ANY NEW JAGUAR DEVELOPMENT?

[justclaws]

I think this is the problem. Your "invitation only" policy is making the Jaguar development community gather in secret and gives the distinct impression to anyone outside that there's no coordination or sharing of information, no place to gather, and no place for anyone to learn about development...

Well the thing is that we are a group of individuals working on our

own projects, for fun, not for profit, and I really don't want to do

the job of "marketing" the Atari Jaguar as a development platform.

The "web-ring" nicely links active developers, that enough for us.

 

You and Songbird (as publishers) have real reasons to do marketing!

You sell JUGS as the "first complete development system" (I forget,

does that mean you sell it complete with Brainstorms "Mac", "ALN"

and so forth?) and I think people finding that, or "Jag Development

Club" or the new "JagDev.Org" or other sites will find what they want.

 

 

It just takes a simple google search and a person can find all sorts of groups and links to developing for the Dreamcast or the 2600, etc.

So??? Does this mean we should drop the Jaguar, and go out to buy

ourselves a Dreamcast? I develop for the Jaguar because I like to

do so, I bought the devkits because I wanted to, even though doing

so was costly, and I continue because the Jaguar is fun and my main

games platform, even now. (I also own 2600, 7800, Lynx and N64,

so you can see I'm not a die-hard Atari fan, but why must I upgrade?)

 

I'll probably still be writing games for the Jaguar in another 7 years

time, if my equipment keeps running, even if I'm ALONE in doing so!

(I bet I won't be.) I don't need to impress people, I develop for fun.

 

 

Why is it that the Jaguar underground must work behind closed doors in secret?

Did you read my first post in the discussion about why most amateur developers these days do not talk about their projects. Please do...

In fact, you said YOU develop in secret, and gave various reasons...

 

 

I bet if you asked that Atari Age could probably even host a BB for underground developers. Perhaps it could be set up so people could read but not post unless they were members (like the other boards here).

There are Jaguar development boards out there if you look. However,

the fact is, who cares? We're happy chatting together, as friends, and

helping each other out. Nobody is "marketing" the Jaguar. It's not a

cool machine, we're not "in it for the money", just "in it for the fun".

 

If a Jaguar fan wants to start developing, that's much more sensible

than an existing developer looking around for new platforms to port

their projects too. If they're so keen to do so, they'll do so anyway!

 

 

Regards,

Richard (JustClaws)

[Atari_Owl]

You took the words right out of my mouth, Richard

 

Cheers

[Thunderbird]

You took the words right out of my mouth, Richard    

 

Cheers

 

Yikes! That means BOTH of you are totally missing the point.

[Atari_Owl]

Tbird,

 

You're beyond tiresome.

 

It seems to me all your posts are is:

Boast

Attack Somebody

Boast Boast

Attack somebody... Attack somebody

Boast Boast Boast

 

You are worth no more of my time.

 

Return to your petty insults, your bullying and childish ranting if you wish.

You are worth no more of my attention, I am no longer listening.

 

Good Day

[LinkoVitch]

is it Fight Circle?

is it Challenge Ball?

 

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

 

I would guess thats aimed at me.. so on both counts no

 

sorry

 

Perhaps I should do a competition, first person to guess the name correctly before we announce it gets a finished version WHEN we finish it for free

 

BTW this is just an IDEA, this NOT currently the case.... I am just thinking about it

[badcoder]

Yup, I'm developing something.

 

Hints:

It will be for the Atari Jaguar  

 

OK a hint:  It has NOTHING to do with Battle Sphere, not even same genre BUT using a theasaurous (sp?) you could get it's name from "Battle Sphere" (but we didn't do this we just realised afterwards )

BadCoder is hoping that it is not called 'War Balls' as that is one special mode in the BadCode5 'Bad Balls/Bad Walls' binary that is developing when BadCoder has some hours or minutes to spare in these days.

 

The binary will be running with BJL or similar, saving to 64 word EEPROMS or 1K word EEPROMS using the UGD published documentations published.

