BattleMorph!

[Thunderbird]

Yes, the game is not perfect, but it really does draw you in. Nothing about the textures or animations really ruins the game. The bad ones are not distracting at all. I didn't get bothered by it because there's so much good in the game and fun in it.

[Tyrant]

Hay, did I say it was ruined? lol its one of the best jag games arround, I just prefer the simplicity and clean look of cybermorph (probably why I allways blow up the vortex towers, even if there's no pods that could be near, I hate the black mess on the clean landscape hehe).

 

But yes, please, please tell me the "secret" to killing that damned bee

[t.skid]

Hay, did I say it was ruined? lol its one of the best jag games arround, I just prefer the simplicity and clean look of cybermorph (probably why I allways blow up the vortex towers, even if there's no pods that could be near, I hate the black mess on the clean landscape hehe).

 

But yes, please, please tell me the "secret" to killing that damned bee

 

About the bee: I managed to kill it; lost two lives then I start to follow the bee and, avoiding his bombs, shoot missiles and laser.

[Guyôme]

just shoot it from behind lol simple isn't it ?

 

Enjoy, mJag-cd doesn't wok Ineed an Ac adaptator grrr

 

@+

 

have fun

[Thunderbird]

I just remembered that we had a discussion at ScatoLOGIC on how we wanted the pilot "eject" to feel, and I couldn't describe it properly to Scott and Steph. They took the concept and molded it into the sound/music look and feel it has today. It was almost the same as I had tried to express. Seems like they can read minds after working together so long. The only thing missing was I wanted a breathing sound, but it was cut because we ran out of room.

 

The reason I mention this is that BattleMorph gives me the same feeling when you submerge in the water. I remember doing it for the first time and feeling Deja Vu.

[t.skid]

I just remembered that we had a discussion at ScatoLOGIC on how we wanted the pilot "eject" to feel, and I couldn't describe it properly to Scott and Steph. They took the concept and molded it into the sound/music look and feel it has today. It was almost the same as I had tried to express. Seems like they can read minds after working together so long. The only thing missing was I wanted a breathing sound, but it was cut because we ran out of room.  

 

The reason I mention this is that BattleMorph gives me the same feeling when you submerge in the water. I remember doing it for the first time and feeling Deja Vu.

 

What was the reason to made a Cart instead of programming Battlesphere in CD version? And how long did it takes? (I'm asking it because I don't know the 'behind-the-scene' story of Battlesphere Actually, I'd like to ask you lot of things about it, but I can't steal too much time!)

[Thunderbird]

I just remembered that we had a discussion at ScatoLOGIC on how we wanted the pilot "eject" to feel, and I couldn't describe it properly to Scott and Steph. They took the concept and molded it into the sound/music look and feel it has today. It was almost the same as I had tried to express. Seems like they can read minds after working together so long. The only thing missing was I wanted a breathing sound, but it was cut because we ran out of room.  

 

The reason I mention this is that BattleMorph gives me the same feeling when you submerge in the water. I remember doing it for the first time and feeling Deja Vu.

 

What was the reason to made a Cart instead of programming Battlesphere in CD version? And how long did it takes? (I'm asking it because I don't know the 'behind-the-scene' story of Battlesphere Actually, I'd like to ask you lot of things about it, but I can't steal too much time!)

 

 

The CD wasn't out when we designed BattleSphere, and by the time the CD was on the market we had coded so much of the game specifically to use all the available RAM for speedy framerate. Since the CD drive has to load all data into RAM before it can be used, our whole work to that point wouldn't fit in RAM with the CD installed.

 

There are other code changes required to work with the CD, but that was the biggest. The others would also be very difficult to work around too.

 

So, we ditched the idea.

 

When Atari folded we stuck with the cart format instead of going to the cheaper-to-make CD format because we thought we would have a better chance to crack cart encryption.

[t.skid]

T-Bird, I understand. Thank you.

[Thunderbird]

T-Bird, I understand. Thank you.  

 

It's hard to explain, and a lot of people don't understand you can't just take code from a cart and burn it onto a CD and it works. I heard some people trying to take ROMs they downloaded and burn them on CD-R and use bypass cart to load them. Arrgh!

[LinkoVitch]

T-Bird, I understand. Thank you.  

 

It's hard to explain, and a lot of people don't understand you can't just take code from a cart and burn it onto a CD and it works. I heard some people trying to take ROMs they downloaded and burn them on CD-R and use bypass cart to load them. Arrgh!

 

So your saying that these SNES ROM's I burnt as wav files to an Audio disc won't run in my Jag? DAMN!

 

[t.skid]

It's hard to explain, and a lot of people don't understand you can't just take code from a cart and burn it onto a CD and it works. I heard some people trying to take ROMs they downloaded and burn them on CD-R and use bypass cart to load them. Arrgh!

 

So your saying that these SNES ROM's I burnt as wav files to an Audio disc won't run in my Jag? DAMN!

 

 

[Thunderbird]

T-Bird, I understand. Thank you.  

 

It's hard to explain, and a lot of people don't understand you can't just take code from a cart and burn it onto a CD and it works. I heard some people trying to take ROMs they downloaded and burn them on CD-R and use bypass cart to load them. Arrgh!

 

So your saying that these SNES ROM's I burnt as wav files to an Audio disc won't run in my Jag? DAMN!

 

 

 

You laugh, but there are people who were asking how this could be done with JUGS-DD in BattleSphere Gold. We lost several sales because some customers believed that this was the purpose of the bypass carts. I had a pretty detailed canned explanation of the different formats I would email them to explain it.

