Jag's 3d is actually impressive?

[Lost Dragon]

18 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Fair enough. Unfortunately, I'm one of the ones who has a hard time appreciating the technical aspects of the game because I REALLY hate the rendered 90s graphic look that was so popular at the time on the Jaguar and other, contemporary systems. It's just so ugly to me. I've long since said that I'll take the modest, tasteful 80s arcade sprites over the 90s (and often today's, like on the Amico) rendered look.

With the above in mind, it's certainly fast and smooth, which is ALWAYS appreciated, and there are plenty of particle effects, but I don't see much going on with the backgrounds, number of enemies, or enemy sizes to consider it even inline with many contemporary SHMUPs, let alone beyond them. That in and of itself would be fine, but if we're talking a showcase of the Jaguar's 2D prowess, if this is it, then that's fine, but is it really something other systems (outside of the earlier 16-bit ones) would have struggled with in any way? In other words, what is the Jaguar doing here specifically that is taking advantage of its 2D prowess so I can understand better? (genuine question)

Bought it day 1 and literally hated it myself. 

 

 

Jeff kept the awful lightning gun from his earlier disspointing crack at Defender, Defender II on ST and Amiga, the art direction was awful and the gameplay simply utter chaos. 

 

Looking at the documents and quotes from Jeff about the games development, whilst it might of made better use of the hardware than Tempest 2000,it was a far weaker title to play. 

 

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-jaguar-defender-2000_30114.html

Edited August 16, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

Might as well put Jeff Minter D2K quotes from the time, back up here as well:

 

Well, after a slowish start, what with the fag-end of jetlag and a nasty cold,
got some nice stuff running this week.  Started out with an overhaul of the
graphics – my artist has re-done a lot of the stuff he’d drawn by hand as
rendered models, and they look pretty cool.  In particular, the Phish has
been replaced by this *massive* rotating space-station affair which just looks
gorgeous.I have modified its behaviour, to reflect the characteristics you’d
expect from such a huge enemy – now it takes a lot more shots to kill, and
has a nasty habit of lurking off the bottom of the screen until you appear,
when it zooms up and surprises you – nasty.  The 250 and 500 bonuses also
look a lot cooler now, as they’re little rendered rotating 3D digits.

All this tarting-up is leading up to D2K’s first public outing, which is
going to be at the ECTS in London at the end of this month.  By that time
Defender Plus should be largely done, and there may be some early progress on
the 2K mode to be seen, too.

Finished up the week by starting into the tiling generator for doing the
multilayer parallax in 2K.  At the moment there’s a screenful of parallax-
scrolling Flossies on the screen of my Jaguar… got the object
builder and tile map reader bits running now, just going to add a bit of
optimisation in the object list builder section, to ensure that the OLP only
has to traverse objects it really really needs on any given scanline, and then
I’ll be ready for a full test, running the existing game over the scrolly
background, to find out just how much background I can put in there before I
max out the OLP or drop out of my lovely fluffy 60Hz…

Next week: some more new graphics and more work on the tiling routine.  We’re
also expecting some new sound FX soon, and… the first three tunes on CD!
We’re hoping to have the game running off CD and playing the tunes by ECTS.
Apparently Imagitec got a bit freaked out when they knew that they were
composing for CD instead of cart, and begged for a bit more dosh from Atari…
to pay for all the session musicians they’ve had to get in now, to do
screaming guitar solos and that sort of thing… yum yum yum!

\
(:-) – Maybe they’ll get in Dave Gilmour for my *next* game…..
/

[Lost Dragon]

14 hours ago, sd32 said:

About Defender 2000, isn’t it running at only 30 fps? I think Minter mentioned it on an interview. It’s nice, but didn’t blow me away...maybe because I didn’t like the artwork 

Over to Jeff:

 

The difference between 30fps and 60fps is quite distinct and clearly

noticable. US TVs display at a rate of 60Hz, and if you can do a
complete screen update at that rate then no matter how fast objects
move, the motion will appear totally smooth. The difference is
particularly noticable in fast-scrolling games like D2K – which is why
I’m busting my nuts to keep 60Hz throughout.

