Open Lara engine on the ATARI Jaguar

[Clint Thompson]

Open Lara for the Jaguar:

 

It's way too early to draw.... *2 seconds later* ahh, there we go! Frame one.

 

NEXT!!

[alucardX]

2 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

Open Lara for the Jaguar:

 

It's way too early to draw.... *2 seconds later* ahh, there we go! Frame one.

 

NEXT!!

It's Atari Jaguar bullet time.

[leech]

1 hour ago, alucardX said:

It's Atari Jaguar bullet time.

Which is faster still than Valve time.  ?

[Gunther]

https://www.retrorgb.com/tag/openlara

 

Cool little article where the Jag port has been mentioned.

[phoboz]

That's a very interesting way of prototyping, to have the game running very slowly on the 68k first.

 

I'd say that this in the time when the really interesting work starts, e.g. to implement the 3D redering using the GPU, and the BliTTeR (perhaps you are now facing 80% of the work)

 

It will be exciting to see if this can be done in a stepwise approach, or if this will be done using a larger, more complete GPU program to start with. Perhaps in the end a more complete GPU program is needed to reach reasonable performance?

 

Another important aspect to consider is the parallelization of tasks between the 68k, and GPU. E.g. paralell execution vs. exclusive access to the buss (e.g. there is also an important aspect of bus load balancing here)

 

Either way, I hope you succeed in getting something running at a double digit framerate in the end?!

Edited January 30, 2022 by phoboz

[Clint Thompson]

5 hours ago, phoboz said:

Either way, I hope you succeed in getting something running at a double digit framerate in the end?!

Considering WTR ran at like 12 max, I'd be surprised.

[leech]

2 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Considering WTR ran at like 12 max, I'd be surprised.

Huh, I think I've really only seen videos of that, even though I've owned it forever and haven't really gotten around to playing it.  Hover Strike on JagCD sure seemed to run smoother than that.  And that one is more textured.

[agradeneu]

3 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Considering WTR ran at like 12 max, I'd be surprised.

Lots of 3D code running on 68K I assume. That game should have run above 20FPS, Has someone analyzed the source code yet?

[+Biff Burgertime]

12 FPS seemed like more than enough for this guy!

 

(siniscope-dot-com has lapsed since I last encountered it, here's a wayback machine link)

 

When I first started lurking around here, it was fascinating to see such superfans of obscure games nobody else mentioned. Kinda reminds me of the way a certain someone around here speaks of Bubsy...

[agradeneu]

9 hours ago, phoboz said:

That's a very interesting way of prototyping, to have the game running very slowly on the 68k first.

 

I'd say that this in the time when the really interesting work starts, e.g. to implement the 3D redering using the GPU, and the BliTTeR (perhaps you are now facing 80% of the work)

 

It will be exciting to see if this can be done in a stepwise approach, or if this will be done using a larger, more complete GPU program to start with. Perhaps in the end a more complete GPU program is needed to reach reasonable performance?

 

Another important aspect to consider is the parallelization of tasks between the 68k, and GPU. E.g. paralell execution vs. exclusive access to the buss (e.g. there is also an important aspect of bus load balancing here)

 

Either way, I hope you succeed in getting something running at a double digit framerate in the end?!

More like 99,9%;-)

I think your approach with the 3D engine is much more sensible and much more likely to succeed, produce something playable.

 

Many coders say that it was easier to write something from scratch than to mess with alien code.

 

Now, rewriting the Lara renderer to highly effective RISC assembly might be even more insane task than writing a texture mapped renderer from scratch?

 

Which brings me to the point why nobody ever did this since 1997?

 

Not even assembly freaks like Eclipse could make IS2 fully texture mapped.

 

The closest thing to something like Lara was AtariOwls 3D engine. 

Edited January 30, 2022 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

On 1/28/2022 at 3:50 PM, swapd0 said:

I think the other way around, you can write a better 3D engine if you have a real game to test it, instead of a couple of cubes spinning around.

 

At least the latter one has some chance of success, means running >0,5 FPS.

 

The 68K already slows down 2D games, it might be a reasonable choice to port 3D games from Amiga or ST to Jaguar.

 

Otherwise abusing it for 3d computing or any other demanding task is ludicrous and not a proper use of the Jaguar hw at all.

And come on...we are talking about *Tomb Raider* here. A game that is more demanding than the best 3d the Jaguar had to offer when really excellent programmers knew the RISCs inside out.

