What was the Jaguar truly capable of?

[Shaggy the Atarian]

19 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

? Now now Clint, this is Atari we are talking about.

 

What did commercial coders moan about on Atari Consoles like the Panther and Jaguar, even the 7800?

 

Computers like the Falcon? 

 

 

(Ok..that could start a very long list ?)

 

RAM or the lack of...

 

 

Jinks coder talking about the 7800:

 

"The only downside to the 7800, IMHO, was the pitiful amount of RAM in the 
system which often made things....interesting.... ;-)"

 

Per Leonard Tramiel on the Atari Museum FB(back in 2017 I think it was), he stated that the Object Processor of the Jaguar was created to be efficient in using as little RAM as possible, their workaround to high costs of memory chips in those days. Granted, I don't know exactly how it did that, but that is what he stated, while debunking a number of other rumors surrounding the Panther (like saying that Raiden and Trevor Mcfur were in development for it).

 

The 7800 did have a separate line for adding more RAM though, several commercial release cartridges did do that. Still, Atari didn't foot the bill for it when it was always needed.

 

(Keep in mind though, the CoJag was under the guise of Atari Games, a separate entity from Atari Corp. Also being in the arcade business, they could've populated the boards with 8MB, if the game in question needed it)

Edited August 24, 2019 by Shaggy the Atarian

[Clint Thompson]

1 hour ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Now I need to pull the A51 board I have out of mothballs and look at it more closely  I imagine that Max Force also only has 4MB, but I wonder about the prototype games. Galloping Ghost Arcade in IL has Freeze, although this doesn't look like it would need more than 4MB (nice and smooth animations though):

 

 

 

Max Force was the 6MB board in the video linked a few posts back. I think the other prototype games relied more on a crazy amount of ROM chips for their data assets over RAM. 

 

May have already seen it before but if not, check out the massive amount of chips used for Freeze!

 

 

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

Wow,  I had not heard Jeff talk about doing I, Robot if he could...that would of been a far better experience i'm sure, but Atari were probably looking for a title that had more commercial viability. 

 

I, Robot too niche compared with Defender.

 

 

 

On the subject of Jeff (and it is Jaguar related in enough respects)...

 

 

I mean no offence to Jeff, but having followed him, interviews and quotes wise, since he started out, an awful lot of his talk sadly stayed just that.

 

I fully appreciate as Jeff himself put it, what he was allowed to write was up to "The boss dude" (or dudes. .) at Atari and they would  often to reject his proposals out of hand (Atari UK having no interest in him bringing ST/Amiga Defender II to the Lynx for example) , but during the Commodore 64 era he talked of wanting to do a Star Raiders type game. .

 

It never happened during that time.

 

Then he says he would of loved to of done Star Raiders 2000 on Lynx, but Llamsoft too small to risk Lynx development. 

 

His demo work on  the Panther was to create test routines for an epic Star Raiders type game he tells the press.

 

This was the last we ever saw of him attempt anything like Star Raiders. 

 

 

During the Jaguar era you can find him talking about how he'd do an upgraded version of Virus (ST/Amiga)...

 

How he wouldn't mind doing "..the Robotron Thang. ..Sinistar. ..yeah i hunger"...

 

Well ok Jeff you had a crack at Sinistar on ST/Amiga with Photon Storm,  bit hit n miss, but lessons learnt etc.

 

 

Then talk of how Jaguar Llamatron would be done:

 

"I'd love to do a 'Super Llamatron' on the Jag... massive complex maps full of baddies instead of just an arena, 
simultaneous 4-player games over comlynx, extreme speed and blastability, 
adrenaline rush, mad powerup weapons, and lots of fluffy beasties.."

 

 This would be the Robotron Thang no doubt.

 

I cannot fault him for wanting to update the classics, but post Jaguar we saw a lot more Tempest updates in one form or another and the likes of:

 

Polybius

Minotaur Rescue

GridRunner++

Hover Bovver II

(Cancelled) Unity

Space Invaders Extreme

Super Ox Wars( Galaga)

Goat Up

Five A Day (Time Pilot inspired)

Minotron 2112

Caverns Of Minos (Lunar Lander/Oids inspired)

Deflex 

 

And probably some i have missed.

