Starcat

Hi Al! The forums were invisible to guests for a few days and this restriction has been lifted. Guests can now read the forums, just cannot post (which is true of all the forums here on AtariAge). ..Al 1013224[/snapback] Great to hear that! So it's again as it always was. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Freedom? I wouldn't call that freedom. You can't read JS2 when you are not a member. If you are a member you have to post enough to stay a member, even if you have nothing to say. You are basically forced to post. At least some people (including me) don't care enough about the forum to do that, so they can't read any posts. It has been that way for months or years. Now that Atariage decided to make the jag forum invisible to those who are not signed up (which is nothing that I support, but I can understand it, as a lot of people seem to read it just to be able to badmouth it on JS2), you claim that Atariage was the bad forum where you had no freedom? It’s just another way of self defense. But I can understand why Gorf feels the way he does about JS2. Just the word freedom he used is misplaced in this case, at least in my vocabulary. On Atariage, I can post what I want, whenever I want, and I don't need to do anything to earn the right to read or post. Lately you need to sign up to do that, but beyond that you don't have to do anything. He probably prefers JS2, because his pals are over there and because people praise his work, instead of criticising it. That's just the normal thing to do I guess. You always go where you feel more welcome. Supportive words always make you feel more welcome. I can understand that very well. It's the same reason I don't visit JS2. I don't like my work to be badmouthed, flamed for no reason, but the fun of it and I don't like it when people spread lies about me. And I'm tired of reading junk like that or protecting myself and correcting lies. I don’t want to fight all day. I got tired of that years ago. And here on Atariage I don't have to fight. On the net, freedom is just as good as the moderators that protect it. Abusing this freedom by flaming others or spreading lies about them, is something they have to prevent, otherwise freedom turns into a monarchy, where only the king is free. Personally I don't have the time or interest to post or even read JS2, there is so much junk that is said over there, it would just get me down. All this is just a hobby and in the end, it's not important at all. I have plenty things I can do with my time and all are better than wasting them with message on a webforum that just try to make me angry. I just develop Jaguar games for fun and when the fun ends the development ends. So I guess I do everyone a favor, who is still looking forward to one of my projects, when I ignore some of the fools on the net, who have a blast at lying and badmouthing the efforts of others. That way they can't get me demotivated, which means higher chances for me to continue my project work as well. I know others who care more about what is said, are often down and frustrated and I at least try to get motivated again, to keep some of the most promising Jaguar projects alive. Of course I know this message will be stolen from here and reposted on JS2 anyway, so they can again have a blast at dissecting my words and rearranging them in random order, kind of like those funny anagram generators. (Ever tried those? really funny) But I don't care about that. I can't prevent it and I don't have to read the results anyway. To me Atariage is THE Atari forum out there. More than that. Atariage has become the home of the Atari scene for many years now. Keep up the good work and don't let anybody badmouth that effort. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Haven't had much time to post lately, but I guess it's better late than never. Congrats on the release! Regards, Lars.

Hi! Yes, shipping with air mail is included already. Regards, Lars.

Hi folks! JagMIND is available again. JagMIND Website The game is almost identical to the ejagfest version, except for some minor changes, slightly faster loading times at startup and different highscore entries. The overlay was only included in the limited edition though. But it's not needed to play anyway, as the controls are simple and explained in the game itself. The price was slightly reduced compared to the ejagfest edition too. Enjoy. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I can't speak for others, but as soon as compact flash is there, that will be at least for my games the medium of choice. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Thanks LanDi! Nice to hear that it is useful to you. The lib is mainly intented to give beginners an easier start on the Jag. It's a bit outdated, but still does the job I guess. (3-4 years old now) Once you understood all the basics the best way would be to write your own code, that suits your projects best. TXG/MNX, yes, that's a main problem of the OP. It corrupts it's object list and wants a new list 60/50 times a sec, which means you always have to rebuild a list or copy a prebuild list. Sadly you can't copy a long object list during the VBL, so you have to prepare a new list before the VBL. If your code is too slow, you end up with black screens (if you are lucky) or complete OP crashes that require a full system reset. Many Atari examples use prebuild lists that are very small (usually one bitmap object + branch and stop) or they hard coded a certain object list that is always created. You don't have the blackout problems or crash problems that way, but the problem is, you can't do much with it either. It's only really suitable if you want to go for a framebased approach. But that way you skip all the useful OP features and have to do it all in software. The approach I use is actually the same most people use, including Native. Actually they even use the same gpu build routine. It's simply the most straightforward idea and gives the best flexibility to the programmer, while still offering the best speed. The downside is, your code needs to be fast enough to run at 60/50 frames per sec. For all performance intense games I highly suggest a frame based approach though. Where you have one fullscreen bitmap object that is copied every VBL. In that case you can even use the Atari code as I said. And for example program the blitter to do what the OP would have done otherwise. That way you are not limited to a framerate. Even 25 frames or less would be no problem. Which means you win a lot of performance for caculations or other things. And it's the only way for CPU intense games. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Somehow a lot of your posts are confusing me. You seem to repeat things others said before and think you have to throw terms into the discussion and explain them in a strange way, even though most people know them for years. And for those who don't know them, there are countless sites on the net to explain them correctly and understandable. Also your talk about what the Jaguar can do or what it can't do or how it should be done is really misplaced. You don't need to explain what the Jaguar is to the coders on this board. And those topics have been discussed a thousand times by people who actually did 3D coding for example, so most fans know those answers as well. People like Sym or Atariowl are the remaining Jag 3D gods. You don't need to explain to them how things work. Also the Jaguar doesn't need any additional hardware to do 3D, it just needs skilled people who want to do it. If there are no people to support it, even the best hardware add on would be useless. And a ram cart doesn't help much with 3D at all. It doesn't make calculations faster, and doesn't give the Jaguar a higher bus bandwidth either. Probably all 3D games on the Jag use Z buffering I think. Your explaination is not exactly wrong, but it's more complex than it needs to be. Z buffering is simply to make sure that polygons that are behind others don't get drawn in front of them. If you don't use Z buffering, you get the typical clipping errors you could see in tomb raider 1 for example, when you stand in front of a wall and it looks like you could go through it, as platforms or passages behind that wall get drawn, though the wall should be hiding them. And Z buffering is really mainly used to avoid those clipping errors as I mentioned. If you only want to render the visible polygons of a scene, there are many better approaches than just Z buffering and with Z buffering alone you don't get far either. Btw, the Jaguar Blitter actually has an option for z buffering, so you don't need a ram add-on for that. Regards, Lars.

