viMaster

Most of the games weren't even 3D

Go Terrance!

Oh, am I!

Yeah, I didn't even mention Tursi & KSkunk, just because their names hadn't been involved in this thread, but they as well as belboz & SubQMod have done and continue to do great things for the Jaguar. Having talked to most of them quite a bit, I again wouldn't even say they are in some uber-powerful-take-over-the-world-mafia together! They all have their own agendas, ideas and programming styles, and yet again, we all get along. We may not all agree on some things, but it doesn't matter and doesn't prevent work from being done.

I voted "Magnum Opus' (with Mini games in between)," which I assumed meant I wanted some really amazing games that may have taken a long time to finish and also that I can handle some mini-games in between those bigger releases. I'd pay for the amazing games and I'd pay for the mini-games within reason. 1. Atari_Owl, you are a class act and I look forward to whatever you have planned for the Jag. We've talked a couple times in our IRC channel and if you want to stop by again some time, you're more than welcome! Omf and I are there most of the time 2. Matthias, I guarantee you Impulse will do much better than 60% of the Jag fans (and certainly better than 14 ) We've also talked a couple times and I just wanted to re-iterate that you have my support and I truly believe the majority of Jaguar fans are looking forward to what you've done with Impulse. If you need encouragement, you know how to reach me! Also, don't be modest, you know Impulse is going to be a "Magnum Opus," anyway! You and your perfectionist personality 3. Gorf, you're extremely opinionated... I wouldn't have it any other way You know I support what you and your team do. So far, I believe I have everything that 3D Stooges has officially released and I look forward to what comes in the future. The crazy thing is, these guys aren't in some elite "mafia" as some of these new folks seem to believe... and they say Gorf is paranoid?! All 3 of these folks are in completely separate corners and really work alone either with themselves or in the case of Gorf, with his own 3D Stooges. The difference is, though their style of games may be different, they get along, which is something that others could possibly learn from?

No it isn't, and I'm sorry you feel that way.Heh, it's nothing new. He's always had an issue differentiating opinion from fact, no matter how many times you explain it. Anyway, with regard to the videos, they're not that bad, but they're really only useful for people who understand that the actual game may not look quite like that and want to see what the games are all about. Then again, with collections like viMasterJag's already online, I don't really see the point in posting lower-quality versions of a lot of the same stuff. Sometimes it's simply the joy of sharing something of yours with the world, whether it be through a video capture card or an external camera. Kev's contributions to the world of Jaguar on YouTube is what actually inspired me to begin doing my own videos. I just happened to have a capture card already. Thanks for the vids and keep on trucking with what you have.

Of course, to use the VGA connector, you'd need one of those old atari monitors, so if you have one, great. If you're thinking of hooking up to your modern plasma/lcd TV, though, it's trickier than just plugging in the VGA cable.

This is amazing. You are a genius, Darkmaster1299!

A fairly heated message, and I would like to point out the people asking for chance have been fairly even tempered and I don't believe the attitude in Gorf's message represents the group that are working for the change of policy in this thread. That said, Gorf, you are a developer, and I believe the idea is that since you did not release your project to the public, and are still with us and working on this material, that your material would not be up for opening discussion, talks of duplication, etc. I know the common sensial, non-censored approach would be new to the Jaguar forum here on Atariage, but if we apply what we've seen on the other forums, we would give that respect to your work. Again, with this first step we are working on, this is not about featuring your roms, or even the older roms, but the ability to talk openly and communicate without censorship about the Jaguar. Thank you for your hard work on the Jaguar, having made clear what I said above, your work is not what this thread is about. Yes, on topic again, (yikes) the censorship is kinda ridiculous, in my opinion. I don't know if Al will change it, but so far it appears that he won't.

