Mortal Kombat demo on the Atari Jaguar

[Jag_Mag]

6 hours ago, bulken said:

Impressive, waiting to see the final game.

You can have a look at his code here,https://github.com/trufungames/Mortal-Kombat-Atari-Jaguar

[bulken]

10 hours ago, Jag_Mag said:

You can have a look at his code here,https://github.com/trufungames/Mortal-Kombat-Atari-Jaguar

Very interesting.

[agradeneu]

22 hours ago, bulken said:

Impressive, waiting to see the final game.

He said very clearly it is just a proof of concept, have fun while waiting!

[bulken]

1 hour ago, agradeneu said:

He said very clearly it is just a proof of concept, have fun while waiting!

You think someone else must use the sorcecode above and finalize it themselves, is that the hint you try to give here?

 

It seems that not everyone agrees that the example above is enough as proof of concept.

[Jag_Mag]

46 minutes ago, bulken said:

You think someone else must use the sorcecode above and finalize it themselves, is that the hint you try to give here?

 

It seems that not everyone agrees that the example above is enough as proof of concept.

It's a POC of Mortal Kombat selection screen.

Edited March 7, 2023 by Jag_Mag

[Jones007]

On 2/26/2023 at 12:46 PM, Jag_Mag said:

8 bit color would look great,anyway best of luck to him it's cool to see projects done in Raptor.

In his video he mentions that he reduced two character animations from 12 frames to 8 frames due
to RAM issues.
I am no expert, but since the Jaguar is cartridge based, for my understanding RAM shouldn't be a
problem - all character animations could be streamed directly from the cartridge.
Is that some sort of limitation in RAPTOR here?

[Sporadic]

3 minutes ago, Jones007 said:

In his video he mentions that he reduced two character animations from 12 frames to 8 frames due
to RAM issues.
I am no expert, but since the Jaguar is cartridge based, for my understanding RAM shouldn't be a
problem - all character animations could be streamed directly from the cartridge.
Is that some sort of limitation in RAPTOR here?

No, that's not a Raptor limitation; you can stream assets direct from the cart or RAM. 

 

[bulken]

3 minutes ago, Jag_Mag said:

It's a POC of Mortal Kombat selection screen.

Yes, a lot more to do before it's a full game.

 

3 minutes ago, Jones007 said:

I am no expert, but since the Jaguar is cartridge based, for my understanding RAM shouldn't be a
problem - all character animations could be streamed directly from the cartridge

It may also be an issue to fit all Mortal Kombat arcade assets on a 4 MB cartridge, but didn't the Native demo developers manage to stream compressed data using the DSP?

 

I guess you probably need a dedicated engine to make this happen?

[bulken]

14 minutes ago, Sporadic said:

No, that's not a Raptor limitation; you can stream assets direct from the cart or RAM. 

 

I think I understand from the video that he has all the character idle (animation?) images in the display list, then he just turns the sprites on and off depending on which character is marked by the cursor.

Edited March 7, 2023 by bulken

[Sporadic]

7 minutes ago, bulken said:

I think I understand from the video that he has all the character idle (animation?) images in the display list, then he just turns the sprites on and off depending on which character is marked by the cursor.

Which would be the incorrect way of doing it.

He could just have a single character sprite on that screen and swap out the graphic address dynamically at runtime, updating other sprite object parameters as required. He could even decompress the asset into memory (where the sprite would reference it).

[bulken]

7 minutes ago, Sporadic said:

Which would be the incorrect way of doing it.

He could just have a single character sprite on that screen and swap out the graphic address dynamically at runtime, updating other sprite object parameters as required. He could even decompress the asset into memory (where the sprite would reference it).

Yes, definately only load the idle animation for each character when the cursor moves to a new location on the selection screen.

 

Even de-compressing an animation of <10 frames would not lead to a notable delay when moving the cursor, before the animated character appears on the lower side on the screen.

Edited March 7, 2023 by bulken

[agradeneu]

Using 8 bit sprites should solve all RAM problems.

 

 

12 frames are the highest number of animation frames, there are also more simple 3 frames - 6 frames animations. I took a look at the Arcade sprite sheets.

