Games that should have been on Jaguar

[awbacon]

On 11/8/2019 at 9:05 AM, Clint Thompson said:

Happy Birthday!

 

Out of all things, Killing Time is the only game I've ever played in my entire life that has made me physically sick after roughly 25-minutes. Something is super wonky with the skipping of frames or jerkiness when turning left/right that just makes me incredibly nauseous. I had to watch a video again to remind me but now remembering the serious framerate drop issue.

You have to use the strafe to avoid it. Yes the framerate is trash, but I still love it!

[awbacon]

 

 

Now here is one I wonder if the Jag could handle. It never (outside of Rayman) seemed to push pure 2D visuals. I'd love to know just how many sprites the Jag could push around given the best coding and optimization possible

[awbacon]

Also I could take a port of Escape from Monster Manor. Maybe with some damn floor and ceiling textures!

[Gummy Bear]

The Jag needs a fishing game!

[Machine]

22 hours ago, Gummy Bear said:

The Jag needs a fishing game!

 

Fishing Derby 2000!!!

[Lost Dragon]

On 9/3/2019 at 10:51 PM, agradeneu said:

I expected a lot more PC and Arcade ports: Sim City 2000, TIE Fighter, Day of the Tentacle Deluxe, Rebel Assault, Raiden II, Hexen, Heretic, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Mechwarrior, Jaguar Turrican, Gunship, Descent, Dark Forces, Jaguar Ultima

I put this up for ValdR elsewhere, but here is how Descent was brought to Playstation:

 

 

there is actually 3.5 meg of RAM available. 0.5 meg for  sound effects, 1.0 meg in vram (for  textures
 and screen buffers), and then the 2.0 meg for code/data.
 

 Considering that the PC box says 4MB of RAM is the minimum requirement, that isn't such a bad leap.  But Descent 1
 really used about 9MB during runtime.
   
  So basically, we reduced everything to fit in the required slots. We made all the sound effects fit in the 0.5 meg of
 sound ram.  Then, we made it so that all the textures on each level fit into the 1meg of VRAM.  Each level load then
 fills the VRAM with all new textures.
  So then all I had left was the code and data.
 
 
  The code for Descent isn't that large, so I had around 1.5 megs left for all of the Descent data.  That was the hardest thing...
 

 so I basically looked for anything that used extra memory to buy speed and took it out.   For instance, we store a
 normal for each wall on the PC.  
 
On the PSX, I calculated all the unique normals in a mine and stored them separate from the walls.   Also, I took out the low-detail models for the polygon robots.  This slows the PSX down, because a robot in the distance actually draws with the high-detail
 model! Also, the PC used megs of data storing u,v's, lighting values, and texture info for each wall in the mine, even if there was no wall there!  On the PSX, I only stored these for walls that used them.
 
 
 I also went through all the data structures and restricted ranges of variables so that I could pack them in a short or a byte if they were originally stored in an int.
 
 
  The hardest part of the port was not making it fit in 2MB, it was making it look good and render fast using the
 hardware to draw textures.  The texture mapper only has  integer u,v's and only does linear interpolation,  and you
 cannot tile a texture more than 2 or 3 times.  
 
Even if the hardware is really fast, it is still linear, so you still have to do a lot of subdivision to make things look good,
 and each subdivision requires a good chunk of CPU time, and the CPU is only 33 mhz.   So this limits the number of polys,even if the hardware can draw billions per second.  
 
 
 
  The assumption that we didn't need as much code because the PSX does texturing in hardware isn't that correct because we actually had to put in quite a bit of code to make up for the
 limitations of the hardware texture mapper.

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

I put this up for ValdR elsewhere, but here is how Descent was brought to Playstation:

 

 

there is actually 3.5 meg of RAM available. 0.5 meg for  sound effects, 1.0 meg in vram (for  textures
 and screen buffers), and then the 2.0 meg for code/data.
 

