20 replies to this topic

[Lost Dragon]

The final set of files i'll be converting from the PDF's Scott stilphen sent me...reasons being these are far, far too time consuming to devote so much time on, for such a niche sector.

 

Sorry to sound harsh, but Jaguar really isn't of huge interest to readers of Unseen64/Assembler Forums/Atarimania etc, format simply died on it's arse at retail and aside from the collectors/die hard fans..it just doesn't warrant the time.

 

 

Giving this a dedicated thread due to number of files.

 

 Dactyl Joust had POTENTIAL, but it was far, far too early to see if game would live upto that potential....The rolling video clip only had the most basic of A.I routines etc, it needed at least another 6 months work+

 

 

And, as you can read in the files, Atari were questioning wether it was really worth pursuing, comment on how they felt HVS had over streched themselves, coder had started off well, but got in over his head.

 

 

Didn't feel right coder was working on it, coder they did want was tied up doing NBA Jam.

 

Not exactly the most inspiring of comments i've read.

 

Espically when game had already seen comprimises:Gone were the line of sight weapons HVS promised they could deliver, along with rendered 3D stadium walls.

 

 

I dread to think what else would of had to of been cut...

 

 

NBA Jam was a sweet Jaguar title, but White Men Can't Jump has gone down as 1 of the worst Jaguar titles, Ruiner Pinball had sound FX straight out of a Genesis game and was the lesser Pinball game on Jaguar for myself, though i know it has it's fans.

 

 

But WTF was it with Atari expecting Sega Saturn quality games or better (See Batman Forever) from developers?

 

The Jaguar was NO Sega Saturn in terms of processing power or Ram and HVS were NO Team Andromeda, who cut their teeth with Dual CPU hardware in arcades before even touching Saturn.

 

It just smacked of Tramiel desperation, telling Next generation magazine and others (UFG etc) Jaguar was more powerful than Saturn.

 

Anywho, here's the files.

 

Think over last few days Atari I.O has had a massive boost to it's files and hopefully people have learnt a great deal.

 

As for my online 'followers' or is that stalkers? LOL...pick the bones out of these files all you will, say the usual sh*te, all old info, proves nothing etc.

 

 

Fact is, i paid bloody good money for over 5 years as a regular RetroGamer customer, read Atari article after Atari article along with developer profiles and NONE of this stuff was in the material people took coin for, nor was it in dedicated books on Tiertex/US Gold etc, so i feel the community has a lot to thank Scott for, in terms of him sharing these files.

 

I will keep the unused files, but ZERO plans to return and convert them.

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[A31Chris]

This is all very interesting reading but overall I would say it's way more damning of Atari than High Voltage Software.

1. What basis does he have that Brian McGroarty wasn't up to the task? Hunch? Gut feeling? What? Or maybe he just wanted to go with what was proven which was Adisak.

As for Brian flaking out he gives no example of that. It also could have been because High Voltage Software hadn't been paid for their work since June 95. How many times have we heard that about Atari?

2. A programmer who has worked on 3D stuff since before SGI workstations saw the video of Dactyl Joust and as blurry as it was he was very very impressed with what they had achieved considering the hardware. He claims that they have achieved a resolution of AT LEAST 320 by 200. Can anyone else name a Jaguar game using texture polygons that is at that resolution? Can anyone name a non textured polygon game that runs at that resolution?

Everyone can go look at the video that Clint posted up. Even as blurry as it is you can see that the lance comes to a fine point. Everyone can see how smooth and sharp the polys look. Also they can see how smoothly it moves. And is that music I hear playing?

3. Another thing is Mr. Skrutch doesn't even mentioned or seem to notice that in the paperwork submitted to them from High Voltage Software that they list using the C compiler and their GPU manager to create this. This game was programmed in C on the GPU. Not assembly. If Skrutch knew what was going on or had been paying attention that should have immediately raised questions. 'What C compiler for the GPU? There is none known to work.' 'What is this GPU manager thing?.'

Even after all these years with the paperwork High Voltage Software submitted to them the old Atari alumni still had no idea that someone got their GPU compiler to work. They didn't realize it until I told them about it 2 years ago on a discussion on Facebook where they were talking about how it was impossible to get the GPU compiler to work. That is about 20 years after the success High Voltage Software had with their compiler they were still slinging around the word 'impossible.'