 

Linkovitch, BadCoder is thinking Jaguar 'Global War' will be a popular addition.

 

Have fun!

BadCoder.

[Matthias]

Matthias and Stone, and Gordon (Since you all asked the same thing in email or on here in the past day),  

 

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.

 

My understanding is that the 64K limit is there because there are different Jaguar BIOS ROMS, and they handle memory allocation differently. I worked with Atari and am familiar with the way they do things. They would never have put in such a warning unless there was a reason to do so.

 

Just because you tried it and it worked for some programs you found is no guarantee it won't crash on some combination of hardware that Atari was protecting you from with the 64K limit.

 

As said it's just from experience. And i do have only few CD-players and few Jaguars.

But because other people hadn't any problem too, my impression was that you could ignore this 64KB-limit.

 

Perhaps we should setup a poll where customers of the several CD-bypass cards would tell us their experiences too? We really do have a big problem trying to get our stuff working on a system whoms manufacturer no longer exists.

 

Also, there's a possibility that the problem doesn't show up just by luck. Suppose that the BIOS writes some scratchpad values to RAM just after the 64K buffer it allocates for the CD. Perhaps the values that are written there merely write over some code and create changes to the code that don't show up easily? What if the modified code is something that happens only rarely in the program (like if you reach a million points in score). The program can crash after 2 hours of play because it seemed to work when you just tested it out. Perhaps even the modified bytes of code are just some data like a bitmap or a sound sample? You might not notice that a few pixels are the wrong color or a few bytes of a sound sample are wrong at 44KHz playback. Who knows, the data that is corrupt may be inside the BSS segment of the code you loaded and the changed data is not important.  

 

The point I make here is that the reason for the 64K limit may be very obscure, and only happen in certain conditions, but I don't want to write code that has an opportunity to fail because I break a rule that was specifically laid out. It might work 99 times out of 100, but the one customer who buys my program and it doesn't work on his setup is going to be left with a bad experience. He might send the CD back and I replace it thinking it has some surface defect and the customer has the same problem with a new CD. Now I have to refund his money and he has a bad experience and no CD to enjoy.  

 

The idea that we can violate the 64K limit just because it worked when it was tested is dangerous. It's like overclocking a CPU or running a 9V console on a 12V power supply. It may work a little, but the risk of problems is very high.  

 

At least no hardware will be destroyed by having bigger BOOT-Tracks.

 

There's a lot more bypasses out there that follow the 64K spec (BSG, Developer BIOS, B&C, and Bypass for FlashROM) than there are that don't follow the spec (P:SE).

 

Don't you mix something up here? The bigger BOOT-track is on the CD, the bypass is on the card.

What you say sounds like that a Native-CD burnt by me (or Stone, or even the Songbird-version) can't be loaded by BSG, are you really checking the size of the BOOT-track first?

 

So, I'm not sure why anyone would go through the trouble to make a CD and not just put a <64K boot loader in it like the spec says to. How do you think the ScatoLOGIC Demo CD works? It boots according to the spec. At some point I can even make a booter for everyone to use if you can't figure it out. It makes the CD boot on everything.  

 

That's my weak point: I just don't know how to load more than one file from CD.

From the manual it looks easy, but all my attempts were unsuccessfull. And the attempts

of other people which normally share their experience/knowledge with me failed too.

 

One last thing... if you follow the spec and install the boot loader and do everything as requested by the docs, then when the CD encryption process is cracked there will not need to be any changes to make your CD boot on the standard player with no bypass. It can just have the encryption info added to the last track and you make more CDs.  

 

If the specs are violated, it could be possible that it won't pass encryption because it lacks the right number of sessions or tracks or whatever the proper format is for encryption. Who can know for sure? It's best to do what the spec says if there's some doubt.

 

That's probably sure, but as said above at least me wasn't able to lay out a program to be loaded in parts from CD.

