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I-War!


louisg

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Does anyone else have this? I'm borrowing this from a friend and wondered what people thought of it. I'm not too great at it, but it seems quite interesting. One great decision they made was using the Jag's limited gouraud shaded polygons for a freaky cyberspace environment. It's quite stylish and cool. 

 

Anyone got any tips or opinions on this one?

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I have I-War.  I haven't played it in about 4 years but it's pretty cool IMHO.  I enjoyed the computer theme and its one of the better Jaguar tank-style games.  Also, IIRC there is an "on rails" bonus stage in between levels that makes for an interesting change of pace. I'll have to dig it out and give it a spin soon.

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It's one of my top 10 Jaguar games, I love it. I love the Tronesque cyberspace look and it's really fun. Also a true 3D game with platforms and bridges, etc. above "ground level" that you "bounce" up to on "trampolines."  It rocks and I highly recommend it to any Jag fan that wants more 3D Jag games. Yes, there can be some slow down when things get hectic and tons of polygons are shattering all over the place, but it doesn't last long and I don't feel it detracts from the game because the enemies all slow down too, so it's not like you get pummeled and can't react fast enough or anything. The bonus levels are also awesome. It is Cybermorph and Hoverstrike rolled into one with a dash of Tron in Cyberspace. The music is fantastic old-school techno-rave stuff, like T2K...but what else would you expect from Imagitec?

Edited by Bakerman

"Slugs, he created slugs?...Is this not the work of a complete incompetent? I would have started with Lasers, 8 o'clock, day one."-Evil (Time Bandits)

"...burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me..."-theme song (Firefly)

"I try to respect him, I really, really do, but he's just such a Smeg-head."-Lister (about Rimmer, Red Dwarf)

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You really make me wish i'd checked out I-War as a Jaguar owner back in the day :-)

 

Imagitec were'nt the greatest of Jaguar developers, sadly....i'd of loved to have seen Space Junk and Freelancer finished (on any bloody platform) just to see if they delivered the goods...

 

But in terms of music, they really delivered.

You have me a bit confused...are you saying you no longer own a Jag, or just that you wished you had gotten I-war long ago, but maybe will now? If the former, if you spend so much time talking about the Jag, why not get it again? Along with I-war? it seems you still have a love for the system if you are hanging in Jag forums so much...maybe it's the second choice though? Then definitely get I-war, I promise at least you won't hate it.

Maybe there are Youtube videos to check out? though just use them to get an idea, as most Youtube videos the people can't play the Jag games they are filming worth a damn and so it's hard to be impressed with the half-hearted attempts at gameplay.

Edited by Bakerman

"Slugs, he created slugs?...Is this not the work of a complete incompetent? I would have started with Lasers, 8 o'clock, day one."-Evil (Time Bandits)

"...burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me..."-theme song (Firefly)

"I try to respect him, I really, really do, but he's just such a Smeg-head."-Lister (about Rimmer, Red Dwarf)

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yeah, you got that right, if I had to start from scratch with the Jag now, I wouldn't and couldn't, the pricing is insane, really insane. I like to recommend it as a collectible system, but right now I just can't justify recommending it with such astronomical prices. I've only got about a dozen cart games back myself, and half a dozen CD games, since I sold off my collection several years ago (only because I needed money, and the same with the 3DO and DC). I got back into it just in time to get most of my top favorites, but now I can't afford to collect for the Jag anymore atm. I'm not sure if I would if I had the cash, with the crazy high prices. luckily I have the Jag CD so I've been building up a sizable home-brew collection. 

"Slugs, he created slugs?...Is this not the work of a complete incompetent? I would have started with Lasers, 8 o'clock, day one."-Evil (Time Bandits)

"...burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me..."-theme song (Firefly)

"I try to respect him, I really, really do, but he's just such a Smeg-head."-Lister (about Rimmer, Red Dwarf)

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One of the coolest little...surprises in I-War was going into the 3rd person behind-the-tank view when activating the shield. You get a 3D reflective sphere (not a perfect sphere, early 90s 3D chunky sphere) with reflective textures! To me, that is one of the coolest special effects on the Jaguar but it seems to get overlooked a lot since most people just play the game in first-person. Granted, the frame rate suffers when this shield is on...still looks very cool. :P

 

I liked I-War - didn't love it as I'm not a huge fan of teleport room mechanics and trying to keep track of that. That said I always had more fun with I-War than Hover Strike. Sure HSCD looked better but I-War felt like you were playing one of the tanks in TRON and I have a soft spot for tank games.

