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Hi folks! As I promised a few times before, I finally uploaded the new Eerievale Trailer to the Eerievale Homepage. You can find it in the "the game" section and there you find it in the "media & downloads" section. This trailer should mainly be looked at as a story teaser or a general teaser for the game, because it shows a few game environments and hints at the story, but no gameplay is shown. On Euro JagFest 2005 and previously Games Convention 2005 (a big German games show) the trailer caught a lot of positive feedback and attention and of course I don't want to hold it back any longer from you folks here on Atariage, who didn't make it to Euro JagFest. And of course even those who made it to the event are welcome to download and enjoy it again. Have fun! Regards, Lars.

Hi! It will probably be for sale in the coming weeks or so. I'm quite busy with my study right now. So once a bit of the stress is over i will sell the game on my site. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I fully agree with what you said. Most vaporware games sounded great, which makes it even worse that they didn't get finished. Although some vaporware projects are anounced exactly for that reason. Some people enjoy teasing the fans with projects that don't ever get started and never even reach a demo state. Then there are also people who try it and due to one reason or the other just don't get it finished or loose interest before they get it finished. Although I wouldn't even call that vaporware anymore, because they did something, most vaporware projects are nothing but an idea that sounds good, but never progress beyond that. About Eerievale I can just repeat what you said I too am keeping my fingers crossed. But I am very optimistic that it gets finished too. After all the work that went into it, it really would be most frustrating if it didn't get finished. Now if I only had this Compact Flash adapter already Well, at least there are enough things to be done until I can't progress without. Regards, Lars.

Hi! "CAN" is quite relative here... The Jag "CAN" raytrace a 100.000.000 polygon scene with reflections, refraction and radiosity, if you build a harddisc interface to save/load the data on/from and if you write all the software to do it and if you give it enough time (like years). What I mean is, the jag can do anything you program it to do, the question is, can the Jag do it as fast or as good as you want it to be done? Of course you can use C for GPU/DSP, if you write a compiler that can do it, or find one that can. But you can be SURE that a good assembler coder will be able to get a lot more performance out of the GPU/DSP, than he could with C. I think what GT meant was, it doesn't make much sense to code the GPU/DSP in C with the given tools if you need a lot of performance in your game. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Peter summed most of it up already. I think everybody had a really great time. I surely did. I met a lot of great new people and got some nice new ideas for Eerievale and also got some great feedback. I had a new Eerievale trailer on display, which was also shown on the german Games Convention 2005, which caught a lot of interest. I showed a new Eerievale poster, which was very good in quality to my own surprise (better than I had expected, the company that printed it did an amazing job) and I later also had a little PC demo of Eerievale on display, sadly I forgot about that until late of the event, so some people probably missed it. But most you could do was exploring the game world (over 300 screens in this demo) and talk to a few characters and solve some minor puzzles. I had JagMIND finished for the event, after one of my JagCDs died on me the night before, but I got it finished nevertheless and it was played by the visitors all over the day. Other than that I also finally had the chance to play virtual boy. Really cool machine, too bad it wasn't successful and too bad many people get headaches with it. But still a great concept. I also enjoyed many other games that day, too many to remember every one and I had a great time talking to all the great people. Too bad I didn't realize there were Eclipse people around, I was later told about that and I even talked to him, without knowing it was him. Could have been a great chat, I'm sure. Anyway. After the event Björn myself, kingcar and CD-i from the nexgam forum continued the tradiotion of a little after-party meeting at his flat, where we all sat down to play a little bit again and talk and let the great day pass by in our minds again. Björn also let us take a look into his holy games chamber, where you find all the great systems and titles and where even the ceiling is shining in magic silverlight of a thousand CDs. Now that's a gamer's room. Reminds me of how much space I have left in my room at home, to be filled with systems and games. Oh,yes. It was a great day. I'm sorry for those who missed it. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Nevertheless, on his web pages, James had expressed disappointment with the graphics at certain stages. This may of course have been referring to times when he was without an artist or had a different artist. 963665[/snapback] Yes, I was reffering to what I read on the site back in the day. Regards, Lars.

