"Practical" Jaguar Hardware Upgrades

[roots.genoa]

Since nobody replied, I tried to look for it and the Jaguar seems to display regular polygons. The reason I was asking is someone claimed the 3DO port of Tomb Raider is using quads, so I was wondering if it wouldn't be relevant to do 3D on Jaguar that way. Then again, if nobody didn't do it before, it might not be of course. ?

[+Stephen Moss]

On 11/27/2021 at 4:42 PM, Clint Thompson said:

The idea of creating 3D stuff on the Jag is awesome but there’s also a reason it took VLADR literally 20 years to create a single stage 3D tunnel polygon demo while no one else had created any 3D anything for the Jag from a homebrew standpoint. At least not anything nearly as complex.

If I had the time and could do it in BASIC rather than assembler I would try, having made Tie Fighter, Y-Wing and Star Destroyer models in STOS 3D, I only got as far as hacking objects into the Atari 3D Demo which uses the original 3D render 3D2JAG, the newer 3DSCONV might produce better/faster results if it works and anyone were to try it.

 

As I recall VLADR was writing his own 3D engine rather than using the Atari engine, maybe if there was a 3D plugin to JagStudio in a similar way to the U-253 sound engine that might encourage people to look at 3D a bit more.

 

The other problem is creating the models, maybe things have improved over the last few years but when I was looking at it I found a lot of software proports to produce 3DS files but when you look at them they are nothing like the files Autodesk produce and so not being true 3DS files the Atari converts do not play well with them.

I found Milkshape produces 3DS files the converter liked, but could not find a dimension based input as opposed to freehand interface so used Gmax with the Starfleet command exporter, then import into Milkshape to convert to 3DS.

 

Not exactly convenient if you prefer using dimensions when modelling, which could deter some people.

 

@roots.genoa

It has been many years since my brief I look at 3D on the Jag so I maybe miss remembering, but as I recall the 3DS to Jaguar converter use triangular ploys, but there is a switch to reduce the poly count that I think combines some polys to rectangles.

 

[Sporadic]

28 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

Since nobody replied, I tried to look for it and the Jaguar seems to display regular polygons. The reason I was asking is someone claimed the 3DO port of Tomb Raider is using quads, so I was wondering if it wouldn't be relevant to do 3D on Jaguar that way. Then again, if nobody didn't do it before, it might not be of course. ?

The Jaguar doesn't have dedicated 3D hardware. It will display whatever polygons you tell it to. It has no preference between quads and triangles. It's equally crap at drawing both ?

[+CyranoJ]

The urge for people to have a super sub-par 3D game experience over a rather splendid and flued, 60fps, high coloured 2D *FUN* one always amazes me.

[+Gemintronic]

Eventually original hardware will be too expensive and brittle to use.  The only thing practical I can see is a community driven "Jaguar II" in FPGA.  EMUTOS or Linux for those who want to dev on the console itself.

[tripled79]

On 12/1/2021 at 3:06 AM, CyranoJ said:

The urge for people to have a super sub-par 3D game experience over a rather splendid and flued, 60fps, high coloured 2D *FUN* one always amazes me.

Look at how well Checkered Flag turned out...

[philipj]

On 12/1/2021 at 2:37 AM, Stephen Moss said:

The other problem is creating the models, maybe things have improved over the last few years but when I was looking at it I found a lot of software proports to produce 3DS files but when you look at them they are nothing like the files Autodesk produce and so not being true 3DS files the Atari converts do not play well with them.

I found Milkshape produces 3DS files the converter liked, but could not find a dimension based input as opposed to freehand interface so used Gmax with the Starfleet command exporter, then import into Milkshape to convert to 3DS.

Hi Stephen...  There's a few options out there that might require having to use other older animation packages... There's still the old "OBJ or Object" file format from the old "Lightwave" software packages used on the Amiga machines... Also let's not forget that "Lightwave" was used on the Playstation 1 to animate objects so there's stuff out there on that sort of thing as well. The old "Impulse Imagine 3D" program also uses the OBJ format standard; it also started out as an old "Amiga" 3D raytracer and animation package although it's user interface is a little quirky to use has a bit of a learning curb... There's Windows version of "Imagine" out there you can download for free; they both used the Motorola 68000 for everything so it's quite possible to make a bit of a compromise by letting the 68K do some 3D while letting the GPU rasterize the 3D stuff. Then there's the old "Polyray Raytracer" standard similar to how the POV Ray format is; I have an old book called "Animation How To" that uses "QBASIC" to write animation descriptions as a test vehicle before porting the animation to Polyray format.

 

This is just a few things this whole Jaguar journey has allowed me to look into...

 

 

[agradeneu]

On 12/1/2021 at 9:47 AM, Sporadic said:

The Jaguar doesn't have dedicated 3D hardware. It will display whatever polygons you tell it to. It has no preference between quads and triangles. It's equally crap at drawing both ?

Compared to ST and Amiga it has. But I am not wasting my time to argue things that were already debunked by John Mathieson years ago.

 

I can't code anything on Jaguar - it must be crap with everything!

Edited December 4, 2021 by agradeneu

[+CyranoJ]

9 hours ago, tripled79 said:

Look at how well Checkered Flag turned out...

Yeah if only they'd used QBASIC and let the 68K do some 3D while letting the GPU rasterize the 3D stuff.

They must feel like utter fools now.

[philipj]

Well I got to start somewhere CJ... Better to start on a positive note without all of the silly sarcasm.

[Atariman]

When it comes to 3D, I think it is pretty cool what some folks have come up with. Sure, the Jaguar isn't a 3D powerhouse, but I even appreciate when some 3D elements are thrown in alongside stuff that is predominantly 2D... For example, although I know it certainly isn't a homebrew game, doesn't Tempest 2000 have some polygon-based elements? Definitely correct me if I'm wrong... 

[Zerosquare]

Tempest 2000 does use polygonal 3D indeed.

[philipj]

Posting a couple of YouTube favorites I like to draw inspiration from; I'm thinking of taking note from some old-school by basing my (Concept 3D engine) around the 68000 using the Motorola to control everything... The old graphical workstations of old basically used terminals like the ST or the Ikonas (Motorola based terminals) to control the mainframes that crunched the math. I always get a kick out of the old school graphic stuff that handled real-time 3D in a meaningful way, but that's just my personal preference. Also I've noticed that the 3D models were pretty simplified in those days using "splines, nurbs," and other simplified forms of 3D modeling common in CAD stuff and were small in file sizes... I think with the Jaguar, less is probably more if used properly, but that's just a theory IMO.

 

 

 

[+Stephen]

On 12/4/2021 at 5:28 AM, CyranoJ said:

Yeah if only they'd used QBASIC and let the 68K do some 3D while letting the GPU rasterize the 3D stuff.

They must feel like utter fools now.

Don't forget - GPU in main, and pages upon pages of number-wang spreadsheets showing cycle counts!

[philipj]

13 hours ago, Stephen said:

Don't forget - GPU in main, and pages upon pages of number-wang spreadsheets showing cycle counts!

You know... at one point, the QBASIC community was once flourishing with enthusiast before the DOS community took a nosedive... There was some optimism and a level of zeal I can certainly admire today. As I mentioned before the QB64 thing is a language to prototype game ideas before porting them to other systems like the Jaguar. In the meantime here's a neat video of what was possible using Old-school QBASIC...

 

https://youtu.be/982eKRzFReI