Unreleased Jaguar Games.

[leech]

4 minutes ago, ataritiger said:

Very cool. Im unaware of st polygon games ported to jag by homebrewers from st or st fps of those games.

 

Technically genesis and snes can too, but chips improve things by 10x but still things lack, starfox was still like 15fps and virtua racing had alot cut out of it but its svp polygons and fps crushed sfx chip.

 

Was just asking with panther specs provided if was better than md or snes polygon fps.

No clue.  But the ST was faster head to head with the Amiga 500.  Faster CPU and all.  Since the Jag has the same CPU at 14mhz(I think) then it would be somewhere in between an ST and Mega STe (in 16mhz mode).  So even assuming the Jaguar ports were not using any of the other hardware, most polygonal games ST ports would run faster than an ST, slower than a Mega STe.

Asking if the Panther was faster than any system is like asking if the Amiga AAA chipset was faster.  Neither were made into actual working hardware that people could test.

[ataritiger]

2 minutes ago, leech said:

No clue.  But the ST was faster head to head with the Amiga 500.  Faster CPU and all.  Since the Jag has the same CPU at 14mhz(I think) then it would be somewhere in between an ST and Mega STe (in 16mhz mode).  So even assuming the Jaguar ports were not using any of the other hardware, most polygonal games ST ports would run faster than an ST, slower than a Mega STe.

Asking if the Panther was faster than any system is like asking if the Amiga AAA chipset was faster.  Neither were made into actual working hardware that people could test.

Cool ? thanks.

[Lostdragon]

On 8/8/2021 at 3:56 PM, ataritiger said:

Did he work on panther and jaguar or cybermorph or just made threads and did interviews about it? So he knows 100% cybermorph was never started on panther or you know panther couldn't do 3d?

One final time for clarity. 

 

 

Way back when GTW were looking at what platforms and titles had the legs for coverage in the then planned GTW book, Frank Gasking enquired what I knew of the Atari Panther and it's games. 

 

 

I'd been dabbling in crude interviews and misc lost games research to assist others with their projects and would always ask people if they worked on titles for any unreleased platforms, for example the Konix Multisystem or Atari Panther. 

 

 

RVG interviewed Fred Gill from ATD, i merely did a secondary source contact email with Brian Pollock as where possible, we rely on multiple sources. 

 

 

I also put the Q of Panther Cybermorph to misc Atari Corp sources who'd worked on it. 

 

Shinto i believe also looked into the claim, got same answers we did from his Atari Corp sources. 

 

 

Others asked Leonard Tramiel. 

 

 

The Community caaried out multiple source due diligence research and all of us got the same answer. 

 

 

 

I then merely pointed out the origins of the screenshots used in that now infamous, Fake News Atari Panther article, the Jaguar VHS Demo tape. 

 

 

The Pixel Nation Panther article is still used as a credible source of Panther material by some sites to this day, when it should be struck from the archives as it gets soo much wrong. 

 

 

Skip to around 4:10

 

 

 

You will see the very footage the falsely claimed Cybermorph Panther screens were lifted from. 

 

 

I went further into researching supposed Panther games in development, reaching out to key sources at Domark, Tengen, Atari Corp, HMS  etc. 

 

I interviewed Peter Johnson for ST Gamer magazine, asked him about his work on Panther SOTB

 

Guildo H was another exclusive interview at the time. 

 

Frank Gasking spoke to the Tiertex people who'd been given green light to port Strider II, but work never started. 

 

 

The community are to thank for what's now known about the Panther, I just did what i could to assist and provide credible research. 

Edited August 10, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Zerosquare]

Don't waste your time. You can lead a horse to water, but...

[ataritiger]

On 8/10/2021 at 2:22 AM, Lostdragon said:

One final time for clarity. 

 

 

Way back when GTW were looking at what platforms and titles had the legs for coverage in the then planned GTW book, Frank Gasking enquired what I knew of the Atari Panther and it's games. 

 

 

I'd been dabbling in crude interviews and misc lost games research to assist others with their projects and would always ask people if they worked on titles for any unreleased platforms, for example the Konix Multisystem or Atari Panther. 

 

 

RVG interviewed Fred Gill from ATD, i merely did a secondary source contact email with Brian Pollock as where possible, we rely on multiple sources. 

 

 

I also put the Q of Panther Cybermorph to misc Atari Corp sources who'd worked on it. 

 

Shinto i believe also looked into the claim, got same answers we did from his Atari Corp sources. 

 

 

Others asked Leonard Tramiel. 

 

 

The Community caaried out multiple source due diligence research and all of us got the same answer. 

 

 

 

I then merely pointed out the origins of the screenshots used in that now infamous, Fake News Atari Panther article, the Jaguar VHS Demo tape. 

 

 

The Pixel Nation Panther article is still used as a credible source of Panther material by some sites to this day, when it should be struck from the archives as it gets soo much wrong. 

 

 

Skip to around 4:10

 

 

 

You will see the very footage the falsely claimed Cybermorph Panther screens were lifted from. 