Hi folks! Now the time has finally come... Euro Jag Fest is tomorrow. I'm still busy with preparations and really excited. Still doing some final testing on JagMIND with the help of my testers. I also recieved some amazing high posters, at least it's better than I expected and will definately be some nice decoration for the location. Anyway. See you there tomorrow. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Of course it's sad that he gave up, but I don't think he intended to do vaporware. Some others did that on purpose, so even if you are dissapointed, you shouldn't put them into the same bag. I know at least one reason why he left, and some others left because of the same reason. Frustration. Most people who never tried writing a game just can't imagine how much of it takes. Especially when it comes to complex games that are plot driven, such as RPGs or Adventures. Before I started working on Eerievale I had no idea what it meant to create an adventure game either, even though I had done a lot of jag coding and project work before on other games and I had played tons of adventures games before. Still I had no idea how much work is involved. Now I know. But I see it as a great challenge and I always wanted to do an adventure game like Eerievale, so I kind of enjoy this challenge. And of course seeing how well EV is progressing it also gives me a feeling of pride and satisfaction, when I see the countless little parts of the game come together to form a whole. However, you hardly ever see hobby rpgs or adventure projects finished. Not to badmouth anything, but look into the PC homebrew adventure scene. You will find coutless tiny projects created with existing adventure kits, but most of those projects don't last more than a few weeks, until the authors run out of ripped graphics or find out how much work it is to come up with own graphics or even ideas for the game. And when they notice that two lines of plot and a few obligative puzzles aren't enough, they usually drop it. However compared to most of those projects, what James did was a whole different leaque. He tried to make a whole game on his own. With own story and plot, own graphics/sound, own game engine and everything else that a game needs. When reading comments like you see them in this thread already, to me it just seems like people are sad and frustrated that he left. I feel the same way. But from my own experience in hobby game dev, and adventure game dev which is remotely similar to RPG dev, it also seems like people don't understand how extraordinary it is to finish a complex hobby game. Esepecially good adventures and rpgs are such a rarity. You can count them on one hand, even on mass systems like PCs with millions of coders these days. It's really one thing to have an idea and working on a project, but a whole different thing to get it finished the way you imagined it. Not everybody has the time, endurance or skill that it takes. To be honest I always had the feeling as if James was too much of an perfectionist, when it came to his code... He seemed to optimise everything as much as he could, and he didn't get graphics and so on of the quality he hoped for. He also seemed to have his vision of a game and didn't want to change that. However complex games kind of develop their "own life" and ideas change during development and they have to change, some ideas might turn out to be too complex, too confusing or just might get replaced by better ideas. So in the end he wasn't as ethusiastic about the projects anymore when he saw how much work a rpg actually is and that his ideas just didn't look as good in the game as he hoped for. (He wasn't statisfied with the graphics.) And if I remember correctly a few months before he dissapeared he put those projects on hold more or less and decided to do his "dark guardian" shooter, because he wanted to do something that was possible in a reasonable timeframe. Although it didn't get finished either. This is all just based on my own impression and a few discussions in the past. So my impression regarding his work could be wrong. I just thought he shouldn't be looked at as somebody who did "vaporware" on purpose. It just didn't develop the way he thought... It can happen to all developers... Just look at Unity by Jeff Minter. How many have been looking forward to it and dissapointment was huge when it got canceled. Regards, Lars.

