Wipeout Source Released. Would be fun to have on the Jag.

[alucardX]

50 minutes ago, Jones007 said:

I've got a stupid question: I own a Jaguar and I'd also be very curious to see how
well it would handle Wipeout or Tomb Raider.
But how come no one tries?

 

Donate your Jag to XProger and see if he'd be willing to do it. He's quite limited on Jag dev without a real Jag.

[Jones007]

5 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

Using Kickstarter would be a very bad idea. Imagine if the developers don't succeed to obtain a decent result anyway!

Depending what the aim is.
A promised joyful playable Tomb Raider at 20fps? Then many people could get disappointed, yes.

But when the aim would be: "Finally see what's under the hood and how close the Jaguar can come towards the 3DO / Playstation",
then *any* result would be a winner. And all those speculation about "would it have been possible?" could end forever.

 

 

9 minutes ago, 42bs said:

It is just, that it is close to impossible.

Hmm. I didn't know that it's so clear.
But if so, sure, all the talks about it are pointless.

[jerseystyle]

On 3/28/2022 at 9:46 AM, agradeneu said:

 

Please don't show this Vlad stuff again, it's not representative. It's the lower end of what is possible, but you present it like was the best. 

 

 

 

Oh man don’t be a jealous gatekeeping.

 

Also the VladR saga isn’t mentioned nearly enough, in my opinion. How many times has anything that ridiculous happened here? It was literally a naked emperor moment. People were spending WEEKS talking about getting him to that expo, how he’d show the mythical power of the Jag (he had the secrets!) he shows up, presents that junk… so good. Man what a jackass. I loved watching him talk about how much money he was earning as a developer while living in a bunker somewhere. 
 

Edited February 2, 2023 by jerseystyle

[jerseystyle]

On 3/28/2022 at 9:46 AM, agradeneu said:

 

Please don't show this Vlad stuff again, it's not representative. It's the lower end of what is possible, but you present it like was the best. 

 

 

 

Wipeout on Jag… wouldn’t that be something?

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by jerseystyle

[+cubanismo]

Yeah, there are a lot of us that would love to do this just for the thrill of trying it, but day jobs, family, other hobbies, etc. take up time. There would be moral hazard beyond just the likelihood of eventual success to do something like a Kickstarter, because for hobbyists it's hard to even say you can devote X hours to the goal, which is sort of what the people would be paying for as it's proposed here: developers' time.

 

It also takes some of the fun out when you're beholden to backers. People in the immediate community are pretty polite about deadlines slipping and have had their expectations set realistically over the years, but it only takes one jerk on Kickstarter complaining their build isn't as promised or there haven't been blog updates this week to make the whole thing not at all fun anymore, and if they paid money, I wouldn't even really blame them.

[Jones007]

16 hours ago, 42bs said:

It is just, that it is close to impossible. So why waste time on a 10FPS so lala port of a 3D game instead doing something the Jaguar is made for.

I see your point!
But wasn't that what people thought about a Tomb Raider GBA port in the first place as well?

But, to be fair, I am not a coder, just a fan. So I can't really technically judge it.

[42bs]

49 minutes ago, Jones007 said:

I see your point!
But wasn't that what people thought about a Tomb Raider GBA port in the first place as well?

When you want to port it, you have to use to a great part RISC and there the problems start. No real compiler. Even the 68k gcc is fairly outdated nowadays.

 

 

[Jones007]

5 minutes ago, 42bs said:

When you want to port it, you have to use to a great part RISC and there the problems start. No real compiler. Even the 68k gcc is fairly outdated nowadays.

 

 

What is the reason for that?
Creating a new dev kit then seems a good thing everybody could benefit from (again: I am not a coder, so it's easy for me to say, of course).
The 3DO community released a new C++ compiler recently, afaik.
Is there too little official documentation for the Jaguar to create such a thing?
Or too little time (I assume that would be a monster project)?

[42bs]

3 minutes ago, Jones007 said:

Creating a new dev kit then seems a good thing everybody could benefit from (again: I am not a coder, so it's easy for me to say, of course).

There is a dev kit, called JagStudio, JaguarSDK and Raptor.. But IIRC it is C => 68k. No RISC.

 

And Jaguar dev. communitiy is to small i'd say to pull something like a full blown 3D dev kit.

 

[Jones007]

18 minutes ago, 42bs said:

There is a dev kit, called JagStudio, JaguarSDK and Raptor.. But IIRC it is C => 68k. No RISC.

 

And Jaguar dev. communitiy is to small i'd say to pull something like a full blown 3D dev kit.

