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If Battlesphere were all that...


Flojomojo

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This is / was their prerogative. I don't see any other post-Atari Corp. developers giving out updates on their game sales stats.

I believe Songbird (for example) has mentioned how many copies of his games sold.

But sure. They don't have to do that. They're entitled to do limited runs. But you don't get to complain that your games sell for high prices on eBay because they're rare, when you're actively making decisions that make them rare.

 

I'm uninformed / unaware about what this actually means.

At one time they got into full paranoia mode, and accused others in the Jaguar community of planning to pirate their game. Needless to say, they had no proof to back up their accusation, because it was false. (And when it eventually got pirated, the culprits weren't the ones they accused.)

Then they put an auction on eBay saying that the profits would "help combat software piracy", without giving any details. Real classy.

 

Based on facts alone: it was their / T-bird's approaches to Hasbro that allowed the Jaguar to be released from any possible legal / copyright issues (re: software releases, encryption keys, use of logos etc.), which is where they offered up the diabetes / charity thing as a carrot.

That's the "facts" Thunderbird kept repeating, but some parts are known to be false, and the rest is at most dubious.

 

They didn't release the development tools. They got leaked before they were involved.

They didn't release the developers documentation. It was leaked too, and one of the designers of the Jaguar chipset (John Mathieson) released the most important document as a gift to the community.

They didn't release the encryption keys. This was Curt Vendel's work.

They didn't launch homebrew development on the Jaguar. Several developers were working together on hacking the Jaguar and made games before them.

They weren't the first to release a PC-to-Jaguar communication kit. The Favard brothers and Matthias Domin/Bastian Schick released one for free before them. But they actively dissed the existing implementation (BJL) to sell their commercial solution, which was a lot slower and more cumbersome.

Their relationship with other homebrew developers was pretty hostile. I know of at least one project that was abandoned because of their attacks.

 

The only thing they did, if you believe them, was convincing Hasbro to make the Jaguar an open system. They claimed they had to do a lot of hard work, but I find that hard to believe: at that point, Hasbro had zero interest in the Jaguar brand, and it was basically worthless anyways. And despite several persons asking about it, they never released any proof of how they were involved besides their testimony (and they've been know to take some "liberties" with the truth more than once).

 

But it's actually irrelevant. Apart from a few exceptions, homebrew development on consoles is not officially allowed by the manufacturers. In practice it makes no difference, because it happens anyways and nobody cares (as long as you don't do things like rip off an active license). And Hasbro definitely wouldn't care: they bought Atari just for the brand name.

 

So homebrew development existed on the Jaguar before Scatologic got involved, still exists now they're gone, and they had very little effect on that.

 

I think the whole story with Hasbro was little more than that: a story to make them look like good guys. Which was absolutely unnecessary. If they had given the profits to charity without the drama, they would have gained a lot more respect from the community.

 

This sucks, especially for those who legit want multiple copies to play. I've heard that this happened numerous times, but I never bothered looking to see if it was a regular thing, the names of the ebay accounts etc. Have they ever responded to these instances?

Honestly I have no idea, as I have no interest in BS. I just know it happened at least once.

 

Then again, it's their game to do with what they want, just as it's fine for us to criticise their practices.

Sure. I have no issue with selling your own game on eBay. But doing that sneakily, while claiming you have no stock left and blame the scalpers, is dishonest.

 

We probably wouldn't be talking about it if they didn't, nor would the prices be beyond the $150 mark. It's their prerogative to do so or not.

I don't agree. As you probably guessed, I dislike the BS developers, and don't care for the game (I was never interested in space-opera shooters), but I think the game is good enough not to need the drama. I'm pretty sure it would still be remembered, had it been more easily available.

 

As far as 'being aggressive', I can call it as I remember it. The team were blunt, called out factual errors, spoke their mind, and yes perhaps overhyped things, but hey - it was 'news' when the Jag's commercial tailspin accelerated. Plus, they engaged with fans online via newsgroups and forums - few other developers bothered or cared. This raised the profile amongst the fans. As far as aggressiveness goes, most of this perception was in their answers toward people who were bereft of facts or had poor logic and reasoning skills. I used to enjoy watching them rip into people who lacked the basic tenets of logical argument. About the time I got bored of the whole online Jag forum / newsgroup stuff (early / mid 2000s until about 5 years ago) I found that they were a bit more abrupt and sometimes rude. However, having to deal with the same stupidity, demands, entitledness (and sometimes hostile nature) of the Jag fan base for years and years, I don't necessarily blame them (although I always found one member of the team rarely if ever could concede they were even slightly wrong even if I could see he was from afar, which didn't help the whole 'them vs us' mentality that plagued the Jag scene forever).

