What was the Jaguar truly capable of?

[Lost Dragon]

Quick search threw up Scott describing Atari Falcon version of Zero 5 as a title that sucked and was merely a very lame clone of Inferno by DID,which he described itself as graphically spectacular,but unplayable.

 

AirCars looking like a 2600 game..

 

 

Phase Zero had a very nice heightfield engine: the

terrain was gorgeous at times... It also had a fairly nice

HUD... But the gameplay was strictly a hoverstrike clone

unfortunately: all waypoints and boring easy to kill enemies...

 

Team behind it were apparently Walkers..

 

He laid into PlayStation Descent and Interplay..

 

There's a point when his views just came across as very petty.

 

Ego driven a tad too much maybe?

Edited December 4, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

Notice how he's not kicking and screaming and throwing a babyfit and blaming the DSP like the id software guy does.

Adisak just took care of business.

Just to make clear..The I.D Guy (Fave Taylor) had Doom etc under his belt, finished, actual game.

 

The HVS guy (Adisak) had:

 

I have a very simple algorithm to doom in texture mapping floors and walls in 65536 colors with light

shading to enhance depth perspective and it runs at about 40-50 frames per second!!!

 

I have texture mapping routines on the jaguar capable of drawing floors with depth shading and texture mapped walls at any angle which is basically adoom graphics engine. I do not have any of the player-player interaction, collision, mapping,

etc. that doom uses...

[JagChris]

Well, he knows his stuff. That's why he's the one who helped Microsoft get Halo working and not those guys.

[Lost Dragon]

Notice how he's not kicking and screaming and throwing a babyfit and blaming the DSP like the id software guy does.

Adisak just took care of business.

The HVS Guy on the I.D guys and the DSP yadda Yadda buisness:

 

ID wrote their own sound code so they could run tasks in the DSP.

The Atari sound code fairly well takes over the DSP. Plus the Atari

sound codes is a major drain on memory bandwidth. The music/sound

driver I wrote for WMCJ and will use in NBAJ-TE uses 4:1 ADPCM compression and is over 30 times more bandwidth efficient than Atari's sound code.

 

(on average I do 1-memory access compared to Atari's code's 32 accesses to play back a sample at 1/2 the max sample rate which is about standard sample rates). I noticed about a 15% improvement in my frame rate when i dumped their sound code for mine and an additional 10-15% improvement

because I didn't have to split objects to let the DSP grab the bus more often.

adisak

 

Full story at 10...:-))

[JagChris]

We already seen all that. He's still not throwing a bitch fit.

[+CyranoJ]

There's a point when his views just came across as very petty.

 

Usually just before he opened his mouth.

[VintageGamer74]

Just wondering what are "Clut" graphics? I'm not a programmer. Just curious.

[swapd0]

Color Look Up Table, or indexed graphics if you prefer, for each pixel the OP read the palette (CLUT) to know the real RGB color.

[VintageGamer74]

@swapd0 Thanks for the response. One last question: Is that feature a pro, con or did it really matter in terms of performance of the Jaguar? ✌️

[swapd0]

If you use a 16bit sprite, on each bus access the OP reads 4 pixels (64 / 16), but for a 4bit sprite it'll read 16 pixels (64 / 4).

 

For a HUD display, score, or something like that it's better to use lower depth sprites, you'll save bandwidth.

[JagChris]

Just to make clear..The I.D Guy (Fave Taylor) had Doom etc under his belt, finished, actual game.

This is incorrect. Dave had DSP engine under his belt, that was used in a game.

 

Adisak had two finished games under his belt. Main and DSP engines.

Edited December 5, 2018 by JagChris

[agradeneu]

If you use a 16bit sprite, on each bus access the OP reads 4 pixels (64 / 16), but for a 4bit sprite it'll read 16 pixels (64 / 4).

 

For a HUD display, score, or something like that it's better to use lower depth sprites, you'll save bandwidth.

So you can use a mix of 16bit, 8bit and 4 bit Bitmaps and sprites? (tech Manual says so how i understand it) Use 16bit only where its necessary. Using 4 bit for very large sprites using lots of animation frames could solve some problems with limited RAM.

Edited December 5, 2018 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

If you use a 16bit sprite, on each bus access the OP reads 4 pixels (64 / 16), but for a 4bit sprite it'll read 16 pixels (64 / 4).

 

For a HUD display, score, or something like that it's better to use lower depth sprites, you'll save bandwidth.

No problem with 4 bit sprites, Donkey Kong Country is full of them

[Lost Dragon]

This is incorrect. Dave had DSP engine under his belt, that was used in a game.

