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I cant believe the overall quality of this product . The team of people behind Zaku are really something else, gotta keep an eye on this guys and whatever else they do. I dont know, maybe in 3 or 4 years we will see a Lynx game starring Zakus caveman alter ego, Bonku on a game called Bonkus Adventure! . But seriously, amazing product, great price... just admirable man .

You must not have heard of "Soulstar" for the Sega CD... Well there's also a Jag version that was never officially released. And then there's "Supercross 3D" that's somewhat impressive that neither the Sega arcade system or the Sega CD can do. Here's a couple of links... Soulstar: Supercross 3D: philipj, actually i am a big fan of Sega CD Soulstar, dont get me wrong, Sega CD had the best scaling and rotation capabilities from its era (dunno if the Marty and CD32 top it in that regard, though), but the Galaxy Froce 2 and Power Drift arcade boards were just superior. Some great examples of the Mega CD capabilities are Soulstar, Thunder Strike, Jaguar Racing, Batman and Robin, Batman Returns, Pugsy, among others. About Super Cross 3D, i think it is using polygons for the tracks, right?, its no all scaling sprites. There is also Val D Isere Snowboarding on the Jag, which is very fast and smooth, but not quiet on the level of Super Burnout.

How good is the Jag at sprite scaling?, i loved those Sega games from the late 80s early 90s that ran on arcade boards specialized on sprite scaling. Apparently those arcade systems were so good at it that even the Saturn couldnt handle arcade perfect ports of: Galaxy Forxe 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaLRLo2yB04 Power Drift In the case of Power Drift, it took a Sega Dreamcast port to finally do that game justice on a home console. Being an owner of Super Burnout , i can tell that the Jag is very good at it, but not being a tech guy, i cant tell if the Jag is just really good at sprite scaling and rotation, or if it was an amazing job by the coders of that game. By the way, anybody here remembers wishing that Sega ported Power Drift to the Sega CD because of its sprite scaling and rotation capabilities?, and we tought it would be able to do it justice!, ha. Hehe, little did i know back then that the Sega CD hardware was way, way, way weaker than Power Drifts arcade board!

Hey and I'm not even a Jaguar fanboy. Actually I don't even own one, I just fine it very interesting and one of the few more obscure consoles I actually knew about before I really got into retro gaming. For that matter I didn't own any Sega console when I joined Sega-16 either, I did start collecting for that more recently though, actually got one with a Sega CD. I'd consider getting a jaguar, but their a lot less common and have gotten rather expensive recently and there's not a lot to really that much to collect for it, especially in the way of exclusives, or the best versions of multiplatform games, plus some better CD only games and rarer/more expensive games in general. If I'd gotten into this 3-4 years ago it would probably be another story. For the same reason I'm not planning on getting a Saturn really. (although that does have a larger library, the it tends to be even more expensive to collect for, and some of the best games are import only) I guess that's the reason though, I'm kind of equal opportunity retro game fan (retro electronics in general really), I grew up with Nintendo along with PC games (we actually had a 2600 packed away but I didn't get to play until ~2000), but don't feel particularly biased toward any (except a little bit of negativity against the PS1 and PS2), so I'd rather judge them by individual merit. Yeah, i have noticed your unbiasness in your posts, its quiet refreshing, hehe . We should get buddydudies to send you a Jaguar for free, he must have tons of spare consoles . I would have never guessed you didnt have a Jag, hell at times i tought you might be a Jag coder since you seem to have some nice knowledge of the Jags hardware, but i think you have already adressed that.

Yeah, that's kind of a no brainer once you know a bit about it. I beleive the Jaguar's even more of a 2D powerhouse than the Saturn. (depending on programmers and hardware utilization, the Jag is certainly more flexible, plus the Saturn has some bugs as well, like with transparency) Did the Neo Geo even use 256 color subpalettes? (or just a whole lot of 16-color subpalettes) Either way, the master palette is 65,536 colors, which is the same as many Jag games used on-screen. (I seem to remember that the Jag was actually most effecient using 16-bit color) kool kitty89 is so badass, that he once went to the Sega-16bit.com forums and told those sega fanboys that the Jag was quiet capable of giving the Saturn a run for its money in 2d. Of course, people there would hear non of it and treated him like a lunatic jagfanboy. The topic of discution there was about which console from the mid 90s had the best 2d capabilities including sprite scaling like in Segas arcade machines. Most there agreed that Saturn was the best at 2d, some mentioned FM Towns Marty, Neo Geo, NEC PCFX, and kitty mentioned the Jaguar, and they laughed, and i was too scared to back him up . I hate that whenever i mention the Jag as a 2d powerhouse most people act like i am crazy. I dont have the hardware knowledge to back my claims, only what i have learned from guys like Gorf on his posts .

