Duranik

Why we didn't add any sound at all, I cannot remember. The simplest explanation is probably that we didn't know how to do it because the only pieces of source we had were two examples of a Jaguar head scaling in and out, and the infamous Jaguar underground docs. This was pretty much at the very beginning of the internet; information was not as easily available as it is today. At first, the game was completely running on the 68k and was slowing down heavily at maybe around 40-50 objects. This engine was then converted to the GPU, and it had no problems with object list slowdowns anymore (at some parts, the object processor is running out of bandwidth, but that's another story). Hardware prices are hard to find for this time, but here is a list with the cost of goods for the Amiga CD32 and 1200, which have some comparable specs and mainboard complexity. You can see that 2MB alone was $50; even the 68EC020 is $8.

Hi Bastian, there is a little proof of concept demo from eclipse, they pitched this idea to atari. Basically its doing exactly that, generating a polymesh from a height-map. Demo is available here https://demozoo.org/productions/154300/ maybe good for some inspiration

Interesting question I think its a combination of things, first the Blitter was one of the first components designed at the end of 90 (The Netlist has a date of 29/11/90). At this point in time there was certainly not much talk about texturemapping. The second is that the market start for the machine probably was not late 93 but more like late 92 or early 93 but as the software was not even ready for late 93 that would have never worked out As the developers were from the UK and the Amiga was the dominant machine at this time it looks like they got a lot of inspiration from there so they made the Jaguar an all around flexibel machine with Sprites and the possibility of line drawing support. The main 3d performance problems are very well known today and have been discussed frequently. - No triangle rendering so a lot more complexity in your code. - page misses when texture mapping. There were some changes made between the prototypes and the production machine which slowed down texture mapping according to the eclipse coders, i don´t know what exactly was changed but the only thing that would make sense is that the production machine used some different memory maybe for cost cutting reasons.

The Charity Auction is a great idea. Unfortunately the programmer of the original Atari Falcon Version (and Native etc...) is suffering from a related very bad disease these days.

Calm down guys. There is some tearing in this demo. I don't remember it occurring very often. It happens because of this large white "cloudy" object that passes by, this object is a so called "RMW" object if I recall the name correctly. It basically modifies the content of the pixels, in this case adds to the brightness and is slower because it takes additional reading and writing. It has nothing to do with the Jaguar main bus, the Objektprocessor has simply to much to do and can't finish his line. This was around 1996 when we were all flashed by the fancy Playstation transparency effects. We played around many many hours trying to get this RMW thing rendering but couldn't get it to work because there was only very limited information available. At one point we got it running and it looked like some sort of transparent glass instead of a random mess of pixels. I think we were so hype and pasted it everywhere into the demo. There is certainly A LOT that could be done in this demo to improve performance, first thing that comes to mind is splitting the Object Lists in some horizontal strips to avoid parsing all objects all of the time etc.

Very cool ! That sounds awesome

Do you know if there is a more detailed/higher res drawing availabale for the JagDuo ? I can only find this

Yes mine is a half size model

Here are the stl files. Depending on the printer it may be better to use the two half files with the Panther splitted in the middle into a left and right part. Original 1:1 dimension would be 253 mm x 175 mm x 77 mm. Panther_3D_STL.rar

I ask Matthias if he will share the STL Files as he did some adjustments to get better results on a 3d printer. If you can print one do it, its a very cool looking little piece of Atari history. I always had the impression the original device would be very small but in real world scale, its larger than the Jaguar case.

Inspired by the "We love Atari Vol2" Book I decided to create a 3d model of the classic Panther housing. Our good old friend Matthias Domin was kind enough to do a 1:2 3d print of it. It looks really lovely on my desk So why not share a picture. The Panther would have been sooo cool... well at least maybe.

