Starcat

Hi Guys ! To Matthias: Yes, it's exactly what I wrote in the post: Concept art. Micky: Great to hear that. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Oh, well that's fine then. I guess I misunderstood you. I thought you wanted to help with programming And that is of course not possible, because you don't know enough about jaguar programming yet to help me. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Yes, putting banners like "Goatstore" or "Songbird" onto buildings in the game could be a funny idea. However before anything like that happens, they or others that are interested need to agree and I also have to discuss that with the rest of the Star Alliance team. to Dragonforce: I don't know where you could help in the star alliance project. Even for an experienced jag coder who has already done several projects it would probably take months to fully otherstand the code and to be able to actually improve it or help in the project, so I don't think you as a newcomer to the Jag could help me. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Thanks for the kind words. We're doing our best to make the game as good as possible. To LinkoVitch: Yes, we are planning to put in cut scenes of some sort into the game. To Paolo: Support (in every way that comes to your mind) is always very welcome and also very important to keep the project going. In the past the progress was slow often because I needed money for hardware and software to continue development. Regards, Lars.

Hi Kev ! I'm not sure. But I'll try my best to make it as good as possible. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Thanks guys ! 'm glad you like it. Regards, Lars.

Hi Guys ! As most of you probably know, the progress of our popular atari jaguar 2D shooter, Star Alliance - Battle for Earth is slow but steady. To show all you game hungry Jag fans some progress the Star Alliance team has decided to release a concept art rendering. If there is enough interest we might consider releasing more concept art later. You can find it on the Star Alliance Page ( http://www.starcat-dev.de/star_alliance/index.php )and also below in this post. Have fun ! Feedback is very welcome. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! LOOOOOOOOOOL It really isn't hard to figure out which one are from the PC version and which one from the Jag version. Afterall the PC version is available in every good game store and infos on it can be found on hundreads of sites. It's ok to ask this if you had linked to the Jag AvP proto pics, but somebody should really be able to tell the graphical difference between a Jag game from 1994 and a PC game from 1999. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Actually I did a Jaguar version of Tic-Tac-Toe quite some time ago. I'll try not to get involved in this discussion of what the fans think what's possible and not, because it'll just end up as another flame war. Let me just say this, if you seriously think the Jaguar could even beat the 3DO at texturemapped 3D, then you know you played Jag for too long. You should really take a break and look what the systems actually can do. The systems 3D abilities sorted by machine : 3DO->Saturn->PSX->N64->DC Besides, does it really matter what the Jag could do in your opinion ? I think it's really a waste of time to think about what it could do as long as there is nobody who will get it done. (for example a game like Mario 64 in same quality on the Jag) All those number comparisons like "system X can do polycount Y" don't say anything, because the actual performance of a system depends on so many factors, that unless you're an experienced coder for the system you can't estimate it. The only way to get an idea of what a system can do if you don't want to study the hardware for years, is to look at the games. Look at all the Jag games and you'll see immediately what games uses the Jaguar's power in the best way. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! >1) How long will it take just to learn how to program a platform game >(hours). >2) Is the jaguar CD or Cart easier to program for? >3) What type of programming "language" does the jaguar take? >4) After learning how to program a game, how long would it take to make >one? >5) How many people are usually in a developement team? to 1) Depends completely on your experience and how fast you learn. But in general I would never ask for hours. Rather weeks, months maybe even years, depening on your experience that you have already and how fast you learn. to 2) If you want to program a cartridge game, you need an alpine. BJL games can be modified to run from cartridge space as well, if you put a wrapper program around it, but that is no real cartridge development. And when you want to do CD development you need a JagCD and a cd bypass cart. to 3) Assembler. Motorola 68000 assembler probably what you're using most in the begining and later the GPU/DSP Assembler. to 4) That depends on you again. First of all "programming a game" a a wide spread definition... a "Game" can be something like "tic-tac-toe" or pong, but also the latst PS2 and NGC games. So for a simple game like pong, it might take a few months if you have never programmed. But everything more complicated like a platformer or shooter might just as well take years. If you want to make a real good and professional game you can always calculate that you will need about 2-3 years if it is a platformer or shooter or something like that, but only if you have experience already. to 5) It doesn't really matter how many people are in your team. It just matters how good they are and how much time they spend on the project. Most Jaguar hobby projects are done by just one person or with the help of 2 or 3 others. The professional Jaguar games were usually done by teams of bout 10-20 people. Regards,Lars.

