If you could change one thing about an existing Jaguar title...

[ZylonBane]

It's disturbing how many of these "one thing" changes boil down to "completely rewrite the engine" or "be running on better hardware". I can assure y'all that AvP doesn't discard the position of all enemies between levels because of any design decision on Rebellion's part. They literally had no choice in the matter. Only 128 bytes of storage on the standard cartridge EEPROM, remember?

[+CyranoJ]

It's disturbing how many of these "one thing" changes boil down to "completely rewrite the engine" or "be running on better hardware". I can assure y'all that AvP doesn't discard the position of all enemies between levels because of any design decision on Rebellion's part. They literally had no choice in the matter. Only 128 bytes of storage on the standard cartridge EEPROM, remember?

 

Rubbish. That's permanent memory. They can use RAM for temp location storage between levels.

[Atlantis]

also, dino dudes but with 200 levels

[ZylonBane]

Rubbish. That's permanent memory. They can use RAM for temp location storage between levels.

 

The Jag only has 2MB of RAM, which it needs to use for working variables, memory-resident code, and most significantly in AvP, decompressed sounds and textures. You can't get something for nothing. If Rebellion had decided to store the exact state of the potentially dozens of entities in a level, multiplied by every level in the game, they would have had to sacrifice something else. So we would have had a more limited selection of textures on each map, or fewer/lower quality sound effects, or even fewer enemies per map so it wouldn't exceed the RAM allocated for saving each level's state. Furthermore, they would have had to write more code to handle whether the player was resuming a map from a RAM save or an EEPROM save, which would have had the double deficit of eating into ROM space, and yielding an inconsistent player experience depending on the resume mode.

 

So no, there's no way this would have been a "one thing" change. It would have been a fundamental redistribution of system resource allocation.

[kid_vidiot]

The main problem/fix with AvP isn't remembering the enemies killed, it's REMEMBERING THE AUTO MAP!

 

That's the whole point of an auto map! Having the map start over between saves, between levels, and between air ducts is a huge deterrent to the gameplay. It basically breaks the game when it comes to the air ducts. Atari was so backwards, they thought it was 1988 and people wanted to break out graph paper in the middle of their immersive first person 3D shooter.

 

AvP was so good because it was about mood, exploration, and immersion over mindless run and gun. The auto map not saving completely destroys all of that.

[JagCD]

Decent controls on chequered Flag.

 

I wonder how hard it would be to do a control mod to that game. Taking out the progressive steering wheel control scheme that it has -- and

replacing it with a simple Pole Position style steering control scheme would probably improve things a lot.

[JagCD]

Fix the network bug in Doom.

 

Make Atari Karts 4 player.

 

And I will reiterate making the save function in AVP save everything.

 

I seriously doubt the Atari Jaguar hardware was fast enough to do a 4 player split screen racing game.

Definitely didn't have the 3D power of the N64.

[+CyranoJ]

 

I wonder how hard it would be to do a control mod to that game. Taking out the progressive steering wheel control scheme that it has -- and

replacing it with a simple Pole Position style steering control scheme would probably improve things a lot.

 

Not hard at all.

 

http://reboot.atari.org/new-reboot/cfpatch.html

[Bill Loguidice]

 

I seriously doubt the Atari Jaguar hardware was fast enough to do a 4 player split screen racing game.

Definitely didn't have the 3D power of the N64.

 

If it was done on the Super NES with the excellent Street Racer, there's no reason that Atari Karts couldn't have had four player split-screen. It's not like Atari Karts had any real 3D in it.

[JagCD]

 

If it was done on the Super NES with the excellent Street Racer, there's no reason that Atari Karts couldn't have had four player split-screen. It's not like Atari Karts had any real 3D in it.

 

Well, I guess Ubisoft (the company behind Street Racer) could have pulled it off -- since Rayman was one of the better titles on the Jaguar. I'm not sure Miracle Designs (which developed Atari Karts) had the technical skills to pull it off, though.

[ZylonBane]

Atari was so backwards, they thought it was 1988 and people wanted to break out graph paper in the middle of their immersive first person 3D shooter.

SIGH.

 

Once again, no, Atari didn't think that. The automap doesn't get saved for the same reason each level's state doesn't get saved--insufficient save space in the cartridge.

[JagChris]

I can't remember but I had to map out the ducts at the very least. I had a blast.

You're all a bunch of crybabies.

[Gunstar]

I've passed over this thread multiple times, but needed to think on it a while, there are several games that could be drastically improved with one or more minor changes I think. But I didn't want to jump the gun. I've come to the decision that if there was one thing I could change about one game, it better be the best possible thing that would make the greatest impact not only to the game, but the community at large. The game that I would change ONE THING about, is BATTLESPHERE/GOLD. The one thing I would change is it's availability. I'd get it into the hands of someone like Songbird to make additional and continual production runs, like he does with all Songbird releases. All have been available from when they were released to this day. Always in stock. So everyone in the community could get the game for a reasonable price and even multiple copies and get it out to all the fans for solo and network play. BS's limited release runs were lame and thus a cost now of hundreds of dollars, if you can find a copy, and thousands of dollars if you want to network, IF you can find enough copies.

[Gunstar]

I can't remember but I had to map out the ducts at the very least. I had a blast.

You're all a bunch of crybabies.