Though I think Atari had the right idea putting bounties on the head of goals like achieving the performance of Panzer Dragoon. Though that was unrealistic.

As for stadium walls and things missing perhaps they would have never been in there. Perhaps they would have. The game was simply too early to tell what it would turn out to have been in the end.

The point is High Voltage Software as far as research and development on the Jaguar were second to none. And they still are 20 years later. They accomplished things nobody to this day has accomplished on the Jaguar.

1. They created a GPU manager that streamlined overlays. Programmers didn't have to worry about overlays they just programmed in C on the GPU. Their GPU manager handled the rest making it invisible to the programmer.

2. They solved the problem of the GPU compiler so easily that it doesn't even stick in their head what the problem was. It didn't make a big enough impression. This is all the while Atari was screaming 'Impossible!'

3. They eliminated the m68k entirely from the equation after startup. Not even using it for vertical blank.

I myself am not saying that the Jaguar could throw around textured polygons like the Saturn or the PlayStation. Thats ridiculous. What I am saying is that this is proof that we still have not seen all that the Jaguar can do.

So to me it looks like Atari are the ones with their heads up their butts on this one.

In the end though, C and eventually C++ use became pretty invisible (read easy and efficient) even on the GPU RISC processor.

Edited by A31Chris, 07 July 2017 - 11:26 PM.

[Lost Dragon]

This forum alone, is littered with enough examples of material that can damn both Atari and High Voltage Software, with regards to the Jaguar alone.

 

Taking your points 1 at a time though:

 

1)It sounds like Atari had very real concerns that they were not going to get the game HVS themselves had promised they could deliver, they'd already seen key features dropped and games was still at a very early stage.If HVS had pitched a set game design to them and had started chopping and changing key nechanics, i think they had every right to say they needed someone else working on the code.

 

This has been standard practice for numerous developers/publishers over the years, you've only to read interviews with Ex-Ocean softwarew, US Gold people from a UK point of view...the more talented coders/artists given WIP projects to either finish off or start from scratch as original teams failed to produce the goods.

 

Plus Atari Corp-Joel Sieder seems to think this is what happened to Lynx Rolling Thunder etc...

 

I've heard it happen a lot..people produce a great demo, but then really stumble when it comes to turning that into a fully fledged game.

 

Atari's lack of payments and the pityful reasons they gave for not paying are legandary, sadly...and a key reason i myself hold Atari in very low regard.

 

Yes buisness was war, but Atari burnt so many bridges with tactics like this long before the Jaguar and still expected people to work with them, then seemed surprised people declined the Panther (Mev Dinc), Jaguar etc...

 

 

2)Your talking about a resolution of a title that still needed major work done to it, espically in terms of A.I and asking for it to be compared to actual finished retail Jaguar titles, the game as it was in the video was sadly little above Tech demo status.

 

 

It's a very brief video clip and you don't see enough of the game to get any idea how basic skill level opponents would of worked, collision detection, long range attacks, let alone close in combat.

 

The game would of needed to be calculating so much code, just for basic flying and combat on the lowest skill levels...Jaguar only had so much to give...

 

The trouble with early footage on ANY PLATFORM is an awful lot can change before retail code.

 

It's caught an awful lot of people out time and time before.

 

Ocean's Operation Thunderbolt on C64 was actually reviewed based on the gorgeous looking early code, actual finished version was awful.

 

If you look at early Saturn Quake video that Lobotomy were showing the press, it's visually more impressive than the finished code, Monsters aren't messy at a distance etc.They had to comprimise when they had put in the path finding A.I etc.

 

PS3 Dark Souls footage in preview higher resolution, better frame rate, yet again path finding A.I for the creatures meant a performance hit elsewhere.

 

AVP on Jaguar..early video footage shown on Jaguar to likes of Gamesmaster TV, the very footage that sold the Jaguar to me, ran a lot faster in high resolution mode, but again had no A.I routines....

 

 

 

*As for music playing, at least 1 RetroGamer Writer has been caught out by YT posters putting their own music on top of video footage, not on a Jaguar title, but an Acorn 3000 game, his mini-review praised the in-game music, game had none, so he was left with egg on his face.

