The best 3D engine on Jaguar ?

[+Stephen Moss]

For released games I would say IS2.

 

No-one has mentioned protos yet but has anyone even considered the the play area in Verunas Forces or the city scape in BIWN?

[Atari_Owl]

I don't think you can look up or down in BIWN plus the texture warping is absolutely appalling.

 

I don't think it would be fair then to include an engine which is incapable of drawing the screen correctly

[Fredifredo]

IS2 versus Battlemorph / hoverStrike is an other match : Rosocha( asm power ) Team versus Atari Team ( GCC ! / asm ) !

 

For me Battlemorph has a lot of clipping !

 

IS2 is really the best !

 

don't forget interview of the master : http://toxicmag.planet-d.net/real/articles/mathieson.htm

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

I could comment one some of the replys, but I'm tried of correcting urban legends about certain technical aspects of systems or games. Especially because nobody cares about the truth anyway, so I'll just let you believe whatever you want.

 

I fully agree with Atariowl about BIWN, though.

Actually I never understood why people were raving about it being so impressive graphics wise...

Okay, you are walking through "a city", which was something you couldn't do in many games back in 94 or 95.

But what is it really that you are walking through actually?

 

A bunch of blocks with very repetive and average quality textures. And while textures aren't the Jaguar's strongest point, there really isn't much more graphically impressive to that game. The polygon counts on screen are minimal compared to other Jag games.

 

And Atariowl is totally right about the engine being far from bug free...

Clipping is bad, you often get into situations where you look through buildings, the camera angle is fixed and annoying, there are no doors, you walk through the walls to get into a different room and as Atariowl said already the texture warping is terrible, worse than in any PSX game (and I remember some people having prejudices against the PSX and flaming it because some early games also had slightly warping textures).

 

It might not be fair to compare BIWN with finished games as it's far from being finished, but for what it is, I think the myth of BIWN is impressing more people than the actual visuals. Although that seems to be true for many unfinished or rare games out there.

 

I also agree with Fredifredo, IS2 and BM are a totally different league than hoverstrike.

 

Regards, Lars.

[peryton99]

I would have to say that American Hero's Dancers had some nice 3D's.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

When you are talking about the BI/WN alpha it depends on which version you're talking about. Rev. 23 looks better in most occasions from previous Revs. While it might not be fair to compare it to released games, it does exist as is and can be judged from that angle. Just because the graphics are buggy doesn't mean they can't be judged seeing that the graphics in many finished Jaguar games are buggy! A few games that come to mind that have texture warping include World Tour Racing and I-War. And the list of PSX games that have texture warping is long and from what I see, the warping in BI/WN is about the same as what you see on the PSX, from my point of view.

 

You can look up and down in BI/WN. I don't remember which controls allow you to do that off the top of my head, but it is possible

 

Either way it's too bad that it wasn't finished. It could have been a pretty nice game but all we can ever do is speculate.

 

I'd go with IS2 as having the best 3D engine on the Jaguar.

[Gunstar]

We are strictly talking about "engines" hear and not entire games, are we not? If so, it really blows my mind that wome people still 'dis Hoverstrike: CD. It's a fantastic 3D e4ngine that is just pushed a bit too hard. I Gaurantee that if you reduced the texture-mapping in it to the equivalant of IS2 it would be as good or better as far as frame-rate goes, and if you were to reduce it down to JUST gauraud shading with a feew "decals" like Battlesphere, it'd have a VERY similair frame rate. Then you add in the MULTIPLE light-sourcing, guaruad shading, full-

blown texturemappig with even animated textures and it's quite impressive at ~15fps (cd version) in my book. We are talking ENGINES, not GAMES here...

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

I know different revisions of BIWN, not sure which exactly they were, but I know they didn't change the graphics engine during the project and didn't fix the problems in any version I have seen.

 

The reason I even mentioned the PSX was just, because I think it's funny how people blame decisions of the development teams on the hardware as long as it's not the system they like.

 

When you see a bad 3d game on the Jag, you say the coders were bad. When you see a bad 3d game on the PSX, you imply that it's a fault of the system

 

If a team writes a 3d engine, where warping textures can occur due to the method they used, it's not a fault of the hardware, that's all I meant to say.

 

I certainly haven't played all PSX games out there and with more than 10k titles released worldwide, I guess hardly anybody ever has. Without doubt there are thousands of bad titles released for it, so it's not difficult to find awful games for it.

