CD support

[VCSMaster]

Hello, is there any support in JagStudio for creating Jag CD games? Assets are getting large for my project to be a regular cart game, I am rapidly creeping up on 6MB. I am porting an old visual novel and the graphics are hurting me on cart space.

 

What happens when JagStudio runs out of cart space? Does it throw an error, etc? How would I convert the ROM into a disc image to be written, or even to a format which can run in an emulator with more space?

 

Thanks in advance.

[+CyranoJ]

You can use the GD functions to offload files to microSD, or use up to 16mb on the JaguarGD via bankswitching.

 

There are no plans to support the toilet attachment.

[VCSMaster]

49 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

You can use the GD functions to offload files to microSD, or use up to 16mb on the JaguarGD via bankswitching.

 

There are no plans to support the toilet attachment.

I see, that's a shame. I have no intentions of buying a GD, so I guess I'll just drop the project.

 

Thanks!

[Clint Thompson]

2 hours ago, VCSMaster said:

I see, that's a shame. I have no intentions of buying a GD, so I guess I'll just drop the project.

 

Thanks!

 

Are your graphics all 16-bit? You can get away with a LOT more if you use 256-color, which has proven to come in handy for me in the past and is not only perfectly acceptable but in many cases better for performance reasons.

 

You can also get away with more by compressing if you’re not already doing that?

Edited August 18 by Clint Thompson

[VCSMaster]

7 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

 

Are your graphics all 16-bit? You can get away with a LOT more if you use 256-color, which has proven to come in handy for me in the past and is not only perfectly acceptable but in many cases better for performance reasons.

 

You can also get away with more by compressing if you’re not already doing that?

Hello!

I started out with the intention of 8-bit color, but when I hit 6MB with *that* much earlier on, I dropped everything to 4 bits and halved my audio rate, and put it all in mono. All assets are already being compressed by JagStudio. Now, still only about 10-15% of the way through the port, I'm out of space again, hence my asking.

 

The original game was meant for PC and contains about 600MB of content, including some FMVs which I had hoped might be doable with the CD addon as well.

Unfortunately, without any extra space, I can go no further.

[VCSMaster]

Hello, out of curiosity, if there is no CD support, why are there MemoryTrack specific bits in the commands?

[+CyranoJ]

Because RAM only games can be written to CD using ULS and provide save functions. 

[Zerosquare]

On 8/18/2024 at 5:54 PM, VCSMaster said:

Unfortunately, without any extra space, I can go no further.

If this is a game where you need a lot of pictures, but not at the same time, and some loading time is acceptable (e.g. adventure games), one solution is using BPEG. It's a JPEG-like picture format for the Jaguar.

 

It was used in Elansar, a Myst-like game released on a 4 MB cartridge:

 

I don't know if/how it can be used in conjunction with JagStudio, however.

[VCSMaster]

19 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Because RAM only games can be written to CD using ULS and provide save functions. 

Ah, I see. So still no dice for more storage, darn.

 

39 minutes ago, Zerosquare said:

If this is a game where you need a lot of pictures, but not at the same time, and some loading time is acceptable (e.g. adventure games), one solution is using BPEG. It's a JPEG-like picture format for the Jaguar.

I don't know if/how it can be used in conjunction with JagStudio, however.

This sounds promising. If it's supported in JagStudio, that sounds like it might be a good option. I'm "only" running 320x200x4 for my graphics right now. It would be nice to get further in the game, but not sure how much further I'd get still. The original game is quite large and even removing many VFX/SFX/FMV and bit crushing the music I don't think I'd be able to finish the game.

[Orion_]

I made a jaguar cd dev kit with a file system, cinepak video etc... but it's not included in JagStudio, you will need to code in assembly language.

http://onorisoft.free.fr/jag/jag.htm#Tools

I used this kit to make my game Philia which is CD only due to large data (around 70mbytes)

https://orionsoft.itch.io/philia