What was the Jaguar truly capable of?

[agradeneu]

In all seriousness, the jaguar can probably do much more impressive effects than the neo geo due to sheer processing power. But the amount of graphics and data the neo geo could access are on a whole different level.

 

Just an indication that the amount of data of NEOGEO is probably a "tad" overestimated. A 165 Kbyte background in 16 bit color for a Jaguar game when converted to 4 bit Color is roughly around 1/4 of the data =41 Kbyte. An 128x128 explosion bmp in 4 bit color is the same data like 32x32 explosion bmp in 16 bit color (an explosion which is actually used in a Jaguar game btw). Now Keep in mind that Native is using 1.) 16 bit Bitmaps 2.) real time unpacking the data with the DSP "on the fly"

WHILE maintaining a flawless 60 FPS/s!

 

NEO GEO games are all about the artwork and the sheer amount of artwork crammed into huge ROM space. Rayman on the Jaguar still does better with big 16 bit color sprites and smoother animation ,all with just 2MB ROM space!

Edited November 7, 2018 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

 

Spoken by someone who actually knows.

Highly disprespectful of the actual creators of Native. Either you are totally clueless or just too full of yourself to realize the bigotry of your statement. Duranik are proven developers, they used any system they were working on to the fulllest potential - Lynx, Dreamcast and hopefully Jaguar again. It's not a sign of weakness to acknowledge their master class in terms of technical and graphical prowess. Native is the legit benchmark for any 2D game on the Jaguar. PERIOD. Their work and modesty (no BS talk but hard work!) should encourage everyone. Now its time to stop pointless arguments wasting my time and energy I could use elsewhere - welcome to my ignore list!

Edited November 7, 2018 by agradeneu

[+madman]

NEO GEO games are all about the artwork and the sheer amount of artwork crammed into huge ROM space. Rayman on the Jaguar still does better with big 16 bit color sprites and smoother animation ,all with just 2MB ROM space!

Rayman on the Jag has bigger sprites and smoother animation than every single Neo Geo game? Is that what you mean by the Jaguar doing "better" than the Neo Geo?

[Austin]

Highly disprespectful of the actual creators of Native. Either you are totally clueless or just too full of yourself to realize the bigotry of your statement. Duranik are proven developers, they used any system they were working on to the fulllest potential - Lynx, Dreamcast and hopefully Jaguar again. It's not a sign of weakness to acknowledge their master class in terms of technical and graphical prowess. Native is the legit benchmark for any 2D game on the Jaguar. PERIOD. Their work and modesty (no BS talk but hard work!) should encourage everyone. Now its time to stop pointless arguments wasting my time and energy I could use elsewhere - welcome to my ignore list!

 

Dude, if making a logical comment is enough to get slapped on your ignore list, grow some thicker skin.

 

It's irritating to me when armchair experts become so adamant what a system is "capable" of, willfully ignoring those that actually do have experience (i.e., people like CJ who, oh I don't know.. actually program Jaguar games).

[philipj]

 

Just an indication that the amount of data of NEOGEO is probably a "tad" overestimated. A 165 Kbyte background in 16 bit color for a Jaguar game when converted to 4 bit Color is roughly around 1/4 of the data =41 Kbyte. An 128x128 explosion bmp in 4 bit color is the same data like 32x32 explosion bmp in 16 bit color (an explosion which is actually used in a Jaguar game btw). Now Keep in mind that Native is using 1.) 16 bit Bitmaps 2.) real time unpacking the data with the DSP "on the fly"

WHILE maintaining a flawless 60 FPS/s!

 

NEO GEO games are all about the artwork and the sheer amount of artwork crammed into huge ROM space. Rayman on the Jaguar still does better with big 16 bit color sprites and smoother animation ,all with just 2MB ROM space!