I've posted scans of all the duct work for AvP on AA before, years ago, that anyone can download. A strategy guide that includes all the level and duct maps. From Tips&Tricks video game magazine from Winter '95 edition. I still have the guide, but my scanner is in storage. But a search should find them here.

[kid_vidiot]

SIGH.

 

Once again, no, Atari didn't think that. The automap doesn't get saved for the same reason each level's state doesn't get saved--insufficient save space in the cartridge.

Sorry, that doesn't hold water. The 2600 could save a freakin stick outline auto map. We aren't talking skyrim here.

[ZylonBane]

The 2600 could save a freakin stick outline auto map.

 

Example?

[Lost Dragon]

Maps in AVP? hell i'd completed the game by time i 1st clapped eyes on any (in Atari Entertainment Magazine).I'd probably struggle like hell with game now (just as i would say Monty On The Run on C64) as i find my frustration threshold with games has gotten so much lower as i've gotten older, but back then i think my love of the subject material put on a very thick pair of specs/blinkers and i glossed over AVP's flaws.

Hoverstrike (cart) though, now there is a game i'd change in terms of finding my way to objectives, really struggled in later stages and lost interest in game as a result.

[sd32]

Straffing in I War would have been cool.

[Major Havoc 2049]

I've posted scans of all the duct work for AvP on AA before, years ago, that anyone can download. A strategy guide that includes all the level and duct maps. From Tips&Tricks video game magazine from Winter '95 edition. I still have the guide, but my scanner is in storage. But a search should find them here.

The Official Jaguar Gamer's Guide also had the level maps and the air duct maps as well. The air ducts weren't that big of an issue, imo. Most of the air duct levels were fairly small, with only a few that were somewhat large, but nothing crazy big. The computers also had level maps in them. Do you want the game to play itself? A little challenge is a good thing.

[JagChris]

Candy ass crybabies!!

[Gunstar]

Sorry, that doesn't hold water. The 2600 could save a freakin stick outline auto map. We aren't talking skyrim here.

Since the 2600 doesn't have the ability to save ANYTHING, sorry, THAT doesn't hold water. Jag cartridges, with a save eeprom (a brand new concept at the time for ALL system cartridges) really don't have much space. That being said, Towers II saves level auto-mapping on the eeprom, so you are right that AvP could have had saved mapping too.

[ZylonBane]

That being said, Towers II saves level auto-mapping on the eeprom, so you are right that AvP could have had saved mapping too.

 

No it doesn't and no he isn't. On game load Towers II reconstructs the automap based on the state of the quest variables that it does save. So it's only a "best guess" at how the automap would have looked at that point in the game. This approach wouldn't have worked nearly as well for AvP because it's more free-form and there are far fewer "quest" objects.

 

Here's one little change I would have made to BattleSphere-- reverse the color coding on the radar so bad guys are red and good guys are green, like in normal games.

[+CyranoJ]

 

No it doesn't and no he isn't. On game load Towers II reconstructs the automap based on the state of the quest variables that it does save. So it's only a "best guess" at how the automap would have looked at that point in the game. This approach wouldn't have worked nearly as well for AvP because it's more free-form and there are far fewer "quest" objects.

 

You can keep banging on about this as much as you like, however you will still be wrong.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/117658-definitive-alien-vs-predator-guide-new-scans/

 

The maps are, at most 24 squares wide. This can be represented in 3 bytes using bit masking for a square. That's 3x24 = 72 bytes for a map. However, given that almost 1/3 of all maps are actually solid walls, and the game knows where these are already, they only have to store the settings for the discovered squares. So that's 72/3 = 24 bytes to save the map on average. If they wanted to use 'Fog of War' they could skip every other square. That's 12 BYTES - it could be even less if they scanned 2 squares ahead.

 

12 BYTES OR LESS.

 

God, I love these armchair commentators who insist on things they don't understand.

[ZylonBane]

Oy vey...

 

First, by my count Sublevel 4, the training maze map, is roughly 50 x 42 grid squares, far in excess of your 24-square estimate. This would take about 2K to store accurately, if one stores simple grid-level discovery and lets the automap infer wall discovery. Yes, this could be diminished somewhat by only encoding navigable space. It's still going to be a lot more than 72 bytes though.

 

But hey, let's take that wildly optimistic 12 bytes per map figure. And what the heck, let's figure 4 bytes for the much smaller duct systems, because why not. That's 12 bytes times 5 large maps plus 4 bytes times 8 duct maps, yielding 92 bytes for map storage. AvP supports three save slots, so 92 x 3 is... uh-oh... 276 bytes. Bzzzt, sorry, blew out our 128-byte EEPROM budget by a mile there, without even storing any game state.

[Gunstar]

 

No it doesn't and no he isn't. On game load Towers II reconstructs the automap based on the state of the quest variables that it does save. So it's only a "best guess" at how the automap would have looked at that point in the game. This approach wouldn't have worked nearly as well for AvP because it's more free-form and there are far fewer "quest" objects.

 

Here's one little change I would have made to BattleSphere-- reverse the color coding on the radar so bad guys are red and good guys are green, like in normal games.

Ok, yeah i knew it wasn't perfect saves or anythin in Towers II, I noticed parts of maps missing, but I though it was a save still not a guess based on variables.