Fallen Angels

[evisu]

Tried this today the first time ... wow, really fun to play. And the Voxelgraphics are amazing!

Thanks for sharing this.

 

Amd yes .. a cart release would be great

[cuda_man]

Finally found an old enough CD-R drive to burn this to. Wow! Beautiful game! and fun too!

 

Great job!

[Lost Dragon]

Wait..what?

 

Factor 5 were working on a Reboot/sequel to Rescue on the N64 at 1 point, but it morphed into Rogue Squadron?

 

 

"Return to Fractalus became Star Wars:Rogue Squadron for the N64. The landscape engine is without fractalisation,because - alas, the N64 once again was not powerful enough.

 

Source Julian Eggebrecht Factor 5

[Lost Dragon]

And as for the Amiga version:

 

From Julian Eggebrecht

 

The Amiga version of Ballblazer ("Master Blazer") had a rendition of

the Rescue on Fractalus graphics engine, but it was never completed

into a full game.

The Amiga was not powerful enough to get away with the same tricks as the

8-bit Atari. People expected real 3D and not only 2D planes of fractal

mountains. The Amiga could do more planes of mountains at higher

resolutions, but that wasn't enough - at least we thought so.

[philipj]

I like that "real-time Mandelbrot" demo Atari had with their development software where they used both the GPU and the DSP to render fractal mandelbrot in real-time... That seem pretty promising especially when it was demonstrated on "Battlesphere" in one of the menus. I think the way those fractal mountains done on the 8-bit platform was very simplistic considering how fast the 6502 was able to pull off the pseudo 3D effect on the Atari-8. I think fractals has become a bit of a lost art in the gaming world today, but I think that's on account that back in the old days, computers just couldn't handle the number crunching it took to do what most people wanted fractals to do and in the case of "Rescue on Fractalus" that was some level of fast/cheap reasonable pseudo 3D visuals on an 8-bit system, which was very ambitious for its time being the original "Behind Jaggi Lines" using a scheme designed for "anti-aliasing".

[VladR]

Wait..what?

 

Factor 5 were working on a Reboot/sequel to Rescue on the N64 at 1 point, but it morphed into Rogue Squadron?

 

 

"Return to Fractalus became Star Wars:Rogue Squadron for the N64. The landscape engine is without fractalisation,because - alas, the N64 once again was not powerful enough.

 

Source Julian Eggebrecht Factor 5

That must be some internal joke, or similar, because of the sheer power discrepancy between 1.79 MHz Atari and 93.75 MHz CPU (plus 62.5 MHz GPU) in N64.

 

I suspect somebody else , famous at the time, made some such quote, and this is merely a sarcasm referencing that?

 

And as for the Amiga version:

 

From Julian Eggebrecht

 

The Amiga version of Ballblazer ("Master Blazer") had a rendition of

the Rescue on Fractalus graphics engine, but it was never completed

into a full game.

The Amiga was not powerful enough to get away with the same tricks as the

8-bit Atari. People expected real 3D and not only 2D planes of fractal

mountains. The Amiga could do more planes of mountains at higher

resolutions, but that wasn't enough - at least we thought so.

MasterBlazer looks and feels amazing - like a true, in-spirit, enhancement to the original Fractalus! Was it done by Julius ?

 

There's 3 billion other demos/games with voxel and polygonal terrains, so there's no need for yet another one. But there's only one Fractalus.

 

I'd lie if I said I haven't spent some time breaking down the Assembler implementation on 6502 and what's needed to pull off a proper Fractalus terrain on Jag, as it's easily a Top 10 game for me on Atari and a one that deserves to be redone on last Atari properly.

 

 

Even full-time, my vision (docking, landing, take-off, proper space-planet transition, lensflares, atmosphere edge, clouds) of Jaguar Fractalus doesn't come cheap, and is at least 6-8 weeks of work, so not really a mini-game anymore, unfortunately...

[Lost Dragon]

Julian was producer for Amiga MasterBlazer and did say he had long talks with the original Fractual routines coder of A8 Rescue when attempting to do the Amiga version.

 

 

It would of been rather fitting for a commercial reboot to of found a home on the Jaguar.

