Battlesphere question

[owen]

Hi,

 

I'm probably being a bit dense here but, anyway, i've just got a quick question about the original battlesphere - is there any way to go back to the main menu once your in one of the play modes - like alone against the empires? It's a bit of a nuisance resetting the jag each time

[TheGrandPubaa]

Call me crazy, but don't all Jag games have the standard "Push # and *" to reset to the title screen. I've never even dreamed of getting the opportunity to test that out on Battlesphere...

[+Saturn]

Call me crazy, but don't all Jag games have the standard "Push # and *" to reset to the title screen.

Yes, this works, but it doesn't take you directly back to the title screen. It actually reverses the order of screens it took you to get where you presently are by one.

 

ie, choose an option on the "Main Menu" screen.

Choose an option in the "Games Menu" screen.

Set the options for that mode of play on the "Options" screen.

Choose ship in "Ship Select" screen.

Playing the game.

 

Pressing # and * in any of these will take you back to the previous.

[Tyrant]

Tbird never did really learn to follow the Atari spec on things did he?

[+Sauron]

Tbird never did really learn to follow the Atari spec on things did he?

 

Are comments like this really necessary? Considering that the Jag had already been long "dead" by the time BS or BSG came out, I don't think it really mattered whether or not the specs were followed.

[Matthias]

Hi!

 

Tbird never did really learn to follow the Atari spec on things did he?

 

Are comments like this really necessary?

 

I don't think so.

 

Considering that the Jag had already been long "dead" by the time BS or BSG came out, I don't think it really mattered whether or not the specs were followed.

 

I doubt that it has something to do with the time in which Battlesphere

was laid out (Don't forget that for a long time 4Play hoped that Atari would aprove a BS-release), a lot of the other ("commercial") programs don't follow the specs completely. Especially if you have a lot of menu-levels you'll

have to decide either to follow the holy book, or to do what is more logical.

And from what i hear 4lay did the latter.

 

Regards

Matthias

[PeterG]

I remember reading, that they did this after the demise of Atari because they thought it would be stupid to reset the game just to go back into the menues. And I think they did right.....

Peter

[Stone]

Were there any Jag games in which you could get stuck in menus with no way to get back other than resetting? I don't think I have any

 

The simplest/most logical thing for menus is surely to have B for 'select' and A/C for 'back', no? Somehow I doubt I'd think of hitting * and # to go back in a menu until I was really frustrated with it not working

 

Unless I'd read the manual, of course

 

Stone

[Tyrant]

Tbird never did really learn to follow the Atari spec on things did he?

 

Are comments like this really necessary?

 

I don't think so.

Ok, sorry, but it is true.

[owen]

Thanks guys, hitting those buttons does indeed take it back a menu,

 

I didn't think i'd be able to get a copy of battlesphere either GrandPubaa but one turned up on e-bay (in the uk) and i managed to snag it for £82, i was most happy

[Oppressor]

Actually, we followed the spec better than most Atari games in that our networking actually worked, but don't let our superior engineering skills get in the way of a good opportunity to take a shot at Doug where he can't fire back...

[Matthias]

Hello Oppressor!

 

Actually, we followed the spec better than most Atari games in that our networking actually worked, but don't let our superior engineering skills get in the way of a good opportunity to take a shot at Doug where he can't fire back...

 

Did you had beside the Bug-lists and "Jaguar Development Standards"

(listed in Appendix C or D depending on the version of the manual)

any other Atari-"rules"?

 

The "Jaguar Development Standards" list 21 points, about half of

them can be taken seriously, others are obvious (like "Joypad1 is

for player 1"), but were there more rules to follow (or to be ignored)?

 

Regards

Matthias

[Oppressor]

Basically, I looked at Quake, which was a mega-hit, selling far more copies than there are jaguars, and aped a lot of their interface. One should always steal from the best...

 

Foolish pride is the enemy of quality... OTOH false humility is pretty useless too...

 

Ironically, Quake 3 has a weapons HUD nearly identical to that of BattleSphere. I'm not saying they copied it from us, but merely that great minds think alike...

 

To this day, I continue to steal/copy/improvise on other people's ideas. What's the point in ignoring the self-evident progress of others? If you can explain that to me, I think I'd understand European space shooters like X2: The Threat a lot better...

[Matthias]

Hello Oppressor,

 

my question wasn't meant in this direction (all you said is ok),

i probably should have added one or two sentences more to explain

why i was asking:

 

As one of those who tries since years to finish a Jaguar-game i am also trying to follow established user-interface standards (although i think things like *+# = reset the game and *+#+OPTION = resetting the E2prom are not really wise decisions of the standardization-comitee),

so i thought i should ask one of those developers who had (more or less good) access to everything Atari provided or required.