 

One of the things I admired about the Jag was its ability to do high resolution, but I see why a lot of developers never really shot for the 600x400 res style graphics in the beginning... Just looking at Neo Geo specs on Wikipedia and other emulation sites in the past (and I haven't forgotten the links provided on this topic, thanks btw), I think it's pretty impressive what Duranik was able to do with the animation. I guess in my search for a comparison between the two hardware the Neo Geo and the Jaguar was an attempt to find a balance for graphics and animation in a way that helps to free up some of the Jag hardware responsibilities. I remember reading about how Duranik used the DSP to decompress those graphic files and how there wasn't enough cartridge space to finish the game. Just look at the animation YouTube... That's was the game they intended, but never saw the light of day, but the fact that they got that close meant that you do a modest level of good stuff on the Jaguar. I've always known that the Arcade Jamma standard the Neo Geo sported on its hardware using high bandwidth was a big factor, I just didn't know to what degree, but just look at the size of the Neo Geo cartridge versus the Jag cartridge with two output slots at the bottom instead of the typical small mass market game console off-the-shelf cartridge with fewer pins than the Neo Geo.

 

[Gummy Bear]

Highly disprespectful of the actual creators of Native. Either you are totally clueless or just too full of yourself to realize the bigotry of your statement. Duranik are proven developers, they used any system they were working on to the fulllest potential - Lynx, Dreamcast and hopefully Jaguar again. It's not a sign of weakness to acknowledge their master class in terms of technical and graphical prowess. Native is the legit benchmark for any 2D game on the Jaguar. PERIOD. Their work and modesty (no BS talk but hard work!) should encourage everyone. Now its time to stop pointless arguments wasting my time and energy I could use elsewhere - welcome to my ignore list!

And you branded ME defensive?

 

I love the Jag, but wishful thinking ain't going to make it better than facts demonstrate.

 

Calm down with your unbridled Duranik worship. You're losing credibility hand over fist.

[+madman]

I've always known that the Arcade Jamma standard the Neo Geo sported on its hardware using high bandwidth was a big factor, I just didn't know to what degree, but just look at the size of the Neo Geo cartridge versus the Jag cartridge with two output slots at the bottom instead of the typical small mass market game console off-the-shelf cartridge with fewer pins than the Neo Geo.

 

Nonsense...the JAMMA connector has nothing to do with that, it simply supplies voltage, outputs video and reads control inputs. The home console isn't JAMMA and is the same overall architecture.

[philipj]

Nonsense...the JAMMA connector has nothing to do with that, it simply supplies voltage, outputs video and reads control inputs. The home console isn't JAMMA and is the same overall architecture.

 

Well clearly the home console isn't JAMMA, but thanks for shedding some light on that... It's been years since I looked at anything JAMMA other than Wikipedia specs and emulation sites. The point I was making was trying to find a balance concerning graphics and animation on a limited file size versus what the Neo Geo cartridge was handling; I'm not even talking about emulation any more at this point for the sake of clarity, but just graphics, animation, and file size... Something that Duranik dealt with when they used the DSP to decompress the images; it reminded me of the JagPEG format I read about in the Jag documents that used CRY via the GPU; I use to think Duranik was using that particular format for there graphics to cram in a cartridge.

Edited November 7, 2018 by philipj

[+madman]

 

Well clearly the home console isn't JAMMA, but thanks for shedding some light on that... It's been years since I looked at anything JAMMA other than Wikipedia specs and emulation sites. The point I was making was trying to find a balance concerning graphics and animation on a limited file size versus what the Neo Geo cartridge was handling; I'm not even talking about emulation any more at this point for the sake of clarity, but just graphics, animation, and file size... Something that Duranik dealt with when they used the DSP to decompress the images; it reminded me of the JagPEG format I read about in the Jag documents that used CRY via the GPU; I use to think Duranik was using that particular format for there graphics to cram in a cartridge.

The only thing JAMMA provides is a common interface for arcade boards. It outputs whatever RGB signal the board generates. It doesn't have anything to do with bandwidth of the Neo Geo or anything of the sort. The multiple buses on the Neo Geo itself are part of what made the Neo so powerful.

[PeterG]

If I remember correctly the Native Video above is from a planned Nuon version and not for the Jag...

[Lost Dragon]

If I remember correctly the Native Video above is from a planned Nuon version and not for the Jag...