 

And yes, the soundtrack was great as the tempo and style fits this kind of game, just like the track in T2k was more energetic to fit with that faster pace of a game.

 

Given that this thread was started over a year ago I'm sure no tips are needed but as I can recall, playing with the heavy tank was the best way to start. It was slower but could take a beating. When you have you 'I-war legs', then the other tanks are good to use. Remember to use your map and you won't get lost; use your missiles for packed rooms but watch where you aim since those could collide with something else and blow up prematurely. 

Edited by AtariHero
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There are many tactical shooter on the Jaguar (Hoverstrike C + CD, Iron Soldier 1 and 2, Cybermorph, Battlemorph and (ok, not so shiny) Aircars), which outshine the late published I-War. But it has its unique qualities: The Tron appeal, the music, the tricky levels.

 

Dear Lost Dragon. You certainly miss the Jaguar. The prices for Soft-and Hardware are rising. I would think about a purchase in an earnest way.

 

Oh, i write like Jane Austen. "Dear Mr. Abercrombie..."

 

Time to go to bed!

Edited by TeddyGermany
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I have I-War for my Jag and have had it for over seventeen years. Completed the game, too. Fun game, but it needs work on the graphics, of course. But, needless to say, despite the visage of the game it plays quite well. I like it and I am sure it may have a following. But, bear in mind that the Jaguar is obscure and was under-marketed. It should have cheaply been upgraded to four megabytes of RAM or more instead of two. Better hardware and software support would have made the Jaguar a real beast to contend with. Did you know that third-party game developers for the Atari Falcon030 computer had 300+ titles ready to be converted for the Jag? It could have been easily done. But, Atari CEO Jack Tramiel put the kibosh on it, and that was part of the death knell of the Jag and, ultimately, Atari Corporation. We all know the rest of the story. However, one person has found a way to port Atari ST games to the Jaguar, as most of you already know, I am sure. So, by hook or by crook, I am sure someone will figure out how to port Falcon titles to the Jaguar. I am almost positive it is inevitable. But, people can learn Raptor BASIC+ from CJ. It is supposed to be easy to learn, but I am, alas, a noob and know really very little about game coding. So, that is another avenue for games to be released for the Jag.

 

Sorry for being long-winded. Atari games, however seemingly "obsolete" that they are, will still be my fave choice in gaming preference. I am just waxing passionate about it and, maybe, somewhat rambling on. No worries. Thanks for letting me share. :)

Edited by DegasElite
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Here in UK established coders like Bullfrog Productions Peter Molyneux were warning Atari from day 1 the Jaguar lacked the Ram to make PC conversions straight forward but like the abandoned Panther before it, Atari refused to believe their hardware was at fault.

 

Regarding Falcon conversions, wasn't Jaguar Ishar supposed to be a Falcon port? Seem to recall an interview stating something alone those lines a while back.

 

Jaguar suffered from enough Genesis,Amiga and SNES ports as it was, having 32 bit Falcon games running on a flagship 64 bit system wouldn't of done it any favours at the time, might well be a shot in the arm for it now though.

 

But if your looking at converting commercial titles, you either release them for free or you go the route Piko Interactive has, and legally aquire the rights and code, if your talking a physical release.

 

You can't just convert work that isn't yours, just because you can.

Yes, Ishar III was coming for the Jag. It was released also for the 3DO.

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That is true. I would never really advocate piracy. No. But, there are people that have ported copyrighted titles to the Jag. I will not name names. So, Lost Dragon, you are correct on that statement. I am talking about making new home-brew games from scratch, of course. Plus, it would have helped to make commercial ports by the actual developers for the Jag, no doubt.

Edited by DegasElite
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Yep, I don't think we need name names with regards to who ported what from where to Jaguar, when they had no legal right to do so, or those who did total conversions they had no legal right to do or even finished off code they had no legal right to be in possession of..

 

 

Enough egos in Jaguar community as is who want websites and publications to cover and praise their work, with little or no regards for the morality if what they are doing, all I will say is, it has caused a lot if I'll feelings among the industry coders i have spoken to from the ST/Amiga era...

 

Homebrew of course is a totally different matter, but involves a lot more work, hence you don't see quite so much of it, it seems.

