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sh3-rg

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Posts posted by sh3-rg

  1. Posted

    I made a Jaguar TTF a while back, it's not very good & I'm not happy with lots of it, but maybe someone wants to touch it up & replace a few of the ropier characters.It's called 'beebris' but will install as 'jagwar' I think.

     

    EDIT: lol, A B C D E F.. J?! That's typing in the dark for you ;)

  2. Posted

    Thought I'd kick things off since I had some free time, so I gave each game a single play:

     

    Beebris: 8781 (level 9)

    SuperFly DX: 4727

    Downfall: 10430

     

    All those are beatable (esp. SF) so I'll give them all a proper go later on! I won't be using my old high scores either, that'd be cheating :P

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    Looks like Downfall made it on 1up's 31 Homebrew Games Worth Playing list. It's definitely nice to see it get that kind of recognition. :)
    Very nice! It's well-deserved. I actually just played it myself a few moments ago (along with SuperflyDX).. :)

     

    Just be aware that if you follow that link you should ignore the comments section - seems someone who used to frequent these parts has taken it upon himself to create spoof accounts in an attempt to cause the kind of trouble he used to revel in both here and on js2 before the ban hammer saw to him on both forums. Great way to reaffirm what many already think about the fabled 'Jaguar Community', but there you go, jealousy obviously motivates some people more than simply being productive or helpful :?

    • Like 7

  5. Posted

    Thanks Stephen, I'll use your advice to investigate, cheers!

     

    Is there some part of a Jag CD that can come loose in transport that would produce this effect?

    Nothing mechanical that I am aware of.

     

    Video is hard to see but once lid is closed I can see a partial rotation there, it might be that something is catching on the CD unit casing, check the following...

    1) does the optical head move and motor spin correctly without a CD? If not then

    2) does the optical head move and motor spin correctly with the top of the case removed? If not then

    3) double check that you have installed it correctly and not damaged any of the wires/cable attached to the transport and that connectors are attached the correct way up, particully that the flexible circuit is inserted into the FCC connector the correct way up as it is single sided.

  7. Posted

    I bought a couple of Jag CDs earlier in the year, they were both supposed to be fully working, but one does exactly the same thing - the most movement I get is a tiny little jitter (I think that's what I'm seeing in the video - it seems a bit dark). Is there some part of a Jag CD that can come loose in transport that would produce this effect?

     

    video:

  10. Posted

    (Sorry, it's us again, promise we won't release or announce anything else this week ^_^ )

     

    JiFFI is a tool for windows & Atari 16/32 by GGN that lets you convert between Jaguar homebrew formats and also to ROM & CD images. Read below for more info from the JiFFI doc:

     

    Q: What it's all about?

     

    A: In case you haven't figured it out yet, this is a program to convert between the various homebrew formats of the Atari Jaguar. More specifically:

    - COFF/ABS (mac/aln)

    - BIN/BJL (headerless, popular because of the BJL mod for the Jaguar)

    - Jaguar Server (v2 and v3, special header produced by ST assemblers mostly)

    - ULS (the phenomenally easy CD creator for homebrews from Reboot!)

    - ROM (read below for more info)

     

    Q: Why make such a program anyway?

     

    A: Well, there are lots of reasons. Off the top of our heads:

    - sh3 wanted to flash 2 homebrew titles on his Skunkboard and use it without lugging a pc with him to flash the games on the spot. To achieve this, GGN invented a (tiny) semi-automatic method to create a ROM file that booted the titles. We just thought it'd be a neat little program and expanded it further.

    - We can't think of anything similar from what we've seen so far.

    - With a few simple clicks, our collection increased 5-fold :lol:

     

    There are thoughts for further development of this (complete Jaguar binary file management tool - let us know if you'd find this extra functionality useful or have any suggestions)

     

    It's too large to attach here, so head to the JiFFI pages to read more & download.

    • Like 9

  11. Posted

    Reminds me of the update premise for PacMan DX, looking good. Also, is that the same ship from project one??

     

    Thanks. The ship in the space level is the same design as the P1 ship, but a new version with 64 rotations scaled from 128x128 originals to prevent them looking too pixelated. It won't look exactly the same in the final game, there's one or two reasons why it won't be suitable. Each world/theme will have a unique ship design, along with all other game elements.