 

 

The quote about the N64 game morphing into Rogue Squadron was supposedly by Julian himself and presented in all seriousness, but as i mentioned in the unreleased A8 games thread, Julian's comments have been contridicting by others in the industry, so it's hard to know who to believe at times.

 

This is why i wish magazine writers would stop using single sources of information and presenting claims as stone cold fact.

 

From personal experience, your unlikely to get answers from people as to why they are suddenly saying the exact opposite of what they previously said or it simply doesn't tie-in with what's known, but most are honest enough to say that they might well be miss remembering things.

 

Andrew/Jane Whittaker has been given multiple changes to explain statements that are polar opposites of previous statements they made or have no grounding in reality, yet declined to answer each time...

 

Jez San, Mark Cale and Martin Hooley i find are happy to use Q+A sessions to rewrite history in a more favourable light..

 

I doubt anyone takes the claims of Jack, Leonard or Sam Tramiel that seriously anymore..

 

R.J Mical supposed to prefer telling a good story as opposed to what really happened and all these examples before you get into magazines simply making up quotes and people online pretending to be people they aren't.

[VladR]

Well, a quote can be very easily misrepresented, no doubt about that.

 

In reality, only people who were present know what was said, and as anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment can attest, plenty times people can't agree on what was said 5 minutes ago, let alone 5 months or years.

 

I'm glad Atari didn't get a chance to fuck up the Fractalus brand, we dodged a bullet on that one, I never even knew...

[Lost Dragon]

:-)) I have to be careful what i say,but taking Jane Whittaker as an example..Account A of personal Aspects of their life,told to person B for article C..were the exact opposite of what they told person D for article E..that alone raised eyebrows.

 

The account of being betrayed by Atari and warning not to work for them, which were posted after Whittaker expressed critiscms of Rebellion, were quickly retracted by Whittaker after a counter claim by Atari.

 

And the story Whittaker tells of M2 Power Crystal bears no grounding in reality.

 

Luca from Unseen64 made enquiries to Whittaker directly, in order to try and set the record straight,nothing ever came back

 

 

Whittaker doesn't respond to challenges on social media when the above versions of events are rolled out either :-))

 

Getting back onto Lucasarts and Rescue..i do recall them being asked about the Jaguar in an old interview they did with Edge magazine.

 

Edge basically asking which Next Generation consoles they'd be supporting....

 

Think the line went something like:Atari however got the short drift.. Lucasarts spokesperson simply saying "Are they for real?".

 

 

The prospect of seeing the likes of ATD (who made such a meal of Blue Lightning, game should of been bundled with a knife and fork), Imagitec Design (that I-War engine couldn't cope with anything demanding, they couldn't even get anywhere with Freelancer or Space Junk) or Atari themselves (Texture everything, feck the frame rate) being assigned it, just doesn't bear thinking about.

 

Bad enough they screwed the pooch with ST Star Raiders and A8 Star Raiders II.

 

Neither really felt like the original in so many regards.

[+LS650]

This thread seems to have moved well off from the subject of DrTypo's Fallen Angels.

[Lost Dragon]

Is there another more recent thread for remakes of Rescue or games inspired by it?.

 

It seemed a bit pointless to create an entire new thread just to add brief updates to what became of previous attempts to do a Behind Jaggi Lines style game on more powerful hardware.

 

Most Jaguar threads do run off the original topic after a few pages...this was 7 pages and had been dormant for a while.

Edited December 27, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[VladR]

This thread seems to have moved well off from the subject of DrTypo's Fallen Angels.

1. Fallen Angels is basically a 32-bit remake of Fractalus

2. We're discussing Fractalus-based work on Amiga and the Atari's take for Jaguar (plus the inevitable clusterf*ck surrounding Atari) which I never even knew about, but given my very high opinion on Fractalus, it's a pretty darn important thing.

 

It would appear the quote (mentioned by LD) from company that created Fractalus - LucasArts - is in order:

"Are they you for real?"

[VladR]

:-)) I have to be careful what i say,but taking Jane Whittaker as an example..Account A of personal Aspects of their life,told to person B for article C..were the exact opposite of what they told person D for article E..that alone raised eyebrows.

