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

[Jagosaurus]

 

The thing is, people in the Jag "scene" have been "dreaming" for twenty years now. Let it die.. That, or maybe we can get a "Dreamers Only" sub-forum in the Jag section so the rest of us can get back to having sane, grounded conversations.

From the high score club & your YT channel, it's evident you enjoy discussing game strategy related high scores and efficient playthroughs. That's awesome. Some other forum members come here to discuss this also.

 

While other members come here to:

 

... to discuss CIB collecting, cart color variations, and LE label quality.

 

... to discuss the unfortunate downfall of their last Atari system and ponder what could have been done differently.

 

... to discuss game concepts of what they would've like to see made.

 

... to discuss memories.

 

... to discuss programming, their ports/projects, and upcoming plans.

 

The reality is most visit here for a mix of the reasons above. Not sure why the things you enjoy discussing take precedent over other's preferred discussion areas.

 

You halfway know what you're getting into when click a "vs" or "could game x" thread. Caveat emptor there. Avoid them if you don't want to read the resulted talks.

 

To be in the "it's 20 years ago, let it go" mentality seems to be a circular discussion considering you could apply that to everything in our hobby.

[Spacey Invader]

I think you're confusing several different concepts. Everyone is entitled to a subjective opinion of a game, preferably with objective facts to prove their point. Nobody needs experience in making something in order to give their opinion on it, though it certainly would help to be knowledgeable. However, when one critiques specific parts of something and tells utter nonsense about how they would've done it better, when they in fact, cannot, that is what gets bothersome. I have zero experience in doing special effects and makeup for movies/tv. What if I went onto a forum and started saying how if I was in charge of makeup and fx for The Walking Dead, the zombies and the kills would look way more realistic. I would be lying, I wouldn't be giving a review of the show, I would be telling lies because I have no experience in that field. Same thing when someone with no programming background comes on about how he would speed up Supercross 3D to 30fps when one of his "optimizations" would buy almost nothing.

 

I really don't understand why the Jag is the one console that gets all these arm chair experts with their pie in the sky dreams. I don't see people on the Lynx forum talking about conspiracy theories or how the Lynx could've competed with the Gameboy Advance if only its unharnessed powah was discovered by developers.

It takes a lot less than someone saying they could do something better on the jag to unleash the fume accusations. Wondering whether this or that could have been ported wouldn't seem to deserve the wrath reserved for those who claim to be expert coders. Outlandish and exaggerated analogies about how unharnessed "POWa" of the jag could, say, best the ps2 are ridiculous and outside of the relm of what even the fumiest of us would suggest.

 

Maybe I'm just confusing my concepts again. Fumes! POWa!

[Lost Dragon]

The 3DO, by nature of wider range of quality games released, does seem to be far more favourably remembered.

 

People seem to be aware of how great:Road Rash, NFS, Space Hulk, The Horde, Madden, SF2T, Twisted, Starfighter, Return Fire etc etc were, even if they'd not had direct experience of them, they at least saw the glowing reviews in the UK Press....

 

When they look back at the Jaguar, usual suspects aside (Doom, AVP, Tempest etc), they'll think of the press ripping into them, for not being what they expected from 64 Bit gaming....

 

So yes, 3DO did deliver more on expectation, by not promising to be quite so far ahead of existing hardware.

 

Atari saying they'd leapt over 32 Bit completely, was a rod for their own back, in the making there and then.

[+CyranoJ]

It takes a lot less than someone saying they could do something better on the jag to unleash the fume accusations. Wondering whether this or that could have been ported wouldn't seem to deserve the wrath reserved for those who claim to be expert coders. Outlandish and exaggerated analogies about how unharnessed "POWa" of the jag could, say, best the ps2 are ridiculous and outside of the relm of what even the fumiest of us would suggest.

 

Maybe I'm just confusing my concepts again. Fumes! POWa!

 

I don't think ANYONE has claimed to be an 'expert coder' - well, not since Gorf and Thunderchunt were removed, anyhow, LOL.

 

Although Vladr seems to think he is, but so far has been utterly incapable of proving it. It's funny how the same group of people who believe these people's bullshit are also the fantasist 'hidden POWA' folk, lol.

 

Whatever, clicking 'Ignore this topic' because I'm sure he'll be along to claim something else fantastical soon. After all he's managed to unleash 95% more JaguPOWA than anyone, LOL. In his case, it really is all in the vapour.

 

PS. If you want to see some real progress, check here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/241983-new-prototype-driving-thing/page-1

 

Yes, it's written in BASIC

No, it's not written in VRBasic (ROFL)

Yes, it's being actively worked on

Yes, look at that - someone releasing a binary. If only our 'savior expert coder' could do that

Edited November 18, 2015 by CyranoJ

[Spacey Invader]

 

I don't think ANYONE has claimed to be an 'expert coder' - well, not since Gorf and Thunderchunt were removed, anyhow, LOL.

 

Although Vladr seems to think he is, but so far has been utterly incapable of proving it. It's funny how the same group of people who believe these people's bullshit are also the fantasist 'hidden POWA' folk, lol.

