Starcat

Congratulations to this amazing release Keep up the great work!!

This is great! I'm looking forward to reading more about it. Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing your experiences.

Creating a game for yourself is the best thing to do. In my opinion, only something you create for yourself can really be innovative, fresh, exciting or groundbreaking. Especially in homebrew, creating something for yourself in the first place, is the driving force that is necessary to actually bring something unique from start to finish. Nobody is forced to share their work. However, personally I think it's stupid not to share your hard work with people who appreciate it enough to even pay money for it. It's another thing to want to try a game first, to see if you like it. But I honestly believe every true Jaguar fan will want to own a decent game and support the developer by purchasing it. Buying a great homebrew product or independent game is a matter of respect and appreciation in my opinion and at the same time it helps the developers to continue their work in the future. This may sound strange, but to me, homebrew and indie games are the future of videogames. With the exception of a handful of titles in the last 5 years or so, the mass market and big publishers really didn't have anything to offer that I cared about. In fact I'm quite sick of the attitude of major publishers and their chewed out sequels. They are the death of videogames. Sure games look more advanced than in '83 when the video game crash swept away all the soulless clones on the market, but these days it's essentially the same for most titles on the market. Maybe I am the only one who feels like this, though. Just my personal opinion. Anyway. As I said, to me the future of exciting games lies in the hands of homebrew and indie developers, creating new original ideas and titles. I don't care for elite releases that only a small group is able to enjoy. It just raises expectations of those who can not try it. In my opinion a game is meant to be played. At least that's what I'd like to see with my games. Regards, Lars.

Actually parts of code working on some Jags and not on others, seems to not so uncommon. Mostly it's due to remaining data in memory or registers though. Then again, I'm a bit uncertain. I also experienced code working on my test Jaguars, but not on some others. However I think I remember IS2 cart not working on a Jaguar console a while ago on ejagfest. Other games worked, though. I don't know if it was an M or K series Jag though. Or if it even related to that or something else.

That's sadly very true, as well. There is a lot of stuff out there, especially source codes to official games, that are not used except maybe for very few people who are far enough to develop such a game themselves and being curious how atari did it and how they can do it better.

Sorry, Robert. Didn't see your post before.

At the moment, it doesn't. But this is a very good idea for a new feature Supporting the Memory Cart would be interesting too. Zerosquare, Matthias wrote a tool that displays the conent of the savegame eeprom a while ago. I'm not sure if the source is also on his website, but it might. Maybe it helps you implement a feature to backup savegames, unless of course you already know how to do it. The thing to think about regarding a release of your tool is, that people could exchange roms after dumping. Then again, this has been done a long time ago already. Not so much inside the Jaguar community but in the emulation community. So does it affect the Jaguar community much? I don't know. Not so many people have the means to run rom images on the jaguar itself and even if they did, they are Jag fans and probably either own the original or plan to buy it at some point if they like it. Most people who pirate roms use them on an emulator and they don't really care about the Jag as a system, I think. They would never buy the games, they are just hording what they can get for free. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want my games to be dumped and distributed somewhere without my permission either. However I believe rom dumps of games like avp, t2k etc didn't hurt the value or demand of the actual games. Maybe it would make more sense to do some kind of poll, as there will always be people that approve of it as a tool, while others disapprove and see it a way to pirate games. Regards, Lars.

Funny enough, I wanted to give Virtual Jaguar a try again yesterday. It has been many years since I tried it and it never worked for me. I never tried the latest version on current hardware before. No change though. It always hangs before anything of any game is even displayed. I just don't know how to get it to work. I tried Raiden, which is technically a game simple to emulate, I guess. It was one of the first that ran flawlessly on Project Tempest, too. I also tried more complex ones like Tempest 2000, but of course no luck there either. The screenshots on the website show a lot of games in action, even a lot more than PT can emulate, but I just have no luck getting it to work.

That's a really nice review. Congratulations on your BJL Jag, too.

Hello Matthias! Can you tell me how parameters are passed between C and asm functions? With other words how a C functions passes its parameters to an asm functions and vice versa. Regards, Lars.

I'm using Windows XP, however my environment is pretty much setup like Atari did, just mostly using batch files, setting the paths and using SMAC SLN. What needs to be done to get Seb's lib to work in that environment?

Thanks. Matthias, what compiler are you using? At the moment I'm trying to get a basic environment to work, that I can experiment with. Zerosquare, thanks for the hint. However I'm not quite sure how I would setup an environment with this libary. I'm familiar with the DOS based Atari environments, I mostly use batch files instead of makefiles, too. But I'm not really used to linux, cygwin or similar environments. Is there any ready to use environment like the one in the Atari examples that works with the Removers C lib? Regards, Lars.

I didn't know the games were written in C, but it sounds promising. What library are you using when programming in C on the Jaguar?

Hello everybody! I know this topic isn't entirely new, but up to this point, I couldn't find good tutorials or examples on using Jaguar C to develop games. Of course C isn't exactly the strong side of the Jag and there are libs like the removers lib. However it's my impression, that except for the Jagware people possibly, nobody is really using it. Correct me if I'm wrong. It just seems like such a waste, if this really works well. A lot of great games could be made with more attention to the idea than the code (as C is just faster to develop with than asm). I'd really like to see a good hello world tutorial and also some background information how developing a jag program in C works compared to assembler. For example, what functions are available? How can one modify or add own assembler routines to the program? To those using an existing library such as the removers lib, what do you think of it and do you feel anything important is missing? Regards, Lars.