 

Cheers

Matthias

[Matthias]

Matthias' date='

The concept of selling cheap games with no boxes or manuals is something that people have asked about in the past, but it's not something I enjoy. In addition to the programming of Jaguar games, the fun I get from developing comes from making professional looking boxes and manuals and extras. I don't get pleasure out of making incomplete projects. To me it's like spending years making a custom car and then not painting it. I don't mind that other people wouldn't care about boxes or manuals, but I don't enjoy this and I basically make Jaguar products for the fun of it. If it's not fun for me then I don't do it.

 

 

 

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.

 

It's hard to estimate prices, since you don't have any quantities specified. For example, 100 boxes could cost you as little as $15.00 each. You could probably get 500 for $8.00 each. If you worked with a company that already had the cutting die from a previous Jaguar project, then you could get $3.00-4.00 off the price of each box. If you combined several project boxes into one order, you could cut the price way down. It's all relative to the amount of product you buy at one time, and also the time of year you request printing too. Just after Christmas is a good time that's not busy and you might be able to get a much better deal.

 

You can also look around and try to find a place that will just print and cut for you and not fold or glue. This is a HUGE pain in the butt though, and I wouldn't recommend it. Some people even ask just for printing and cut/fold/glue by hand... this takes FOREVER. If you have no life, you can save this way as well.

 

My problem is, that i can't estimate how many cards (PCBs, shells, labels, boxes, manuals) need to be produced. I have never released something for the Jaguar market, so i have no experience. Looking at JI2 and AA shows only very few active Jag-fans, so i still wouldn't expect to sell more than 100 cards for a game made by me. Perhaps even 100 is too much.

 

I think the amount of Jaguar-Homebrew-Yahoogroup members is about 50, and perhaps this number can be used for an estiamtion of card- or CD-purchasers.

 

Regards

Matthias

[Matthias]

Hello!

 

Hello,

 

> So far, no homebrew CD games have come out which make use of  

> the EEPROM to save games, so it's probably not a really important  

> feature in the current situation.  

>

Well I can think of (counts on fingers) 1,2,3,4, maybe 5/6 projects

ongoing with by Underground programmers that support the E2PROM.

Protector SE and the B&C bypass (with E2PROM fitted) can be easily

supported, as well as using a "spare" production cartridge with BJL,

as a "save cartridge". (You put one cart aside per UGD game...)

 

The 2K E2PROM of the Protector/SE and BS/Gold is supported, in

some cases, but in each case people have coded for 128 bytes,

just like the production carts, B&C bypass likewise with 2K chip.

 

The big issue at the moment for Underground programmers is how  

to support BattleSphere Gold cartridges when the Underground had

an already agreed system for allocating space on the 2K E2PROMS,

but Scatalogic has another approach incompatible with that system.

 

It is a pity that compatibility may be lost due to that disagreement,

when the UGD system was agreed by discussion, and not dictated.

I hope that discussion is ongoing out of our normal forums on this.

 

During the last days i tried to find a point where all the trouble started,

and i think it might be this posting. You know, somebody always has to throw the first stone, and i guess that Doug thinks the above statements were such a stone. And he began to throw back ....

 

From the knowledge of today both parties say that the other party didn't asked for help or spoke about new developments (BSG on the one side, PSE with Underground-E2prom-standard on the other side). And each party thinks itself would be right....

 

At least this lead to the state that both parties are now speaking together and clear some points (even if it looks more like shouting each other).

 

 

Matthias

[Matthias]

Hi,

 

this is a follow up of my last post.

 

The big issue at the moment for Underground programmers is how  

to support BattleSphere Gold cartridges when the Underground had

an already agreed system for allocating space on the 2K E2PROMS,

but Scatalogic has another approach incompatible with that system.

 

It's not our fault that releases following BattleSphere Gold attempted to create new and incompatible standards. :-(

 

This is the post which i mean with "throwing stones back" (hopefully this is a valid english phrase).

