philipj
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Posts posted by philipj
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I do have one question... Will there be any technical documentation, schematics, programmers references and things of that nature for the XM?
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I almost counted the XM as a lost where as I sold all my 7800 stuff a couple of years ago... But I'm finally glad its coming out; I just have a get game console off ebay and strike the collection back up again. Also I've been meaning to Dev on the 7800 for some time now thus the XM is a nice incentive for me to get back on board with that sort of thing especially with the added memory and two sound processors. Don't exactly know how far I get with it, but if I good a strong foot hold on this programming thing, I'll take things to the moon God willing.
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I've had my email since the late 90s... In fact it's the very first email I signed up to. Still using it after all of these years.
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No.
Quote from John Carmack:
I actually dug up all my old jaguar development hardware to give to these
guys a year or two ago.Unfortunately, it turned out that I had lost the C compiler that I had retargetedto the jaguar RISC engines, so DOOM was no longer buildable. -
Wasn't a custom C compiler used to program Doom for the Jag...? Every one and their mother was looking for the compiler at one time before they gave up.
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Wow...! I nearly missed this. Just submitted mine in. Can't wait to get the module; I might order a second one.
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Here's a little fact nugget about the music I did for "Jamind Bomb Squad"... The inspiration for the song came from a couple of sources; originally I only knew the game to be "Jagmind" in the beginning. When Is started working on the song, at the time I had just obtained an Intellivision with the game "Bomb Squad" that I was playing a lot back in those days. I didn't know what the game would play like so if I recall Starcats had brokedown the game play to me in description as a puzzle game so my first thought would be to create something of mystery and atmospheric while the player figure the puzzle out. A song that came to mind was one off of "Samurai Showdown" for the SNES, which was Nakoruru theme song; so I would play the SNES song in the background while playing a game of "Bomb Squad" on my Intellivision to help drum up some inspiration "Jagmind" and that's how I wind up making two songs for the game. Also that's how "Jagmind" had the name "Bomb Squad" added where as before, it was only known as simply "Jagmind". Lars changed up the game a little and added new stuff to what he had already made as well as the Bomb Squad name at the end.
One more thing I want to mention... I remember a person posting sometime ago about me not making more songs for the "Jagmind" video game...? Well there's a very good reason for that. I'd previous made a crap load of songs for the game "Jagworm" and the songs were set and already made with the game still being worked on until the infamous "Hard Drive Crash" were the original source code or game got lost. When I did the music for Jagmind, I remember asking Lars if he wanted more songs, but he didn't seem to want to take the chance again of me making a lot of songs and him loosing his work again, which was completely understandable at that time. But for those who might remember those days, yea I did want to do more songs, but it just never worked out that way.
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I like that "real-time Mandelbrot" demo Atari had with their development software where they used both the GPU and the DSP to render fractal mandelbrot in real-time... That seem pretty promising especially when it was demonstrated on "Battlesphere" in one of the menus. I think the way those fractal mountains done on the 8-bit platform was very simplistic considering how fast the 6502 was able to pull off the pseudo 3D effect on the Atari-8. I think fractals has become a bit of a lost art in the gaming world today, but I think that's on account that back in the old days, computers just couldn't handle the number crunching it took to do what most people wanted fractals to do and in the case of "Rescue on Fractalus" that was some level of fast/cheap reasonable pseudo 3D visuals on an 8-bit system, which was very ambitious for its time being the original "Behind Jaggi Lines" using a scheme designed for "anti-aliasing".
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Just wanted to wish everyone a "Merry Christmas" and a "Happy New Year"... Included with this post is a "Jaytrax" file that has 2 "sub songs" on it; these songs help to inspire the work I did for "Jagworm"... In fact you can almost here similarities between the musical styles thus it became the frame work for what I would eventually do with the "Jagworm" music. To access the songs, just click the "Sub Song" drop-down-box located on the top right of the menu upon opening the file, select the desired song, then click the "Play button" at the bottom..." Remember you can use the "Spacebar" to make the song completely stop without lingering instruments playing versus using the "Stop button". Just a little tid bid I thought I would add for the record. Anyways I hope everyone enjoy the music; I think the style of the music is very appropriate for the holiday season. Once again have a merry Christmas and happy new year.
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I'm going to see if I can get a set this holiday... I just purchased me a Truck so I might can get them depending on how the money will look this holiday.