 

Last report from HVS coder i read said game had very simple A.I, Sound FX, no music...

 

 

3)Expecting ANY team to get Saturn like performance from the Jaguar, or better, was utter, utter madness from Atari, but we've seen Bill Rehbock think that C.Flag II was a match for Virtua Racing, Darryl Still admit he simply passed on the info he was given from Atari's engineering department, heard reports that the Atari board honestly thought F.F.L was as good as Tekken/Virtua Fighter....heard Ringler claim Leonard Tramiel had vastly over stated the Jaguar's 3D ability etc etc....

 

But on the flipside there were a few sound voices that knew things like WTR were never going to compete with 3DO NFS.

 

As history has shown us, some simply went along with Atari's wishes and texture-mapped, frame rate be damned..Tiertex with Super Cross 3D, Martin B.with Missile Command...but others like ATD and Battlemorph used texture mapping far more sensibly.

 

 

Your speculating on the stadium walls etc, implying they might of been put back in, all we can say at the stage game was at, is that they had been either in and removed or promised and instead replaced with forcefields and it was a gameplay chance that went off the original design spec and were now pitching Atari a very different game to the one originally proposed.

 

This is why Atari are seen questioning wether game is worth pursuing..if they've made key changes so early on, is this really going to happen? and should they be looking at a total redsign?.

 

 

 

Given the fact the game wasn't even at basic playtesting stage, which is where Atari would of been asking for key changes to be made, features added/removed...i prefer not to enter to far into realms of speculation myself.

 

 

 

We know marketing would of been keen to build hype for the game from an early stage, so it wouldn't of looked good if more and more features had to be cut, we also know Atari themselves asked for things to be changed on numerous Jaguar games..arcade racers made more Sim like, 2 player, 4 player modes dropped.

[A31Chris]

2)Your talking about a resolution of a title that still needed major work done to it, espically in terms of A.I and asking for it to be compared to actual finished retail Jaguar titles, the game as it was in the video was sadly little above Tech demo status.

This is a video of the ROM running on the Jaguar with Carl from Songbird there in attendance.

And from those notes it looks like to be a little farther along than just Tech demo status.

I must admit that it's impressive that you can tell how far along that the AI is based on that little tiny clip.

The fact that Atari was trying to develop that GCC as a Hail Mary for their development considering how much trouble developers were having programming in assembly for the GPU once they seen that report that should have been a showstopper.

They should have immediately went what? I'm not sure if those figures mean that they want they wanted $10,000 only for that set up. Because they should have paid immediately 10, 50 maybe even a hundred k for it.

[Lost Dragon]

The only addt info i've seen on the game comes from:

 

 

 

http://www.cyberroac...html/dactyl.htm

 

 

"Dactyl Joust was playable, artwork and box design probably exist."

(Email conversation with Jaguar programmer, name withheld by request)

 

 

 

*Appreciate coder doesn't want to be named, had a lot of that myself, but this statement alone a little vague..playable..but in what form? early demo we see on Clint's video?..then speculation artwork and box design probably exist...wouldn't of been his department, handled outside but all we see on the link is 1 concept art type screen, so we have little else to go on.

 

 

"Sure enough, it existed. It was far from finished, however. You could fly about the arena and bop, lance and fireball things. There was some rather simple enemy AI, sound and a few keen special effects. One of the nicer things was that it was RGB based, not CRY, and therefore rather pretty. Very careful manipulation of the shading let me still do some depth cues and use the green channel for some pretty wacky field effects. The game was probably half a year of solid work from completion. But at that point, everyone who could've paid for continuing development felt it was time to move on to Playstation, so both Dactyl Joust and TRF (Mortal Kombat style fighting game - I didn't know actual MK-II was in the works?) got shelved."

 

 

 

*Now we get to the meat of the story, so at this stage, very possible game did have music, very early combat mechanics, but were they at the stage where your interaction (ie hitting something with your Lance or a Fireball, had any effect?), could you of had Music and Sound FX playing at same time...say explosions, screeches, player grunts when taking damage, weapon hits etc etc? it doesn't sound (no pun intended) like these were implemented, nor were the A.I routines needed to turn this into a fully fledged game...thus it's little more than concept demo in my eyes.