 

Regards

Matthias

[justclaws]

Well I can think of (counts on fingers) 1,2,3,4, maybe 5/6 projects

ongoing with by Underground programmers that support the E2PROM.

Protector SE and the B&C bypass (with E2PROM fitted) can be easily

supported, as well as using a "spare" production cartridge with BJL,

as a "save cartridge". (You put one cart aside per UGD game...)

 

The 2K E2PROM of the Protector/SE and BS/Gold is supported, in

some cases, but in each case people have coded for 128 bytes,

just like the production carts, B&C bypass likewise with 2K chip.

 

The big issue at the moment for Underground programmers is how  

to support BattleSphere Gold cartridges when the Underground had

an already agreed system for allocating space on the 2K E2PROMS,

but Scatalogic has another approach incompatible with that system.

 

It is a pity that compatibility may be lost due to that disagreement,

when the UGD system was agreed by discussion, and not dictated.

I hope that discussion is ongoing out of our normal forums on this.

 

During the last days i tried to find a point where all the trouble started,

and i think it might be this posting. You know, somebody always has to throw the first stone, and i guess that Doug thinks the above statements were such a stone. And he began to throw back ....

Well really, if I had thrown a stone, it'd be big, and would not go far!

As it was, no stone throwing was intended, but I do admit frustration!

I guess the bold bit could be misinterpreted - SORRY THUNDERBIRD!

However, the bit in italics above surely would tell you I am hopeful.

 

I'd just love to see some progress, the UGD standard has been "on-

hold" for many weeks, pending your input on compatibility with BSG.

If two versions of every game have to be produced, so be it, but that

is not a safeguard to EEPROM saves, people will run the wrong one...

 

 

From the knowledge of today both parties say that the other party didn't asked for help or spoke about new developments (BSG on the one side, PSE with Underground-E2prom-standard on the other side). And each party thinks itself would be right....

Well you know Matthias the discussion started about the Protector SE

2K EPROM (and other 2K E2PROMS) long before Scatologic released

BSG, but the problem was this was in our "secretive Underground".

Of course had UGD-JAG known about BSG, or Thunderbird have been

able to find the Underground mailing list maybe all would be well now.

 

At least this lead to the state that both parties are now speaking together and clear some points (even if it looks more like shouting each other).

Well I am glad that some discussion has resulted between Scatologic

and UGD-JAG members on this, if this is our only conversation forum,

but I am still disheartened that all we have achieved to-date is a long

list of problems, and not a single positive move towards a solution...

 

 

It's Nick (Stone) I feel sorry for most here, getting thrown back and

forwards across this discussion, I hope he doesn't get injured here.

 

Regards,

Richard / JustClaws.

[Stone]

There's a lot more bypasses out there that follow the 64K spec (BSG, Developer BIOS, B&C, and Bypass for FlashROM) than there are that don't follow the spec (P:SE).

 

Don't you mix something up here? The bigger BOOT-track is on the CD, the bypass is on the card.

What you say sounds like that a Native-CD burnt by me (or Stone, or even the Songbird-version) can't be loaded by BSG, are you really checking the size of the BOOT-track first?

 

I didn't spot this earlier, so I'll reply here: I'm using the FlashROM bypass and have successfully loaded home-burned CDs with boot tracks both above and below the 64KB 'limit', so at least one of the options listed by Thunderbird above is incorrect.

 

And forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't the B&C cart an EPROM cart burned with a version of the FlashROM bypass binary modified with the universal encryption header and a few other tweaks to get it to run on production-level systems?

 

I could say something about misinformation here but I won't

 

It still seems rather unclear, so I'll ask it again: does the Songbird version of the Native CD work with BSG?

 

Stone

[Stone]

It's Nick (Stone) I feel sorry for most here, getting thrown back and

forwards across this discussion, I hope he doesn't get injured here.  

 

If it's been going on since Biblical times I think I can probably cope with a little bit more

 

Stone

[Matthias]

Hi,

 

i have looked into my CD-players, they divide into two groups:

One group with the DATE OF MFG of 9511 (November 1995), this has the BOOT-ROM on a socket. In fact it is an NM27C020-Eprom. This is a PCB revision C.

