Battlemorph is criminally underrated

[ZylonBane]

11 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Right. However that's just 1 bottleneck IMO. 

The single most significant bottleneck, yes.

[Lostdragon]

On 12/31/2021 at 11:43 PM, JagChris said:

I think even ATD said they were phoning things in around that point getting ready to jump ship for PSX land.

 

It didn't need texture mapped everything. I think it just needed more care. It's not a bad game. It's mediocre. For me it's only memorable for being bizarre. 

Pretty much. 

 

 

ATD admitted it was a contractual obligation title, they had to finish it for Atari and in doing so it meant they were late in terms of being able to develop their first PlayStation title. 

 

 

Only a small team, so didn't have the resources at that point to have multiple titles in development. 

 

 

It was Atari who wanted it texture mapped, in order for the system to be seen as being able to compete with the 3DO, ATD say they made the decision to use texture mapping wisely, rather than go overboard with it. 

 

 

Sounded a very similar situation to the one Imagitec Design found themselves in with I War.. 

 

You have a 3D Engine designed to push a lot of flat shaded polygons, Atari then say we want texture mapping, your coders know what it'll do to the frame rate, but it's Atari paying the bills, so you try and reach a compromise. 

 

 

Fred Gill:

 

ATD was happy to sign contracts for Blue Lightning and Battlemorph after we finished Cybermorph; it provided a steady stream of income and allowed us to expand. We hoped that instead of a fast-seller, the Jaguar might be a slow-burn, but it wasn’t to be.
With the Sony and Sega announcements, it became clear that Sony and Sega had leap-frogged the Jaguar, and we were indeed backing the wrong horse.

 

It was Leonard that wanted us to texture map everything in BattleMorph, and it was Leonard that insisted everything was textured in Hover Strike with disastrous results. Something that had been quite playable at 15-20fps, was crippled down to an unplayable 5fps as a result (it was only later that the Iron Soldier guys discovered a ‘hack’ which allowed the texture palette to be a texture source, doubling the speed of texture mapping for small textures).

 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

On 12/30/2021 at 6:59 AM, JagChris said:

 

I'm not referring to it being just gouraud shaded polygon's. That's fine. It was the weirdness.

 

The sizes were all out of proportion. The batteries were giant Duracell. The power lines were just squares. The fish were as big as the subs. What was the bonk enemy on the head homing missile about? Bizarre. 

 

The art direction was kinda sloppy to me. Weird to my friends. One described it as someone taking shrooms and then making a video game.

 

I'm with JagChris here, ATD made some very strange art design choices and a giant hammer as a weapon just felt beyond surreal. 

 

 

I grew up with Starglider II on the Atari ST and the UK team at Argonaut had a much better idea of how to design planet landscapes etc  than any of the ATD team it seems. 

[agradeneu]

13 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Pretty much. 

 

 

ATD admitted it was a contractual obligation title, they had to finish it for Atari and in doing so it meant they were late in terms of being able to develop their first PlayStation title. 

 

 

Only a small team, so didn't have the resources at that point to have multiple titles in development. 

 

 

It was Atari who wanted it texture mapped, in order for the system to be seen as being able to compete with the 3DO, ATD say they made the decision to use texture mapping wisely, rather than go overboard with it. 

 

 

Sounded a very similar situation to the one Imagitec Design found themselves in with I War.. 

 

You have a 3D Engine designed to push a lot of flat shaded polygons, Atari then say we want texture mapping, your coders know what it'll do to the frame rate, but it's Atari paying the bills, so you try and reach a compromise. 

 

 

Fred Gill:

 

ATD was happy to sign contracts for Blue Lightning and Battlemorph after we finished Cybermorph; it provided a steady stream of income and allowed us to expand. We hoped that instead of a fast-seller, the Jaguar might be a slow-burn, but it wasn’t to be.
With the Sony and Sega announcements, it became clear that Sony and Sega had leap-frogged the Jaguar, and we were indeed backing the wrong horse.

 

It was Leonard that wanted us to texture map everything in BattleMorph, and it was Leonard that insisted everything was textured in Hover Strike with disastrous results. Something that had been quite playable at 15-20fps, was crippled down to an unplayable 5fps as a result (it was only later that the Iron Soldier guys discovered a ‘hack’ which allowed the texture palette to be a texture source, doubling the speed of texture mapping for small textures).