 

 

"For Dactyl Joust, we were using an automatic memory paging system which was started with Ruiner. This worked by augmenting function calls to load in each function in 256-byte chunks, as many as needed, and doing address fixups. Rarely called support routines remained in main store, specially tagged to avoid being loaded in. (See above re: running from main RAM and crossing page boundaries. The addresses had to be guaranteed by creating a million sections in the link file. Can you say link file nightmare?) In the end though, C and eventually C++ use became pretty invisible (read easy and efficient) even on the GPU RISC processor. Going back and looking at Jaguar code again when I did Tempest/X3 for Playstation was a total trip. Even just a couple years later, I'd forgotten how fun/weird/ugly that beastie was. I honestly miss it though. I really do. For all its quirks (especially because of its quirks!) It was a great little box."

 

 

 

*Coder sounds very much a fan of 'coding to the metal' which is fantastic and how it seems Jaguar had to be treated, used experience gained from earlier Jaguar work, but gods i hope they learnt from Ruiner Pinball in terms of sound and we wouldn't of been subjected to more Genesis quality sound FX and would we of seen realistic physics in Dactyl Joust i wonder?

 

 

He ends with a statement echoed by Imagitec Design when they talked of Jag CD Freelancer 2120 (Somewhat ironic all Jaguar shots were actually from Pentium PC version), who described Atari as going totally mental, wanting lighting, texture mapping to copmete with PS1/Saturn games, so Jaguar version shelved, switched to much more capable PS1...and ATD, who said contractual obligations finishing Jaguar titles meant they were late developing 1st wave Playstation titles.

 

 

The harsh reality is..Jaguar Dactyl Joust would of needed to of been started far, far earlier, with HVS having the coding capacity to assign key staff to ensure it hit the ground running and not be worked on alongside NBA Jam, it should of been a sole-focus project.

 

 

As it stands it joins Black ice/White Noise as a promising what could of been, but video footage only tells a fraction of the true story, C.Flag 2 video footage didn't give any idea how broken the actual driving controls were, if the basic combat mechanics didn't work in Dactyl Joust for example, it wouldn't of matter if game had music (unlike Doom) in-game or how smooth it looked.

 

 

I still have PS3 Lair, 1080P PS3 1st generation game, technically stunning for the time, but unplayable as your Dragon is an utter nightmare to control and Factor 5 screwed up the 2nd GC Rogue squadron game, again pushed hardware to the limit, but game was crippled by basic gameplay flaws.

 

We weren't paying £55 over here for coders to get most out of hardware, we wanted gameplay in there as well.

[A31Chris]

*The game would of needed to be calculating so much code, just for basic flying and combat on the lowest skill levels...Jaguar only had so much to give...*

You can see in that video that Collision detection is already working. AI, you can see the other dactyl Rider swooping in to attack the player.

The Jaguar already does those sort of computations in other games. And it looks like it's already doing a lot of them in that video.

[Lost Dragon]

Your post came in as i wrote mine, just to add:

 

You originally stated the video Clint had put up, so of course i based my reply then on basis of that clip, went and found the extra coder info, who himself documents how far along game was...so it's nothing to do with myself guessing how far along game was, i'm using the video and coder details along with documentation.

 

Carl himself could give his own personal impressions i'm sure, but unless there's later proof game went beyond simple A.I and special effects, which isn't what's said in the Cyber Roach quote, simply it was that far, then team moved onto PS1..my comments stand.

 

 

Problems with Jaguar development go far, far beyond just payment aspects.

 

Bugged hardware, originally expecting developers to code on the Falcon, unrealistic hardware expectations, poor software tools, huge amounts of ill feelings towards Atari, over way they'd treated consumer, publisher and retailer in past, total lack of confidence Atari could market Jaguar properly and all backed up by poor sales of hardware and software at reatail.

 

By time D.Joust was in development, it was clear there simply wasn't a viable commercial Jaguar market.

[Lost Dragon]

So you see the rider take damage, dismounted etc?

 

Fireball have splash damage impact zones?

 

You can tell where the specific hit points on player etc are?

 

All from a brief video clip?

