New Jaguar owner, and thoughts on Doom.

[NightSprinter]

Well, I bought an Atari Jaguar from the local flea market. Yeah it was expensive at almost $50 for a bare system, two controllers, and DOOM cartridge, but I wanted the system. I have to say despite the complaints about the gamepads, I find them decidedly comfortable. If I can acquire a computer from the STE series (or higher if the TT or Falcon030 support the STE joystick ports), I can use the jagpads as well. The system works fairly well, and interestingly enough came with an S-Video cable instead of a crummy RF switch or composite cable (wouldn't mind getting an SC-1445 monitor cable to enjoy some RGB goodness). Since the system did come with DOOM, I might as well give my thoughts on the game (as I have it for 32x, and Ultimate DOOM for Win95).

 

The graphics are pretty good for the Jaguar. Of course while nowhere near as blurry as the SNES they still look odd in the distance (especially enemies). Aside from that, the graphics overall happen to be surprisingly good compared to the PC version. [update] Um, for some reason Nightmare difficulty doesn't respawn monsters, AND allows for cheating? Lame.

 

Gameplay is pretty decent. There are a few quirks (like difficulty lining up the enemy with your gun, or an enemy on an upper level being too far for auto-aim to kick in), but you learn to compensate for it. As Gorf and a few others will probably chime in for, there is some SIGNIFICANT slowdown at times because of all the objects drawn at once. I'm guessing even JC himself couldn't get into the system's power with the tools he had.

 

Sound&Music: Well, the sound in DOOM is the same more or less regardless of version. 'Nuff Said. The complaints about "lack of music" aren't warranted. The music only plays during the tally screens. Not sure why Carmack did this, but the music is a smidge better than the SNES version, and leaps and bounds over the horrid FM synth downmixes of the Genesis-32X port (I mean c'mon, the OPL2/3 sounds better than that).

 

Controls: Like gameplay it's pretty decent, if somewhat stiff. The automap controls are where it suffers. Maybe remapping the zoom/follow/etc. to the keypads in map mode would make things easier (hold down Run to move in map mode? Blech..).

 

Difficulty: Oh does the game have it. When you get to Ultra-Violence mode things become a hectic slaughterhouse. I'm sure cheats again are disabled on Nightmare, but even UV can be beaten fairly easily due to the easy-to-input level warp codes. (heh, how about warping to stage 24 to get everything but the BFG9000 and slaughter from level 1 to finish?) I still get my ass handed to me in what was originally E1M9.

 

Levels: I know it's only twenty-four levels, but c'mon Johnny.. you let me down by leaving out the real "Tower of Babel" and "Dis" levels. I actually want to have that "holy shit" experience of running past the Cyberdemon and nearly getting plastered against a spire because a rocket "just" missed me. I want to start infighting between the Spider Mastermind and the cacodemons and Barons in "Dis" and run past the boss behind its back collecting extra ammo saying to myself "run faster, damnit.. those other demons are gonna die soon and that chaingun fires faster and hits harder than yours.." The lack of levels, and/or the use of simplified or DOOM V1.2 levels just gives me a "let down" feeling.

 

Overall, DOOM for the Jaguar is pretty damn fun, and seroiusly shows how well a single-player FPS can provide some fun and still kick your ass if you're not careful. I'd give it somewhere around a 7.75/10 to 8.25/10.

Edited July 26, 2007 by NightSprinter

[Gunstar]

Jag Doom has some high-lights you may have missed as they are subtle, like the new 16-bit color shading so it's a bit better in that sense than the 8-bit, 256 color PC version. Also, it has unique and incredible lighting effects in areas that are in no other version that make it shine, IMHO. missing levels and bosses you can blame on Atari for dictating it to be only a 4MB cartridge instead of a full 6MB cartridge. Slow down is becuase, as Carmack said himself, for the most part (besides highlights noted above) it's a straight port of the 386 PC version in C+, and take absolutely NO advantage what-so-ever of the Jaguar RISC chips. Carmack said if they had done a complete re-write from the ground up it could have been a steady 24fps, higher-res, and just all around a lot better. But as it is, it's only using the ~13MHz 68000 and the GPU, 68k slowing it down, and lack of DSP, Blitter and Object processors for the most part. It's using about 30% of the Jaguar's potential. Glad you like it. And yes, the controller are much more comfortable than all the Atari/Jaguar haters want you to believe; why do you think since then, every other system that's come out has controller of a comparable size? match them up with PSX/PS2, Saturn 3D, Xbox, Dreamcast, Gamecube and others sometime, they are real close in size, just missing the keypad in the middle. The procontroller is even more comfortable and quite a few Jaguar games, including Doom, can take advantage of the extra X,Y&Z and shoulder buttons (X,Y&Z map to the 7,8&9 keys and the shoulder buttons map to the 4&6 keys, so even games that weren't made to use the pro-controller specifically, can use those buttons instead of the corrosponding keypad buttons).