The other group has a DATE OF MFG of 9512 (december 1995), where

the NM27C020-Eprom is soldered to the PCB. These PCBs are revision H.

 

But the checksums of the Eproms for both groups are the same: $2D21

 

Are there any othe versions on the market?

 

Regards

Matthias

[Stone]

i have looked into my CD-players, they divide into two groups:

One group with the DATE OF MFG of 9511 (November 1995), this has the BOOT-ROM on a socket. In fact it is an NM27C020-Eprom. This is a PCB revision C.

The other group has a DATE OF MFG of 9512 (december 1995), where

the NM27C020-Eprom is soldered to the PCB. These PCBs are revision H.

 

But the checksums of the Eproms for both groups are the same: $2D21

 

Are there any other versions on the market?

 

There must be...my JagCD has Date of MFG 9511 and a soldered EPROM...can't remember the PCB revision offhand (and I'm not looking either, given the struggle i had before getting it back together) but the serial number is 535B018268, if that helps at all.

 

Stone

[Songbird]

Hi, everybody,

 

I don't have time nor desire to read every post in this thread (let alone the entire board!) thoroughly, but one technical point did catch my attention.

 

There are a number of Jag CD games published by Atari which have boot tracks greater than 64KB. BattleMorph is approximately 400KB, for example. As far as I can tell, the entire track is loaded all at once, and not just the first 64KB.

 

Thus every CD booting method, including encrypted CDs running on a consumer unit, supports boot tracks of greater than 64KB. These methods simply locate the boot track header and load the indicated number of bytes to the indicated load address. At least that's my understanding after analyzing every published game (and several unpublished ones, too) with the Alpine.

 

JagFree as implemented in Prot SE follows the Atari spec as completely as I and other UGD developers understand it. If a given CD does not follow the Atari spec and thus ends up with load problems, that's the CD's fault -- unless I've got some obscure bug which didn't show up after testing dozens of unique CDs. Possible, but very unlikely IMO.

[Matthias]

Hello Nick,

 

the one i have with socket has 535B010723 as serialnumber,

that's not far away from your 535B018268.

 

Matthias

[Thunderbird]

I didn't spot this earlier, so I'll reply here: I'm using the FlashROM bypass and have successfully loaded home-burned CDs with boot tracks both above and below the 64KB 'limit', so at least one of the options listed by Thunderbird above is incorrect.

 

It's getting really old being called a liar because someone is choosing to selectively remember the things I have written.

 

If you read my post completely, you would have noticed that I said that programs could possibly boot with the 64K limit if whatever mechanism there is that imposed the 64K limit were not used or did not come into play with some programs.

 

If a bag of fruit jelly beans said that it had yellow, green, red, purple, and black ones inside and you ate three of them and never found a black one, would you say that the bag does not contain black ones. Would you call me a liar if I said I thought that there were black ones inside.

 

You guys can violate the specification if you'd like to, and dance around in the streets and call Atari's Engineers a bunch of liars.

 

It's so utterly trivial to follow the procedure for loading from your own boot track that it's not even worth arguing about.

 

I'll write my code according to the specs. and you can write code to do whatever you want. Maybe you can even run GPU code from RAM, Perform Consecutive Divides with the DSP, or use the Blitter Clipping on an odd phrase boundary while you're at it. Who knows, it might work with a few test cases!

 

Like I said, this is not a very constructive conversation because following the spec is not terribly difficult.

 

It's a hell of a lot easier to follow the spec than to spend countless hours trying to prove the spec is wrong, because there's little or nothing to be gained from breaking the rule. Why bother?

[Thunderbird]

Hiya Atari Owl,,

Tbird,

You're beyond tiresome.

You mean you're already getting tired of being stubborn, insulting, annoying, AND wrong? I was just starting to have fun pointing this out, and hadn't even gotten warmed up yet. Stick around.

