philipj

Ok... This song is very much Jaguar related. I don't know if anyone would remember; a while back I guess around 2001 or 02 "Songbird Productions" released a game called "Protector SE". Prior to it's release a contest was being held for musical content with downloadable mod file with instrument. It would probably be one of the first times I dealt with mode files considering at the time I was still fairly new at composing music via computer. Of course by that time I had already spent a couple of years using "Jaytrax Synth Sequencer" and another music program called "Winjammer", a PC sound card based sequencer and had only heard of mod trackers on and off over the Internet. Most of the instruments in this song comes directly from files Songbird had posted on their website thus the rules at the time was that it had to be in mode tracker form and submitted within a deadline. At that time I didn't have much time to figure out how a mod tracker worked so I almost didn't enter the contest. However out of enthusiasm for the release, I made the decision to compose the music and enter the contest during a time when I was still experimenting with different musical styles trying to find my sound. The inspiration for this song came from wanting to make "House Style" music with an Atari retro feel... Also some of the cool art works from Songbirds website, which you can still download from the site, also help to inspire the making of the song. Basically internalized my experiences with some of the aesthetics from what I experienced with the Atari 2600 from games like "Asteroids, Defender (which Protector is in essence, Defender clone)" and other space shooters like Space Chase, Yars Revenge, and so on... I basically put all of those good feelings into the song thus I choose "House genera" of music to do so; the style is very lite yet very celebratory, nothing too off the wall. This was before I actually played T2K for the Atari Jaguar and heard the music for that game... When I heard it I was like "OH...! OK... Bad@zz techno / house music...I see now. lol" thus looking back over time, I had second thoughts about the style of the music I was making. In all in all I had fun making this song and was a great learning experience, lessons I would use later on down the road especially for another Jag game that never got released called "Metro Blaster", which I'll post later. In reference to the music actually used in "Protector SE's" game-play, I here a little "funk element" in the song, which I thought was pretty neat. Kind of made me wish I'd gone in that direction myself, I'd probably have better sounding song than the one I actually made... Live and learn right. I'll make the Jaytrax available for download... I hope you enjoy and it inspire future Jaguar game development. The Protector Gold (Philip Wood).zip

Hi Felyx... I did the sound tracks for Jagworm. I've been meaning to learn how the sound engine works. Too busy with real life, but definitely on my to do list. Seen cartoon network lately...? Something about the shows on that station that's very bizarre, but then again I'm old-school head who grew up on "Tom & Jerry" where the Tom catches hell trying to catch the mouse. That thought can go both ways in that respect.

Ok... Here's song I made called "Teen-E-Bebop" featuring samples from "Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers" hence the reason I gave title of the song its name. The inspiration came from a song LL Cool J, a legendary hip hop artist, created called "The Do Wop". Now I grew up listening to LL and can remember the mid 80s when he first came and then created the song "I'm Bad", which just totally ripped Micheal Jackson's song "BAD" a new one; both songs were released the same year in 87, but it was the LL Cool J song that was the most popular among me and my playground friends in the 80s. Anyways when I made Teen-E-Bebop, I really wanted express the great memories of an era when hip hop was still very young, fresh, and still very much underground before it went mainstream. To make a long story short, I looked at the song "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" by the Teenagers, which to me, is the most recognizable do wop song I know. One thing I want to quickly note is the fact at how talented the Teenagers were, the harmony from them was flawless, I didn't hardly have to add any music to the song... They were that good. I felt like I was cheating just using their vocal harmony through out the majority of the song, to bring some level of originality to it, I added some music towards the end of the song using the Teenagers baritone singers voice as a bass instrument that plays in a continues loop to help make the music blend with the Teenagers harmony. Almost most of the instruments, except the samples and the drums are mostly synthesized sounds from Jaytrax... I had a lot of fun make this song I'll leave links to both songs for comparison... I hope you enjoy.

When I saw the YouTube, it reminded me of arcade game called "Pipe Dreams" by Lucasarts... The art style almost looks a lot like "Reck It Ralph" by Pixar; they did work for Lucasarts before they ventured off and to become Pixar.

First off let me thank Jeffery for posting this music on YouTube and Starcats for giving me the opportunity to do giving me the opportunity to make music for his game. When I started composing the music for Jagworm, it was really at the height of the buzz around the game at the time... I didn't know Lars personally, only through game forums (AA & JS2). I liked some of the graphic works he was doing and I wanted to put my work our there as well. I think at the time he had a contest for music talent similar to what "Songbird Production" did for Protector SE, which I also participated in. I just made time to do those things while attending school at the same time around 04 and 05; it was work, school and then music making on my spare time. Looking back today is nostalgia and it was fun to try and make cartoon music on my first try. I hope this music inspire others to keep chasing your dreams and keep making Jaguar games. I'm also going to include the Jaytrax music file of Jagworm, which has all of the songs located in the "Sub Song" dropdown box... To access them please read the topic instructional I posted. Best regards. Jagworm Music by Philip T. Wood 2013.zip