 

Whatever, clicking 'Ignore this topic' because I'm sure he'll be along to claim something else fantastical soon. After all he's managed to unleash 95% more JaguPOWA than anyone, LOL. In his case, it really is all in the vapour.

 

I've never seen any self-proclaimed "experts" either, but the arguments made. particularly in madman's lengthy rebuttal to my initial post in which I confused various concepts, indicated that there are real villains out there claiming the ability to do things (3-D wonders, etc) that would classify one as an "expert," and that these folk are constantly claiming they could have done better than things that actually exist. I was simply arguing that the ones most derided are those who aren't even programmers in the first place. I'll take everyone's word that there's some golden statue of Vladr built as a golden idol as the savior of the jag. Honestly this thread is the first I've heard from him. Time to use the search feature.

[Atlantis]

Maybe the FUME creates from the argue that both "sides" contribute to, and the reputation we all have as community. Ascii programming:

argh! ---> FUME <--- argh!

There is a sub-programming forum here, maybe the rest could be dedicated to us retarded people that stick out our necks and dare to enjoy 25 Jaguar games... hence Jaguar's obvious commercial failure and all, that someone can know about, and be smart about.

If you're not a programmer or do not like the games, MOVE ON!

(And yes fat makes it more true than non-fat.)

[Flojomojo]

9 pages on this topic. I simply don't understand you guys and I guess I never will. There's a lovely Road Rash remake and it's not on a underpowered/dead system.

 

Road Redemption

[Sporadic]

9 pages on this topic. I simply don't understand you guys and I guess I never will. There's a lovely Road Rash remake and it's not on a underpowered/dead system.

 

Road Redemption

Road redemption is awesome

[Spacey Invader]

9 pages on this topic. I simply don't understand you guys and I guess I never will. There's a lovely Road Rash remake and it's not on a underpowered/dead system.

 

Road Redemption

Nice of you to drop in anyway -- don't get too close to the cage during feeding time, most of us bite.

[LianneJaguar64]

9 pages on this topic. I simply don't understand you guys and I guess I never will. There's a lovely Road Rash remake and it's not on a underpowered/dead system.

 

Road Redemption

But then I guess it's because we love the Jaguar! XD otherwise we wouldn't be here... And I think it's nice to talk about what could have been, but I do feel that it should be within the realms of reason 'D Also, people keep saying 'fumes', and that's really irritating -__-

[Austin]

Also, people keep saying 'fumes', and that's really irritating -__-

 

Stay around long enough and you'll start to understand there is a reason people keep referring to it.

[VladR]

Concepts and dreams are a lot of fun. OTOH, there's also a point when it's ...

 

Time-To-Nut-Up-Or-Shut-Up1.jpg

 

Or to put it another way: When someone talks big but doesn't back it up, some may say he's "all hat, no cattle".

 

I'm not familiar enough with Vladr's (or others') posts to make that judgement myself, but I can understand why some may want to see some actual work done.

So, what - you'd like to see some demo / proof-of-concept of RR ? Just because I dared to express my thoughts based on experience I got with texturing on jag ?

 

Hell, why not ?

 

It's Wednesday, weekend is coming up, anyway.

 

How about I spend the upcoming weekend with coding a proof-of-concept of RR ?

 

To spice things up, I won't just got for some empty road, I'll create a city segment, which contains a lot of 3D buildings and textures.

 

No GPU/DSP - honest ! Just 68k/Blitter (maybe OP), so framerate will be far from ideal - but eh- Rome wasn't built in a day either.

 

How does that sound, eh ?

 

 

Someone willing to extract some 2D bitmaps of bikes/trees/shrubs for me or should I supply a seat of an artist too ?

[PlaysWithWolves]

Sure. IM me the specs of what you need and I'll see what I can do.

 

I did upload a tree over here, FWIW.

[JagChris]

Wait, it wasn't 60 fps ? I always thought/heard NFS/RR were rock-solid 60 fps on the 3DO ? YT videos that are corss-interpolated make it impossible to guesstimate the framerate.

Though, I did notice quite a lot of framedrops in YT videos - I thought those were drops from 60 to 30fps ?

 

I never really saw a working 3DO (just a broken one with a copy of NFS that was hence no use), so I wouldn't know.

 

And are we sure Road Rash on the 3do isn't bitmaps?

 

Because the story goes that they (Electronic Arts) wanted to do NFS the same way on the 3do as RR and the developers said something like 'No we can do Need For Speed with actual polygons.

[NeoGeoNinja]

And are we sure Road Rash on the 3do isn't bitmaps?

 

Because the story goes that they (Electronic Arts) wanted to do NFS the same way on the 3do as RR and the developers said something like 'No we can do Need For Speed with actual polygons.

 

Well, if relating to the most obvious difference...

 

All the player and CPU vehicles in NFS are Polygons vs RR's use of sprites (etc) for player and CPU based opponents/traffic/pedestrians etc.

 

Perhaps we mean that?

[VladR]

 

And are we sure Road Rash on the 3do isn't bitmaps?

