Asteroite pre-orders OPEN NOW

[+Saturn]

Nice! Congrats

[Songbird]

Very cool on the completion! Hopefully you found it a bit of a challenge to get it all the way to 100%.  

[PFG 9000]

5 minutes ago, Songbird said:

Very cool on the completion! Hopefully you found it a bit of a challenge to get it all the way to 100%.  

Yes, some of those items were well hidden.  I think I made the game harder for myself by

Spoiler

using the bombs to reach quite a few platforms and areas early. 

I ended the game with all the powerups and expansions, as far as I know, but I collected them in an un-intended order.  But that's one of the best things about this genre - exploring and experimenting to find inventive ways of navigating the world.

 

Anyway, the middle and late sections of the game were pretty rough until I went back to collect the items I had skipped earlier.

 

I found one room in the

Spoiler

sewers where there are two sections of ceiling missing, each with a large pipe going upwards in the background.  You can jump up through the holes and walk across the room (like in world 1-2 of Super Mario Bros. on NES), which is an easy way to bypass all the enemies and obstacles in the room.  But if you go too far to the left, you can glitch yourself right out of the map.  Just thought it was a fun trick worth mentioning.

 

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

My copy arrived today!. I’ve had such a blast playing it for a little bit today the graphics are awesome I really like this style. I’m really looking forward to the weekend when I’ll have more time to enjoy it and get my Jaguar hooked up to a crt tv. So far I’ve not ran into any issues with my copy. 

[Editorb]

I played for about one minute last night. My progress is still at 5 percent. ?

[phoboz]

Finnally, material for building Asteroite arrived!

Folded a few boxes last night, I will start shipping to those who pre-ordered from me in the coming days. (mainly people in Europe)

[+CyranoJ]

Tbh, I'm surprised you are still shipping carts when there are now known problems.  (The crash, the map glitch and the end sequence)

 

A pause to fix them seems like a more reasonable thing? 

 

Carl, what's the plan on replacing them when they are fixed? 

 

(And, before anyone says "But Switchblade" I felt the same then and said the same things)

[Songbird]

I stopped shipping carts a week ago once it became apparent these weren't isolated cartridge failures. Remaining Songbird orders are on hold until we get this straightened out. We'll make sure everyone gets a reliable cart in the end.

[+CyranoJ]

21 minutes ago, Songbird said:

I stopped shipping carts a week ago once it became apparent these weren't isolated cartridge failures. Remaining Songbird orders are on hold until we get this straightened out. We'll make sure everyone gets a reliable cart in the end.

Awesome, good work

You might want to tell Gaztee though , he shipped all his yesterday...    Also, Phoboz in the post above yours.

[+Saturn]

Finally had a chance to play again and beat the game! What an experience. There were some liberties afforded to the player in the last portion so thanks for that, Phoboz. Made it not a tedious or overly frustrating task to reach the end. Great game and welcomed addition to the library.

 

I found the pipe room in the sewers and glitched off both sides just to see what happens. Here's a pic of my character icon lost in space ?

 

[+Saturn]

Don't know if this is worth mentioning but noticed during the last 10% that when I switched to the map screen, a dead enemy and an icon stayed on screen:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

I recorded the ending w my phone for posterity

[+jgkspsx]

How many Jaguars have been affected by the issue so far? 

[phoboz]

3 hours ago, Saturn said:

Finally had a chance to play again and beat the game! What an experience. There were some liberties afforded to the player in the last portion so thanks for that, Phoboz. Made it not a tedious or overly frustrating task to reach the end. Great game and welcomed addition to the library.

 

I found the pipe room in the sewers and glitched off both sides just to see what happens. Here's a pic of my character icon lost in space ?

 

It would be helpful if someone showed me a picture where I can see which room this is, e.g. before the glitch?

Or Mark in on the map screen somehow?

[+Saturn]

In here

Spoiler

 

 

[phoboz]

31 minutes ago, Saturn said:

In here

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Thanks.

Spoiler

Yes, I remember now that I planned to put a room up there, but eventually there was not enough space left om the global map to put something there.

Finally I just forgot about it.

 

Edited April 14, 2022 by phoboz

[phoboz]

13 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Tbh, I'm surprised you are still shipping carts when there are now known problems.  (The crash, the map glitch and the end sequence)

 

A pause to fix them seems like a more reasonable thing? 

 

Carl, what's the plan on replacing them when they are fixed? 

 

(And, before anyone says "But Switchblade" I felt the same then and said the same things)

@Songbird tried a debug ROM twice yesterday on a console where the game used to crash, but it appears that we have found a way to correct the problem. So I will ship out cartridges with the new version, once we have test played the new ROM a little bit more...

So there may be a minor delay, because I have to scrap the cartridges I already built before the bug was brought to our attention. Fortunately, I didn't put any labels on the cartridges I built, and the cartridge shell can be re-used.

I may also take care of some of the other minor glitches mentioned here...

 

Belive me it was not easy to track this down, even if the change was only one row of code. We also found a bug in the Removers' library (or rather jlibc which is a prerequisite for the Removers' library). This bug was not the source of the problem with this game, but it is nice to know that malloc() now actually returns NULL when the Jaguar runs out of RAM if using the latest version of jlibc.

[Songbird]

@phoboz has been doing a great job of providing multiple ROMs with debug messages and potential fixes. It looks like we have a solid fix for the game crash (already validated on multiple Jaguars which previously hit the crash right away), and a potential fix for the corrupted background graphic at the end of the game (need to validate). Other minor visual glitches are being investigated and we'll fix them if the fixes are simple and low risk.

