Why no music on Jag Doom?

[Lost Dragon]

@Vladr:

 

Here you go, early interview with ATD,explaining issues they encountered with the DSP...

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/230813-atari-jaguar-uk-upload-from-edge-magazine-courtesy-of-lost-dragon/

 

 

Plus..i believe the DSP was tied up decompressing the graphics on Native demo, due to Jaguar lacking enough Ram?

 

http://www.cyberroach.com/jaguarcd/html/native.htm

Edited June 24, 2017 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

As for High Voltage and what they managed to do...really?

 

We are honestly using their code as a bench mark?

 

 

:-)) Come off it, WMCJ pulled in some of the lowest scores I have seen..

 

ST Format 22%

 

Atari Times 5/100

 

This is Atari press to boot.

 

Flat,blocky backgrounds, repetive voice samples,jerky movement, dark colour palate,passable music..

 

Titles like this harmed the Jaguar's reputation even further and are the last thing i would bring up as an example of great coding.

 

You are far too happy to ignore fact the DSP caused issues for developers..period.

[JagChris]

 

 

This guy has to be trolling us.

 

Voice to text goof. Was in a rush.

[JagChris]

So?

Do you ever run out of non-sequiturs?

One guy in his spare time figures out the DSP while in the same time frame another full time guy couldn't.

 

Yeah non sequitur.

[Zerosquare]

So you're comparing someone with essentially zero constraints to someone working under a tight schedule and budget?

You might want to compare how much time your "guy in his spare time" spent on developing his game, and how much it would have cost if he had been on salary.

 

But sure, let's ignore that too, and conclude that Dave Taylor was a bad programmer based on a single, flawed data point.

 

It's obvious you know nothing about professional software development. Heck, it's obvious you know nothing about software development, period. Which is not surprising considering your experience consists of reading video game magazines and babbling on forums.

[JagChris]

He did it in less time then Dave Taylor He Did It Before iron soldier was even finished. He was part time in his free time that's way more time constrained and doing it 8 hours a day 5 days a week.

 

No one is saying the DSP doesn't have issues but if they were really good programmers they dealt with it. No excuses.

 

And if they weren't, they were David Taylor.

[DracIsBack]

The reason is most likely that it was largely a rush job and Dave Taylor who did the DSP work wasn't very good.

 

I've been guilty in my younger, more naive days, of accusing developers of lazy/incompetent and marketing people of being idiots behind stupid decisions

 

That say, 15+ years into major software projects of all kinds and seeing first hands what said "alleged" lazy/incompetent developers and said "alleged" idiot marketing people have to work under, it's usually not even remotely that simple.

 

More specifically, as is discussed in that thread, there's usually a major business reality behind what's perceived as laziness or idiocy. Developers often have to make technical choices because of time constraints dictated by the business. The marketing team often has limitations on how much they can spend and/or limitations on how to promote or what they can promote because of technical changes .... that often come late in the game.

 

Let's face it guys - when DOOM was being worked on, few thought Atari was going to succeed. And when DOOM was being worked on, Atari had little money to spend on development. It was a first generation game, with first generation tools, with a likely a tiny little budget that couldn't be extended because Atari's money was scarce. They also desperately needed a well known title out there as quickly as they could get it.

 

So the developers, with the constraints of timelines imposed, the constraints of the software dev kits they had, the constraints of the development budget they were given, likely did the best they could with what they had.

 

And this is usually the case in software. Because I said before, if you lose money on projects, you don't stay in business. Lots of developers would love to spend countless quarters fixing tech debt, refactoring old code etc ... and usually gripe that they can't. But the lights also need to stay on ...

[Zerosquare]

He did it in less time then Dave Taylor He Did It Before iron soldier was even finished.

Was the game complete and released at that point?

Hint #1: compare the release dates of both games.

Hint #2: do you know what a regression is?

 

He was part time in his free time that's way more time constrained and doing it 8 hours a day 5 days a week.

Yeah, right.

Because professional programmers spend 40 hours a week hammering at their keyboards.

They never have to attend meetings or do any other stuff unrelated to programming.

They certainly don't have to deal with everchanging requirements and schedules.

They're absolutely free to prioritize whatever task they'd prefer to work on.

They sure can delay the release date as much as they want if they need more time.

And they definitely don't have producers breathing down their neck, asking "why isn't it done yet? this is costing us money!"

 

They have so much freedom compared to the pour souls who do stuff in their spare time!

 

No one is saying the DSP doesn't have issues but if they were really good programmers they dealt with it. No excuses.

 

And if they weren't, they were David Taylor.

