Starcat

Hi! I suggest Project Tempest or Virtual Jaguar. I'm not even sure you need the boot rom for those... Just try a google search on those emus. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I don't really have any news yet. Most important infos are on the site already (date, location), things like maps and so on will come later I guess. I'll ask Björn about hotels or similar locations where one could stay over night if they want to. Btw, if you mean the banner on www.atari-jaguar64.de then you are right. The site is really outdated. There also isn't a new banner yet, but that will probably come soon. Regards, Lars.

Hi! The problem is, that the CDs ARE error free. (Speaking about the ones I made, at least.) Still some drives can't read them, because the quality of the drives varies a lot and espeically with CDR they are very picky. It's a small number of drives that have these problems, but I think people don't care if it's a big or small number of drives that have these problems, when they own one that has problems. So whatever you do, you can never be sure that a CD runs on the users JagCD unit. So at the moment, the user still has to make sure that his drive can read the CDs, which is of course a very bad and annoying thing. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. The situation is terrible for both developers and fans. And that problem alone proves that something more reliable is needed. Justclaws: I never used zip myself, so my comment was just based on what I read. Anyway, the main reasony why I think it wouldn't make much sense on the Jag especially with CF coming up are: zip is not as common as CF these days, CF is more relieable, CF offers less loading times, CF probably is cheaper in total. What confuses me is, that you mentioned 4MB flash carts now. Some Jag fans I talked to still confuse compact flash and flash carts. But it's a different medium. It's Jaguar cartridges on one side and compact flash carts on the other side. While some developers might want a flash cart for development, personally I don't have much use for one. I actually sold my atari flash cart ages ago. The problem I have with carts is, that they are expensive and a pain to produce, while they offer very limited memory compared to other possible mediums. And as long as these problems remain, I won't be doing cartridge dev anyway, so a flash cart isn't really useful to me. However Compact Flash simply is the best combination of the cartridge and CD advantages in my opinion. And all that with no real disadvantages. Regards, Lars.

Hi 82-T/A! Yes. What I wrote was not directly addressed to you. It was a genereal statement, because many people on this board don't seem to understand it yet. Maybe it's just me, but I want good adventure and rpg games on the Jag, simply because gameplay wise the Jaguar has incredible untabbed potential and I think that is exactly what new games should aim at. I mean even if you spend years to push the hardware to its limits, that won't impress anybody outside of the Jag scene these days. Great gameplay however can make a game special and impressive, not important what system the game runs on. Regards, Lars.

Hi! That was one thing I was pointing at in my posts... It seems like most people think programming was the most difficult aspect of making a game. But programming can be learned fairly easily if you are interested and willing to spend some time on it. And as you said, you can find countless solutions to problems on the internet already, which you can adapt or learn from and improve. The 68000 is one of the most common microprocessors, which makes things a lot easier. For a start the 68k is more than enough and if you are good at 68k, you can also learn the rest quite fast. The most time consuming thing about Jag programming probably are the bugs, that you have to face, especially when you want to push the system to its limits. But there are more important things to do in a story based game, than that anyway. The difficult things of creating story based games (adventures, rpgs, and so on) is the creative aspect where you imagination comes into play (graphics, music, ideas, storywriting, game design) and so on in my opinion. Some of those things can't hardly be learned at all... You can't learn to get a good idea, that's for sure. And even though graphics, music and writing can be learned up to some point, without real talent, the results will never be as good as if a professional did them. I mean you can learn to use the tools that are there, but in the end your results will only be as good as your ideas and experience allows it. And even somebody who can write perfectly without any mistakes, isn't automatically a good story writer. The ideas make the game. Own ideas to be more specific. A big mistake many player make is, they think after you have played a lot of games, you could create good games automatically. This is very wrong though. Even if you can analyse the games properly (which many players are not doing in the first place) and understand which elements of the game made it special, it's still of little use if you want to create a game on your own. You don't need to see that ideas work, you need to understand why they work. And that's something that only experience can teach you. Afterall for your own game you shouldn't just copy ideas of successful games, but come up with own ideas, that make your game special. Btw, I wouldn't consider any of the titles you mentioned real RPGs or even Adventures, but I think I said that often already. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I read a bit about the zip drive topic and after what I've read (click of death and so on), I can just say, that it's absolutely no medium to publish a game on. So I think it wouldn't make much sense on the Jag. CF however makes a lot of sense, because it has many advantages compared to CD, not just theoretically more space (you can of course also get smaller ones if you don't need that much). For me the main advantage of CF is, that there are basically no loading times compared to CD, they are more reliable and people don't have to worry about getting a Jag CD unit anymore, which is rare, expensive and tends to fail. As a developer I also hate the fact, that I can never be sure that a CD game runs on the unit of the player. With CF that problem doesn't exist. Among many other development related issues when using JagCDs, which would be solved with CF. Regards, Lars.

