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Starcat

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Posts posted by Starcat

  1. Posted

    BTW. Garvin, why did you change the intro video? I liked that video, VERY High quality work there...

     

    Yes, it was cool.

     

    You changed too much. I was really looking foward to Native, maybe done by Carl or Thunderbird, but your work has already disappointed me.

     

    I think only Duranik could finish Native. Unimportant who else would do it, it wouldn't be the same.

     

    It is my personal opinion that Duranik's vision for Native was so great and so inspirational that what you have done to Native is horribly in the wrong direction. He is a much greater programmer.

     

    Duranik are actually two people. Roland (Coder) and Johannes Graf (Graphics). But I think they were indeed really great at what they did.

     

    But that's just my personal opinion. No offense targetted.

     

    Yes.

     

     

    I guess the trolls from JI2 are finally making their way over here...

     

    Why ? Just because he states his opinion doesn't mean that he is a troll.

     

    You can thank Lars for telling them where we went...

     

    Oh, yeah. Great. Just say that I'm responsible for everything that is bad in the world ;-)

    No seriously, I dont understand what your problem is... If somebody here is a troll and gets annoying he'll be banned.

     

    Btw, normally trolls won't register to get access to a forum. That makes AtariAge already a much better and safer place than JI2.

     

     

    Regards, Lars.

  3. Posted

    Hi Thunderbird !

     

    Can you tell me if there is a way for a homebrew game to detect what CD Bypass solution is used ? Can you detect is BS Gold / JUGS DD or Prot SE is used ?

     

    Maybe a text string or so at a memory location in the BSG cart that can be checked to find out if BSG is plugged in ?

     

     

    Regards, Lars.

  4. Posted

    Hi Stone !

     

    I'm sure if there is really a reason to be sorry for not getting HIS alpine...

     

    He once sold me a Jaguar that had "one pin missing on the boot rom" according to him... I thought it was easy to replace the boot rom with a BJL rom. When I got that Jag I had to find out that the a lot of parts were missing, the board was scratched and fried throughly at one spot.

    (at the power regulator Chip). The power connector was also missing :-(

    The whole board was completely useless.

     

    If he said that his alpine was in a good shape, it might mean "if you've luck you'll get it to work".

     

     

    Regards, Lars.

  5. Posted

    Hi Guys !

     

    Thunderbird, I think what Tyrant means is not talking about your products in general, but talking about your products when it is almost off topic.

     

    Somebody who asks how to get the BJL feature in Prot SE working shouldn't get the answer "Buy JUGS", but he should get infos on how to build a BJL cable.

     

    I can help you work out the code to imput from the rotary controler, no problem.

     

    Cool.

     

    Its a nice game so far, but the controls could use a little tweeking... the way the ball allways seems to bounce the same way from the controler, and almost randomly from the blocks is a little strange. Also the behaviour of that 4 ball icon is... weird lol. Normally when you get a multiball if you loose some of the balls (as allways happens), they dont get replaced by new balls, that just makes the game even harder since its impossible to catch all of the balls, and normally the extra three are free, and dosnt matter if you drop them, unless you drop all 4 balls, at which point your ball count goes down by one.

     

    Yes, all that stuff needs a little tweaking... The Ball bounces slightly different from the player. (but obviously too slightly) The bouncing from the blocks isn't random either, but needs tweaking as well.

    I'll think about the multiple ball powerup again. I'm sure there is a better way to implement it.

     

    Also serial mouse support isnt possible on a jaguar due to the way jaguars interface with their controlers. I have considered making a small box that would interface them, but it dosnt seem that important yet, when games that could use mice practically are being writen I may make some. I still havnt had time to make up any rotary controlers yet, well except two for myself, hopefully I'll make up one or two in a few days.

     

    Yes, no PC mouses can be used on the Jag, but ST mouses can. In fact I already have built an "ST Mouse to Jag" Adaptor. It works fine.

  6. Posted

    Hi Guys !

     

    I don't know how it is in the USA, but here in germany you can get a Jag easily and save modded to BJL. Just go to a tv repair shop and ask kind if they desolder the original boot rom and put in a socket.

    I did exactly that. It took less than 5 minutes from opening the Jag till closing it again and I have a perfectly clean and working BJL.

    The BJL cable costed me about $5 though.

    So I just had to buy a Jag and spend $5 to get a BJL dev kit :-)

    I think no other dev kit can top that.

     

    Thunderbird, I don't want to hurt your feelings and I respect the big effort that you put into BS and JUGS, but from what i have heard and seen on the €-JagFests the upload results are better with a professional BJL kit and BJL is also faster.

     

    The BJL uploads on my BJL Jag almost never fail, even for big games like Slam Racer and Native.

     

    Tyrant, you can be sure that there are still tons of things future Jag coders have to struggle with. The differences between the BJL and JUGS are such a tiny problem compared to those others that it is not worth to think about it. The BJL -> JUGS problems can be fixed with the correct upload commands, I think.

     

    However a big problem for newbies still are the different startups, PAL / NTSC problems, CD coding and many other things.