Nobody at all is saying Indie developers can't protect their work. Again, someone has got their flaming torch and pitchfork out and started chasing common sense away before they even thought about things. We are talking about opening up the GENERAL DISCUSSION. If an Indie says "Hey, I made this to sell, please don't host an image" then that should be respected. But wait... you were referring to Battlesphere and its devs, were you not, when you made this statement, which is the one I was quoting when I made the above statement? In the very next sentence, you mentioned Battlesphere, so I'm led to believe that is the one you are talking about? You weren't opening up general discussion in that quote, you were talking specifically about one game and its one developer. There's only been one famous one that must be the one you're talking about -- 4Play & Battlesphere. So if, in fact, you are saying that an indie developer wishes to not have their game copied around, that it should be respected. Then why can't you respect the wishes of 4Play? They have said time and time again that Battlesphere is not to be copied. What's the difference? No, it hasn't. I specifically pointed out that the sales for this game go to charity. But you cannot honestly say that the only units of this rom for sale on ebay are from the developer. Other people sell them. For STUPIDLY HIGH PRICES, and guess what? THEY KEEP THE CASH THEMSELVES. The fact that the original dev is doing it for charity is great, but, honestly, don't you think selling more for less would get that charity more cash in the long run? Surely selling 200 units at $80 is better than selling one at $1000? That's his call, sure enough. But why should everyone else be forced to avoid certain subjects just because a handful of individuals think it should be so? Here, I obviously misunderstood you and I apologize for that. What I thought you were referring to was the one copy a year that goes on sale DIRECT from the developer, whose proceeds go directly to the Tour de Cure. I was mistaken regarding what you were talking about. I agree that it's ridiculous that Battlesphere costs that much from other people who have purchased it. It generally goes for between $300-600 depending on which version. It sucks, but it's supply & demand. I don't know how many copies 4Play still has, but they're only selling one a year and again, for charity, which is an important and unselfish thing to do in this world. 4Play certainly can't be held responsible for what everyone does with Battlesphere after they've purchased it. Obviously, people have been raking in the dough now for years with that game, which is unfortunate, but again, is just supply & demand. There are more expensive games out there -- look at a couple for the 2600, lol. You might be being sarcastic with the whole Battlesphere being the greatest game on the Jaguar, I'm not sure. Personally, it might not be. It's certainly one of the most impressive and definitely the most impressive of the homebrews. I like a couple games better, but that's just my opinion. As far as other devs, it's unfortunate if they don't want to bother with the Jaguar. I think they would be surprised at how much they'd be appreciated if they made games for it. I've always said (and always will) that new talent is always welcome and that includes you, Mr Morden and Reboot. Opinions may differ regarding everything just being free for everyone, but that's certainly not a reason to give up. Jaguar fans love stuff they can buy in a nice physical package and they also love the free stuff they can just download and load with BJL or the skunk. Why can't there be room for both? That being said, if these other developers really don't want to bother with it, I'm not going to, as some might say, "lick their fingers."

It's off topic, but I feel like a comment. Your stance implies that the majority of Jaguar fans who buy recent Jaguar games are only buying them because they have no option... that they would simply stop doing that & that they are mostly closet pirates & would rather copy games than buy them if it wasn't for people such as our good self protecting the devs. That's more than paranoid, eh? It's been said many times before, look to the examples set on other systems. If devs don't want their stuff copied, put up a disclaimer, make it known, the vast majority of people will respect that because they respect the effort of the devs. The few that won't were likely not going to be customers & more likely to be rom collectors who just aren't worth the effort of considering. Where's a forehead-smacking smiley when you need one. kZa, it's like we're arguing the same point and yet some people don't get it... and you don't realize we're arguing the same point. Taken from what I was originally quoting & replying to: And then my comment: Do you see what I'm getting at? He mentioned only one developer on the entire planet is trying to enforce it... and he said it was stupidity. The fact is, if the Battlesphere team don't want their game to be loaded on flash devices, they have the right. They have been vocal on that point, which is why it can't be loaded onto a Skunkboard. Wait, wasn't that your point? That people should honor that anyway?

Wrong, there are a few different people. You're right... it's so stupid that these indie developers want to protect their work from being copied and passed around... man... the nerve Wow, you seem to have a lot of disinformation coming at you since your arrival here and granted, that can be chalked up to the fact that you're new... but once again, before you go spouting off about something you know nothing about, get the facts. Every year this seller (aka developer) does a charity bike ride. He not only asks for donations on the diabetes Tour De Cure site, but he also sells one copy of BS on EBay. I don't know where you got your information about him keeping the money, but it makes no sense when he: 1. Is adamant about raising money for fighting diabetes and 2. Doesn't even need the money. Once again, we've been brought off-topic with disinformation.

Great job on the vids, kev.

You mean the bonus levels? I believe all you have to do is have a 2nd controller plugged into your jag and use that when you come to the bonus levels.

I don't know (which is a whole other discussion,) but yes, should probably get back on topic.

Why not make it easier and reduce it to a big fat 0! Potential new programmers then don't clutter your forums with random comments to meet the quota and everybody is happy. New programmers get the information that they want and the Jag scene gets new games. Its good for both sides. Right, because, as jag fans, we surely don't want to read comments from other jag fans about the jag

This is a completely different subject than the 10-post rule, but we can talk about it as well. Jay would be the best person to ask, but I'll give you my take on it instead. The stuff in the downloads section (as far as I understand) is a big "thank you" from Jay and other users for supporting JS2. Given that it's a gift to JS2 users, one would assume you would need to be a JS2 member to receive that gift. Personally, when someone like Jay decides to show his appreciation for the users of his board, I appreciate it.

