Tyrant

I'll let you know next week when I get my cd drive and copy of dragons lair. /me loves retail therapy

I take it from the total silence that nobody knows anything about it?

A priety nice trade imvho, but getting al alpine will cost you a fair bit more. My alpine and dev jag should be in the post very soon, and I cant wait to get them, and start coding. Once I learn all the languages and systems, I'll be racing you to see who can use that engine first hehe, tho I'll probably loose since I want to make a large 2D/3D hybrid game (no details yet hehe, but it'll rock, if I can pull it off). Obviously this wont be ready for a few years, but it'll be a fun project and should eventually be another cartridge game to add to the collection.

Oh ok, best not try that then hehe.

Ok, a few more details here... I was a little over-excited when I made the first post, I knew these things were cool, but I never realised quite how cool until I made one. The basic design is a standard jaguar controler, with a large black aluminum knob in place of the d-pad. The encoder mechanism is mechanical, but very sensitive, providing 36 pulses a revolution (did I hear correctly that the ones based on 2600 driving controlers only produce 4 pulses per revolution?) I orriginally planned on using an optical mechanism, but I couldnt find an encapsulated one for a reasonable price, and the work involved to build and align an optical system would have made each pad take so long to build it wasnt worth it. Once I've made up a few more, I'll sell them on ebay as a limited run, if there's enough interest to make it worth my time, I'll then start making up some more of them, but I cant gaurentee how many I'll have time to do, but it will never be more than 50, since I only have 50 spare pads, and I was planing to make up some of them into autofire pads.

I finished assembling my first spinner today, and it kicks ass! Before this I'd never managed to get much past level 40 (yeah I know, I suck, but hay), today however I got all the way to 58 on my first test of it lol, which I think proves that everyone should have a spinner if they love tempest. I'll be really busy for the next week or two, but I'll try to find time to make up a few more spinners to sell (on ebay, its easier than any other way), and of course I'll post the details here first.

Yeah I know, the putting down of macs is more a joking thing than anything really serious, I'd never use a mac unless forces, but I dont have any real problem with them, the new ones are gorgeous to look at (on the outside anyway). As much as I hate micros~1, they do write a damned good interface... the underlying programs generally have huge flaws (well mainly just crashes, most micros~1 programs do what I need), but they are easy to use, and look nice. Talking of falcons, how much can one pick them up for? Im very hard up at the moment but I'd love to get one at some point.

The other day, when I unboxed a copy of Zoop to see what its like, I was initially very disapointed since it had no sound what soever, it had the roar and little bit of music thats present on the begining of all games, but no other sound. After I played it a while and got bored, I turned it off, left it for about half an hour then put it back on to check I hadnt had it on mute or something dumb like that, and it had all its music and fx. I've no idea why this was, tho I did do an eeprom reset (* # and option) at one point, maybe you should try doing the same on your theem park.

Except macs arnt better, linux boxes are, if you have the time to learn their internals, but macs just plain suck.

I find the JI2 waaaay too hard to navigate, its like its trying to be a newsgroup or email list but isnt. I allways used to prefer multithreaded boards, like proper newsgroups, but Im begining to be swayed by the ubb style.

Is there going to be an E-JagFest this year? I'd love to go if there is one, does anyone have any details? The pages for the last two dont make any mention of one for 2002 that I can see. [ 06-01-2002: Message edited by: Tyrant ]

ARRGH!!! NOOOooooooo...... Dont get me wrong, galaxian is a priety fun game, the problem is that its boring after about half a level, and I've never yet seen a port / clone that has changed that. I take back all I said, Galaga is a worthy clone, great fun, the perfect dificulty level, chalanging and very adictive, thank you for raising my awareness of it. /me loves mame [ 05-26-2002: Message edited by: Tyrant ]

Thank you very much, I hadnt thought of trying there. The good thing is I can just about afford one, the problem is I wont be able to afford to eat for a while, but I think its worth it .

Nope not yet lol, I still havnt had time to finish the prototype yet, just been working, and a CD drive shouldnt be toooo much lol. When I get real money I'll be trying to buy a 4Mb alpine , but thats just a little out of my reach for now. Actually, what is the going rate on a 2Mb Alpine (with and w/out stubulated jag)? and how much for a flash cart? Im expecting alpines to be scarry prices, but its worth checking since I would like to get into jag development, if I can find the tools (I even have a game idea in my head I think I can get to work). Does anyone have circuit board designs for alpines? I see the stubulator rom image is availible for download but what about the roms on the alpine itself, and the board layout? Someone could probably make good money making new boards, the market is tiny but they'd command a high price.

Im looking for a Jag CD drive, I have large quantities of cash, and are willing to part with lots of it (especially if its boxed and with the pack in games). Make me an offer (by email to [email protected])

quote: Originally posted by Ze_ro: Uh, are you taking into account that Primal Rage actually has horrendous load times, even on the original CD's? Seriously, it's probably the worst JagCD game when it comes to loading... --Zero Primal Rage was an excelent game in the arcade (especially on the larger box with the curved console). However, all of the console ports sucked. On the 3DO I have to wait a second or more after killing someone in order for the death animation to load from CD, its just a joke. A real shame since its my favorite beat-em-up on the arcade hardware, maybe one day I'll manage to get myself an original board.

quote: Originally posted by Glenn Saunders: [QBThe world does not need yet another asteroids clone. It didn't need it in 1984 with the 7800 and it doesn't need one now.[/QB] In a similar vein, the world does not need another Galaxian clone, looking through the list of games mame supports, I'd have to say almost 10% of them are straight rips or new graphics for Galaxian, its sick! Im a little young to remember Galaxian the first time round (Im only 21 now), but didnt the world get totally sick of it?

