Gunstar Posted May 10, 2013 Share Posted May 10, 2013 just to be safe, set the write speed as low as possible, x2 being optimal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitari Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 Thanks Gunstar it worked perfectly! What a cool game, kind of like a 3D defender in reverse and slower pace. Ok it's not like defender. I think this game needs an overlay as I can't seem to keep everything in my mind. In the 5 mins I had to play it before Postman Pat took precedence over the TV, I managed to find a pilot, he knocked on the door of the craft (?) and I killed him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 RTFM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitari Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 I didn't know there was a F manual!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 manual.pdf in the original archive, post #1 of this thread, but it's as easy as 1, 2, 3 :-) Controls : • Arrows: turn • A : accelerate • C : brake • B : fire • 1 : land • 2 : enable/disable shields • 3 : open/close airlock • 7 : booster • * and #: self-destruct • pause : pause the game 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 I didn't know there was a F manual!! Yeah, I think "F" stands for "Flight" in this case. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitari Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 manual.pdf in the original archive, post #1 of this thread, but it's as easy as 1, 2, 3 :-) Controls : • Arrows: turn • A : accelerate • C : brake • B : fire • 1 : land • 2 : enable/disable shields • 3 : open/close airlock • 7 : booster • * and #: self-destruct • pause : pause the game I'm sure I can memorise 1,2,3 and 7! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitari Posted May 11, 2013 Share Posted May 11, 2013 Yeah, I think "F" stands for "Flight" in this case. of course! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitari Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 Got up to level 5. It seems a bit of a panic to find button 7 when mothership appears! If you're still working on it may I suggest something interesting in the sky? I was thinking of the shape of a crescent of a gas giant planet (like Jupiter). Also the terrain is very much the same after a long while maybe some exotic trees or acid lakes? Also the aliens seem really detailed but the pilots are a load of pixels! Nevertheless this is a marvellous game and actually commanded an hour of my very busy schedule! All the best Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 (edited) No need to panic when the mothership appears, if you miss it, it will be back very soon to give you another shot. I think he said he was done with this one, so it is what it is. Basically what you get with the original 8-bit game, with 3d tunnel and terrain, not much else is updated but slightly graphically. But maybe down the line he'll make a sequel? With some of the improvements you've suggested? I'd change some of the graphics myself too, but it's the author's decision. I'd suggest a better artist, but the Alien looks good, so it's not for lack of a good artist, just like the beta place-holders were good enough for them to leave them in. But it's really nit-picking for such a great game GIVEN to us all. Edited May 13, 2013 by Gunstar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitari Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 On level one I collected 16 pilots and couldn't find the mothership.. then I RTFlightM as Sh3 suggested and found out that the mothership is in the sky! Good point. If he did add some of my suggestions (or didn't) and made an official glass mastered release for sale....I'd buy it! (So long as it came with an overlay ) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitari Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 In terms of overall graphics and gameplay this is just as good as Cybermorph and the like. There really are 99 different levels? Took me an hour to get to level 5. That's nearly 20 hours of gameplay! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrTypo Posted May 13, 2013 Author Share Posted May 13, 2013 Thanks for the nice comments everyone. The sprites (pilots & ships) are blocky since they are only 32x32. It is because of anticipated memory constraints. Well, in the end there is some memory left but I prefer to leave it at that. I have many many ideas for improvement but not enough time. About the levels: there are about 9 kinds of terrain, 6 colors schemes and the day/night cycle (one day is about 6 levels if I remember right). The diffculty reach its maximum at level 20. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isgoed Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 That explains a lot. I was at lvl 22, and was only racing through the landscape like a hunted pig, searching for survivors while trying to avoid any firing from turrets or ufo's. There was just no time to return fire without being killed, and I was thinking... oh my, and there are 99 levels? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 That explains a lot. I was at lvl 22, and was only racing through the landscape like a hunted pig, searching for survivors while trying to avoid any firing from turrets or ufo's. There was just no time to return fire without being killed, and I was thinking... oh my, and there are 99 levels? It's "old-school" gaming - just repeat the level until the player dies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper_Eye Posted May 15, 2013 Share Posted May 15, 2013 Can MacOSX users make JagCD's yet? If so, how and with what program? I read something somewhere about a dummy .wav file that someone created that the JagCD looks for, but it's been a while since I last tried. I have a couple skunks but, as someone who primarily uses a combination of a Linux desktop and a Mac, I was curious enough to see if I could produce the .cdi and burn it. In Linux I used wine to run jiffi. The fonts in the GUI are unintelligible so I used the command-line: wine JiFFi.Exe -i jag.cof -o output -uls This produced the .cdi without issue. Now when it comes to burning... cdi can be converted into a nero format and burned with the native Nero application but I don't have that garbage installed. Most of my burning needs are met by my favorite native burning software K3B but I turn to wine for cdi and the only burning tool I use with wine is the excellent ImgBurn. I fired it up, loaded in the cdi, burned to CD at 2x speed. I did not use any special settings, just load and burn. The result worked in my Jag perfectly. This same process should work using wine on OS X. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted May 15, 2013 Share Posted May 15, 2013 Hyper_Eye, if you ever feel the urge to write up what you did with a few screen shots I think that kind of info would be a handy resource for our site. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper_Eye Posted May 15, 2013 Share Posted May 15, 2013 I was able to resolve the font issues in the GUI using winetricks to install corefonts: winetricks corefonts With that the GUI seems to work 100%. So there isn't much to document. 