Instead of having your doubts, why not simply go to JS2 and ask Jay for yourself? He's very reasonable, and would be happy to explain why he has the 10 post restriction. If Jay received enough requests to change the policy, I suspect he might be persuaded to do so. Actually, along those lines, ls650, I believe Jay even gave kZa immediate access to JS2, because he knew he was a developer. As you said, you need only ask.

You don't have to imagine the cries of outrage over the years, you can go and read it yourself. Things may have gotten better lately, but that doesn't automatically repair the chilling damage done by the community itself over the years. Would there be a fantastic emulator that ran everything thrown at it by now otherwise? Tough to say, the Jag is a strange beast. But chasing people away like an angry mob, threatening devs with such nonsense as lawsuits and reporting them to the 'authorities', and calling them thieves and far worse - well that certainly hasn't helped. Now that you mentioned it, I believe I did go back and read a couple flame-wars from back in the day before I even registered. I don't remember anything specific about emulators, but I am sure you are correct when you say mud was slung. What I'm saying is it doesn't happen any more, that I've read, so it's about time to move on, don't you think? I'm not saying you can't continue to hold a grudge against said people who have been the cause of this mess. What I'm saying is when new people come on board, there's no need to say that if they mention anything emulator-wise they're going to get kicked to the back of the bus, because I truly don't believe they will be any more. Things have changed. Move on. People keep drudging it up, even though it doesn't really matter today, which is part of the problem.

We are both running the same forum software. Plenty of spam-bots attempt to register every single day here. The difference may be that I manually validate all new accounts (after email validation), which is realistically perhaps the only sure-fire way to prevent spammers from getting through. It's very rare that a spam-bot (or human spammer) gets a fully validated account. It's more work on my part, but better than having to clean up the mess they typically leave behind. ..Al Now that you mentioned they are both running IPB, I should have known that. I ran a board myself a long while ago using IPB and should have seen the clear signs of it here on AA lol. In any case, that is another way to go about it -- manually validating accounts. Jay has done that at times as well.

I was going to say, I haven't had problems with mine, but you figured it out. So how do you like it? I'm amazed at how incredible it is.

Thats a very weak counterargument in my opinion. Spamming is a "write only" problem, by that I mean the moderators at JSII should clamp down on people writing it and not the people wanting to read the rest of the forum. I've never noticed any spam on the AA forums, so either nobody does it (unlikely) or the moderators are all over it ASAP (most likely). You misunderstand. I'm talking about spam-bots that have gotten through the kaptcha validation and start mass-posting the same topic everywhere that's accessible. I've personally seen it happen quite a few times. At that point, yes, the admin can block that IP address and it can never register from there again. People who wish to do harm are persistent, though. I've been a member here slightly longer than over at JS2 and I have never seen spam-bots over here. I do not know what the difference is -- maybe Invision PowerBoard is easier to manipulate as a spammer, I don't know. The fact is, we've done what we've needed to do in order to keep the forums clean over there. Since you haven't been there to witness the spam-bots, you wouldn't know. To be honest I couldn't think of 10 Jaguar related questions to ask prior to getting permission to look at the programmer's forum, so its catch 22 for me. I've also no desire (to paraphrase Mr Morden) "to lick fingers" either. Who said they had to be questions? You're just trying to think of excuses as to why it's dumb, when it's so incredibly easy to make 10 posts. That is NOT 10 unique threads, but 10 posts. Comment on whatever you like. I don't know what you mean by "lick fingers." I hope any licking you are doing is done with consent. Obviously, a couple people... maybe 3 made comments and argued with a couple from the Reboot team -- those people did it here, too, so this isn't a "JS2 vs AA" thing. Why oh why can't people just let the whole "JS2 vs AA" thing go? You've obviously read too much into that. I wasn't making an "us" vs "them" statement. I stand corrected. That is how it has been in the past. You say that's not how you meant it and I accept that. The point was, they are making plenty of friend over at JS2. The administrator himself supports what they are doing for development of the Jaguar. I also support them. There were a few negative comments made, yes. It was basically the same people who did it here. The only suggestion I would make to Reboot (and I know this isn't on this thread's topic) is to just avoid making assumptions that just because a developer wants to provide a complete package for a price means he/she is trying to get rich off the Jag. We all know that simply can't happen with the economics of our scene. And please don't take that as an anti-Reboot statement, because I personally have no problem with them as a group. I support and encourage any new development team that takes a stab and that includes Reboot. Granted, things were said in that "other" thread by one or two of them and one or two other people who took the ordeal way too far. I just hope we're past that now.