Hi! If the CD boots flawlessy and even plays the cinepak correctly, you are close to a good copy already. I would assume it's rather a problem of your JagCD or the media you use. I never had to change any settings. Juse select "copy disc" that's all I need to select. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Actually I would suggest NTI cd maker. I never saw a program that could copy all kind of cds so easily and it does JagCDs perfectly for me. You might also get it done with other programs too, but I never had much luck with others. At least not if you want a perfect copy. I am working on new Jag games, but I don't know the group you are reffering to I think. By following the link in my signature you get to the site of my upcoming graphics adventure project for the Jaguar and other systems. Regards, Lars.

Hi! It's wicked fast with the VR though... sometimes you forget your playing on the Jag.... and wonder (Wow.... if Martin can program this... what else could he have done!) 995065[/snapback] Yeah, what freaked me out about that game was he programmed that in six months, by himself and that's his first and only Jaguar game. Fricken amazing! 995500[/snapback] I guess, that's the different between the coding elite and the average coder trying to do a game. The elite get amazing stuff done in rather little time, while others spend years and merely reach the average quality level. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Actually there was a moderate amount of texture mapping in I-War But certainly frame rates were pretty poor 995159[/snapback] Really? I haven't finished I-War, just played a few levels, but I never had such low framerates. I never had any problems. I think Phase Zero qualifies just as well as AvP or Doom does. And actually even more, as you basically have 3d coordinates for the landscape at least. You have X/Z the position on the playfield and you have the height Y. So I think you could call it a 3D engine, just not a polygon based one. Phase Zero has got great visuals and is very fast, too. But of course you can't compare heightmap and polygon engines with each other. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I know this is supposed to be a fun poll, but it still seems a bit strange. None of the options is likely to happen, except for Eerievale and most are actually entirely impossible due to techincal or copyright reasons. I also don't see what sense it makes to include a title that is going to happen, among a bunch of games a lot of Jag fans always wanted to have, but will never get. But of course as a fun poll, the result isn't really important. I think I'm voting for Native. It would be a great game if Duranik had decided to finish it in 97. Regards, Lars.

Hi! There is no code you need to crack to backup your Jaguar CDs. The only thing it takes is a good cd writer and a good software. As Jaguar CDs are multisession audio, you need to copy them exacty as they are with error correction turned off. This is also why you need a good writer and a software that allows this, because any read error or corrected read error ruins the backup. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Exactly. In my opinion the VR mode is the best of the game too. It's really fast and it really has amazing textured models for a Jag game. Just keep in mind the lynx model in classic mode, and you could play the game on it Or the bosses in the VR mode... Also great. That's the way decent 3d models should look like on the Jag. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I know different revisions of BIWN, not sure which exactly they were, but I know they didn't change the graphics engine during the project and didn't fix the problems in any version I have seen. The reason I even mentioned the PSX was just, because I think it's funny how people blame decisions of the development teams on the hardware as long as it's not the system they like. When you see a bad 3d game on the Jag, you say the coders were bad. When you see a bad 3d game on the PSX, you imply that it's a fault of the system If a team writes a 3d engine, where warping textures can occur due to the method they used, it's not a fault of the hardware, that's all I meant to say. I certainly haven't played all PSX games out there and with more than 10k titles released worldwide, I guess hardly anybody ever has. Without doubt there are thousands of bad titles released for it, so it's not difficult to find awful games for it. In my own collection I have some of the better games though and there are really just a hand full of games where you can see a bit of texture warping and those all werey early titles like alien trilogy or ridge racer. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I could comment one some of the replys, but I'm tried of correcting urban legends about certain technical aspects of systems or games. Especially because nobody cares about the truth anyway, so I'll just let you believe whatever you want. I fully agree with Atariowl about BIWN, though. Actually I never understood why people were raving about it being so impressive graphics wise... Okay, you are walking through "a city", which was something you couldn't do in many games back in 94 or 95. But what is it really that you are walking through actually? A bunch of blocks with very repetive and average quality textures. And while textures aren't the Jaguar's strongest point, there really isn't much more graphically impressive to that game. The polygon counts on screen are minimal compared to other Jag games. And Atariowl is totally right about the engine being far from bug free... Clipping is bad, you often get into situations where you look through buildings, the camera angle is fixed and annoying, there are no doors, you walk through the walls to get into a different room and as Atariowl said already the texture warping is terrible, worse than in any PSX game (and I remember some people having prejudices against the PSX and flaming it because some early games also had slightly warping textures). It might not be fair to compare BIWN with finished games as it's far from being finished, but for what it is, I think the myth of BIWN is impressing more people than the actual visuals. Although that seems to be true for many unfinished or rare games out there. I also agree with Fredifredo, IS2 and BM are a totally different league than hoverstrike. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Reply sent. Regards, Lars.