Just to follow up on my last post... I know it isn't Jaytrax related, but for a proof of concept, below are some pencil art works of me dabbling around with a fighting game concept. I could give a back story on the drawings, but to keep it short and to the point, the following is a ninja, a shaolin monk, a couple of street brawlers and a cyborg gorilla. All of these drawings I did in various points in time to kind of keep the idea around, the gorilla I did in high-school as a comic book art, but later decided to include him in a final concept. All of them I'll probably redesign or just scrap and start a new. These were all rough sketches. With all sincerity, I hope these old drawings inspire others to keep working on your game projects and don't let anything discourage you... A delay isn't always a denial, just keep working on your stuff... Learn from mistakes, get smarter and keep moving.

Ok I'm back... Today is Friday Sept 28 of 2018... Back in the day there use to be a TV marathon called "Kung Fu Friday" so this topic is perfect for I'm going to bring up next... No doubt I use to love to watch this show on Friday evenings, sometimes it would show on Saturdays. One of the shows I use to watch that I have great memories is called "Wu Tang Deadly Strike" back when me and my pops use to watch it together. Other movies like "The Last Dragon, Big Trouble In Little China" are movies that would stylistically set the tone for games like "Pit Fighter and Mortal Kombat" thus it certainly hit a nerve with me concerning the idea of making a Street Fighter style game of some sort. "Konami's Yie Ar Kung Fu arcade game" was a favorite of mine long before the whole fighting game craze hit the scene in the 90s as well as a slew of other beat-em-up genera of games; It was out around the time Deadly Strike was playing on TV... it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand in coming up with some kind of fighting game concept... I also have some hand drawn art works I might post later, however I would often make music first before I got into designing something thus if I ever get this programming thing, I'll at least have something to work with... And I will get get it eventually. It's always fun to look back at what I did... i usually finish what I start when I do things like for legacy sake; live and learn right? Before I make this post too long (I can go on and on), here's a song I made, among other songs I haven't made public, concerning a fighting game concept that's been sitting on the back burner; it's probably the one the best of them all... I made this probably about a year before I did some music for Starcats "Jagworm". The song is called "Face Off "Kung Fu Madness" and was inspired by the movie "Deadly Strike" and one of my favorite hip hop artist "Ice T's Tibetan Jam". I hope you all enjoy.

To talk about "Jaytrax", for me, is to sort-of go back in time to give a bit of a back story, foundation to how I got started into using Jaytrax or at least give some idea as to the driving nature of using the sequencer/synth. Take it back to 95 around my high-school graduation year; one day I visit the old arcade at the mall and run into a slew of games that would really showed you what was to come with the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and N64. There was this game called "Soul Blade" that we all know today as "Soul Caliber", but by the time they released for the PS1, they renamed it "Soul Edge"... The way I remember, it was Soul Blade on the arcade cabinet. Anyways without being too long-winded, it was very fun and different in game-play thus bought something new to the table, but what impressed me the most about the game was the music. Now the SNES music from various games back in the 90s really offered a very refreshing alternative for non PC owners that was used to hearing the bleeps of the NES and the 2600; the 16-bit era was a bit of fresh air musically... The fact it can play more than four channels was audibly obvious and appealing. I always dabbled with a music keyboard in those days, but the music content coming from the 16-bit games, I knew if I wanted to get into gaming at some point in time, I'll have to make music outside my musical box thus some of the music I was hearing from "Soul Edge" was highly thoughtful and certainly outside of my knowledge base. Fast forward to 98 when I got Jaytrax I decided to revisit the old arcade as a source of inspiration for trying my hand into making music that's appropriate for a game scene as an experiment to see if I can make music similar to what Namco did so I chose "Mina theme song" having worked with a TS-404 emulator thus I used a music loop I created with the program, saved as a wave file and imported it to Jaytrax and created my song called "KUNG FU STYLE" just to see if I could make that kind of stuff. So without further or do here's "Kung Fu Style"... A song inspired by Mina theme on Soul Blade and for kicks, I'll post a YouTube of Mina's original theme song for a comparison to see if you hear the differences. A little later I'll post another song I made inspired by the martial arts and maybe I'll talk a little bit more about the "TS-404 emulator" I was using; I had a very good workflow and tool set I developed back in those days. Also I was very much inside my musical box, which I'll probably get into... Until then, I hope you enjoy.

I gotcha.

One more thing... Can we please get this tread back on topic???