 

 

 

"Phoned in" is strictly what you read into this....

Contract obligations does not mean the designers did not care. They made a very good job with BM. The game is one of the best Jag games for many fans and I am not sugarcoating anything. So, if that game was "phoned in", what was Supercross 3D or a dozen of other titles? Objectively, it's design is sensible and carefully laid out.

Sean Patten was the producer and I think he was one of the best Atari had. 

 

 

 

BTW, it's gouraud shading, not flat  

Edited January 9, 2022 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

13 hours ago, ZylonBane said:

The single most significant bottleneck, yes.

Makes me wonder why I can't use a Geforce RTX with a Pentium 100??

 

 

 

 

[agradeneu]

12 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

I'm with JagChris here, ATD made some very strange art design choices and a giant hammer as a weapon just felt beyond surreal. 

 

 

I grew up with Starglider II on the Atari ST and the UK team at Argonaut had a much better idea of how to design planet landscapes etc  than any of the ATD team it seems. 

It's surreal by design, it's creative. 

 

The capabilities of the Jaguar are not good enough to produce realistic 3D graphics, at least for a fairly complex 3D environment. (I war looks much weirder than anything in BM)

 

It's ok you are not liking it, but there is no logical causality for you both argueing it was "phoned in".

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by agradeneu

[Lostdragon]

54 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

"Phoned in" is strictly what you read into this....

Contract obligations does not mean the designers did not care. They made a very good job with BM. The game is one of the best Jag games and I am not sugarcoating anything. So, if that game was "phoned in", what was Supercross 3D or a dozen of other titles?

Sean Patten was the producer and I think he was one of the best Atari had. 

 

 

 

BTW, it's gouraud shading, not flat  

I didn't have the interview with Chris Gibbs and Fred Gill to hand last night, as the original was on my ipad which recently died, but knew it had been uploaded here. 

 

 

Chris talks of Sam Tramiel wanting the game to be texture mapped, Fred in his RVG interview talked of it being Leonard.. 

 

 

The Edge article clearly stated ATD were under obligation to finish Battlemorph and as a result, they were late starting PlayStation and Saturn development. 

 

I've already put up the conflicting claims from Fred and K.L.H over the issue of Blue Lightning being designed from scratch for the Jaguar CD, in the thread concerning it's review score, this morning, the more quotes there are from ATD, the more conflicting information that seems to come forward. 

 

And the  Jaguar development era doesn't sound the happiest of ATD's either. 

 

 

I didn't say the designers didn't care, I said they made some very strange art decisions, which having a giant, floating hammer as a super weapon was.. 

 

 

Jez San and the team at Argonaut, in my opinion, achieved far more in terms of environmental and craft design on far more limited hardware, than ATD did with Battlemorph. 

 

 

 

Battlemorph isn't some wacky space game and the hammer weapon felt so out of place and looked ridiculous 

 

Starfox is surreal but it doesn't throw in the absurd to the degree Battlemorph does. 

 

When i am looking to spend a lot of time with a game, I tend to appreciate solid art design, design choices that have you wanting to explore and discover, not roll your eyes and think wtf is that?. 

 

 

Totally throw my hands up over any technical jargon mistakes. 

 

 

Flat shaded/igouraud shaded,  I should of said non textured, but going off what's been reported, the point remains, like Imagitec with I War, it was sources within Atari who wanted the texture mapping, not the coders, designers, as they knew it'd hit performance, but Atari were the ones putting up the money. 

 

As for Sean, never said a word against him, loved I. S, but he was also producer for Jag CD Blue Lightning, so not sure what the point is here with him, he's been producer on some flagship Jag titles and a dog of a title. 

 

 

Didn't actually realise until today Sean did stuff like this :

 

http://tabletopgeeks.com/interview-sean-patten-of-iron-handsnecromundicon/

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, agradeneu said:

It's surreal by design, it's creative. 

 

The capabilities of the Jaguar are not good enough to produce realistic 3D graphics, at least for a fairly complex 3D environment. (I war looks much weirder than anything in BM)

 

It's ok you are not liking it, but there is no logical causality for you both argueing it was "phoned in".

 

I'll try and put my feelings across more subjectively here. 