However, on the subject of framerate bullshit, I saw some blurb for an
upcoming game – it might have been Rayman – which claimed framerates
>60Hz! Which would be completely meaningless unless in the context of
a monitor with a higher refresh rate. Certainy pointless for a
videogame system designed to plug into a TV.

\
(:-)
/

[Lost Dragon]

My favorite 2D shooter on Playstation (which i went and swapped at a later date ?) :

 

 

Not sure if there are better examples on the system but i loved the art direction. 

 

 

[roots.genoa]

1 hour ago, Lost Dragon said:

Not sure if there are better examples on the system but i loved the art direction.

Same artist as Metal Slug - it helps. It's available on both PS4 and Switch by the way.

[Lost Dragon]

1 hour ago, roots.genoa said:

Same artist as Metal Slug - it helps. It's available on both PS4 and Switch by the way.

Appreciated ?

[sd32]

5 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

My favorite 2D shooter on Playstation (which i went and swapped at a later date ?) :

 

 

Not sure if there are better examples on the system but i loved the art direction. 

 

 

Great game. One of the times the Playstation beat the Saturn version of a 2d game.

[marcio_napoli]

9 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

OK I'll play along

 

Zero 5 Jag (1997)

 

(note it is mostly flat shaded, very sparse use of textures, I can't quite tell if there's any Gourad shading going on)

 

DarXide 32x (1995)

 

 

(yup it stutters and begs for mercy but it is fully textured)

 

Don't get me wrong the Jag was a step-up compared to MD/SNES, wrt to PS1/Sat thanks but no thanks.

It really would have deserved a better/bigger library but I think even the 3DO was "a little ahead"

 

NFS 3DO (1994)

 

 

 

and even the 3DO Road Rush "it's a pipe version" (1994) is kind of impressive:

 

 

So yeah Zero 5 shows the Jag coulda/woulda/shoulda but just didnta ... 

 

of course the 3DO was way overpriced but with the PS1/Saturn just around the corner (and cheaper than the 3DO) ... the Jag was too little too late.

 

It could have mopped the floor wrt MD/SNES and also CD32/FM-Towns-Marty ... likely better than "der kludge" MD+32x but ... again too little too late.

 

Just remember Jag launch price 249US$, PS1 launch price 299US$ .... granted had the likes of Zero5, AVP, SkyHammer come around launch or close to it, the Jag could have put up a fight.

 

Skyhammer Jag (2000 release):

 

 

but then again Stellar Assault SS (1998)

 

 

successor of Stellar Assault 32x (1995 release)

 

 

Hi, a bit busy these days, but I'm reading the whole thread, lot's of fun here!

 

The comparison to the 3DO is interesting, I had one in 93 and can't put in worlds how mesmerizing it was back in the day, with games like Road Rash and NFS, it really was a sight to behold. These 2 alone were alien tech graphics.

 

When you compare the peak the 3DO achieved, it really seems the 3DO pulled a bit ahead of the Jag.

 

No disrespect intended to Jag developers, but (maybe) this is a case of the 3DO simply having better dev teams. EA was extremely talented, and really put a ton of effort on the 3DO.

 

I risk that comment as we know Atari would reach for the lowest bidders, and besides these super polished EA games, 3DO's 3d (on average) was as boxy as Jag's.

 

Ok ok, even if the 3DO was indeed a bit ahead, I should be, it was 700 USD!

 

The thing is, when we consider how difficult it was to program for the Jag, and the lowest bidders factor, have we ever seen the Jag's full 3d potential? I'd risk say we didn't, not even from Rebellion or Eclipse.

 

If the Jag had its own Rare, EA, Konami, Capcom developing for it, then yeah, we could say so.

 

Take the Genesis for example.

 

When we think every ounce of power was extracted from that thing, comes along a dev pushing out 32bit like graphics like Batman and Robin.

 

 

Imagine if the Jag did have similar cases, what we'd have seen...

[JagChris]

The 3D0 has a meg of video ram while the Jag has none. IMO Atari should have explored simple procedural texturing to offset that as much as possible.