Edited July 26, 2007 by Gunstar

[Gregory DG]

See what Carmac wrote about JagDoom. Sigh... The good old days... Edited July 26, 2007 by Gregory DG

[NightSprinter]

Yeah, I read what he had to say about it. I really want some better dev tools to be released and made available to him. I'd easily pay $50 to get an "Ultimate DOOM: Anniversary Edition".

[JagChris]

Yeah, I read what he had to say about it. I really want some better dev tools to be released and made available to him. I'd easily pay $50 to get an "Ultimate DOOM: Anniversary Edition".

 

LOL! if an anniversary edition ever got released, expect to pay around $70 at least.

 

had to chunk the DOOM renderer into nine sequentially loaded overlays to get it working (with hindsight, I would have done it differently in about three...).

 

He had to flip 9 overlays in to get the renderer to work? Does he mean the standard 9 a second? What is that, supposedly around 300,000 cycles lost per flip? Just cutting it down to three flips in and out may have doubled DOOMS framerate.

 

Nightsprinter, I don't think John Carmack has ever read the Atari times, or that there is a very big chance he will in the future.

[Gregory DG]

Nightsprinter, I don't think John Carmack has ever read the Atari times, or that there is a very big chance he will in the future.

Hey hey hey, watch it!

[JagChris]

Nightsprinter, I don't think John Carmack has ever read the Atari times, or that there is a very big chance he will in the future.

Hey hey hey, watch it!

 

 

We'll keep our fingers crossed for ya Gregory!

[EmOneGarand]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

[NightSprinter]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

 

It's not disabled per-se. It's just not played during the actual levels. If you get to the result screen after each level, it plays a song from the game.

 

I still want to know why it's possible to cheat on Nightmare with no monster respawning? It's like I'm playing Ultra Violence still, but with insanely-fast attacks from monsters.

Edited July 27, 2007 by NightSprinter

[EmOneGarand]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

 

It's not disabled per-se. It's just not played during the actual levels. If you get to the result screen after each level, it plays a song from the game.

 

I still want to know why it's possible to cheat on Nightmare with no monster respawning? It's like I'm playing Ultra Violence still.

I know it's there for the Title and Intermission screen, it's just that he music for the levels is on the cart are therebut are just coded to be turned off.

[NightSprinter]

Even so, when you hear the music during the intermission screens it compares favorably with the excellently-done SNES music, and is leagues ahead of the Genesis-32x music.

 

Still wanting to know what's the deal with Nightmare on the Jag version, though.

[Gorf]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

 

The music is cool the first time then it gets annoying. It does indeed take away from the atmosphere

and the spookiness of the game. How many people are going to wear a walkman in battle with cyber

demons anyway? I mean come now. Im a musician as ong as I am a programmer andI never liked

to many games with music. Especially more than once. Even T2k gets a bit much after hearing the

same mods over and over again. Good thing they can be turned off. The sound effects in T2k are so

much better when not drowned out with the tunes. Music in game is over rated. I can see an Air Force

battle sim playing some speed metal in the background though!

[Gunstar]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

Yes, Carl at Songbird was messing around with the source code too, and he said the same thing basically; there were major glitches when he enabled the music, but if he traded off the sound effects for music it worked well, IIRC. It's all about it being another Jaguar rush-job, that's all...still, it's mighty impressive for a rush job that didn't take much advantage of the Jaguar Risc chips, using mostly the system-crippling 68000 and was written/ported with terrible tools in a varient of C. With all of that against it, it's saying something for Carmack and team's programming skills (and the Jaguar itself) that it turned out as good as it did!

Edited July 31, 2007 by Gunstar

[Gunstar]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

 

The music is cool the first time then it gets annoying. It does indeed take away from the atmosphere

and the spookiness of the game. How many people are going to wear a walkman in battle with cyber

demons anyway? I mean come now. Im a musician as ong as I am a programmer andI never liked

to many games with music. Especially more than once. Even T2k gets a bit much after hearing the

same mods over and over again. Good thing they can be turned off. The sound effects in T2k are so

much better when not drowned out with the tunes. Music in game is over rated. I can see an Air Force

battle sim playing some speed metal in the background though!

I completely agree. I'll let the music play for a bit the first time I play a game, but quickly get sick of it and almost always shut off music, when possible, in favor of the sound FX and "atmosphere." For those who DO like music, just get a soundtrack or other choice of music and play it on a stereo while playing the game with sound effects; it's better that way anyway, becuase you can choose the music! Get a sound track from some thriller/horror movie and play it while playing Doom. It'll be much better anyway!

 

On the other hand, like to make my own soundtracks of game music that's good to listen to when NOT playing the games, for example, I made CD's with just the music of HoverStrike: UL, Iron Soldier 2, Battlemorph and Soul Star and listen to them, as well as the T2K soundtrack quite often, just kicking back and closing my eyes and enjoying the tunes through my sound system.