Sturmwind EX was just released on consoles two weeks ago. There is a Switch and Xbox one Version. A Steam Version is also available since a couple of weeks. Your support would be greatly appreciated. Nice that someone still remembers Native after almost 20 years, it certainly would be time to finish this now

Did you discover some hidden secret features of the 32X ? The 32X VDP is very simple, it doesn't even do sprites. All is done in software on the 32X, there is no chip that can render textured or shaded polygons, it has only one feature that the Jaguar is missing and that is a simple line fill command which might be useful for flat shaded polygons

Just wanted to share a link with a nice interview/podcast with John Mathieson one of the Jaguar Harware developers. There are some interesting little bits about Atari/Jaguar and a bit of Nuon in there. Hope you enjoy it as i did ( start at 3:40 to skip some commercials)

Sorry for the delay. The bonus carts are ready now. We will start shipping them within the next 1-2 weeks.

Would certainly be more in line with the look of the Amiga/ST Version We would like to use a bigger cart for this project (2MB or more) so this should be doable but it doesn't look to be as popular as i expected so its off the list.

The games doesn't run well on an emulator (flickering issues, sound etc) thats why we don't like to put a rom download for now. Patching it to work better is certainly possible but we rather would spend the time on some new stuff now.

Thanks for the comments und suggestions, these are very interesting to read. The games in the list are there for the reason the Lynx could handle them very well and the engine/programming/tools needed can be done in a reasonable timeframe or we could even reuse some code from the past. I expected the RPG bandwagon as the Lynx certainly lacks in these genre. Unfortunately we are not really into these type of games, a zelda-ish game maybe as this is more an action/adventure type of thing but a "JRPG" style of game, hmm no, never got into these.

Yes, 2d scaler ala Outrun, Lotus Esprit 1/2/3 Ohhh noo, a horizontal shmup really ?

Thanks for the kind words thats very nice ! We were a bit worried about all this shipping as this was almost too much for us to handle but it went really smooth till now, also a big thanks to the Lynx community, no complains or anything about packages not yet deliverd or anything, everyone was patient, thanks ! Actually we got a lot of motivation to probably do one more Lynx game whats the game you guys would like to see the most - a "Lotus" style game - something "Giana Sisters" - a "Flashback" thing - some easy to pick up "Dragons Lair" type This is just for a little brain storming, no promises if we ever find the time to do the actual thing. Now all i want to hear is LOTUS.

If your cart looks like this http://atariage.com/forums/uploads/monthly_06_2008/post-12435-1213721737.jpg it _should_ fit (can't see how tall this chips are bit i guess the same size) otherwise you can probably make it fit easily with some minor "craftsmanship" and something like this http://www.dremeleurope.com/at/de/multifunktions-werkzeugsystem-6006-ocs-c/

Later this summer we might ge some more of those bonus carts, write a mail to ag-reserve@duranik.com if you don't want to miss it. We expect a very low amount of carts again

We used the existing cart design from Lynxman as we thought this final run would only be around 50 carts. So creating a new batch was to expensive the hole is in the PCB to get it out of the Lynx1 i think, we designed the plastic case to fill the hole. After we announced the final run we got much more than those expected 50 carts, so we had to make a new run of the PCB anyway, we tried to remove the hole in the last minute but the tooling for the case already started and the carts were ordered so we just had to accept it. We have more of these Plastic cases left, if anyone wants to buy some, drop me a line It is some industrial glue, i don't know the exact name but the combination pcb>plastic is good for any glue i think, its not hard to attach these

The bonus cart amount was very limited from the begining, at one point we had the plan to let people optionally add it to the order but this would have delayed everything by at least 3 monhts as we would have to collect the orders to get a higher amount together. This price of 39 Euro only was possible because some retailers took a couple of those games. We couldn't offer them a big discount because the whole package wasn't very cheap to produce. It uses a custom made injection molded plastic cover. Thats not exactly cheap to do in this low quantities. We are looking into the possibility of getting some more of those bonus carts, again this will most likely be a very low amount, if we can confirm this we write a mail to all AG preorder people.

Everyone who ordered with email should have an "Production update #1" mail (about 2 weeks ago). Please check your spam folders etc.. Next Production update mail we be send in a couple of days.