Bill Loguidice Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Taylor made clear sales of Wolfenstien on Jaguar were dire..i honestly don't think anyone at I.D thought Doom would be any different or reverse the fortunes of the Jaguar any more than it would for the 32X. This is key. You can't have sales of blockbuster titles be in the tens of thousands when they really should be in the hundreds of thousands. The fact that the Jaguar user base never made it to the hundreds of thousands doomed any potential to see things like the Doom engine get further refined on the platform. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 I fully understand people disappointed that the Jaguar version of Doom wasn't all it could of been.. But I also fully realise just why that was and the poor sales of the machine itself and even the best software released on it, simply were the reason it didn't have the luxury of games being written to take full advantage of the hardware. It simply wasn't commercially viable to invest serious time and resources into Jaguar development when retail sales would be a fraction of those on Genesis and SNES and in later era of it's life, developers rushing to develop on PS1 and didn't want to be late getting products out, for fear they would go unnoticed on the Playstation.. A far more capable platform for 3D with Sony's huge resources behind it.. So many developers made this clear time and time again over the years, yet still we hear game X was poor on Jaguar because coders were poor or lazy or both. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainBreakout Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 From the above link posted by Mattfrie1 http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-slashdot.pdf#section.1.13 Page 26: "Unfortunately, it turned out that I had lost the C compiler that I had retargeted to the jaguar RISC engines, so DOOM was no longer buildable." -John Carmack Well, that's a major bummer! Certainly puts a damper of the possibility of adding sound (like the MIDI method idea earlier). Hmm... But there exists a Jaguar hack of Doom to make it resemble Doom 2 and looks like even Heretic ?!? Anyone know how these programmers are doing it? Did they figure out a way to recompile the source even without Carmack's custom C compiler? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Others in the same boat did far better with the DSP than Taylor. HVS etc. You guys blame hardware limits then timing when that doesn't pan out. Ok then. He simply didn't have enough time. That's agreeable to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 (edited) High Voltage Software attempted a PC conversion of a FPS on Jaguar? I remember them doing WMCJ..awful, Ruiner Pinball..ditto, NBA Jam.. Quality. Thea Realm Fighters thankfully never made it and that's a 2D beat me up.. Dactyl Joust looked promising, but with simple A.I,basic gameplay mechanics etc it had a long way to go before we could see if it lived up to the potential.. Plus, they were hardly darlings in Atari's eyes..were they? Internal documents voicing concerns within Atari that the coder had bitten off more than he could chew, HV wouldn't be able to deliver the amount of texture mapping promised..the line of sight combat mechanics weren't working etc. At least the 2 Jag games Taylor was involved in were finished and seen as flagship Jaguar titles.. Not exactly in same boat other than the Jaguar market died on it's are before future products made it to retail..more sailing on same stormy waters by being Jaguar developers.. In I.D's case doubt Doom 2 was ever seriously considered for Jaguar, after poor sales of Wolfenstien, then Doom. We aren't blaming hardware limits other than to point out the headaches at least 3 separate Jaguar developers highlighted.. All doing different genres as well..a FPS, free roaming 3D Space shooter and a 2D Shoot Em Up.. Evidence there from those who worked on the hardware.. Edited June 22, 2017 by Lost Dragon 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Sauron Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Others in the same boat did far better with the DSP than Taylor. HVS etc. Others in the same boat weren't making the same game. But of course you can continue to live in your fantasy world believing that the Jaguar was as powerful as the PSX. It's apparent by now that no amount of facts will deter your fantasy. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Sauron what I said has nothing to do with the PSX. Just the Jag itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Sauron Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Right, which we all know you are an expert on, especially regarding the Jag's abilities. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Stormworks have a looped sample streaming from ROM for the music. Try doing that for each and every level.... Also, every video they have posted seems to be running under emulation. And we all know doom runs much faster that way. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 Right, which we all know you are an expert on, especially regarding the Jag's abilities. All rational people are experts when it comes to judging things that are right in front of their eyes. Here is WMCJ, similar to Doom with full screen pseudo 3D scaling bitmaps and it has music during gameplay. https://youtu.be/oS7meo8nwns All under similar pressures as Taylor. @Lost Dragon, quoting Atari s feelings towards HVS is valid how? They figured out things on the Jag Atari was too busy with their head in the sand to figure out. Dave Taylor wasn't all that great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Sauron Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 Here is WMCJ, similar to Doom with full screen pseudo 3D scaling bitmaps and it has music during gameplay. Oh, good god...please don't tell me you just tried to compare WMCJ with Doom. WMCJ has a much smaller play area to render. WMCJ doesn't use raycasting or lighting effects. WMCJ (most likely) isn't using the DSP for additional processing outside of audio. WMCJ is an unplayable mess, whereas Doom is a pretty good port of one of the best games of all time. All rational people are experts when it comes to judging things that are right in front of their eyes. If this is true, then you've just proven beyond all doubt that you aren't the least bit rational. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 Except for the playfield comment and raycast comment all the rest was pure opinion. Same old same old around here. Yawn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 Didn't Carl and Welsh Warrior fix his bugs tinkering around in an afternoon or two No they didn't - better perhaps but not fixed. Didn't stormwerkz interactive take the engine and get sound to work while playing the game? No they didn't - did you even read or know this? It's a rather massive difference... Stormworks have a looped sample streaming from ROM for the music. Try doing that for each and every level.... Also, every video they have posted seems to be running under emulation. And we all know doom runs much faster that way. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 OMG TEH REMO! Oh well you got me! Nah I'm kidding. Dave Taylor wasn't very good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 (edited) @JagChris:Once more..with feeling.. Jaguar Doom:converted from PC, Carmack admits could of been coded to make better use of Jaguar hardware,he had to rewrite most of the 3D code to work on Jaguar RISC chips as it was..but still bloody good..a flagship Jaguar game, real shot in the arm for the console. WMCJ:Written by HVS for the Jaguar hardware, not converted from different architecture, not a FPS either,but a 1/2 court, 2 on 2 basketball game, with a floating camera..basically a bloody awful game, a laughing stock in the press over here let alone elsewhere as was Runner Pinball..neither did the Jaguar any favours over here... HVS.. not all that good at producing the Triple A quality titles Jaguar needed to be taken seriousily..NBA jam aside and Thea Realm Fighters would have made the scales tip even further downwards. You single out Probe for being lazy on Primal Rage, yet have no understanding of games development..which was most likely a contractual obligation, nothing else. You single out Rebellion for not watching any Alien films before making AVP, despite knowing they had advisors on board and ignoring fact that Konami's Aliens Coin op, along with Sega's Alien 3:The Gun,MD and SNES Alien 3 are so loosely based on the films, it's unreal. ATD are another often swathed by you.. Yet HVS are constantly used as an example of the Jaguar's best commercial coders.. Looking at WMCJ..sloppy controls, muted colours, same,limited speech sales used over and over..random music, jerky movement of characters..it just needed so much more polish. Again, given Dactyl Joust just existed as a promising demo, which HCS themselves admit needed at least another 6 months work, had the most basic of A.I and hadn't delivered the line of sight combat mechanics HVS had promised, i can easily see why Atari questioned if the project was worth pursuing/HVS could deliver, based on their past results. Still... i await your breakdown of how HVS used the DSP in a PC FPS conversion and got better results than I.D with their attempts.. That will put both parties in same boat.. The only HVS Jaguar title i can think of for a near as dammit comparison is Ruiner Pinball Vs Pinball Fantasies, but even then HVS aren't going for realism, so physics differ... But comparing WMCJ to DOOM... There's no common ground there for a realistic debate about which team used Jaguar hardware better. Edited June 23, 2017 by Lost Dragon 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Sauron Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 Except for the playfield comment and raycast comment all the rest was pure opinion. Same old same old around here. So yes, just discount the facts and focus on the opinions. The facts themselves still shoot down your argument. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VladR Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 Except for the playfield comment and raycast comment all the rest was pure opinion. Same old same old around here. Yawn. The only technical criteria that we can compare WCMJ and Doom at, is full-screen texturing. Yes, WCMJ is as bus-heavy as it gets [in terms of rasterizing], as every single pixel on screen is calculated and drawn (most probably drawn by Blitter, so each scanline of the polygon had one blit command issued). However, that's where the similarities end. This is just first few things (of a long list) Doom engine has to do every single frame, and WCMJ does not: 1. Culling the huge world into displayable dataset - when you check the map, it shows the levels are really huge (like, square miles huge) - BSP traversal is not cheap