Vicious Circle (Atari CoJag)?

[STGuy1040]

I'm still new to the boards so forgive me if this has been discussed before. (I did a search for this but didn't come up with any topics). I encountered a Youtube video

and the game looks really good. Since it was developed on the Jaguar hardware, and since a rom is available for Mame, I wonder if a Jag developer could make this a reality on the Jaguar console somehow?

 

I'd buy a copy! It looks like a fun fighting game!

 

Edit: fixed link

Edited November 8, 2008 by STGuy1040

[kevincal]

Well if I'm not mistaken, the CoJag is considerably more powerfull than the Jag by itself...

[STGuy1040]

Well if I'm not mistaken, the CoJag is considerably more powerfull than the Jag by itself...

 

 

Ah ok, I didn't know there was a difference in hardware. The Youtube reviewer claims it was done on Jaguar hardware but never states the hardware was enhanced. Oh well...

[Feralstorm]

I heard the Co-Jag arcade hardware bumps the 68000 of the Jaguar to a 68020 or 68030. I'm not sure what other changes/enhancements are made, but that's a pretty strong difference as-is, especially considering how much use a lot of Jag software makes of the 680x0 chip.

[+Sauron]

I heard the Co-Jag arcade hardware bumps the 68000 of the Jaguar to a 68020 or 68030. I'm not sure what other changes/enhancements are made, but that's a pretty strong difference as-is, especially considering how much use a lot of Jag software makes of the 680x0 chip.

 

I think the CoJag games included more memory plus a hard drive, if I remember correctly.

[Allpaul]

I heard the Co-Jag arcade hardware bumps the 68000 of the Jaguar to a 68020 or 68030. I'm not sure what other changes/enhancements are made, but that's a pretty strong difference as-is, especially considering how much use a lot of Jag software makes of the 680x0 chip.

 

I think the CoJag games included more memory plus a hard drive, if I remember correctly.

I think the Jag could totally do this....

[Crazyace]

It looks like the backdrop is a movie ( or anim streamed from HDD ) - apart from that it looks pretty simple to reproduce on a stock jaguar

[doctorclu]

I heard the Co-Jag arcade hardware bumps the 68000 of the Jaguar to a 68020 or 68030. I'm not sure what other changes/enhancements are made, but that's a pretty strong difference as-is, especially considering how much use a lot of Jag software makes of the 680x0 chip.

 

That sounds about right. One I have always wondered, how likely it would be to have a daughter board (cartridge slot) that would add the elements of a Co-Jag... have on that board the extended processor, more ram, and the hard drive lines.

 

But yeh Co-Jag games would be nice to have on the Jag.

[STGuy1040]

I heard the Co-Jag arcade hardware bumps the 68000 of the Jaguar to a 68020 or 68030. I'm not sure what other changes/enhancements are made, but that's a pretty strong difference as-is, especially considering how much use a lot of Jag software makes of the 680x0 chip.

 

I think the CoJag games included more memory plus a hard drive, if I remember correctly.

I think the Jag could totally do this....

 

I know nothing about Jaguar coding so I can't say for certain either way. If you removed the FMV backgrounds, and made it a Jag CD game, then it might be possible. Any Jag coders willing to comment on this?

Edited November 8, 2008 by STGuy1040

[kevincal]

I dunno, that Vicious Circle looks a bit out of the Jag's league imo... It looks just as good as Killer Instinct 1 or 2 in the arcades. I mean the Jag COULD do Vicious Circle, it just wouldn't hold up to the arcade version very well imo.

 

Area 51 was also a CoJag game and a very popular one. I remember it vividly from the arcades in the mid-late 1990's. I had no idea it was related to the Jag at all, at the time.

[viMaster]

Any Jag coders willing to comment on this?

One just did

 

It looks like the backdrop is a movie ( or anim streamed from HDD ) - apart from that it looks pretty simple to reproduce on a stock jaguar

[nonner242]

Any Jag coders willing to comment on this?