Fixed

I actually believe things have been getting better in the Jaguar community lately. People have generally gone from the stance of absolutely objecting to any roms at all to not really caring enough to worry about the old games for the system. I'm surprised some haven't seen this already. We now have betas & alphas of games as well as prototypes available to download and flash to the skunkboards. Go back a couple years ago and no one in the Jaguar community would have dared ask for any of those publicly. A few people have commented on emulators... I imagine it's true that in the past certain people may have cried foul if someone else was trying to create an emulator. Since I've been a member of this board (I think 3 years, maybe) I haven't seen or heard any of that. I and others have stated that in order to get the best compatibility and experience, you simply have to buy the hardware and games and that is true. That can't be mistaken for discouraging someone from improving on the emulators, though. I haven't heard anyone in my 3 years here discourage anyone in doing that -- in fact, I believe someone is currently making improvements to one of them. If we want the scene to grow through emulation as well, someone has to step up and work on that side of things. If no one is willing to do it, then that's that. Why is that stupid? If certain developers explicitly voice that they do not want their game(s) running on that piece of hardware and if the creator of said hardware is willing, then it should be done. Who is privatizing dev kits? Around 200 total skunks have been sold, the developer's manual has been available for years as has the basic atari dev setup. Belboz also made that dev setup available for people using newer machines with Windows XP, which is quite the feat. I thought I was able to flash to those, but maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe it's just $802000, I dunno. I think something important is in the $800000 area. JS2 frequently gets bombarded with spammers, so something had to be done. I don't think registration & 10 posts is unreasonable. If you knew how much information was in the programming area over there, you would have registered a long time ago. There's nothing wrong with the AA Jag programming section -- it just has very little information. Obviously, a couple people... maybe 3 made comments and argued with a couple from the Reboot team -- those people did it here, too, so this isn't a "JS2 vs AA" thing. Why oh why can't people just let the whole "JS2 vs AA" thing go? Just as here on Atari Age, there are more people on JS2 who appreciate Reboot's efforts than not. It's not out of "respect" for the game at all. The developers explicitly forbade the game be flashable on the skunkboard. If I've taken anything from this whole thread, it's that most people aren't too concerned about distributing the commercial roms of games that were available during the Jaguar's "original" life and I do not disagree. And also, most people wish to abide by current & future developer's wishes by not distributing their games if they do not want them to be. What you're saying is it's ok to go against the BS devs wishes, because Battlesphere is expensive. I think this has been a great discussion so far. There are obviously still some remnants of bad blood from before my time here and I think we need to get over that. The "handful" that may have cried out in the past really don't hang around here any more, except maybe a couple, but you can clearly see what the majority believes regarding roms, themselves. As far as hosting them here on the site, it's up to Al. If there are other reasons behind the scenes that prohibit him from doing it, then so be it. The games can be found anywhere. It's just you won't be able to play them all, unless you have a skunkboard, because their compatibility is poor with the current emulators. Which brings me to the emulator point -- if someone wants to create one that works for all games, go for it! It won't be easy, but if you want a fully-functional emulator, you'll have to make one (or improve on one.) As far as discussing piracy techniques here on AtariAge, which was one of DrClu's original reasons for starting the thread, you walk a fine line with that. I don't know the extent of the discussions on any of the other atari sections here on AA, because I don't have any interest in them. Since making backups of the carts isn't exactly something everyone can easily do, I would assume we're talking about the Jag CD games. I've read a few threads in this section on what you need to make backups of the CDs and I don't think those topics ever got locked. There's an interesting divide among developers here, though. On the one side, you have the ones who like to put the game in a nice package for people to purchase and throw in their collection. On the other side, you have the ones who would rather give their work out in the form of binaries for people to load on whatever device they have. The Jaguar scene has room for both. To say those who enjoy making a professional package out of their games and sell it that way are in it for the money is simply preposterous. Having been on the buying-side of every Jaguar game out there, I can tell there isn't anyone out to try and get rich from developing homebrew Jag games. It hasn't happened in the past and it won't happen in the future. Developers clearly understand there isn't enough interest in the Jaguar community to even make much money from their games and all the ones I've talked to code for their own hobby enjoyment. The point is, there's no need to be divided on this issue -- if someone wants to make a professional package, great! If you don't and would rather just have it available for download for free, great! Stop attacking the ones that prefer to do the whole package. They're not making much money, they're not trying to get rich, they're simply charging for materials and maybe a little extra for their time. Nothing wrong with that.

Wow, that's pretty cool and interesting. I tried making just a standard joystick myself and it worked, though the pass-through to a normal pad in order to use its numpad didn't work out for me. I'm just too inexperienced with electronics in that fashion. If I had kept working on it, I wanted to eventually create my own combination joystick/rotary/numpad, but I got impatient and just bought a chaos reigns rotary, lol.