What could have saved the Jag?

[+CyranoJ]

4 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

That's exactly what I mean. That's a fair argument and one I don't necessarily disagree with, although I still don't think Jumping at Shadows is at the apex of the performance curve. It just has unusually well-done aesthetics for a Jaguar title and an original, thoughtful game design. It's a stand-out title for the platform, and would be welcome on just about any other platform I can think of. It's just not quite what I meant in terms of pushing the Jaguar's limits.

 

3 layer, fullscreen, 16 bit, dynamic CRY lit backdrops, multiple large sprites, 4 channel professionally composed music and professionally drawn artwork, 3 years of sweat, blood and tears, a couple thousand dollars of my own money and you think it isn't pushing the jaguar's performance curve?

 

Pretty much the same sort of workload and professional resoursing for Xenowings....

 

Yeah, add me to your 'never talk to again' list please.

[agradeneu]

6 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

That's exactly what I mean. That's a fair argument and one I don't necessarily disagree with, although I still don't think Jumping at Shadows is at the apex of the performance curve. It just has unusually well-done aesthetics for a Jaguar title and an original, thoughtful game design. It's a stand-out title for the platform, and would be welcome on just about any other platform I can think of. It's just not quite what I meant in terms of pushing the Jaguar's limits.

 

As I've said, I think over time we'll get more releases of higher caliber like that, much like other, larger platforms. It's obviously been trending in that direction and should only continue getting better going forward, for various reasons. That takes nothing away from existing efforts or games (or from the past, for that matter), which are all necessary steps in the process.

Lol dont tell me Sauron needed to point your nose on Jumping at Shadows to make a U Turn!

You were bullshitting all the time, refusing my request  to address homebrews by name, because you simply dont know them! 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 01:11 AM by agradeneu

[+Sauron]

1 minute ago, CyranoJ said:

 

3 layer, fullscreen, 16 bit, dynamic CRY lit backdrops, multiple large sprites, 4 channel professionally composed music and professionally drawn artwork, 3 years of sweat, blood and teas, a couple thousand dollars of my own money and you think it isn't pushing the jaguar's performance curve?

 

Pretty much the same sort of workload and professional resoursing for Xenowings....

 

Yeah, add me to your 'never talk to again' list please.

I think you're taking his comment as an insult, when it isn't. He's giving an opinion, and he's not shitting on JaS in any way. Please calm down.

 

[+CyranoJ]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

I think you're taking his comment as an insult, when it isn't. He's giving an opinion, and he's not shitting on JaS in any way. Please calm down.

 

 

I probably am, but I wasn't the one who stayed up all night arguing

[+Sauron]

1 minute ago, agradeneu said:

Lol dont tell me Sauron needed to point your nose on Jumping at Shadows to make a U Turn!

 

 

...and the same goes for you as well. Your attacks on Bill are unwarranted. Seriously, this is giving me shades of the Jag community from over 20 years ago, when no one could say anything other than fawing praise of Battlesphere or whatever Gorf shat out without being shouted down. Let's not become the monsters we got rid of so many years ago.

 

[leech]

36 minutes ago, Stephen said:

I may - I am trying to maintain positive (not naive) attitude and keep a small community that is always in flames, in a decent state.  I am sorry - I know this is not always possible.  I've bought Xenowings and Jumping At Shadows.  To me, they are both AAA titles.  I've had my Jag since early 1994.

 

Peace - I do not have the energy in my life for negativity over video games when I am watching close family members die.  I'll not post any more here, nor will I try to interject positivity into the universe.

Where do you get such wonderful toys?

 

We always need positivity.  I have lost both my parents in the last 6 years.  I know how hard it is to try and be positive.  Unfortunately death is a part of life, and all we can really do is try to enjoy the time we have with those we love.  I've floated around here for many moons, not sure why the Jaguar is always seems to attract the most vile people, but this thread has been somewhat friendly and on the level so far... though admittedly I skipped around

[agradeneu]

9 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

 

3 layer, fullscreen, 16 bit, dynamic CRY lit backdrops, multiple large sprites, 4 channel professionally composed music and professionally drawn artwork, 3 years of sweat, blood and tears, a couple thousand dollars of my own money and you think it isn't pushing the jaguar's performance curve?

 

Pretty much the same sort of workload and professional resoursing for Xenowings....

 

Yeah, add me to your 'never talk to again' list please.