Hi ! There is just one thing you should really think about first: The saturn is known to be a very difficult system to code. And that's what professional coders said. (I never coded Saturn and probably never will, so I can just repeat what I heard.) The dissadvantages about saturn dev are: -Sega is still in business, they still have all the copyrights to saturn and stuff like that -Dev kits are almost impossible to get and very expensive. -there is no real community. -IF you do a game, probably no one will care about it, because the average hobby game can't compete with professional games of the saturn. and the people also won't be interested in new games, because if there are tousands of games, who cares if there is one hobby game more or less ? -There are no coders that can help you -There are no source codes or examples available -The whole development evironment is a lot more expensive The advantages of the Jag today are: -Many fans that are looking forward to games -Not many official games, so even hobby classic updates might be welcome. (because when there are only about 70 games, every game is important) -the Jaguar hobby development environment is simple, and very easy to get -tools, examples, docs and even complete game source codes are available -there are many coders that could help you. Including me. -the Jag is "OURS". It's an open system everybody can code for it without having to pay licenses. That's all that comes to my mind right now. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! I guess if it was a wrong power supply it probably is one certain IC near the joypad port... I forgot the name. It was a small motorola IC... (I think 8 pins in each side) MC whatever... I think it was an AC/DC converter or something. (not sure about that though) I had a jaguar that died from a wrong power supply (got it for free, because it was broken ) and that had exactly that IC burned. Although it turned out that the whole Jag was fried. But maybe you have luck and it still works. All I have heard so far is that you can use genesis power supplys with the Jaguar, but never heard that you can use SNES power supplys. The SNES power supply has an output of 9V DC 1.3 A... the Jag needs 9V DC 1.2 A... So it's quite possible that the Jag is fried when you use a SNES power supply. However I still don't understand what the problem is. If somebody is serious about getting a standard Jaguar, it's a piece of cake. Especially in the neatherlands as they were *everywhere* when atari was still in business. Here in Germany I've never seen a Jaguar in a store back when atari was still in business and still it was a piece of cake to find a standard jag here. You can easily find Jags in used game stores, maybe even on flea markets, there are tons of jags on ebay, and many retailers that are good and ship internationally. And if all those ways are still to difficult, why don't you just ask somebody to buy one for you. You give him the money, he buys the jag for you and sends it to you. Simple. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Yes, exactly. Here are some hints and suggestions if you want to start Jag coding: -Get the development hardware, tools, docs etc. -Learn programming first before annoucing a game. For somebody who has never programmed assembler or C even a tiny pong game is a huge challenge on the Jaguar. While a project like GTA on the Jag would be a huge challenge for somebody with many years good assembler experience and a lot of game development experience. -You need to seperate your ideas/wishes/dreams from the reality (this is not meant to offend you, I just don't know how to say it). What I mean is you have an idea and what you need to do is think exactly what you can do and how you can do it. Ideas a great, but sadly completely useless if you can't make them real. -You need to get an idea what a system can do and what it can't and also accept that. It can be very hard if you're a fan of a system, but it doesn't make sense to think for example how you could port Quake 3 Arena in exactly the same quality of the PC version to a C64, just because you think the C64 could do it. (this is an extreme example, but I hope you understand what I mean.) -Work for yourself, not for others, because otherwise I can guarantee that you will fail. Jaguar programming can be frustrating as hell for newbies, and if you are not doing it for yourself, you'll give it up sooner or later. -A good player isn't a always good coder. In fact I know thousands of players who would never be able to create a game even if they would try as hard as they can. Whenever they get stuck they say to themselves "I'll continue later" and start playing. Then they try it again, don't find a solution and play again and so on. Two years later they realise that they still didn't get anything done. Same goes for game design, art, sound and all other topics anout game design. Only very, very few coders are so multi talented that they can for example create a professional jump and run or shooter completely on their own. -Focus on one system. If you have more than one system that you want to develop for you won't get far. It's similar to the problem stated in the thread above. As soon as you get stuck, you might say "Let's try the other system, maybe it's easier". But the problem is, it's not easier. Programming is programming. If you really know one machine very well, it can be easy to adapt your thoughts to another. For example if you know C you can learn to program any system with a C compiler quite fast. Same is with assembler. If you know one assembler very well, it's a lot easier to understand other assemblers. Well, I could give you a lot more suggestions I think, but at the moment they don't come to my mind. Hope this helps. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! HA HA HA HA Sonic Jam ?! That looks like a mediocre PSX game of 1995. Tekken 3 is one of the first PSX games that even uses high res for the whole game and useses easily 100 times more polygons. Here is a screenshot: http://www.maniac.de/oldhome/reviews/satur...sz/sjam/s5b.jpg Here is a PSX screenshot of Tekken 3: http://www.all4games.com/playstation/tekke.../images/001.jpg Hello ?! Since the DC died, Sega creates their games for every new video game system out there. What do you think why there are so many Sega games on NGC, PS2 and Xbox ?! Besides Sega broke a lot of contracts and patents back in the Atari days, they owe them something. HA HA HA HA HA ! Start THINKING !!! The PSX does have Quake 2 and that has TONS more polygons and a much more complicated engine. Besides even simple games like Tomb raider or wipeout 2097 sucked on the saturn. Don't try to tell me storys. I OWNED both PSX and Saturn with those games, I compared them directly. No, the problem is simply that Doom is a PC game. It does not use polygons so the 3D hardware can't be used. It uses the strength of PCs, fast CPU, lots of RAM. The strength of consoles is fast graphic (3D) hardware. That's why direct ports suck. The 3DO version is very bad exactly because of that reason. 3D shooters that use the polygon hardware instead like PoEd, Killing Time etc. are smooth, instead. Lobotomy probably simply concentrated on the strength of the saturn and used the 3D hardware. Regards, Lars.