In my own collection I have some of the better games though and there are really just a hand full of games where you can see a bit of texture warping and those all werey early titles like alien trilogy or ridge racer.

 

Regards, Lars.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Hi!

 

I know different revisions of BIWN, not sure which exactly they were, but I know they didn't change the graphics engine during the project and didn't fix the problems in any version I have seen.

 

The reason I even mentioned the PSX was just, because I think it's funny how people blame decisions of the development teams on the hardware as long as it's not the system they like.

 

When you see a bad 3d game on the Jag, you say the coders were bad. When you see a bad 3d game on the PSX, you imply that it's a fault of the system 

 

If a team writes a 3d engine, where warping textures can occur due to the method they used, it's not a fault of the hardware, that's all I meant to say.

 

I certainly haven't played all PSX games out there and with more than 10k titles released worldwide, I guess hardly anybody ever has. Without doubt there are thousands of bad titles released for it, so it's not difficult to find awful games for it.

In my own collection I have some of the better games though and there are really just a hand full of games where you can see a bit of texture warping and those all werey early titles like alien trilogy or ridge racer.

 

Regards, Lars.

994852[/snapback]

 

 

There is a difference between versions 18 and 23. I don't know if you could consider it a huge difference, but it does exist. Versions 18 and 19 are what most people have played, 23 seems to be less common. The textures are different, there are more buildings and the frame rate is higher. Although Rev. 23 seems to crash more often it looks better overall.

[Punisher5.0]

The BattleSphere 3D engine is definetly up there on the list. That thing pushes a lot of poly's around and keeps the frame rate very steady at 60 fps which is very impressive for a Jaguar game.

[Gunstar]

The BattleSphere 3D engine is definetly up there on the list. That thing pushes a lot of poly's around and keeps the frame rate very steady at 60 fps which is very impressive for a Jaguar game.

994992[/snapback]

 

Actually, it peeks at 60fps(empty space with only debri flying past) and can go as low as 10fps( space station or two and several ships in view, with lots of firing, explosions, etc.), but averages (reliably) 30fps. This is from the horse's mouth in the Battlesphere FAQ.

[Clint Thompson]

Missile Command 3D (Virtual Mode)

994151[/snapback]

 

It's wicked fast with the VR though... sometimes you forget your playing on the Jag.... and wonder (Wow.... if Martin can program this... what else could he have done!)

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

Exactly. In my opinion the VR mode is the best of the game too.

It's really fast and it really has amazing textured models for a Jag game.

 

Just keep in mind the lynx model in classic mode, and you could play the game on it Or the bosses in the VR mode... Also great.

 

That's the way decent 3d models should look like on the Jag.

 

Regards, Lars.

[Atari_Owl]

When you are talking about the BI/WN alpha it depends on which version you're talking about. Rev. 23 looks better in most occasions from previous Revs. While it might not be fair to compare it to released games, it does exist as is and can be judged from that angle. Just because the graphics are buggy doesn't mean they can't be judged seeing that the graphics in many finished Jaguar games are buggy! A few games that come to mind that have texture warping include World Tour Racing and I-War. And the list of PSX games that have texture warping is long and from what I see, the warping in BI/WN is about the same as what you see on the PSX, from my point of view.

994735[/snapback]

 

The texture problems in BI/WN go far beyond anything i have seen in any other games with totally bizarre shapes being formed.

 

Quite simply there is something drastically wrong with the clipping/texture calculation when one walks close to a wall.

 

Neither WTR nor IWar have remotely as severe problems as BIWN and whilst i also have not seen all PSX games i have never seen one with the problems that BIWN has.

Edited January 6, 2006 by Atari_Owl

[krupkaj]

I am curious why nobody mentioned Phase Zero. I know it is unfinished game, but the same is for BIWN. And I realy like the voxel engine in Phase Zero.

[atarijagplayer]

I-WAR

[ZylonBane]

I-War? Ha ha you're funny. The I-War engine was bloody terrible. It commonly dipped into single-digit frame rates, and there wasn't even any texture mapping! (at least, not that I can recall)

 

And Phase Zero didn't have a 3D engine. It had a voxel heightmap engine with sprites for objects.

