Sauron
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Posts posted by Sauron
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59 minutes ago, sirlynxalot said:
Its actually very tricked out already. I think its a 386dx25 to start with, and then in the 90s my family put in a cyrix 486dxr2 clip on cpu, so if you have it initiated through the appropriate software drivers, you will get a clock doubler, 486 instruction set and 1kb of L1 cache from the cpu. That speeds up performance in dos games quite a bit compared to the stock cpu, but Doom and Descent and things like that are still not really at a fun playable level (unless you're running Fast Doom, a recent new build of doom for 386s and other slower cpus that has many more options to downgrade the graphics so you can get a smoother framerate. Greatly reducing the details will make the framerate pretty good on this machine but at a certain point its just like "what am I doing, this is not that fun to run doom in potato quality." Anyways, I tested Tempest with and without fully utilizing the clock doubler and L1 cache and it ran just as well in slow cpu mode as it did with the fast settings, and that was quite a surprise to me.
RAM is upgraded to 16MB
Storage is a 2GB compact flash via an IDE to CF adapter. I needed to get a bootrom with the xtide bios for the system to boot from the CF.
Doom should still be playable on that. What kind of VGA card do you have in it?
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8 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:
The DOM should help a lot too. I'm nostalgic for the old hard drive sounds, but you just can't beat a 512mb storage capacity on a 386. You can basically load every game you'd possibly want to play on it... and have it load at the fastest speed possible by the processor.
Yup, you get the best performance and storage capacity with those. I certainly understand the nostalgia for the old HD sounds, but having such a modern convenience on older hardware makes you never want to go back to mechanical media ever again, on any platform.
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1 minute ago, 82-T/A said:
Doom played fine on a 386. That's the system that most people played it on originally. It came out in 1993, and most people still had 386s at the time. It didn't play all that great on a 386 SX, but played totally fine on a 386 DX. Remember that you could minimize the screen size as well to reduce the processing demands. Minimum system requirements was a 386 w/ 1mb of RAM, but recommended a 386 DX w/ 4mb of RAM.
It'll play fine on a higher clocked 386DX, sure, but good luck getting it to load with 1 MB of RAM. The game would never load for me with anything less than 4MB, and no memory manager utilities or boot disks would change that. That said, Wolf3D is certainly playable on a 386SX with 1MB, provided you're freeing up enough RAM for it.
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36 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:
What are the system specs? Is it a 386 SX? We had a 386 SX-16 back in the day, and you'd be surprised how much quicker you can make it if you upgrade some of the things in it. The same principles apply then as they do today.
If he's able to run Doom at all then I highly doubt it's a 386 SX with only 1 MB of RAM. The game required a 486 and 4 MB at minimum, IIRC. Outside of that, I'll second those recommendations.
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4 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:
At this point, I view the JagCD as an overvalued liability and is why I sold mine a while back. Part of me still wants one but the non-collector part of me moved on.
This is exactly why I sold mine also, and I don't miss it. A repro JagCD makes no sense nowadays with the proliferation of the GD. I think it's best that developers and publishers move on to taking advantage of the added conveniences we have now. CD releases on the Jag were pointless 10 years ago once making carts became easier for everyone, and it's even more pointless now.
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A very simple but surprisingly fun game. Definitely helps make the top tier worth it!
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On 4/10/2024 at 3:06 PM, Clint Thompson said:
Very much look forward to this, should it become a working thing.
Hope so though... really don't want to try and find and waste money on another JagCD unit.
Same here. I sold my JagCD a while back, and the VLM is the ONLY thing I miss from it.
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I don't think I'll be able to resist this release. Oh, my poor bank account...
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Maybe Atari can be somehow convinced to remake them.
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Time is the fire in which we burn....in the toxicity of the Jaguar's fumes.
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Music may have been a shortcoming for Atari on the console side, but most definitely not on the computer side.
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5 hours ago, Austin said:
Never knew this was a thing, but I would definitely like to see it in action.
Same here, I wondered a bit about its movie playing capabilities myself back in the day. Would love to see what kind of video quality the DC is capable of.
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54 minutes ago, JPF997 said:
The reason why Hasbro got rid of Atari and Hasbro Interactive ( the gaming division ) was because of the dot-com bubble , the Wikipedia article on this is actually pretty solid, Hasbro Interactive managed to become the third largest third party publisher in the world in a incredibly short amount of time, but then the Dot-com bubble burst, Hasbro panicked and tried to get out of gaming as fast as possible, which is why they sold the entirety of the gaming division to Infogrames for a remarkably cheap price.
True enough, but the Atari name had little to do with their pre-bubble-burst success. Most of their big hitters were still published under Hasbro Interactive, with the Atari name mainly just used for their retro-themed games, none of which were huge sellers. Take it from someone who was there at the time, the Atari name had little value during Hasbro's ownership.