1) Run the ImgBurn setup package with wine. 2) Install corefonts with wintricks (winetricks corefonts) 3) Run jiffi (wine JiFFI.Exe) 4) Open the .cof with JiFFI and generate "ULS boot .cdi" 5) Load .cdi with ImgBurn and burn (default settings work fine). Burning slowly may be beneficial to the life of the Jag CD. Having resolved the font issue I am going to try to wrap these in wineskin packages for Mac users. This will allow them to download and run them as if they were native apps. BTW, ImgBurn is an alternative to DiscJuggler for Windows users as well. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K3V Posted May 16, 2013 Share Posted May 16, 2013 Fun game. Impressive! Thanks for sharing it. Any chance of Memory Track support in the future to save your progress? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted May 16, 2013 Share Posted May 16, 2013 (edited) This is the future, it is now. But the only thing that could be saved is high score and level, and since you can choose to start your next game at any level (or the last one you played), the only thing that the memory track could do is save a high-score. And since you would have to take a picture of the high score screen to show the world anyway, you can just take a picture of your final score before you restart or power down. I know the original Rescue On Fractalus didn't save level either, and no need, for the same reasons, though it may have saved the high score, but I really don't think it did even that (my 8-bit is broken atm, so I can't look). Just like an arcade game, a high-score is for that session, not an ongoing game over several sessions, so if you want an all-time high score, you will have to play a long session without dying... Edited May 16, 2013 by Gunstar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted May 16, 2013 Share Posted May 16, 2013 I was able to resolve the font issues in the GUI using winetricks to install corefonts: winetricks corefonts With that the GUI seems to work 100%. So there isn't much to document. 1) Run the ImgBurn setup package with wine. 2) Install corefonts with wintricks (winetricks corefonts) 3) Run jiffi (wine JiFFI.Exe) 4) Open the .cof with JiFFI and generate "ULS boot .cdi" 5) Load .cdi with ImgBurn and burn (default settings work fine). Burning slowly may be beneficial to the life of the Jag CD. Having resolved the font issue I am going to try to wrap these in wineskin packages for Mac users. This will allow them to download and run them as if they were native apps. BTW, ImgBurn is an alternative to DiscJuggler for Windows users as well. Haha, that's awesome! I always had the hunch that JiFFI would work under wine, but never had the time (or remembered) to verify. Thanks a lot for trying it out! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrazyChris Posted May 16, 2013 Share Posted May 16, 2013 Really nice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper_Eye Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 I was able to resolve the font issues in the GUI using winetricks to install corefonts: winetricks corefonts With that the GUI seems to work 100%. So there isn't much to document. 1) Run the ImgBurn setup package with wine. 2) Install corefonts with wintricks (winetricks corefonts) 3) Run jiffi (wine JiFFI.Exe) 4) Open the .cof with JiFFI and generate "ULS boot .cdi" 5) Load .cdi with ImgBurn and burn (default settings work fine). Burning slowly may be beneficial to the life of the Jag CD. Having resolved the font issue I am going to try to wrap these in wineskin packages for Mac users. This will allow them to download and run them as if they were native apps. BTW, ImgBurn is an alternative to DiscJuggler for Windows users as well. Well I have created quite the coaster pile trying to make this work on Mac. Unfortunately Wine does not have the same support for optical drives on Mac as it does on Linux. Because of this burning software does not work through Wine and that eliminates the use of ImgBurn and DiscJuggler. There is a free application called LiquidCD that supports .cdi and supposedly burns DC discs fine. It trips up on the .cdi that JiFFI spits out. The only option I could find was to rip the cdi. I tried a lot of combinations of different tools for ripping, converting, burning, etc. The combination that seems to get me the closest: 1) Rip the .cdi with cdirip (using -raw and -bin options) 2) Convert the .cue files to .toc using cueconvert 3) Burn the first session using cdrdao (with -multi flag) 4) Burn the second sessiong using cdrdao (no -multi flag) This produces a disc with matching track lengths to the disc that ImgBurn produced. All the LBA's match. It is good enough that ImgBurn verifies it against the .cdi successfully. Apparently something I can't see is off though because it does not boot in the Jag CD. I get the audio player. So this is where I'm stuck. At least I won't be making any progress before I order a new spindle of blank cd-r's. For those that are curious JiFFI worked just fine. I was even able to make a .app using wineskin. I was thinking about making it available but the package is huge at about 150MB. That sure seems like a lot of overhead for a single dialog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 Well I have created quite the coaster pile trying to make this work on Mac. Unfortunately Wine does not have the same support for optical drives on Mac as it does on Linux. Because of this burning software does not work through Wine and that eliminates the use of ImgBurn and DiscJuggler. There is a free application called LiquidCD that supports .cdi and supposedly burns DC discs fine. It trips up on the .cdi that JiFFI spits out. Yeah, the .cdi format is getting long in the tooth, especially since the version of cdi that JiFFI outputs is an older one. I guess this should be addressed at some point, but it would mean that: a) Someone will have to find a suitable format that can be written using modern software (and we're talking multi-platform here; windows, macosx and linux) b) Aforementioned format should preferably be open or be easy to figure out (from what I remember, NRG format was not as straightforward) c) Someone would have to invest a lot of time in creating coasters until everything works out ok If anyone's interested, create a cdi image using the latest JiFFI version (so it has the padding string), burn it to CD, image it up with the new format, toast it back to a CD, test it to see if it works on a real machine and upload the image somewhere so I can grab it, and also mention the exact binary you used to create the cdi. Of course it'd be better if people from different platforms grabbed that image first and burnt it so we can be 100% sure it works. I can then take a whack at it. (Did I mention i have no JagCD unit?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 In regard to ULS.... Patches Welcome.... It only took 10 years for a pixel artist to think up the solution, so with all the l33t coders lurking around here I'm sure it'll be fixed in a JiFFi 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.