! Let's talk CODING, not shells!

 

2) Where can i get labels for the shells and at which price?

 

If it adds costs, leave it off. I just want a bare board for $10.00!

 

3) Where can i get boxes in Jaguar-standard-shape and at which price?

 

You can pay high ags for them!

 

4) Where can i get box-inlets(?, the thing which holds the card in the

mid of the box) and at which price?

 

Just use a bubble bag. Nobody cares about the inserts. Bubble bags are just as high quality as anything else on the market! (or so I read elsewhere in this forum)

 

5) Whats the price for a cartridge-manual (b/w or colour)?

 

What's an inkjet cartridge and some paper and staples go for these days?

 

 

Seriously:

I asked these things to show that a game-production isn't finished when the Eprom-image is ready to be burned.

And if companies would reply with real price-estimations, Jag-fans could see how much money is spent for things from which the developer/publisher can't benefit.

 

Best regards,

Matthias

[Matthias]

Hello Doug, Richard (in alphabetical order )!

 

Hi Richard:

 

Well please substitute the words "learn about" for "investigate". If there is a new standard agreed with you' date=' privately discussed, I'd like to learn about it so I can modify my code if that proves beneficial. I'd like to learn about things that the "top developers" (who are they?) have discussed. [/quote']

 

So, you're telling me that there's not even a library available for everyone to use the existing standard?!?!? Why is everyone so resistant to changing the standard if they have to write their own code anyhow????

 

Doug, re-read your earlier posts to this thread, and you'll see why

people started to show "resistance". I was on saturday at a point where i was upset about your BS(G)-marketing-campains.

 

Regards

Matthias