Starcat

Hi Matthias! Great to hear about ConnectTHEM. I actually didn't know much about it before and it really looks great! (Just like Clicks! and Reversi do too) Keep up the good work! Regards, Lars.

Hi T2KFREEKER! Yes, on the Jag you don't really have much of a choice. Either wait for the games or don't wait for them. As a long time Jag fan you probably know about Eerievale already. Eerievale Homepage Other than that you can't do much else but wait and check out the forums regularly. Regards, Lars. 955221[/snapback] Lars, I had seen the page a long time ago and lost the link, so, thanx' for reminding me of where it is. I am assuming that you run the page? I hope I'm right. How close to a finished product are you? The game looks fantastic and I can't wait to get my hands on even a demo. Also, since it is being done in the UK, will there be an NTSC version? 955480[/snapback] Oh, so it was a good thing I posted about Eerievale. Sadly I can't tell you a release days yet. It will probably be one of the games you'll still have to wait for some time. Adventure games tend to take quite some time to develop, because research, design and writing play such an essential role in it. So you have a lot of things to care about that other genres like action games don't need. But you still have the work of creating the game engine, graphics, music etc just like in action games. So it is a lot more work that has to be done. Maybe that is why you hardly ever see new adventures games (I mean real ones, not a bunch of lame action sequences packed into some cinematic sequences ) these days. There actually is a demo of Eerievale, though. It is part of the Ocean Depths release, which you can order on the Starcat Developments Site in the products section, but it really only is a very early demo. It mainly was a proof of concept demo to show that it is possible to do a game like Eerievale on the Jag in the first place. Now, the game doesn't have too much in common with this demo anymore. The game will run on both PAL and NTSC machines, although I'm not in the UK, but in Germany. But it's also PAL territory so your point is still valid. Keep an eye on the Eerievale page, in the coming weeks I will probably put a new trailer online. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Actually I think you pretty much answered the question about the differences in value yourself Something that many people have or had is never worth as much as something only few people had in comparison. Isn't it always that way? Besides Nintendo usually drops the prices of a system or puts them on an "open" pricing level (so retailers can decide the prices) once a new generation is coming. So it's not expensive anyway. Stores could basically give it away almost for free if they wanted to. (or ask little more than they paid for it) Although prices for mint boxed N64 games are growing again slowly, when you look at ebay. But you are completely right that boxed (mint) Jags are worth a lot more these days. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Yes, on the Jag you don't really have much of a choice. Either wait for the games or don't wait for them. As a long time Jag fan you probably know about Eerievale already. Eerievale Homepage Other than that you can't do much else but wait and check out the forums regularly. Regards, Lars.

Hi! About the Jaguar bugs... It has more than any other commercial system I know about. Actually from my experience with other systems, most of them don't have any serious bugs to worry about. I mean in the case of the Jag it's often happening that whole design ideas of the hardware don't work due to limitations or bugs. Of course it could be that atari didn't have the money or time (if they waited longer, the Jag would have had a much harder start than it already had, with saturn and psx even closer to its release), but it's a fact that other companys called back their systems for a lot least important problems. This becomes especially obvious when I talk to some fellow Jag developers these days and hear what odd bugs and problems they are still discovering that were never mentioned in the dev manual. really weird sometimes and often problems that don't seem to have any logical connection from a programmers point of view. So the best improvement would have been a bug free Jaguar. Afterall a lot of performance and time is wasted on avoiding bugs. This still wouldn't make the Jag able to compete with saturn or psx, but I'm sure it could have increased the framerate slightly in some games. Btw, you can not run any jaguar programs without using the 68k as it has to be used to tell all other processors what to do. However you can pretty much turn it off if you think you have to, later in the programs. About cojag I think area 51 had a 68020 and maximum force had a mips cpu. Regards, Lars.