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Nonsense...the JAMMA connector has nothing to do with that, it simply supplies voltage, outputs video and reads control inputs. The home console isn't JAMMA and is the same overall architecture.
Well clearly the home console isn't JAMMA, but thanks for shedding some light on that... It's been years since I looked at anything JAMMA other than Wikipedia specs and emulation sites. The point I was making was trying to find a balance concerning graphics and animation on a limited file size versus what the Neo Geo cartridge was handling; I'm not even talking about emulation any more at this point for the sake of clarity, but just graphics, animation, and file size... Something that Duranik dealt with when they used the DSP to decompress the images; it reminded me of the JagPEG format I read about in the Jag documents that used CRY via the GPU; I use to think Duranik was using that particular format for there graphics to cram in a cartridge.
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Just an indication that the amount of data of NEOGEO is probably a "tad" overestimated. A 165 Kbyte background in 16 bit color for a Jaguar game when converted to 4 bit Color is roughly around 1/4 of the data =41 Kbyte. An 128x128 explosion bmp in 4 bit color is the same data like 32x32 explosion bmp in 16 bit color (an explosion which is actually used in a Jaguar game btw). Now Keep in mind that Native is using 1.) 16 bit Bitmaps 2.) real time unpacking the data with the DSP "on the fly"
WHILE maintaining a flawless 60 FPS/s!
NEO GEO games are all about the artwork and the sheer amount of artwork crammed into huge ROM space. Rayman on the Jaguar still does better with big 16 bit color sprites and smoother animation ,all with just 2MB ROM space!
One of the things I admired about the Jag was its ability to do high resolution, but I see why a lot of developers never really shot for the 600x400 res style graphics in the beginning... Just looking at Neo Geo specs on Wikipedia and other emulation sites in the past (and I haven't forgotten the links provided on this topic, thanks btw), I think it's pretty impressive what Duranik was able to do with the animation. I guess in my search for a comparison between the two hardware the Neo Geo and the Jaguar was an attempt to find a balance for graphics and animation in a way that helps to free up some of the Jag hardware responsibilities. I remember reading about how Duranik used the DSP to decompress those graphic files and how there wasn't enough cartridge space to finish the game. Just look at the animation YouTube... That's was the game they intended, but never saw the light of day, but the fact that they got that close meant that you do a modest level of good stuff on the Jaguar. I've always known that the Arcade Jamma standard the Neo Geo sported on its hardware using high bandwidth was a big factor, I just didn't know to what degree, but just look at the size of the Neo Geo cartridge versus the Jag cartridge with two output slots at the bottom instead of the typical small mass market game console off-the-shelf cartridge with fewer pins than the Neo Geo.
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Very nostalgic reading that about "Duranik"... It was the buzz around that game that got me into the Jag scene in the beginning. I'd mark the Jaguar as another faded game console like the 3DO, which is also a good console in it's own right, until I ran into "Atari HQ" and saw images of the game in development. That's when I knew I wanted to make games for the Jaguar; been stuck with the idea ever since not really knowing what all that involved. Great memories man... Good old college days.
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Wow, these are wild man! I'm impressed by all these works, considering the color limitations, it's amazing! I'm hoping that I can possibly use 7800 basic or ASM programming to create either a demo or even a game for the 7800, using the graphics I've made
Thanks man... That was a while back I did all of that, but I've been a fan of the 7800 for awhile. Never did get into the programming aspect of things, but maybe one day I'll get a chance to do something for the old system. Good luck with your project dude.
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Hi... R_Leo_1
First off, congrats on your artwork... I think it would be very cool to see your stuff on real 7800 hardware; I think it would be a breath a fresh air from the retro style I'm use to seeing. 21 years ago at about age 20 I was an MS paint user... Before then I started out using "Mario Paint" for the SNES in my teen years until I got my hands on an old IBM 386 that had "Windows 3.1" installed on it when I was 19. I found that "MS Paintbrush" tool set wasn't as good as the ones on Mario Paint, but I didn't let that stop me... I was determined to make the best of out of what I had at the time. There was only 28 colors to work with versus Mario Paint, which had more colors so it was tricky at first. Over time I found that MS paintbrush had a blending tool where you can blend different colors together, but the trick was that art piece had to be at a decent resolution. Up close you can clearly see the blending, almost dithering effect, but looking afar, the blended colors looked like one color, very similar to how a dot-matrix printer blend various shades of three or four colors on a white sheet of paper in various hues and shades, but looking at it afar it looks like one single color. MS Paint wasn't the best program in the world, but you can pull off some very decent art works so just keep doing what you're doing. Don't let the nay-sayers discourage you.