Not only is it in the game, it's coming from a music engine that owl wrote himself! That guy really knows how to code. Owl also coded the music engine!?, it sounds terrific, and the composition by Calico is great!. I had my doubts weather it was in game music or not because it sounds so damn good!. This project doesnt stop amazing me. Ok, this project already has one of he best graphic engines on the Jag, but from what i am hearing on the video, its also gonna have one of the best sound engines. To think that so many official Jag games sacrificed sound for what turned out to be subpar graphics. Owl really has all corners covered, doesnt he? Now i guess we only need to find out about the gameplay, but i guess eventually AtariOwl will give us some insight on what he has planned.

I hadnt noticed the piano music in the video, is it from the game? Sounds very moody, its pretty good.

Awesome, just awesome. The texturemapped objects look great, the lightning effect is very impressive, the terrain looks so smooth, and all this at a good frame rate! Owl, thanks for giving us the chance to see how the project will be evolving in the upcoming months, through your blog. Its gonna be extremely interesting.

Its a person (female)in robe (dress). Put your Jag-glasses on. Yeah, thats what i tought, your character its a sorceress, right?

Thanks Curt!

That last screenshot looks amazing, i was impressed with the previous ones, but that last one...WOW ! The textured mapped polygons look great (i would say some of the best seen on the Jag) and they really gel great with the voxel landsape, the combination looks better than i hoped, and i already had great expectations for the graphics! Kudos for AtariOwl and anyone involved on the project. Man, Pier Solar for the Sega Genesis, and Owls project for the Jag are taking homebrew development on those consoles (my 2 favorite ones ) to a whole new level!

Huh?, significantly more advanced?, thats pretty amazing. Cant wait to see it!

Damn it Owl, that last screen shot looks amazing , it really captured my imagination. And guess what?, i think that this project if finished will become the first act/adv/rpg in the history of consoles to be based on a voxel engine, and that will make it one of the most unique looking games in the history of videogame consoles, am i wrong ? Thanks for sharing this screenies with us AtariOwl, you just gave a little more faith to this Jaguar fan, after the recent sad stuff thats been happeing o the Jag scene.

Not even close. Not even in the same ball park. I know that in 3d the Jag eats the NEC PCFX alive , but isnt it a close call when it comes to 2d, Gorf?. I always hear how great the PCFX hardware is at 2d, with its 9 layers of pharallax and cellophane effects or whatever that means , hehe. Anyway, i am sure that the sprite engine you mentioned some time ago (128 high color sprites scaling and rotating you said? ) would kill the comparisons and crown the Jag as the king of the 2d jungle .

I wish most people in the Jag comunity handled themselfs like AtariOwl does, he is always a class act. By the way i was checking his blog, and checking his interests. Two things cought my attention, not only is he a fan of the Jag , but also of The Legend of Zelda , and his project seems to be an Action/RPG , huh huh, this can only turn out to be an amazing project ! I mean, he obviously has great coding talent, but he is also got great taste in videogames! You cant beat that combo!!!

I co-sign this powerful post!

Am i the only one who feels that the giant house level on Club Drive could work for a 3d patformer like Super Mario 64?. You just substitute the car with a humanoid character add some enemies and presto! There is quiet a bit of exploring to do in that level, you can climb up the cofee table, go trough the mouses hole in the wall, go to the bedrooms, etc. And i think i have read from Gorf that the Club Drive engine could have been gouraud shadded instead of flat shadded without the Jag struggling much. That level always reminds me of the first level on Toy Story 2 for PS1 and N64, only well, untextured, hehe. So yeah, i think the Jag can do something "similar" to Super Mario 64 and after looking at the San Francisco level also in Club Drive, i think the Jag can also do GTA3, heheh .

Its entirely possible that people may discover that someone has already been thinking upon those lines. By all means Atari Owl, keep talking, go on... WE WANNA KNOW MORE!

I tought that the expansion pak was being used on that youtube clip. The guy who posted it says in the description: "Factor 5 really pushed the N64 hard with creative coding, use of the RAM expansion pack, and a nice high-res mode (as seen here)."

How about Bangaioh!, its a great 2d shooter from Treasure. Jag should be able to handle it. The early N64 racer F1 Pole Position had some pretty short draw distance, pretty basic level of geometry and really basic textures. Maybe F1 World Tour Racing 3;) on the Jag would have come pretty close to that game. Also, the awesome Body Harvest wasnt the most impressive looking N64 game, i think the Jag had a shot at that one too. Smash Bros. would be even better on the Jag with an awesome 2d engine featuring prerendered sprites and backdrops, high color graphics, a zooming and panning camera and a plettora of blitter special effects (whatever that means, hehe).Who needs polygons when you kick so much ass in 2d. N64 Smash Bros looked pretty lame in my opinion, played great though.