Edited January 30, 2022 by agradeneu

[Chilly Willy]

On 1/28/2022 at 12:50 PM, agradeneu said:

Carmack knew his DOOM engine inside out and he would never give the 68K a shot to "run" this.

 

Depends on what you mean by 68K. Doom was officially released on the 68K Color Mac... if you had a 68030 or 68040. They coded the game to exit if you tried it on a 68020 based Mac. It ran rather well depending on the processor and the display update method chosen. The Mac version was also the first version to run at >320 wide. You could run at 640x480... that was the slowest mode, but looked really good. Nice sharp edges. I patched my copy of Mac Doom to run on the 68020... which it did! Veeeeerrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy slowly. ?  Mac Doom was pretty awesome on a 68060 Mac.

[JagChris]

14 hours ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

12 FPS seemed like more than enough for this guy!

 

(siniscope-dot-com has lapsed since I last encountered it, here's a wayback machine link)

 

When I first started lurking around here, it was fascinating to see such superfans of obscure games nobody else mentioned. Kinda reminds me of the way a certain someone around here speaks of Bubsy...

I love WTR. One of my favorite Jag games.

[Gunther]

For anyone new to Atari Age that may be viewing this thread/topic:

 

Please take the time to head to the Atari Age store to see the many high-quality Jaguar and ATARI legacy console games that are on offer and about to be released to show your support to the dedicated developers keeping these systems alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Gunther

[leech]

On 1/30/2022 at 2:17 AM, agradeneu said:

More like 99,9%;-)

I think your approach with the 3D engine is much more sensible and much more likely to succeed, produce something playable.

 

Many coders say that it was easier to write something from scratch than to mess with alien code.

 

Now, rewriting the Lara renderer to highly effective RISC assembly might be even more insane task than writing a texture mapped renderer from scratch?

 

Which brings me to the point why nobody ever did this since 1997?

 

Not even assembly freaks like Eclipse could make IS2 fully texture mapped.

 

The closest thing to something like Lara was AtariOwls 3D engine. 

I mean we have quite a few games that are fully texture mapped.  AvP, Doom, Hoverstrike... I always thought Iron Soldier 1 and 2 weren't textured because of the particular artistic choices that were made, vs any real technical reasons.  I mean most people kind of wanted to use the CRY feature of the Jag, which Tempest used to an awesome effect.

[Djmicklovin]

On 1/30/2022 at 6:17 PM, agradeneu said:

More like 99,9%;-)

I think your approach with the 3D engine is much more sensible and much more likely to succeed, produce something playable.

 

Many coders say that it was easier to write something from scratch than to mess with alien code.

 

Now, rewriting the Lara renderer to highly effective RISC assembly might be even more insane task than writing a texture mapped renderer from scratch?

 

Which brings me to the point why nobody ever did this since 1997?

 

Not even assembly freaks like Eclipse could make IS2 fully texture mapped.

 

The closest thing to something like Lara was AtariOwls 3D engine. 

What has ever become of AtariOwl’s 3D Jaguar project? 3D is obviously possible on the Jaguar. So many 3D projects were started and ended up being abandoned. I’ve seen some promising things that showed that the Jaguar is capable of producing graphics at least on par with the Sega Saturn and Playstation.

[+cubanismo]

I did a little reading on the Saturn recently and poked around at Sega's SDK materials there, and it sounds like their tools were as crap or crappier than Atari's, so comparing some maxing-the-bits passion project that never got released on the Jaguar to say, Virtua Fighter 2 isn't even fair. You'd have to find something with a similar level of time invested in it on the Saturn platform to make it a fair fight.

 

Still, I'm in the camp of those who would love to see more 3D stuff on the Jaguar. I spent a few hours playing Hoverstrike (CD Version) this weekend, and the game rocks. I'd played it before, but just for a few short sessions because it was on some youtube top-10 lists, and I never gave it sufficient time to get the feel for the controls, read the missions, or even really have a look around. Weird organic animated textures and real waves that toss my craft around on some of the first level missions had me stopping from time to time just to admire the graphics and effects, and the FPS was fine in my opinion. I really like the only-in-the-90's synth-guitar sound track. If you've only played the cart version, give the CD version a try if you can. Makes the cart version feel like a half-finished toy, mostly just because of the better FPS, but I hadn't realized the sound effects also go from like NES-era to high quality, music sounds way better, it seems to have more missions, and the FMV video is fun if you're a fan of games from this era too. It has also recently been discussed at length how awesome Battlemorph is. Zero 5 is awesome, thought it would admittedly be better if there were a difficulty level about 3 levels below the easiest one they included. Battesphere looks and plays great.

