Future Jag Releases?

[Mendon]

Now that the encryption software appears to have been found, just curious as to what this means for future releases for the Jag. Are there games that will now be released that were held up without the key?

 

Just curious as to what specific titles may be coming.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Mendon

[Htbaa]

I hope there will be more stuff . A cool thing would be emu's for the jaguar. Like a game boy color emulator (Not sure if it can handle GBA ). That would be too wicked .

 

And maybe an emu that allows you to play jag roms on a CD . Then I'd say good bye flashcard (not that I have one) and welcme cdr!

[Tyrant]

It is technically impossible to port a cartridge game onto CD. Even if one had the source code to the game, it would be impossible to port most games, and the few it could be made to work on, it would take months at least, if the source was availible.

 

In other words, cartridge games will NEVER run from CD, end of. IS2 btw was writen both for CD and cart at once, and so in essence could be considered a cd game ported to cartridge, rather than a cart game ported to CD (which is easier, depending how big the game is, but again, requires the source code, a good understanding of it, and a lot of time).

 

Sorry to be a burster of bubbles.

[Htbaa]

I did not say port it, emulate it. That could be possible.

[+Saturn]

Personally, I hope to see a ton releases in the near future. (but who doesn't? ) However, I understand these things take a great deal of time and that's cool all in itself.

 

I don't see how this will increase the speed of new games being released since the bypass system was always present, but maybe it will give all the incredibly talented homebrew programmers an incentive to be the first to have a new release that utilizes the encryption key.

 

However it works out, keep those programs coming.

[Sinigord]

It is technically impossible to port a cartridge game onto CD. Even if one had the source code to the game, it would be impossible to port most games, and the few it could be made to work on, it would take months at least, if the source was availible.

 

Slam Racer was written as a cartridge game, and it works just fine from a CD. It all depends on what the developer had to use resource wise on the Jaguar. If there was a need to execute code from cart space to allow more ram to be used for graphics, then it's going to be real difficult to make that code from RAM only. I decided that the executing code had to fit in RAM only and the cart was basically a compressed file store. I did have a small loader which ran straight from cart and it would decompress and run each part of the code as necessary.

 

Rebuilding the bubble

 

Gordon

[Tyrant]

I would consider slam racer to be a bjl/cd game put onto cart then . Either way, the port was only possible because you had the source, and because it didnt make any direct reads to cart space that couldnt be paused while the cd spins up, seeks, etc. Most games I believe were not designed that way, and the source has been found for almost none of the official releases.

 

Oh and Htbaa, it is possible to emulate a cartridge yes, Atari even made a product to do it, its called an alpine . Unless you add 2 or 4mb of extra ram to a Jag somehow (either alpine or flash, or I suppose some homemade ram filled cartridge), it is not possible to run a cart game from cd.

[Gunstar]

I hope there will be more stuff . A cool thing would be emu's for the jaguar. Like a game boy color emulator (Not sure if it can handle GBA ). That would be too wicked .

 

And maybe an emu that allows you to play jag roms on a CD . Then I'd say good bye flashcard (not that I have one) and welcme cdr!

 

Emulators for the Jaguar would be cool, I'm all for that, I just hate console&computer emulators on PC's...but I'd love to see ST/Amiga emulators for the Jaguar, that would be VERY cool, or even the Atari 8-bit emulator-maybe the ST-atari-8-bit-emulator could be ported or possibly run an ST emulator on the Jag running an 8-bit emulator! I like the emulators available for the Dreamcast, it would be cool to see similiar ones for the Jaguar. I'd think it would be reletively easy (as far as emulators go) to make emulators for the Jaguar of any of the older 68000 based 16-bit machines; Amiga, ST, Genesis, etc. Playing SegaCD games on the JaguarCD sure would be cool!

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

In my opinion... and this is my opinion...

 

Now that the encryption software appears to have been found, just curious as to what this means for future releases for the Jag.

It doesn't make writing games any easier, nor distributing games on ROM any cheaper, or easier, since the Universal header was found. The cost of the ROMs will be exactly the same. It does not make the process of writing new games, part-time, for hobby programmers, any easier. It makes sales of CD games more viable, market wise.

 

Are there games that will now be released that were held up without the key?

If there are any CD games which are not the subject of legal hitches but were not commercially viable for the limited number of CD (validation) bypass owners, then of course now a wider release can be achieved.

 

The Black Ice/White Noise prototype comes to mind, but it's no game.