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Woo - not catching up on 4 pages of surely all arguments. But I think I can safely say, that phillipj is to the Jaguar forum as "Carmel Andrews" was to the 8-bit forum
Who's Carmel Andrews...? I was trying to just blend in and be a regular, that's all.
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Changed jobs twice since then and company i work for now was good enough to pay for private health care sessions when my back last gave out and carry out regular hearing tests to minimise hearing detoration best they can.
Working in heavy industry takes it's toll on others a lot more than my limited time in it.
Nowadays i do mixed shifts including nights which are supposed to take years off your life :-))
I do what you do..manage the ailments, little more can be done.
Once the quack tells you the damage is done..it's done.
Awe man sorry to hear that man... Chronic back pain is no joke. Popping them pain pills is serious business especially with the "Ibuprofin"... That stuff can cause "Cirrhosis of the Liver" over a long stretch of time if you take it daily; I only take it if I really need it and some days I just put up with the pain to keep from taking so much of it. A lot of times it could just be stiffness of the muscles where you have to work with the pain until the stiffness goes away... And "Iceyhot and Blue-Emu" always good for pain relief. I don't want to throw the topic off course, but keep fighting man for a better quality of life and try not and wind up bed ridden at an old age because back stress. -
My bloody job cost me aspects of my health.
Serious back injury and loss of upper range of my hearing (high frequency range) and has resulted in permanent tinnitus. |-O
Oh man I'm sorry hear about that... Before I had took up CAD I worked at "Home Quarters" before the franchise closed doing all kind of manual labor lifting 40, 60, and 80 pounds of concrete and all sorts of lumber and every other thing you can imagine having to were back braces and what-have-you. I committed to getting an office job in CAD and that's exactly what I did before my back would give in; My doctor warned me and I listened and I'm glad I did. Today I have chronic back pains, but I think it would've been a lot worse if I hadn't followed through. It's manageable today, but I hope things work out for you man.
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Thats actually a great suggestion. Create something in a more user friendly development environment FIRST. Then if you really want to bring it over to the Jag you have something to show and you can start trying to figure out how to do it. That would be something I would imagine EVERYONE here would be willing to help with.
Actually I am learning to program on the PC first using QB64 just to get a basic understanding on programming in general before I get off into tackling the Jaguar... I certainly don't won't the thread to spiral out of control, but it's every post, I get some measure heckling from someone and although Zerosquare has given me sound advise, it was not without some measure of attitude behind it... If some one did him the same way, he would probably do what he's doing now by browbeating the members here. But I do agree with him games never being released for the Jag by dreamers and that has been the problem and you can since my doubling down tone, that's because the thread looks like it's getting a little heated, which is not what I want here.
And Clint Thomas I hear you man and I do listen to the experts here and in the past... I wouldn't know what I know except they gave me understanding about so to say that I'm not listening just isn't true Zero would have people believe. It does feel like censorship in some ways because my opinions and expressions here is not without a smart remark or some level of "Nope... You can't do that either" in that type of affect and it gets sometimes hostile as if they don't want me, which I know may or may not be true; I just approach it as lightly as I can, but I had to vent that time.
I don't won't the thread to get that "wink-and-nod" again about locking it up... It's a very decent thread and I think it deserves to stay open, but I also think the game enthusiast voice doesn't always sync with the reality of the hardware so I hear you Clint. I got to avoid that wink and nod though... lol
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Wow... So your job was a little more demanding then mine was... Mine limited to drawing buildings and converting old building plans into digital ones, assisting architects,but never fully becoming one. lol I was just fortunate enough to be around CGI artist and teachers at Virginia College being able to talk to them and even work with them and see the various stuff they were doing. Yea, but I tried my hand with that engineering work in AutoCAD; that's some tedious work, but I managed to pass the those in CAD and even used it a little on the job site.
That was Core Design.Ok.. I get them confused. They're both darn good companies.
