philipj

Thanks a bunch man...! I've had those old drawings for years just experimenting with concept artworks. I think the biggest thing is finding a beginning, a middle, and an end to an indie game project especially when it comes to the buggy Jaguar and finishing the game in a reasonable timely manner. The good thing is that it's not like the early days where information was hard to get on programming the Jag. If you got a family and a job and other priorities, you got to do what you gotta do; the key would be to find a fair balance if you still want to make something for the Jag with a reasonable level of enthusiasm, I hope to make legacy pieces, but then again I'm an artist so that statement kind or reflects that... The thing some artist have to realize is there's a time factor that must be considered thus art must be a means to an end; a process among other processes that reaches an end point with every project making things easier the next go round. Well in theory it all sound good. lol

I can certainly understand... I'd like to see new 3D content for the Jag. I've been wanting to do a good racing game for sometime now. Here's some more artworks I did in Windows 3.1 paint program using 16 colors; I did this around 96. Maybe I'll redesign all of my old car drawings one day for a Jaguar release; it's always been a dream of mine revisit that old project; it's still on the table. I hope the images inspires one to get past the concept phase for more Jag development. I was influenced by a lot of good games back then; Ridge Racer, Outrunner, NFS 2, a couple of SNES games... All of the nuances came from those games back then in my youthful and expressed in my artworks. Note: These images are massive and will take up a lot of forum space... The last picture, Akira's motorcycle" I modeled in AutoCAD and ported over to Bryce 3D for rendering. Couldn't put any texture on it, the 3D object was one gigantic mesh thanks to AutoCAD 2000 crappy 3D interface; I modeled this before I learned 3D Studio Max. Although the motorcycle is one big mirror, the gloss gives enough visualization of what a shiny vehicle would look like.

Same here guy... My condolences.

I was casual artist drawing every so often... My epiphany about having some drawing skills was when my English teacher told me I had good penmanship when I first started writing in cursive before my teen years. I reason in my head if I can learn to write in cursive, I can learn to draw: I'm basically drawing lines and curves to make a fancy looking lettering thus I can apply the similar principles to drawing so I collected comics and started mimicking the art works just as I did with cursive letters. Latter on in life while taking an art class I learned that if you doodle everyday for three to five month, by the end of the year you will have basically come to a reasonable level of artistry especially if you start with a very good strong foundational knowledge. If you ever doodled in a note book on some level then the first step has already been taken, it's only a matter of consistent practice with a good knowledge base like "How To Draw the Marvel Way". The book is simple and was a great starting point for me back in the day; it's a bit dated today, but it gets the job done just fine. I know things are going a little off topic, but I'll post one or two more image and end it there to get the topic back on track. The following image are the old art test from those commercials you see on TV; I call them the "Charlie Brown Test" because the guy who drew Charlie Brown comic strips took this test.

I actually pencil drawn the hovercraft and used it as a base line... The others I did freehand with a mouse of course.

Thanks... Here's a book I use to read almost religiously back in the mid 90s... I originally wanted to do comic book art at first; this book called "How to Draw The Marvel Way" really is a great starting point. It gives you all of the bare essentials for drawing anything. They also made a VHS I use to rent from the local library a lot. I'll post them both for reference sake. https://archive.org/details/howtodrawcomicsm00stan?q=the+marvel+way

I use to tinker with and old "IBM 386" with Windows 3.1 around 95 or 96. Before than I use to do art work using Mario Paint and found that the Mario Paint tool-set was better than the Windows standard paint, but I learned a whole lot using both. Here's some work I did using Win3.1 paint using 16 colors and lots and lots of diskettes. I was dreaming up game designs even then, but never went all the way with it (too busy working); certainly won't let that happen again. Enjoy.

I've seen SSD kits on ebay for the Cojag arcade boards where you can load games on an SSD hard drive... I thought that was pretty interesting.

Although I know the GPU is highly capable of doing 3D on it's own merit, I'm more of an "audio and visual" person starting off as comic book artist in my highschool year until I took up "Computer Aided Drafting" due to the lack of jobs for comic artist in my state... Even with computer animators and digital artist, the school I went to also had cgi and animation course and I hear about talanted artist who struggle to get real jobs in the art field; it seems that cgi artist are becoming a dime a dozen these days with everyone wanting in on the cgi and gaming bandwagon... It just isn't a sustainable field in some areas. Getting back on topic, learning to program in Assembler has always been something I've taken interest in more than any other language thus the 68000 seems to be the most stable CPU to learn before drifting off into the other JagRISC... Learning BASIC is on my to-do-list, but it's Assembler that I really want to master to take advantage of the speeds. I've been making plans to make an experimental 3D engine for Raptor using the 68000 as the main processor and as a learning tool for myself personally... But that's a long ways down the road; I have to get to know the API first so a couple or a few classic sprite games are perhaps in order. Is Raptor programming language exclusive to just BASIC or can Assembler be used to control the API in some way?