You don't get banned from AA because you're blunt (there are several examples). Thunderbird got banned form AA because he had been a grade-A asshole, for many years, to many people, again and again. And not just to those asking "stupid" questions either -- he actively attacked people who pointed out factual errors and shaky reasoning in his posts, and kept derailing topics.

 

This is simply conjecture. Sure, it's based on what has occurred over the years, but I very seriously doubt they sit at home revelling in their Jaguar infamy. It's a footnote, an interesting one for sure, but I doubt they really give it much of a thought these days. Except when they happen across threads like this and probably laugh.

Yes, I hope they moved on and became wiser since. But back when they posted in JSII, it was obvious how highly they thought of themselves, and how little consideration they had for others.

 

Where it possibly comes into play is the refusal to let others reproduce it under license (ostensibly due to quality control, or supply chain control, or whatever)...which I kind of agreed with ten years ago, but not now.

It was a red herring from day one. BS(G) isn't a luxury watch. It's a cardboard box holding a plastic case, with a PCB and an EPROM chip inside. The manufacturing standards may be good, but they're not something that no-one else could achieve (and some did). I think they never actually intended to let anyone else produce copies under licence, or that their licensing terms were so stiff nobody was interested.

 

Why do I think this? Hypothetical - License it to *someone*, get them to produce the cart (or Scatbox), approve the product at their high standards, let it sell for $130 a piece, collect their $30-50 per piece for doing nothing, reseller donates a percentage to charity, sell hundreds of the products, profit, go on a holiday and sip cocktails with little umbrellas by the pool, be happy that a good thing has been done and the handful of Jag fans are happy and get to appreciate your product for what it is rather than a semi-mythical tchotchke that it currently is.

From a commercial point of view, I agree, it makes no sense not to have rereleased BS. Which is why I think it's a matter of pride, which fits nicely the behaviour of the authors. Edited by Zerosquare
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... nothing but higher resolution ...

Actually, you happen to have a valid and realistic point even on the Jag platform!

 

A typical lowpoly spaceship 3D mesh of this eras is - what - 50-100 triangles ? For dogfights, it means there's just one spaceship on the screen.

- The 3D transform cost is minimal (like, 5% of a frame time/vblank).

- AI may take another 10-15% of vblank, but not more - there's really only few states in the 6DOF FiniteStateMachine.- it's mostly lerping between waypoints and rotation angles

- most of the time, a ship occupies a very small portion of the screen, so the fillrate cost is minimal

- based on my experience with my 3D engine, I'm sure you could raise a resolution on jag to a double of a typical resolution - e.g. to 700x240 (or 640x240 with side black bars) and still play at around 30 fps, only occasionally dropping to 20 fps, when ship is zooming past you (when the fillrate cost is high)

 

That might actually look might sharp even on a big TV :)

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The only thing they did, if you believe them, was convincing Hasbro to make the Jaguar an open system. They claimed they had to do a lot of hard work, but I find that hard to believe: at that point, Hasbro had zero interest in the Jaguar brand, and it was basically worthless anyways. And despite several persons asking about it, they never released any proof of how they were involved besides their testimony (and they've been know to take some "liberties" with the truth more than once).

 

To be fair, they had a lot to do with the Jaguar being opened up, including having their own talks with Hasbro (confirmed in an interview with Hasbro's VP or Marketing or something from back in the day), and also with organizing an email campaign towards Hasbro for that specific purpose. Had BS not been in development at that point, Hasbro wouldn't have opened up the Jag to the community. Like you said, though, not that it really means much at this point in time.

 

All of the other stuff that Zerosquare said is absolutely true. There was an underground Jag developers mailing list way back then, with the key word being "underground" because 4Play/Scatalogic had a lot of animosity towards other devs. At one point in time, someone put up the question in the mailing list about whether they should be invited to join. I, being naively stupid at the time, was the only one to say yes. Everyone else gave an emphatic "no" as their answer.

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At one time they got into full paranoia mode, and accused others in the Jaguar community of planning to pirate their game. Needless to say, they had no proof to back up their accusation, because it was false. (And when it eventually got pirated, the culprits weren't the ones they accused.)