 

Maybe if the likes of Custodian and Xenon 2, both legally ported,sell well enough, more ST era ports will follow?

 

I know Piko has plans for Venus The Flytrap, has bought rights to Imagine back catalogue, Switchblade also acquired..

 

But which Falcon only games are worth considering?.

Perhaps, you have a point about the Falcon ports. But, I would like to see more original, non-copyrighted work go into a home-brew title. Possibly, someone could really whip up something nice in Raptor BASIC+. I am sure that someday, somehow, someone will whip up a 3D engine for the Jag for home-brewers. I know it would be myriads of lines of code. But, one can dream, right? Thanks. :)

Edited by DegasElite
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http://justclaws.atari.org/jagudome/towerview.html

 

Gives an indication of how long a Falcon port to Jaguar might take or at least did in this case.

 when atari was first developing the jaguar after dropping the panther, what i was told was that the unit was going to be sorta compatible with the falcon, so that the games when ported over, did not have to be extensively reprogrammed for a proprietary jag only unit. jack said no, he wanted a unit that no one could put games on, without going through atari license agreements. he feared developers could bypass atari, and have a working jag game converted from the falcon or ST. which in my mind would be awesome.

 by making the unit with out enough ram, and proprietary, it was title starved. and of course, that was the history of jacks atari. we see today, there are those clever enough, to see that there is some compatibility there, and port st games over to the jaguar anyways.

 they are not 64 bit, but nether was theme park or cannon fodder. i do not know how far atari went with this discussion of compatibility, it seemed not to have lasted very long, along with making the jag lynx compatible.

VIDEO 61 & ATARI SALES
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22735 Congo St. NE, Stacy, MN 55079
651-462-2500

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:) I'm anything but a tech head, but my very limited understanding is the Falcon's DSP is far more powerful than that in the Jaguar, but Jaguar has it's own key advantages, hardware wise?, so would it be straight forward-osh to take tasks running on Falcon DSP and move them onto Jaguar specific hardware?.

 

I have been very impressed by DML's Falcon work on Quake 2, but that seems custom written for Falcon hardware with a lot more Ram than Jaguar has...so not sure what hurdles trying to do something similar on Jaguar would present?

 

I was once following the attempt to bring something along lines of 3DO Road Rash to the Jaguar, but rather than head in 1 fixed direction, that project seemed to spin wildly off into possibility of bringing a Wipeout type game to Jaguar and it seemed more technical chat than building anything that could be put out there, Game Engine wise, for someone to build a full game around.

 

The homebrew scene, Atari wise, has often struck me as a bit..'Elitist', but that seems part n parcel of the more unsavoury aspects of the wider Atari community, people wanting to keep material of all types to themselves, sadly more often than not.

 

 

In an ideal world, you could have people who've discovered the work around measures, texture-mapping cheats etc that commercial Jaguar coders from the day didn't have the luxury of finding, due to commercial deadlines, sharing ideas etcwith those commercial coders behind game engines such as those powering WTR, Skyhammer, Iron Solider 2 etc etc

 

 

But from what i've seen, people like Mike Diskett, Jonathan Court etc, UK coders who dare pop their head out and say i worked on....get shouted down by a few weak dogs barking.

 

Rebellion get slagged off based on C.Flag 2 and fact they hadn't watched the Alien/Predator films prior to developing the game-Erm, that's what Andrew Whittaker was on hand for, plus, hello? anyone played Konami's Aliens coin-op? or Sega's Alien 3:The Gun coin-op? not exactly faithful to the film.

 

 

Probe described as lazy for the Primal Rage CD port etc etc.

 

Fanboys with little attempt to understand the very harsh world of commercial development on a failed format, it's hard enough to get coders, artists to talk about Jaguar development as is.

 yes the falcon was more powerful. but i was also told that the falcon was going to be the official developers machine. then one day it was not. supposedly there is some sort of ram swap that was developed, to offset the limited ram jack stuck the jaguar with.

 

 if you ever took apart just about anything from jacks atari, you will see in the beginnings, regardless if its a cart, or a platform, there are lots of support electronics on board, as time goes by, it seemed no matter what it was, a cart, or a platform, you saw less and less electronic component support on the boards.

 

 he spent far more time and money cutting costs on just about any unit regardless of what it was, then developing new programs to support  the hardware.

 

 each unit was carefully studied all of the time, to see where they could shave a penny off of a cart, by eliminating a resistor, a chip, or just about anything.