 

What's happened to the idea of Jeff's take on Virus, Star Raiders and I, Robot? .

 

 

Home hardware now far more powerful than those available when he originally suggested what he'd love to do back then.

 

Far from an attempt at knocking his work, i would honestly love to see him approach the titles he's talked of.

 

It's clear they are close to his heart and the updates to Star Raiders i have played (from Star Raiders II on the A8, Star Raiders on the ST to that abomination on XBLA some years ago) he could inject some much needed life into a once legendary title.

 

I just struggle sometimes to understand how he chooses which games to update and why.

I'm still pissed that I never got a PC version of the Neon light synthesizer engine.

[Lost Dragon]

13 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Per Leonard Tramiel on the Atari Museum FB(back in 2017 I think it was), he stated that the Object Processor of the Jaguar was created to be efficient in using as little RAM as possible, their workaround to high costs of memory chips in those days. Granted, I don't know exactly how it did that, but that is what he stated, while debunking a number of other rumors surrounding the Panther (like saying that Raiden and Trevor Mcfur were in development for it).

 

The 7800 did have a separate line for adding more RAM though, several commercial release cartridges did do that. Still, Atari didn't foot the bill for it when it was always needed.

 

(Keep in mind though, the CoJag was under the guise of Atari Games, a separate entity from Atari Corp. Also being in the arcade business, they could've populated the boards with 8MB, if the game in question needed it)

I think it was Gamesmaster Magazine where they did an early look at the Jaguar and Peter Molyneux of Bullfrog said the limited amount of Ram onboard the Jaguar would make PC conversions difficult. 

 

 

I do remember Leonard being quoted as saying in his opinion the Jaguar came equipped with quite a lot of Ram for the era.

 

Also the  original design for the Jaguar only  had 0.5 MB, due to Ram prices being so high, but once they had finalised the Jaguar architecture , it had to be 2 Meg.

 

I'm glad Leonard debunked the Raiden on Panther claim.

Several other Atari Corp sources join him debunking the Crescent Galaxy claim.

 

 

Martin Hooley has apparently sworn blind Raiden,Humans and Daemonsgate were all in production for the Panther, but this is something so far over 10 Ex-Imagitec Design staff involved on all 3 of these games (Creators, Coders, Artists, Designers and Musicians) all deny.

 

 

Maybe Martin was doing all 3 out of the office himself?  ?

 

There's no love lost between Martin and Leonard though. .Martin has twice now used RetroGamer Magazine interviews to get in personal attacks on Leonard, so clearly some history between the 2 over the years.

[Lost Dragon]

And little side note:

 

I should stress even though the game itself was not to my personal liking,  i did very much appreciate Jeff commenting on how development was going, what he would like to use the extra storage space of the CD for when it was still planned as a CD title etc.

 

He's also been honest enough to admit he did not ask permission to copy Robotron when creating Llamatron,  just hoped  he wouldn't be  nailed to the wall over it ?
me to the wall... at that time I was

 

 

He also mentioned meeting Eugene Jarvis and he liked Llamatron. 

 

 

Jeff also commented that folks within Atari were not happy about him commenting on the progress of D2K (no idea who or what the concerns were though).

 

And i also wondered if Atari withdrew or got back the extra payments Jeff talked of Imagitec Design begging Atari for, once they were aware the soundtrack they were then writing was for CD not cartridge. .

Edited August 25, 2019 by Lost Dragon

[philipj]

Personally... I would love to dev for the Cojag hardware with the 68020 and the extra ram. Only in a perfect world; these days I'm focusing on the basics of programming let alone game making, this time without fail. Although extra and alternative hardware are dream for development, the software content is much needed in the Jag community, but if the Cojag was to ever become a consolized reality, I'm all for it 100%. I've been meaning to get my hands on a Cojag for sometime; I'll probably get one sometime down the road eventually.

[agradeneu]

6 hours ago, philipj said:

Personally... I would love to dev for the Cojag hardware with the 68020 and the extra ram. Only in a perfect world; these days I'm focusing on the basics of programming let alone game making, this time without fail. Although extra and alternative hardware are dream for development, the software content is much needed in the Jag community, but if the Cojag was to ever become a consolized reality, I'm all for it 100%. I've been meaning to get my hands on a Cojag for sometime; I'll probably get one sometime down the road eventually.

