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Could Road Rash (3DO) be ported to the Jaguar?


Rick Dangerous

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My point was more about have some sort of enhancement chips a la SNES with some additional ram and maybe SD card access to add some much needed 3D capabilities and some faster streaming, there's only 25K CDROM units produced worldwide so that should not be really an option for streaming.

 

After all the SNES got quite a few nice games on SuperFX, and SA1, the 32x albeit not a monster has a few nice addition to the Genesis library.

In both cases (via different means) the host console is still used (background, extra music channels, IO processing), if the "add-on" made it easier to perform 3D + streaming it would certainly help in the direction of porting.

You're right, the SNES did get games that used additional hardware. This was during its commercial lifetime. And it sold around 100 million units. Neither of those criteria apply to the Jag in 2015.

 

And who are the developers that are asking for additional hardware for 3D and streaming to help with their porting? What ports are they working on? Or is this all pie in the sky talk that ultimately means absolutely nothing?

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Although there were only around 25,000 CD units, and maybe 15,000 are in the wild and working (by only my wild guesstimate and no hard data), that's still 15,000 more units than any hypothetical new add-on.

 

I would think logically the best type of new add-on might simply be something that plugs in like the CD add-on does and replicates the CD add-on functionality, but with an IDE- or SD-based solution, kind of like has been done already on some of the Jaguar's more popular contemporaries. At least we know that a cartridge can read in data from a CD on the Jaguar and no new engineering needs to be done around that to create hardware features the Jaguar doesn't presently have.

 

Of course saying and doing are completely different things. I sure couldn't make something like that, and who knows if there'd even be much demand for something like that. Selling 250 units or so of something wouldn't necessarily justify the R&D and production effort.

 

Again, for my money, I'd just prefer homebrew devs on the Jaguar just focus on making better software for the base system than have to worry about splitting an already small user base for an add-on that might introduce even more complexity than the already modest team sizes developing for the Jaguar struggle with for the core system.

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We now live in an age of Kickstarter and other crowd funding. It would be interesting to see if a solid design and demo could raise the money to justify actually building something. I heard a lot of good ideas here.

Go for it. Build a Jaguar hardware add-on based on the good ideas you've read here and setup a Kickstarter. I'll be your first backer. Simple as that.

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We now live in an age of Kickstarter and other crowd funding. It would be interesting to see if a solid design and demo could raise the money to justify actually building something. I heard a lot of good ideas here.

 

Not specifically targeted to you, but it amazes me how quickly people like to throw out "just Kickstarter it" for any super niche videogame project. Just because a few hundred people in a particular community might go for something, it doesn't mean you'd reach more people by going to Kickstarter. Practically speaking, you'll reach all the people you'd ever reach through places like AtariAge, Facebook, etc., without the significant overhead of Kickstarter. Unless the monetary goal is super low, Kickstarter really only works well for projects with at least some type of broad appeal, and even then it's a crapshoot. A random add-on for a super niche old console like the Jaguar has nothing remotely resembling broad appeal.

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Although I like to talk of ways and techniques that may work in getting expansive and technically demanding games on the Jaguar, like a Quake type game, or a Road Rash type of game, and think that with the right programmers and time something good could be achieved, the reality of such a demanding project would only really have two possibilities: First, a really good programmer that just loves the Jaguar and wants to see how far they can push the boundaries in their free time, like the person or persons that do stuff like Quake on the Falcon, or Wolfenstiein 3D on the Genesis. Two, a rich individual who love the Jaguar and is willing to finance a development team on their own just to see it done and as a "gift" to the community with no aspirations for a return on the investment to undertake such a project, or a combination of these two possibilities.

 

So it's unlikely as hell to really happen, but I can talk about it and dream and have fun doing it, especially if there is someone in the conversation (like VladR) who just might be such a person as in the first possibility. We have a bunch of home brew developers in the community, but most seem to want to just stick to relatively small 2D projects (comparatively, I no these are no small achievements) like Impulse X and Degz/Superfly DX, etc.

 

Atari Owl is the only person in the last decade that seemed to want to do an expansive 3D project and that seemed to come to a halt long ago. Dr. Typo has made a couple of impressive "3D." "mini-games" with Tube and Fallen Angels, but that's been it. Though he did mention of moving on to bigger and better things on the Jag when asked about further improvements to those two games...