I've often wish the Co-Jag could be consolized like the Neo Geo just to take advantage of the enhanced hardware and extra ram it has... Not enough retro activity going on concerning the cojag with exception of the "Primal Rage 2" and even with that, they used the R3000 cpu to get the game working right instead of the 68020 version. It would be a dream project for me to make something really good the home console and then ported to the Co-Jag.

Here's a game that's super rare made by "Capcom" called "Slip Stream" released in 95, which is a pretty late start for such a game during all of the 3D craze that was going on in the arcades at that time, but I guess people were still hitting those soon to be dated games. This game was made using the "Sega System 32 Hardware"; a NEC-60 RISC based system, but the graphic style is very much like "Super Burnout" for the Atari Jaguar without all of the elaborate sprites to simulate bridges and what-have-you like in the game "Power Drift". I think the pseudo 3D effects are considerably done pretty good; it almost has a decent 3D thing going on the way the road and the cars are presented.

That brings good memories... I rented that game and the Sega CD system when it first came out. That's more like mode 7 style graphic affects using the CD unit hardware that supported scaling and rotating. What that game company did with "Soulstar' was incredible; Galaxy Force 2 was absolutely possible it's too bad Sega never released their legacy super-scale based games for the CD unit. It would be great for more of the Sega Arcade games were ported to the Jaguar, it might attract more gamers to the system. All of the superscaler arcade stuff is totally possible even if the screen resolution was a little lower to make room for graphics just like it is with this game.

Both "Galaxy Force 2 and Power Drift" uses the same hardware the "Sega Y Board"... It has three 68000 cpu's; they probably have two of them being used for graphics why one handles the game logic Galaxy Force 1 & 2 are one and the same game like "Afterburner 1 & 2" just slightly different. I think Sega really had a really good grasp on superscalers that seem to be trending around the mid to late 80s. Jeleco's "Cisco Heat" also featured three Motorola 68K chips in them. Was just looking at the Atari ST port it on YouTube which I'll post below. Wikipedia claims that a version for the Jaguar was in the works, but never made the cut; I wonder how that game would've looked? https://youtu.be/Kket83oo0OA

I never said the DSP was the only processor to have "specific characteristics" as you put it, I pointed out that it's the best processor to work with on the Jaguar because of those characteristics and even pointed the fact that Atari themselves makes that a highlight of the system. CJ didn't say anything that I didn't already know about; I've talked about in past discussion the issues I had with the 68K being the slowest cpu of them all and not really wanting to use it so naturally the DSP is the best processor, but not the only processor. Dude I'm sorry I make you feel some kind of way due to misconception you have about me; I left the Jag scene at a time when I was getting a better understanding of the system. I admit that back in the day my understanding was lax to say the least, but that's not quite the case today, at least not in the way it was back then... But you're right, I need a proof of concept in code on the stuff I post, but that doesn't mean that my ideas aren't solid... If you got the experience, well then good for you, but don't try and throw my stuff under the bus just because you disagree with me or whatever my concepts represent; One can't fly a plane without reading the manual first. ??? There moments I do wonder about the Jag forum here at AA... Sometimes it's a great place to be and other times it turns into a rabbit hole. SMH

My opinions aren't that uninformed, I give enough information to relay a reasonable idea that's generally feasible in theory not to take away or question any of the programmers here... When I see a good thing I run with it. No argument there man... Well one... It slower and tends to slow the other the processors down when it hits the bus, but has its advantages like taking some work load from the other processors. I'm probably not saying anything you don't already know, but for the sake of clarity and repetitive memory, I bring it up anyway.

I got it... Been making some plans for it. I haven't poke around on it yet, but it's in my scope; first 2D and then 3D stuff once I've got the hang of things. Programming is still the newest of an old concept at this point so I just record ideas so I don't forget them based on Jag manual other sources... I'm bound to hit on something worthwhile. Got things going on in my home life so time can be an issue.

Well not full time... Just enough to make some meaningful stuff.

Same here... At least I'm trying to get to that place.

Well that's why they call this a forum right... So i can put my opinions out there. If opinions can't be freely given, then that defeats the purpose having a forum. You know as well as I know that the DSP is only 32bit processor that have full access to main ram unhinged without a workaround at full speed despite being on a 16bit bus, it's the only processor that controls all of the i/O ports on the system and is sited by Atari themselves for these facts.