[Bill Loguidice]

I feel like the 3DO handily beats the Jaguar in most categories. It certainly helps it was CD-based from the start, of course. However, like I stated earlier, it's not really fair to the Jaguar on one level to compare it to other systems, even the 3DO, which had vastly larger libraries with games put out by far better equipped and financed studios/publishers. The Jaguar library, even with the CD stuff added to it, is incredibly small. With that said, considering how historically poorly the Jaguar console and CD add-on sold (for a major system release), I suppose the library is in the correct proportion.

I'll still say that while systems like the Saturn, PS1, and yes, even the 3DO, showcased their full potentials with in-library examples from back in the day, I don't think the Jaguar ever had that chance. With that said, I also don't think there's all this hidden potential that's been suggested for the past few decades. There's definitely MORE potential than what's been shown, but I seriously doubt anything like what's been suggested by its most ardent fans or homebrew developers.

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I feel like the 3DO handily beats the Jaguar in most categories. It certainly helps it was CD-based from the start, of course. However, like I stated earlier, it's not really fair to the Jaguar on one level to compare it to other systems, even the 3DO, which had vastly larger libraries with games put out by far better equipped and financed studios/publishers. The Jaguar library, even with the CD stuff added to it, is incredibly small. With that said, considering how historically poorly the Jaguar console and CD add-on sold (for a major system release), I suppose the library is in the correct proportion.

I'll still say that while systems like the Saturn, PS1, and yes, even the 3DO, showcased their full potentials with in-library examples from back in the day, I don't think the Jaguar ever had that chance. With that said, I also don't think there's all this hidden potential that's been suggested for the past few decades. There's definitely MORE potential than what's been shown, but I seriously doubt anything like what's been suggested by its most ardent fans or homebrew developers.

What are homebrewers suggesting?

[agradeneu]

Po'ed might be the most complex and ambitious 3D engine running on the 3DO. 

I don't see this being much ahead of what the Jaguar does/could do. 

 

 

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

On 8/15/2020 at 8:48 PM, Bill Loguidice said:

Of course I have. However, Native demo is not a full game and there's been considerable speculation whether or not it could even fit in memory if they did try to finish it. I believe even the developers themselves said they hit a roadblock they couldn't surmount. But yes, if Native demo could have been a finished game, it would have certainly been extremely impressive and would have showed off the potential of the Jaguar and Jaguar CD nicely. It definitely looked next gen for the time and wouldn't be in the same grey area in terms of casual impressiveness that I feel Defender 2000 is. Of course, that's just my opinion. It's clear that some people here think that Defender 2000 has quite a bit going for it that I just can't grok.

The roadblock was the CD encryption protection.

I had a little chat with one of the devs about it.

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by agradeneu

[Austin]

50 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Po'ed might be the most complex and ambitious 3D engine running on the 3DO. 

I don't see this being much ahead of what the Jaguar does/could do. 

Many consoles can do many things if you make them. How well they do them is another story.

 

The Jaguar could certainly do what you see in 3DO PO'ed, but it's very unlikely it would even come close to touching the framerate that the 3DO one runs at. Even then, the 3DO game still gets reduced to slideshow levels at various points in the game.

[Lost Dragon]

57 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Po'ed might be the most complex and ambitious 3D engine running on the 3DO. 

I don't see this being much ahead of what the Jaguar does/could do. 

 

 

 

I had a lot of fun with that one on Playstation. 

 

The games press i saw at the time seemed to suggest this was about as good as commercial 3D engines were going to get on 3DO, hardware limits had been reached etc:

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

1 hour ago, agradeneu said:

What are homebrewers suggesting?

I think Bill is making a polite reference to the extremely worn out discussion of the Jaguar’s true 3D potential not being touched by commercial teams at the time and there have been ahem, individuals suggesting their efforts are going to set a new benchmark in performance.. 

 

Cue many, many years of discussion and the commercial releases have yet to be matched, let alone surpassed? 

 

 

Nobody is saying likes of Rebellion, Teque etc couldn't of ootimised engines further and get higher resolutions, better frame rates etc, the developers themselves have gone on record to state that, it's just the improvements would of been slight, not giant leaps forward in most cases. 

 

But over to Bill to clarify. 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[agradeneu]

6 minutes ago, Austin said:

Many consoles can do many things if you make them. How well they do them is another story.