One just did

 

It looks like the backdrop is a movie ( or anim streamed from HDD ) - apart from that it looks pretty simple to reproduce on a stock jaguar

 

[Gorf]

Here is the problem.

 

Jag home console has:

 

No harddrive

 

Only 2 megs ram compared to 8

 

A 68020 running at the same clock as the J-RISC's.

And the 020 has a small internal cache but the 68k

does not...that would be a serious improvment in

performance alone.

 

The Jaguar console uses the 68k at HALF the J-RISC's

speed and no internal cache so it hammers the bus

everytime its used.

 

OR even worse for porting prospects, the coJag uses

a MIPS R1000/3000 on this particular game.

 

Can it be done? Yeah but it would not be nearly as

well done. You'd have to try to incorporate the CD

as a Harddrive and some how use 2 megs efficiently

as if you had the coJag's 8 megs.

 

I believe they switched out the 020 host's for the

MIPS host's after Area 51.

 

Even with all that, I doubt the port would be anywhere

as good as the arcade. Jag II would have handily been

able to do it and with serious improvements. ..sigh...

 

Graphically it would be fine, content wise it would have to

be cut back considerably.

Edited November 9, 2008 by Gorf

[Gregory DG]

The Jag could easily do that game (albeit without the FMV backgrounds.) Looks like nothing much more than a prerendered CG game.

[Zerosquare]

The Jag could easily do that game (albeit without the FMV backgrounds.) Looks like nothing much more than a prerendered CG game.

I've never played Vicious Circle, but if it's anything like Maximum Force, there wouldn't much left without the prerendered CG stuff... (once you look past the cool video backgrounds, it is rather shallow).

[Gregory DG]

The Jag could easily do that game (albeit without the FMV backgrounds.) Looks like nothing much more than a prerendered CG game.

I've never played Vicious Circle, but if it's anything like Maximum Force, there wouldn't much left without the prerendered CG stuff... (once you look past the cool video backgrounds, it is rather shallow).

Max Force is a gun game that relies on the FMV. Vicious Circle is a standard 2D fighting game with pre-rendered characters, like Killer Instinct. The FMV is just running in the background. There's a video in the first post in this thread that shows it.

Edited November 9, 2008 by Gregory DG

[Zerosquare]

Max Force is a gun game that relies on the FMV. Vicious Circle is a standard 2D fighting game with pre-rendered characters, like Killer Instinct. The FMV is just running in the background. There's a video in the first post in this thread that shows it.

Thanks, didn't notice it. Indeed, the video backgrounds in this game look to be purely for aesthetics.

[atarian63]

I dunno, that Vicious Circle looks a bit out of the Jag's league imo... It looks just as good as Killer Instinct 1 or 2 in the arcades. I mean the Jag COULD do Vicious Circle, it just wouldn't hold up to the arcade version very well imo.

 

Area 51 was also a CoJag game and a very popular one. I remember it vividly from the arcades in the mid-late 1990's. I had no idea it was related to the Jag at all, at the time.

'

Yep, I have an Area 51/Maximum force duo and it is cojag, I know it's more ram and a hard drive, the board is big like 16"x14" appx.

[atarian63]

Here is the problem.

 

Jag home console has:

 

No harddrive

 

Only 2 megs ram compared to 8

 

A 68020 running at the same clock as the J-RISC's.

And the 020 has a small internal cache but the 68k

does not...that would be a serious improvment in

performance alone.

 

The Jaguar console uses the 68k at HALF the J-RISC's

speed and no internal cache so it hammers the bus

everytime its used.

 

OR even worse for porting prospects, the coJag uses

a MIPS R1000/3000 on this particular game.

 

Can it be done? Yeah but it would not be nearly as

well done. You'd have to try to incorporate the CD

as a Harddrive and some how use 2 megs efficiently

as if you had the coJag's 8 megs.