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5 hours ago, JPF997 said:
Not from what I've seen here on Atari age or the internet at large, the Hasbro Atari era was very successful, far more people bought and played Atari games during those three years that on the Lynx or the Jaguar.
No it wasn't, otherwise they wouldn't have needed to offload all of Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames just three years after purchasing Atari. Like zzip said, Hasbro did very little with the Atari name while it was under their stewarship, with the most notable thing from that era being that they opened up the Jaguar thanks to a bunch of us overwhelming their customer support department.
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On 2/23/2024 at 7:48 AM, Clint Thompson said:
Valid points aside, once he got to his change asks, it was a done deal. In no reality would a Hitachi SH-2 make the consideration list.
In other words he wanted the Jag to be a Saturn/PSX hybrid...and in 1993, to boot, which would have resulted in the system costing at least $400 (probably more than that, to be honest), which would have been laughable for a cart-based system. Let's ask 3DO how well overpricing their console worked for them? At least that one shipped as a CD-based system. It's always easy to look back at things in hindsight and say "we should have done X, Y, and Z instead of A and B", which obviously doesn't take into account things such as the development budget, realistic cost of parts for that time, and manufacturing costs. And expecting all of that from a company that was on its last legs and with extremely limited funds in comparison to its competitors just would never have been feasible.
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Just now, Tony Barnes said:
Per the controls, which version were you using? Run or Gun or Thrust?
Not sure, I just chose the default option, which would be the one highlighted in that screenshot.
2 minutes ago, Tony Barnes said:Also, can you define "schizophrenic" a bit more, in context of the controls?
What I meant by "schizophrenic" was that initially moving around was fine, but it became confusing once I started firing. It didn't click with me until I read your description of the controls that you posted earlier in the thread. When I went back into the game, following what you said I found that it not only made sense, but gave the game a more deliberate feel. But I did require reading that explanation before it clicked with me, hence why I'm suggesting that a tutorial that explains the controls would probably help new players figure it out more quickly. That's, of course, assuming that many new players would be slow on the uptake like me.
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Just got around to giving the demo a shot today. My first time playing, I really didn't understand the controls at all and found them schizophrenic. However, after going back in this thread and reading the description of how the controls work, it makes a lot more sense now, and frankly I find they add a lot of value to the game. Yes, this definitely isn't like the million twin-stick shooters out there, it's not a mindless run and gun game. The gameplay seems a lot more deliberate, which requires careful planning to make your way through the level. That said, the control scheme isn't intuitive, so it would be best to have some kind of a tutorial in order to "sell" people on the control scheme. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished game.
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Nice to see a developer touting the strengths of the VCS. Getting more devs on it wouldn't hurt at all.
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It's disappointing that they haven't gotten the sound working in this yet. It's a fun game and probably one of the more technically impressive 7800 games. I've been playing a ROM of it for years but would love to be able to purchase it for the VCS.
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On 2/12/2024 at 11:20 AM, Sporadic said:
Nah, we need at least another 5 years yet 😇
Pfft, 5 years is nothing when it comes to Jag games development.
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53 minutes ago, Gedalya said:
Just buy one of the aftermarket Pro Controllers! I believe AA has them in the store as well as Songbird. I got mine from Songbird.
They're out of stock in both the AA and Songbird stores, and I don't know if anyone else carries them. Is anyone aware of a new batch of them being made?
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1 hour ago, CyranoJ said:
Can't blame you. The most potential that the VCS has is as a modern showcase for Atari homebrew devs of the classic systems. It's great that they've got some 2600 and 7800 homebrews in the VCS store, but why we haven't seen more (and why we haven't seen any other systems yet) is beyond me. If they're going to drag their feet on it, then they're squandering their biggest opportunity to get the VCS into more people's homes.
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Yeah, I don't know if I'd say they're important just yet, but if they continue on this path and prove to be successful with it, then yes, they will certainly be important.
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2 hours ago, Dummy2837 said:
The controls, mostly. I read about all the combo moves and tried warming up in a two-player match to get the timing and stuff down, but I can't seem to not get pummeled. I'll try again tomorrow, I do suck at fighting games but I am not completely incompetent so I was annoyed.
Ahh yeah, that makes sense. The controls are definitely not the greatest in that game. What I can suggest is to not be overly reliant on special moves, just focus on avoiding attacks and then counterattack where they're vulnerable (ie. if the opponent is attacking high, duck and counterattack low). One thing I can say is which character you're fighting against can also be a factor. Granted, I haven't even touched the game in several decades, but I remember Alaric being much tougher an opponent than anyone else. There may be others who can offer better advice than that, but really, if you can used to the controls then the game shouldn't pose much of a challenge.
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Atari has revived Infogrames !
in Atari General
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Well, I like the new logo....