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could the atari jaguar ever handle the quake engine??


Andreaus44

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i just started getting curious while playing avp this morning.. and this question popped into my mind .. could it?? i just wanna know just for shits and giggles because in theory i would think with the hardware specs it could be able to but .. the jag is more of a sprite machine than built for full blown 3d. also will there ever be anything more than the movie of dactyl joust? was it based off of cartrige or cd?

allright thats it

later

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Just look at Hover Strike CD or Skyhammer for the sort of frame rates you can expect from a fully 3D, fully texture-mapped Jag game. Those frame rates worked for games where you piloted a big tough vehicle that could absorb a lot of damage and fought similarly slow-moving enemies, but for a fast-paced game like Quake it would be hopelessly inadequate.

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BTW on which minimum system specs (clockwise) Quake runs decent on PC?

I think it was about 75-100MHz to run at minimum detail - at least, that was what we looked for when playing across the network at school :D However, the question's kinda irrelevant as you're comparing apples and oranges...the Jag 'only' runs at around 25MHz but because of the nature of the processors and the way things are set up you can achieve performance well in advance of a 25MHz PC with comparable amounts of RAM and storage space in the kinds of applications it was designed for.

 

Add to that the way the Jag does things (mmmm, multithreading :D) and you'll find it ridiculously difficult to make any sensible comparisons as to what's possible or not, right up until someone tries it.

 

But given that iD wrote the game, already had Jag coding experience and opined that it was possible, I'd be inclined to agree with them :P

 

Stone

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I know that the processing power of a risc chip isn't comparable to a same clocked "normal" cpu. However, it would beinteresting if the Jag could surpass the processing power of an 75-100 MHz PC with proper programming (means extensive use of parallel processing).

@Stone:Its just a matter of finding an equivalent to express the Jags speed through PC specs- if you have that you can compare even apples and oranges ;-)

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If the SNES can handle Doom (reduced to a tiny window, but heck it is still doom), I think the Jag can handle a toned down version of Quake.

The SNES couldn't handle Doom. That's why there was a SuperFX coprocessor chip in each cartridge.

 

And if agradeneu doesn't see Hover Strike or Skyhammer as representative of how fast Quake would run on the Jag, then there's simply no reasoning with him

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I know that the processing power of a risc chip isn't comparable to a same clocked "normal" cpu. However, it would beinteresting if the Jag could surpass the processing power of an 75-100 MHz PC with proper programming (means extensive use of parallel processing).

@Stone:Its just a matter of finding an equivalent to express the Jags speed through PC specs- if you have that you can compare even apples and oranges ;-)

 

I believe about a little over a year ago on JI2 T-bird said the Jag's overall processing ability was about equivalent to a 100mhz pentium. But this was over a year ago, so my memory might be in error.

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The Jag has no dedicated 3D hardware.

 

The Playstation which is a 33MHZ RISC processor does, which is why it can outperform the Jag.

 

Only in the very earliest days of 3D gaming did PCs perform most of the 3D work via the CPU rather than the graphics cards. This was around the era of things like X-Wing in the early 90s. By the mid 90s, gfx chips started having dedicated 3D hardware and APIs like Direct3D were coming out.

 

If the Jag could do Quake then AvP wouldn't run at 3FPS and iD's port of Doom wouldn't have been at extra-low-resolution.

 

Battlesphere is able to maintain 30fps because the background is simple, there is little to no texturing, and the ships are usually far enough away that you can pull level-of-detail tricks to reduce the poly count to something tiny.

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However Quake was released before the 3DFX/3D-cards era. A Open GL patch was released later.

BTW I heard that there is a Quake version for Falcon. How does itr compare.? If its decent, then I guess that the JAG coulde do Quake without much problems, as the Jag is superior to the Falcon in GFX.

 

@Zylonbane: If reasoning is dogmatizing than Im glad that Im not up to your definition of "reasoning".

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@mos6507: A 100 Mhz PC has no dedicated 3D hardware too.

 

Besides that: it is an exaggeration, regarding the Jag.

The Jag might not support Texturemapping, but its Risc chips and architecture allegedly makes it capable of creating 3D polygons. Taken this, the Jag of course HAS 3D hardware.

Otherwise a game like IS 2 wouldnt be possible to create.

 

AvP is slow because of Rebelloins inability to gain high frame-rates on the Jag even with this rather simple raycaster. On the other hand they tortured the Jag with High Res 16-bit Textures, which were awesome back then and no other system was capable to achieve this.

 

Doom was ported in a relative short time. Carmack claimed that he would do the programming totally different, as his Jaguar expierence was fresh back then when he had started programming on doom. Besides that, ID claimed that its possible to create Quake on the Jag, and they must know as they are the experts.

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If the Jag could do Quake then AvP wouldn't run at 3FPS and iD's port of Doom wouldn't have been at extra-low-resolution.

 

As Agrandeu said, this was their first time on the Jag.

 

In the JEO Battlesphere updates as it was being developed, Scato claimed with what they had learned about the Jag they could get the Jag to do Doom at 320x240 at 30fps 'EASILY'. This is paraphrased from memory but I'm sure the rez I gave and the speed are correct, and that the word EASILY was used. But there is a chance I could be mistaken.

 

What I remember as the main problem, is the high speed video memory to do something like Quake. The Jag may not have adequate video RAM to throw the textured polygons to the screen fast enough. I think the analogy was that if a Jag had the same amount of memory as a Pentium 100, whatever that would be depending on the machine. Say 32mb and 1mb video ram. The Jag would match it or beat it in performance. This is my memory and understanding of what I read in posts on JI2 and other places.

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i dont get it. thunderbird says that. but id software. i mean. freaking ID SOFTWARE. cant make doom work good. but can make wolfenstein 3d make top notch.  

 

who to believe...i believe john carmack. the best programmer in the world.  :ponder: . but i might be wrong.

 

Well, I think Doom runs great on the Jag. But if you don't think it works good, you gotta remember it was their first time programming on the Jag. They were just learning it.

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The Jag did 2D well and had the hardware for it. Jag Quake would not have been GL or 3D enhanced but I bet it could have been done and done well. I don't think it would have ever been mentioned if it was not possible. I think people are confusing what they would see on the Jag - it would be the non 3D version. The Jag just does not have any 3D hardware. Would have been nice to have seen them try that though.

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