There is no voxel rendering in StarFox 64...if you mean that is how you'd do it on Jaguar then yes and it would be a much faster frame rate on the Jaguar. I have a 68k based voxel engine on the Jaguar that is not only much nicer looking than that land scape but even with the 68k Im getting 10-12 fps. I intend to move it to the GPU eventually. The N64. PSX and Saturn do not have the blitter. That is one big advantage the JAg has over these systems. Voxel engines on any of the others would choke horribly. The hardware is not geared for that on those other systems. Atari really should have played to this stregnth as a voxel engine always looks much nicer for a landscape then a poly engine untill you get up to PC and PS3/360 hardware. Even then voxels still look better. Voxel can more accurately represent a height map than you can with a poly engine. It also takes much more muscle to do it. Gorf, do you think the Jag can do a game like say Tomb Raider or Mario 64 with a voxel engine, or is that type of engine better suited for games where you drive big vehicles and you dont need much precision on your character movement, as well as the many ways Lara or Mario interact with the enviroments in their respective games. I am talking about the Jags case not voxel engines in general. Outcast for PC still looks amazing to me after all this time. A Jaguar racing game or FPS with a nice and fast voxel engine like Phaze Zero would be amazing.

Quads might seem like a great idea if you're new to 3D. Triangles seem really wasteful at first -- especially since you need two triangles for every quad, and quads are everywhere in most 3D models. Like I said before, quads really are more efficient than triangles. The downside is that the world uses triangles. Most algorithms are designed for triangles, not quads (or have considerable complexity when dealing with quads). As a result, most tools only work with triangles. Quads ARE a great idea for 3D I wasted a lot of time around a couple of years ago when somebody put a lot of effort into persuading me otherwise, but i came to my senses. Long Live Quads. So, thats way i always read that Owls project is so impressive...its renderer works with quads. The secret is out!!

I did the 3D engine for the N64 Space Invaders, and it was full featured. Production called for not having any real camera movements, to be able to utilize more of the engine. The invaders and objects are full 3D models (at one point, I had the environment rotating, with the invaders swarming in... but that wasn't the design Activision wanted). You could do this game on the Jag (we also released it in the PSX) with the current design. The N64 wasn't great at pushing lots of polygons, you had to make the most of the polygons you did render, with use of the RDP. --Selgus What we were doing in Gorf 3D was a full 3D AstroBattles which is similar to Space Invaders. The camera moves along with your ship(it does a catch up to the player kind of deal.) We have 24 invaders as did the original Gorf and we are still getting no lower than 30 FPS. We'll most likely triple the poly count once the new renderer is done. The frame rate should be a constant 60 no problem.....G- shaded models of course. We were also thinking of using a voxel landscape underneath it. The poly scape was putting ahurt on the JAg with the old smple Atari renderer. We are doing similar in the Galaxian stage which also has 24 alien ships attacking but no need for a land scape which helps but the models have more facets than the Astro Battles aliens do. so with the Atari sample renderer we are still getting 30-60 annd when busy enough we drop to about 24...still respectible considering. The problem with the Atari sample renderer is in its implementation.It is highly unoptimized. It has some really nice featuresalong with lighting and a very nice camera interface. We are only getting these frame rates due to the fact the Scott removed all 68k code parts and replaced the code with GPU code. The other problem is it does all it's work in word sized values. When you have a 32 bit cpu and a 64 bit bus, that is seriously wasting the BW. We intend to correct that in our renderer which will hopefully look more like an open GL interface. Build a list of object and then flush 'em! Except this will be where the GPU and blitter using an elaborate interruption scheme will burn through a nice list of polies, lines and points and no bus interruption other than an occasional sound channel buffer load from the DSP. It's really quire a balancing act to get more polies on the screen with the Jaguar. Everything sounds awesome Gorf, keep up the good work guys!

Talking about some technical aspects of 3DO, i have a question for you tech-guys. How come some 3DO games like The Need For Speed and Star Fighter have way larger draw distance than your typical Saturn, Playstation and even Nintendo 64 game(fogging is cheating)? Hell, games like Total Eclipse look better on 3DO than on PS1, sure, the PS1 versions beat it in the frame rate department, but still, you would think that PS1 would clean its clock on every facet.

I did some research on some PCFX forums and it indeed didnt have hardware support for polygons. I found some comments where it was said that it could do 3d like Sega 32X did, trough RLE. I am not a technical guy, so i dont know what that means... Still, suppousedly its very impressive in 2d, better than the Jag?