I remember when I first wanted to do Jaguar stuff, I thought the Jag could do what the PlayStation 1 was doing back in the late 90s till I got wise over a period of time... Deep down I wanted the Jag to do something on the level of the PS1 or the Sega Saturn, which it can but with limitations due to all of the hardware issues. The topic is turning into a history topic a bit, but can be very necessary in trying to find out what's actually feasible for the Jaguar and what's not. The PS2 had a crap load of processors in it and was considered hard to program, but was very flexible at the same time with more stuff to work with compared to a single processor 3D game console with a graphics chip. Because of that, the range of what's possible is wider, but for the Jaguar, you actually have to look backwards in time before all of the trendy stuff that was out by SGI, Sun Workstation, and other graphic systems that were out around the Jaguar release in the mid 90s that could do what the Jaguar couldn't do... Maybe a few things you can find here and there from consoles like the PS1, Saturn, and N64 that can be applicable for the Jaguar if you're lucky, but you need a very different and exclusive pipe-line when it comes to the Atari Jaguar. Any modern pipeline even Open GL 1.0 would be a challenge for the Jag without making some very extreme and specific optimizations.

Well technically the DSP is the second highest priority on the Jag system, but it has the highest among the other processors.

The DSP really is the best processor considering that it's the only chip that has full access to main memory and has the highest system priority... The whole idea of cutting off the 68000 always kind-of rub off as a bit of a waste in resource, but is perfectly understandable when it comes to it slowing the other processors down. At least the 68k has full access to memory versus the GPU. Memory is gold even on a unified architecture; I think all of the real action should happen with the DSP and 68K while GPU just drawing stuff to screen; it's just one big sprite machine with a lot of programmability. I think a decent 3D engine can be made using the just those two processors as a means of taking advantage of the their access to main memory.

This is a great topic... I ran into this topic googling FPU. I think today you can use more modern controllers that have FPU on them, which you can get very cheaply. Then there the atmeltiny chips you can buy for less than a dollar in some cases that can be used on an Atari 2600 to help breath some new life into these old system; I have no problems that. I'm still waiting on the Atari 7800 XM module that'll will worthy sound processors for such a graphical 8-bit system with extra ram to do more stuff with the 6502 CPU. I wish I had the skill to do my own cartridge to help enhance the retro Atari 2600 and bring it to the 21st century; call it cheating or whatever, I see no problems using extra hardware even if it is a little overkill for the Atari 8s. Consider it to be like the FX chip for the SNES or the SVP cartridge for the Genesis, imagine a virtual racer style game for the 2600.

I'd like to see how the Jaguar handle spline and b-spline based 3D, a more bi-cubical style 3D graphics in games... I first took notice of bi-cubical in the game "Star-fighter" for the 3DO with all of the blocky polygons covering the landscape; the Acorn PC version uses even lesser graphics than the 3DO and it had a little bit more to it's hardware; the ground almost look mode 7 like, but I know that's just the way the texture maps look to accommodate hardware that may not have a lot of ram sticks. One computer system I like to look at is an old graphics workstation called the "Adage 3000", which was a 68000 terminal based computer system controlling a larger floor model that had boards that rendered 3D graphics using a series of 4bit AMD 2901 bit-slicers much like the ones used in the "Star Wars" arcade math box as part of a custom "Bipolar Processor", only their hardware was built around "Splines, B-Spines, and Bi-Cubical Surface" rendering techniques the company developed over the years prior. Although the Adage 3000 was a good system, it didn't have no where near what the Jaguar had hardware wise. It was considered the first GPU of its time in the late 70s and early 80s. Their hardware wasn't as powerful as the Jaguar, but they had a more well rounded system design that's still impressive for it's time frame. People always point to the SGI computer stuff (which could much of what the Adage could), but the Adage predated the old "Iris 2400 Workstation Computer" that also had the Motorola 68000 controlling a floor model using custom chips. Bottom line I think the Jag falls in line as a more advanced version of the graphic workstation computers of old with more perks than those old systems versus a PlayStation 1 or Sega Saturn. I could go on and on about that kind of stuff, but I'll just leave it here since it'll be a "YouTube Overload" with my post to help illustrate. You know the crazy thing about the Adage 3000 was that Atari had an Adage Workstation was that Atari owned an Adage computer and used to do some graphics work for the movie "Superman 3" dodging missiles being launched at him... Didn't the movie release around 1982 or 83? They probably used it to do graphic work for the "Firefox Laser Disc Game" as well; who knows? Just a note worthy mention. https://youtu.be/pKgt5IX-HVA