Unseen64 confirms your thoughts:

Note that while the videos below say that they are from the Atari Jaguar version, these are actually the NUON demos Duranik had made.

https://www.unseen64.net/2010/07/13/native-ii-nuon-cancelled/

Edited November 7, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[+CyranoJ]

Guys calm down. Just enjoy it for what it is.

[Zerosquare]

A slick grey-and-red fumes generator?

[+madman]

A slick grey-and-red fumes generator?

I think it's an unfounded beliefs and rumors generator these days.

[phoenixdownita]

Unseen64 confirms your thoughts:

Note that while the videos below say that they are from the Atari Jaguar version, these are actually the NUON demos Duranik had made.

https://www.unseen64.net/2010/07/13/native-ii-nuon-cancelled/

Interesting that it became Sturmwind on the DC if I have to believe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmwind

[MAYAman]

I thought the Jaguar did decent 3D, Iron Soldier is great. I think that they should have done more 2.5D games like Donkey Kong Country and maybe 2D sprite monster games like Neo Geo. Just my thoughts.

[Lost Dragon]

Might as well get a rational quote from High Voltage Software up to compliment the other commercial coder comments before any publications celebrating the Anniversary of the Jaguar go into biased mode.

 

Originally, I had to use Atari's music code (even though I had my own code). Atari's music code caused all sorts of bandwidth problems which involved major bandwidth hogging (two reads per cycle per channel regardless of the sample rate). In order to allow the DSP to access the bus during display, I had to drop in tons of "null" objects with the release flag set. Anyhow, the Atari music code caused major nightmarish headaches which three months of patching my code couldn't fix (yep, threw away a lot of time trying to make shit fly). Anyhow, I finally just wrote my own music code that worked and I got a 30% boost in my framerate immediately. The new music code would also allow the DSP to help perform tasks.

 

Unfortunately, I didn't

have time to move some of the decompression threading to the DSP which had plenty of time left over with my code running. If I had been able to use my music code from the start, WMCJ could have very well been running at 5-10 FPS faster!!!!!!! It still runs at a respectable 12-15 FPS but 17-20 FPS would have been a definite possibility.

 

One of the reasons why NBAJ TE runs sooooooo fast and sooooo

smooooooooth is that I didn't have to deal with any code conflicts like this.

 

I got complete freedom over the programming design and it really shows in how good and how quickly the project turned out.

 

adisak @ high voltage software

 

So basically we might of seen WMCJ running with a faster frame rate, it still needed a lot of other key issues addressing,but at least we know why it ran at the speed it does.

Edited December 3, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[swapd0]

I wonder if these flaws were detected with the first prototype of the hardware but maybe Atari was in a rush to release the console as soon as posible.

[Lost Dragon]

I wonder if these flaws were detected with the first prototype of the hardware but maybe Atari was in a rush to release the console as soon as posible.

They were certainly under pressure to get the hardware out.

 

Rob Nicholson of Hand Made Software said that he felt the chipsets needed another 2 revisions at least.

 

And the amount of coders/publishers etc that have come forward over the years stating Atari knew game X wasn't ready to ship or adding texture mapping to it,to be seen as competing with 3DO upwards, yet released it anyway,speaks volumes.

[Lost Dragon]

Tad more from WMCJ coder, as i feel it's important to establish that people like myself aren't saying Jaguar couldn't of been pushed further, but that even if code had been optimised to the best of it's ability, you'd just of seen better frame rates.

 

All to often over the years claims were made that can create an unrealistic level of expectation for those unfamiliar with the Jaguar and i believe a poster stated a few pages back there wasn't any documented evidence to suggest the Jaguar had really been pushed?.

 

 

I disagree..there is ample evidence and from commercial coders in Europe and the USA..