 

It seems to me all your posts are is:

Boast

Attack Somebody

Boast Boast

Attack somebody... Attack somebody

Boast Boast Boast

I can see where you would get this impression based on your emotionally biased and narrow point of view. It's too bad you don't have an open mind. Here's a couple of things to keep in mind the next time you try and interpret my posts:

 

1) I never attack anyone who doesn't attack me or someone else first.

2) I never forget who's attacked who in the past, going back years.

3) Any success I have no matter how minor has proven to be really annoying to people who choose to attack me.

4) Number 3 is a very powerful weapon when used against the attacks.

5) People who are offended by my accomplishments or hearing them discussed have their own "issues" to resolve.

 

You are worth no more of my time.

Return to your petty insults, your bullying and childish ranting if you wish.

It must really suck to be wrong all the time. No wonder you have such a poor attitude. I wish I could help you with your problem, but it seems to me like you have so completely enclosed yourself in your fantasy world that you're beyond help. Why not just open your eyes and take a look around. Everything you have just said about me is so ridiculously wrong that it's bordering on hilarious.

 

Why not go back through the message archive on here and take a look at the posts I have made? Your little analysis of my posts seems to ignore 99% of the threads I post in. There were none of these flamewars on this board until very recently when you guys showed up here and started trying to bash BSG for not supporting your group's badly conceived EEPROM standard. You've conveniently ignored the previous year worth of threads in order to launch into yet another attack.

 

I just did a search and found a whole ton of threads where you asked questions about various things (NTSC/PAL, Texture Mapping, Native, etc) and I responded with answers you seemed satisfied with. Is this the thanks I get for helping you out? I guess I know who NOT to respond to anymore!

 

You are worth no more of my attention, I am no longer listening.

 

Fine. In the meantime, I will continue to answer questions and write things as I normally would. If this really irritates you, then so much the better!

 

Welcome to the Jaguar Scene!

 

FEEL THE LOVE!!!

[JagChris]

This thread is frustrating to read. Although I do agree that JustClaws totally missed the point of T-bird's earlier post.

 

T-bird was making a statement that the DC and 2600 developers sites were easier to find than the Jaguar's and a new developer for the Jag would have difficulty finding help. More difficulty than a new developer for the DC or 2600. He was not saying or encouraging anyone to develope for the 2600 or DC rather than the Jag. He was merely stating(I think) that development help for the Jag should be as easy to find as the 2600 or DC.

 

I think most of the people who have posted on this thread are really smart and have brilliant minds and I am just a complete layman. However, I also think the same folks are Prideful, stubborn, stubborn asses. I hope you can all work out your differences and then we can all reap the benefits of the cooperation. I would hate to think new Jag games were being hindered because of these disagreements.

[Thunderbird]

This thread is frustrating to read. Although I do agree that JustClaws totally missed the point of T-bird's earlier post.  

 

T-bird was making a statement that the DC and 2600 developers sites were easier to find than the Jaguar's and a new developer for the Jag would have difficulty finding help. More difficulty than a new developer for the DC or 2600. He was not saying or encouraging anyone to develope for the 2600 or DC rather than the Jag. He was merely stating(I think) that development help for the Jag should be as easy to find as the 2600 or DC.

 

That's exactly what I meant. I think it is true, and I'm happy to see someone agrees.

 

I'm only trying to offer help and a point of view on the subject, so I wish that the reasons for being so secretive were disclosed so I'd have a chance to weigh the positives and negatives.

[justclaws]

Although I do agree that JustClaws totally missed the point of T-bird's earlier post.  

Well sorry about that, but I think you missed part of the point of Thunderbird's post as well, and my reply, where perhaps I was unclear.

 

T-bird was making a statement that the DC and 2600 developers sites were easier to find than the Jaguar's and a new developer for the Jag would have difficulty finding help. More difficulty than a new developer for the DC or 2600. He was not saying or encouraging anyone to develope for the 2600 or DC rather than the Jag. He was merely stating(I think) that development help for the Jag should be as easy to find as the 2600 or DC.  