 

The Jaguar could certainly do what you see in 3DO PO'ed, but it's very unlikely it would even come close to touching the framerate that the 3DO one runs at. Even then, the 3DO game still gets reduced to slideshow levels at various points in the game.

I think Iron Soldiers 2 3D engine is at least on par with that one. And it runs at a much better frame rate.

Edited August 16, 2020 by agradeneu

[JagChris]

I like the guided missile view. Everything speeds up beyond the walking mech mechanics and kinda gives you an idea of the real speed of the engine.

 

I think both Iron Soldiers have probably the best draw distances of any 3D polygonal Jag game. 

[Bill Loguidice]

39 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

I think Bill is making a polite reference to the extremely worn out discussion of the Jaguar’s true 3D potential not being touched by commercial teams at the time and there have been ahem, individuals suggesting their efforts are going to set a new benchmark in performance.. 

 

Cue many, many years of discussion and the commercial releases have yet to be matched, let alone surpassed? 

 

 

Nobody is saying likes of Rebellion, Teque etc couldn't of ootimised engines further and get higher resolutions, better frame rates etc, the developers themselves have gone on record to state that, it's just the improvements would of been slight, not giant leaps forward in most cases. 

 

But over to Bill to clarify. 

Yes.

 

As for 3DO 3D games, I usually think games more along the lines of Blade Force and StarFighter doing a better job of showing off the system's max 3D potential than something like PO'd, but to each their own. While the 3DO had better overall 3D capabilities than the Jaguar, again, it wasn't exactly designed to excel at them either. We'd have to wait for the PS1 for a true 3D-centric machine.

[Austin]

41 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

I think Iron Soldiers 2 3D engine is at least on par with that one. And it runs at a much better frame rate.

Hardly. IS2 still features tons of flat/shaded objects, while nearly everything in PO'ed is texture-mapped. Not to mention, the textures in PO'ed are of significantly greater quality. There's also loads of other things happening at a much faster pace with the amount of 2D objects and projectiles it's throwing around. Yes, IS2 runs smooth, but visually it's a tiny step above the first game. Skyhammer is a far more appropriate comparison, and that game struggles to render a small corridor with four textured walls, heh.

[marcio_napoli]

8 minutes ago, Austin said:

Hardly. IS2 still features tons of flat/shaded objects, while nearly everything in PO'ed is texture-mapped. Not to mention, the textures in PO'ed are of significantly greater quality. There's also loads of other things happening at a much faster pace with the amount of 2D objects and projectiles it's throwing around. Yes, IS2 runs smooth, but visually it's a tiny step above the first game. Skyhammer is a far more appropriate comparison, and that game struggles to render a small corridor with four textured walls, heh.

I was playing Skyhammer just a few days ago and know what you mean, but the story doesn't end there, there's more going on.

 

Here's the interesting thing:

 

When you point your ship at a corridor with buildings on the side, framerate can be very decent, let's say 15 fps (wild guess).

 

Then some other times, framerate drops to 4 or 5 fps, but there's nothing out of ordinary on screen, just the same side buildings.

 

Does anyone know why?

 

It's almost like the engine is rendering further 3d scenery lost into the far distance, but due to keeping consistency of visible sight, it blocks that with darkness, even though much further has been actually drawn.

 

I'm pulling that out of my @ss, just a wild guess.  Because I see no other explanation... even when several enemies (fully polygonal, fully textured) are on screen, framerate remains high (15 fps).

 

And then it suddenly drops with nothing but side buildings. Really strange.

 

Isn't that a clear case of lack of optimization on Jag games?  Not a hardware limitation, but programming problem?

 

Again, pulling all of these out of my @ss.

 

A quick note regarding IS2:

 

As my OP suggested, the problem with IS (1 and 2) is that all that high poly count is lost in things like explosions, which happen just for a brief moment.

 

On such moments, the Jag pulls out tons of polygons, proving it actually can do it.

 

If all those polys had been used for fixed level geometry, we'd be actually surprised how capable the hardware is for complex 3d environments.