Then they put an auction on eBay saying that the profits would "help combat software piracy", without giving any details. Real classy.

This made me curious. A quick Google retrieved what you mentioned ( http://atariage.com/forums/topic/96687-anybody-want-a-battlesphere-gold/). Very odd. Quite an outlandish statement on their part. And not backed up by facts. As I said, I was active online in a lot of Atari (and Jaguar) related stuff from the mid 90s until the early 2000s when I lost interest for a while. I did notice some of the logic disappeared from anything BS related when I dropped out. This appears to be one of those "what!?" things I just missed.

 

They didn't release the development tools. They got leaked before they were involved.

They didn't release the developers documentation. It was leaked too, and one of the designers of the Jaguar chipset (John Mathieson) released the most important document as a gift to the community.

They didn't release the encryption keys. This was Curt Vendel's work.

They didn't launch homebrew development on the Jaguar. Several developers were working together on hacking the Jaguar and made games before them.

They weren't the first to release a PC-to-Jaguar communication kit. The Favard brothers and Matthias Domin/Bastian Schick released one for free before them. But they actively dissed the existing implementation (BJL) to sell their commercial solution, which was a lot slower and more cumbersome.

Their relationship with other homebrew developers was pretty hostile. I know of at least one project that was abandoned because of their attacks.

 

I don't dispute much of this. That said, they never claimed to be the official source of the Jag dev tools, documentation, encryption keys (I think I downloaded them on a 56K modem long before BS came out). Homebrew - no-one is suggesting they started that, I remember BJL and the like long before Y2K.

 

I do remember them hyping up the JUGS thing when it wasn't "all that". Slower, more awkward (arguably), and harder to get hold of (definitely) than other solutions at the time. They were pushing it, which would've been great had the solution been more accessible to all. I do remember a discussion about USB being an option but they dismissed it out of hand due to regulations and price (oh, the irony).

 

So homebrew development existed on the Jaguar before Scatologic got involved, still exists now they're gone, and they had very little effect on that.

 

No arguments. In fact, I don't think you and I particularly disagree on much other than about minutiae and personalities.

 

As you probably guessed, I dislike the BS developers, and don't care for the game (I was never interested in space-opera shooters), but I think the game is good enough not to need the drama. I'm pretty sure it would still be remembered, had it been more easily available.

Absolutely, if it were more easily available, especially for network play (more Scatboxes or other solutions) it would be a slightly bigger footnote than the strange grumpy one it has ended up being.

 

I *do* think people who have issues with the devs (be it online interactions or their approach to things) *has* tainted their view of the game. Yourself included from my reading of it. No harm, no foul, no angst, no disrespect. At all. (insert peace symbol here)

 

I've managed to play the game and evaluate it somewhat objectively. I like it, and as a Jag game and mid 90s non-linear space shmup it's pretty damn good imho. It's somewhat embellished by my interactions with the devs - everything from friendly to testy to grumpy to borderline hostile (when I was chuffed to hold my own against some 'logic' thrown my way ;) ). That's why I played devil's advocate earlier - the thread I found and linked to above (and in this one) shows some deep seated annoyance (understandable) that's brewed for ten years or more. I'm just trying to be objective having missed the ensuing middle few years of testiness while having been around for the first batch of five to ten years of BS (pun intended ;) ).

 

Edit: I forgot to add it was a very ambitious and mostly successful attempt at what they attempted. Deeper than almost any other Jag game (AvP, Battlemorph, Skyhammer are on par) - whether you like the gameplay or genre, on options and choices alone it does the business imho.

 

I think they never actually intended to let anyone else produce copies under licence, or that their licensing terms were so stiff nobody was interested.

 

I agree. Nor should they need to have to. Their toy, their game. It's amazing how much that thread I linked to covers the same ground with the same impressions (and a few of the same people commenting). I do remember them publicly ( I think :( ) rejecting other publishers, some who are still producing and selling Jag games....

 

I'm amazed how people who've never met yet share the same interests in obscure poorly selling hardware begrudge each other so much. I honestly wonder what would happen if they / we / us ever met in person - shuffling of feet while looking at the ground, running away, fisticuffs, or a genuine conversation about some cool if flawed hardware from a messed up and skint company.....