Hi! This is news to me... Who is working on a zip storage device for the Jag? Although I don't really understand what use a zip drive could have on the Jag? The only area I know of, where it is used is for backup purpose. I mean you have loading times, quite a lot if I remember correctly and the medium is not even as common as CDRs and the default size ones are "only" 100 MB, so a lot smaller than CDR. And a zip drive unit for the Jag won't be cheap either I think. So what's the advantage compared to CDs? Especially with Compact Flash on the horizon it doesn't seem to make much sense. Afterall the only way any new medium could succeed is when there is decent software support. I know some people who want to support CF in their future titles already, but as I didn't even know about zip for the Jag until now, I'm not sure how many will support it. Regards, Lars.

Hi! I don't think you can safely say that he had same problem, from what was posted. Very often different problems can have very similar results. That's something I learned especially when doing Jag dev, but of course this is valid for all areas. For example there can be millions of reasons why a program crashes. Just like there can be countless reasons why you can't read data of a drive. If there was only one cause for a problem, I think our world would be a lot more simple and easier for many. However I don't understand why we are even still talking about all this, especially why there is still talk about faulty electronics. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer deeds over words and I usually don't talk much about things when it won't help or change anything about the problem. If the electronics were faulty, no recovery tools would help in the first place. However as I was able to access the drive in a way and run recovery tools, this proves that the electronics are fine. So from the very first posts about this topic months ago, it was clear that it couldn't be the electronics. Really, I think this discussion is not only a waste of time as it doesn't help, but also off-topic in this thread. Afterall the topic is, "how long are you willing to wait for a new game", but the projects you are indirectly reffering to are lost, so they are not on the "waiting list" anyway. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Thanks a lot for the support Justclaws. I really appreciate it. I think I really pointed out that I tried everything I could to get the data back. If there was a chance and a possible way for me how I could get the data back I would do it. Afterall I lost a lot more than just the Jag projects. Anyway just out of curiosity, how should it be possible to replace the motor of a harddrive? I haven't opened a current hard drive yet (only one that was a few year old 2.1 GB drive at some point), but I don't think that much changed inside the drives. The hard drives I know are all sealed with a vacuum inside and even if you could remove the screws (which is really hard work physically even with high quality tools), you would immediately destroy the drive, as the vacuum is lost and the tiny dust particles in the air would ruin it. There are only two motors inside, one turning the discs that can't be removed at all and one motor that controls the read/write "heads". But even that one is impossible to remove without destroying the heads and scratching the discs. And you couldn't get replacements for either of the motors, unless you bought a brand new drive and would be willing to destroy it as well. So the only thing I could imagine, that could be replaced at all, is the pcb. But still that won't help at all when the drive is physically broken inside. Regards, Lars.

Hi Atariowl! I fully agree with you. The scene is not very big and slowly shrinking. Although there still are many people who don't contribute to the message boards, but you can't really count those in, as you don't know how many those are and you don't see it when they leave the scene either. And as we all know, many Jag developers left the scene in the past already, because they thought the situation was just frustrating and not worth the trouble... I think the retro scene is also a bit hard to estimate. From my own experience, I guess most of all people who buy retro systems or game collections are people who played the originals back in the day. However the question is, how many game collections does one person need, especially if you probably have the original systems and games anyway. I know some people buy those collections and systems like the flashback, just because they want to complete their collections or support the developers, but most gamers of today don't pay much attention to the retro collections. And most magazines don't rate them well anymore either, so that probably won't help making them more popular. Still the Jag can't be compared with the VCS... I mean most gamers that were around in the 70s-90s had a VCS at some point. The VCS was very successful. The Jag however sold badly compared to the VCS and except for fans, most people don't know it or don't like it much. And not many have nostalgic feelings about the Jag. Anyway, back to the actual topic of my post... I understand why you are afraid, that the scene will be very small when your project might finished in a few years. I feel the same way. However I am making Eerievale for myself in the first place, so even if the scene is small by the time it gets finished, it wouldn't be the end of the world, even though it would be a pity. I agree that it's probably the best idea to remain silent, like you did in the past if you can. I often think I should rather spend the time I use to read or post on forums on development too. Regards, Lars.