Lacks a 30.000 dollar Kickstarter to be on Genesis homebrew level

[+CyranoJ]

Just now, agradeneu said:

Lacks a 30.000 dollar Kickstarter to be on Genesis homebrew level

 

We probably could get $30

[leech]

15 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

 

3 layer, fullscreen, 16 bit, dynamic CRY lit backdrops, multiple large sprites, 4 channel professionally composed music and professionally drawn artwork, 3 years of sweat, blood and tears, a couple thousand dollars of my own money and you think it isn't pushing the jaguar's performance curve?

 

Pretty much the same sort of workload and professional resoursing for Xenowings....

 

Yeah, add me to your 'never talk to again' list please.

But but... what about the... $feature?  and the $other_feature?    To Quote Vasquez: "Look man! I only need to know one thing: where they are."
Edit: No Llamas were harmed in the making of this post, hopefully none were sacrificed for new Jaguar games.

Edited yesterday at 01:20 AM by leech

[agradeneu]

5 minutes ago, Sauron said:

...and the same goes for you as well. Your attacks on Bill are unwarranted. Seriously, this is giving me shades of the Jag community from over 20 years ago, when no one could say anything other than fawing praise of Battlesphere or whatever Gorf shat out without being shouted down. Let's not become the monsters we got rid of so many years ago.

 

He pissed off every homebrew dev, coincidentally.??

Although micdune kept it cool. 

 

 

 

[agradeneu]

30 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

You seem to regularly ask people to leave. And again with taking my comments completely out of context and changing their actual meaning and intention, this time with the Lynx. I'd appreciate you stopping that. I'm telling you, your interpretations are very wrong.

You are back pedaling on your Initial dimissive claims, maybe its time for you to admit you have fucked up the Situation!

Im not taking any of your compliments towards JAS as genuine, because they contradict every of your statements before. Otherwise there would be no argument. You are trying to save face, at my expense, after you realized that the majority of people support us and appreciate our work.

It also does not help to compliment a game at the expense of other work.

Xenowings and Wyvern Tales2 are as great and impressive as JAS!!! Period.

 

 

 

 

[Lost Monkey]

53 minutes ago, Sauron said:

... Seriously, this is giving me shades of the Jag community from over 20 years ago, when no one could say anything other than fawing praise of Battlesphere or whatever Gorf shat out without being shouted down. Let's not become the monsters we got rid of so many years ago.

 

Yeah, too late... 😞

Edited yesterday at 02:04 AM by Lost Monkey

[Bill Loguidice]

23 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

You are back pedaling on your Initial dimissive claims, maybe its time for you to admit you have fucked up the Situation!

Im not taking any of your compliments towards JAS as genuine, because they contradict every of your statements before. Otherwise there would be no argument. You are trying to save face, at my expense, after you realized that the majority of people support us and appreciate our work.

It also does not help to compliment a game at the expense of other work.

Xenowings and Wyvern Tales2 are as great and impressive as JAS!!! Period.

 

 

 

 

If only I could make you understand. I'll simplify again and let's see if you twist it. They all seem like fine games, but I feel like we can see even more out of the Jaguar over time. I don't think it's peaked with the level of technical homebrew we've seen consistently, unlike say the Genesis or C-64. Note how that's not a put down of what I'm sure are your fine efforts. However, if you think you and others have squeezed all you can out of the Jaguar, please state so. Clear?

[leech]

16 minutes ago, Lost Monkey said:

Yeah, too late... 😞

Sad thing is, I missed out on Battlesphere because there was just a lot of nonsense back then.  It has calmed down a lot.  Though I still mostly stick to non-Jaguar stuff these days and just buy stuff when they look good.  While I do not have a complete collection, it is close... (outside of a lot of the physical ST ports, didn't have the cash when they were available, though I got a few like Defender of the Crown and Dizzy games.)

[+CyranoJ]

I do feel like a lot of the back-and-fore argument bullcrap wouldn't last 5 minutes in a pub around drinks where tone and inflection add essential context to conversations and change their meaning significantly.

[leech]

2 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

If only I could make you understand. I'll simplify again and let's see if you twist it. They all seem like fine games, but I feel like we can see even more out of the Jaguar over time. I don't think it's peaked with the level of technical homebrew we've seen consistently, unlike say the Genesis or C-64. Note how that's not a put down of what I'm sure are your fine efforts. However, if you think you and others have squeezed all you can out of the Jaguar, please state so. Clear?

There is a reason for this though.  The install base of the Genesis / C64 is MASSIVELY larger than the install base of the Jaguar (and even smaller for working JagCDs).  Sure, emulation helps, but the popularity of the system is like .01% the size of either of those, and the popularity of the c64 dwarfs the Genesis massively as well.