 

 

Basically having spent an awful lot of time back in the day on Argonaut Software's Starglider  II, which was running on little more than a 68000 CPU on the ST (i was envious of the sampled whalesong on the Amiga version), I personally felt Argonaut understood how to design what Battlemorph was attempting and implemented it far more successfully, than ATD did with Battlemorph on the Jaguar CD. 

 

With Starglider II, I came away with the distinct impression the team had put in an awful lot of time and effort, ensuring each planet had its own characteristics, with differing inhabitants and features and the environments just worked. 

 

 

With Battlemorph, it just felt like the CD storage offered more scope for variation, they had learnt better coding routines from Cybermorph and the game represented an opportunity to put in what they couldn't in Cybermorph, but the game was being designed within a very realistic commercial environment, they knew the Jaguar itself was struggling the Jaguar CD was not going to change that. 

 

 

And to make things more tortured for the development and design process Atari wanted the game to visually match what Atari saw as showcase 3DO software. 

 

 

I have never come away with the feeling Battlemorph is ATD's proudest achievement, I think that honour goes to Rollcage. 

 

 

I think they lacked artists of the same natural ability of Argonaut and that was reflected in both Cybermorph and Battlemorph 

 

 

And I think Starglider II did the whole free roaming Sci fi combat thing a lot better than Cybermorph or Battlemorph, mainly due to the urge to explore, it also touched on the surreal far better than ATD's attempt. 
 

 

[agradeneu]

42 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

 

Jez San and the team at Argonaut, in my opinion, achieved far more in terms of environmental and craft design on far more limited hardware, than ATD did with Battlemorph. 

 

 

 

Battlemorph isn't some wacky space game and the hammer weapon felt so out of place and looked ridiculous 

 

Starfox is surreal but it doesn't throw in the absurd to the degree Battlemorph does. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am still wondering what in Starglider 2 does not look totally abstract and surreal (?)  

 

So you think a hammer weapon is more absurd than a toad and a rabbit flying a spacecraft in "Starwing"? Hm.... 

 

I would say we are not argueing things that are totally subjective!  But, let me say this, videogames are full of absurdities when you think about it!

[youxia]

As with most such retro-debates, we'll never know for sure what went down during the development. I suppose that in this case the design was part creativity, part deadline/obligation compromising. So not exactly "phoning in", but also not as great as if it was a main project for a prime console.

[agradeneu]

Let me say this: your preference for Starglider 2 is totally subjective and part of your personal history.

 

I see it totally different for the same reasons.

 

All the "historical evidence" does not change that.

 

 

 

 

 

[agradeneu]

7 minutes ago, youxia said:

As with most such retro-debates, we'll never know for sure what went down during the development. I suppose that in this case the design was part creativity, part deadline/obligation compromising. So not exactly "phoning in", but also not as great as if it was a main project for a prime console.

This is utterly speculative and really no foundation for any discussion. 

Just compare BM to other 3D offerings on the Jaguar and it's one of the rare quality titles. Technically, the best game might be Iron Soldier 2, but BM has better game design IMO.

 

It's nothing you can "phone in". Of course, there are limits: hardware, budget, time. But that is with any game production. We have plenty of examples on Jaguar where developers phoned in game design as an afterthought for a tech demo. But that is not the case here.

 

  

[Lostdragon]

33 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

 

I am still wondering what in Starglider 2 does not look totally abstract and surreal (?)  

 

So you think a hammer weapon is more absurd than a toad and a rabbit flying a spacecraft in "Starwing"? Hm.... 

 

I would say we are not argueing things that are totally subjective!  But, let me say this, videogames are full of absurdities when you think about it!

? Well, as a nipper, I loved Wind In The Willows, 4  anthropomorphised animals, Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger,living  in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. 

 

 

Mr Toad drove a car, so a Sci Fi game featuring  anthropomorphism animals such as Starfox didn't seem absurd at all, just in keeping with Nintendo themes. 

 

Totally agree games are full of absolute absurdities, finding heavy weapons, rocket launchers etc, causally abandoned and conviently  full loaded, in hospital toilets, always made me laugh in games, but it happened. 

 

[Lostdragon]

28 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Let me say this: your preference for Starglider 2 is totally subjective and part of your personal history.

 

I see it totally different for the same reasons.

 

All the "historical evidence" does not change that.

 

 

 

 

 

It could never be anything but part of my personal history. 

 

I went from the likes of both Starglider games, Epic etc on the ST, didn't see anything similar on the Mega Drive and Mega CD, despite some polygon 3D games being converted, Elite was in the works, but never appeared, to the Jaguar. 