 

Now that is impressive.

 

Because all i saw was a lot of flying, your foe in the distance, you close in on it, foe making no attempt to avoid you, could be pre-set flight path, coder did say simple A.I was running..and clip ends with you not going directly head on, but slightly above and your not seemingly hitting the rider, but bird itself.

 

There is nothing in that clip that suggests how combat worked.

Edited by Lost Dragon, 08 July 2017 - 04:41 AM.

[A31Chris]

It looks like the reason it didn't get out there was because Atari wasn't paying them and the whole project got delayed.

But despite whatever anyone says about the game play in high voltage software games to me it seems apparent that they always tried their best.

And it looks like they were trying to mix great graphics and good gameplay.

[A31Chris]

No I can see the Collision detection is working when one Rider hits the other one you can hear the sound that makes indicating a hit.

[Lost Dragon]

To get TRUE Jousting, you'd of needed an approach like that used in Amiga Dragon Strike:

 

 

 

Graphics obviousily very basic, windowed, plain landscape etc, but crucially your in 1st person mode, have a crosshair, your hance in front of you.

 

 

Amiga technology was too primitive to do concept justice...

 

I expected Jaguar Dactyl Joust to take this idea, be full screen, with much faster and more detailed 3D.

 

What i've seen from the brief few seconds where your even near your opponent, does little to convince me the mechanics worked.

 

But then i'm basising it on similar games before and after it, PS3 hardware had the power but Factor 5 fumbled the mechanics.

 

The hit sound in the Jaguar game..sounded like a cheap car horn or novelty bike horn sound, hope that wasn't intended for final game.

 

 

 

I know film fans disect teaser trailers and game fans do the same, people taking The Last Of Us 2 teaser apart at almost sub atomic levels , but personally i feel you cannot get any real idea as to how this would of turned out.

 

None of us know what chances would of been forced on game from technical viewpoint or by Atari itself, nor has there been talk of different camera viewpoints.

 

If game was merely 3rd person only as shown in clip..missed opp.

 

 

Dragon Strike for all it's flaws looked more like the 3D Joust i expected newer technology to bring.

[Lost Dragon]

"... everyone who could've paid for continuing development felt it was time to move on to Playstation, so both Dactyl Joust and TRF (Mortal Kombat style fighting game - I didn't know actual MK-II was in the works?) got shelved."

 

 

Coder makes clear even Atari knew there wasn't a viable retail market for Jaguar, so shelved projects and i wasn't going to mention TRF fighters in this thread but OMG...that would of simply joined WMCJ as yet another blight on Jaguar landscape, thank god that was shelved.

 

The Jaguar needed far more than people simply trying their best, it needed games like Mortal Kombat 3, not awful wannabie clones like Ultra Vortex or TRF....

 

 

That's like saying Rebellion tried their best with Redline Racer/CF2 in trying to do the Virtua Racing clone wanted, it was a bloody disaster and destroyed early faith inthe Jaguar.

 

I fully accept Atari had very limited funds, very limited resources in terms of whom to call on for software, but so often wrong teams used, wrong projects greenlit...

 

 

 

Jaguar needed Triple-A games in high numbers from day 1 to build a strong userbase before Saturn and PS1 hit, it didn't get them, so never had the high ground to attempt to buy time for Jaguar II to be finished which would of been the system to take on PS1/Saturn.

 

 

Trying to get something like Panzer Dragon from Jaguar Mk 1 was crazy, besdes Panzer Dragoon itself very different style of game, pre-set flight path, not free roaming in an arena.

 

 

I've yet to play a true 3D Jousting game on any format, that works..which is why i still adore the purity of the original Joust.

 

 

Maybe the technology still isn't there yet? maybe it's something PS VR on PS5 or 6 can deliver?

 

Whatever the case, whilst Jaguar Dactyl Joust makes a great talking point, it simply wasn't ready to be talked about as an actual game.

Edited by Lost Dragon, 08 July 2017 - 05:06 AM.

[A31Chris]

*This forum alone, is littered with enough examples of material that can damn both Atari and High Voltage Software, with regards to the Jaguar alone.*

Not really sure of what high voltage software did during the Jaguars era that damns them so much. But I think there's enough evidence out there that undamns them quite sufficiently.