Hi! These are "docs", but not the Jaguar development manual. They won't help you much if you want to get into Jaguar programming. (Actually not at all, just interesting for collectors.) Just wanted to make sure nobody is dissapointed. Regards, Lars.

Hi! To me it's definately Iron Soldier 2, Battlemorph and Missile Command 3D so far. All three games were really fast and had amazing 3D graphics on the Jag, with MC3D, probably having the best textured 3D models I ever saw on the Jag. Zero5 had a fast 3D engine too, but I never played it enough or saw enough of it to really comment on it. It certainly is a lot better than some of the other engines on the Jag. And I definately prefer a fast 8-bit color engine, than a slow 16-bit color 3D engine if the games look the same And as you just see the ships in zero5 most of the time, they don't look worse than the models in most other Jag 3d engines, even though it's just 8-bit. Of course not every 3d engine is the same and they all have limitations, which makes them difficult to compare, but the three ones I mentioned first are all amazing and obviously quite flexible 3D engines with high polygon count, some texturemapping (or even full) and are very fast too. So to me that makes them the winners. Regards, Lars.

Hi folks! Just wanted to point those who are still looking for a copy of JagMIND to ebay. An order that was still awaiting payment was canceled recently and got available again. As there seemed to be several people interested I decided to give everybody the same chance of getting it, by putting it on ebay. It's the unit number 42. JagMIND No. 42 on Ebay Regards, Lars.

Hi! The most obvious limitation or problem (if you want to call it that way) of cry is, the limited colors. As Matthias said, cry is optimised for easy access to the brightness values, which means 8-bits are used for brightness, leaving only 8-bit for color. So you have 256 colors with 256 brightness levels. Of course 16-bit color (cry) is 16-bit (rgb) color you might say. The problem is, that the cry colors are different to those of rgb. And they can look quite different if your original graphics are optimised for rgb, which is what most screen graphics are. So if I were you, I would only use cry if I really need easy access to the brightness values of the graphics or when I want to do shading. If you have prerendered graphics or in general graphics with a lot of colors and you want the colors to be as close to the original colors as possible on the Jag, then rgb is the only option. Just an example to illustrate the problem, I once had a water background in a level of a game and while it looked great on PC, the dark blue turned into a very ugly purple, almost dark pink when using Jag cry. So it can happen that you really end up with quite different colors, if you happen to choose one that cry just doesn't have. However if you don't care about those differences that might appear, then cry is fine too. It's just a matter if you want your graphics to be exactly the way you created them. Btw, early Eerievale versions actually used cry, however the graphics just looked awful compared to rgb, so I switched to rgb quite fast. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Actually he doesn't have everything (yet) Otherwise I'd like a look at the Jaguar version of Eerievale for inspiration Maybe he has the instant version of the game that can be played before it's finished... Okay, I know, I watched too much Spaceballs lately. When it comes to add-ons, Compact Flash is currently my most wanted add on. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Who cares about Checkered Flag 2? As if the first part wasn't bad enough on the Jag. Compact Flash is a thousand times better! Can't wait for to hear more news about it. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Cool stuff! Thanks for sharing. What I didn't understand yet is, where do you specify the address the unpacker is loaded to? (in GPU or DSP Ram) "d0 is a flag =0 that means, the routine will come back only when the file has been unpacked, if <>0, the routine will come back immediatly, the unpacking processus run in parallel !!" Also could you explain the use of the D0 register again? So did I get this right, when you set d0 to zero and unpack the data, the 68k won't return from the subroutine, until the risc routine finished decompressing? And if I want to run the 68k and the decompressing routine in parallel I write a value different to zero into d0 before decompressing? I didn't do performance tests yet, but I assume it's a lot faster than the original atari lzw packer? Because when comparing the packed files of the two, the atari one always had a slightly better result. (only a few K each time, but still) But of course if this one is a lot faster, it's worth it. Regards, Lars.