Prototypes for Kasumi Ninja and I-War UPDATE 5/21 NOW WITH WORKING IWAR PROTO

[orange808]

4 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Sounds about right, though I'm not sure how much better of a game Kasumi Ninja would have turned out regardless sadly. Always felt it looked good but gameplay was bad.
 

That's okay. I'm not expecting to find a better game. At this point, the stories behind the games are as interesting (and sometimes more) than the games themselves. I'd like to hear and see more about Kasumi Ninja.

 

Slightly off topic, but I used to particularly enjoy the postmortem features over at Gamasutra. Those gave a lot of good insights into how the creative process. Although, I admit that an unfinished prototype wouldn't tell much story, I'd still love to see and hear some of the team's ideas that didn't make it into the cart.

[+Mitch]

Just noticed something. Iwar is a 2 meg game. This dump is 4 meg. I think it is an overdump.

 

Mitch

[jguff]

Would be interesting to see if you can turn texture mapping off on prototype I-War.

 

Press 2 + 4 + 6 + 8 at the main menu screen to activate an expanded options menu. Note: The option to toggle between texture mapping does not function in the retail version of the game.

 

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/jaguar/586894-i-war/cheats

 

Bob

 

 

 

 

[ColecoGamer]

Hopefully the Kasumi Ninja proto has better controls than the retail version. Sheesh…

[agradeneu]

19 hours ago, doctorclu said:

 

 

 

Now someone bring on the Bubsy prototype! 

 

 

 

Just play the game they released...?

[agradeneu]

6 hours ago, ColecoGamer said:

Hopefully the Kasumi Ninja proto has better controls than the retail version. Sheesh…

Dont expect a "better game"....its just contrary to how games are developed.

 

If the finsihed version is bad, usually its just even worse than what was released.

 

[doctorclu]

6 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Just play the game they released...?

 

No that is the high functioning beta release.  

 

I want to see an alpha or early beta release.  There are two known versions mentioned by Bubsy's developers:

 

1) Early Bubsy: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind where the code was ported, the game was basically there, though it was just basic shapes jumping around a basic playfield.  Most of the mechanics were there.   That was right before they decided to design a new Bubsy game.

 

2) The copy of the game demonstrated at the CES before release showing Bubsy on the Ali Baba level, which was the first level developed.   Later the Alice in Wonderland levels, the last developed levels, were made the opening levels, and Ali Baba became the third world.

[doctorclu]

6 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Dont expect a "better game"....its just contrary to how games are developed.

 

If the finsihed version is bad, usually its just even worse than what was released.

 

We saw some interesting variation with Fight for Life.  Some prefer the unreleased beta to the actual game.  Maybe something like that is where ColecoGamer's hope comes from?

[agradeneu]

18 minutes ago, doctorclu said:

We saw some interesting variation with Fight for Life.  Some prefer the unreleased beta to the actual game.  Maybe something like that is where ColecoGamer's hope comes from?

There was some hype for this proto yes. But it was rather a "fan service" thing than the proto version being substantially better than the final release.

 

Kasumi Proto looks even more weird than the final release and is very incomplete/missing a lot of things. 

Its nowhere a better game and nobody should except a "fixed version".  Don't spend money expecting that 

 

Its a psychological thing, that with the real bad games, you kinda hoping for some sort of redemption when looking into a proto.  

But with the good games, nobody would expect that.  

Edited May 15, 2022 by agradeneu

[Jag64]

18 hours ago, doctorclu said:

 

 

"Hey, get a load of this... a game you can control with your mind (or frowning just right)."

 

And so on.

Ah yes, the Atari Kinect.

[+Stephen]

17 hours ago, jguff said:

Would be interesting to see if you can turn texture mapping off on prototype I-War.

 

Press 2 + 4 + 6 + 8 at the main menu screen to activate an expanded options menu. Note: The option to toggle between texture mapping does not function in the retail version of the game.

 

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/jaguar/586894-i-war/cheats

 

Bob

That was exactly my thought.

[Seedy1812]

The Iwar rom you see is only about 6 weeks to the release date on wiki. Its as good as the final gold rom

Most of the final changes to the game were relating to position of text on the screen as some TV's cut off a pixel or 2 here and there

Edited May 16, 2022 by Seedy1812

[doctorclu]

2 hours ago, Seedy1812 said:

The Iwar rom you see is only about 6 weeks to the release date on wiki. Its as good as the final gold rom

Most of the final changes to the game were relating to position of text on the screen as some TV's cut off a pixel or 2 here and there

Hey Andrew!

 

I guess the question I would have to that then is why is this 4 mb verses the released 2 mb?

[Seedy1812]

1 hour ago, doctorclu said:

Hey Andrew!

 

I guess the question I would have to that then is why is this 4 mb verses the released 2 mb?