Edited July 31, 2007 by Gunstar

[EmOneGarand]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

Yes, Carl at Songbird was messing around with the source code too, and he said the same thing basically; there were major glitches when he enabled the music, but if he traded off the sound effects for music it worked well, IIRC. It's all about it being another Jaguar rush-job, that's all...still, it's mighty impressive for a rush job that didn't take much advantage of the Jaguar Risc chips, using mostly the system-crippling 68000 and was written/ported with terrible tools in a varient of C. With all of that against it, it's saying something for Carmack and team's programming skills (and the Jaguar itself) that it turned out as good as it did!

let us not forget how JagDOOM has a very unique lighting system compared to the other ports, I think thats another point to add to how incredible a rush job it was lol..

[Gunstar]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

Yes, Carl at Songbird was messing around with the source code too, and he said the same thing basically; there were major glitches when he enabled the music, but if he traded off the sound effects for music it worked well, IIRC. It's all about it being another Jaguar rush-job, that's all...still, it's mighty impressive for a rush job that didn't take much advantage of the Jaguar Risc chips, using mostly the system-crippling 68000 and was written/ported with terrible tools in a varient of C. With all of that against it, it's saying something for Carmack and team's programming skills (and the Jaguar itself) that it turned out as good as it did!

let us not forget how JagDOOM has a very unique lighting system compared to the other ports, I think thats another point to add to how incredible a rush job it was lol..

I did mention that, just look at my first reply, right after the first topic post!

[EmOneGarand]

Speaking of Raycasters... a new one would be an interesting idea for a homebrew project but a CD version would be the way to go. I'm not sure how the system handles CDA over MOD when it comes to the 3D raycasting math being used, but it would allow for more maps, more enemy sprites, and CD music tracks. Of all my favorite Raycasted FPS games, Disruptor was one of my favorites mainly because the sound designer was a genius because of the way it changed depending on the situation. A game like that on the Jag would have my full support lol.. if I ever get the handle of programming (looks bleek ) I'd have that on my to do list.

Edited July 31, 2007 by EmOneGarand

[EmOneGarand]

I think it was Belboz over on JSII who said that JagDOOM does have the music from the full version, it's just disabled because of a hardware conflict of sorts meaning it causes some major issues in game, though as most agree it has a better atmosphere without the music

Yes, Carl at Songbird was messing around with the source code too, and he said the same thing basically; there were major glitches when he enabled the music, but if he traded off the sound effects for music it worked well, IIRC. It's all about it being another Jaguar rush-job, that's all...still, it's mighty impressive for a rush job that didn't take much advantage of the Jaguar Risc chips, using mostly the system-crippling 68000 and was written/ported with terrible tools in a varient of C. With all of that against it, it's saying something for Carmack and team's programming skills (and the Jaguar itself) that it turned out as good as it did!

let us not forget how JagDOOM has a very unique lighting system compared to the other ports, I think thats another point to add to how incredible a rush job it was lol..

I did mention that, just look at my first reply, right after the first topic post!

whoops, my bad I forgot

[Doskias]

Didn't John Carmack in an old interview (cannot find it at the moment) that he kept a Jaguar dev unit around to tinker with on his own time?

[Gorf]

Didn't John Carmack in an old interview (cannot find it at the moment) that he kept a Jaguar dev unit around to tinker with on his own time?

 

 

I dont know for sure but it would not suprise me by any means. The guy is a coder

and a gamer and you see it in the games from 'id'. I still love playing all versions

of DOOM and Quake. They are still the only FPS games I really like. Maybe because

they were the first to really use the FPS theme so effectively. Teh games are simple

in concept and I never get tired of them. It i this very thing that tells me John still

has his dev kit. I just wish he'd find that altered GCC compiler that he fixed up to

better make use of the Jaguar's special chips.

[Gregory DG]

Didn't John Carmack in an old interview (cannot find it at the moment) that he kept a Jaguar dev unit around to tinker with on his own time?

That's probably the DevKit he gave to Carl Forhan.

[Doskias]

So I take it John Carmack did not save any of his NeXT compiler tools and/or docs covering his WAD format for Jaguar?

Edited December 29, 2007 by Doskias

[The Helper]

So I take it John Carmack did not save any of his NeXT compiler tools and/or docs covering his WAD format for Jaguar?

 

According to what I know that stuff was all lost.

[+doctorclu]

Well, I bought an Atari Jaguar from the local flea market. Yeah it was expensive at almost $50 for a bare system, two controllers, and DOOM cartridge, but I wanted the system.

 

Out of curiousity where was this flea market?

[Gregory DG]

The person to ask would be Carl. He was planning a hack of Doom a while back. He probably has the .WAD compile tools and whatnot.