hi! The games I have been most looking forward to weren't even on that list For example I have been hoping for some great network fun with Battlewheels on the Jag... They could have made great game out of it I think. Too bad the game never got far. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Actually that's exactly a feature that I hope will be possible with Compact Flash... Creating a game and publishing it and later letting users load additional data onto the CF in a way, so you could offer updates or users could exchange levels of their own. The only problem might be, I don't know how piracy of the CFs will be solved exactly, so I don't know if the encryption/password system of the CFs will allow new data to be written to it on the Jag. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Back when that happened I tried all data recovery tools I could find and every time I tried it, it just got worse. The drive also got very hot during those tries, so I cooled it with a fan. It never got that hot before. I actually burned my hand on it once after letting it run for about an hour without fan. I know drives can reach temperatures of 50-60 degrees, but you don't really burn your hand on those yet. I'm sure it got a lot hotter. Cooling helped a little, though. So I assume there was some kind of physical problem afterall. It wasn't the electronics, that's for sure, otherwise I couldn't have accessed it anymore and the maxtor diagnostic tools also said the electronics were fine and there was just a problem during read/write test. Not saying what exactly the problem was though. When at first programs could still recover the directory structure and file fragments or even single intact files, in the end I couldn't even get a proper directory structure displayed anymore. I mailed a data recovery company here in Germany at some point and I sent them a log file I got from one of the tools they recommended to try before asking for their service and the result was that I would have to pay thousands of euros (open ended) for a recovery with no guarantee at all. Recovery prices are always done on a MB base and even if starts at relatively small prices for a few MBs... 200 GB afterall are 200.000 MB. The person I was in contact with said, they would have done it, if I would be willing to pay that much, but he also told me on a honest private note, that he doesn't think there was hope to get much usable data back at all. He said if I was running a big buiness with huge sums depending on that data, I might consider it, before having to close a company for this. But when I told him I was just a private person, he said, I should just try to get over the loss and learn from it. He actually had a similar story to offer than mine and his advice was, never to buy a Maxtor product in the first place and to do regular backups to high quality drives (Western Digital for example). Regards, Lars.

Hi! If it's just the laser unit, you could try to get a replacement for that. Regards, Lars.

Hi! You are right that there are little things going on these days, but what can you do? I mean certainly you can always dream, wish and hope for new things to appear, but that won't help much getting more games for the Jag. The problem is, that there are only a hand full of people who are actively working on projects at all. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Did I get this right? You want to take out the JagCD electronics and put a VCS into it instead and hook it up to the Jag's RF modulator? While I don't really understand why somebody would want to do that, I guess it would be possible if you could fit the VCS board into the JagCD unit. Which will probably be possible, as the VCS board isn't too complicated. Similar things were done for the VCS handheld done in the past. However if you want to get the VCS video signals to be outputted with the Jag's RF modulator, you would have to connect the VCS video output lines to the RF inside the Jag I guess... You can't just access the RF modulator via the cart port or anything, if that's what you were proposing as the Jaguar's video singals are generated by the OP/video processor inside of TOM. Regards, Lars.

Hi Isgoed! Thanks. I'm glad my explaination has cleared things up a bit Regards, Lars.