 

 

I went further into researching supposed Panther games in development, reaching out to key sources at Domark, Tengen, Atari Corp, HMS  etc. 

 

I interviewed Peter Johnson for ST Gamer magazine, asked him about his work on Panther SOTB

 

Guildo H was another exclusive interview at the time. 

 

Frank Gasking spoke to the Tiertex people who'd been given green light to port Strider II, but work never started. 

 

 

The community are to thank for what's now known about the Panther, I just did what i could to assist and provide credible research. 

Ok thank you I appreciate it. I believe you now. This must be Atari jag myth # 2 and #1 was developer posted final rom of fight for life around 2000, but nobody has it because they must have confused the beta or a later source code leak or something as final rom but there no proof the guy who made it who it seems honestly Atari treated him like crap, never posted final rom as Larry says in his youtube video and parrot info on search engines.

[Lostdragon]

Larry has his audience, but his research and fact checking badly need work done to them. 

 

When he covered Amiga Final Fight he failed to credit the person who found the Easter Egg and sent it to him and then went onto incorrectly explain how to activate it. 

 

When your asking for Patreons to support your channel, that's sloppy and you need to improve your game. 

[Yak]

It would have been very difficult to do polygonal 3D games on the Panther. The main reason for this, if I am recalling my Panther stuff correctly, is that Panther didn't have a frame buffer in the same way that more conventional machines like the ST and Amiga did. It had only 32k of RAM total, and display RAM was limited to a pair of *line* buffers. The line buffers were filled on a scanline by scanline basis by the OLP (Object List Processor), which read down a list of objects, determined which portions of which objects intersected the current scanline, and copied the relevant slices of those objects to the line buffer. So you couldn't just render a bunch of whole triangles to an offscreen frame buffer then swap buffers when you'd drawn enough. On Panther you were effectively "racing the beam" with the assistance of the OLP; whatever you drew had to complete in a frame. The upshot of this was that it was entirely a sprite-based machine. As well as not having a frame buffer to accumulate a decent amount of triangles in, you also had the limitation that the OLP could only traverse a finite list of objects, since traversal of that list, and rendering into the line buffer of any intersecting objects, had to complete within one scanline's worth of time.

 

The OLP could do scaling of objects, by repeating pixels when drawing into the line buffer, and you would have been able to do Sega-superscaler-style sprite scaling 3D with that; but even if you could, by playing carefully with changing the scale of sprites on a per-scanline basis, have possibly squeezed out some triangles, you would only have been able to draw an extremely limited number of them, and more than a few on a scanline would have caused the OLP to time out and stretch the display. 

 

Basically: Panther was a sprite-based machine, designed to generate displays that always completed with a single frame; as such it had no frame buffer, only line buffers, and was therefore entirely unsuitable for polygonal 3D. 

[sirlynxalot]

That prototype cybermorph video reminds me of air cars.

[ataritiger]

7 hours ago, Yak said:

It would have been very difficult to do polygonal 3D games on the Panther. The main reason for this, if I am recalling my Panther stuff correctly, is that Panther didn't have a frame buffer in the same way that more conventional machines like the ST and Amiga did. It had only 32k of RAM total, and display RAM was limited to a pair of *line* buffers. The line buffers were filled on a scanline by scanline basis by the OLP (Object List Processor), which read down a list of objects, determined which portions of which objects intersected the current scanline, and copied the relevant slices of those objects to the line buffer. So you couldn't just render a bunch of whole triangles to an offscreen frame buffer then swap buffers when you'd drawn enough. On Panther you were effectively "racing the beam" with the assistance of the OLP; whatever you drew had to complete in a frame. The upshot of this was that it was entirely a sprite-based machine. As well as not having a frame buffer to accumulate a decent amount of triangles in, you also had the limitation that the OLP could only traverse a finite list of objects, since traversal of that list, and rendering into the line buffer of any intersecting objects, had to complete within one scanline's worth of time.

 

The OLP could do scaling of objects, by repeating pixels when drawing into the line buffer, and you would have been able to do Sega-superscaler-style sprite scaling 3D with that; but even if you could, by playing carefully with changing the scale of sprites on a per-scanline basis, have possibly squeezed out some triangles, you would only have been able to draw an extremely limited number of them, and more than a few on a scanline would have caused the OLP to time out and stretch the display. 

 

Basically: Panther was a sprite-based machine, designed to generate displays that always completed with a single frame; as such it had no frame buffer, only line buffers, and was therefore entirely unsuitable for polygonal 3D. 

Wow ? thank ? you for great post.

[agradeneu]

18 hours ago, ataritiger said:

Wow ? thank ? you for great post.

Well, we told you that all the time! ?‍⚕️

[Lostdragon]

The only time i have ever seen D. I. D mention the Jaguar... 

 

Might as well put the scan up. 

[ataritiger]

4 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

The only time i have ever seen D. I. D mention the Jaguar... 

 

Might as well put the scan up. 

Nice.