Adisak had two finished games under his belt. Main and DSP engines.

You missing what i was getting at.

 

Dave has a commercial FPS under his belt...Doom.

 

Adisak had some routines and algorithms which could of been ideally used for a FPS game on Jaguar, but werent and adisak himself openly admits he hadn't tested those routines when features like

player-player interaction, collision, mapping etc were added.

 

Don't get me wrong, i would of loved to of seen Adisak try his hand at a FPS in the Jaguar, far more my thing than a street Basketball game, just as i would of loved to of seen Jim Bagley do Saturn Doom using his engine had Carmack let him.

 

But neither appeared, so it doesn't make much sense to compare a Basketball game to a conversion of a FPS from PC to Jaguar which I.D themselves could of been written a lot wiser for the Jaguar.

 

Adisak's Jaguar NBA JAM by his own admission is the Sega 32X code (Iganua) reworked for the Jaguar, so it's not as if it was written from scratch by him.

Edited December 5, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

It's somewhat ironic Adisak spoke higher of WMCJ than NBA JAM on Jaguar, as the former is associated with being something of a laughing stock title and the latter a flagship title.

 

His thoughts on this and bringing code from the 32X to Jaguar:

 

We are porting from the Iguana 32X version and making literally dozens of improvements with every step.

 

 

To be honest, WMCJ has more actual play depth than NBAJ. You have

more control over the game and features like the AI in WMCJ are considerably stronger (in NBAJ-TE, the AI simply boosts computer stats and cheats when he computer gets behind). WMCJ has a much more complicated 3-D texture mapped game-field and overall is a better game IMHO. NBAJ does feature

60 fps play but only has parallax scrolling and no rendered 3-D.

Adisak pochanayon -- Jaguar Programmer for WMCJ and NBAJ-TE

[agradeneu]

If you use a 16bit sprite, on each bus access the OP reads 4 pixels (64 / 16), but for a 4bit sprite it'll read 16 pixels (64 / 4).

 

For a HUD display, score, or something like that it's better to use lower depth sprites, you'll save bandwidth.

That could mean you can mix 16, 8 and 4 bit sprites without hassling with different pallettes etc., the OP does the work for you? That would be fantastic for any artist, brilliant idea by the Jaguar Designers. 4 bit can look good on any sprites, it really depends on the quality of the art itself. 16 Color sprites are part of 90s Arcade asthetics, like Neo Geo. Rubbish art assets will look rubbish no matter if it's 16 bit or 4 bit.You can create stunning imagery with just 2 or 3 colors even.

Edited December 5, 2018 by agradeneu

[JagChris]

We talked about this a few years ago. Maybe in hindsight he thought different but I kinda agree that WMCJ has a bit more depth.

[LinkoVitch]

That could mean you can mix 16, 8 and 4 bit sprites without hassling with different pallettes etc., the OP does the work for you? That would be fantastic for any artist, brilliant idea by the Jaguar Designers. 4 bit can look good on any sprites, it really depends on the quality of the art itself. 16 Color sprites are part of 90s Arcade asthetics, like Neo Geo. Rubbish art assets will look rubbish no matter if it's 16 bit or 4 bit.You can create stunning imagery with just 2 or 3 colors even.

 

The limitation however is the Jag has only one 256 CLUT, so you can use different palettes on your 4bit images, but if they are to be displayed on screen at the same time then all the palettes need to fit within that 256 colour buffer. Plus if you have a 4 bit sprite but only used 7 colours, you will still be using 16 of the CLUT entries for your palette. So there are tradeoffs still

 

Also according to the manual (and it makes sense) there is a performance impact for using Indexed colours as a lookup in the CLUT has to be made before rendering the pixel, although I imagine this is miniscule, but worth remembering.

[Lost Dragon]

We talked about this a few years ago. Maybe in hindsight he thought different but I kinda agree that WMCJ has a bit more depth.

People's thoughts are going to differ over time and Adisak wasn't going to be any different.

 

I found his brief comments about reviews quite interesting.

HVS themselves gave certain UK magazines an opportunity to go over the top on critiscm.

Whilst i am not personally a fan of Ruiner Pinball, it's not deserving of the 23% score Ultimate Future Games awarded it.On a similar note, they awarded WMCJ 35% and ST Format should never of used The Rev Stuart Campbell as a reviewer either as the 22% score he awarded it was rather absurd (but he's also the reviewer that gave Defender 2000 it's 3/10 Edge score and similar score in ST Format).

 

 

Adisak also spoke of issues with the game which were beyond his control-do you happen to know which in particular he refers to?.