Hi Gunstar! I have to admit the last post was really surprising me and a bit confusing. First of all, you claim my statement was based on opinions and speculation. But yours is just as well. Such a discussion is quite pointless. I didn't say nobody could do an RPG on the Jag. I said nobody in the Jag scene could do a game that surpasses or matches the ones mentioned quality wise. (zelda: link to the past, ff3, chrono trigger) And while that is speculation if you want to call it that way, it's speculation with a lot of backup through game history and through knowing what it takes to do something like that. You speculate that my speculation, that there won't be a Jag game surpassing Zelda a link to the past or FF3 or Chrono Trigger is wrong. However this is quite ridiculous in my opinion. Both statements are speculation as you said, but mine is more likely to become a truth, simply because history proves me right in the sense those games were masterpieces and that it's definately not easy to surpass something like that, afterall there were millions of games coming out since Zelda and the other titles, but still we remember those names out of that huge number of games, simply because those were special. Also so far there were not many homebrew projects. You know as well as anybody, that not many of the few that were announced got finished yet, most got canceled. Most titles in development are classic remakes/clones or puzzle games. Which means that those kind of games are more popular among jag hobby developers than epic titles with a lot of design and story writing involved. I dare to speculate that this is, because writing an epic story and creating huge game worlds is more time consuming and more difficult. It's no speculation however that games like zelda a link to the past, FF3 and chrono trigger are considered masterpieces by millions of gamers and it's also no speculation that creation of games like that is more difficult and time consuming than any hobby project on the Jag. And obviously difficult enough that no company was yet able to turn those names into unknown ones by creating even more well known names that replaced them. But I have to agree with your statement too. Of course there are superior RPGs than Zelda. Just like there are superior shooters than need for speed. Zelda is no RPG. It's an action adventure series and has always been. Besides I am definately not the only one who likes Zelda. Afterall it's still one most popular game series of all time and many still consider Zelda Ocarina of time, one of the best or even the best game of all time. Of course taste differs. If you don't like a certain type of game, you can't rate it.. There were people rating the tony hawk games with over 92%... I wouldn't play them if you paid me too and I wouldn't give them a good rating and make the game with a big "fans only" sticker on it. But just because I dislike that kind of game doesn't mean others can't consider it a good game... Same with highlander on the Jag, I totally dislike it, you like it. Although I usually like action adventures, but that's another story. For what it is, there is no argueing that Zelda as well as FF3 and Chrono Trigger are a masterpieces. PERIOD. And I played Morrorwind and I didn't like it much. It's just not comparable to the "good old" 2D games in my opinion. But as I said, talking about personal taste is not really a good base for discussion, because no arguments will change anybodys mind about their personal taste anyway. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Graphically Cybermorph may be superior to Starfox (not much of a surprise as the Jag hardware is clearly better at 3D than a SNES even with FX chip), but gameplay wise Starfox clearly is better. Cybermorph gets very repetive after a few missions. But I fully agree that Cybermorph is by far not as bad as many people make it, there are much worse 3D games on the Jag. Both graphically and gameplay wise.. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Well, in any case you need to find somebody to do that if you want such a game. And I don't think anybody would want to spend his time on a project, just because people want something like that. The only chance would be if somebody came up with the idea for such a project himself and had a personal interest to do it on the Jag. Otherwise I don't think anything like this will ever happen. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! I didn't reply to point C and D, because I didn't think they needed comments. I'll do that now, though. c) I didn't really sell posters. I put them on Cafepress so people who wanted to could get one, but so few were sold, that I never recieved any money from it. Cafepress has a limit of $25 (or even $50?) or so before they send out cheques I think, so far the only "profit" I got from it were like $5 in total on my cafepress account, so a lot of people would still have to buy some, until I would get any money. But that's no problem as I didn't put them up for money anyway. I put them up because many people told me they wanted one. That's all. d) I encouraged fans to support Jaguar development. However I meant all serious Jaguar developers and their projects. And I always said there was more to support than donating money. Actually very important things would be spreading the word about new developments and so on, like it is common in other scenes of game systems. One example is in the Jag scene most topics regarding a project are started by the developers and except for that there is not much talk about those projects at all. Also the only person who ever donated a little money was Paolo (thanks a lot at this point) when my hard disc crashed. Actually there were discussions on the Eerievale Forum (started by myself again), where fans could share their opionions and contribute ideas, which I really enjoyed. I love that kind of exchange of ideas, but as long as I still have to start threads like that myself and the contribution is limited, it's only half the fun. Also as you were talking about money... In my opinion the ammount of a donation is absolutely not important, it doesn't matter if it's just $1, $5 or even $10. What matters and what I appreciate is the gesture itself. These days people take all they can get for free, but usually don't pay money without getting something in return. So if somebody feels like giving a few bucks, without asking something back, it's a great gesture and great way to show that you care about a project. Such small ammounts aren't helping much money wise, but they are an enormous help to keep up motivation. I never expected people to donate money, but if people feel like they want to do that, they do that on their own will and I appreciate that gesture. Other means of support, like spreading the word of a project are just as