 

I'm not trying to compare any of them against Saturn or PS1. Don't care. If I want to play Saturn or PS1-style games, I'll play them on my Saturn or PS3, which I do. The Jag 3D games had their own thing going on, and the system was perfectly capable of supporting fun 3D polygonal content. Yeah, it's a 2D powerhouse, 2D games are easier to make, I'm not turning out code of my own at the moment, and it's not like I'm going to stop playing Rebooteroids. Just sayin', don't judge a book solely by it's Checkered Flag/Supercross (Though I still enjoy playing Supercross 3D, haters gonna hate, and I'll let ya'll carry the day on that 2fps masterpiece).

[agradeneu]

17 hours ago, leech said:

I mean we have quite a few games that are fully texture mapped.  AvP, Doom, Hoverstrike... I always thought Iron Soldier 1 and 2 weren't textured because of the particular artistic choices that were made, vs any real technical reasons.  I mean most people kind of wanted to use the CRY feature of the Jag, which Tempest used to an awesome effect.

No, solely technical reasons. 

[agradeneu]

14 hours ago, Djmicklovin said:

What has ever become of AtariOwl’s 3D Jaguar project? 3D is obviously possible on the Jaguar. So many 3D projects were started and ended up being abandoned. I’ve seen some promising things that showed that the Jaguar is capable of producing graphics at least on par with the Sega Saturn and Playstation.

No idea, he left years ago. 

Good and fast 3D is possible yes, but hard to achieve, and the Jaguar is simply not on PS or Saturn level.  

[JagChris]

19 hours ago, Djmicklovin said:

What has ever become of AtariOwl’s 3D Jaguar project? 3D is obviously possible on the Jaguar. So many 3D projects were started and ended up being abandoned. I’ve seen some promising things that showed that the Jaguar is capable of producing graphics at least on par with the Sega Saturn and Playstation.

Let's not get excited. The Saturn and PSX have dedicated 3D hardware the Jag doesn't and a couple years newer tech. It's not going to match either in 3D. But it also depends on what you mean by graphics. 

 

All AO's demo shows is the Jag is better at 3D than most thought.

[leech]

25 minutes ago, JagChris said:

Let's not get excited. The Saturn and PSX have dedicated 3D hardware the Jag doesn't and a couple years newer tech. It's not going to match either in 3D. But it also depends on what you mean by graphics. 

 

All AO's demo shows is the Jag is better at 3D than most thought.

The Jag has some minimal hardware for 3D.  Though I can't recall exactly how much more than 'z-buffer' there is though.

[agradeneu]

32 minutes ago, leech said:

The Jag has some minimal hardware for 3D.  Though I can't recall exactly how much more than 'z-buffer' there is though.

GPU and Blitter were designed to compute and render Gouraud shaded polygons. That was not really "minimal" 1992/1993. 

You could read the tech manual for all the features of GPU and Blitter regarding 3d graphics. Or this great article:

 

https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_Jaguar/

Edited February 1, 2022 by agradeneu

[leech]

3 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

GPU and Blitter were designed to compute and render Gouraud shaded polygons. That was not really "minimal" 1992/1993. 

 

Heh, sorry my brain and fingers left out a word or two... I meant 'at least' some minimal hardware.  That's what I don't get, it definitely does have 3D hardware in it.  I remember back in the day there were arguments made that it indeed had some more 3D hardware in it that made it a tad better than the PSX, one of which was the Z-buffer.

[zzip]

I remember 3D hardware was one of the selling points of the Jag.     It was one of the first consoles to do so, so of course it's going to be weak compared to consoles that came a few years later like PSX, and may seem "barely 3D" in retrospect.

[phoboz]

This is what PhOBoZ & Krauser has been up to lately (e.g. designing some 3D models for an upcoming Jaguar 3D game that hopefully will run in double digit framerate)

 

The first ship is the vessel of Bounty Hunter N17, featured in the action adventure game Asteroite.

 

The last ship in the demo is the player's ship in the game Wormhome 2000.

 

The idea is that the game will be an arcade like dogfight game, with different missions for BH - N17 to hunt down cosmic villains.

Edited February 1, 2022 by phoboz