Oops, replied instead of edited. Why is the option to delete posts admin only? would save me some embarisment right about now hehe [ 05-22-2002: Message edited by: Tyrant ]

JPG's at 100% are pure bloatware, drop down to 80% quality and you'll see a huge saving on bandwidth and load times, but at 1:1 zoom even 65% isnt noticible on photos. Also, obviously, use rle (gif) for pics with large areas of flat colour. Yes I know this thread is drifting off topic but anyone who shares JPG's at 100% quality demands a reply. [ 05-22-2002: Message edited by: Tyrant ]

Kasumi isnt unplayable, when I first got it I played it for a few hours, but then again I havnt played it since. For me, the best thing about it is the headband

Hehehe, have you seen all of these crazy people? (Yes, I have plans to become one of them soon). Check out the shere number of links on their examples page.

Basic is, for the most part, an interpreted language, which meens as you said, the instructions are intepreted into machine code at runtime, rather than being precompiled (most forms of basic have an optional compiler however). As for taking other peoples engines, or unfinished games, its largely a matter of expierience. Reading through other peoples code, even when well documented, is really quite tricky, even reading through your own code after a few months is hard lol, but expierenced coders who can do it well I would imagine prefer it because most of the basic work has allready been done and they can do all the finishing up work. p.s. sorry if it was a bit patronising, I was aiming it at the total newbie who knows virtually nothing, that way hopefully anyone could understand me.

Disassembily is very different from source code. I'll explain, in the most non-techie way I can . When sombody decides to write a game, they sit down and plan it all out, they write documents explaining what will happen, how it will work, and why things have to happen a certain way. They also plan out the code, the broard sections, which part will do what, how the different bits of the program will work together, etc. Then they sit down and actually write the code, most Jaguar games (in fact most games on any platform) are written in either c++ or assembily. C++ is a fairly high level language, which meens it is more like english than assembily, but even assembily is still too high level for the computer (or console) to understand. In order for it to be playable, the c++ code, or assembily code, is reduced down automatically into machine code. Machine code is very complicated and not at all friendly to humans, thus while it is possible to read it, trying to understand lots of it is close to impossible. The problem is, that when the code the programer wrote (either in c++ or assembily) is translated to machine code, it looses all of the comments and names it had. For example, the programer might have set commands in c++ to use a variable called "Score" to keep the current score in, after all, that makes sence. But when its translated into machine code, that area of memory is just given a number, with no little sign to say what its for (after all the computer knows what its for, the word "Score" was just there for the programer). Also all of the little comments the programer wrote into the source are lost when you compile (turn the code to machine code). As for disassemblers, they work because machine code and assembily are very similar, assembily is classed as a very low level language, which meens its similar to machine code, but very different from english. Thus a disassembler can turn machine code to assembily code almost perfectly, however, it wont have the comments, or labels, the programer put there, and it will be only a tiny bit easier to understand than raw machine code. It is possible to obtain the machine code from any game on any platform, after all, since the conputer needs to be able to access it in order to run it, we can access it to dump it, you need special hardware for cartridge based games, but its not hard. The problem is that the source code, with all its lovely comments that tell us what its all for are very hard to find, most people, and all companies, keep hold of their source, and dont let people see it. When those companies go bust, or drop the game, the often just destroy or forget about the source code for their old games. Thus you (hopefully) can understand the problem, without documented source code (and often even with it), programs can be *very* hard to understand. The other thing that should be considered is that one of the things that led to the downfall of the Jag was that too many games were simple ports of other games on lesser platforms, kasumi ninja for instance, is basically mortal kombat with 24 bit backdrops (I dont know if it is based on mortal kombat's code or not, but it looks almost identical). While porting games can make for some really cool things, like tempest 2000, it can also lead to some really terrible games too lol. A straight port of a game, in my opinion anyway, should be considered carefully, because if your going to be moving a 16 bit game to run on a 64 bit machine, you should add something to it, otherwise you lower people's expectations of what Jaguar's are capable of. Then again, while still learning to code, its all good .

Dreamcasts are basically just pc's tho, so why not just play it on your desktop? (Yes, I know a dreamcast isnt really a pc, but anything that runs windoze is rediculously easy to code for, thus putting dreamcasts in the same basket as pc's).

quote: Originally posted by Atariken64: 44 controllers? any way we can get a cut deal on that?? Im still waiting for a component I need to prototype my first spinner design (ordering things through friends companies can be more hassle than just buying direct lol). Once I know how well it works, I'll be turning a few of the pads into spinners and selling them on ebay / yahoo auctions. Once I know how dificult they are to make and how much they'll sell for, then I'll make up some more. So in short, I'd rather not sell any basic control pads yet. Then again, I may not be able to come up with a simple enough design for the spinners and might just give up and sell all the pads as basic ones hehe (but its more likely I'll turn them into autofire pads).