 

Regards

Matthias

[Oppressor]

Hello Oppressor,

i thought i should ask one of those developers who had (more or less good) access to everything Atari provided or required.

 

You're joking, right? Good access? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... Ow that hurts...

 

All we had was the Jaguar Developer's Manual and access to the BBS on which little of use was posted except for occasional and randomly buggy updates of RDBJAG.

 

Our relationship with Atari at that time was at best, strained. They saw us as lunatic unfunded fanboys who would never finish their title, and we saw them as roadblocks because they wouldn't spill the beans on issues like the UART bug in a timely manner. We were on a holy quest. That's what people both loved and hated about us.

 

I know there's been some fascinating speculation about our amazing relationship with Atari, and these days, I'm on great terms with a lot of former Atari employees, but at the time, we were utter outsiders who did this entirely in our spare-time and bought our own equipment. And no funding whatsoever. We're really good coders who didn't know when to quit, deal with it, OK?

 

Meanwhile, when we went on the road and tried to get funding for a future edition, we were rewarded by some venture-funded asshats in Santa Monica, CA who tried to steal the title and concept shortly after Atari's death, assuming we died with them (strange but true). Never mind my apartment was two miles from their offices, and they could have just funded us instead and actually obtained a finished product, but I digress...

 

My advice: do what feels right in your game. If gamers tell you it sucks, listen to 'em. Easy to elaborate, difficult to follow, apparently, for many.

[Matthias]

Hello Oppressor,

 

let me say it in a very naive way: At least you had a relation to the company.

 

When i started (using the JagServer and later BJL) with development for the Jaguar i had no access to the official development manual including tools ands examples, only to the so called underground dox which don't cover everything Atari put into their doc-set.

 

Back to my question about "rules/standards":

I could even imagine just because you were handled as fanboys you had to care much more about such "Development standards" because Atari would have searched a reason to kick you out of business (=giving no approval for your product).

 

 

Regards

Matthias

[owen]

Wow! Oppressor, seems like you guys went through quite a lot to get the game finished, i take my hat off to you for being so persistent and producing such a great polished game!

 

I do have one more question though... Why are friendly forces highlighted in red and enemy forces in green? When i first played it i naturally presumed that red = bad

 

Sorry, that's the only tiny nitpick i have with Battlesphere, its lived in my jaguar since i got it!

[Atari_Owl]

Maybe ists:

 

Green = Go! Its ok to shoot these guys

Red = Stop! Don't shoot me? I'm a friend?

[Oppressor]

Wow! Oppressor, seems like you guys went through quite a lot to get the game finished, i take my hat off to you for being so persistent and producing such a great polished game!

 

I do have one more question though... Why are friendly forces highlighted in red and enemy forces in green?  When i first played it i naturally presumed that red = bad

 

Sorry, that's the only tiny nitpick i have with Battlesphere, its lived in my jaguar since i got it!

 

I think BattleSphere Gold has that nitpick addressed wherein you can switch the enemy target colors. I don't know - that project was mostly Doug's work with only peripheral involvement from me. I've been on the next thing for several years now in my fleeting free time.

 

As for why that color scheme? Read _Bill The Galactic Hero_ by Harry Harrison for a thorough discussion of the subject. I'll stand by the assessment that I think it's a better color scheme, but since nearly every other game in the universe does it the other way around, I acknowledge the mistake.

 

And the next thing is a new version of the game described partially in a 50 or so page spec. X2: The Threat managed to scoop us slightly with multimonitor support (and good for them BTW), but there's still plenty of never-before-seen goodness to be implemented. It will be done when it's done. In this case, the longer it takes, the better it will look since I'm a big fan of Moore's and Pixel's Law. No funding whatsoever once again - there's no way the industry would pay a bunch of unknowns to attempt what we're attempting and we prefer to rule in Hell anyway.

 

Besides, while it's annoying to still have zero credibility with the game suits, we have beaucoup cred in the tech industry now and that really helps pay the bills.

[Paolo]

Sorry, guys. I am surely missing something here, but I don't understand what is the platform on which this new Scott's work is giong to run.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

X2: The Threat is a nice visually feast and test for your PC hardware. However, I was really liking the whole mission based aspect of it until after like the 3rd one, and now I just have to search amlessly for a dead warpgate. Time to break out my original X map and try and remember where that area might be...ugh. Good game, but too much having to build yourself up to get anywhere after the first few missions. However, this is true of all the X games.

 

However, while I am a HUGE fan of space shooters in general and I would love to own a Battlesphere of my own, X is the only game series that really makes me feel like I am in space and in this ship flying around. Not sure why that game pulls this off and others don't but it does.

 

Freelancer is another really good game...too bad it has almost no replay value.