Why not develope for the PC then - plenty of power.  But more hardware power means also higher demands on quality/content. Honestly I don't see a point in developing for the CoJAg for power reasons, the Jag has still plenty to offer for homebrew devs and the least powerful console, the 2600, is getting excellent homebrew support. Add NES; C64, SNES or Genesis to the crowd. If you want power, develope for modern systems.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

On 8/24/2019 at 5:19 PM, Clint Thompson said:

Max Force was the 6MB board in the video linked a few posts back. I think the other prototype games relied more on a crazy amount of ROM chips for their data assets over RAM. 

 

May have already seen it before but if not, check out the massive amount of chips used for Freeze!

 

 

I hadn't seen that before, thanks for sharing! Gotta love arcade boards that had massive stacks of ROMs on them (making it even more fun when one of them would go bad to fix it). I do wonder how many frames per second would be added to stock Jag games running on any of these boards, but the amount of work it would probably take to port them over would be a hassle. Of course, if a vice-versa was done to get Freeze running on a stock Jag, that would make for a better puzzle game than FlipOut!

 

On 8/25/2019 at 10:04 AM, Lost Dragon said:

He also mentioned meeting Eugene Jarvis and he liked Llamatron. 

 

I run into Eugene about once a year at arcade trade shows, he's one of the only arcade execs who I'll see go around playing other people's games. I'll have to ask him what he thinks about Defender 2k (or if he remembers it  He's not always fond of talking about "old sh*t" as he calls it, as he prefers people talk about the stuff his company is up to now. But, he is easy going).

[philipj]

17 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Why not develope for the PC then - plenty of power.  But more hardware power means also higher demands on quality/content. Honestly I don't see a point in developing for the CoJAg for power reasons, the Jag has still plenty to offer for homebrew devs and the least powerful console, the 2600, is getting excellent homebrew support. Add NES; C64, SNES or Genesis to the crowd. If you want power, develope for modern systems.

 

I am... I've been spending time reading up on programming with "QB64" development environment for the PC, MAC, and Android, which seems like a decent place to kick things off. My only thing is I've spent a lot of time reading up on how the Jaguar works collecting info over the years I hate for that knowledge to go to waist. And yes I've been considering developing for more powerful modern console and porting down to retro; it certainly been on my radar to do. Also I've been looking at the "Atari 5200" where I recently got me one from eBay. It's kind of sad Atari wasn't able to over power the NES with the 5200; it certainly was more powerful with better resources, but that's for another topic. lol Don't want to through this topic off in a room full of Atari enthusiast. My desire to dev for the Cojag comes from a long drawn out dream from some years ago when I use to compare the console with the arcade counterpart. I'm a little more sober now versus the hardcore attitude I use to have some years back. ?

Edited August 27, 2019 by philipj

[+Stephen]

9 hours ago, InMain said:

I miss the crazy gorf days. These topics just aren't the same without him.

Why you little cuss(TM)!

[Kalani]

Jag is capable of endless speculation, flame wars and vaporware on forums.

[VladR]

19 hours ago, InMain said:

VladR with some HERO, road rash, and what was the thing with the car riding on the 360 degree track? Stun Runner! Bring all the Jag drama! I love it. 

I'm sure you do. You just created yet another account here yesterday.

 

PRGE is barely 6 weeks away. Then you'll get your fair share.

 

I'm tied up in Lynx for next 7 days (tomorrow is deadline for initial compo submission and week later for the improved one) but then it's back to THE Jaguar Fold. Can't wait

[philipj]

On 8/28/2019 at 10:26 PM, InMain said:

No disrespect intended, actually, the Gorf In Main Saga beats out even the Coleco Chameleon Saga for me as the most fascinating thing to ever happen on this board. I read some of those versus threads five or six times, and they weren't short! You can't bring up the potential of the Jaguar without thinking of the dude who had me legit wondering if the kitty could pull off Rogue Squadron.

