Road Rash pre-alpha on Jaguar at 30 fps

[VladR]

Thanks, but do we know who wrote it and what are its license terms ? I wouldn't necessarily trust the readme portion of the source code, as I saw way too many cases of people writing less than 10%, yet taking all the credit...

 

Also, as much as I hate having burnt a lot of the time on the Atari sample audio code, I learnt a damn lot about MIDI files structure/theory and details (I haven't worked with MIDI files in past, just Ogg Vorbis) and I learnt I really only need to write two modules - I don't need the 12 modules that Atari supports.

 

Two are enough for my game.

 

 

I should be able to write 2 such modules in under a week and then full 100% of the code is just mine and written from scratch (I don't even use the Atari's startup code anymore). Given how much time I invested in this so far, a week doesn't sound too bad, really...

[Lost Dragon]

Well, technically it ran with music about 2 months ago (or, whenever I made the post about that - would have to go back few pages to see when exactly it was), but it was inflexible, as it was using the hardcoded music from the Atari sample code at that time, while now I can just directly import and play any MIDI file.

 

I can't just grab a video, as I broke my old capture device, but the new Roxio (that is supposed to record at 60 fps), has arrived few days ago. That's assuming that the HDMI -> S-video (or is it composite ? I always mix those two) conversion will actually work.

 

There's plenty other features that warrant a new vid, for sure :

- Menus,

- Timers,

- Smooth input,

- Basic Physics (inertia/weight/acceleration),

- full Z-sorting,

- camera zoom (based on speed)

- more generic AI (higher variability between enemies behavior)

- resolution choice

- ultra-sharp 768x240 centered window (from within 1409x240)

- 16-bit background

- intro shader effect (5-shader composite)

 

And probably a whole lot more I forgot. Though, I probably would want to implement the power-ups before a new vid. I'll think about it...

Are there any music tracks in particular you have in mind?.

 

I only ask as the music in Super Burnout was such a fantastic aspect of the game itself.

[VladR]

Well, I currently see 2 choices:

1. Spend ~$200 on 5-6 tracks from those royalty-free sites, but converting those formats to MIDI is proving quite problematic - the tunes are becoming severely butchered in the process, but I am trying multiple converters and some are doing better job than others, so there's hope.

2. Make an ad across various audio forums that I can offer, say, $500 for composing few tracks and see who bites.

 

I still need to experiment a bit with importing AIF instrument patches. I can freely change the instruments in my engine already, but haven't yet imported the new ones.

 

Regardless, you can't please everyone with choice of tunes, so I don't presume this aspect to be statistically significant...

[Lost Dragon]

Music can often be something of a sticking point for gamers.

 

It's your game, you decide what works best.

 

 

Don't fancy a return to the screaming guitar solos of Ace Combat etc from the Playstation 1 era?.

 

 

[VladR]

Don't fancy a return to the screaming guitar solos of Ace Combat etc from the Playstation 1 era?.

Sure. On a CD-ROM, why not ?

 

But on a 2 MB cart ? Where, at most, you can reserve 0.5 MB for audio ? And I'm not sure now if I even will have that much available.

 

Eventually, one of next games, can have 4 - 6 MB. But I am not going to postpone the first release just to put more music on a cart, that by all accounts, 50-70% don't really listen to, or don't care for.

 

 

Just look at how many, and how good games, shipped without music, yet it didn't really bothered jag players much. So, just having a music. Any music, is a huge plus. And I already have it, it's just not custom, yet.

 

But, every day I work with Audacity audio tool and Atari's sample audio code, I figure out something new and more and more pieces of the giant jigsaw audio puzzle are snapping in.

 

 

This audio engine, just like 3D renderer engine, will be reused by all other games, so once I figure out importing generic RAW patches (almost there), all later games will simply use the same framework and take 1% of the effort it is taking now to get the tunes inside due to the learning curve and related rewriting of the Atari code.

[+madman]

But I am not going to postpone the first release just to put more music on a cart, that by all accounts, 50-70% don't really listen to, or don't care for

If there's one thing we can count on from VladR it's not postponing his releases.

[+CyranoJ]

But on a 2 MB cart ? Where, at most, you can reserve 0.5 MB for audio ? And I'm not sure now if I even will have that much available.

 

Good to see you've done your research thoroughly.

[VladR]

 

Good to see you've done your research thoroughly.

What's that supposed to mean ?