important, or even more important and personally I especially enjoy exchange of ideas between fans and developers as I stated before. I hope that makes things clearer. When donating something, you don't expect something back and it's not like this meant I had to deliver anything. One thing people still don't get is, this is a hobby and I don't have to do anything and nobody can tell me what to do with my time. Just to clarify that again. I work hard on the project and put a lot of effort and time into the project and I enjoy it, but I can't stand it when people think they can tell me what I have to do. Another thing that really annoys me is, I can post things a thousand times and still people don't understand what I am saying or don't want to understand it. So I will repeat myself once again and explain it here... Please read it carefully and keep it in mind. Adventure games are not so much about programming! They are about storytelling and need most development time for research, writing, game design, graphics, music and testing. When the Eerievale project started many people said it would be impossible to do such a game as hobby developer for the Jag, yet I proved them wrong when I showed the first tech demos on Euro Jag fest 2003. However since then the project grew so much, that it reached a point of being impossible to design the game on the Jag itself, which was what I still did in the beginning. Thus the PC version was created as "design tool" in the first place. I don't know... maybe the word "Pc version" confuses you and others? Maybe I should just call it "editor with test function?" because that's exactly what it is and that's also what all developers do for bigger projects... Blue lighting had editors, battlemorph had them, avp had them, doom had them, rayman had them, and probably most other good Jag games too. It's just normal to create proper tools to make development easier. Afterall I guess you still want to play the game somewhere in this decade. Of course the Eerievale editor is something different, as it’s for a different genre, but the main difference still is, that my editor allows me to test things right away, without having to manually slice the exported data into little pieces and without having to waste hours to burn them onto test discs to see if a modification was good or not. At first I also was not sure if this was a good idea. In the past I always did everything by hand or with very simple tools only. But when I created a new editor on the PC for the game, and when I saw that it could speed up design time by an amazing factor of 10(!!), it was clear to me that I would go this way. Simply because ideas can be tested much faster and put into the game more flawlessly and many great ideas find their way into the game, that I would never have thought about on the Jag itself. Not because the Jag couldn't do them, no. But because I was simply afraid I wouldn't have enough memory left to do it in the end. So basically when I still did the design on the Jag, I always tried to get everything as small as possible to make sure I would not run out of memory in the middle of the project. Which limits the quality of a game a lot of course. On PC, that’s not a topic, as you have a harddisc and tons of ram, you can put it anything you like. Of course, when I already have a PC version anyway, I certainly won't throw it away, but release it once it's done and as it's C++ code it can be ported to other systems/OSes including Windows, Mac, Linux or even the Dreamcast quite fast. The Jaguar version however is pure assembler and can not be completed before all game design on the PC is finished and before the engine on the PC is finsihed as well. Before those two things aren't finished, putting any time into the new Jag engine is a waste of time, because I certainly can’t foresee the future and can’t know what features the PC engine will offer and how to access the gamedata when it’s all not finished yet. So if you still don't understand why the design has to be completely finished first and why I don't design it on the Jag itself anymore, let me try to explain it in another way. Most hobby games are obviously remakes or ports of some sort. Why is this done? Simple. Because the developer has something to look at and knows exactly what he needs to port. No time is wasted on things that aren't used in the final game. He can also look exactly at the gameplay and port it the same way. With Eerievale it's the same in the sense that, once the PC version is finished, I have the game exactly the way I want it to be. All features I want in the game are in it, without any ideas stripped down, censored or cut out. So I can sit down and don't have to worry about the quality of the game anymore. I can just relax and write the Jaguar engine for the game with exactly the features needed by the game. There is no time wasted on code that isn't needed in the final game. Everything has a purpose and can be ported and optimised exactly as needed. And the gameplay can be ported much better too. I don't have to worry about memory problems anymore, because I know what all locations will be like, I even have the final game data already, so nothing has to be changed on the actual gameplay and no ideas need to be removed, I just need to cut the data into proper slices and load them into Ram when needed. Graphics will have to be converted into the Jaguar formats too, but the rest stays the same. I know all this might be hard to understand for non-developers and for me it's hard to explain, because to me it just seems logical. Why not develop the game on the system where it's easiest and possible in the highest quality to then take the best result and port it to the Jaguar as good as possible, instead of wasting years developing it on the Jag where it's much harder and resulting in a version that could have been so much better and that I'm not statisfied with? As I said before, in an adventure game like Eerievale the code is hardly a topic, because the research, graphics, music, design and writing of the gameplay is what takes years of development time, while writing the actual game engine can be done in a few weeks or months in the worst case. As an adventure fan I always wanted to play a game like Eerievale myself, sadly no comparable game was ever released on any system I know about, so you could say, Eerievale is a project I always wanted to make and so I certainly want to make it as good as possible. As you know I do Eerievale completely on my own, except for music and so there are many roles I have to take. Even roles that clash at some point. And to be honest, to me as a designer/writer/artist, which is what I do among other things in the Eerievale project, there is hardly anything that's as unimportant as the system I make the game for. What matters to me, when taking