The American Hero prototype, but again, it's not really a game.

The Soul Star prototype, but it's not really a game, and unlicensed.

 

Just curious as to what specific titles may be coming.

I think we can be assured of a rerelease of Painter for the wider audience, and the other homebrew projects are just as far forward as they were before, so those nearing completion will enjoy a wider audience, but it is important to realise this doesn't make creating the games any easier, or quicker, it just allows a wider distribution of any new games on CD.

 

Once again, I'd add that it should be clearly understood that for most cartridge games, the cartridge is a device that is used during the game, as a memory resource, it's not like a CD which is used to load data into memory. The CD is a loading device, like a floppy or cassette in the past. A cartridge extends the Jaguar memory capacity by the size of the ROM.

 

No existing released games could be made to work from CD, because they could load off CD, but where to? Cartridge games already use the internal RAM for program code and data, CD games must load entirely to RAM. If we had the source for them, perhaps they could be modified, not every game will use the ROM as memory, some will load from it in sections as a storage device, just like Sinigord says Slam Racer does. We have no source code though at the present.

 

New games designed to run in RAM can be made to load from CD, (not run from it of course) and games which are primarily 3D polygon based (with little texture mapping) need less RAM, like Iron Soldier II. Most homebrew games are 2D sprite based though, so every bit of RAM is important. Also music could be streamed from CD, but a DSP sound routine which can mix CD music and sound effects does not exist yet, even Atari games like Blue Lightning apparently load chunks of audio into RAM and then play it.

 

A good example of the problems created for a Jaguar CD game by the relative lack of memory is Primal Rage. The CD has a vast capacity to store graphics and animations, but to use these, they must be loaded into Jaguar RAM, along with the existing code. That is why the Jaguar Primal Rage has smaller creatures than other versions, and why the fatalities can only be executed (no pun intended) after they load painfully off the CD. This is another reason why Blue Lightning has poor graphics, and no animation on the enemy graphics, due to the lack of RAM memory for the sprite graphics needed during a level. Graphics had to be small to fit them all in the Jaguar's 2MB RAM, (less CD buffer space), and were scaled up giving the pixelated appearance we see, and their relative monotony.

 

If the Jag-CD had been fitted with another 2MB of RAM (or even the initially rumoured 512K of buffer RAM) then this would have changed the situation entirely. Remember, to read data from CD you need a buffer. This might be 64K, or it might be 256K. Officially Atari said you had to read data from CD, extract it from the buffer, and copy it into place, so that *could* mean you need to allocate 512K RAM to load 256K of data.

 

The PS1 had more accessable RAM, as did the Saturn, because they were designed as CD consoles. (The Saturn ended up with a confused architecture and segmented memory due to the change from cartridge to CD.) The N64 could also use it's cartridge like the Jaguar as memory, but had 4MB instead of the Jaguar's 2MB RAM, Nintendo argued against CD for the above reasons I stated. Games like Zelda with 256 Mb (32MB ROM) as opposed to the Jaguar max of 6MB ROM (and released games only went up to 4MB) demonstrate how much memory is needed!

 

Note that the GameCube is said to suffer from having too little RAM now, only 24 MB, where the PS2 has 40MB, and Xbox has 64MB, they use RAM like carts, data is loaded into RAM and run from there. Only things like streaming video use the CD during the game wheree possible. Games like the second Gamecube StarWars game have to stream data from disc into the Gamecube RAM continuously, because it does not have enough RAM to load all the textures and data into RAM at the beginning of a level. Large PS2 racing games do the same.

 

Full motion video should not be confused with game code, the concept is different. A program can load into Jaguar RAM, which then stream the data from CD which it decodes and displays as a video. Games cannot work like that though, animated characters could not load data from CD on the fly. See Primal Rage as the example. Read up on game design and engineering if you do not believe me, these are well known issues.

 

Memory limitations also apply to ROM games though. Imagine how much more attractive DOOM would have been if the sprites could have been created in more detail, closer. The reason they're pixelated is because the game (on PC and Jaguar) had to work with a limited amount of RAM (no point in needing 32MB RAM on the PC when people only had 8MB) and 4Mb of cartridge and 2MB RAM on the Jaguar, giving 6MB on Jaguar. Defining something to be 1/3 closer, means a lot more RAM. Look, if something was 10x10 that's 100 bytes. Bring it closer, define it as 15x15, and suddenly you need 225 bytes. Also, define it in 16 bit colour instead of 8 bit colour, and you need 450 bytes. Now let's have 8 frames of animation instead of 4 frames, and you need 3600 bytes instead of 1800 bytes....