 

This means that there are a lot more people to know the ins and outs of those systems far more than there is for the Jaguar.  Let's just ignore those and look at even just Atari systems.  The 2600 is definitely at the astronomical level of more success than any of their other systems/computers.  Yet, there are also people who loved them so much, they have squeezed so many tricks out of the 8bit and 16bit computers (who knew that a standard ST could actually display so many colors at once even beating the magical Spectrum 512 images of the day?  Or that you can play full motion videos on an Atari 8bit?).  But this is because the older people that had such systems absolutely loved them and have spent many years hacking around and finding all these practically obscene tricks.  And you want to know who most of those were?  Demo makers!  It usually isn't game devs who figure out the crazy stuff that is capable of a system, it's generally the demo scene, then it trickles down from there.

The Jaguar simply never had a large demo scene.  If you want some Jaguar games that 'push the limits' of the hardware, see if you can contact some of the demo scene that is still around and send them a Jaguar / JagGD.  They can then get to work on trying to do all the crazy tricks, and hopefully pass those onto the home brewers.  I'm not a programmer, my brain doesn't really work on that level.  But it seems to me that you have programmers, then you have coders that write games (which takes a special talent to design things so that they're not only fun, but a challenge, and do a balance so you don't just get pissed and quit the game), and finally demo coders, who has a single purpose of making people go 'wtf?  how did they do that?' 

 

[micdune]

4 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Although micdune kept it cool. 

 

Yeah, i'm not too concerned about this kind of things, especially when things start becoming ludicrous with people who obviously don't have any clue about what they are talking about. At the end of the day, doers will always beat the cheap talkers and we will only remember the games and certainly nothing else.

 

52 minutes ago, leech said:

If you want some Jaguar games that 'push the limits' of the hardware, see if you can contact some of the demo scene that is still around and send them a Jaguar / JagGD.

Well, the people behind Xenowings have been doing demos for 30 years now (https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=307 ) so I would say we are pretty knowledgeable in that area. But demos and games are very different things. Demo is mostly cheating by using all the memory for one effect or even streaming data or precomputing graphics. Any game will always been more complex to do than a demo where there's no interaction, hence why so few demomakers make game. It's doing a marathon vs a sprint.

 

Please note by the way that Xenowings is the first game ever done by our programmer. 

Edited yesterday at 05:27 AM by micdune
typo

[leech]

1 minute ago, micdune said:

 

Yeah, i'm not too concerned about this kind of things, especially when things start becoming ludicrous with people who obviously don't have any clue about what they are talking about. At the end of days, doers will always beat the cheap talkers and we will only remember the games and certainly nothing else.

 

Well, the people behind Xenowings have been doing demos for 30 years now (https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=307 so I would say we are pretty knowledgeable in that area. But demos and games are very different things. Demo is mostly cheating by using all the memory for one effect or event streaming data. Any game will always been more complex to do than a demo where there's no interaction, hence why so few demomakers make game, it's doing a marathon vs a sprint. Please note by the way that Xenowings is the first game done by our programmer. 

Agreed.  I was just pointing out that they usually find the crazy things.  Then if you can get them to share (or even code their own!) then it can turn out crazy.  I kept resisting to go look up videos on Xenowings and Jumping at Shadows, because I didn't want to have to try and see if I need to spend money right now or later... and now I'm distracted at other games coming out for the Jag...

 

Xenowings looks awesome!  Will be an instant order when I can do so!

[micdune]

Just now, leech said:

I was just pointing out that they usually find the crazy things.  Then if you can get them to share (or even code their own!) then it can turn out crazy.

 

That's what i thought before starting doing games for a job 25 years ago. But then i realised most of the decent game programmers were already aware and knowledgeable in pretty much anything the demoscene does. It's just that a lot of it of it was hardly applicable or relevant for making a game (talking about retrosystems here).

[leech]

1 minute ago, micdune said:

 

That's what i thought before starting doing games for a job 25 years ago. But then i realised most of the decent game programmers were already aware and knowledgeable in pretty much anything the demoscene does. It's just that a lot of it of it was hardly applicable or relevant for making a game (talking about retrosystems here).

Yeah, most of what they do hogs all the resources so you can't really have things like input, which is generally kind of important for games. 

I was referring to things like showing splash screens or cut scenes, like what Bill was asking for.  Looks like Xenowings has some awesome ones, though I couldn't actually tell if that was in game stuff, or just for the trailer. 