 

I believe they switched out the 020 host's for the

MIPS host's after Area 51.

 

Even with all that, I doubt the port would be anywhere

as good as the arcade. Jag II would have handily been

able to do it and with serious improvements. ..sigh...

 

Graphically it would be fine, content wise it would have to

be cut back considerably.

The next in the series in Site 4 and it is PC based, (that why I don't own one).

[STGuy1040]

Any Jag coders willing to comment on this?

One just did

 

It looks like the backdrop is a movie ( or anim streamed from HDD ) - apart from that it looks pretty simple to reproduce on a stock jaguar

 

 

Whoops! My bad man!

[Gorf]

The Jag could easily do that game (albeit without the FMV backgrounds.) Looks like nothing much more than a prerendered CG game.

 

I've never seen the game in action(nor do I remember what a still of it looks like) so you

might be right but I still think the following would make a dramatic impact on the port:

 

A ) Those pre-ren CG games can be quite the memory hogs. Im sure the 8m vs the 2m of

RAM alone would have a significant impact on the game in a port to Jag. Even without the

FMV, you could eat up even a 4 meg cart pretty quickly.

 

B ) A CD would hold a lot of data but I doubt it would be fast enough to buffer in the needed

frames. The coJag has a hard drive as well which is much faster than a CD drive and the

8 megs in combination with that hd make a big leap from the Jag console to the Jag coin

op.

 

C) Don't forget the half clock quarter bus of the 68k vs the full 32 bit 020. Consequently, that

right there doubles the bit width to the DSP. In the Jaguar the DSP is only using the lower 16

bits externally. It has to. The DSP must follow the host processor's data width.

 

It might not be impossible but Im willing to bet a lot more than the FMV backgrounds would

need to be dropped from the game.

[Gorf]

The next in the series in Site 4 and it is PC based, (that why I don't own one).

 

 

Yeah you are talking another league. Varsity vs sophmore.

The coJag is quite a monster. The Jag II would have whooped

its ass handily though. A third J-RISC tooled specifically for high

level languages like C, more RAM and an 020 along with the new

blitter wher a giant leap from the last chipset. The new blitter alone

uses more silicon than the original Tom and Jerry combined .

 

It would have been a really nice machine.

[Gorf]

Ok after viewing the video more closely, you might be able to pull this off on the Jaguar

even with the animated back drops. You'd have to do some serious compression and you'd

have to rely on the RISC's alot more....but if you did the code from scratch, I think you

could do a respectible version of it. I would not use the 68k to replace the 020. I'd shut

the 68k out totally during the game play loop. Again, the RAM would be the hardest part

to deal with.

[STGuy1040]

Ok after viewing the video more closely, you might be able to pull this off on the Jaguar

even with the animated back drops. You'd have to do some serious compression and you'd

have to rely on the RISC's alot more....but if you did the code from scratch, I think you

could do a respectible version of it. I would not use the 68k to replace the 020. I'd shut

the 68k out totally during the game play loop. Again, the RAM would be the hardest part

to deal with.

 

 

This is good to hear! I don't know how difficult it would be to port this over to the Jaguar, but if any of you ever consider this as a possible venue, you have one person right here that would buy a copy (possibly even 2; one to play and one to collect).

 

This may not be the best comparison but I remember the buzz surrounding Killer Instinct 2 (albeit KI Gold on N64) when it was announced for the N64. Since the N64 was a downgraded version of the arcade hardware (I believe it was if memory serves me correctly) people wondered if the N64 game would be any good. The final product was quite impressive (and one of the reasons I still play my N64) so with some sweat and blood I bet the guys with their hands in Jag development could come up with something very similar to the arcade game. Here's hoping!

 

Edit: fixed spelling

Edited November 10, 2008 by STGuy1040

[STGuy1040]

I'm sure there isn't much else to say on this topic, but if any Jag developers decide to pick up the gauntlet and run with it, I'll be waiting with arms open and cash in hand!