 

Yeah, hypothetically, in a 3d flatshading game without textures, you could have 1.8 MB for audio, and just 0.2 MB for code+other data, but with some basic 2D art assets for menus and such, it's not very likely to happen, now is it ?

 

My current executable is 0.85 MB with 3 tunes (though, one is very short) and about 20 different audio patches. But, that's just one racing track, and just one set of enemies 3d mesh.

 

So, I still have over 1.15 MB space available. And there's still opportunity to use LZJAG compression. I've already tested it on each part of the executable and some parts indeed compress very well (55% on base code+data without audio).

 

Of course, filling ROM to the full means that I need another code that will handle copying just required sections from rom to ram on demand, but that shouldn't take too long...

[+CyranoJ]

You've been here how long telling us all you are the second coming of Gorf? And you don't know carts can be 2,4 or 6mb. Or if you do, why the hell would you limit yourself to 2mb?

 

Did you even open the h/w reference manual?

[VladR]

You've been here how long telling us all you are the second coming of Gorf? And you don't know carts can be 2,4 or 6mb. Or if you do, why the hell would you limit yourself to 2mb?

 

Did you even open the h/w reference manual?

Because I've read that a non-2 MB cart is a complication during cart creation process. Something about image splitting (or something, don't recall exactly).

 

Darling, literally 2 posts above, I already answered your question, but let me highlight it for you:

 

 

 

Sure. On a CD-ROM, why not ?

 

But on a 2 MB cart ? Where, at most, you can reserve 0.5 MB for audio ? And I'm not sure now if I even will have that much available.

 

Eventually, one of next games, can have 4 - 6 MB. But I am not going to postpone the first release just to put more music on a cart, that by all accounts, 50-70% don't really listen to, or don't care for.

 

 

Just look at how many, and how good games, shipped without music, yet it didn't really bothered jag players much. So, just having a music. Any music, is a huge plus. And I already have it, it's just not custom, yet.

 

But, every day I work with Audacity audio tool and Atari's sample audio code, I figure out something new and more and more pieces of the giant jigsaw audio puzzle are snapping in.

 

 

This audio engine, just like 3D renderer engine, will be reused by all other games, so once I figure out importing generic RAW patches (almost there), all later games will simply use the same framework and take 1% of the effort it is taking now to get the tunes inside due to the learning curve and related rewriting of the Atari code.

 

 

First madman throws an extremely lame non-sarcasm, now you do this ?

 

Guys, you're getting soft and lame

[LinkoVitch]

Suspect ROM/RAM addressing is confusing him, hell he keeps referring to AIFF's as 'patches' rather than samples, which are not difficult to understand, process or playback. The concept of 2/4/6MB of ROM and 2MB of RAM would blow his mind I suspect.

 

Oh and heads up.. for a 32bit cart (Jaguar standard width BTW), you will need to split a 1/2/4/6 MB game, the splitting has nothing to do with size of the data. Perhaps you should go back and read up on systems architecture a bit? Or here's an idea.. stop spouting buzzwords like you have a clue, when everyone here that actually does write code on the Jag can see from a mile off you are just spouting utter bollocks, maybe even actually make good on some of your claims? as they say. talk is cheap.

[Isgoed]

Just look at how many, and how good games, shipped without music, yet it didn't really bothered jag players much.

 

Well, it "bothers" me if a game like Attack of the Mutant penguins, Cybermorph, or Doom doesn't have music.

 

With Doom, some Jaguar players said that they didn't like music with that game anyway.

That's okay, there is the -0- button on the controller to turn music off, but Doom as it was introduced to the world had imo good (midi)music that fitted the gameplay fine.

 

So if you can produce a game with catchy/moody music that suits the game, I would welcome that

[42bs]

T2K without the sound track would be only half as good. That said, having a good music track isn't an easy thing (just went through this).

But then, in the early video game days, we made the sound track our selves: "Eye of the tiger" for "Empire strikes back"!

[Albert]

Stay on topic or I will lock this thread.

 

..Al

[VladR]

Stay on topic or I will lock this thread.

 

..Al

Yes, sir !

 

EDIT: I see you cleaned the thread while I was replying.

 

Sorry for giving you cleanup work....

Edited August 26, 2018 by VladR

[+Stephen]

Truthfully, I'll take a silky smooth framerate on a Jag game before worrying about what music it has.

[VladR]

Truthfully, I'll take a silky smooth framerate on a Jag game before worrying about what music it has.