 

Sorry for the long reply.

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.

[Tyrant]

I'd have to agree with everything JustClaws wrote, except that Jaguar Primal Rage has larger characters than any other console port, but they are smaller than the arcade, which like almost all arcade machines, had everything stored in a vast forrest of rom chips, thus providing instant access. Jag primal rage is the closest to the arcade afaik, but still a long way from being arcade perfect.

 

Thank you for explaining better that which I have tried several times in the last few days. I never was quite cut out for being a teacher hehe.

[Mendon]

Sorry for the long reply.

 

Not a long reply at all but an excellent post. Thanks for responding and I learned alot from you!!

 

Mendon

[Mendon]

Hey Gordon....

 

Maybe not the right thread to post this in but since you responded here I'd like to ask you a question: you did Painter for both the ST & Jaguar; which system would you consider "easier" (for lack of a better term) for you to work with? Which one do you like working with more?

 

Just curious.

 

And I'd still like to see you move Invaders & Centipede over to the Jag also!

 

Mendon

[Gunstar]

I'd have to agree with everything JustClaws wrote, except that Jaguar Primal Rage has larger characters than any other console port, but they are smaller than the arcade, which like almost all arcade machines, had everything stored in a vast forrest of rom chips, thus providing instant access. Jag primal rage is the closest to the arcade afaik, but still a long way from being arcade perfect.

 

Thank you for explaining better that which I have tried several times in the last few days. I never was quite cut out for being a teacher hehe.

 

Jaguar Primal Rage had characters as large or larger than the 16-bit versions and the 3DO version, but I'm pretty sure that the PSX and maybe Saturn had slightly larger characters, I've only heard this of course, and cannot confirm firsthand. Although, if it is true that the PSX version has larger characters, it's not due to larger memory, the PSX has 2MB of system ram just like the Jaguar. I don't know offhand how much ram the Saturn has, but another curious thing is that the 3DO's characters were the same size as the Jaguar, yet it has 2MB of system ram and an extra 1MB of video ram, so if any machine should have been able to use larger sprites do to more memory, I would have thought it would have been the 3DO. Maybe I'm not fully informed on the PSX though; does it have extra video ram like the 3DO or something? I know for a fact that it's system ram is identical in size to the Jaguar though. The only advantage the PSX had over the Jaguar that I'm aware of, originally, was that it was CD based (moot point with the Jagcd add-on), and that it had better polygon and texturing abilities in it's graphics chip(s). Personally, I'd be interested in seeing how the PSX handles a voxel engine compared to the Jaguar (PhaseZero) and the Saturn (A.M.O.K); PhaseZero blows away A.M.O.K in this department; much higher resolution voxel graphics, same or better draw-in distance, at the about the same frame-rate and window size...

[Tyrant]

Hmm.... I cant prove it, or remember where I saw it, but I thought that the Jag was the best port of them all, and had the largest sprites, which were bigger than all other versions. I have both Jag and 3DO versions and Im sure the Jag has visibly bigger sprites, the 3DO version was really terrible, apart from the horrible button arrangement, which isnt exactly fixable with a 3DO pad, the load times are truely terrible, and the sprites seem very small. Not that that is entirely a bad thing, gives you more room to run away in hehe.

[+Saturn]

Not that that is entirely a bad thing, gives you more room to run away in hehe.

lol

 

I get my ass handed to me on a regular basis when I play Primal Rage, no matter which version.

[Tyrant]

Actually I rule in PR, used to play it all the time on the large arcade machine they had at virgin megastore in free play mode. Damn that was fun, got rather good too, but only with sauron, and I could never pull off his lovely fatality where he rips the enemies heart out .

 

One day I'll get rich and buy an arcade cab of it, then I'll be a happy bunny

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

Jaguar Primal Rage had characters as large or larger than the 16-bit versions and the 3DO version' date=' but I'm pretty sure that the PSX and maybe Saturn had slightly larger characters,

 

the PSX has 2MB of system ram just like the Jaguar. I don't know offhand how much ram the Saturn has,

[...]

Maybe I'm not fully informed on the PSX though; does it have extra video ram like the 3DO or something? I know for a fact that it's system ram is identical in size to the Jaguar though.

