[What's the most under-rated retail game on the Atari Jaguar?]

1 hour ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Painter is criminally underrated/played. It's a lovely game that, in my imagination at least, is what Pepper III would have been like.

Cool game, also reminds me about Qix. Although shouldn't it be possible to eliminate the bad guy by encircling him?

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It looks like a found the issue related to the final bug, e.g. the sporadically corrupt end sequence.

 

This was a though one to track down, but it turned out to be a synchronisation issue, e.g. the final level did not unload properly before the end sequence was loaded. This lead to corruption that would degrade the system further and further. After finishing the game 4 times in a row, it would crash when attempting to start a new game.

 

Now I am just waiting for some independent verification of this fix.

 

It looks like you will get a very robust game this time...

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12 minutes ago, K3V said:

Question!

 

  Hide contents

I found 26 missiles -- is that correct or did I miss some?

 

Spoiler

Looking at the code, I count to 32 missiles.

 

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3 hours ago, Saturn said:

Mine is on 98% as well. I assumed it was bc of the last save point and the boss fight(s) equaled the remaining 2%.. unsavable.

I don't remember the total # of missile upgrades I found. Will check my notes on Discord.

 

Quick edit

  Reveal hidden contents

Found 15

 

Spoiler

Once you beat the final Boss the game will automatically save giving you the extra percentage you gain for finalising the game. I think it was +1%, but you also get an additonal +1% for visiting the room of the final Boss (e.g. it becomes filled on the map), but this you can also do if you get back to the last savepoint after entering, and exiting the Boss room.

 

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2 minutes ago, ColecoGamer said:

But considering the type of game Asteroite is - and how big it is in comparison to most Jaguar releases -

Yes, Asteroite is the most complex game I worked on so far maybe not because of the looks, but because of the size of the game, and the variety of different enemies, items, skills, bosses etc.

 

More complex software will of course have a higher chance of containing bugs.

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This was indeed a real bug in the game code. However, on a very specific platform there might be a series of fortunate circumstances that prevent the bug from becoming a problem.

 

For example, in every case I have been involved in porting a piece of (non trivial) software from one platform to another, previously undetected bugs in the code have manifested as themselves as problems on the new platform.

 

Apparently the differences between most of the Jaguars vs. a small portion of the K-series Jaguars are large enough to enable previously unknown software bugs to manifested themselves as problems.

 

So the issue in this case was not that certain consoles had out-of-spec behavior, rather it was indeed a software problem. That is normally not an issue as you are supposed to detect these during validation, but both the platform on which the game was developed, and the platform it was tested on, did not reveal the bug, as it didn't lead to a problem.

 

The actual bug was in this case that I attempted to continue iterating over the elements in a linked list, after the current node was invalid (or re-used for something else). A NULL element would terminate that operation, which I belive was the reason why it was working on most consoles.

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29 minutes ago, Welshworrier said:

Out of interest, what was the bug causing the crash?

Yes, but only on a few Jaguar K-series consoles, that's the reason it slipped trough validation (because it did not manifest on my development console, nor on @Songbird's test console).

 

Lesson learned: Test the game on a few different Jaguar consoles that are know to behave differently. 

 

I had the same experience from the Vectrex scene, but thankfully there was a person who collected these out-of-spec consoles and were glad to test games on these different consoles. Due to the more analogue nature of the Vectrex this was a well known problem (e.g. mainly due to scattering in the actual capacitance of the integrator capacitors), but I was surprised to see this on the Jaguar as well?

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13 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Tbh, I'm surprised you are still shipping carts when there are now known problems.  (The crash, the map glitch and the end sequence)

 

A pause to fix them seems like a more reasonable thing? 

 

Carl, what's the plan on replacing them when they are fixed? 

 

(And, before anyone says "But Switchblade" I felt the same then and said the same things)

@Songbird tried a debug ROM twice yesterday on a console where the game used to crash, but it appears that we have found a way to correct the problem. So I will ship out cartridges with the new version, once we have test played the new ROM a little bit more...

So there may be a minor delay, because I have to scrap the cartridges I already built before the bug was brought to our attention. Fortunately, I didn't put any labels on the cartridges I built, and the cartridge shell can be re-used.

I may also take care of some of the other minor glitches mentioned here...

 

Belive me it was not easy to track this down, even if the change was only one row of code. We also found a bug in the Removers' library (or rather jlibc which is a prerequisite for the Removers' library). This bug was not the source of the problem with this game, but it is nice to know that malloc() now actually returns NULL when the Jaguar runs out of RAM if using the latest version of jlibc.

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31 minutes ago, Saturn said:

In here

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Thanks.

Spoiler

Yes, I remember now that I planned to put a room up there, but eventually there was not enough space left om the global map to put something there.

Finally I just forgot about it.