Hi LanDi! Sorry to say this, but to me it seems pretty much pointless to post such a poll. First of all, this is entirely "wouldn't it be cool if" talk. It's not actually a possibility. I also don't think this poll would be useful to find out what's the most needed change of the Jaguar (if it was possible), simply because most people here are players who want to enjoy new games, but have little Jaguar development experience if any. I mean when you look at it, you see most people just picked the first option. Not because it would be the best improvement, but simply because it was the standard answer. Of all the changes listed above, the one that might be closest to being possible would be replacing the 68k by a 68020, but the rest, like adding more internal memory or even adding other features to the chipset is entirely impossible. But I agree with "else", a jaguar without all the bugs would have been a great start. And if more improvements were to be made, I would suggest replacing the 68k with a later one that allows a higher clock speed, so the main bus is not crippled by the 68k clock speed anymore. Video Ram, from which the Jaguar could display graphics right away, instead of the linebuffer solutions and more Ram would be nice too. And of course all the other fancy stuff such as better 3d hardware support and texturemapping. But really the best improvement would be a fully bug free Jaguar. Regards, Lars.

Hi Gunstar! That's good to hear. The Jaguar really needs good adventure games and it would be amazing if more games followed. From my own experience I can tell you though, to make a good graphic adventure game, the game engine is not needed up to the point when you put the finished parts together. Afterall the engine can not help you with storywriting, graphics, sound or game design. Yes, I still plan to release the adventure engine once it is done, but until that happens, you don't have to wait with working on your project. You stated already, that you started on story and artwork, so you are on the right way I think. I know if you don't have a game engine to try your ideas on, it seems like you couldn't really progress. That's what I originally thought too and that was the reason why the first thing I created was the first version of the adventure engine. Even before I had an idea for a game that would use the engine. Now, looking back, I think this feeling of not being able to develop an adventure further without without the engine, is just a protective reaction to keep the the difficult work of creating an adventure from scratch away from you as long as possible. Probably very similar to the way a writer might feel when he has loads of empty pages in front of him and that feeling just slowly dissapears once he jumps into the cold water and starts writing (or developing the game in this case). At least that's my person experience. Also, in case you haven't done this yet, I highly suggest creating a detailed design document for the project. It's absolutely essential to plan your game properly and also very useful to write all your ideas down, because even if you think, you could keep them in mind, at some point you tend to forget tiny ideas that might prove useful later. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I liked I-War on the Jag too. I also liked the Cybermorph graphics and never understood why people complained about either of them. The games are meant to look VR like, as it was popular at that time. I you watch a cartoon movie and complain it to be cartoony, so you shouldn't play a VR game and complain it to be VR-like either... I do not agree about HoverStrike though. That was a title that bored me to death, and I think I-War is tons better.. The only thing that can get annoying about I-War are some of the speech samples, like when you have little energy But it is and stays a cool VR game and I also reminded me of Tron right away when I first saw it. That was why I wanted it in the first place. Regards, Lars.

Hi peryton99 and Paolo! Thanks. I'm still working hard on Eerievale in every free minute I can find. However when it comes to posting, I think you won't see too many posts by myself in the coming time. My study recently started and I am out of the house for 12 hours a day (studying and travelling by train), so you can probabbly imagine how exhausting it is and how little time if left for other things. So I can mainly work on Eerievale on weekends or in holidays now. At least I can use the time of the train rides to do some research and make notes on ideas for the game. Which means that it's at least not wasted time. Anyway. Just wanted to say, that I'm still working hard on it and I am quite sure it will be worth the waiting time. Regards, Lars.

Hi folks! Just a short reminder... EJagFest 2005 is in exactly one month. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Even though the Jaguar was released in Japan, with least success of all regions where it was launched, I don't even think there ever was a single japanese Jaguar developer in the first place. I also never heard about the game before and I'm pretty sure it was never announced for the Jag. Regards, Lars.

Hi LanDi! Why should the 4K be a problem? If people would think that way and give up so easily instead of finding a way around limitations like that, you wouldn't see many Jag games at all. Not even ports. Of course texturemapping is not the Jag's strongest point, but I'm quite sure a good coder could do a Battlewheels as you see it on the lynx, but using textured polygons on the Jag. As long as you don't add much more detail. Iron Solider 2 had lots of textured buildings afterall and they also had a lot other models on screen. The 4k for example are not much of a problem, as you can simply load another chunk of 4k when you need it. Actually most 3D games do that at some point. Regrads, Lars.