  13. Posted

    Are you saying it wouldn't work from a technical programmers POV or your feeling that it just wouldn't look good?

     

    Yea, I just thought it wouldn't look right, but you never know, maybe it would look cool. I'm not going to suggest it to CJ though, I'll let him read it here... I've run out of bargaining chips when it comes to adding stuff into games, I gotta keep my head down for a bit :lol:

  14. Posted

    I love the Vectrex! :cool:

     

    I'm hoping my camera video with it's added blurry artifacting (rather than a direct capture) hasn't given a false impression of the retro gfx skin - it's not exactly super silky smooth as real vectors on a Vectrex.

  15. Posted

    Q: the starfield that's coming at you in the UI, is that now the standard during gameplay? If so, I think that would be an incredible "next gen" effect - totally in the spirit of the good Jag arcade remakes. Hope it's an option at least.

     

    The FE star effect is a standard 3d starfield, think it's got a range of 255 intensity values, from very dark to pure white. If you watch as the menu icons are moved left & right the source of the stars alters accordingly. I think CJ did well with this whole front end BMX interface, he spent quite a while on getting it right and it's paid off I reckon.

     

    As for your question, a 3d starfield wouldn't really work well behind the game as the stars come at you out of the screen, but you & everything else in the game scroll around the screen on a different plane. It would be suitable for some kind of into-the-screen bonus level, so you might get to play over it if we come up with something like that :D

     

    I think the current star backdrop in-game is a 3x3 screen map (so 9 screens total) that moves equally and opposite to the direction of the player. It can give an odd sensation when you compare the star movement to the asteroids etc., but it looks decent enough (what did look iffy though was when we had multiple layers that moved in multiples of the player ship - that was just too odd!).

  16. Posted

    Here's a link to a very horrible quality video of our new game "Rebooteroids!" for the Atari Jaguar.

     

    Well, it is 1080p and fairly steady for a camera vid ;) The video quality on youtube improves slightly after upload as they continue processing, the first version right after upload can be a bit iffy. Anyway, time to invest in a high-end capture device I think.

  17. Posted

    Not too shabby! I do think, though, that it needs a bit more of a graphic punch to it - such as when you die, your character explodes (?) or you see some kind of a "Game over!" message.

     

    Ah, there's quite a few things we could add to make it better & polished, thing is it wasn't really about that, just something to quickly put together in a few hours here & there for an AC release. Something we could all get involved in.

     

    I'm glad you think enough of it that your suggestions are not gameplay-related anyway - testament to the originals that inspired it as much as anything else. Your ideas aren't difficult to implement, for sure. One of the testers actually said the game should allow you to mash buttons & quickly start again without having to wait, he'd probably not agree with your idea of a Game Over message :P

     

    TBH, the 2mb limit is only a matter of a few bytes away, there's nothing much that can be added now without removing samples or packing stuff and we think the samples are half the fun (once you can hear them properly - 1.1 awaits). After the 1.1 that tidies such things up, it'll be done with & we'll be working on the next one and on our bigger project that I'll be sharing more info on soon.

     

    In future we'll probably do more simple, fun, quick stuff like this as it gets us all working together at the same time which really is a good laugh for us all, even though we span at least 5 different time zones. With little quickies like this there's none of that getting bogged down in boring front-end and game management junk - it's that classic hit the button, play the game, one more go kind of pick-up-and-play simplicity we're all really fond of. SFDX was a very simple game, we polished it quite a bit and added lots of features and tbh there's times when you go that far & it stops being fun.