 

 

I could never understand the UK Press in particular making such a fuss over Cybermorph being free roaming, sure, Starfox had been on-rails, but the genre was nothing knew to the UK

 

 

I found the buildings and craft designs in Cybermorph rather crude lacking any artistic flair and creativity, Battlemorph offered more variety, but the standard of design and ambition hadn't progressed that much. 

 

 

For myself, Rollcage would simply BE ATD as a studio, at it's very best. 

 

 

Blast Chamber did very little for me, I think Atari were unwise to go with Cybermorph as the in-pack game if talk by Eclipse is correct and they had something more visually impressive on offer. 

 

 

It was Atari that wanted ATD to turn a tech demo into a fully fledged title, so a decision they had to live by. 

 

 

But it seems daft when Eclipse apparently had a better showcase title on offer. 

 

 

 

Marc:We initially developed our own concept, but we couldn't agree on it with ATARI. The reasons for this are still incomprehensible to me today. In retrospect, this game would certainly have been a lot better than Cybermorph as the first game to showcase the Jaguar's abilities. I was pretty upset about this and about to end working with ATARI before it really started. But since I had already invested a lot of energy and time in this project, I gave it another try. 

https://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1997/03/interview-mit-eclipse-software

 

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Lostdragon

[youxia]

9 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

This is utterly speculative and really no foundation for any discussion. 

So, just like most of the opinions expressed in this thread?

 

I'm sorry that I don't have a nostalgia bias clouding my vision and I can't say that Battlemorph is an absolutely stellar game in every department - because it isn't. What I see is a decent enough title, with good gameplay and level design but also some questionable choices. Given the developement history it makes sense that compromises were made, which is the actual gist of what I was actually saying (ie: "not exactly phoning in" does not mean "the game was phoned in" in English language).

[agradeneu]

 

All ATD games:

 

https://www.mobygames.com/company/attention-to-detail-limited

 

Battlemorph reviews (one of their more favourable games): 

 

https://www.mobygames.com/company/attention-to-detail-limited

[agradeneu]

1 minute ago, youxia said:

So, just like most of the opinions expressed in this thread?

 

 

Opinions on something that actually exists, yes.  

[Lostdragon]

11 minutes ago, youxia said:

So, just like most of the opinions expressed in this thread?

 

I'm sorry that I don't have a nostalgia bias clouding my vision and I can't say that Battlemorph is an absolutely stellar game in every department - because it isn't. What I see is a decent enough title, with good gameplay and level design but also some questionable choices. Given the developement history it makes sense that compromises were made, which is the actual gist of what I was actually saying (ie: "not exactly phoning in" does not mean "the game was phoned in" in English language).

The phoning in aspect  was a tongue in cheek comment by JagChris, which has been the subject of perhaps too much emphasis in past few posts. 

 

 

The historical facts are, ATD were a small, young team, whom Atari had contracted to initially produce a tech demo for the Jaguar hardware, debugg the chipset and make hardware improvement suggestions.

 

They were then asked to turn a tech demo into a full game, which by their own admission, was a learning curve, they were massively out of their depth with Blue Lightning,  they had game concepts etc they wanted to put into Cybermorph, but couldn't, Battlemorph gave them the opportunity to do this, but put them behind others in getting cracking on Wave 1 Saturn and PlayStation software. 

 

 

They showed their full potential as a studio with Battlemorph, despite Atari's insistence on full texture mapping and a title which they are  probably best known for, Rollcage on the PlayStation. 

 

 

I personally wouldn't put them in same tier development status as Eclipse, due to hit and miss quality of their output as a company, not just on Jaguar. 

 

 

Like Imagitec Design, there were clearly some internal staff clashes, which can make getting more viewpoints tricky, lot of years passes, people not keen to think back to difficult projects. 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Lostdragon

[youxia]

5 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Opinions on something that actually exists, yes.

Note to self: try to steer clear of fanboi threads. There seems to be a direct relation between the abundance of phrases such as "logical causality" or "subjectiveity/objectivity" and the actual lack of these things ?

[agradeneu]

1 minute ago, Lostdragon said:

The phoning in aspect  was a tongue in cheek comment by JagChris, which has been the subject of perhaps too much emphasis in past few posts. 