 

The account of being betrayed by Atari and warning not to work for them, which were posted after Whittaker expressed critiscms of Rebellion, were quickly retracted by Whittaker after a counter claim by Atari.

 

And the story Whittaker tells of M2 Power Crystal bears no grounding in reality.

 

Luca from Unseen64 made enquiries to Whittaker directly, in order to try and set the record straight,nothing ever came back

 

 

Whittaker doesn't respond to challenges on social media when the above versions of events are rolled out either :-))

 

Getting back onto Lucasarts and Rescue..i do recall them being asked about the Jaguar in an old interview they did with Edge magazine.

 

Edge basically asking which Next Generation consoles they'd be supporting....

 

Think the line went something like:Atari however got the short drift.. Lucasarts spokesperson simply saying "Are they for real?".

 

 

The prospect of seeing the likes of ATD (who made such a meal of Blue Lightning, game should of been bundled with a knife and fork), Imagitec Design (that I-War engine couldn't cope with anything demanding, they couldn't even get anywhere with Freelancer or Space Junk) or Atari themselves (Texture everything, feck the frame rate) being assigned it, just doesn't bear thinking about.

 

Bad enough they screwed the pooch with ST Star Raiders and A8 Star Raiders II.

 

Neither really felt like the original in so many regards.

I'm not surprised Whittaker wouldn't respond back, even if he actually really wanted.

 

Example, when I quit my job earlier this year, the NDA I had to sign, was just totally ridiculous. You basically cannot say anything that could be potentially misrepresented. Ever. Hell, I could be sued for my comments even 50 years after my death (which I thought was a joke, but apparently a totally legal thing in U.S )

 

Now let's contrast that with a litigation happy finger of a certain French company, so no wonder we're getting little info back from people...

[Lost Dragon]

1. Fallen Angels is basically a 32-bit remake of Fractalus

2. We're discussing Fractalus-based work on Amiga and the Atari's take for Jaguar (plus the inevitable clusterf*ck surrounding Atari) which I never even knew about, but given my very high opinion on Fractalus, it's a pretty darn important thing.

 

It would appear the quote (mentioned by LD) from company that created Fractalus - LucasArts - is in order:

Yeah i tend to literally throw morsels of info into existing threads these days, rather than create specific threads for it.

 

Think i put talk of Jaguar games Eclipse and Caspain Software offered Atari in the What Was The Jaguar Capable Of ? thread and Adisak talking about his unused Doom style Jaguar game engine in that or the 32X Doom thread...

 

The Minter/Lynx Ultra Star Raiders thread became something of a general update to Star Raiders thread as only a handful of people want to discuss it.

 

So i took the same approach with what became of attempts to update Rescue On Fractulas. .we have seen a stunning fan based game on Jaguar and to compliment that, i thought i would try and shed light on some of the failed commercial attempts and also answer ValdR's point about how you can't always take quotes at face value.

 

To be fair, the thread had been dormant long enough there was no risk of derailing any on going discussion about Fallen Angels, as there was nothing being discussed. ..

Edited December 28, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Thorsten Günther]

 

MasterBlazer looks and feels amazing - like a true, in-spirit, enhancement to the original Fractalus! Was it done by Julius ?

 

 

Master Blazer on the Amiga was done by Thomas Schulz - known as "8Bitjunkie" around here. It was his first commercial game IIRC.

[UHATEIT]

Fallen Angels for the Jaguar is one my the best homebrews IMO aside from Tube SE which is spectacular. Doctor Clu did some damn good work on these games!

[UHATEIT]

Fallen Angels for the Jaguar is one my the best homebrews IMO aside from Tube SE which is spectacular. Doctor Clu did some damn good work on these games!

Have to correct myself it's Dr Typo not Doctor Clu, but this will not let me edit my original post!

[Lost Dragon]

Clearing out old box of gubbins, found Edge supplement for The Dig PC..

 

At the back I'd interview with Jack Sorensen, President of Lucasfilm and he was asked why oh why they hadn't done Rescue On Fractulas or Koronis Rift on Playstation but Ballblazer instead?