Hi Atariboy! I don't know if it was in this thread or somewhere else, but somebody for example said, he wouldn't even buy a halo2 for the Jag if the price was that of TC, which is in my opinion, not just a stupid comment, but also it sounds a bit like saying it was overpriced. Keeping the costs in mind, the price is good I think. You just can not compare Jaguar games with current games on other platforms. Of course Jaguar games can not compete with those in terms of complexity and professionality and are expensive compared to it, but if you want new Jag games there is no other way, as parts are expensive, development is a great effort and the number of units of a game is very low in comparision as well. So you just can not compare it. Just to mention that ond thing, among other comments I have read. Regards, Lars.

Hi Matthias! I think many fans just still have a wrong opinion of the developer scene. Just count how many projects started and how many got finished since the Jag homebrew dev scene started. Not many. And that's not because those developers didn't try hard or didn't want to get things finished. You could almost say it's the way it usually goes. That's why I think any homebrew game that gets finished is a great achievement. And if it's fun and even good looking, then it's really an extraordinary achievement. To a gamer it doesn't matter if a new game is an unreleased game, an almost finished prototype or a homebrew game, as long as it is good. But to a developer it's a huge difference and while I think ratings and comments should be honest, they should also keep the effort in mind. I also think it's better to erase a project in the worst case, rather than releasing something you are not satisfied with. So I think it doesn't really matter how long it takes to finish your games, or even if they do not get finished, as long as you are happy with the results. As JustClaws said. It is a hobby afterall. Also don't worry about how much you have to show on EJagFest. The most important thing is to have a good time. Even though many Jag fans would surely like to see new stuff and hear news about the projects, most time on the festival is spent talking and playing anyway. I am not sure what or how much I will have to show this time, either. Mainly due to my study. The first week of this semester is over now with me being literally 12 hours a day "on tour" (either at the school, waiting in train stations or inside the trains), which means I really don't have as much time as I used to have either. So don't be too surprised when I'm not online as often as I used to be. I can merely do some project related work on weekends or during holidays now. Regards, Lars.

Hi Justclaws! I have to agree with that. These days there is a lot more negative and discouraging stuff happening then a few years ago. Actually I'm surprised about the reaction on TC... Jag fans have been really awaiting this title for many years. Well, at least most reactions were positive. I guess you never can except entirely positive reactions on a public forum. Some people just don't know what efforts it takes or can't appreciate them. I know how you feel and I have to say, sometimes things really dragged me down as well. When things get really bad, remember what's important. That's what I do and it really helps me with my projects. Sometimes however, putting something to rest is the best way. Better than regretting or even disliking what you do at some point. Actually it happens quite often with projects, even if it seems to go well at first. You can never predict how it develops and sometimes you simply run into a dead end and reach a point where it simply is not fun anymore. So I can fully understand how you feel about this. Although I'm sad to hear, that you are taking a break. You have been an important part of the community for so long. I fully agree to that. It's just a hobby and sometimes I really forced myself not to read certain forums or threads sometimes, because I simply knew that it would make me angry and I just didn't want that. To some people it doesn't matter what you do or say. You just end up being angry and frustrated and that's not what a hobby is about. There are much more important things in life and life is too short to waste your time being angry or frustrated. It happens often enough in daily life, that you don't need that during your freetime I guess. Thanks for the kind words. I really appreciate it. It's also great to hear that you will try to attend EJagFest this year. I think we'll all have a great time again. Regards, Lars.

Hi Gunstar! By hardware only 1-8bit (2-256) color , 16-bit (65k) color and 24-bit 16.8mil) color are possible on the Jag. Of course a software routine could be written that uses 4096 colors, but I highly doubt one would do that simply because it would be slow as hell on the Jag and not much of advantage either. I assume for Zool2 they used 8-bit color or 16-bit if they were lazy. Regards, Lars.

Hi Shamus! First of all I think it's really great that you are still working on improving VJ. Although I never really figured out how to successfully run homebrew games on it. That's why I am using project tempest for dev mainly, even though it's not perfect either. Maybe you could explain how exactly homebrew binaries can be loaded with VJ? Regards, Lars.