[LinkoVitch]

well it's not impossible, it would just require some indepth work

 

and rewriting code in the ROMS

 

and time and effort...

 

[t.skid]

You laugh, but there are people who were asking how this could be done with JUGS-DD in BattleSphere Gold. We lost several sales because some customers believed that this was the purpose of the bypass carts. I had a pretty detailed canned explanation of the different formats I would email them to explain it.

 

Well, this is sad....

[Thunderbird]

well it's not impossible, it would just require some indepth work

 

and rewriting code in the ROMS

 

and time and effort...

 

 

It won't work because a ROM image would fill the entire Jaguar's RAM, so there would be no RAM to use for stack, framebuffer, etc. Perhaps you could get the 1MB version of Cybermorph to run if you rewrote some of it, bit all other games won't fit.... ever.

[LinkoVitch]

what I was meaning (and I have no intention of trying to do this). is treat the CD as a cart, and then load parts from the CD as a cart game would load from a cart normally.

 

So re-write the loader code within the game and get it to address the relivant cart space from CD instead. Not read it all in in one go.

 

so you would essentially have a 2x Uber slow 8 bit cartridge

[Thunderbird]

what I was meaning (and I have no intention of trying to do this). is treat the CD as a cart, and then load parts from the CD as a cart game would  load from a cart normally.

 

So re-write the loader code within the game and get it to address the relivant cart space from CD instead.  Not read it all in in one go.

 

so you would essentially have a 2x Uber slow 8 bit cartridge

 

 

That still won't work. Many games load data directly from the cart in real-time while playing. Many games execute code in cart space while playing. You can't do that because you'd have to relocate the code.

[LinkoVitch]

didn't think of that

 

Unless you could wrapper the CD access and use it VM stylee now that would be fast NOT!

[Gunstar]

Thanks for reminding me of something else I dont like about Battlemorph hehe, the weak spot on the boss's (if there is one) isnt easy to see, I've spent an age shooting at that bee, being blown up by its missiles, then deliberatly ramming it over and over to try and kill it. I think I managed a couple of times but normally nothing seems to hurt it.

 

The music is cool and the underwater bits are really great. Im not sure about turning down the contrast/brightness to kill the artifects, but the texture mapping I think will look bad at any settings, since it's so large and pixelated in places, and just looks... not like the smoothness of cybermorph. Also I cant say Im a big fan of the loading weapons screen.

 

Then again, Battlemorph is a totally uber game, just I think I prefer cybermorph hehe, had a nicer feel somehow.

 

The contrast thing T.Bird mentioned DOES work. I do this myself, in fact, I use my Dreamcast for VCD and the software player for this has it's own menu-driven contrast&brightness for just this purpose! I've watched VCD's on my Sony DVD, which does not have this option and the movies look MUCH worse, not to mention some other problems in picture quality; I play the same movies on my DC and they look 10 times better BEFORE I even adjust the contrast&brightness, after, the movies look 20 times better and it's even hard for me to distinguish them as VCD and DVD (except not quite as sharp)!

[Gunstar]

Curious!

I had the "clean disk" problem only two times, and this was at the very first days of playing.

Recently I didn't have that problem anymore.

Funny,Jag CDs are like the wine, the older they get, the better they are:-)

 

TSkid, it happened to my second level, just like you, but I already had a memory track and I didn't really worried (gameplay-wise, at least)!

 

I've NEVER had any problems at all with my Battlemorph CD, never heard there was a problem, and until it visits my console, as far as I'm concerned, ther is no problem. I've played BM all the way through several times and have never had any problem.

[t.skid]

Curious!

I had the "clean disk" problem only two times, and this was at the very first days of playing.

Recently I didn't have that problem anymore.

Funny,Jag CDs are like the wine, the older they get, the better they are:-)

 

TSkid, it happened to my second level, just like you, but I already had a memory track and I didn't really worried (gameplay-wise, at least)!

 

I've NEVER had any problems at all with my Battlemorph CD, never heard there was a problem, and until it visits my console, as far as I'm concerned, ther is no problem. I've played BM all the way through several times and have never had any problem.

 

So, it seems that you're one of the few lucky men that didn't face with that problem

[Thunderbird]

Curious!

I had the "clean disk" problem only two times, and this was at the very first days of playing.

Recently I didn't have that problem anymore.

Funny,Jag CDs are like the wine, the older they get, the better they are:-)

 

TSkid, it happened to my second level, just like you, but I already had a memory track and I didn't really worried (gameplay-wise, at least)!

 

I've NEVER had any problems at all with my Battlemorph CD, never heard there was a problem, and until it visits my console, as far as I'm concerned, ther is no problem. I've played BM all the way through several times and have never had any problem.

 

It's definitely a problem and was admitted by Atari at one point. The thing is that whatever the glitch is that it does read correctly one some discs or drive combos. You got lucky. Mine worked after retrying a few times, so I was lucky eventually. Some people cannot get it to read EVER.

[JAGUAR]

Use an S-Video cable or RGB cable and adjust the brightness and contrast of yout TV properly, and the artifacts will magically disappear. This holds true for any digital video. The Jag's DV was amongst the best of that era, so BM's should not be as bad as you say.

 

The other totally cool thing about BattleMorph is the underwater sequences and the way they encoded the audio tracks so that the switch was seamless.

 

Of course the music is very cool too!

 

I uploaded a Battlemorph video with enhanced music, enjoy.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQz8bQsof60

[ZylonBane]

At this point I'm like, 75% sure JAGUAR is trolling us.

[+remowilliams]

Only 75% ?