 

It does always amaze me that the discussion of 'We don't know how awesome the Jaguar is!' always comes up... sure, people are doing insanely impressive stuff these days with old hardware (https://www.generationamiga.com/2022/12/29/grind-a-new-doom-clone-for-the-amiga-500-and-atarist/ this looks better than any game on the Amiga 500 / Atari ST has any right to look)  I'm fairly certain, outside of some code optimizations to squeeze a few more frames here and there, we have seen what the Jaguar can do.  Sure, we could probably squeeze more out in the JagCD, just due to far more storage capability (or even flash carts).  But more storage doesn't solve all problems.  As I said earlier in the thread, love the Jaguar for what it was, some 3D stuff and amazing 2D capabilities.

 

Still kind of shocked that Atari wasn't able to talk to Atari Games at least for something like Stun Runner... which would have been amazing on the Jag.

[micdune]

22 minutes ago, leech said:

sure, people are doing insanely impressive stuff these days with old hardware (https://www.generationamiga.com/2022/12/29/grind-a-new-doom-clone-for-the-amiga-500-and-atarist/ this looks better than any game on the Amiga 500 / Atari ST has any right to look

 It's great but it's still to be released because it's a huge commitment in time and ressources. As mentioned earlier, you can't expect to do this kind of things for cheap, be it money or time.

 

22 minutes ago, leech said:

I was referring to things like showing splash screens or cut scenes, like what Bill was asking for. 

We could have pulled all the tricks in the bag just for the sake of it like in that Megadrive game where a lot of stuff is precomputed (like that dotted boss) thanks to technology that wasn't available back then (and still, it's not any improvement compared to what Treasure did). But it's, for me, mostly eye candy. Our challenge was to do something in a reasonable amount of time, with a commercial quality and, above all, make sure it gets out.

 

22 minutes ago, leech said:

I'm fairly certain, outside of some code optimizations to squeeze a few more frames here and there, we have seen what the Jaguar can do.

You can always do more but unless someone shells out 50K for a 3 years development time, you're unlikely to see a solid/decent game built around all these tricks.

Edited yesterday at 06:05 AM by micdune
typo

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, micdune said:

 

Yeah, i'm not too concerned about this kind of things, especially when things start becoming ludicrous with people who obviously don't have any clue about what they are talking about. At the end of the day, doers will always beat the cheap talkers and we will only remember the games and certainly nothing else.

 

Well, the people behind Xenowings have been doing demos for 30 years now (https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=307 ) so I would say we are pretty knowledgeable in that area. But demos and games are very different things. D

 

Please note by the way that Xenowings is the first game ever done by our programmer. 

Very well said. 

 

Some pseudo experts find all reasons to complain about Jaguar homebrews being not good enough to WOW them,

then show off a clumsy run of a mill action platformer on Genesis as an example for an "AAA game". 

 

I ask myself then, How about us making a point and develope exclusively on Genesis, getting a proper Kickstarter of thousands of dollars and getting free "AAA status" for less work actually?

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 07:42 AM by agradeneu

[roots.genoa]

42 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

I ask myself then, How about us making a point and develope exclusively on Genesis, getting a proper Kickstarter of thousands of dollars and getting free "AAA status" for less work actually?

[agradeneu]

Maybe I should explain why judgemental statements like in this thread upset any developer dedicated to a platform.

 

First, I put thousands of hours into developing complex games like Gravitc Mines or Jumping at Shadows. And Iam just one person of many. They are complex, and NOT simple! 

 

It took a whole day to tweak and balance one level in GM because flashing a new ROM on Skunkboard took several minutes.

 

We have gone through great lenghts to release stuff on that level, which IMO beats most commercial offerings for the Jag of the 90s easily. 

 

Then comes along armchair experts repeating the same complaints over and over again, despite the obvious complexity of games, and worse, trolls with questionable intention always use "AAA" homebrews on other platforms as a weapon  to dismiss or belittle our effort as "lazy work". If a known hater like "Jagchris" is liking your antagonistic views, you ar on the wrong side, surely.

 

Moving the goalpost ensures you simply cant catch up with their ever growing demands. There is always something better and greater, because comsumer have so many choices today, for dirt cheap money. Of course, that is what ruins the creative force of the game industry. 

 

Its should be so simple - if we would put as much effort into Jaguar games like the devs on Genesis do, something incredible would happen. As if games are produced by some guys with a magic wand!

 

That is not true. You need to put more work into it, more animation frames, more complex levels, more work hours per day. There is a limit what a team of 2 people can do in a 2 or 3 years time frame.

 

Insult to the injury when someone hypes up a rather generic game as "AAA", while the best games on Jaguar are already more polished, more consistent and more fun than many offerings on way more popular platforms with thousand dollars of kickstarter backing.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 08:25 AM by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

28 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

And you should try to develope a game for Jaguar, deal?