 

I see, makes sense...

I wouldn't have guessed, I must admit. From an outside perspective the Jaguar community seems large,
and compared to the 3DO they've had a lot of homebrew output.

But after all I've learned now, a new 3D dev kit for the Jaguar could give quite a boost for future development.
So maybe that would be something for a Kickstarter project?

[alucardX]

54 minutes ago, Jones007 said:

I see, makes sense...

I wouldn't have guessed, I must admit. From an outside perspective the Jaguar community seems large,
and compared to the 3DO they've had a lot of homebrew output.

But after all I've learned now, a new 3D dev kit for the Jaguar could give quite a boost for future development.
So maybe that would be something for a Kickstarter project?

I think there are people that have 3D on their radar but I'm not sure you'd call it a dev kit. More like 3D renderer projects. The Jaguar can do 3D but it wasn't designed to be as capable at 3D as later systems and it certainly wasn't designed to do a lot of texture mapping. Somewhere along the way we'll see more 3D but again, it will take the right person with the right motivation to do it.

[Jones007]

Fair.

But then, again, I would come up with Kickstart.
Pay someone - either XProger or some of the former devs (Alien vs Predator).

And not paying them for a "promised 20fps Tomb Raider". Rather pay them for
"trying to max out the hardware by best knowledge and see what's possible".

I would pay my 20 bucks for that. And if enough people would follow, it could be win/win for everybody.

[alucardX]

30 minutes ago, Jones007 said:

Fair.

But then, again, I would come up with Kickstart.
Pay someone - either XProger or some of the former devs (Alien vs Predator).

And not paying them for a "promised 20fps Tomb Raider". Rather pay them for
"trying to max out the hardware by best knowledge and see what's possible".

I would pay my 20 bucks for that. And if enough people would follow, it could be win/win for everybody.

I think that one of the major points of value is that if they can get some rendering routines running on the Jag chipset that can handle running OpenLara then those can be applied to new and original games and it can become the basis for many other projects. That, for me, would be the bigger selling point. What was done to get OpenLara running on the GBA was pretty amazing.

[roots.genoa]

7 hours ago, Jones007 said:

But wasn't that what people thought about a Tomb Raider GBA port in the first place as well?

There are actually quite a few impressive 3D games on the GBA already. Don't forget it's a 32-bit system, and it has a lower resolution than consoles which help a bit for 3D.

[+CyranoJ]

6 hours ago, Jones007 said:

I would pay my 20 bucks for that. And if enough people would follow, it could be win/win for everybody.

 

And would you and the other of hundreds of people required to do this pay that $20 per month, every month, for the next X years to keep it funded?

 

No, didn't think so

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

 

And would you and the other of hundreds of people required to do this pay that $20 per month, every month, for the next X years to keep it funded?

 

No, didn't think so

Hey now, we all know that it only takes a few hundred bucks to fund a professional quality videogame, right?  Shit man - $20 won't buy you the time to ask me for a feature if you are also taking me out to lunch.

 

As Atari said, DO THE MATH.  Let's say a decent developer salary is $80,000.  That's only 4,000 donations needed for a year.  For one person to work on this.  Sounds perfectly reasonable for something that will sell 300 to 400 copies max.  Only 10 copies per donator would be needed.  This is a very sound business plan.  I cannot fathom why nobody in the past 20+ years of the Jaguar having homebrew has ever thought of something like this.

[Jones007]

10 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

 

And would you and the other of hundreds of people required to do this pay that $20 per month, every month, for the next X years to keep it funded?

 

No, didn't think so

I don't see the logic. How many members has AtariAge - thousands? If everyone paid $20 (once), it would be quite a bunch of money.
OpenLara was a one-man-show so far. He did it for free in his free time.
No one is asked to quit his job for a Jaguar homebrew project. It's just about motivation.
And if it would be all together $20.000, that would be quite a lot for a homebrew port project.
There have been other great homebrew projects, where people worked for free.

 

 

6 hours ago, Stephen said:

As Atari said, DO THE MATH.  Let's say a decent developer salary is $80,000.  That's only 4,000 donations needed for a year.  For one person to work on this.  Sounds perfectly reasonable for something that will sell 300 to 400 copies max.  Only 10 copies per donator would be needed.  This is a very sound business plan.  I cannot fathom why nobody in the past 20+ years of the Jaguar having homebrew has ever thought of something like this.