Why don't you take a look at some youtube videos of it? It should give you a rough idea how the game plays like. Personally I would say the game is average gameplay wise, compared to similar titles on other platforms. The big characters don't allow a good oversight and feel a bit clumsy in terms of movement to me. In a way the game feels a bit like a good try that could have been even great if there was put more time into the game design and some minor issues had been fixed. As it is, it's still a fun game though, just no Turrican, Contra or Metal Slug I'm mentioning this, as I recall having talked to somebody on an early Euro JagFest who mentioned having contact to the original developers and he told some storys how they always wanted to create a Turrican-like game and how they hoped Hyperforce would surpass the original. They didn't quite manage to do just that. However as the Jag doesn't really have anything else in terms of sidescrolling jump 'n run / shooters, it's as close as it gets.

Funny how people still stick to this whole "64-bit" marketing catchphrase after so many years. It means nothing and didn't even turn out to be good for promoting the Jag. I guess if people relate the bit count of a system to its processing power then that may be good for marketing, but in fact those don't have to be related. Processing power alone doesn't make good games. Good, original and creative ideas make good games. Good game design, strong characters or great storytelling also does. The technology is just the requirement, the vehicle for the content. If the content is average, who cares about the technology? That probably was the main problem for Atari anyway. Many Jaguar games were average titles to begin with. On a superficial look great technology may impress, but when looking closely at a game it's always the content that either build or breaks a great game experience. Some titles on the Jag seem to be build solely on the idea to sell the game by the boxart, instead of good gameplay. (Supercross 3D for example) Today most Jag fans hopefully know, if just the right developers push the Jag, it can surpass what has been done in the past by far. The Atariowl Project is the best example in technical aspects and by being the first promising 3d action adventure rpg game for the Jaguar. If any title proves the Jags hardware power, that can be unleased by a great developer its this game. I'm also very confident that Eerievale will set whole new standards from a storytelling, 2d visual and game design point of view. In fact even today I haven't seen anything like it on other systems. Which is even more of a reason to stick to it and bring it to the Jag once it is done.

Hi primeform! It's long ago since I used a flash cart. I sold mine years ago. But I'll still try to share what I remember. It always was a bit tricky to upload to the flash cart, however I figured it out after a few tries. Sometimes I had to upload twice, but it eventually worked. When using Windows XP you certainly need a tool to allow access to the parallel port. You could also try dosbox, but I am not entirely sure if it allows it. I used a tool called porttalk / allowio for BJL transfers later though. When you run the flash cart and the image on it is bad (bad transfer, wrong image, whatever) it should give you a black screen. There is no Jaguar boot screen. However depending on your tv possibly, you *should* get a (black) picture, at least on "tube" tvs. Regards, Lars.

Thanks for the hint. I was trying to use the same socket. I think I'll stick with composite and Scart for now.

Now I'm trying to get the svideo part to work as well. It shows the colors right, but there still are wrong (pink/bluish) colors next to it. Any idea what causes that? I never used svideo much, so I'm not sure. here is a picture of what the screen looks like.

I finally got it! Seems like I had to switch the pins for composite / audio in / out. However that didn't fix my sync. For some reason I had to connect Pin 8 and 16 on the Scart connector to get sync. But all of the trouble was worth it. My picture is much better than it ever used to be. I used a flat ribbon Scart cable before, but now I can connect a properly shielded one. Thanks for the help everybody! Regards, Lars.

I resoldered the whole adapter, still no improvement. However there is one odd thing I noticed... What I am building is an adapter with a cart connector (female) so I thought I could just plug in a standard scart cable and be fine. However is it possible that most scart cables, even those who claim to be full connected, actually do not connect the pins 1:1, but for example wire composite in to composite out, same is true for audio in / out? Regards, Lars.

The composite does work. I connected 9B to the shielding of the Scart connector, so that should be find as far as ground goes. Of course each R / G / B pin also has its own ground connected.

It's really weird, because it *should* work. I might just replace the wires again now that I know the exact pinout. My TV says "no signal" even though I can see the picture cycling through. So I thought maybe for some reason the signal wasn't strong enough or it needed some pull up resistors or so. Also on a sidenote, I noticed the composite picture gets quite some interference when using the cd unit. I never used composite before, so is this common? I guess it might be? Regards, Lars.

Hi Richard! Thanks a lot. I'm really enthusiastic about the project again and I finally will take some more time for it. I'm sure it be a pleasant surprise to everybody looking forward to the game. Regards, Lars.

Thanks I can't wait to put the experience I gained in the last years into the Eerievale project. I'm sure it will be pleasant surprise for everybody. And you're very right about Tekken and FFL. While Tekken is by far not the best 3D beat em up out there, it's a fun and decent one. At some point it would really be amazing if the Jag could get a better 3D beat em up. Gameplay wise FFL has a lot left to wish for.