Gee, what did they this guy do to you? Did he run over your dog with his car or something? Edited June 24, 2017 by Zerosquare

[Lost Dragon]

I have never understood how JagChris can look at game development with the utter simplicity he does..

 

Dave Taylor=Bad

 

ATD=Bad/Lazy

 

Rebellion=Bad/Lazy

 

Probe=Bad/Lazy.

 

High Voltage Software=Great.

 

At best, it's child like in it's approach, at worst insulting to the coders,artists and musicians involved who had to struggle with the Jaguar hardware whilst facing very real issues with budgets, deadlines, project managers etc.

 

Plus to then simply ignore valid points people trying to engage in sensible debate about commercial coding environment facing those at the time, instead waggling a finger at Dave Taylor as if he had just soiled a new carpet JagChris had laid down...

 

Bad Coder.. Bad Bad Coder..go to your room, no more Jaguar coding for you, Me Laddie..:@

 

I could pick numerous games by Probe, Rebellion, Tiertex,Jeff Minter ATD etc i loved and and equal number i hated..

 

But i would do my best to discover what went wrong, conditions they worked under, anything they'd do different, rather than make sweeping statements about their ability whilst ignoring the abominations some of my hero status coders threw out.

 

A bit of balance and understanding goes a long way when you look back at titles you wish had turned out differently.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Lost Dragon

[JagChris]

This thread is about why Jag Doom has no music during gameplay. I put in my two cents and that's how I feel about it. People can read my words and compare them with others and if they agree with me fine. Or they can take Zerosquare and whoever's words and say hey I agree with them. That's also fine with me.

 

Either way it's not going to put the music back in Doom during gameplay.

[CaptainBreakout]

See, I took it to mean that there was an ever-so-slight possibility that there might be. ... A way to put the music back into Doom that is -even if it is a crazy hack. If I was a talented enough programmer, I'd try the MIDI route. Seems like a good reason to add yet another extremely unusual piece of Jaguar hardware (an external MIDI synth) to the enthuiast market as well.

 

Anyway that's my two cents. Subscribed to this thread hoping that adding music might be the topic of discussion, since Jaguar Doom is a popular target for hacking. Still hoping this thread turns that way. Would seem to me to be the most productive line of conversation.

Edited June 24, 2017 by CaptainBreakout

[Zerosquare]

It'd be certainly doable (outputting MIDI from a Jaguar is pretty easy), but what would be the point of targeting hardware virtually nobody has, to run a game that everybody has played to death and has been ported to everything already?

Unless anyone finds it motivating and does it for fun, it's not likely to happen.

[CaptainBreakout]

No disagreement there. I for one would consider it novelty enough to get/build a MIDI synth for, and spend a certain amount of time and money just to see happen. Part of my motivation for this interest is seeing old consoles do new things, and I know I'm not alone here with how enjoyable a feeling that is.

 

Still you are right. Someone would have to be really motivated to want to see this. When I see short runs of games, custom controllers, and even remakes and improvements (Space Rocks, Berzerk with Voice) and even when people go to extreme lengths (dare I mention Battlesphere)... There's no doubt in my mind the motivation is out there. But for Jag Doom? Maybe, considering it has it's champions.

 

But you are right again about Doom in particular. I love Doom. And since I love the Jaguar too, I'd totally grab it for the Jaguar if a hack came out with music. Lol I doubt I'm the only one, so... I'm sounding off hoping that at least express the interest to the world at large and hoping this might be the difference between it ever happening and not.

[+Sauron]

This thread is about why Jag Doom has no music during gameplay. I put in my two cents and that's how I feel about it. People can read my words and compare them with others and if they agree with me fine. Or they can take Zerosquare and whoever's words and say hey I agree with them. That's also fine with me.

 

Let's see...choose between someone who is obviously very knowledgeable about the Jag architecture with plenty of coding examples against someone who obviously knows nothing about it and has a long history of speaking out of their ass. What a tough choice!

[VladR]

@Vladr:

 

Here you go, early interview with ATD,explaining issues they encountered with the DSP...

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/230813-atari-jaguar-uk-upload-from-edge-magazine-courtesy-of-lost-dragon/

Thanks a lot for the article, but they do not describe any issue with DSP, they merely state:

 

"But, as it turns out, everything is using the DSP to its full, so there's no spare memory, no spare processing power"

This can hardly be described as DSP issue. They're merely using it to its full performance, which is actually great news

[JagChris]

 

Let's see...choose between someone who is obviously very knowledgeable about the Jag architecture with plenty of coding examples against someone who obviously knows nothing about it and has a long history of speaking out of their ass. What a tough choice!

Hmm..

Knowledge of architecture, coding examples= authority. Got it.