I am not talking about full time projects. Neither sold copies.
XProger doesn't sell any copy of OpenLara - it's for free download.
It's just about paying someone money for doing it and investing his free time.
Like other homebrew devs do without any money.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Jones007

[+Biff Burgertime]

[Jones007]

🤷‍♂️

 

 

Maybe we're talking about different aims here.
If a homebrew project like Wipeout for the Jaguar would necessarely mean physical release,
printed box and manual as well as a professional publisher and a reasonable amount of units
sold - then I'd agree that it would probably not be a good idea to try.
Chances are low to get a result that compete with the Playstation version and sells well.
Okay!
But that was never my idea.
And no one is talking about professionally publishing the 3DO version of OpenLara or Wipeout either.
And many people smiled about the *idea* that 3DO Tomb Raider could be even playable on that
machine in the first place as well.

OpenLara was never meant to be professionally published with a physical release by XProger.
Turrican II AGA (recently released for Amiga) neither.
That was never the aim.
Those were free time projects.
And if people here are saying, for a free time project (without any profit) that's too much
work, I said "Ok! So everyone could pay $20."

Nothing more. And it (still) sounds reasonable to me.

 

Edited February 3, 2023 by Jones007

[42bs]

Money => pressure=> no fun

 

I can only talk for myself, but the things I want to try out are so many, that I won't hardly focus on such a project for a long time. But, hey, if someone starts it and wants my 2cts to optimize code, I might find time and help.

[Jones007]

9 minutes ago, 42bs said:

Money => pressure=> no fun

 

I see that point! And that's why I came up with a compromise:

Not paying for a "brilliant 20fps port", but paying for "trying the best to see what's possible".
And even if the result will be 10fps, everybody will be fine with it.

Because what I am reading out of this whole thread, is the curiosity what the Jaguar could
really do regarding OpenLara or Wipeout in comparison with the 3DO, if someone really tried
hard.

So getting a working game is secondary in this case.
It's more a "scientific research project" to max out the hardware - hence any result would be
satisfying in order of answering that question.
And as a side effect, other future homebrew games could benefit from the knowledge that had
been gained.

I really see no pressure there.
Paying $20 just for satisfying the curiosity.
 

[+Biff Burgertime]

[Jones007]

14 minutes ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

Any more constructive thoughts to contribute?

[Zerosquare]

2 hours ago, Jones007 said:

"trying the best to see what's possible".

There's no such thing. You can almost always go further at the cost of more effort. Who decides "that's is/isn't good enough"?

 

Also, there are basically two motivations for doing things:

- fun. In which case money is not the issue.

- money. In which case offering $20 is laughable: a typical independent developer's rate is several hundred dollars per day, and we're talking about a project that would take many months.

[Jones007]

41 minutes ago, Zerosquare said:

There's no such thing. You can almost always go further at the cost of more effort. Who decides "that's is/isn't good enough"?

That is true, of course. But the OpenLara Jaguar port with (only) 100% software rendering on the 68k was definitely still far
from the maximum possible (that shall not be a complain, please don't get me wrong! I was very happy that someone even
brought it to that stage!).
Sure, there is no perfect code. Or maybe there is, but you'll never know.

 

 

41 minutes ago, Zerosquare said:

Also, there are basically two motivations for doing things:

- fun. In which case money is not the issue.

- money. In which case offering $20 is laughable: a typical independent developer's rate is several hundred dollars per day, and we're talking about a project that would take many months.

Three motivations. The two you've mentioned and a third one in-between: Fun plus money.

And I don't expect someone to work on such a project for $20 bucks. Of course not! But I could imagine
that people would work on such a project, if they got 3000 x $20.

And again, it's not meant to be a full time job.
We would need someone who has fun doing it in the first place, and gets even more motivated
by (lets say for example) $60.000.

And no one expects a perfect Tomb Raider (or Wipeout), everyone just wants to see what's possible if a
skilled and experienced Jaguar coder just tries hard by his best knowledge. $20 bucks is little to pay
for that (even since everyone is so curious about it), and no pressure on the coder to present a
"perfect product" in the end.

If I was a skilled homebrew coder, I think I would do that.

But I have the feeling we are turning in circles now.

There's one group saying "I'd love to see how good the Jaguar could pull it off."

And a second group saying "Only for the right amount of money. And the Jaguar won't be
able to pull it off in a professional way. And who cares if the Jaguar can do 7fps or
maybe 16 fps, as long as it's not at least 20fps, no one would buy it, so it would be
wasted time."

It was just an idea of mine, nothing more.
So if the community agrees that trying a Tomb Raider or Wipeout port for the Jaguar
would be too much work for too little outcome, that's fair, I can understand that.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Jones007