[agradeneu]

6 hours ago, Austin said:

Hardly. IS2 still features tons of flat/shaded objects, while nearly everything in PO'ed is texture-mapped. Not to mention, the textures in PO'ed are of significantly greater quality. There's also loads of other things happening at a much faster pace with the amount of 2D objects and projectiles it's throwing around. Yes, IS2 runs smooth, but visually it's a tiny step above the first game. Skyhammer is a far more appropriate comparison, and that game struggles to render a small corridor with four textured walls, heh.

Except:

 

1. Po'ed is not fully textured as it misses floor and ceiling tmaps. That is really an obvious one.

 

2. Objects in Po'ed are animated sprites with roughly 2-3 animation frames

 

3. Animated objects in IS2 are polygon 3D models, often fully textured. Object texture mapping is very detailed

 

4. There is loads of things happening with 3D rendered objects and animation in IS2

 

5. The frame rate of IS2 is much higher and the animations are generally smoother. You are confusing frame rate with game speed. For high frame rate, you need to process/render more images per second. So the rendering speed of IS2 is higher.

 

6. Enemy behaivor in IS2 seems to be more complex and realistic.

 

7. Both games process and render a true "free to roam" 3D world, with polygons. You can look up and down, and in Po'ed there is even some vertical movement. Thats why I think this is a very interesting comparison.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

5 hours ago, marcio_napoli said:

I was playing Skyhammer just a few days ago and know what you mean, but the story doesn't end there, there's more going on.

 

Here's the interesting thing:

 

When you point your ship at a corridor with buildings on the side, framerate can be very decent, let's say 15 fps (wild guess).

 

Then some other times, framerate drops to 4 or 5 fps, but there's nothing out of ordinary on screen, just the same side buildings.

 

Does anyone know why?

 

It's almost like the engine is rendering further 3d scenery lost into the far distance, but due to keeping consistency of visible sight, it blocks that with darkness, even though much further has been actually drawn.

 

I'm pulling that out of my @ss, just a wild guess.  Because I see no other explanation... even when several enemies (fully polygonal, fully textured) are on screen, framerate remains high (15 fps).

 

And then it suddenly drops with nothing but side buildings. Really strange.

 

Isn't that a clear case of lack of optimization on Jag games?  Not a hardware limitation, but programming problem?

 

Again, pulling all of these out of my @ss.

 

A quick note regarding IS2:

 

As my OP suggested, the problem with IS (1 and 2) is that all that high poly count is lost in things like explosions, which happen just for a brief moment.

 

On such moments, the Jag pulls out tons of polygons, proving it actually can do it.

 

If all those polys had been used for fixed level geometry, we'd be actually surprised how capable the hardware is for complex 3d environments.

Skyhammer is not a finished game and most likely unoptimized. It likes to crash too. 

[agradeneu]

6 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Yes.

 

As for 3DO 3D games, I usually think games more along the lines of Blade Force and StarFighter doing a better job of showing off the system's max 3D potential than something like PO'd, but to each their own. While the 3DO had better overall 3D capabilities than the Jaguar, again, it wasn't exactly designed to excel at them either. We'd have to wait for the PS1 for a true 3D-centric machine.

There are no definitive answers to that. Don't underestimated the power of optimization and little programming tricks. You can cheat a lot with (3D) games, e.g. good good art direction can make quite a difference.

 

I remember the days ca. 2007 when I got ridiculed in forums when stating that we will see fantastic games for the PS3 in the future, because when it lauchned everyone was hating on it and reasoning on how the hardware was a desaster.  Later we got Uncharted 2, God of War 3 and The Last of Us.

 

Recently we saw devs pushing the 7 years old PS4 to run impressive games like Last of Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. Ask a PC fan and he will say the PS4 was already underpowered and outdated rubbish when it launched. 

 

 

 

 

[+Sauron]

3 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

There are no definitive answers to that. Don't underestimated the power of optimization and little programming tricks. You can cheat a lot with (3D) games, e.g. good good art direction can make quite a difference.

 

This exactly. Many people don't realize just how important this is when it comes to creating "impressive" graphics. And it's not just true of 3D games, it applies equally well to 2D. Put the Jag's hardware in the hands of a AAA development team with the resources to match what they need and I'm sure we'd see them create something that looks jaw-dropping in comparison to what we typically got on the same hardware.