 

Here's someone who fits that description and here's what he had to say about 2D on the Jag:

 

The Saturn is better then PSX at 2D and I bet with the right coders even the 3D in the sense

of polygon features. Again that quad only polygons in hardware is just plain stupid. Triangles

rule! Well at least they did not screw this up on the DC.

 

The Jaguar is balance between the two and more a computational beast. Jaguar gives you

quality not quantity. The best of both worlds just not as much on the screen as either. However

the OPL and Blitter wil toast either system in 2D in shear objects on the screen. You'll never

see this as the OPL is only limited by buswidth and memory...It works out to about 3000 128

x 128 x 16bit sprites but then you are left with little bus to do much of anything else.

I do believe that teabags Orions PSX claim of a paltry showing of 16x16.

[+Sauron]

Hmm..

Knowledge of architecture, coding examples= authority. Got it.

 

Here's someone who fits that description and here's what he had to say about 2D on the Jag:

 

 

I do believe that teabags Orions PSX claim of a paltry showing of 16x16.

 

LOLWUT? Read that quote again, and focus on the last sentence. If you still don't understand exactly what it's saying, then think of the following quote before typing out another reply:

 

 

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

[Lost Dragon]

@VladR:The way i read ATD's comment was that it had thrown up an issue, in sense they had been coding thinking they could use DSP to assist with taking some of the work load off other chips, but this wasn't possible, so they had to rethink the process..

 

But..without seeing full conscript, it's hard to know full context quote was given in..

 

And it was their 1st Jaguar title so bound to be a learning curve attached, but it still remains a documented example of the DSP not being able to implement everything a coder had hoped to of done at a commercial level, at that time.

 

Maybe Atari had oversold the potential of the DSP?.

 

They did clearly state what and where they would of liked to use it for and why that simply wasn't possible but as to if that was an issue with the DSP or their original plans..i very much doubt they themselves would remember,it's been so many years.

 

Fred admits his memory is very hazy as does Brian Pollock,when it comes to coding on Jaguar back then.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

8-) The coder quote JagChris uses is speculation in part..

 

I bet with the right coders...

 

That sounds like speculation.. doesn't even suggest who such coders should be or what type of 3D..

 

Are we talking like for like 3D racing game? Sci fi combat a la Darklight Conflict with fancy lighting effects? Plain polygons?

 

Saturn was designed as very powerful 2D hardware,had more Ram than PS1 so of course it was better at 2D, but then there are Ex-Interplay coders who think SNES is better at 3D than 3DO..

 

But it too was designed as a balanced piece of hardware..

 

PS1 designed with 3D in mind at expense of 2D.

 

But that's all by the by..PS1 Doom had music and it was bloody awesome for it.

 

Added so much to the atmosphere..baby wailing...brrr...

 

And that's why it's the version I return to time and time again.

 

We already have a stunning console port of Doom with music so a Jaguar version with music would be little more than a curio, for likes of myself and maybe others..

Edited June 26, 2017 by Lost Dragon

[+CyranoJ]

I do believe that teabags Orions PSX claim of a paltry showing of 16x16.

 

Isn't your quote from the guy who couldn't make a simple single screen shooter on the 7800 without demanding a whole slew of additional processors be added, and then sulked off because he couldn't make it happen? Or is it the guy who spent 39 years waiting for someone else to make him a rendering engine 'better than the atari one' because he couldn't make his own, and then sulked off because he couldn't make it happen? Or are they the same person?

 

Either way, I believe ZeroSquare's and Orion's knowledge teabags anything he has to say.

[WAVE 1 GAMES]

A whole lot of "teabagging" going on in this thread. Lmfao.... geez

[rayik]

Occam's Razor: There is a much more simple and more likely option.

Nah. At this point he's just trolling.

[JagChris]

 

LOLWUT? Read that quote again, and focus on the last sentence. If you still don't understand exactly what it's saying, then think of the following quote before typing out another reply:

 

Yeah I know what you're saying. It's maxed out. And so let's cut that in half. 64x64. That's still what like 4 times PlayStation's potential.

 

Or we can be really conservative and just go 32 by 32. That's still double PlayStations output.

 

@Lost Dragon I was just told that people with experience and code to show are considered authorities. Now your saying it's speculation. Flip flop.

 

Just trying to get a handle on what Authority is.

Edited June 27, 2017 by JagChris

[+CyranoJ]

Just trying to get a handle on what Authority is.

Start with getting a handle of what reality is before moving onto advanced topics.

[Lost Dragon]

Try a better quote from your authority coders rather than them putting a wager someone might be able to do better 3D on Saturn than PS1, backed up for like for like examples and i might be convinced.

 

But yes..it is Flip Flop weather here..lovely English summer for once.