on a platform like jag, shitload of memory access (can't fit that into cache) and ray-triangle tests. No such thing in WCMJ - you have 1 floor polygon, 3 side polygons, and about 3-5 background polygons (quads) - it's always in the view, so there's just clipping involved (but Doom does that too obviously) 2. Then it has to trim that down into what is really in view - again a lot of trigonometry, but there are some hacks to speed it up (though it's something WCMJ does not have to do) 3. Lighting - every single pixel is relighted every frame - it's crude, as it's 256 colors, but WCMJ does not do that 4. Pathfinding of enemies - go take a look at math on how pathfinding between arbitrary (non-square) polygons looks like. It's not pretty. WCMJ does not have that - they're all walking on a quad - thus the it's just 4 conditions (x and y range) 5. Collision detection against walls - you may argue that this is cheap given the whole engine design, but again, WCMJ does not have to do that. My best guess is that they had to ship the first version they got working. If the coder on WCMJ got another week, the framerate could have gone 50% up at least. Unlike Doom, there's really not much math that DSP could help here with, so a multithreading renderer would be of no use in this game. Since bandwidth DSP<->RAM is 16-bit, it could at least compute scanlines, and call Blitter, outside of playing audio, but I doubt it would provide significant boost,as GPU is already doing that. But, DSP could be rendering background triangles in parallel with GPU doing the rest. Still, majority of time would be just spent on waiting for blitter to finish current scanline. Best guess - DSP could be handling the gameplay (camera, input, AI). Now Doom, on the other, that's a different beast. You have 8 KB for code - e.g. double than GPU, so suddenly you reduce overlaying by 50%. That significantly helps. But again - who would spend so much time on something like that ? Even me, doing jag coding in my free time, is leaving multithreaded rendering as a last thing (and only god knows if I'll ever get to that). And when the team had fixed underestimated schedule and brutal crunch ? No chance.... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 Come on guys. He just wasn't that good in tight spaces. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zerosquare Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 (edited) "Come on guys, I know I've been busted spouting nonsense again, but please concede that point so my ego doesn't suffer? Please? Pretty please?" If you're looking for that kind of interactions, I suggest Facebook instead of AtariAge. Edited June 23, 2017 by Zerosquare 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VladR Posted June 23, 2017 Share Posted June 23, 2017 It could be just my memory, but I don't recall having read interviews where devs would mention that they were disappointed by DSP performance. Can I have some links please ? I'm personally expecting the DSP to double the computing throughput of GPU (in terms of code running from the DSP cache, not touching main memory in inner loops), save for half memory bandwidth (and probably no DSP<->Blitter, as it's not on same bus as GPU). So, I'm curious if the field experience was different ? I mean, as long as DSP's not touching bus very often, it should be exactly as fast as GPU. Switching chunks back and forth at 60 fps will be certainly very prohibitive, compared to GPU due to half bandwidth (and thus the switching would eat up to 20% of frame time). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 24, 2017 Share Posted June 24, 2017 "Come on guys, I know I've been busted spouting nonsense again, but please concede that point so my ego doesn't suffer? Please? Pretty please?" Yep, that's why teams like 4-play in their spare time while having full-time jobs had the DSP all figured out along with networking before the original iron Soldier was even released. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 24, 2017 Share Posted June 24, 2017 It could be just my memory, but I don't recall having read interviews where devs would mention that they were disappointed by DSP performance. So, I'm curious if the field experience was different ? I mean, as long as DSP's not touching bus very often, it should be exactly as fast as GPU. Switching chunks back and forth at 60 fps will be certainly very prohibitive, compared to GPU due to half bandwidth (and thus the switching would eat up to 20% of frame time). The id guy is the only one I know of. Foreplay and high voltage software both were able to use the DSP to run user code as well as music. There might be others out there but I am not aware of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zerosquare Posted June 24, 2017 Share Posted June 24, 2017 Yep, that's why teams like 4-play in their spare time while having full-time jobs had the DSP all figured out along with networking before the original iron Soldier was even released. So? Do you ever run out of non-sequiturs? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted June 24, 2017 Share Posted June 24, 2017 4-play Foreplay This guy has to be trolling us. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted June 24, 2017 Share Posted June 24, 2017 This guy has to be trolling us. Occam's Razor: There is a much more simple and more likely option. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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