You and Songbird (as publishers) have real reasons to do marketing!  

You sell JUGS as the "first complete development system" (I forget,  

does that mean you sell it complete with Brainstorms "Mac", "ALN"  

and so forth?) and I think people finding that, or "Jag Development  

Club" or the new "JagDev.Org" or other sites will find what they want.

As I said, I understood the point that Thunderbird was making about people interested in development not finding information so easily, but really that is astonishing to me, have you ever looked for yourself?

 

There is lots of information on the sites I suggested, a web-ring linking the Jaguar (and other Atari) console developers, and various forums. JDC used to have a development forum, but it mainly got populated by people just wanting games, and flaming people for not having already released commercial quality games, for free, yesterday. On the Jaguar home-brew Yahoo group, there is a comprehensive list of links to developers, tools and resources, and I've never received any queries about any other discussion forum. I've introduced several members.

 

Clearly the (totally secret) developers of "Arachnoids" who are now apparently working with Scatologic had the initiative to contact them about publishing. Clearly the members of UGD-JAG who were never invited, but just subscribed, (remember you're only invited if you DON'T subscribe yourself) had the initiative to find out how from one of the sites that listed the subscription details, mine is one. Clearly the new secretive developers of Arachnoids would probably have been invited by some UGD-JAG member to join, had any email address of web-site been available.

 

Clearly anybody visiting the JDC, Jagdev.Org, BJL, or DevCats sites can quickly find development documentation, tools, source code, and contacts. What is so difficult? Really, this is a genuine question, not flame bait. What can be done to any or all of these sites to resolve this?

 

I said that to encourage developers, this would be something well handled by both Scatologic and Songbird who could publish future titles, my point about UGD-JAG not doing this was just to explain that as individuals we have no crusade for Jaguar development, it's a good thing to do, yes, but why do we have to change what works for us, and has done for as long as home-brew Jaguar development has been going on, just to dispel the criticism of one non-member, when more than 20 members are quite happy? Email has worked for us for years, much better than on-line forums which require hours on-line, and would handicap several members who only have a short time each day to connect to the Internet by modem.

 

I think most of the people who have posted on this thread are really smart and have brilliant minds and I am just a complete layman. However, I also think the same folks are Prideful, stubborn, stubborn asses. I hope you can all work out your differences and then we can all reap the benefits of the cooperation. I would hate to think new Jag games were being hindered because of these disagreements.

Well I guess I can't comment on my faults, which are undoubtedly numerous, but I hope arrogance isn't one of them, and I accept your criticism. I never intended to start a flame war, and I've not flamed anybody. I understand that Matthias identified my post as the first stone, but really as I said, I'm happy to apologise for any misunderstanding.

 

All I wanted to do was explain why some projects that support E2PROM are currently delayed, and that is because the UGD-JAG group has been waiting for some input from Thunderbird on how to make sure that new games can be made to work on both BS-G and P-SE/B&C and future cartridges which will include JagFreeCD and 2K E2PROM support. Despite all the arguments, we are still not any close to realising that objective.

 

I have my opinion, and I don't begrudge anybody from having theirs. However, I'm not willing to be criticised for chatting in private, in secrecy, when people doing the criticism are maintaining similar secrecy for no apparent reason.

 

UGD-JAG started secretly because at the time (way back in the days when Jaguar was Atari's "upcoming" platform, Atari had a very unfriendly legal department who certainly didn't encourage home-brew titles, or any kind of discussion about the Jaguar.

 

However, despite the comments from Thunderbird, if you look around, you will see that the Jaguar development community is anything but secret. (I'm sure he has just somehow missed all the activity, I don't know why.) Any time anybody posts a question, several people post a reply. Nobody is secretive in coming forward to help potential developers!