 Considering that the PC box says 4MB of RAM is the minimum requirement, that isn't such a bad leap.  But Descent 1
 really used about 9MB during runtime.
   
  So basically, we reduced everything to fit in the required slots. We made all the sound effects fit in the 0.5 meg of
 sound ram.  Then, we made it so that all the textures on each level fit into the 1meg of VRAM.  Each level load then
 fills the VRAM with all new textures.
  So then all I had left was the code and data.
 
 
  The code for Descent isn't that large, so I had around 1.5 megs left for all of the Descent data.  That was the hardest thing...
 

 so I basically looked for anything that used extra memory to buy speed and took it out.   For instance, we store a
 normal for each wall on the PC.  
 
On the PSX, I calculated all the unique normals in a mine and stored them separate from the walls.   Also, I took out the low-detail models for the polygon robots.  This slows the PSX down, because a robot in the distance actually draws with the high-detail
 model! Also, the PC used megs of data storing u,v's, lighting values, and texture info for each wall in the mine, even if there was no wall there!  On the PSX, I only stored these for walls that used them.
 
 
 I also went through all the data structures and restricted ranges of variables so that I could pack them in a short or a byte if they were originally stored in an int.
 
 
  The hardest part of the port was not making it fit in 2MB, it was making it look good and render fast using the
 hardware to draw textures.  The texture mapper only has  integer u,v's and only does linear interpolation,  and you
 cannot tile a texture more than 2 or 3 times.  
 
Even if the hardware is really fast, it is still linear, so you still have to do a lot of subdivision to make things look good,
 and each subdivision requires a good chunk of CPU time, and the CPU is only 33 mhz.   So this limits the number of polys,even if the hardware can draw billions per second.  
 
 
 
  The assumption that we didn't need as much code because the PSX does texturing in hardware isn't that correct because we actually had to put in quite a bit of code to make up for the
 limitations of the hardware texture mapper.

When I wrote ports I mean more like rebuild versions of those games. PC and consoles were very different architectures that time, so direct ports are not really what you want. PCs had lots of computional power and lots of RAM but were TERRIBLE with graphics rendering. "G Police" reqired a beefy Pentium CPU to run anything near as good as the Playstation original.  

[Lost Dragon]

39 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

When I wrote ports I mean more like rebuild versions of those games. PC and consoles were very different architectures that time, so direct ports are not really what you want. PCs had lots of computional power and lots of RAM but were TERRIBLE with graphics rendering. "G Police" reqired a beefy Pentium CPU to run anything near as good as the Playstation original.  

Loved both G-Police Games on Playstation and was gutted when Playstation 2 Police (supposed to head up Sony PS2 online gaming along with new Colony Wars), but they were too ambitious for the hardware.

 

 

I know Bill Rehbock wanted Descent on the Jaguar, but it would of had to of been built from the ground up and without a large installed user base, what publisher is going to fund that?  

[awbacon]

Descent never did it for me. I remember when it came out it was getting great reviews but when I purchased it and played it...I never got into it. I should try it again at some point though and see if I was missing something. Recently I did a video on Battle Circuit, and I wasn't super into the game when it was in arcades but this year I def fell in love with it. Weird how sometimes games are somehow BETTER when you play them years down the road from release

 

 

I'd def take a port of Battle Circuit though.

[awbacon]

 

 

I def think Jaguar could have handled moving these types of polygons around. Are there any examples like this from the Jag of internal demos of the polygon rendering power of the hardware?

 

I'd be curious to compare them for fun

[Fredifredo]

NHL Open Ice : 2 on 2 Challenge using the NBA Jam Engine should be funny

 

MADDEN NFL 98 convert from Genesis 

 

A baseball game ...

[awbacon]

 

For some reason these reminded me of Cybermorph and Battlemorph. Early 3D loved fighter ships lol

[MyMelodyChan]

The perfect that could have been on the Jaguar 

I chose this because Jaguar can perfectly handle it!