 

Take a look here for the PSX (PS1) specifications.

http://consoledatabase.retrofaction.com/co...onyplaystation/

 

Sega Saturn

http://consoledatabase.retrofaction.com/co...nfo/segasaturn/

 

RAM: 16 Mbits (same as Jaguar, 16 Mbits is 2 MBytes)

VRAM: 8 Mbits (Jaguar uses main memory due to flexible graphics)

Operating System ROM: 4 Mbits (Jaguar has just a boot ROM, no O/S)

CD-ROM: 256K CD-ROM buffer (Jaguar has no extra buffer, sadly)

Sound: 4 Mbits Sound RAM (Jaguar has 8K RAM on the DSP)

 

Memory Cards: 128 Kbyte flash-memory (same as Jag Memory Track)

 

Of course you could also mention the cache on the GPU, but it does

not really help with the issues we discussed, and is only 2K anyway.

 

So the Jaguar has 2 megabytes of RAM. (I'm ignoring the 10K cache.)

 

The PSX/PS1 has 2+1+.25+.5 = 3.75 megabytes of RAM total.

If you add the ROM (because it's got primitive pre-defined routines

in ROM to save the programmer some hassle) you add another .5...

 

The Sega Saturn had even more RAM, which helped it lots too.

 

This does not mean the PSX was better than the Jaguar, it was a

later machine, and like the Sega Saturn they were able to pump

up the resources because of the higher initial price as well, where

the Jaguar was sold at a lower initial price with the CD as add-on.

The biggest cost cutting blunder on the CD was not adding RAM.

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only advantage the PSX had over the Jaguar that I'm aware of, originally, was that it was CD based (moot point with the Jagcd add-on), and that it had better polygon and texturing abilities in it's graphics chip

[tiw]

Justclaws, I went to your website, some good info, yeah, thanks!

[Sinigord]

Hey Gordon....

 

Maybe not the right thread to post this in but since you responded here I'd like to ask you a question: you did Painter for both the ST & Jaguar; which system would you consider "easier" (for lack of a better term) for you to work with? Which one do you like working with more?

 

Just curious.

 

And I'd still like to see you move Invaders & Centipede over to the Jag also!

 

Mendon

 

Well, the ST is an older system but was a very capable system for the time. The real headache on the ST was the interleaved screen format and lack of colors. Doing any kind of scrolling on the ST was torture.

 

It's not really fair to compare the ST and Jaguar, the Jaguar has so much more hardware available and faster processors. I guess I like the Jaguar better, it's a games console and nothing else. I think as far as Painter is concerned, the Joypad works better than keys. Slam Racer just would not have been possible on the ST, some of the precise masking code that allows you to drive under bridges, signs and trees would have slowed the ST to a crawl.

 

I have done some work on Centipede, it's not even running yet on the Jaguar, but the ST source has all been modified to comply with the PC 68k assembler conventions. It'll be a while given how much time I've been spending at work recently. I'm hoping to get a lot done around christmas time.

 

Gordon

[Mendon]

Thanks for the response Gordon; much appreciated.

 

Didn't mean to put you on the spot or anything; was just curious as to how you felt about working with both systems. And was just curious (and hopeful) that maybe some more Sinister releases, like Centipede, might be in the future. I always felt that all the Sinister releases were excellent.

 

Be a fantastic day if all Sinister and Dave Munsie titles were released for the Jag

 

Mendon

[Paolo]

You are right!

The best (gaming) things I have seen on ST (and I mean the more refined, clean, hardware pushing...) came from Munsie or Sinister.

Now, Sinister showed us their interest in the Jag (thank you, guys, I am still at the first levels, but I'm having F-U-N!);

time for Dave to surprise us

 

Ciao.

[Mendon]

I'm hoping to get a lot done around christmas time.

 

Ho Ho Ho.... I can't wait for Santa Gordon and his bag of Sinister goodies to appear!!

 

Mendon

[Mendon]

Time for Dave to surprise us  

 

Ciao.

 

Oh yes!! Can you imagine if Dave's Kaboom!! was moved over to the Jag and if a Tyrant rotary controller would work with it???? drool drool

 

Mendon

[BeefMan]

JustClaws, are you sure the Gamecube only has 24MB of memory? I thought it had a total of 40MB or you could say 43MB if you count the frame buffer and texture cache.

[Gaztee]

I WANT Kaboom!!!!! I love this game IF it were to appear for the Jaguar I want my name first on that list. I am sure Tyrant would not object too, will keep him busy making them rotaries

 

Gaztee