Hi scuzzo84! Yes, you can get in trouble. It's not legal, but if they don't see it, they will probably not do anything or even if they see it, they might not bother sueing you if you don't make money. But the situation for commercial systems is, if you develop for them using inofficial dev kits, you have no right to release it and might get into trouble. harveymush, theoretically your idea could work. But it's not a way you want to go. Even if you have a dev kit, burning test discs is a real pain. If you have little Jag experience, this is even worse, as you will end up wasting countless discs, without knowing what's wrong. I can not recommend any particular C compiler. However you should be able to use any C compiler that can output MC 68000 object files. For testing I suggest using the Jaguar emulators (like project tempest) if you don't have a dev kit. I used the emulators quite a bit for dev myself and it works fine for most of the time.. Except when you want to do real complicated stuff or CD related dev, as that's not really supported. LanDi, actually codejunkies (Datel) are licensed gamecube developers. They did many action replay related things and cheat discs, freeloader as well and so on. So if they take homebrew releases and release them for the cube, just like they did it with their other releases, it is legal. I agree that the cube is a great system and I hate to see how many developers turned away from it already. Although with revolution knocking on the door already, I guess it's not too bad. There are still some great titles ahead, even if some multiplatform games are not ported anymore. But personally I am happy to own a cube for the great exclusive titles it has and that are still coming (like Zelda. So I don't care that much about the multiplatform games it might miss. I'm going to wait for Zelda and I'm sure I'll have an amazing time playing it until the revolution comes. Regards, Lars.

Hi doctorclu! Sorry to dissapoint you, but making a 64-bit system is not that much of an achievement. So it's not like the others did steal the idea of making a 64-bit system. There has been 64-bit hardware before, even if that has not been used in a game system. You could build a 256-bit system that can't even compete with a C64. The bittness means little on its own. The important thing is, how well designed is the system architecture for its purpose. The achievement of the Jaguar was not 64-bit, but it was the architecture itself, considering the little budget compared to Sony, Nintendo and Sega they did quite a good job. The Jaguar has a 16-bit 68k, which is the CPU (you can't write a Jag program that doesn't use the 68k, but you can write one without using the GPU), it has a 64-bit blitter, and Object Processor, and a 32-bit GPU (64-bit memory access) and DSP (16-bit memory access). The main memory of the Jag also is 64-bit wide, but rated only at 68k's speed. Techincally seen an identical system running at 16MHz with 16-bit bus, is just as fast as a system running at 8MHz with a 32-bit bus. And this is exactly what John Matthieson used on the Jag too. In the Jaguar Gamers Guide you can find an interview with him where he talks about the Jag a bit. Using the 64-bit bus, he could use cheaper components (that could not run at much higher MHz numbers) to get as much power out of them as, if they used more expensive ones that could run at higher MHz numbers. So the 64-bit idea came up as a way to get as much performance out of the hardware, while keeping the same MHz count. Regards, Lars.