[Cobra Kai]

I think the Jaguar would explode if forced to run SM64.

[awbacon]

On 12/8/2019 at 7:02 AM, Kobra Kai said:

I think the Jaguar would explode if forced to run SM64.

Lolol...maybe Jag could have handled Bubsy 3D....the real king of 3D platformers!

[awbacon]

 

Even a port of any of the Darkstalkers games on Jaguar would have been awesome. If PS1 could handle a cut down animation port I don't see why Jag couldn't

[Lynxpro]

Considering what the Lynx coders are doing with Mortal Kombat [it looks amazing, check out the video presentation from SillyVenture 2019 in Poland from this weekend], an arcade perfect conversion of Mortal Kombat to the Jaguar would be fantastic... obviously with ProController support...

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

Considering what the Lynx coders are doing with Mortal Kombat [it looks amazing, check out the video presentation from SillyVenture 2019 in Poland from this weekend], an arcade perfect conversion of Mortal Kombat to the Jaguar would be fantastic... obviously with ProController support...

why not Mortal Kombat 2 then?

[+grips03]

Would be great to see Maldita Castilla

 

 

[sd32]

11 hours ago, agradeneu said:

why not Mortal Kombat 2 then?

Yeah, why settle for the first one. If only MK2 would have received the same treatment as NBA JAM TE from the same coders for the Jag... that would have been more than enough for me BITD.

[sd32]

14 hours ago, awbacon said:

Lolol...maybe Jag could have handled Bubsy 3D....the real king of 3D platformers!

Bubsy 3D is better than a lot of Jaguar 3d games... i would take it! Also, i dont think its "THAT" bad, hehe.

[agradeneu]

6 hours ago, grips03 said:

Would be great to see Maldita Castilla

Yeah that one is great, also Super Hydorah. 

[Kalani]

On 9/4/2019 at 10:41 AM, agradeneu said:

Around 4000 titles were released for the PS2 during it's lifetime, it has a huge library of  games and lots of classics. Do you really think 156 Million consoles were sold just on marketing metaphors and empty promises and people kept buying PS2s  because they had "no idea of games" and it was a nice piece of paperweight? Your argument is seriously flawed by just looking at the data. The PS2 had the best library of games, that was the most important reason it's still holds the title of the most popular console in history. Calling the launch of the PS2 "abysmal" in context of the Jaguar is quite a streeeeeeetch, GT3 was already presented at E3 and released in 2001, just like GTA 3. But surely the Jaguar would have sold 150 Million instead of just 150.000 if only Ataris marketing was better and more 64 bit "Do the math" lol

"Software sells hardware" is a mantra that worked well with most systems, even more so with Wii and PS3 which both were completely defined by their exclusive games. The turnaround Sony did with the PS3 is a fine example how that works and it benefitted them in the long run with the huge success of PS4 which is mostly an outcome of excellent brand reputation and the trust of people that sustainable software support justifies a longterm investment into new hardware.

They had a strong launch Wii and ps2 lots of hype and both had promise of killer apps. The gaming market has been in transition. First wave of grown gamers grew up bought more expensive warez. 

[Tidus79001]

I just came across gameplay footage of Tenseiryuu: Saint Dragon today (first time that I had seen or heard of it) and my first thought was that it looked amazing and something would perform well as a port to the Jaguar.   I know that it probably isn't ever likely to happen, but one can always hope & dream.

 

 

Edited December 15, 2019 by Tidus79001

[roots.genoa]

4 hours ago, Tidus79001 said:

I just came across gameplay footage of Tenseiryuu: Saint Dragon today (first time that I had seen or heard of it) and my first thought was that it looked amazing and something would perform well as a port to the Jaguar.   I know that it probably isn't ever likely to happen, but one can always hope & dream.

I first discovered this game on the Atari ST, so I know someone who could make it happen...