 

 

The historical facts are, ATD were a small, young team, whom Atari had contracted to initially produce a tech demo for the Jaguar hardware, debugg the chipset and make hardware improvement suggestions.

 

They were then asked to turn a tech demo into a full game, which by their own admission, was a learning curve, they were massively out of their depth with Blue Lightning,  they had game concepts etc they wanted to put into Cybermorph, but couldn't, Battlemorph gave them the opportunity to do this, but put them behind others in getting cracking on Wave 1 Saturn and PlayStation software. 

 

 

They showed their full potential as a studio with Battlemorph, despite Atari's insistence on full texture mapping, probably best known for Rollcage on the PlayStation. 

 

 

I personally wouldn't put them in same tier development status as Eclipse, due to hit and miss quality of their output as a company, not just on Jaguar. 

 

JagChris completely overrates the capabilities of the Jaguar, which is the only reason he thinks devs "phoned" it in.

 

[agradeneu]

2 minutes ago, youxia said:

Note to self: try to steer clear of fanboi threads. There seems to be a direct relation between the abundance of phrases such as "logical causality" or "subjectiveity/objectivity" and the actual lack of these things ?

You missed the point! You can think of the game as you want, but the discussion was about allegations made by Jagchris and LostDragon about the development of the game which hold no water IMO.

I have expierience as a game designer and artist, I make my judgement based on that. Besides that, my preference is strictly personal, yes. 

[Lostdragon]

56 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

You missed the point! You can think of the game as you want, but the discussion was about allegations made by Jagchris and LostDragon about the development of the game which hold no water IMO.

I have expierience as a game designer and artist, I make my judgement based on that. Besides that, my preference is strictly personal, yes. 

Your clutching at straws  here when you state the comment i made about the game being a contractual obligation and one which put a development team behind others, is an allegation which holds no water. 

 

 

Your choice entirely to ignore the documented article Future Publishing ran with the team and interviews they did with Fred Gill and Chris Gibbs. 

 

 

I've already pointed out there are conflicting reports from internal team members when it comes to the entire era of Jaguar development for ATD and why it's best people make up their own minds, rather than go on the comments of a single team member. 

 

 

Unless you were part of the ATD teams working on either Cybermorph or Battlemorph, your own personal experience as an artist has no bearing on the development of either. 

 

 

Did you come up with the design concepts for either title?  Did Atari ask you to make fundamental changes? 

 

Your as much in the dark as the rest of us on here as to what went down from the moment Battlemorph was greenlit as a project to the day it was paid for and delivered to Atari. 

 

 

I've presented the material that help shape my understanding that ATD were overstretched with Jaguar projects and ended up feeling the sooner they could move on, the better where as your basing your thoughts on games you've had experience with. 

 

Chalk and cheese situations. 

 

I'm going to go back to I War again here, the original game design was for a futuristic racing game, the games bonus stage was only added at Atari's request.

 

Game development by it's very nature is fluid

 

 

 

Whilst i have been fortunate enough to be passed design documents and internal Atari Corp files regarding misc Jag games and spoken with a few ATD and Atari  sources regarding Cybermorph, the only information I have to go on for Battlemorph is what Future Publishing presented and I have never seen any of the Battlemorph team challenge in any interview they've been part of in the years since. 

 

 

I'm not a coder, designer, whatever, hence the schoolboy error by myself on type of shading used on the polygons. 

 

 

Direct comments from the industry figures who worked at the company, on the games are all I can go on and they themselves are wide open to the usual issues of conflicting staff viewpoints. 

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

? Discussion is mute anyway as this did everything I wanted so much better than Battlemorph 

 

 

 

Very underrated, thanks in part to lacklustre ports to Saturn and PlayStation. 

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Lostdragon

[The Helper]

10 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

? Discussion is mute anyway as this did everything I wanted so much better than Battlemorph 

 

 

 

Very underrated, thanks in part to lacklustre ports to Saturn and PlayStation. 

 

 

Starfighter was pretty bad ass - I had a 3D0 back in the day and this was definitely one of the best for it.  I probably played just as much Battlemorph as I played this game though - even though they are similar they really feel like 2 different games.

[agradeneu]

12 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

Your clutching at straws  here when you state the comment i made about the game being a contractual obligation and one which put a development team behind others, is an allegation which holds no water. 

 

 

 

 

  

It's an utterly irrelevant information.