Hi! To do console development, you normally need to be a licensed developer. Which means you sign a contract with the system's company, agree on NDAs, and get the dev kit and techincal support. However these days not anybody can do that anymore. Many companies like Sony for example won't even give you a dev kit unless you have a team with a certain number of people and/or a known name. In the case of PS3 I heard rumors that you won't get a dev kit if your team is less than 100 people for example. I don't know if Nintendo or M$ have a team size limit for their systems, but I assume they wouldn't give dev kits out to hobby developers either, even if they paid them enough. In the case of abandoned systems like the Jaguar, Dreamcast or similar system it is slightly different though. Haspro declared the Jaguar an open system in 1998, due to petitions that were done among fans and because they thought it was good PR. So on the Jaguar you can develop games freely without havingto pay any fees to atari. You may not use the Atari name or logo though, as your project is not connected with atari. But you are free to use anything Jag related that isn't under copyright by other companies. (So you can not you graphics from other games or so or do another run of official games or so... That would be piracy.) But you can use the dev tools freely and the docs and whatever else is part of the development kit. You can also use the Jaguar logos. Sega on the other hand did it slightly different, they did not make Dreamcast an open system but at least they say, that they have nothing against homebrew and anybody can release games for the dreamcast as long as Sega is not put into connection with that game and no official means were used to create the game. (docs, tools, examples, libs, dev kits etc) In the case of Songbird, he aquired the rights to release the existing Total Carnage binary (modified by himself) on the Jaguar. People have been hoping for this for years, so I assume it wasn't easy to get Midway's ok. However as Jaguar hobby developer, I can tell you how development is done from scratch. Basically the first thing you need is a dev kit. Either an official one, a hobby dev kit such as BJL or even the Jaguar emulator. Then when you have a development environment setup on your system you start the actual development. It's not too different to development on any other system actually. The main difference to PC for example is, that you have to upload the program data to the Jaguar to test it (or run the emulator) and that your debugging means are much more limited than on PC. Learning Jaguar programming is not much of a problem. The motorola 68000 is very common and you can find countless tutorials, examples and books on it. And once you know the 68k assembler well and are a good coder in general, Jaguar coding is no problem anymore. Jaguar coding itself is actually a lot more like homecomputer coding, than console coding. The Jaguar doesn't have as much custom hardware as other game systems that you need to get used to. The most tricky thing you might want to learn probably is the blitter. As you can do a lot of interesting things with it, that are not documented. The only problem that might still show up when doing complex games that push the Jag to its limits, are a lot of bugs and timing problems that can appear. Once your game is finished, you can just go ahead and either find somebody to publish it (like songbird if he thinks the game is good enough) or do it yourself, by burning it onto CDRs or letting a company master the CDs. You could of course also do cartridges, but that's a lot more expensive and annoying to do as you can probably imagine. I hope most of your questions were answered. LanDi, what gamecube titles have been released by non-lisenced developers? Normally Nintendo is strong in protecting their interlectual property. I can't imagine they would just let stuff like that happen without doing anything against it. Regards, Lars.

Hi Jagman! Great to see you around! Are you still planning updates for JFPN? Regards, Lars.

The character models in FFL always struck me as particular bad, actually.I wonder what it would have looked like with somebody else making the models, perhaps it was the programmer making them. That would be interesting to know. A badly created model can hamper texture mapping, and slow up the frame rate! Yes, that's one thing that always seemed strange to me... They claimed the characters had between 300-500 polygons. Now if you keep in mind that Lara Croft in Tomb Raider 1 had only 150 and looked a lot better already... I really think a better artist could have made amazing models for the game using 300-500 polygons that would have looked a lot better than the final characters in the game. If they actually used that many that is. Regards, Lars.

Hi Carl! Is this really a new version (different to the ones shown in the past) ? How complete is it? Just out of curiosity, how did you get the chance to publish the game after such a long time of trying? Must be an interesting story. Anyway this is great news! Keep up the good work. :-) Regards, Lars.

Hi Serblander! I agree with you, except for the point that I should have been drinking after reading this No honestly, I can understand how he feels to some degree... Actually when I was about to get my Jag in 1998, it was similar with me... I had an old EGM from 6/94 and I actually adored the screenshots and pictures of the Jag for hours, dreaming how cool it would be to have one... At that time I couldn't find a Jag anywhere. However after finally getting one I got over that obession quite fast and started looking at the Jag as a normal game system with strengths and weaknesses. Good, but also bad games. I still liked the Jag a lot, but I had to learn that many games I hoped for were never released. And some other promising looking titles turned out bad too. When I got into Jag development in 1999 things again changed entirely and from that time on I saw the Jag from a developers point of view, as I realized the difference between promotion, specs and facts. It's still a cool system, but my main Jag related interest is development, rather than playing jag games. I guess I finished most of the good games so often that it got boring. Although I still enjoy some of my favorite Jag games from time to time. I think keeping the Jag with new exciting projects alive is most interesting. However one thing I never understood was, why was everybody always blaming that the Jag failed because of lack of promotion? I mean if you think about it, there was a lot of promotion and at least in my case it was effective. I have hardly ever awaited a system so eagerly like I awaited my Jag. The problem was just, that Atari couldn't keep what they promised in their promotion. I still think the biggest mistake was, to promote the Jag hardware, rather than creating more good games, that they could promote. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I think only the old project tempest versions had that setting... A lot of roms should work fine on PT, for example, raide, AvP, Doom and probably a lot other too... Your Direct X version may not be too old, but I guess you have a good one anyway, due to your graphics card... The CPU speed should be more than fast enough and graphic card too. Regards, Lars.