 

Anywho the other snippet of WMCJ info:

 

The game is looking really good right now. I have optimized and optimized the game everywhere and right now it runs at about 15 fps

at a resolution of 320x220. However, this could be faster if I didn't need to unpack all the character animations on the fly but since there are 12-15 Megabytes of sprite frames, I need to keep them compressed and I unpack them immediately before they are displayed. This amounts to megabytes of compressed data being slung around which obviously

requires some additional work

 

However, the game looks very good and has a very smooth feel to it

with the AI camera tracking the characters and all their moves. The

entire zooming thing is amazingly non-annoying (I've played games with

continuously moving cameras and most tend to make you a bit dizzy or simply detract from your ability to control the game). Finally, I

have been spending a lot of time fine-tuning gameplay.

 

Wikipedia writers can thank me later

Edited December 3, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[JagChris]

Notice how he's not kicking and screaming and throwing a babyfit and blaming the DSP like the id software guy does.

 

Adisak just took care of business.

[sd32]

I wonder if Pitfall is using the mentioned Atari music code, and if its one of the reasons why it runs at a lower framerate than the 16 bit versions... how many games could have run a bit smoother if they werent using it?

[agradeneu]

Tad more from WMCJ coder, as i feel it's important to establish that people like myself aren't saying Jaguar couldn't of been pushed further, but that even if code had been optimised to the best of it's ability, you'd just of seen better frame rates.

 

All to often over the years claims were made that can create an unrealistic level of expectation for those unfamiliar with the Jaguar and i believe a poster stated a few pages back there wasn't any documented evidence to suggest the Jaguar had really been pushed?.

 

 

I disagree..there is ample evidence and from commercial coders in Europe and the USA..

 

Anywho the other snippet of WMCJ info:

 

The game is looking really good right now. I have optimized and optimized the game everywhere and right now it runs at about 15 fps

at a resolution of 320x220. However, this could be faster if I didn't need to unpack all the character animations on the fly but since there are 12-15 Megabytes of sprite frames, I need to keep them compressed and I unpack them immediately before they are displayed. This amounts to megabytes of compressed data being slung around which obviously

requires some additional work

 

However, the game looks very good and has a very smooth feel to it

with the AI camera tracking the characters and all their moves. The

entire zooming thing is amazingly non-annoying (I've played games with

continuously moving cameras and most tend to make you a bit dizzy or simply detract from your ability to control the game). Finally, I

have been spending a lot of time fine-tuning gameplay.

 

Wikipedia writers can thank me later

The flaw in this is quite simple: The coder thought the game was good, but it was NOT, by any means. The sprites look crap and animate poorly, it's a total waste of Hardware resources. The color choices are ugly. Its poorly throughout. The devs were a bit in denial I think. If this game is "pushing the Jag", its not very successful/effective doing so.

Edited December 3, 2018 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

They were certainly under pressure to get the hardware out.

 

Rob Nicholson of Hand Made Software said that he felt the chipsets needed another 2 revisions at least.

 

And the amount of coders/publishers etc that have come forward over the years stating Atari knew game X wasn't ready to ship or adding texture mapping to it,to be seen as competing with 3DO upwards, yet released it anyway,speaks volumes.

The SNES and other console hardware were not perfect either. You can't really blame the hardware for poor gameplay execution anyway, 1 on 1 fighters were done a thousand times on weaker machines and HMS screwed KN up like no other. It was a MK rip off anyway, formuliac bare bones trash, but they could not pull that off. I don't buy those excuses anymore, sorry.

A lot of Jaguar games look meh because of rushed, sometimes downright rubbish art assets, showing no care for quality, imagination whatssoever. I'm quite amused, ppl are always debating hardware specs for that matter, citing excuses from all sources. It's just another myth. Luckily we have Rayman, and if you analyze that game, it becomes obvious that the Jaguar indeed had a lot of unfulfilled potential, especially with rendering impressive 2D artwork.

[JagChris]

I agree with the animated poorly part. They can be a little floaty.

 

But beyond that they are scaled and rotated bitmaps, not polygons. I think the game is rather nice looking for what it is.

 

And it runs at over 320x200 resolution!

 

Neither games use the GPU manager as it wasn't ready yet.

 

Also makes no mention if advanced techniques such as splitting the display etc are used.

Edited December 3, 2018 by JagChris