[A31Chris]

I'm not saying that dactyl Joust would have been a great game at all. Even though high voltage software left to their own devices may have made a decent game out of it I doubt Atari would leave them be. They would have f***** with it until it sucked.

They were horrible judges of things. And Bill Rehbok was a producer with from what reports from some other programmers have said had no idea how the hardware worked.

I am mainly defending High Voltage Software and they're achievements.

[Lost Dragon]

I once was very keen to speak to Bill Rehbock as he seemed the key to finding out what had become of so many Jaguar titles, this was during the early ST Gamer Vol 1 research era of interviews into ST/Jaguar games...

 

We had a SKYPE meeting set up, but none of us could do it due to work commitments etc and at the time, i thought we'd missed something special...

 

however...from that time i not only found the info i was after from the very people at ground level, but i stumbled across Bill's thoughts and OMG, the guy was utterly, utterly clueless and seemed hellbent at times at contridicting what a publisher had said regarding the status of an annouced title.

 

If Bill and others within Atari honestly believed the Jaguar adly needed titles like:

 

Battle Chess (something that was years old on C64/Amiga) let alone trying to get Battlechess II

 

Rise Of The Robots-Just awful

 

 

Creature Shock-Medicore on any platform...

 

 

Then god help us.

 

 

Bill didn't need to have a technical understanding to do his job well, just an idea of what type of games Jaguar needed to survive and my god he failed on so many levels.

 

 

You go in thinking 16 bit ports will be fine for our 64bit system, your out of touch with your own marketing department and reality.

 

 

It was bad enough seeing them thinking Fever Pitch Soccer made up for no FIFA...

 

That hey we have enough 2D fighters as is, we really don't need MK3 (as the thinking appears to be)...

 

From comments made from numerous people who worked for/with Atari during the Jaguar era, quality was never a prime concern.

 

Atari ignored warnings that texture-mapping would cripple frame rates, no they had to be seen to be competing with titles like Shockwave assualt on 3DO....

 

They knew games needed bigger cartridges, weren't finished...so what, make do said Atari, just get this ready for release we need product on the shelf.

 

The direct interfence Atari played at coder level was clear, Defender 2000 going from CD with Atari's miss judged idea of what a CD game should look like, to cartridge, them having no idea what sort of game Black ice/White Noise should be.....

 

 

Leonard Tramiel's comments about Crescent Galaxy, Atari ignoring tester feedback on this, numerous other games.

 

It all speaks volumes.

 

But to be fair, so does the output of HVS....

 

Leaving aside unfinished projects as it's not really fair to base judgement....

 

Talking purely in terms of the Press reaction and what the they did for the Jaguar's standing from a commercial viewpoint:

 

1)Ruiner Pinball..which was always going to have to be compared to likes of Genesis Dragon's Fury (Revenge was dissapointing as was Sonic Spinball etc), Codemasters Psyco Pinball, Amiga Pinball Illusions etc

 

 

It simply looked/sounded and felt far too 16 bit...going with unrealistic physics was a designer choice, but the Genesis quality sound, visually far too busy tables etc and whilst i felt some magazines, espically here in the UK, Ultimate Future Games, went way over the top in terms of their critiscm..i mean giving it a mere 23%? ohh come on, game was far from unplayable, dissapointing yes, but that score is absurd....

 

Their offering simply didn't have anything to showcase the hardware, nor stand out from the crowd.

 

I know it has it's fans, but from a commercial viewpoint, it did nothing to help sell the Jaguar to the doubters.

 

 

2)White Men Can't Jump:

 

Technically all over the shop..jerky player movements, sloppy controls, muted colours, quiet music, repeated voice samples you name it, it feels like yet another Jaguar title that needed a good few more months in play testing, but as is..felt rushed to market.

 

Bonus points for using Team Tap, but that can't save it.

 

This title joined C.Flag 2 and cart version of Hoverstrike as a Jaguar game that could of been salvaged and turned around, instead was released as was.

 

3)NBA Jam:A flagship Jaguar title and for myself, HVS finest hour on Jaguar.

 

Exactly the type of big name game Atari needed and a conversion done properly which showcased what could be achived with the Jaguar, in the right hands.