those roles is, that I can get all my ideas as good into the game as possible and that also as fast and as flawlessly as possible. It just matters that the game is of the highest quality i can make it, because once it is finished for one system, the difficult and time consuming aspects are all done. Porting it can be done quite fast, as the only thing that needs to be done is porting the game engine and possibly slicing the game data into proper chunks for reloading. I mean at that point the whole game, which the player will later enjoy, is there in the form of data that just needs to be interpreted by the game engine. The only situation where the system matters to me, is as a programmer and as "producer" or “director”, if you want to call it that way, of the project. As a programmer I care about the system, as I need to get the game to work, which I proved with the tech demo, to be possible on the Jag. As “producer” I care about the system, in the sense that I need to justify porting the game to a system and realizing if it's actually worth the effort. Of course as a Jag fan I want to see the game as much on the Jag as any of you, or maybe even a little more, because I know more about the project and know that the Jag really needs a good adventure game. As this is a hobby project, with no budget involved, money is not really a matter for me. The time, effort and money I put into the project already, is more than I could get back anyway. What I care about is just that the game is as good as possible and that as many people as possible have a chance to enjoy the game. So going the multiplatform route, everybody gets the best result. The only tiny drawback I could imagine that people see, is that the game is not exclusive for the Jag anymore. And I can understand that. For example I am quite a gamecube fan and I love the system for its great exclusive titles. It makes me angry when I see that for example Capcom changed their mind and says: Resident Evil 4 will be released for the PS2 as well. Of course it’s cooler to be able to say: Hey this amazing game is just available for my favorite system. But as a developer I can understand why Capcom does this. They do it, simply because RE4 is such an extraordinary game that was so expensive to produce and has so much potential that they can’t afford just to release it on one system and many fans of the series would be very dissapointed, not being able to play the game on their system. And even though I still can’t say that I like their multiplatform idea as a gamer and I would certainly prefer exclusive Gamecube titles, but I accept it, because if that’s the price for such amazing games to be released on the cube, then that’s fine with me. With Eerievale it’s similar. The game has so much potential and there are so many adventure fans without a Jag that would like to play it, I just can’t justify it to myself, not to make a version of the game for other systems, especially if there is so little work involved in those ports. Proting wise the Jag version is most work, as it needs to be completely custom and optimised for the Jag, while the Jag has the smallest fanbase of the systems Eerievale will come out for. Still I never thought about dropping the Jag version. Simply because I like the Jag and want to support it and because I think the Jag really deserves a good adventure game. Another last comment to the topic of exclusivity, for those who care about it and many don’t seem to care much, they just want the game: Nobody can change history and even when a game is ported to different systems, you still know, that in the case of Eerievale, the project was born on the Jag. And so people who enjoy the game on other systems, at least have to admit, that without the Jag, they wouldn’t be able to play the game on their system either. So to sum it up again: All design work has to be finished as well as the engine development, before anything can be ported to other systems. You really shouldn't consider multiplatform as a bad thing, because in the case of Eerievale it makes sure, that the Jag version is as good as it can be and that no ideas were ignored or cut out, because of bad design tools, limited memory or to speed development up. It's all there. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! You sound like you were considering the games simple or easy to do just because they were relased for the SNES... What you don't realize is, that the games you mentioned were absolute masterpieces which are untouched in gameplay quality. Just because it's 2D doesn't mean it's simple. Even just asking for any 2D rpg of some sort at all is already a lot keeping in mind how much work it is and that there is nobody in the Jag scene to do it. Asking for a game that is quality wise comparable to zelda or so is an impossiblity for any hobby developer and obvious even professionals, because there is no similar game even coming close to the zelda series. Jaysmith: Actually to this day there has not been any 3D game that was comparble gameplay wise to the 2D titles... While some 2D titles had playtime of a few hundread hours, most 3D titles even today have less than 20 hours playtime. Of course the graphics engine code is more when doing a 3D game, but coding takes least time for a RPG anyway. I dare to claim that designing a 20 hour game 3D role playing game is easier to develop than a really great and detailed 2D rpg with a few hundread hours playtime. After all he was refering to Zelda: A link to the past, chrono trigger and FF3. So you should compare it with developing an equal 3D game. Really people should stop paying so much attention to programming itself. In the 70s or 80s you could do a good game with pure programming. But since there is something like decent graphics, game design, level design or story writing involved with games that changed. Programming doesn't make such a game good, it's merely the very basic requirement. It's merely the framework. Design and writing is what makes such a game good. I mean nobody likes reading an empty book. Or looking at empty frames of paintings. The design and writing is to roleplaying or adventure games what the writing is to a good book and the artist's work to a valuable paiting. Sorry, but anybody who pays more attention to the programming aspect than to the rest definately has no idea what the genre (be it RPG, action adventure or graphic adventure or anything similar) is about. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Hmmm, I would have liked a "depends on the game" option Afterall 5 years might be reasonable for a really great story based game, while it's insane for a simple VCS quality Pong clone As I can not vote for that and as most Jag games in the future will probably be classic remakes anyway or other smaller projects, I vote for 50% done. Regards, Lars.