 

Because the story goes that they (Electronic Arts) wanted to do NFS the same way on the 3do as RR and the developers said something like 'No we can do Need For Speed with actual polygons.

I was - obviously- only watching YT videos of 3DO RR, but having spent last few decades with 3D gfx over various platforms, I can spot a textured polygon from a partial cut of a screenshot. Moreso on a video.

 

The buildings/bridges and the terrain it sits on are proper textured polygons.

 

The road, cars, bikes, signs, people,trees are all just 2D bitmaps. NFS, of course, has 3D cars and 3D road (signs/trees there are still just 2D bitmaps).

 

The amount of screenspace covered by textures is still quite high (for jag's specs, that is) - so it's a formiddable challenge

 

PlaysWithWolves : Thanks for volunteering ! Incoming IM !

[VladR]

So, any bets on how far i can actually get within a weekend ? Honestly, I don't know either This is an outdoor game, and my engine is most definitely totally indoor.

 

Plus I never had to handle partial clipped textured polygons in a H.E.R.O., and RR is full of those (the buildings that leave the screen at edges).

 

Any bets on potentially achieved framerate ? With GPU/DSP I am confident we could reach 24 fps of 3DO, but I will be doing the prototype without them.

[swapd0]

I don't care if it works at 60, 30, 15, 10 or 1 fps, but show something working and later you'll have time to optimize it.

[PlaysWithWolves]

I don't care if it works at 60, 30, 15, 10 or 1 fps, but show something working and later you'll have time to optimize it.

 

Vlad needs most of the artwork done, so I'm not sure I'll be able to sneak mipmaps in. So, that may be one big optimization that'd be missing.

[VladR]

 

Vlad needs most of the artwork done, so I'm not sure I'll be able to sneak mipmaps in. So, that may be one big optimization that'd be missing.

Don't worry about mipmaps - my engine can compute them automatically.

 

From performance standpoint, this is not a big deal compared to slow C code running on even slower 68k vs hand-optimized ASM running from ~10x faster GPU's cache (with each instructions taking ~2 cycles (save for div and couple others) and running completely off the main slow bus (save for external RAM access)).

 

Contrary to popular misconception, Jag has gobs of memory (two full MBs). We can always brute-force it at first

[+madman]

So, any bets on how far i can actually get within a weekend ?

My bet would be about as far as you've gotten on all the other projects you've released.

[82-T/A]

 

I don't think ANYONE has claimed to be an 'expert coder' - well, not since Gorf and Thunderchunt were removed, anyhow, LOL.

 

Although Vladr seems to think he is, but so far has been utterly incapable of proving it. It's funny how the same group of people who believe these people's bullshit are also the fantasist 'hidden POWA' folk, lol.

 

Whatever, clicking 'Ignore this topic' because I'm sure he'll be along to claim something else fantastical soon. After all he's managed to unleash 95% more JaguPOWA than anyone, LOL. In his case, it really is all in the vapour.

 

PS. If you want to see some real progress, check here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/241983-new-prototype-driving-thing/page-1

 

Yes, it's written in BASIC

No, it's not written in VRBasic (ROFL)

Yes, it's being actively worked on

Yes, look at that - someone releasing a binary. If only our 'savior expert coder' could do that

 

 

YES! I am an EXPERT CODER when it comes to MUMPS / Intersystems Cache, also... Borland Delphi 7.0. So if someone makes a MUMPS environment for the Atari Jaguar... watch out... I'm pretty good at C# / .NET also, but who isn't.

 

Sorry... I've been drinking.

[LynxJagLunatic]

Not sure if this would work on a cartridge due to space limitations but on the Jad CD I think this game would be duable.

[VladR]

Alright, Saturday morning! Really curious how far can I get in a weekend with something like RR, but I guess we'll see tomorrow. There's always another weekend

 

 

 

T-0:

- Fired up the skunk and C dev env (Notepad++)

 

ToDo:

- Milestone 1: Create small section of the city (3D buildings), apply Frustum culling, 3D transformations, Clipping, all the while moving through world (just internally, no rendering yet)

- Milestone 2: Texture the polygons above. Import textures from artist (PlaysWithWolves). Must handle partial clipping (e.g, building polygons at the edge of the screen) - this would be a brand new feature in my engine.

 

I'm aiming for Milestone 2 by the end of today.

[+CyranoJ]

Alright, Saturday morning! Really curious how far can I get in a weekend with something like RR, but I guess we'll see tomorrow. There's always another weekend

 

 

 

T-0:

- Fired up the skunk and C dev env (Notepad++)

 

ToDo:

- Milestone 1: Create small section of the city (3D buildings), apply Frustum culling, 3D transformations, Clipping, all the while moving through world (just internally, no rendering yet)

- Milestone 2: Texture the polygons above. Import textures from artist (PlaysWithWolves). Must handle partial clipping (e.g, building polygons at the edge of the screen) - this would be a brand new feature in my engine.

 

I'm aiming for Milestone 2 by the end of today.

 

So you've picked out a font and colours for the editor then. Impressive.