Yes, $1000 isn't too much. I easily paid more than $3000+ overall for hardware, software and boooks that I needed for Jaguar development. And I still need to spend much more money on it I think, because more hardware is needed. But that doesn't matter much. $1000 might not be enough to get someone started on a professional game if he has no equipment and doesn't know the system. But $1000 is very useful for somebody who is already working on a game for the system. It's up to you to invest $1000 into jaguar development, but if I were you, I'd put it into a project that I like a lot and a project that does not have much money to support it. However I think you can forget all the titles mentioned above like Mario 64, Perfect Dark and stuff like that. All of those are license titles and $1000 is peanuts compared to a license like that. (even if you had enough money they wouldn't give you a license, I think) And also because the Jaguar could never do them. When it comes to 3D the Jaguar is weaker than a Saturn. So you can't expect that we hobby coders port a game to it that would even be impossible on the PSX which is already much superior to the Saturn in 3D. (The Saturn is slightly better at 2D than the PSX when you use the RAM Pack. Simply because you can put additional animations into that RAM.) However Sonic would be a piece of cake for the Jaguar, afterall the genesis uses a 68k as well and the graphic hardware is much weaker than the Jags. Although you might get license problems. Although maybe that's not such a big problem, because Sega is very poor these days and will be bought by either Sammy or Namco soon. Who knows maybe they will just buy the licenses and even drop the name sega. Namco Sonic Adventure DX Sounds strange. But better they do that they letting Sega die and the video game world would loose both the name sega and their games. Like it happened to SNK. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! To Dragonforce about Nintendo not letting him develop: NO company let's hobby developers program their systems. Simply because most hobby projects can't compete with professional ones. And these days even less hobby project can compete with the professional ones, simply because 1 hobby coder can't beat 50 top coders, 20 top artists, 5 top musicians and several million dollars budget. Do you know what ? All systems after the VCS had encryption codes of some sort, like the jaguar. That was done because of two reasons, to prevent unauthorised software (hobby development) and piracy. I don't know any company that liked hobby developers, simply because most hobby games are not professional and would immeditaltely ruin the image of the comany and system. Just look at the VCS, there are tons of clones. Even many games that are identical expect maybe the background color or the cartridge lable. (I recall having several racing games that were exactly the same excepct the background color and name.) Neither, Atari, Sega, Ninetendo or Sony did allow hobby developers to work on their systems. These days however it might be different with their old systems because there is no market for them anymore and it can't be much harm. The PSX was the only system that actually had an official "homebrew" unit, however the people were restricted not to give any infos, source codes, programs etc to other people and were bound with many other guidelines. Nintendo surely made a mistake by letting Phillips do the Job of the SNES CD later (just look how crappy the JagCD laser unit was, afterall the JagCD is known to have some units that don't work even though they are new and never used). If sony had finished the SNES CD, Nintendo would still be the leading game company these days and not fighting for the 2nd place. Well, anyway. I think Nintendo is the greatest company that is still around. Atari died, SNK died, Sega is half dead and makes only games these days (although they are being bought by namco or sammy now, I think), but at least Nintendo is still there and does an excellent job like in the glory SNES days. I'm perfectly happy with the GameCube and I'm counting the days till the E³ to hear the latest news. Regards, Lars.