[Atari_Owl]

I-War? Ha ha you're funny. The I-War engine was bloody terrible. It commonly dipped into single-digit frame rates, and there wasn't even any texture mapping! (at least, not that I can recall)

 

And Phase Zero didn't have a 3D engine. It had a voxel heightmap engine with sprites for objects.

995149[/snapback]

 

Actually there was a moderate amount of texture mapping in I-War

But certainly frame rates were pretty poor

[Lastblade]

Can we consider Tempest 2k? It is 3D even if you are on rails...

 

Otherwise, I vote IS2, HS CD and Battlesphere.

[Bill Brasky]

Missile Command 3D (Virtual Mode)

994151[/snapback]

 

It's wicked fast with the VR though... sometimes you forget your playing on the Jag.... and wonder (Wow.... if Martin can program this... what else could he have done!)

995065[/snapback]

 

Yeah, what freaked me out about that game was he programmed that in six months, by himself and that's his first and only Jaguar game. Fricken amazing!

[Starcat]

Hi !

 

I-War? Ha ha you're funny. The I-War engine was bloody terrible. It commonly dipped into single-digit frame rates, and there wasn't even any texture mapping! (at least, not that I can recall)

 

And Phase Zero didn't have a 3D engine. It had a voxel heightmap engine with sprites for objects.

995149[/snapback]

 

Actually there was a moderate amount of texture mapping in I-War

But certainly frame rates were pretty poor

995159[/snapback]

 

Really? I haven't finished I-War, just played a few levels, but I never had such low framerates. I never had any problems.

 

I think Phase Zero qualifies just as well as AvP or Doom does. And actually even more, as you basically have 3d coordinates for the landscape at least. You have X/Z the position on the playfield and you have the height Y.

So I think you could call it a 3D engine, just not a polygon based one.

 

Phase Zero has got great visuals and is very fast, too. But of course you can't compare heightmap and polygon engines with each other.

 

Regards, Lars.

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

Missile Command 3D (Virtual Mode)

994151[/snapback]

 

It's wicked fast with the VR though... sometimes you forget your playing on the Jag.... and wonder (Wow.... if Martin can program this... what else could he have done!)

995065[/snapback]

 

Yeah, what freaked me out about that game was he programmed that in six months, by himself and that's his first and only Jaguar game. Fricken amazing!

995500[/snapback]

 

I guess, that's the different between the coding elite and the average coder trying to do a game.

The elite get amazing stuff done in rather little time, while others spend years and merely reach the average quality level.

 

Regards, Lars.

[+LS650]

Really? I haven't finished I-War, just played a few levels, but I never had such low framerates.

The frame rate really drops when you have a lot of exploding objects on the screen at the same time. All the 'clusters' of exploding splinters really bog down the machine.

Most Jag players don't seem to think that much of I-War, but that's a game I really enjoyed and played a lot.

[ZylonBane]

I think Phase Zero qualifies just as well as AvP or Doom does.

That's absolutely correct. Phase Zero qualifies just as well as AvP and Doom, in the sense that none of them qualify. Those games are all extremely limited in the geometry they can display, unlike general-purpose 3D engines like Iron Soldier, et al, so it would be stupid to compare them.

 

And later levels of I-War do get very slow, even when there's nothing blowing up.

[Symmetry of TNG]

Hi! just fiering of a replye here:

 

Hmm.. best 3D engine... well considering that almost all jaguar games here have already been mentioned, concluding that the answer has no conclusive answer, I will form one of for my self:

 

Well my own! offcourse

 

Best thing with it is that I learned allot of jaguar HW when doing it, and got indepth useless knowhow of how 3d gets drawn on screen...

 

 

 

..and hence can say this about BIWN... Im rather shure that they use the same "blitter trick" that all early texmap games used.. and hence can conlude that it is not realy the texturemapper that is wrong but the camera routine.

If the view are alowed to come to close to the wall "affine interpolation" will look truly crappy (se almost all PS1 games!) but if you are not alowed to do that but clip/stop player from moving, keeping greater distance to the wall.... and voila! it looks much better!.. (all 3D texmapped jaguar games, I can say with almost sertanty, OBS true 3D, since games like battlemorph/Doom will never get this "texture wobble" effect since they always work in vertical columns.

 

 

..to get pack to voting: Feeding the greedy bastard in me I will give my vote for myself --muaahhahha--

 

Whats that? ..you cant vote on yourself? ...Blaaasted! I wasted my vote!

 

/Sym