Dude what are you even talking about...??? You're trying to paint a picture of me that isn't true at all and you know nothing about... I don't know what kind of idea about me that you have, but I'm trying to make peace here, maybe the sarcasm goes straight over my head, a lot of that around. Making peace seems to go by the waist-side over here, but then again maybe there's still hope... Maybe. Ha ha very funny... Well now that you bring it up... Actually I like 2001 the movie visuals. Syd Mead (Mr. TRON himself), the futurist did all of the visual art works for that movie. I consider his work very brilliant and hope to bring that level of artistry to the Jag one day. BTW I'm still very interested in RAPTOR... I want to make a 68000 based 3D engine using RAPTOR to display it for experimental reasons. There's a few things I need to grasp before using it, but I been eyeballing Raptor for a minute believe or not since I got another Skunkboard about a year ago. No need in programming the GPU in Assembly when you have the API to do the graphic work. I here you... Thanks for the advise. That's probably one of the reason why I never dived in all of the way due to all of the horror stories from experienced programmers like yourself and others here. It's also one of the reason why I keep reading.

Reading the tech manual and countless forum topics over a period of time, makes me feel like I know something.

Well that goes without saying a high poly count mesh obviously won't work on the Jag... That's stating the obvious. Games and comics are one thing, real life is another, I've was busy either working, career chasing, and/or taking care of family... No time to make video games the way I wanted. I'm an artist, not a programmer; if you're not making a real living in the programming field or already educated or established in programming, there's not too much of a reason skew off into making games except as a side hobby, but it doesn't mean the desire to do those things wasn't there... Just didn't have the time, the patience, or both get into something I didn't fully understand that's all. There's no real living to be made making Jaguar games so other priorities came first, but I always maintained interest as much as possible over the years. That's all I have to say about that. A broken Jag due to bad soldering never set well with me using BJL... Even I have a limit. A good copy of "Protector SE" is always good to have. I regret selling it; I'll probably get another copy at some point in time in the future just for keep sake. I use to have problems with BJL, never really got it to work correctly with the PC I had back in the day and didn't always have time to fool around with it. All I could do was to sit it on the back-burner and keep it moving, collect as much info as I could and figure it out later while I cook up ideas. If I had not done that, I probably would've left the scene a long time ago so I gave myself something to shoot for, stayed out of the flame/troll wars as much as I could and kept my ideas under lock and key so if it (my ideas) sounds crazy when I post, it probably is but what the heck. Maybe one day limitless polygon will be possible on the Jag (don't render harder, render smarter)... If a decent 3D engine can be made for the Sega 32X (Yeti 3D) why not the Jaguar.

Now back to the original topic...

Well... I posted the pics to help inspire the project; I didn't mean for the topic to skew. I posted some pics on another and the topic got right back on course after a couple of post; I guess the pics were a bit too glaring, but I get the feeling if I was to start a topic just showing off my art works, I'd probably get the same kind of responses I'm getting here. Whatever impression I made, I humbly just putting ideas out there in hopes of getting feedback and info on the Jags inner workings and what have you, which is something I've been doing for a while now to test the validity of my theories; I'm just getting back into the Jag having bought a new Jag and a couple of Skunks plus getting it going in Windows 10 being an issue so I'm pushing pass the clutter I experienced in the past and actually get a concept off of the ground in prototype form before tackling the Jaguar; a proof of concept first. But I think anything I post will be met with some level of scrutiny, which is a good thing: I try and read everything and the good info I get, I archive it for future reference. Thanks Clint...! I'd really like to make something really special for the Jag like what VRVlad is doing with emphasis on "Next Level", but I'm sure I'm not the only one to wanting something really good for the Jaguar. I'd like to do something really grand, but I'll settle for decent considering the Jaguar limitations. It's only a matter of getting things in order for a smoother way of development; I'll get there as long as it takes to get there. I'll be keeping my Jag and Skunk permanently... Just a few real life issue to over come, but I'm here for the long haul. Always good to get your input.

Well don't think of it as something painful... I don't really consider it to be a painful thing or looking for sympathy. The Jaguar really is after all a very sophisticated kids toy at the end of the day just like my comic book collection; something that has nostalgic value more than anything else and shouldn't be taken too serious.I'm really just getting back in the swing of things, I haven't flashed a "Skunkboard" in a couple of years now. Really I've done more reading then I've done programming just to gain more understanding on some things. I did do a little html so programming isn't too much of a foreign thing... I've been looking at "QB64" which seems very clean cut with direct and swift results without jumping through a whole bunch of hoops; would make for a great prototyping tool for game concepts. Not really Atari Jaguar related, but it's start... It supports all of the major sound and image formats and seems simple enough. I'm probably putting too much of my thoughts out there, but I think QB64 may be a good program to prototype before tackling the Jaguar straight off. I've been watching tutorials on YouTube and what-have-you; I mean QuickBASIC, it doesn't get any simpler or more BASIC than that. It's called learning from past mistakes... And you're somewhat right I have been, not just giving advise to others, but getting my head into the game, but don't look at as painful, it's not by no means. I'm invigorated and optimistic the future so sympathy over here personally; not everything is as it might seem so I hope this brings some clearity... I'm also a good bit older than I was during my past post over the years, I'm not quite the same person I was in my youth or I am the same person just a bit more wiser now. But when I sold my Atari Jaguar collection I regretted it so I'm here for the long haul whatever the case may be.

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?