[Lostdragon]

[leech]

2 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Man... wish I hadn't known Freelancer was talked about on the JagCD (of course maybe that is not what that says, translation available anywhere?)

That seriously would have been THE 'killer app' for our beloved toilet bowls.

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, leech said:

Man... wish I hadn't known Freelancer was talked about on the JagCD (of course maybe that is not what that says, translation available anywhere?)

That seriously would have been THE 'killer app' for our beloved toilet bowls.

It's preview in Gamesmaster Magazine, alongside Tempest 2000 and the AVP footage on Gamesmaster TV show, we're what convinced me to buy a Jaguar on day 1 here in the UK. 

 

 

Sadly we now know the screens used were from the PC version and Imagitec were struggling with the Jaguar CD drivers, were given the Jaguar Doom engine and the entire project was a disaster from start to finish. 

 

Ran poorly on PC and abandoned, attempts made to have it restarted on the Playstation under new owners, Gremlin, but nothing came of it. 

[Lostdragon]

Few more odds n sods if anyone can make use of em. 

 

 

[Zerosquare]

The first sentence of the JagCD blurb in the first picture is funny in hindsight. It means "As it is manufactured by Philips USA, Atari is confident in the quality of its product!".

[CrazyChris]

I don't recall this much texture mapping in the B&C version of Space War?

 

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by CrazyChris

[Lostdragon]

Yuzo Koshiro being asked about the Jaguar. 

[phoboz]

3 hours ago, CrazyChris said:

I don't recall this much texture mapping in the B&C version of Space War?

 

 

Does Spacewar use textured polygons, or is it actually scaled sprites?

I got the impression it is sprites when I played the demo, but I might be wrong?

[agradeneu]

6 hours ago, phoboz said:

Does Spacewar use textured polygons, or is it actually scaled sprites?

I got the impression it is sprites when I played the demo, but I might be wrong?

Ships are made of textured polygons.

[+Stephen]

Anyone know who coded Space War 2000?  Lot of Minter references (in code) - sort of like a demo that went off the rails and started to become a game.  Was it a covert project by 4-Play to slip one inside Atari?

[Lostdragon]

8 hours ago, Stephen said:

Anyone know who coded Space War 2000?  Lot of Minter references (in code) - sort of like a demo that went off the rails and started to become a game.  Was it a covert project by 4-Play to slip one inside Atari?

Rob Zybdel I believe. 

 

There have been conflicting opinions from both parties behind Battlesphere and Zero 5 that it was canned after Atari saw their titles. 

 

 

I have never seen independent verification of either claim from anyone within Atari myself. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

Early screens and working titles for what became World Tour Racing, Super Burnout, Power Drive Rally. 

 

I've also put up the Blue Lightning Press, as I seem to remember screens looking better in the early Previews than final game, perhaps someone can comment? 

 

 

 

Bit more Freelancer as well. 

 

 

 

Comments from  one the Imagitec staff:

 

#views expressed are entirely his own and i won't name him. 

 

Freelancer was a shit storm from day one to be honest - the
best thing about it was the concept art (by wayne reynolds) - I think
we used a 3D system by a small team of about 3 people that were
brought in from outside - mostly because by then everyone didn't like
Emerson Best, who was a rookie producer at Imagitec  and wound everyone
up, thinking he knew it all.

 

Emerson at  best was a green producer - he was brought in for god
knows what reasons - completely up his own arse - started to tell us
how to do everything and was generally massively disliked."


"I think Imag realised that the I- war engine wasn't going to cut
it, and I think Martin Hooley was briefly going to stump up the cash for an
off the shelf 3D engine, when out of the blue, a small team of people
- a three man team, suddenly appeared. No Idea who the poor fu#kers
were but we had a connundrum - we could do it in house or use this
other team and it was better that the other team would put up with
emerson cos we all didn't like him.

It did get to a point where even the external team called martin and
asked him why it was necessary that emerson called them every single
day for 3 hours every single morning though....

 

#it should be noted the above source from Imagitec Design stated the game NEVER used stop motion models, something we know it DID.. 

 

Here's the guy who did the work. 

 

 

http://www.nevillebuchanan.co.uk/

 

So take the above claims with a degree of caution obviously still some old wounds amongst Imagitec Design staff. 

 

Scott Stilphen's Atari Documentation shows Imagitec Design did take delivery of the Doom Engine, which confirms comments Andrew Seed made...

File dated:Feb 13 1995 Game has a ? next to listing for Original release Date.

Status:Expected/Revised date: 4/95..bought Doom Engine..Revised Schedule needed'

 

 

 

 

Another Imagitec Design musician told me.. 

 

 

HI Ross

 

This is a blast from the past.

 

I was involved with the game Freelancer at an early stage, creating music, however this was still ongoing when I left Imagitec so don’t know if this ever saw the light of day. I know it didn’t on the Jaguar CD. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

Last lot of Freelancer, plus the most bizzare press claim about hidden Easter Egg for a topless female character Fight For Life...