 

Joins Doom as an example of giving conversion work to right people rather than taking normal Atari approach of giving to cheapest source.

 

4)Vid Grid:Hard to really say much on this, it's a simple puzzle game, based on music video backdrops, we all know the FMV quality on Jaguar was superb, so this was far better suited than say attempting something similar on Sega CD, some compression errors, but great choice of music..but something simple enough to put together.

 

 

 

I simply see them as a Jaguar studio finding it's feet and over reaching in terms of trying to juggle multiple projects.

 

 

Had they focused on specific titles at a time we might of seen better results across the board, but then could they of survived from a money point of view doing this, espically given that it was Atari who were supposed to be paying the bills...

 

 

Attempting to do a 3D Jousting game is tough for any developer it's a lot more complex in terms of design and structure than attempting a clone of a 2D fighting game or converting a 2D game from the arcades...HVS were probably the best assest Atari had to attempt it, but that say's more about the very limited pool of developers Atari had to call on, to start with.

 

Sega let alone Sony by comparison, had the luxury Atari could only dream of and a lot of that was Atari's own fault.

Edited by Lost Dragon, 08 July 2017 - 06:24 AM.

[Lost Dragon]

Considering the Falcon Port of Towers II   on Jaguar runs at a resolution of 320x200 with 65000 colors, ingame music and stereo sound effects at 41.4Khz. The speed is somewhere between Doom and AVP....

 

 

 

http://justclaws.ata.../towerview.html

 

And you asked for a non-textured Jaguar game running at that resolution:

 

Air Cars:

 

320X240, in 16bit Colour mode solid frame rate of 20 FPS.

 

Hills use Gouraud shading.

 

No poplygon pop up, but uses the old set in dark enviroment trick, draw distance i'd guess is similar to Cybermorph, uses misting to assist as well as the dark, plus disables Gouraud shading on objects (which themselves are quite crude/simplistic).

 

No in-game music.

 

Personally found it to look awful and something that should of been scrapped, but you asked for an example...

Edited by Lost Dragon, 08 July 2017 - 01:57 PM.

[A31Chris]

That's pretty good I wasn't aware it ran at 320 x 240 but I never played the game.

And In fairness you're correct the game isn't completed. So it might have actually had to have been dropped down to 320 by 240. Or not.

Rereading my messages the guy strongly implies 320x240 to be a low estimate.

So the resolution when it's done might not be what we see now. But we've never seen anything like this on the jaguar in any other Jag Alpha with that much going on. According to the notes Collision detection Dactyl to Dactyl, Dactyl to environment are working. Basic ai. It's unprecedented.

I think HVS kicked ass. You all can think what you want.

[Lost Dragon]

I think i'm done p*ssing about with you Chris, to be brutally honest.

 

I couldn't give a proverbial Rats Ass about  HVS..fact is they produced some real sh*t titles that were a laughing stock to the UK Press and at that time, by god Atari needed nothing but glowing reviews, not scores of under 35%....

 

 

I've just had to message the MODS here to lock the bloody thread, because of your nonsense, so yeah..i'm not best pleased.

 

So the Jaguar had a promising Joust update cancelled, so did the N64 and so did the PS2/GC and Xbox and those platforms not only had the processing power to do it justice, i don't see people getting all damp in the trouser department over those versions being canned.

 

Ohh that's right...they all had wide and varied software support, Jaguar didn't.

I've never played Air Cars, it looked wank, but it took less than 30 seconds to find the information...

 

 

I'll happily take a BAN from here if it means i don't have to endure the wasted hours today has seen.

[A31Chris]

Good Lord it's just a disagreement.

Didn't mean to get you that upset. I am done with our debates. I don't want anyone feeling that bad. Sheesh.

Just a game forum.

[TXG/MNX]

Great read this proves about the C- compiler HVS used for there products.

 

They had a gpumanager, @Lost Dragon, are there more documents. that do explain in depth how this worked, its mentioned in the documents that there where more details.

Secondly can you check if you got files with this document, I really looking for the C compiler info. This is still a mistery to me.

 

These papers will get me closer to finished the puzzle.

Edited by TXG/MNX, 22 January 2018 - 11:09 AM.