 

I remember that topic... I think he was looking at how Lucas Games hacked the N64 for Rouge Squadron to run butter smooth by replacing the system bios with  something more efficient. I think all of that may have stemmed from that old BJL era replacing the physical Atari bios chip with another with BJL burnt on it using the old server card for the Atari ST and Falcon. It would've been cool to have found a software solution for doing something similar on the Jag what Rough Squadron did for the N64... That was some serious hard core shite, remember Battlesphere didn't even use the official encryption Atari provided so it was that sort of mentality about what the Jaguar had to offer. It certainly was what sort of inspired me to at least take a good look at the Jaguar for its strengths and weaknesses to the best of my understanding. Anything that PlayStation 1 or Sega Saturn is all but out of the picture for the Jaguar including Open GL. No modern 3D will do very well on the Jaguar so I would come to the conclusion for tweaking the living daylights out of the Jag was to draw on its strengths (Doom, Super Burnout, Phase Zero) and create something unique and hybrid. The GPU can't access ram like it ought to without a work around that's taxing, however it can handle so many teraflops of math at once thus I'd use that sort of gold nugget to come up with ideas. It was fun and still is to some degree today; I feel like if I get a really good handle on the Jaguar I can do some good stuff with it. Thanks for bringing that up InMain, that was a great memory.

[Clint Thompson]

1 hour ago, philipj said:

The GPU can't access ram like it ought to without a work around that's taxing, however it can handle so many teraflops of math at once thus I'd use that sort of gold nugget to come up with ideas.

If by teraflops you mean roughly .000000001 teraflops, then that would be correct in the amount of computational power the Jaguar could pull off at any given moment., probably less actually.

 

1 hour ago, philipj said:

I feel like if I get a really good handle on the Jaguar I can do some good stuff with it.

Well, I'm not sure you'll ever have as good a handle on the Jaguar like these guys did and just look what happened when they did... completely out of their realm!

 

 

 

[+CyranoJ]

1 hour ago, philipj said:

I think he was looking at how Lucas Games hacked the N64 for Rouge Squadron to run butter smooth by replacing the system bios with  something more efficient.  I think all of that may have stemmed from that old BJL era replacing the physical Atari bios chip with another with BJL burnt on it using the old server card for the Atari ST and Falcon.

 

Good luck updating the microcode on the Jaguar, especially via a BIOS update, or with burning a BJL EEPROM on an old server card.  

Someone above asked why this tread won't just die already?  This.  This kind of nonsense is why.

 

[philipj]

15 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Well, I'm not sure you'll ever have as good a handle on the Jaguar like these guys did and just look what happened when they did... completely out of their realm!

 

 

 

 

I remember that... it reminds of a YouTube about that machine. The case it pretty decent, but it's been a while since I sat in a dentist chair; don't won't drilling in my mouth no time soon. lol

 

Quote

If by teraflops you mean roughly .000000001 teraflops, then that would be correct in the amount of computational power the Jaguar could pull off at any given moment., probably less actually.

I stand corrected... Was probably thinking about the PS2; I was watching about the system. 

Quote

 

Atari Jaguar Technical Reference V8

The GPU is also intended to perform rapid floating-point arithmetic. It has no floating-point instructions as such,
but has some specific simple instructions that allow a limited precision floating-point library to be capable of in
excess of 1 MegaFlop.

 

 

 

 

15 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

 

Good luck updating the microcode on the Jaguar, especially via a BIOS update, or with burning a BJL EEPROM on an old server card.  

Someone above asked why this tread won't just die already?  This.  This kind of nonsense is why.

 

I think anything that doesn't have the official "Reboot Atari ST" rubber-stamp seal-of-approval will always be considered to be nonsense in the eyes of some people here; It wouldn't matter what I post. That's just MO that prevails consistently, but that's OK. If the people like the games and they're buying, the more power to you; you don't see me publicly saying anything about it... Just as if the people like to keep this topic afloat, then more power the them. I think it was other people keeping this topic going where I hardly post things here like I use to so what does my 2 cent matter; if the people like it, let them keep talking about it. What I post was apart of a distant history; I see nothing wrong putting it out there. Of course you don't have to replace the bios anymore today, but at one time you did if you wanted to program the Jaguar.