 

Once we have the final ROM candidate, we'll validate the entire game start to finish on several Jaguars which were known to exhibit the failure. This process will likely take a couple weeks, but it's worth it to ensure the original bugs are fixed, and no new bugs introduced.

 

For anyone who ordered direct from Songbird and needs a replacement cart, here is the process:

1. Return the cartridge only (you keep the box and manual) to:
   Songbird Productions
   1736 Chippewa Drive NW
   Rochester, MN 55901
   USA
2. Provide a brief written or printed note with the cart including your name, email, and order number.
3. Wait patiently for a new cart to arrive.

I will gladly replace everyone's cart, regardless if you hit the crash or not. That way you'll get to have the most reliable version of the game possible. Note that if you receive a cart from another vendor, then you should work with that vendor directly to get a replacement.

 

Thanks to everyone for being so understanding during this process! Really appreciate your patience.

 

 

[Welshworrier]

Out of interest, what was the bug causing the crash?

[phoboz]

29 minutes ago, Welshworrier said:

Out of interest, what was the bug causing the crash?

Yes, but only on a few Jaguar K-series consoles, that's the reason it slipped trough validation (because it did not manifest on my development console, nor on @Songbird's test console).

 

Lesson learned: Test the game on a few different Jaguar consoles that are know to behave differently. 

 

I had the same experience from the Vectrex scene, but thankfully there was a person who collected these out-of-spec consoles and were glad to test games on these different consoles. Due to the more analogue nature of the Vectrex this was a well known problem (e.g. mainly due to scattering in the actual capacitance of the integrator capacitors), but I was surprised to see this on the Jaguar as well?

Edited April 14, 2022 by phoboz

[Editorb]

1 hour ago, Songbird said:

3: Wait patiently for a new cart to arrive.

You had me until point 3. 

[+Saturn]

3 hours ago, Songbird said:

@phoboz has been doing a great job of providing multiple ROMs with debug messages and potential fixes. It looks like we have a solid fix for the game crash (already validated on multiple Jaguars which previously hit the crash right away), and a potential fix for the corrupted background graphic at the end of the game (need to validate). Other minor visual glitches are being investigated and we'll fix them if the fixes are simple and low risk.

 

Once we have the final ROM candidate, we'll validate the entire game start to finish on several Jaguars which were known to exhibit the failure. This process will likely take a couple weeks, but it's worth it to ensure the original bugs are fixed, and no new bugs introduced.

 

For anyone who ordered direct from Songbird and needs a replacement cart, here is the process:

1. Return the cartridge only (you keep the box and manual) to:
   Songbird Productions
   1736 Chippewa Drive NW
   Rochester, MN 55901
   USA
2. Provide a brief written or printed note with the cart including your name, email, and order number.
3. Wait patiently for a new cart to arrive.

I will gladly replace everyone's cart, regardless if you hit the crash or not. That way you'll get to have the most reliable version of the game possible. Note that if you receive a cart from another vendor, then you should work with that vendor directly to get a replacement.

 

Thanks to everyone for being so understanding during this process! Really appreciate your patience.

 

 

No way. I'm ordering a 2nd copy and keeping this bad boy ?

Thanks anyway.

[doctor_shred]

My copy arrived yesterday.  Giving it a spin right now.  I'm really enjoying it so far.

 

Thanks @Gaztee for sorting out those of us in the UK.  I like this model of having regional distributors to keep shipping costs down.  I hope this is something that can continue moving forward. 

 

Having to factor in the cost of shipping from US to UK has been prohibitively expensive for me in the past (although I try and pick up as many new releases as my wallet allows).

 

 

[GrizzLee]

4 hours ago, Songbird said:

@phoboz has been doing a great job of providing multiple ROMs with debug messages and potential fixes. It looks like we have a solid fix for the game crash (already validated on multiple Jaguars which previously hit the crash right away), and a potential fix for the corrupted background graphic at the end of the game (need to validate). Other minor visual glitches are being investigated and we'll fix them if the fixes are simple and low risk.

 

Once we have the final ROM candidate, we'll validate the entire game start to finish on several Jaguars which were known to exhibit the failure. This process will likely take a couple weeks, but it's worth it to ensure the original bugs are fixed, and no new bugs introduced.

 

For anyone who ordered direct from Songbird and needs a replacement cart, here is the process:

1. Return the cartridge only (you keep the box and manual) to:
   Songbird Productions
   1736 Chippewa Drive NW
   Rochester, MN 55901
   USA
2. Provide a brief written or printed note with the cart including your name, email, and order number.
3. Wait patiently for a new cart to arrive.

I will gladly replace everyone's cart, regardless if you hit the crash or not. That way you'll get to have the most reliable version of the game possible. Note that if you receive a cart from another vendor, then you should work with that vendor directly to get a replacement.

 

Thanks to everyone for being so understanding during this process! Really appreciate your patience.

 

 

As a long time customer of Songbird products, this is good news to hear.

 

Thanks for doing this.

 

I will be sad to miss playing this for a bit, but, that means I can go back to playing Kings of Edom... Never completed that. It's a tough game to complete.

[PFG 9000]

Carl, do you think you might have the updated version available at the Midwest Gaming Classic?  Or is that too soon?  I think I'll hang on to my copy and buy one of the new ones there.

[leech]

Where does it actually crash usually?   I only managed to get to the first boss and then died pathetically.