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Meant to say regarding Sega CD Dracula, Psygnosis not keen on it themselves:
"Psygnosis know that this game stinks ! They wanted to write a nice impressive adventure but Sega insisted on a standard platform beat 'em up type thing, just so that it would sell to little kiddies. The graphics are very very bad on the
Sega version because the Sega only has 16 colours on screen out of a pallette of 512 and you just can't get pretty digitised graphics with that sort of colour range (why do you think most Sega game are all in bright, sonic-style, primary
colours). I should imagine that all the graphics on the CD32 version will be much nicer - all the graphics are generated on SG workstations in 24-bit and reduced
to the capabilities of the platform - the game play will still be shit though.But you can thank the mighty Sega for that !
Psygnosis's CD skills have moved on considerably from the likes of Dracula and Microcosm - they're still learning !"
I think they did pretty darn good with the "Soulstar" for the Sega CD... Lol...! Enough said.
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Before this thread gets locked...
I think the honest reality is this...
Whilst it can make for an interesting talking point regarding just how much further the Jaguar could of been taken 2D or 3D wise, the simple fact is...
The very fact we didn't see games that went beyond Rayman or Super Burnout when the Jaguar was at it's peak from a commercial viewpoint and had European and American development teams with Atari UK and USA looking to broker deals to see titles finished and released for a user base in the hundreds of thousands...
Makes the likelihood of any homegrown title that goes beyond what was achieved at a commercial level, pretty damn non existant.
If it was going to be done, it would of been done.
The existing Jaguar user base, as passionate as it is, hasn't the numbers to justify the sheer level of man hours required to bring something on par with Rayman to fruition from scratch.
You're probably right... I went to school for "CAD and Design Visualization" so from my perspective, I see a lot of open doors for potential future Jag project, I just need to get the programming and the animation stuff down. While taking those course, I was also around a lot of CGI artist at that school and get a chance to see a few exciting things there that stuck with me for years so I feel like I have a good scope of things... In fact some of the CAD teachers were also CGI artist so that flavor was always in the air... I wondered if I was taking up the right course over there. lol
That's what drive me sometimes. I'll eventually find an avenue for successful Jaguar development within a reasonable compromise based on everything I know. -
Some SNK folk have talked about how working on the more limited arcade hardware, compared to their competitors, forced them into being far more creative in art design, so hardware limitations aren't always a limiting factor, but the Jaguar was never going to pull off so thing like this unreleased Co-Jag based Killer Instinct clone, it would of had to of been seriously cut down.
One of the reasons I've taken interest in wanting to make games was my curiosity about Killer Instinct on the SNES... I never fully understood as a teen why KI for the SNES, although nearly arcade perfect, why the SNES hardware was never able to handle the same level of graphics as the original arcade. Of course I got a better understanding of all of that stuff as I got older, but the thought did stick with me for a long till this day. The Sega CD was able to pull off some level of remarkable CGI using fmv to pull it off with "Bram Stoker's Dracula"; when I played this in my teens, I use to think that it was sad Nintendo never released the, then, newly announced CD drive. The Sega CD pulled off a very decent level of graphics using live action sprites graphics in an FMV environment... I'm not sure, but I think they used "Cinepak" to compress the video. I would love to make something like that for the Jag CD where I believe it's possible to have an KI style game with an FMV background and maybe a limited/modest level of real-time 3D in the background. If Sega CD can do, so can the Jaguar; makes sense to me. That's just one thing on the table that's very much possible the Jag can potentially pull off.
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Nobody is asking you to change who you are. They're just asking you to accept expert opinions and not go off on a tangent of how the Jag must be able to run Dreamcast games because it has a bigger physical footprint or something.
Well let's just say I have big dreams for the Jaguar and I've been looking into other alternatives past the normal routine the Jaguar was originally designed for... If my opinions reflect that sometimes, I try to stay within the parameters of the topic as much as possible, but I have other ideas on the table that I don't mention here less people really think I out of my rockers.
Way to stop posting walls of text nobody cares about.
You ask for it you got it... Don't fly false accusation at me and maybe I won't post as much.
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CPUs used in 70s, 80s, and early 90s synths and samplers
in Hardware
Posted
I know this topic is a bit aged, but still very cool... Don't forget the "Casio CZ Synthesizer" which also used the "NEC D7811g" processor to manage 8 voices via "Phase Distortion".