He's been kind enough to talk about the frame rate issues, explain what resolution it runs in, but awful use of colours, blocky background's, quiet music , limited speech sample's...etc.

 

A lot of questions remain unanswered .

Do you know if they watched the film and/or were Basketball fans themselves?

 

Back on subject of how they responded to poor reviews:

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/amp/2011-05-23-high-voltage-apologises-after-leaked-email-attacks-reviewer

Edited December 5, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[agradeneu]

The limitation however is the Jag has only one 256 CLUT, so you can use different palettes on your 4bit images, but if they are to be displayed on screen at the same time then all the palettes need to fit within that 256 colour buffer. Plus if you have a 4 bit sprite but only used 7 colours, you will still be using 16 of the CLUT entries for your palette. So there are tradeoffs still

 

Also according to the manual (and it makes sense) there is a performance impact for using Indexed colours as a lookup in the CLUT has to be made before rendering the pixel, although I imagine this is miniscule, but worth remembering.

Isn't CRY mode 256 colors too? I wonder if that

looks much better than just using 8 bit?

[LinkoVitch]

Isn't CRY mode 256 colors too? I wonder if that

looks much better than just using 8 bit?

 

Nope, CRY is 16bit colour, although it's a bit of a weird one The CRY 16bit colour is made up of 2 parts, one 8 bit value indicates the colour, and the other indicates the intensity of that colour. So yes there are 256 colours, but then there are 256 shades of each of those colours.

[agradeneu]

Nope, CRY is 16bit colour, although it's a bit of a weird one The CRY 16bit colour is made up of 2 parts, one 8 bit value indicates the colour, and the other indicates the intensity of that colour. So yes there are 256 colours, but then there are 256 shades of each of those colours.

Yes, I checked on this, its looks almost identical to normal 16 bit Also checked on the 4 bit sprites using less than 16 colors thing, when I convert from 16 bit images to indexed, I can choose the number of colors, like 256 or 16.

Edited December 5, 2018 by agradeneu

[Lost Dragon]

On subject of HVS...

 

If this isn't Atari all over, i don't know what is

 

Brian V. McGroarty,talking of wanting a Jaguar CD drive:

Atari never sent me one, even though I endured reams of bureaucratic standards ("feature reductions for license consideration") to write them a pack in game.

[agradeneu]

The limitation however is the Jag has only one 256 CLUT, so you can use different palettes on your 4bit images, but if they are to be displayed on screen at the same time then all the palettes need to fit within that 256 colour buffer. Plus if you have a 4 bit sprite but only used 7 colours, you will still be using 16 of the CLUT entries for your palette. So there are tradeoffs still

 

Also according to the manual (and it makes sense) there is a performance impact for using Indexed colours as a lookup in the CLUT has to be made before rendering the pixel, although I imagine this is miniscule, but worth remembering.

256 Color limit is more than enough I think, as I would use 4 bit only for additional background images and sprites, not for the imptortant assets, which would be 16 bit. Using 4 bit sprites where full 16 bit is not necessary, to save bandwidth and ROM space, but otherwise could be beneficial for more animation frames, bigger sprites or more layered graphics. As some may know a nice trick from art class maybe, far away objects have fewer colors than nearby, so no need for full 16 bit, it won't stick out. :-)

Edited December 5, 2018 by agradeneu

[JagChris]

Adisak also spoke of issues with the game which were beyond his control-do you happen to know which in particular he refers to?.

 

Back on subject of how they responded to poor reviews:

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/amp/2011-05-23-high-voltage-apologises-after-leaked-email-attacks-reviewer

He never really said in depth where the control ended but he wasn't even allowed to use his own internal DSP engine. Imagine that.

 

Some of those questions are easy to answer IMO tho.

 

Sounds samples, it's a cartridge. It's got all those images for animations stored etc. Not gonna leave much for sound.

 

As for blocky, it's using scaled and rotated bitmaps. The character shirts, colors etc are all what the actual actors wore I believe.

 

There are some famous reviews of that game out there, but developing it was a really fascinating experience. We were all into rotoscoping back then, that was the cool technology because of Mortal Kombat. All of the moves in the game were actually done by real dudes jumping off a small trampoline. I mean... when you see a guy in the game jump in the air, do a FLIP, and slam dunk, a dude actually DID that in real life. There is a locally-famous organization in Chicago known as the Jesse White Tumblers (in fact I just saw them perform on the 4th of July this year!) and they have kids who can do these amazing things. We hired them.

 

We just videotaped it, and our artists had to cut out all the frames in Deluxe Paint. There was no blue-screen... we filmed it all in a gym...