Framerate will be dependent on how far I will be willing to go in terms of compromises between scene complexity and overall art vision.

 

If it's not going to be too much work (say, not more than about a week), I'll try to incorporate detail options, so you can choose, for yourself the compromise between framerate and visuals, because it shouldn't be too much work to create 1 or 2 additional sets of the 3D mesh, once I'm in 3dsmax...

[VladR]

Some progress on audio:

- I now can import any raw samples (e.g. instruments) and play them out. That is, those samples, that Atari's DOS-based tools actually manage to process, because Atari's audio tools hang on about one third (so far) of them.

- I created a new feature that Atari's codebase didn't have - I can easily swap one instrument for another at run-time, while reusing same MIDI tune, thus at run-time changing the way same tune sounds

- I spent 2 days studying some music composing tutorials, installed some DAW SW, and will try to compose some tunes by myself. I'm quite excited about it, actually. Even if it should be only for testing purposes...

 

 

If I wasn't so stubborn, I would have discarded Atari's audio code last week, but thank god for sticking with it, despite their shit not working. Of course, it sucks that certain instruments are non-importable, despite having exact same filelength and exact same sample-length and exact same bitrate, with only difference the actual sound that the instrument is producing.

 

I burnt so much time on getting the whole Atari's audio codebase working and refactored, that there's zero doubt I would have created a basic working DSP audio module in the same time. Too bloody late for that now.

It sure seemed like a low-hanging fruit, but by the time you get to the core, you see it's rotten inside...

[VladR]

Some gameplay progress:

- Created a generic component that takes care of all Power-Ups

- For now, I can Increase/Decrease Speed and Time, though it's generic enough that any action can happen

 

Increasing time via powerups is a great feature for a Game Mode where player has to go through checkpoints which add time (say, 2 or 5 or 7 seconds) - say like in the Tron game (I love that mode).

 

That would be an easy way how to easily prolong the longevity of game, especially if it's paired with some run-time/random procedural content generation.

[Paul Westphal]

Music with dope beats are usually a hit on the jag.

?

Edited September 1, 2018 by Paul Westphal

[rayik]

Because I've read that a non-2 MB cart is a complication during cart creation process. Something about image splitting (or something, don't recall exactly).

Its very easy to create split ROM carts

[VladR]

Music with dope beats are usually a hit on the jag.

?

Actually, I'm in the middle of creating such dope beats

 

I had no idea, till now, how much fun Sound Design is (all my previous PC/XBOX projects - I just subcontracted audio). This, is what I wanna do from now on. No more corporate bullshitry ! Not even for 10x more money...

 

 

Pure, 100% creativity - whether it's code, or 3D art, or audio or level design. AWESOME

 

Its very easy to create split ROM carts

Thanks, that looks like a good collection of tips! Would you mind if I shoot you a question or two, should I get stuck ? I'm ordering the related equipment from MCUMall this week, as my PreOrder To-Do List is just getting slaughtered

[rayik]

Thanks, that looks like a good collection of tips! Would you mind if I shoot you a question or two, should I get stuck ? I'm ordering the related equipment from MCUMall this week, as my PreOrder To-Do List is just getting slaughtered

No problem. Ask any questions you have either on the boards or by PM.

 

If you are going to be removing ROMs from a volume of old cart pcbs, I'd recommend you get a desoldering tool such as a Hakko FR-301 (or the prior version FR-300). I finally picked up one last week and wish I did so long before. Including the time learning to desolder, it took me 3 1/2 hours to remove ROMs from 40 cart PCBs (3,200 legs unsoldered). Really a much better way than what I posted in that thread.

[VladR]

Thanks, I will definitely include that Hakko in my order.

 

Out of curiosity, talking about 40 pcbs, what would be your rough time estimate for desoldering, splitting, burning, etc. and assembling 40 carts? Especially, while learning?

 

My current greatest worry is that the desoldering and related tasks are too high-precision, given my carpal tunnel in the right hand. That may put a hard limit on the throughput, but I'm hoping for at least 2-3 per day, with 3-4 hour breaks in between. I guess I am going to find out pretty soon...

[Gummy Bear]

I don't think the desoldering will aggravate your carpal tunnel too much.

It's really easy and quick with the right tool.

Doesn't really take any special technique, like when using braid.

The Hakko that rayik recommends is super easy. Fully electric, so you don't even need to cock it like with the old solder pumps.