Hi! OMC Games gave up the Jaguar a few years ago already. I don't know if anybody still has contact to James. I don't know for sure how far in development the assassin or age of darkness were, but I'm sure both are not in a playable state, let alone far enough to be finished by somebody else. We are talking about role playing games here, which are similar to adventure games when it comes to development and from my own experience I can tell, it's not possible to finish an adventure game or rpg started by somebody else, unless the story and game design was finished already and all that's left would be programming. However I'm sure neither of the two got that far. As that is what takes most of the development time of these games. The only material that was released were information, screenshots, a little bit of artwork and two very early non playable BJL demos. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I think the list really is missing way too many of the bad games and lists too many of the better or even best ones... IS, Rayman, Doom for example Where are games like supercross 3D, highlander, hover strike, air cars, the readysoft games or trevor mc fur on that list ? Really too many bad games were ignored while some really great ones are on it. I mean you will always find people complain about even good games. Taste is different. Somebody who hates a genre will not rate the games of this genre well. But then you needed a list of all Jaguar games, if you wanted to include that factor. Regards, Lars.

Hi! sorry for this chaos post... it's getting late Regards, Lars.

Hi Paolo! I don't know exact names. I just know that the reaction came mainly from Jaguar Connexion in France, I had offered them the latest demo version back in the day. What I have been told after the show wasn't really motivating. Actually I remember the words "joke" being mentioned in this matter and really I don't spend months working on a project that I don't consider serious. I also never got any real feedback on the wip demo that a tester of the game sent to me after the hard disc crash and which I released afterwards as download. Some feedback came from UGD-JAG, but none from the fans that made it seem like there was enough interest in the project to make me start again. Especially these days, time is getting more of a problem for me being a student. So I really need to justify it to myself spending time on a project. Especially one that takes a lot of time. Eerievale is already a big exception, because it's my personal favorite and I would even be doing it, if nobody else cared about it and it takes most time, so not much is left for other projects. This JagMIND was done, because I got so many emails since the release of ocean depths asking for a remake of jagmind and because it was a project that could be done in few months as side project. Regards, Lars.

Hi! All keypad buttons are used, but they actually represent the numbers for entering a code. (except for * and # which are used to accept an entered code or delete a digit you entered) So you don't really need a keypad. It just looks cooler and makes numbers easier to find in a hurry for people who are not used to heavy keypad use. Good idea, Kevin and Jay. I think additional optinal keypads would be fine. JagWorm was lost in the crash, too. I actually thought about restarting that project too at some point, as just the source was lost. The design documents and a lot of graphics as well as the music I had for it were on a different hard disc and survived. But as the interest and feeback I got back from the fans who had seen the latest work in progress version was very dissapointing I never bothered to really return to it. Funny how different the impressions of testers and players can be. Sure, it just used bitmap graphics and they weren't photo realistic either, but painter didn't need that either in order to be fun. Actually for JagMIND it is the same problem, that I'm still unsure how much interest there is. But at least JagMIND is not as time consuming and doesn't need all the level design JagWorm needs. So I thought I'd take the risk with JagMIND, afterall I at least got a lot of emails asking for a new version in this case. Regards, Lars. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Price is not yet known yet, but I assume it will be in a similar region as releases like Ocean Depths or Painter. Btw, one thing that just came to my mind was that for two player mode two keypad overlays might be nice... Do you care about them at all? And if you do, would you prefer paying slightly more for the release if two keypads were included to cover the additional costs? Or do you think it's enough to include one keypad for pad 1? Before I can tell any details on the actual prices I still need to calculate it all. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Yes, 98 or earlier is best for Jag dev... when using win 2k or Xp you might need emulators like dosbox to get it to work properly and still parallel port communication can be a problem. Btw, if you want to order, it would be best if you do it before 12th november, as Nick Harlow of 16/32 systems is processing the orders and he'll attend ejagfest on 12th november so he could give me the money in cash instead of having to do expensive money orders or waiting till the next ejagfest. If you are still unsure and want to wait, that's ok though. Regards, Lars.

Hi folks! I just added a little poll to find out how much interest there is in the a normal release of the new JagMIND. (So all who intend to pick it up on EJagFest don't need to vote, unless they want both versions for some reason.) I don't know yet, what the differences between the versions will be. Gameplaywise they will be identical. Regards, Lars.