 

 

What Sauron said....Very good words :) I reckon I was on that mailing list and I think I remember that coming up. Not that I said or did anything ever (that I'll admit to, I was more clueless then than I am now ;) ).

Edited by skip
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'alternate history land' should not be allowed.

 

Agreed. *But* it goes both / all / every way.

 

Please read what I've read in the few posts I've made in this thread, including the one in response to Zerosquare. (a) I was 'there' (early on, 90s until mid 2000s), (b) my memory for what I was there for is like a trap (much better than now ;) ) and © I hold no "allegiances" to affect or skew my objective observations (and can mostly back it up...even if I have to trawl 'Jaguar Interactive' or usenet...gawd, I hope I don't have to, I was a big(ger) doofus back then ;) ).

Edited by skip
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Actually, you happen to have a valid and realistic point even on the Jag platform!

 

A typical lowpoly spaceship 3D mesh of this eras is - what - 50-100 triangles ? For dogfights, it means there's just one spaceship on the screen.

- The 3D transform cost is minimal (like, 5% of a frame time/vblank).

- AI may take another 10-15% of vblank, but not more - there's really only few states in the 6DOF FiniteStateMachine.- it's mostly lerping between waypoints and rotation angles

- most of the time, a ship occupies a very small portion of the screen, so the fillrate cost is minimal

- based on my experience with my 3D engine, I'm sure you could raise a resolution on jag to a double of a typical resolution - e.g. to 700x240 (or 640x240 with side black bars) and still play at around 30 fps, only occasionally dropping to 20 fps, when ship is zooming past you (when the fillrate cost is high)

 

That might actually look might sharp even on a big TV :)

We might see what can be done soon. Third always threatened to obsolete BS if something came out that will play it. With the new card on the horizon we'll see what happens. I know they were massively reworking something on the Jaguar way back in 2007 as an apparent plan to obsolete current versions of the game.

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My lord....enough Battlesphere threads already!

NOPE

This is a good one -- I am enjoying the memories and retrospective details immensely.

 

I was around in that scene too, though not as into it as some. I feel like I might even remember some of you from USENET -- Zerosquare's handle in particular seems familiar, were you using that name back then, too?

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We might see what can be done soon. Third always threatened to obsolete BS if something came out that will play it. With the new card on the horizon we'll see what happens. I know they were massively reworking something on the Jaguar way back in 2007 as an apparent plan to obsolete current versions of the game.

 

I couldn't resist...

 

broken-matt-hardy-obsolete.jpg

 

tenor.gif

 

tumblr_oa8dlmJYYo1u1ljrzo3_540.gif

 

:grin:

 

Also, I agree this thread has some good history. I tried digging up a bunch of this on my own a couple years back and was so confused :P . This seems to be one at least a few dramatic episodes with devs and the Jag community that have contributed to the... ummmm.... uniqueness of the Jag scene.

Edited by Jagosaurus
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We might see what can be done soon. Third always threatened to obsolete BS if something came out that will play it. With the new card on the horizon we'll see what happens. I know they were massively reworking something on the Jaguar way back in 2007 as an apparent plan to obsolete current versions of the game.

That was a decade ago. Why would they care now ? Has anybody seen any of them active on some jag forum ?

 

Does the obsoletion apply if, say, a similar new game appeared on jag ?

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We might see what can be done soon. Third always threatened to obsolete BS if something came out that will play it. With the new card on the horizon we'll see what happens. I know they were massively reworking something on the Jaguar way back in 2007 as an apparent plan to obsolete current versions of the game.

I don't understand what is meant by "obsolete" as a verb here. What exactly were they threatening? A Battlesphere Platinum edition that would make the older ones less desirable? It's not like they had a self-destruct code in the old cartridges.

 

I can't think of anything much more obsolete than an Atari Jaguar. :ponder:

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To be fair, they had a lot to do with the Jaguar being opened up, including having their own talks with Hasbro (confirmed in an interview with Hasbro's VP or Marketing or something from back in the day), and also with organizing an email campaign towards Hasbro for that specific purpose. Had BS not been in development at that point, Hasbro wouldn't have opened up the Jag to the community.

I wasn't around back then, so I believe you. (Even if I have a suspicion Hasbro cave just to make Scatologic go away :P)

 

That said, they never claimed to be the official source of the Jag dev tools, documentation, encryption keys (I think I downloaded them on a 56K modem long before BS came out).