Edited August 30, 2019 by philipj

[+CyranoJ]

2 hours ago, philipj said:

I think anything that doesn't have the official "Reboot Atari ST" rubber-stamp seal-of-approval will always be considered to be nonsense in the eyes of some people here;

The idiocy above has nothing to do with Reboot, the Atari ST, or anything other than you.  I suppose if you drop your toast on the floor that's Reboot's fault as well in your world view? 

[philipj]

1 hour ago, CyranoJ said:

The idiocy above has nothing to do with Reboot, the Atari ST, or anything other than you.  I suppose if you drop your toast on the floor that's Reboot's fault as well in your world view? 

 

My fault??? I don't know what you're talking about... My world view is just fine, I just call it like I see it. Not quite sure what you're try to impose on me or what picture you're trying to paint of me, but no harm no foul right? SMH

Edited August 31, 2019 by philipj

[phoenixdownita]

4 hours ago, philipj said:

...

I stand corrected... Was probably thinking about the PS2; I was watching about the system. 

...

Try again, the PS2 was nowhere near 1 TFLOPS.

[+CyranoJ]

34 minutes ago, philipj said:

 

My fault??? I don't know what you're talking about... My world view is just fine, I just call it like I see it. Not quite sure what you're try to impose on me or what picture you're trying to paint of me, but no harm no foul right? SMH

 

Your own words are your fault, nobody elses.  Carry on having your little "Reboot rant" because that was the only picture being painted here.  Just the usual "no harm no foul" from someone after they edit their post and try to pretent nothing was wrong.  You'll be saying you wrote Steve Davis Snooker at the age of 3 if you carry on down this path.

 

SM(F)H.

[philipj]

4 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

Try again, the PS2 was nowhere near 1 TFLOPS.

My mistake... I do get the flops confused sometimes. I'm not really focused on the flops as I am on learning to program in QB64 at the moment.

 

2 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

 

Your own words are your fault, nobody elses.  Carry on having your little "Reboot rant" because that was the only picture being painted here.  Just the usual "no harm no foul" from someone after they edit their post and try to preent nothing was wrong.  You'll be saying you wrote Steve Davis Snooker at the age of 3 if you carry on down this path.

 

SM(F)H.

I only painted that picture because it appears your trying to put on some kind of spot like you've done in the past... I mean what do you think I am, chop liver? Words like nonsense and idiocy, I think you enjoy trying to flip people off and get them out of character; It doesn't have to be that way and not trying stir things up here, but it appears like you and others try and stir other people up for whatever reason. I'm just calling it like I see it.

[CPUWIZ]

The Jaguar is capable of making people hate each other, over some solder and plastic, more than any other system.  Hmm, maybe NeoGeo, who knows?

[+CyranoJ]

Carry on updating your microcode and burning a new bios with a server card then. Clearly no idiocy here. 

 

[philipj]

1 minute ago, CPUWIZ said:

The Jaguar is capable of making people hate each other, over some solder and plastic, more than any other system.  Hmm, maybe NeoGeo, who knows?

You're right, that sort of thing is a lot of "nonsense", but if you ever have an ideas and want to post on a forum, that seems like a sure way of getting things started... If you don't want to get hated on or anything like that just keep your silly ideas to yourself and let's pretend that the forum is free to post ideas silly or not.

[phoenixdownita]

22 hours ago, philipj said:

... I think he was looking at how Lucas Games hacked the N64 for Rouge Squadron to run butter smooth by replacing the system bios with  something more efficient.

....

I'll try.

 

The N64 had no BIOS to speak of  https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/1364/why-is-a-bios-dump-not-required-to-emulate-nintendo-64-games-in-most-modern-emul

 

The RSP was microprogrammable to begin with 

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/6261/nintendo-64-microcode-format

link to the gory details

http://ultra64.ca/files/documentation/silicon-graphics/SGI_Nintendo_64_RSP_Programmers_Guide.pdf

 

so CJ comments are smack onto the face of the fact that your statements are no more than technobabble in the way they are written.

 

Mind you I understand the general sentiment but you need to be factually correct first, this is technology, you can't make this stuff up as you go.