Hi! Personally I would always say, keep it quiet as long as it is possible for you and before announcing anything, be as sure as you can be that you can finish the game. In the past I made the mistake of announcing things too early too and regretted it. In the case of Star Alliance that definately was the case. Then again, when I started the project I knew hardly anything about game dev. I still had to learn Jag coding, was new to graphics, didn't know much about design and had no idea about planning the project properly either.. Fortunately I learned from all those mistakes and know how to do it better now. However for some projects, especially big ones, where you can't do everything yourself, there is a new problem... You might need skilled people to help you and unless you know skilled people to help you already, there is no other way than announcing the project, so people hear a about it and might be interested to help. Another matter is when your project is based on projects of others, so you have to wait for them, until you can make yours. And in the case of a scene like the Jag scene, another matter is, the fear that, before your game is finished, there might not be much of a scene left. It's really hard to tell. I announced the Eerievale project after several months of work already, and even though I had a working tech demo running, I still think it was early, but I don't really regret announcing it so early, because that way I got in contact with the very talented folks who create music for the game. When talking about a story based game for example, I think a timescale of 4-5 years is actually quite normal or even good, when thinking about a whole new game being developed from scratch and with highest homebrew quality (means highest quality one can get, without the help of a professional team and no budget) in mind. Eerievale for example was announced in the end of 2003. By that time the project was in development for several months already and I had a working adventure engine behind it. So in a few months it's almost two years since I announced it. But research and the storywriting started long before that already, even though at that time I didn't know I would make a game out of it. What many forget is, that it highly depends on the game you make. Story based games are usually most work when it comes to research, design and story writing, while the actual programming is much less work. For example, if you wanted to do a decent fantasy role playing game, you would probably have to spend years, just for research on role playing systems and of course all the real world background that might make the game world seem more believable. The different cultures that might be present in the game, their history, their way of life at the time the game takes place and so on. If you are doing everything yourself, you will also need a lot of research time to make the graphics believable and fitting. Even things that might seem simple like the weapons, can be quite complex. Afterall it can ruin the athmosphere when a character is fighting with a weapon that wasn't even invented at that time or with a weapon that was entirely untypical for him. Of course it all depends on how good you want the game to be. Fans of the genre will definately notice it when a lot of research and love to detail was put into a game and appreciate that. This love to detail, storytelling and research and so on are things that can even make hobby projects stand out from the crowd. With many professional games, you actually feel that they are very much lacking in these aspects. Many developers are seeing a game as something technical these days (not the real good developers though) and it can work, but it can never be a as good as a game done by somebody who actually put his heart and soul with tons of love to detail into a project. So I guess you can't really give advice when a game should be announced, as it depends entirely on the game and when the developers feels it to be time. Clint: When talking about professional games I agree. For hobby games it's different. Of course it depends on the game. When somebody does a classic update or remake of any kind and he needs 5 years, i would see it similar to the way you said. When somebody does a game that lives from its research, design and storywriting, then I think 5 years is a good timescale from start to finish for a hobby project. For example a RPG like I talked about as example. Regards, Lars.