     

    Hopefully a few non-Jaguar AtariAgers feel the same way we do about this type of release & consider putting a Jaguar in rotation with their more loved classic machines, that's the kind of thing that's only going to spur us on to do more :D We know were not pushing any technical boundaries with this kind of release, but we're not about that & have never claimed to be. What it does show is that once you get comfortable with the basics of the Jaguar, you're free to get stuff going really speedily, you can have all the fun of making games with very few things standing in your way of making it happen. Some find it a challenge to force the hardware to do stuff it's not very good at or wasn't meant to do, but for us it's making the Jag do exactly what it was designed to let you do easily that leaves us free to enjoy. Leave the headaches of 'pushing' & project management to those who enjoy that kind of thing, we're having a great time as we are :)

    • Like 6

  18. Posted

    I've only ever had positive deals with them - when there was once a problem, they put it right quickly & without fuss. I've spent 100s there over the years, not got a bad word to say about them other than I wish their site was 1005 up-to-date, but then I suppose they wish the same, too :)

  19. Posted

    I remembered I have an NTSC jag last night just as I got into bed, so I may be able to try and get it sorted easier than I thought :) Damn pesky NTSC and its fewer scan lines! :D

     

    Can't believe someone as handy as yourself hasn't taken 10 minutes to fit a switch into one of your machines :lol:

  20. Posted

    Yes that might be but fact is their product had all of these points covered. It's not like they demanded something that hasn't been done before.

    I'm pretty sure that with someone willing to spend that amount of money just to make more carts for the community, there would not have been a problem.

    And as a sidenote,if someone releases such a high quality product, I can understand that they don't want to see worse replicas around and attached to their name. Most extreme case would have been a bare pcb with chips and the game on it (or nowdays a rom file).while I would not mind such a thing since I would like for more people to be able to play the game it is pretty obvious for me why they didn't want to have it that way.

     

    Maybe I'm just more cynical, dunno... probably :) Seems like so much 'get out of jail free' to be brutally honest... I can't help feeling it'd be rather convenient to make a list of requirements nobody could be arsed to meet or that would allow sufficient discretion to make sure it just never happened... well it hasn't so far, has it? In fact, a 'lesser' production run would do more to preserve the collectible original versions' value. You can argue this stuff all ways ad infinitum, as people have done here & elsewhere for years. You just end up going 'round in circles with the net result nothing more than yet more ego massaging. It's all just time-wasting hypothetical handle-churning. It'll never happen.

     

    While the desired public perception is of a team willing to let someone do it, the reality is that the status quo has been well and truly preserved along with that all-important "value" of the existing copies (both those already in the hands of collectors & also those locked safely away in storage awaiting future eBay auctions).

    • Like 2

  21. Posted

    Good tips, Sauron. It's also worth explaining the scoring system (there's a 'system'?! :) ).

     

    Fruits are worth 100xlevel number. So early on, don't risk killing yourself to get to those fruits - later they can be worth 8x the amount. There are 8 levels of difficulty. Each level has 64 randomly selected platform types from a set of 32. Once you pass the 64th platform of the 8th level, the graphics will continue to rotate through the 8 types, but the platforms will still be from the harder last platform type. The key to getting an Atardi-sized score is being patient, getting past the nasty level sets, and learning how to get comfortable with the 8th set. Suppose that's easier said than done ;)

     

    [edit: clarification of post-8th level]

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the Painter on sale at e-jagfest were CDs not cartridges.

     

    There were a few carts, yes - I didn't notice any CDs. Gaztee was sat a couple of places away. He had small numbers of quite a few goodies, Painter on a cart was one of them (and they all sold iirc) - that's not to say either Nick or the Dutch Atari shop didn't have the CD version as well. So Gaztee is probably the person to ask.

     

    [edit - add shop/cd comment]

  23. Posted

    I read through some old posts and saw a few references to possible re-releases of Painter, but I have not seen anything recently. Does anyone know whether there are any plans to re-release Painter carts at any point?

     

    Painter was on sale at e-jagfest last November. Since then some have been on eBay even quite recently.

  24. Posted

    Little question: Is the fact that the fallen tiles are all acid green made on purpose?

     

    I made outline gfx for game elements to give linko something to work with quickly. I did all these in that solid green colour. I looked through my photos but none showed the early builds, but as has been mentioned, it looked very VCS-like for a while, even though it was actually a 640x480 screen with 16bit objects :lol:

     

    I got a bit carried away drawing detailed little things like the pressure gauge and totally forgot to make some decent blocks for the tetrominoes. I guess why the green stuff is there is more to do with linko getting things working first & leaving the fancy stuff until it functions correctly... he's quite efficient like that, his whole approach is pretty impressive. Bring on the first U-235 release :)

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