Gunther Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 (edited) The 3DO and Gameboy Advance demos of Tomb Raider have caused quite a stir amongst the retro-gaming community, especially the GBA version As the GBA has no dedicated 3D hardware, this version becomes even more impressive. As this has been achieved on consoles that should have no right to run the Tomb Raider engine it would be interesting to see what could be produced for the Jaguar from Open Lara. Edited January 19, 2022 by Gunther 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeefMan Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 (edited) I’d love to see it attempted but I don’t think the Jag hardware is nearly capable when it comes to pushing polys and textures. Maybe with some cuts you’d have something resembling Tomb Raider. An impressive amount of work and optimization has gone into both ports so never say never I guess. Someone ship this guy a Jag with Gamedrive to get him started lol. Edited January 19, 2022 by BeefMan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agradeneu Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, BeefMan said: I’d love to see it attempted but I don’t think the Jag hardware is nearly capable when it comes to pushing polys and textures. Maybe with some cuts you’d have something resembling Tomb Raider. An impressive amount of work and optimization has gone into both ports so never say never I guess. Someone ship this guy a Jag with Gamedrive to get him started lol. GBA is not an 3D powerhouse, actually the specs are much weaker than the Jaguar and it has no dedicated hw for textures either.... Edited January 19, 2022 by agradeneu 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucardX Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 2 hours ago, agradeneu said: GBA is not an 3D powerhouse, actually the specs are much weaker than the Jaguar and it has no dedicated hw for textures either.... This is exactly right. Everything being done on to render this is being done in software. The resources in the system are being managed in such a way that it is able to handle all of the processing required to do this in software and still be playable. It would be very interesting to see what the Jaguar could handle if something like this were attempted. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 It can be debated all day whether the Jag can do this or not. But the tools to do this are in a sorry state. And then you'd need someone willing. 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunther Posted January 19, 2022 Author Share Posted January 19, 2022 (edited) What's surprising to me is that the GBA version has better draw-in then the 3D0 demo. I think, if someone did tackle it in the future, that the Jag would put out something akin to the 3D0 port. If the GBA can do it... The Jaguar's blitter can handle gouraud-shading which the GBA hardware doesn't offer. I think the Jaguar hardware could pull off at least a version comparable to the 3D0. Edited January 19, 2022 by Gunther 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 You look at the GBA version from a year ago and this one is much improved. Both 3do and GBA use arm processors. Working on the GBA he's learned a lot about arm. It will be interesting to see what he does with the 3do version. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunther Posted January 19, 2022 Author Share Posted January 19, 2022 No texture-warping on the Jaguar too if I'm not mistaken. The Jag version would be able to one-up the Playstation version ;). 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barone Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 Hype aside, the GBA version is quite compromised gameplay-wise when compared to the PS1's. And this game was already a chore to play when it comes to controls. The camera seems zoomed in and angled more from top to bottom them before. And the draw distance has been dramatically reduced. I doubt many people will be seriously playing it for long TBH. I'd love to see a Jaguar port though; but as I said in this thread, no good tools for that are available AFAIK. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 5 minutes ago, Barone said: I'd love to see a Jaguar port though; but as I said in this thread, no good tools for that are available AFAIK. What are the dependancies? the GNU toolchain and SDL2? These things have been ported to everything under the sun, what's stopping them from being ported to Jaguar? Just that nobody made the effort? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucardX Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 19 minutes ago, zzip said: What are the dependancies? the GNU toolchain and SDL2? These things have been ported to everything under the sun, what's stopping them from being ported to Jaguar? Just that nobody made the effort? You can compile code on the 68000 all day long, there are compilers for that. I don't know what the state of a c compiler for the RISCs currently is, but I don't remember anyone ever saying that it was good. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucardX Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 57 minutes ago, Gunther said: No texture-warping on the Jaguar too if I'm not mistaken. The Jag version would be able to one-up the Playstation version ;). That might depend on the way it is programmed. I noticed what looked like texture warping in World Tour Racing. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucardX Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 1 hour ago, JagChris said: You look at the GBA version from a year ago and this one is much improved. Both 3do and GBA use arm processors. Working on the GBA he's learned a lot about arm. It will be interesting to see what he does with the 3do version. Wouldn't porting this to the Jaguar be a lot of rewriting the current Open Lara game into RISC assembly? It looks like Open Lara is written in C? If I'm not mistaken, none of that is going to be usable on the Jaguar RISCs is it? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+LS650 Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 Personally I'd rather see that sort of effort put towards an all-new game for the Jaguar. 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucardX Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 2 minutes ago, ls650 said: Personally I'd rather see that sort of effort put towards an all-new game for the Jaguar. This would be a great learning experience for someone and this could be a game engine used for original titles as well. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 39 minutes ago, alucardX said: This would be a great learning experience for someone and this could be a game engine used for original titles as well. And the work done to port this could be reused to port other games/tools and maybe even help make Jag development easier. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunther Posted January 19, 2022 Author Share Posted January 19, 2022 14 minutes ago, zzip said: And the work done to port this could be reused to port other games/tools and maybe even help make Jag development Jaguar emulation may also benefit from it. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 1 hour ago, alucardX said: Wouldn't porting this to the Jaguar be a lot of rewriting the current Open Lara game into RISC assembly? It looks like Open Lara is written in C? If I'm not mistaken, none of that is going to be usable on the Jaguar RISCs is it? There is an old C compiler for the RISC's. There's a wrinkle to it though. http://www.3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3356#p37117 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melrocks Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 Sounds like a fantastic idea, but aren't the tools to assist with this not developed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoboz Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 (edited) It will mean a great deal of work, as openlara probably was programmed with a single processor system in mind. If the full potential of the Jaguar is to be used, the program need to utilize the multiprocessor architecture of the system. Anyway, I see it very hard to motivate someone to invest in this as the game could never be sold. Perhaps not even get a physical release. 2 hours ago, ls650 said: Personally I'd rather see that sort of effort put towards an all-new game for the Jaguar I fully agree. I'd rather see a talented programmer focus on making new, preferably Jaguar exclusive titles. Because this is the main reason for owning a Jaguar console in the first place. Programming a game originally for the Jaguar will most likely also utilize the special hardware that the Jaguar has in a better way. This compared to playing an inferiour version of a game that already exist on many other platforms. Edited January 19, 2022 by phoboz 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucardX Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 10 minutes ago, phoboz said: It will mean a great deal of work, as openlara probably was programmed with a single processor system in mind. If the full potential of the Jaguar is to be used, the program need to utilize the multiprocessor architecture of the system. Anyway, I see it very hard to motivate someone to invest in this as the game could never be sold. Perhaps not even get a physical release. I fully agree. I'd rather see a talented programmer focus on marking new, preferably Jaguar exclusive titles. Because this is the main reason for owning a Jaguar console. Programming a game originally for the Jaguar will most likely also utilize the special hardware that the Jaguar has in a better way. This compared to playing an inferiour version of a game that already exist on many other platforms. If the engine were to be converted to the Jaguar, all of the assets from Tomb Raider could be replaced with something else. Maybe a mascot character of some sort? If someone can get this working on the GBA there must be SOME hope for the Jaguar running it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoboz Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 (edited) 8 minutes ago, alucardX said: If the engine were to be converted to the Jaguar, all of the assets from Tomb Raider could be replaced with something else. Maybe a mascot character of some sort? If someone can get this working on the GBA there must be SOME hope for the Jaguar running it. There probably is, but as openlara is written in C it will most likely be something running mainly on the 68000 processor of the Jaguar. That would be like porting it to the Amiga 500, the SEGA Genesis, or the Atari ST. The hard part would be to make it playable, e.g. to move tasks over to the more powerful RISC CPUs. This may be very hard depending on how much it is possible to parallelisize the program. Edited January 19, 2022 by phoboz 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucardX Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 1 minute ago, phoboz said: There probably is, but as openlara is written in C it will most likely be something running mainly on the 68000 processor of the Jaguar. That would be like porting it to the Amiga 500, the SEGA Genesis, or the Atari ST. I'm not a skilled programmer so this is a real question. In this situation, the only thing the C code would really be good for would be reference for how the game processes its data so that you could re-implement all of it in assembly on the Jag RISCs right? To do this correctly it would be a total rewrite more or less? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoboz Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 (edited) 4 minutes ago, alucardX said: I'm not a skilled programmer so this is a real question. In this situation, the only thing the C code would really be good for would be reference for how the game processes its data so that you could re-implement all of it in assembly on the Jag RISCs right? To do this correctly it would be a total rewrite more or less? Yes, it would be like writing a new game engine from scratch, looking at examples from other games on the internet. There is probably nothing special, or secret about the openlara code that you could not learn from other places. Besides from reading the propreitary data files for the game, but these cannot be used anyway in a commercial game. Edited January 19, 2022 by phoboz 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucardX Posted January 19, 2022 Share Posted January 19, 2022 Just now, phoboz said: Yes, it would be like writing a new game engine from scratch, looking at examples from other games on the internet. There is probably nothing special, or secret about the openlara code that you could learn from other places on the Internet. At this rate, I can see where you're coming from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.