Edited by Gunstar
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Dr. Typo has made a couple of impressive "3D." "mini-games" with Tube (and Fallen Angels), but that's been it. Though he did mention of moving on to bigger and better things on the Jag when asked about further improvements to those two games...

 

Dr Typo needs to do a 'Tube : Ultra' and get the talents of OMF & Gaztee to bring the game out as an Official Cart release, just like Orion has done collaboratively, most recently.

 

I'd buy that for a dollar "x" multiple "÷" conversion rate to £'s "+" shipping.

 

Game deserves an 'official' release imo.

Edited by NeoGeoNinja
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especially if there is someone in the conversation (like VladR) who just might be such a person as in the first possibility.

 

He's the perfect man for a project that'll never be released! Good choice.

 

I hear he's currently picking out colours and a font for an a8 dev setup. Meanwhile, Phaeron is up to 30fps... Those that can, etc.

Edited by CyranoJ
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He's the perfect man for a project that'll never be released! Good choice.

 

I hear he's currently picking out colours and a font for an a8 dev setup. Meanwhile, Phaeron is up to 30fps... Those that can, etc.

 

 

He's the perfect man for a project that'll never be released! Good choice.

 

I hear he's currently picking out colours and a font for an a8 dev setup. Meanwhile, Phaeron is up to 30fps... Those that can, etc.

I ONLY mention VladR because he was talking about it, I don't know the guy and don't know if he'd ever come through, but it's still fun to talk with him about it. Sorry, but you lost me on the Phaeron & 30fps, I've no idea what you are referring too, was it somewhere in this thread?

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I ONLY mention VladR because he was talking about it, I don't know the guy and don't know if he'd ever come through, but it's still fun to talk with him about it. Sorry, but you lost me on the Phaeron & 30fps, I've no idea what you are referring too, was it somewhere in this thread?

 

Gunstar, how long you been around here? You know better than to try to have fun on the AA Jaguar forum. CJ and co will squish that crap quick.

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@Gunstar:My bad earlier, it was Total Eclipse, not Shockwave on 3DO that impressed Atari, sorry....

 

Here's the quote from Chriss Gibbs:

 

'I remember sam Tramiel (then head of Atari) calling and saying, "hey Chris, you know this Battlemorph, can you put loads of textures into it? " because they'd seen (Total Eclipse) on the 3DO and it was all beautifully textured for its day, and there we were with Gouraud-shaded polygons on the Jaguar.And Jaguar CD, well, it was just another storage medium, it wasn't changing the technology'.

 

'The base technology did'nt change at all and they were pushing it as a massive leap forward in the power of the Jaguar'

 

 

So wrong game, but point remains the same Atari wanted it's games to compete, visually with those on 3DO...

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@Gunstar:My bad earlier, it was Total Eclipse, not Shockwave on 3DO that impressed Atari, sorry....

 

Here's the quote from Chriss Gibbs:

 

'I remember sam Tramiel (then head of Atari) calling and saying, "hey Chris, you know this Battlemorph, can you put loads of textures into it? " because they'd seen (Total Eclipse) on the 3DO and it was all beautifully textured for its day, and there we were with Gouraud-shaded polygons on the Jaguar.And Jaguar CD, well, it was just another storage medium, it wasn't changing the technology'.

 

'The base technology did'nt change at all and they were pushing it as a massive leap forward in the power of the Jaguar'

 

 

So wrong game, but point remains the same Atari wanted it's games to compete, visually with those on 3DO...

 

Ironically, Total Eclipse falls into the same category as StarFox, Road Rash & NFS - the latter two, of which, used streaming techniques to achieve these graphical feats competently.

 

By contrast, Battlemorph was a fully 3D title...

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Ironically, Total Eclipse falls into the same category as StarFox, Road Rash & NFS - the latter two, of which, used streaming techniques to achieve these graphical feats competently.

 

By contrast, Battlemorph was a fully 3D title...

 

Yep, i feel Battlemorph engine is more impressive.

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Yep, i feel Battlemorph engine is more impressive.

 

I'm with you on this. I think they did a fantastic job with Battlemorph. At the time of its release, it was truly one of the best games in the genre, even considering competing games on more powerful systems such as Saturn and PlayStation.