 

 

[agradeneu]

On 2/28/2023 at 12:12 AM, solo/ng said:

Comparing to what we had to do on the Lynx, doing it on Jaguar should be piss easy ; ). 2MB ram, good resolution, so just throw original sprites and parallax background, done, GPU shouldn even be strerssed. On the lynx the uber problem was 48k RAM (without banking); 16kb for the screen (additional info: the lynx version going to be finished not yet but we aim this year for closure).

Unlike the Lynx,  not a big challenge, but an arcade perfect version of MK would make a lot of Jaguar fans very happy and should get a lot of attention by MK fans in general. 

 

Looking forward to the finished Lynx game!

Edited March 7, 2023 by agradeneu

[Jones007]

49 minutes ago, bulken said:

It may also be an issue to fit all Mortal Kombat arcade assets on a 4 MB cartridge, but didn't the Native demo developers manage to stream compressed data using the DSP?

Since we live in a time without the limitations of the 90s - how about bank switching?

But nevertheless a valid point and a major problem regarding a faithful conversion. I don't know how big
the arcade version of MK1 is, but MK2 source plus assets is about 62MB, afaik.

And decompressing animations makes everything depending whether it fits in 2MB again - no more cartridge streaming.

[+CyranoJ]

10 hours ago, Jones007 said:

And decompressing animations makes everything depending whether it fits in 2MB again - no more cartridge streaming.

 

Gravitic Mines is 43mb in a 6mb cart. Clearly RAPTOR's compression is to blame....

People do make an awful lot of incorrect ASSumptions about the engine.

[+Gemintronic]

54 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

 

Gravitic Mines is 43mb in a 6mb cart. Clearly RAPTOR's compression is to blame....

People do make an awful lot of incorrect ASSumptions about the engine.

 

Until I see Road Rash recreated from Wipeout source code running at 1.4 gigahumps there's no way to tell if Raptor is performant.

[+Sauron]

Regardless of what that PoC does or doesn't show, it's still more Mortal Kombat than what we've had on the Jag over all these years. I'd love to see it taken further, and wouldn't mind pitching in if I can.

 

[+cubanismo]

18 hours ago, Jones007 said:

In his video he mentions that he reduced two character animations from 12 frames to 8 frames due
to RAM issues.

No, he didn't. He said it was due to a limitation in the height of an image and the way he's animating them in raptor. I only watched it once, but I don't remember anything about RAM limitations being mentioned.

 

Also, yes, he could have used 8-bit sprites instead of 16-bit sprites with no loss of quality given his description of his workflow (runs everything through the GIF format for... his reasons, which are fine for a proof of concept get'er'done type of thing I guess) and the source material, but that wouldn't have mattered given his description of the raptor animation works (Which I'm not familiar with, so I can't comment on whether he's doing that right or whether there are workarounds or other ways to handle this).

 

His reasoning for why this is a valid proof of concept for an arcade-perfect Mortal Kombat as a whole seems somewhat reasonable to me, but then again I don't recall anyone ever seriously doubting the Jag was technically capable of Mortal Kombat. For those anxiously waiting for the completed game based on this mock-up though, lol. I don't doubt he could do it or anything, as he seems savvy enough and capable of problem solving. Just note there's zero game here thus far.

[Cris1997XX]

6 hours ago, cubanismo said:

For those anxiously waiting for the completed game based on this mock-up though, lol. I don't doubt he could do it or anything, as he seems savvy enough and capable of problem solving. Just note there's zero game here thus far.

I doubt he wants to develop a complete port anyway...

[ColecoGamer]

He stated his plan to finish this project, so it looks like we may finally see MK on the Jaguar. I’m in for a copy!

[SlidellMan]

Would it be possible to have a control scheme that takes advantage of the Pro Controller?

[+Sauron]

17 minutes ago, SlidellMan said:

Would it be possible to have a control scheme that takes advantage of the Pro Controller?

I'd say that would be a must for MK.

[Cris1997XX]

10 hours ago, SlidellMan said:

Would it be possible to have a control scheme that takes advantage of the Pro Controller?

It would be weird if he doesn't cater to those who use...more normal controllers 😂

[Jag_Mag]

If members really want to see Mortal Kombat 1 on Jaguar, offer your time to help.Get in touch with him and ask what he needs.Having another person getting the sprites ready for inclusion into raptor would help him immensely.Anything you can offer to help with will benefit the project.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Jag_Mag

[Jag_Mag]

ChrisJag,maybe you can offer to help with aligning the sprites vertically for him.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Jag_Mag