The game is only 2Mb - I guess its whatever eproms they had available.

[Seedy1812]

22 hours ago, doctorclu said:

 

No that is the high functioning beta release.  

 

I want to see an alpha or early beta release.  There are two known versions mentioned by Bubsy's developers:

 

1) Early Bubsy: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind where the code was ported, the game was basically there, though it was just basic shapes jumping around a basic playfield.  Most of the mechanics were there.   That was right before they decided to design a new Bubsy game.

 

2) The copy of the game demonstrated at the CES before release showing Bubsy on the Ali Baba level, which was the first level developed.   Later the Alice in Wonderland levels, the last developed levels, were made the opening levels, and Ali Baba became the third world.

1. I doubt Atari ever got a version of that build. There was no graphics  , no bubsy etc it was just a square running about a map of say white squares  which made up the ground. The map would have been the first level from Bubsy 1.

[doctorclu]

4 minutes ago, Seedy1812 said:

1. I doubt Atari ever got a version of that build. There was no graphics  , no bubsy etc it was just a square running about a map of say white squares  which made up the ground. The map would have been the first level from Bubsy 1.

 

Humble beginnings.      If nothing else cool to hear about.

 

Thought it was cool to see your name in the high score names for Iwar.   You've mentioned a lot programming Bubsy, how was the programming of Iwar?    Any notable development memories from that one?

[Seedy1812]

I had it easy on I-War. As we were doing a 3d game Karl West had released 3d games before so it was wise for him to handle the game side of things and myself the rest of things. This worked quite well. The game change quite dramatically from what the first gem of an idea we had. We pitched the game to Phillips Interactive and they had their ideas what the game should be but they pulled out before the game was started and we did it for Atari. I think the game was going to be a racing game but morphed into what was released. You would earn credits and then you could buy extra gear for your craft. So you could juggle speed vs offensive /defensive upgrades. The screen showing what you had on the craft was originally a shop screen. Atari had their input into the game and as usual they wanted a mini game adding so I remembered Stardust and going down a tunnel to shoot things.  It was just a quick easy thing we could add into the  game so the player can gain extra points. When we submitted the game to Atari the game play was ok but they had issues with text in the game. What seemed like a couple of weeks they say what text is wrong and we tweak the location  eg this line up 2 pixel's and right 3 .
It was a lot easier to make than Bubsy.

 

[Seedy1812]

Atari being Atari they spelled Karl's name  wrong in the manual he is Karl West , in the manual he is Karl Vest

Edited May 16, 2022 by Seedy1812

[sirlynxalot]

On 5/14/2022 at 10:27 PM, orange808 said:

That's okay. I'm not expecting to find a better game. At this point, the stories behind the games are as interesting (and sometimes more) than the games themselves. I'd like to hear and see more about Kasumi Ninja.

 

Slightly off topic, but I used to particularly enjoy the postmortem features over at Gamasutra. Those gave a lot of good insights into how the creative process. Although, I admit that an unfinished prototype wouldn't tell much story, I'd still love to see and hear some of the team's ideas that didn't make it into the cart.

Completely agree   I have definitely spent waaaaaay more time reading this forum and other pages and videos related to Jaguar games than actually playing the games themselves in the last 10 years ?

[doctorclu]

3 hours ago, Seedy1812 said:

Atari being Atari they spelled Karl's name  wrong in the manual he is Karl West , in the manual he is Karl Vest

Those dang Germans...   (pronouncing W as V). 

 

(Side note, I'm mostly German)

[+cubanismo]

3 hours ago, Seedy1812 said:

What seemed like a couple of weeks they say what text is wrong and we tweak the location  eg this line up 2 pixel's and right 3 .

That seems very consistent with @doctorclu finding that the ROMs are identical save a few bytes changing values.

[Editorb]

Since I discovered it a coupla years ago thanks to @Shinto and his podcast, I-War has become one of my all-time fave video games in a field that includes arcades and many consoles. I very much appreciate @Seedy1812 for taking the time to share some insights!

[Seedy1812]

The game fits on a 2 Meg cart that does not mean it fills up the whole cart. With doctorclu finding differences at the end does not mean much. Similar to my other games the boot up code would fine game.txt ( exe ) and game.dat ( .dat) extract them both one after the other , clear out the rest of ram and run the game.
 

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, Seedy1812 said:

The game fits on a 2 Meg cart that does not mean it fills up the whole cart. With doctorclu finding differences at the end does not mean much. Similar to my other games the boot up code would fine game.txt ( exe ) and game.dat ( .dat) extract them both one after the other , clear out the rest of ram and run the game.

Can you provide any insight to the code that was supposed to disable texture mapping?  Do you know if it ever got implemented, or why the code never worked?

[jguff]

<duplicate - don't know how to delete>

 

Edited May 17, 2022 by jguff
duplicate. would like to delete this one.