 

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3 hours ago, Saturn said:

Finally had a chance to play again and beat the game! What an experience. There were some liberties afforded to the player in the last portion so thanks for that, Phoboz. Made it not a tedious or overly frustrating task to reach the end. Great game and welcomed addition to the library.

 

I found the pipe room in the sewers and glitched off both sides just to see what happens. Here's a pic of my character icon lost in space ?

 

It would be helpful if someone showed me a picture where I can see which room this is, e.g. before the glitch?

Or Mark in on the map screen somehow?

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Finnally, material for building Asteroite arrived!

Folded a few boxes last night, I will start shipping to those who pre-ordered from me in the coming days. (mainly people in Europe)

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5 hours ago, PFG 9000 said:

I finished it!  Asteroite was a really enjoyable experience.  I love Metroidvanias, and I love the Jaguar, so it's a match made in Heaven for me.  I was impressed by the variety of abilities and bosses.  I was expecting something fairly barebones due to the homebrew nature of this, but I was pleasantly surprised at the end product.

 

The only bug I came across was a graphical glitch during the ending screens.  I think there was supposed to be some graphics displayed with the text, but I just saw some digital noise behind the text.  I took a photo, but I don't want to risk spoiling the ending for anybody.  No biggie, and it didn't ruin the experience - I'm just reporting it here since there's been some talk of problematic behavior from some others here.

 

I have the model M Jag.

Congratulations, well done!

You are the first person that have shown in public that you reached a 100% completion score.

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18 minutes ago, PFG 9000 said:

I made it up to 91%.  I can confidently say this is a real Metroidvania, because I'm stuck as shit.  The only place I have left to go leads to a big vat of green acid with a spikey wall at the end.  I must have missed a powerup somewhere, but the rest of the map is totally filled in.  I plan to retread the entire map when I have time.

 

Question for Phoboz or Songbird: 

  Reveal hidden contents

Is the suit powerup supposed to make me completely immune to liquid damage?  Or does it just reduce the damage from liquid?  I can't remember exactly what it said after I picked it up, and there have been a few places where I wanted to explore in the acid but it kills me pretty quickly, even after picking up the suit.

 

If there are multiple suits in the game, I'm referring to the one that is just past the ice boss.

 

Congratulations!

Spoiler

There is only one suite upgrade, and it won't make you completely immune to liquids.

 

Think about if you have really collected all skill upgrades, because this barrier has been really beefed up (with deadly spikes, and acid) to prevent people from breaking the sequence.

 

Maybe you forgot something, or failed to see it in a place you already visited?

 

Each path in the game (that is longer than one room) has a reward...

 

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6 hours ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

 

 

Looks awesome, I've been waiting to see when someone might try a beat-em-up! You've got a lot going on, you sure you can keep up?

We have to decide in which order the projects shall be prioritised, but there are certainly prototypes for games to be released for years to come.

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14 hours ago, Atari_JaguarVCS said:

Does anyway know the situation with UK orders?. I got an email last month saying the materials for the game where delayed but now on the way and haven’t heard anything since. I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this game. I’m guessing worst case it’ll be some time next month. 

On my side the material from @Songbird is on the way in. I propose that you check with @Gaztee, it should be a similar situation on the UK side.

[Announcing - Hammer of the Gods]

20 minutes ago, CD-i said:

I think it's good to focus on a good battle system and not too stupid AI. Every team has it's limits. At the moment as I see there are 2 people working on this, so we can't expect a game as deep as dragons crown or the later Capcom brawlers. Could be the target but this would take years to make I assume with this small team. Better set goals what can be achieved with the team in a good timeframe and work on it.

As I read your inspiration was moonstone? Which by itself is not a really good brawler/hack and slash from a design and control viewport. Therefore maybe better to insure controls from games like the Capcom cps1 brawler, konami brawlers like tmnt, golden axe or streets of rage.

There are brawler which are way more complex with controls, like battle circuit (which has 4 player and RPG elements and sick combos), alien vs Predator or the ultimate brawler imo "Guardians" which has the best combo engine to date for a arcade brawler.

Yes, we both agreed that the Moonstone combat is not suitable, currently the control is more similar to Golden Axe (even if the dash move is still in development). Eventually, we may expand it to be a little bit more advanced.

 

Regarding the AI, I did a first attempt which gave similar results are the AI seen in the Beats of Rage for Atari Falcon video in another thread on this forum. That didn't appeal to me (especially when there were more than 2 enemies on the screen), because every enemy went for the shortest path towards the player, many times they were completely overlapping each other. I hope to make something a little bit better for this game.

 

In relation to RPG elements. We are thinking about some kind of experience point collecting system, with gradual improvement of the characters abilities as result.

 

We will see how much of all this can be implemented in the end?

[Announcing - Hammer of the Gods]

5 hours ago, ls650 said:

Looks like a great start!  But I hope there will be more to the game than just an ongoing brawl...  maybe some RPG aspect, some puzzles to solve, some treasure to be uncovered?