 

There is lots of source available, not just Atari stuff as Thunderbird imagines. There is a complete CD of stuff from Starcat with complete copies of the development documentation. There are lots of projects from Matthias, hardware and software, and for software source code for many. There have been discussions on AtariAge about light guns, keyboards on JI2, modems, processor over-clocking, new ROMS, CD bypasses... etc..

 

Finally, I have taken up Thunderbird's suggestion for public discussions on shared problems (and issues which the Underground have hoped for dialog on with Scatologic,) and discoveries and hope that these new public forums will yield results for everybody. I hope that everybody is not too disappointed by the nature of discussions which result, I'm sure the majority will be the same sort of repeat questions/answers which are inevitable whenever a new Jaguar home-brewer joins the UGD-JAG list.

 

So if I still have missed the point, give up, I'm too stupid to understand.

 

Regards,

JustClaws

[Thunderbird]

Hi Richard,

 

Finally, I have taken up Thunderbird's suggestion for public discussions on shared problems (and issues which the Underground have hoped for dialog on with Scatologic,) and discoveries and hope that these new public forums will yield results for everybody. I hope that everybody is not too disappointed by the nature of discussions which result, I'm sure the majority will be the same sort of repeat questions/answers which are inevitable whenever a new Jaguar home-brewer joins the UGD-JAG list.

 

I can see your point regarding your use of dial-up and the drawbacks of some of these fancy Web BBS message boards. I can understand your perspective.

 

One big drawback of the mailing list is that the format is harder to follow and threading is harder and usually there are no archives or history to consult. If there was an archive with search functions like on these Web systems, you could avoid a lot of these repeated questions from newbies, because they could read the archived messages first.

 

Lastly, while I don't like Yahoo groups because they can be slow loading at times, they do have a feature I believe which does indeed send all messages to the group out as email if the user enables that option. Essentially the best of both worlds.

 

I imagine that there are WebBBS programs which can do this as well.

[Thunderbird]

Hi Richard,

 

Finally, I have taken up Thunderbird's suggestion for public discussions on shared problems (and issues which the Underground have hoped for dialog on with Scatologic,) and discoveries and hope that these new public forums will yield results for everybody. I hope that everybody is not too disappointed by the nature of discussions which result, I'm sure the majority will be the same sort of repeat questions/answers which are inevitable whenever a new Jaguar home-brewer joins the UGD-JAG list.

 

I can see your point regarding your use of dial-up and the drawbacks of some of these fancy Web BBS message boards. I can understand your perspective.

 

One big drawback of the mailing list is that the format is harder to follow and threading is harder and usually there are no archives or history to consult. If there was an archive with search functions like on these Web systems, you could avoid a lot of these repeated questions from newbies, because they could read the archived messages first.

 

Lastly, while I don't like Yahoo groups because they can be slow loading at times, they do have a feature I believe which does indeed send all messages to the group out as email if the user enables that option. Essentially the best of both worlds.

 

I imagine that there are WebBBS programs which can do this as well.

[Thunderbird]

Hi Richard,

 

Finally, I have taken up Thunderbird's suggestion for public discussions on shared problems (and issues which the Underground have hoped for dialog on with Scatologic,) and discoveries and hope that these new public forums will yield results for everybody. I hope that everybody is not too disappointed by the nature of discussions which result, I'm sure the majority will be the same sort of repeat questions/answers which are inevitable whenever a new Jaguar home-brewer joins the UGD-JAG list.

 

I can see your point regarding your use of dial-up and the drawbacks of some of these fancy Web BBS message boards. I can understand your perspective.

 

One big drawback of the mailing list is that the format is harder to follow and threading is harder and usually there are no archives or history to consult. If there was an archive with search functions like on these Web systems, you could avoid a lot of these repeated questions from newbies, because they could read the archived messages first.

 

Lastly, while I don't like Yahoo groups because they can be slow loading at times, they do have a feature I believe which does indeed send all messages to the group out as email if the user enables that option. Essentially the best of both worlds.

 

I imagine that there are WebBBS programs which can do this as well.