Songbird Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Last year Songbird acquired Battlemorph for the Atari Jaguar, and now we're looking for ways to get this excellent but elusive game back into your hands. Do you want to see the original CD game reprinted? How about a separate soundtrack CD? Take the 2-question survey right now and help us plan our upcoming products! Also, if you want to stay on top of the latest Songbird news, be sure to join the Songbird mailing list and you'll be the first to hear about new products and announcements. Happy gaming! 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Saturn Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Awesome, I'd buy the soundtrack and a reprint game CD for sure, even though I have multiple originals. Just for support Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Saturn Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Took the survey, went for the combo on q1 and day 1 purchase for q2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Dangerous Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Will buy the soundtrack and the game on cart when released for sure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cubanismo Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Definitely interested in the CD soundtrack + game combo, took the survey. If/when the GD CD support comes out, will there be some way to purchase Songbird CD titles as a CD image? I'm hoping the Game Drive makes the CD market a little more interesting for developers/merchants again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinkoVitch Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 If you are doing a cart only version, with/without Audio CD, perhaps worth considering a GD locked ROM version perhaps with MP3 of the audio tracks too? Save you on manufacture and shipping costs too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Sargon Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 This is a "meh" for me, but I might buy a cart if one is released. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted July 21, 2020 Author Share Posted July 21, 2020 1 hour ago, cubanismo said: Definitely interested in the CD soundtrack + game combo, took the survey. If/when the GD CD support comes out, will there be some way to purchase Songbird CD titles as a CD image? I'm hoping the Game Drive makes the CD market a little more interesting for developers/merchants again. 34 minutes ago, LinkoVitch said: If you are doing a cart only version, with/without Audio CD, perhaps worth considering a GD locked ROM version perhaps with MP3 of the audio tracks too? Save you on manufacture and shipping costs too. I'm certainly interested in the Jaguar GameDrive (GD) product, but first I need to acquire one and determine what kind of compatibility it has with Jaguar CD games. Given how pricey and fragile the Jaguar CD unit can be, having new options to play CD games would definitely be a good thing! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Helper Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 My opinion is you should offer digital download to game drive, do the cart version for sure there are just not that many active CD players, a CD run for those that have it and of course the Soundtrack CD but also digital download. In other words, you should do everything 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirlynxalot Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Very interested in a cart release, but not having any music, whether its the original cd music or some sort of replacement midi or mod style music, would be a bit of a damper. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Machine Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Audio CD and Cart for me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cubanismo Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Getting technical for a minute: It would be cool to have a huge bank-switching cartridge for this. Your cdemu bios code could bank switch based on the CD timecode requested from CD_read, and in theory you could run it all without modifying the game code. Would be hard to test on skunk, but since the Game Drive already supports massive bank switched ROMs, it would be the perfect development platform, even without "real" CD support finished. Of course I'm glossing over many, many details here. It's easy to think up crazy project ideas for other people to work on ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinkoVitch Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 1 hour ago, cubanismo said: Getting technical for a minute: It would be cool to have a huge bank-switching cartridge for this. Your cdemu bios code could bank switch based on the CD timecode requested from CD_read, and in theory you could run it all without modifying the game code. Would be hard to test on skunk, but since the Game Drive already supports massive bank switched ROMs, it would be the perfect development platform, even without "real" CD support finished. Of course I'm glossing over many, many details here. It's easy to think up crazy project ideas for other people to work on ? That would require the game to make no calls to cart space (which given it's a CD game is likely during game play), however it would also require a rewrite of the audio code to switch from CD source to streamed from cart, which may not be too complex if the full source is available, but is also going to add additional load to the systems bus. CD Audio data comes from the CD via the I2C bus and therefore doesn't impact the main system bus at all, reading from cart space would do, and at a slower rate than reading from RAM, and only 16bits at a time for the DSP (thanks Atari! ). Certainly an interesting idea, but like most things on the Jag compromise is going to be needed quite likely (will depend how hard the system bus is being pushed) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cubanismo Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 (edited) 24 minutes ago, LinkoVitch said: CD Audio data comes from the CD via the I2C bus and therefore doesn't impact the main system bus at all, reading from cart space would do, and at a slower rate than reading from RAM, and only 16bits at a time for the DSP (thanks Atari! ). Agreed, I had been reading the old CD emulation thread by @Songbird last night which of course mentions the I2S limitation. I suppose it'd only be easy if you could go through and easily nop all the CD audio handling, or if the game gracefully handles it just not working. Then again, without CD audio, the whole idea is probably not that interesting. I didn't bother looking at the Battlemorph CD layout to see if it actually had >= 6MB of non-audio stuff before I started talking of course. That would have been too responsible. Edited July 21, 2020 by cubanismo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted July 21, 2020 Author Share Posted July 21, 2020 I've just started doing some analysis on the Battlemorph CD tracks, and the main game track is only 0.5MB in size. Looks like most of the other tracks are audio files and video files, although it's hard to tell if other game assets like text, textures, etc. could be embedded in one of those tracks. I'd need to sift through the disassembled source to identify the purpose of every CD_read call. Eventually I might try combining it with the Jaguar CD Unleashed BIOS to see if I can fake out enough calls to get it to boot on a Skunkboard. Then, if I'm seriously pursuing a cartridge version, I would fix all the peripheral stuff like Memory Track calls swapped for EEPROM calls, adding a small amount of music back into the game, etc. until I fill up a 6MB cartridge. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tripled79 Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 I got an email today, and I voted. CDs! I need to hear that Sean Connery intro! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+TrekMD Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 Answered the survey. Music CD and cart for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Sauron Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 I voted for Music CD and cart as well, although honestly I'd still like a full CD version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+joeatari1 Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 CD, CD, Cart. Need 'em all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 No on CD. Let the toilet die. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+joeatari1 Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 Just now, CyranoJ said: No on CD. Let the toilet die. I enjoy my toilets. Long live the toilets! ????????? 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+joeatari1 Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 Now if only Carl could get his hands on Battle Sphere! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper_Eye Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 I have the CD and I probably wouldn't purchase a reprint if it were exactly the same. If it were something like a Protector SE or Resurgence sort of thing I would be interested. Any extras at all and I would probably buy it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agradeneu Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 Cart version please, with music if possible. ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homerj Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 Voted. Cart for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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