     

    I often get mails asking how to get those things done correctly.

    Somebody should try to create standard librarys for newbies.

     

    Regards, Lars.

  7. Posted

    Hi Tyrant !

     

    Thanks for the suggestions about the gameplay of ball game.

    The idea of rotary controllers would be nice, but I neither have code for rotary controllers, nor a rotary controller to test the code on... :-(

     

    Your 486 or pentium doesn't have a bi-directional parallel port ??

    That is really strange. Doesn't it have an on board parallel port connector ?

    Usually from 486 66 MHz and up all PCs have that...

     

    If you have such a on board controller and you still have the problem, try changing the parallel port settings in the bios. (I'm not really sure which one the correct one was, but I think it was EPP.)

     

     

    Regards, Lars.

  9. Posted

    Hi Glenn !

     

    Thanks for teh hint. I have already added it to the site.

     

    Btw, what do these start numbers stand for ? (If I knew that I could maybe solve the problems in the future...)

     

    Regards, Lars.

  10. Posted

    Hi !

     

    It's only a collectors item. If somebody is serious about Jag development the early dev kits are not the way to go. In the dev manual they say "if you are still using one of the old dev kits contact atari dev support immediately to exchange it."

     

    All hobby dev kits are a much better solution if you want to code and the alpine is the best solution, but quite expensive and rare.

     

    Regards, Lars.

  12. Posted

    I'm sure happy there are people like you out there, supporting the Jag!  :D  

     

    Nice to hear that :-)

     

    However, forgive my ignorance... I have Prot SE, but as far as I know, there's no cable to allow me to transfer the Breakout Clone from my PC to my Jag.  Unless, can I burn a CD, and use that?

     

    Thanks and keep up the good work!

     

    Aren't you aware of the BJL upload featue in Protector SE ?

    I think it is one of the coolest features of Prot SE.

     

    However you need a BJL cable to send the games from your PC to your Jag.

     

    More infos on the cable can be found here: http://home.t-online.de/home/Matthias.Domin/bjlmod.htm

     

    You can find the diagram to create the cable at the end of the text.

     

     

    Regards, Lars.

  17. Posted

    Hi Guys !

     

    I'm happy to announce a new project by Starcat Developments. :D

    It's only a small side project, though.

     

    It's a breakout clone.

    The interesting thing is however that there is a level script included that let's the user easily create his own levels on PC, link the binary again and upload the new binary to the Jag to play his level.

     

    If you created a cool level you are very welcome to send it to me. The best levels will be in the game later.

    If you have any ideas for powerups or other features for the game, feel free to tell me. The Game also needs a good name badly.

     

    This is YOUR chance to help keeping the Jaguar alive. YOU can make this game something really cool and special. :D

     

    You should always keep an eye on the project page to see if there is a new version of the level script with more features.

     

    Feedback is very welcome.

     

    You can find more infos at : http://www.starcat-dev.de/ball_game

     

     

    Regards, Lars.

  21. Posted

    Hi Guys !

     

    I ordered the book High Score ! Illustrated History of Video games and it arrived today.

     

    In the Jaguar section there was a nice surprise for me:

    Star Alliance was mentioned in the book.

     

    However they wrote that it was in development by a company called "JDK".

     

    Although I told them that it was in development by Starcat Develoments :-(

     

    But I'm happy that it was mentioned after all. :-)

     

    Regards, Lars.

  22. Posted

    Hi Thunderbird !

     

    Yes, I'm only rarely loading 2MB files.

     

    Today AMD has processors that imply higher clock speeds, but a few years ago that used the actual MHz count... My Athlon 700 is already a few years old.

     

    So it coul be possible that today it is a real problem to get an alpine working on a high end PC. After all they are many times faster than an Athlon 700.

     

    Anyway. I'm still completely satisfied with my current PC. And as long as it doesn't brake I won't sell it. So I don't think that I will have problems...

     

    Regards, Lars.

  24. Posted

    Hi !

     

    So why do you think it doesn't work ?

     

    The Jaguar "sees" a rom as one big chunk of data...

    And it is not like sound, graphics and code were seperated in a special way. The Jaguar does not know about code, sound or graphics.

    For the Jaguar it is all just DATA. It would be a chance less than 1 in one billion that only the parts that contain the sound data are corrupted.

     

    It's such a small chance that I highly doubt something like that can happen.

     

    And if it was just bad cartridge contact it would run at all.

     

    I think it is more likely that it is your console.

    Even though personally I have not had problems with this, there are people out there who say that some production runs are really bad because they are even more buggy than the others. Maybe you have such a buggy version that can not run theme park correctly. Maybe there are also other games that wouldn't work and you simply have the luck that the games you own work without problems.

    Theme Park worked on your old Jag until it broke. Now you have got a new one and it does not work correctly... what other reason could there be ?

     

    If you have already tryied to erase the cart memory and it didn't help, the only way to find out what is wrong is trying it on a different jag or buying a new copy of theme park I think.

     

    Regards, Lars.

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