Maybe not. But they acted as if the homebrew community owed them a lot, while in fact they had very little involvement (and to be honest, the things they did to help were overshadowed by their harmful behaviour).

 

In fact, I don't think you and I particularly disagree on much other than about minutiae and personalities.

Looks like it :)

 

I *do* think people who have issues with the devs (be it online interactions or their approach to things) *has* tainted their view of the game. Yourself included from my reading of it.

Actually, I don't really have an issue with the quality of the game itself. It's a genre that doesn't appeal to me at all, so I don't really have an opinion on that matter -- I played it once in a convention, just in spite, to see what all the fuss was about. I just don't think any game deserves so much hype.

 

 

I'm amazed how people who've never met yet share the same interests in obscure poorly selling hardware begrudge each other so much. I honestly wonder what would happen if they / we / us ever met in person - shuffling of feet while looking at the ground, running away, fisticuffs, or a genuine conversation about some cool if flawed hardware from a messed up and skint company.....

So true!

 

Zerosquare's handle in particular seems familiar, were you using that name back then, too?

I wasn't around on Usenet, I had no interest in the Jaguar before 2005/2006. So either you're thinking of someone else, or you mean AtariAge instead of Usenet :) Edited by Zerosquare
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That was a decade ago. Why would they care now ? Has anybody seen any of them active on some jag forum ?

 

Does the obsoletion apply if, say, a similar new game appeared on jag ?

Yeah. Scott​ LeGrand was active on the JSIII FB page you were a member of.

 

Why would anyone care now? Why did anyone care then? Why does anybody still care about anything that happens regarding this obsolete system? That this systems post mortem fan base is what it is is one of the Universe's great mysteries.

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I don't understand what is meant by "obsolete" as a verb here. What exactly were they threatening? A Battlesphere Platinum edition that would make the older ones less desirable? It's not like they had a self-destruct code in the old cartridges.

 

I can't think of anything much more obsolete than an Atari Jaguar. :ponder:

Haha yeah that must be why you're here. To bask in complete abject obsolescence.

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I occasionally wonder which member of 4Play was most responsible for their eye-rollingly puerile naming schemes. 4Play... Scatbox... JUGS... Ocatanut, etc. Made them seem like a bunch of tittering pre-teens. And then they complained when other companies wouldn't take them seriously. Gee, I wonder why.

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Yeah. Scott​ LeGrand was active on the JSIII FB page you were a member of.

 

Why would anyone care now? Why did anyone care then? Why does anybody still care about anything that happens regarding this obsolete system? That this systems post mortem fan base is what it is is one of the Universe's great mysteries.

I was on JS3 so short, I barely connected 3-4 names to their nick counterparts, before I got banned there. I think I recall now you mentioning him. Is Scott T-Bird ?

 

My point still stands - a decade ago, I would believe they'd want to do something, as it wasn't very long after they release BS. But after 2 decades ? Now that's a very long stretch. But then again, this is jag arena...

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An interesting quote from the thread I linked to...

Oppressor wrote:

"And our preservation plan is far beyond anything your tiny mind could conceive so just go to EBay and pay $500+ for it already, mmkay? You guys created the situation, not us, so go wallow in it with the rest of the, um, hobbyists."

I wonder what the 'preservation plan' is / was? What was the strategy? Could it still be done? Is it completely a moot point? This genuinely interests me, especially as the quoted lifespan for EPROMs is (apparently) 'only' 25 years...

As for "
You guys created the situation", I honestly and sincerely don't understand. But it was over ten years ago, so who knows...

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An interesting quote from the thread I linked to...

 

Oppressor wrote:

 

"...far beyond anything your tiny mind could conceive..."

That, to me, sounds entirely like a strong sarcasm, followed by a 2-second pause, and then everybody laughs hard. Sort-of like in a talk-show, where there is a second audio track of people laughing after some funny quote.

 

Now, I wasn't there at that time, so I don't have full context, but this really sounds to me like he was just being sarcastic.

 

And that rarely translates well in a web forum...

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I occasionally wonder which member of 4Play was most responsible for their eye-rollingly puerile naming schemes. 4Play... Scatbox... JUGS... Ocatanut, etc. Made them seem like a bunch of tittering pre-teens. And then they complained when other companies wouldn't take them seriously. Gee, I wonder why.

 

Tom Harker

 

By the way, didn't you used to be their biggest cheerleader?

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