 

He laughed and said it seemed almost made for the Playstation hardware.

[alucardX]

I need to try this. It looks great though, nice work.

[jhd]

:-)) I have to be careful what i say,but taking Jane Whittaker as an example..Account A of personal Aspects of their life,told to person B for article C..were the exact opposite of what they told person D for article E..that alone raised eyebrows.

 

Could it simply be a desire to ensure their personal privacy, but not want to seem like they are not answering the questions?

 

Once, in a social situation, I met someone who asked me very personal (and inappropriate) questions. Rather than be impolite and not talk to them, I simply fabricated the answers out of whole cloth. The biographical details I told that person about myself had no basis in reality whatsoever. (I also knew that I would never encounter this person ever again, so no consequences would flow from my deception.) I have fortunately never been the subject of a feature article, but I would certainly think twice about revealing too much personal information.

 

Winston Churchill himself famously said that "In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

[Lost Dragon]

Without knowing the individual, in this case,Jane Whittaker, it's somewhat hard to even guess why they would give 2 very different accounts to the same question asked of them by professional interviewers for mainstream attention.

 

The curious thing with it has been that rather than politely decline to answer the question with a simple,sorry,i would rather not talk about that aspect of my life...they have given very detailed replies, bur just replies that don't match.

 

That alone raised a few questions and once added to some earlier statements about warning people not to work for Atari if you want to get paid,then retracting said statement once it's been disputed by Atari themselves, just makes me personally question the credibility of answers Whittaker has given.

 

I have no doubt there was friction between Atari and Rebellion during AVP development and each keen to use interviews since to paint themselves in the more favourable light and the wounds may well still fester and other people from both teams really do not want to be caught up in spats of the past.

 

I just find Whittaker's accounts make me question just how credible a lot of the insights given are.

 

I feel the same about many from the industry..

 

Jez San

Martin Hooley

Steve Wilcox

Leonard and Sam Tramiel

Mark Cale

 

It seems a good few fledgling developers from the Jaguar era..Rebellion...Imagitec Design..Beyond Games etc have a tendency to use features in magazines and Q's put to them to present a more favourable view of themselves forward.

 

Mark Cale for example is very reluctant to say the least,to talk about all the various titles System 3 annouced, advertised,but failed to deliver.

 

Just my personal thoughts and experiences,others may well differ.

[Rick Dangerous]

On 5/5/2013 at 8:33 AM, DrTypo said:

Thanks to sh3-rg testing, I managed to isolate the issue.

Here is the fixed binary.

Now, how can I edit the OP to avoid confusion?

fa01.zip 543.11 kB · 663 downloads

I noticed on this second version; that you can no longer hear the pilot banging on your ship door to be let in.  Is this intentional @DrTypo or did it just get left out? 

[tripled79]

On 7/15/2018 at 9:30 PM, cuda_man said:

Finally found an old enough CD-R drive to burn this to. Wow! Beautiful game! and fun too!

 

Great job!

Wait! What? How does one get their hands on this game?

[Lostdragon]

. 

Edited July 20, 2021 by Lostdragon
Posted in wrong thread, mobile phone error

[HEXdidnt]

Just been playing this game, having burnt it to my last CD-R after a bunch of attempts with some other .CDI images in DiscJuggler v6. I wasn't optimistic, as I've got a DVD+RW drive that offers me 10x speed as a minimum burn speed, and only got one game 'backup' to work, but Fallen Angels worked perfectly.

 

I'm only dimly aware of Rescue on Fractalus - seen playthroughs of the C64 version on YouTube, but I owned a Spectrum back in the day, and its conversion was pretty dire. Fallen Angels is great fun, though - visually impressive, decent sound, fluid movement, responsive controls and the difficulty ramps up slowly. Nothing groundbreaking, perhaps - except in terms of presentation, which is possibly better than a lot of commercially published Jaguar games. Really great work.

 

Only thing I find a little weird is that it's only possible to return to the mothership when the message 'Mothership' appears and, in between times, one just has to fly around trying not to get shot down. Was that the case in the original?