Hi Matthias ! Cool. I didn't know the source is available on Jaguar Homebrew. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! I recall someone out there was asking about using the source and that's when James came on and said that he was the only person who had permission to do so, etc. Someone would have to ask Duranik if this is true, but I think I recall James saying nobody else could work on it, only him. Back in 2000 when I was doing the JDC CD, I first got in contact with Duranik and they offered me the source code of native to publish it on my CDs and also on my website (although it's not on my site anymore, now it's only available on my CD). However Duranik said that ANYBODY can do ANYTHING with the code. Nobody except Duranik has any right to the code and nobody except them has a right to say what may or may not be done with it. And as it is right now: The is available on my CD and everybody who wants to can work with it. Regards, Lars.

I agree with Matthias. The underground group always worked fine. What's wrong with that now ? New coders can get started with Jag stuff these days easier than ever before. There are not only cheap dev solutions (like BJL and the other hobby dev kits), but also Jaguar emulators and even the Starcat Developments Jaguar Dev Tools CD, which contains all the important files and even more. Everything a new coder needs. And news also are not a problem. I, for example, post news as soon as there is something new for the fans to know. I'm sure all the other coders will do the same if they think there is something the fans need to know about. (I'm sure nobody will "secretly" publish jaguar games without telling anybody ) So I do not see any problem at all about UGD. In fact I'm glad that there is something like UGD. It worked great in the past and I'm sure it will work great in the future as well. Regards, Lars.

Hi Thunderbird ! Ok, I can explain this: Jaguar Community United is a PURE Fan group. It was created after old the website was taken offline. So they decided to move to yahoo. EJagTeam are European coders, but NOT UGD. Afterall UGD also has just as many US members as european. Jaguar Homebrew is the same as the Jaguar Playtesting list. It's for fans with a hobby dev kit that would like to test new binarys that developers release to the group sometimes. It's no developers list. Regards, Lars.

Hi Guys ! I have to agree with AtariOwl. As member of the UGD list since 2000, I know what it is about. Thunderbird, I don't know what list you subscribed to, but it's certainly not UGD. I have recieved thousands of e-mails from the group already. And there are very active discussions when something needs to be discussed. For example the CD Bypass discussions and E2PROM discussions. The group is indeed very friendly and supportive. And the member count is constantly growing. Besides how can you expect a group of people to ask you how you work with your E2PROM when you don't even tell the people what you're working on. BSG was quite a surprise to everybody and nobody knew it included a CD bypass and also a 2 K E2PROM. Protector SE had both included after discussing the ideas with the group and fidning the best way to do it. If you have to keep everything secret, it shouldn't be a surprise to you that the people can't include your ideas in their discussions. Besides the UGD scheme is great and easy to do for everybody. The official games used the same idea, so if it was no problem for them, why should it be a problem in future games ? Regards, Lars.

Hi JustClaws ! It's very true what you said. Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Thanks for the nice feedback. So it seems there is interest in smaller games afterall. Maybe I'll pick the ball game project up again when I have some more time. Btw, does anybody know a better name than "ball game" for the game ? Regards, Lars.

Hi ! Oh no, no! I just thought it was a programming exercise, so you were leavint it that way. Sure I would like to have it in a complete form, with lots of music, different backgrounds and mazes, more animated sprites... I can't wait for a good compilation of classics' remakes (Lars? where's your ballgame?) Keep up the good job, guys! Ciao! To Matthias: I'm always surprised when I play Jagmania how much fun it is. I'm not sure why (never played a pac man game much before), but it is very much fun to play. A finished version would be great ! To Paolo: The "Ball Game" project was started long ago, basically it was just a test for the Starcat Developments Jaguar Library that I started to develop at that time. I wanted to see how fast I can do a simple game with the help of my library and to see if the lib was complete enough already and of course bug free. However I think the interest in Ball Game was too little. (only one person ever submitted user levels and real feedack and suggestions) Maybe it's because the game wasn't really special and because there is already a breakout game on the Jag. And maybe also because pong and also breakout are so simple that most coders do that ones. So Ball Game is on-hold at the moment and I'm focussing on projects that are more intersting to the people (i hope). Like Star Alliance. Regards, Lars.

Hi Jason ! Hey Lars, Any idea when you might have a demo for us to test? Or are you going to release it on CD/Cart so you don't want the ROM out there? I don't know yet if I'll do a demo release. The game will be on CD when it is done. But it's still a long way until then. Thanks Regards, Lars.