My original inspiration was actually Moonstone for the Amiga, but the combat system of that game is not for beginners (definitely not a good match for the JagPad)

I am still hoping that we can get some RPG elements into Hammer of the Gods.

[Announcing - Hammer of the Gods]

2 minutes ago, sd32 said:

Its good to know the Jaggy can handle so much stuff on screen at once… hey if the Genesis could…

It also has to do with the size of the sprites (from the Object Processor's perpective) I am not sure what sprite sizes Streets of Rage had, but the Knight character is a 128x128 sized sprite, and the current enemies are 112x128, or similar.

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9 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

I can't see more than 4-5 even in the big Capcom Arcade games.

 

Why you need 10? From a gameplay perspective, I think good AI and interesting, varied designs and attack patterns are much more important than just the number.

And then the 68K might be the limiting factor, possibly 

 

I like Kings of Dragons for it's RPG elements like Magic, item loot and leveling up.

 

Do you know Vanillewares Dragons Crown?

I don't say we really need 10, but we might have some other, non interactive characters on the background (like a blacksmith).

 

The key to optimize AI is to not check  and make decisions every frame. Rather each character has a counter, and when that counter expires things are checked  and decisions are taken. Then these counters are given different start values so they don't expire all at the same time. This way, the only thing needed to be done every frame (for all characters) is just to increase a counter, and check if it has expired.

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On 4/4/2022 at 9:56 PM, sd32 said:

I found most Snes beatemups boring because it could only handle 4 enemies at once… while Streets of Rage series in Sega Genesis could handle around 8 enemies at once making it so much more fun.

I tried to max the engine out, and 10 characters in total is the limit. Not because of the much debated 68000 "blast processing" CPU of the Jaguar, but because of the much praised Object Processor. You see on the first section with 3 parallax layers, small lines start to bleed though at the black borders on the sides of the screen (yes we do want to cover the over-scan area, because there are some nasty things going on there when the screen is scrolling)

[Beats of Rage on the Atari Jaguar]

You are probably referring to the project below?

 

I tried to look at the Open BOR code, and very much of the code was dedicated to loading animated .gif files from a filesystem (but the Jaguar does not have a filesystem, usually part of an operating system for a computer). I wanted to take a different approach than spending several months to write runtime capable .gif decompression algorithm (on the GPU), and I am not sure that it would be fast enough in the end.

 

Of course the code related to the actual game might be helpful to look at, but personally I am not smart enough to understand someone else's code faster than writing my own code.

 

So my estimation is that it might take as just as long to port Open BOR, than to write a custom Jaguar engine from scratch.

 

I did not work so much on the AI yet,  because my first attempt lead to that all the enemies walked the shortest path towards the player, many times overlapping each other. This did not look very good when I had 8 enemies on the screen at the same time (mostly overlapping). Now I see in the video above that this version of BOR seems to have a similar behaviour, but this was different in games like Golden Axe, and Final Fight. Maybe the AI was improved for later versions of Open BOR?

 

[Announcing - Hammer of the Gods]

1 hour ago, roots.genoa said:

If you mean it's also a beat 'em up with swords, then you're right I guess, but to me it's more about lore than gameplay then. Gameplay seems already richer than Knights of the Round (which is a very low bar tbh), but Golden Axe has running (and jump attack after running, which most people forget about), magic, and mounts.

Yes, Krauser has an idea about a combo system. This genere is new to me as a developer, and the last game like this I played was Golden Axe (I may have tried Legend once?) I guess that a lot has happened to the genere since then? It will take some time before we have a combat system we feel confortable with. What you see now is just a minimal base to build further on...

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1 minute ago, ColecoGamer said:

Sure thing. It’s only taken a month.

Belive me, the time is not completely wasted.

[Announcing - Hammer of the Gods]

25 minutes ago, ColecoGamer said:

@phoboz Does this mean you’re not using the backgrounds I’ve been working on for a long time, making constant changes at your request? The last change you had me make on that first background was finished, and was sent to you over a month ago, with no replies from you.
 

I need to know, so I don’t waste my time working on something you’re not going to use. You don’t mention me in the game’s credits, so that is telling right there.

 

I’m just peeved because I have been spending a lot of time drawing those backgrounds for this game, just to find out they’re not being used. It’s wasted effort and time on my part, and that’s not right. If somehow I’m wrong, I apologize. But I am responding to what I’m seeing in the initial post.

I will reply to you privately.

[Announcing - Hammer of the Gods]

Just now, sd32 said:

How about this… a 4 player cooperative mode ala Ninja Turtles arcade?

We are thinking to have at least 3-4 different selectable character races (e.g. Knight, Archer, Magician, etc). How many of that could play at the same depends on how much we can squeeze into the 2 MB of RAM that the Jaguar has. The number of different enemies at once also affects RAM usage. If we cannot fit more than 2 players at once in normal mode, we may add a mode where 3-4 players could face off against each other (without external enemies), using team tap.