Hi! That depends on how you define "professional". It will be better than previous homebrew releases. Higher quality materials are used than for ocean depths for example. Except for that you can take a look at the website, there is a picture of the packaging. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Yes, of course it will be encrypted Regards, Lars.

Hi Jay! Actually the source was lost. I rewrote it from scratch. So basically it's a new game, just based on similar gameplay, but with more game modes, better graphics, cd music and so on. Depending on interest there will also be a version available through my site later on. Regards, Lars.

Hi Elrond! I could imagine that WinME is the problem... I never used it, but heard only bad things about it. Using Win 98 it's easy to setup a dev environment... using win2k it's a bit harder. Not sure if it's the same or worse with WinME. You might have to use DOSBOX or something similar. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Thanks. Screenshots link fixed. Regards, Lars.

Hi folks! Now as we are talking about new games... A fully new version of JagMIND is coming to the Jaguar. Hopefully ready for Euro JagFest 2005. Check out this Atariage thread. http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=78508 Regards, Lars.

Hi folks! I assume a lot of you remember the Ocean Depths release in the middle of 2004 and the minigame called “JagMIND” that was a part of it. It was based on the mastermind boardgame. Since the release of it, I got a lot of emails regarding JagMIND, some mentioning how much they liked it, some mentioning how sad it was that it was so little polished, some telling me about suggestions and ideas to improve it and some telling me about incompatibility problems with some PAL units. So I finally decided to take all that input to rewrite the whole game from scratch and create a new much more polished version of JagMIND, with better graphics, adrenaline pumping CD music and new much more addictive game modes. At the moment the game is in heavy testing phase and I hope it will be ready for Euro JagFest on 12th november 2005. I am going to do a limited Euro JagFest edition at first to see how much interest there is. It will consist of 48 units, all numbered of course. Quality wise it will be far suprior to Ocean Depths. Not only the game itself, but also the CDRs and the lable printing will be of a higher quality for example, the paper for the DVD inlay will be better and I will also include a high quality keypad overlay. Even though this is optional, it makes playing slightly easier, as the keypad is used a lot and it looks nice. From my testings so far, incompatibility problems are much lower too, I assume it's because of better CDR media. (Actually no incompatibility was noticed yet, but I don't say it can't happen, afterall you never know.) I thought I'd mention this now already, to give those who can attend the fest a little more of a reason to do the long trip. Check out the website mentioned above. It has a picture of the packaging already. Have fun. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Generally spoken, CDR are a problem for some JagCDs, not all. The more you access a CDR, the bigger the problems are. (or at least potential problems on some drives) I don't think better errror handling can be any help here. What we know so far is: different units prefer different CDRs. Whatever the reason for that is. (age, differences in the laser units, quality differences?) So the only real solution to the problem can be, mastered CDs. The downside is the high cost factor and the low number of units you are likely to sell. Most companys won't start with less than 1000 units. A lot more than a JagCD game will ever sell these days. So you would end up wasting a lot of money on a mastered CD and the prices would be higher too. And of course there still is the difficulty to find a company that will even do mastered JagCDs. I had no luck finding one for Ocean Depths back in the day, but I also haven't tried it since, as I just can't afford it being a student. But even mastered discs aren't completely safe, especially older drives can get problems with that as we all know. I think the bottom line is, you can simply not guarantee that a new CD release will work on all units, as annoying and frustrating that might be. So in the end the user will still have to make sure his unit is in a proper shape and able to read CDRs. The path I chose now is using higher quality CDR media and limiting loading times to as little as possible. (except for CD audio). The test results so far were a lot better than with Ocean Depths. So I could imagine that most problems would be solved. (I don't dare to say all problems, because you never know.) Of course this isn't really a helpful advice to you either... I'm sure you need reloading of several chunks of data, judging from all those cool menus. Regards, Lars.