 

 it got so bad, that on the last shipment of the XE game necromancer that i got from atari, the plastic in the shell, was so soft, if you were strong enough, you could crush it. i sent them back immediately.

 

 same was said about the last batch of 7800 controllers i got from them. the fire button clicker boards, the clickers looked like actual copper, not tempered steel. the reason why i found this out, is because within days i was flooded with new 7800 joysticks returns, where the customers were complaining that the fire buttons went flat already after just a few hours of game play.

 

 i took one apart to see, that is what i found, got on the phone and got them recalled from my venders. sent them back. after that, most stuff by then i received from atari, had no boxes, and were just tossed in boxes and shipped to me.

 

 the last 300 7800's i got from atari, the plastic was so weak and brittle, and the mother boards so thin and weak, that people were breaking the shells just getting carts in and out of the machine, they had to take the carts out as careful as possible, because the boards were so weak and thin.

 

 so sent them back to. if atari had spent more time and effort on supporting their platforms, than trying to cut costs, they actually may have survived.

 

 

 this obsession drained away talent from supporting the systems.

VIDEO 61 & ATARI SALES
www.atarisales.com
22735 Congo St. NE, Stacy, MN 55079
651-462-2500

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@Video 61Jack's attitude seems to pre-empt that of Sony's with the PS2 and PS3 hardware, starve the damn things of Ram, make them as difficult as you can for developers to get the best from them, as you only wanted your selected 'Dream Team' developers onboard...

 

I remember talking to Peter C, from Audiogenic after reading old ST Format magazine quote from Peter saying how keen he was to start developing on Jaguar, Atari simply SNUBBED Audiogenic, saying they were only interested in the Big Name publishers...utter madness.

 

 

Early development kits comprised of a Falcon, did they not for Jaguar, these later changed to PC's?

 

 

Somewhat ironic for Jack T. then (and it's fantastic to hear another voice confirm he was 'still on board' Atari by time of Jaguar, some experts claim otherwise...)...that so many developers did indeed end up bypassing the Jaguar's custom chipsets, porting code over to the familar 68000 instead as it was far quicker, easier and cheaper, but in Atari's camp, it at least got product to retail a lot quicker.

 

Games like:

 

Dragon:Bruce Lee Story, Fever Pitch, Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder, Flashback, Syndicate, Theme Park, Pitfall:M.A, Baldies, Primal Rage, Zool 2,Dino Dudes, Raiden  etc never really did the system any favours in terms of showcasing what it was capable of.

 

 

Doom, I.S I and II, AVP, Skyhammer, Zero 5, Hoverstrike:S.E, Battlemorph, did but were too few in number.

 

 

It would be nice to see things like Ishar,Llamazap, Steel Talons, Moon Games,Ultimate Arena (yes i looked into a few Falcon games)...moved onto Jaguar.

 Ishar would have been awesome. all that i can remember is that , one day it was the falcon, then it got dumped, and i heard the word PC a lot. yes if atari would have supported proper development, they could have come up with some winners. no matter the size of the developers, one day a small one will come up with a winner.

VIDEO 61 & ATARI SALES
www.atarisales.com
22735 Congo St. NE, Stacy, MN 55079
651-462-2500

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@BlackCatz40:

 

 

Regarding the Jaguar 2MB Ram issue:

 

Not sure IF your aware, but concept wise, Highlander started out as a beat em up, using SGI characters, a la Rise Of The Robots, but this was abandoned as soon as developers realised you couldn't do this justice on a system with as they put it, a mere 2Mb of Ram...

I have heard that Rise of the Robots was supposed to be released for the Jag. Yeah. It was also not really too much more expensive to up the RAM on the Jag. Atari were just cutting corners, that's all, without thinking that the Jag was being undermined as a result.

Edited by DegasElite
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Don't get me wrong, but I like the way Highlander looks. I just don't know if it would have fared better as its previous concept as a beat-'em-up title. It might have done better that way, but there were so many titles like that in the 1990s. There would have been stiff competition, especially with Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. It just needed more. Atari were just being cheap.

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Don't get me wrong, but I like the way Highlander looks. I just don't know if it would have fared better as its previous concept as a beat-'em-up title. It might have done better that way, but there were so many titles like that in the 1990s. There would have been stiff competition, especially with Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. It just needed more. Atari were just being cheap.

It wouldn't have fared better. Not under Lore design. They seemed to be another grab the money and slop something together crew.

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