 

The Jaguar CD really was just a new storage medium and not a boost in system power, but when it comes to games like this, I don't necessarily see that as a problem. The development team was clearly competent enough to utilize the technology in all the right ways.

 

I'm glad they didn't go overboard with texturing the environment (as Sam Tramiel allegedly requested). I think it could have impacted performance detrimentally. I'd much prefer a beautiful Gouraud shaded 3D environment with freedom of movement and the expanded gameplay possibilities that it opens up, than a "fully texture-mapped" game that's highly restricted in mobility and player interaction.

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I'm with you on this. I think they did a fantastic job with Battlemorph. At the time of its release, it was truly one of the best games in the genre, even considering competing games on more powerful systems such as Saturn and PlayStation.

 

The Jaguar CD really was just a new storage medium and not a boost in system power, but when it comes to games like this, I don't necessarily see that as a problem. The development team was clearly competent enough to utilize the technology in all the right ways.

 

I'm glad they didn't go overboard with texturing the environment (as Sam Tramiel allegedly requested). I think it could have impacted performance detrimentally. I'd much prefer a beautiful Gouraud shaded 3D environment with freedom of movement and the expanded gameplay possibilities that it opens up, than a "fully texture-mapped" game that's highly restricted in mobility and player interaction.

I agree. Until the late life cycle 3DO titles like Bladeforce and Starfighter came along, the 3DO stuff was either very restriced environments or were very simple, nearly empty environments like the original Shockwave and Scramble Cobra. The 3DO looked prettier (for the most part) in screen shots, but the Jaguar's open world games around at the time of Shockwave and Scramble Cobra were Iron Soldier and Cybermorph with much more impressive land and cityscapes to play in. At the time of Bladeforce, Shockwave 2 and Starfighter on the 3DO the Jaguar had (or would have had) such games as Battlemorph, HoverStrike: UL, Iron Soldier 2 and Skyhammer, even though those last two end up coming out post-Atari and post-3DO. I personally think Battlemorph, HS: UL, IS2 and Skyhammer are just as great of games as Shockwave 2, Starfighter and Bladeforce. of course the Jag and 3DO are counterparts in my house, not rivals.

 

I love AvP, I love Space Hulk. I love JagDoom, I love Killing Time. I love NFS, I love WTR. I love Shockwave 2, I love HoverStrike: UL. I love Road Rash, I love Super Burnout. And my Jaguar with CD just looks so cool on top of my 3DO FZ-1!

 

Also, Battlemorph and Total Eclipse are phenomenally better games that Star Fox IMO. But to each their own, kudos to anyone who likes Star Fox more...I'd rather play Starglider on the ST/Amiga personally.

Edited by Gunstar
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Whilst i had a lot of fun with SNES Starfox, it felt like a step backwards from Starglider 2 (ST/Amiga).

 

I'd of loved to have seen Starglider III on either the Konix Multisystem or the Jaguar.

You'd have (not of) loved to have seen a game that doesn't exist on a console that doesn't exist? Brilliant.

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My point was more about have some sort of enhancement chips a la SNES with some additional ram and maybe SD card access to add some much needed 3D capabilities and some faster streaming, there's only 25K CDROM units produced worldwide so that should not be really an option for streaming.

 

After all the SNES got quite a few nice games on SuperFX, and SA1, the 32x albeit not a monster has a few nice addition to the Genesis library.

In both cases (via different means) the host console is still used (background, extra music channels, IO processing), if the "add-on" made it easier to perform 3D + streaming it would certainly help in the direction of porting.

 

I wasn't proposing to literally drop in a RPi, just that costs of relatively powerful CPU is not too bad these days.

I mean the SNES is still the SNES even with the enhancement chips.

 

WRT colorful 2D homebrews I'm with you, not sure though that modern development should really put up with only 2MB of RAM if possible but a lot should be achievable as it is.

Unfortunately the crippling bugs wrt main memory jump access especially from Tom seriously limits what can be done, swapping kernels in cache all the time gets old soon and consumes resources for no other good reason than work around hw bugs.

You say that there are only 25,000 Jaguar CD's so don't use it, but for those of us who do own the system, what else is there to look forward to? The obligatory Myst conversion?

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