Neo Geo to Jaguar ports in 3,2,1 GO!

[agradeneu]

22 minutes ago, ColecoGamer said:

Uh… @CyranoJ and @Zerosquare ARE Atari Jaguar game developers who know the Jaguar’s hardware far better than most here in this thread (myself included). So when you say, “Maybe listen to the POV of game developers? Just a thought.”, maybe it’s time you took your own advice? 
 

Edit: I’m not saying you’re not a game developer (maybe you are?), but that doesn’t mean you understand how the Jaguar’s internals work.

Just for the record: I am the designer and artist of Gravitc Mines and Jumping at shadows. Just look at my profile. So in fact, I am working with CJ and we have countless in depht discussions about the Jaguar and how to make graphics work.

Not everyones is wearing "game developer" on his sleeves. So be assured, my POV is related to practical questions.

The general, more deeper flaw is that people with less knowledge will likely follow people that posture themselves as power figures, but disregard or ignore reasonable arguments made by people they regard as inferior.

Well I am not surprised!

 

Somehow Zero feels to show everyone that I was not worth his "secret knowledge" about practical data throughput and somehow he "forgot" that I am a game developer since 2017, and one of the games he even tested! Given me the "idiot treatment" is surely a revelation to me. But, well, its not the first time. I dont understand why certain entitled people being downright allergic to anything to spells "Native" or "NEOGEO".

Strange times!

But I will take my consequences, be sure! 

Edited March 24, 2022 by agradeneu

[ColecoGamer]

17 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Just for the record: I am the designer and artist of Gravitc Mines and Jumping at shadows. Just look at my profile. So in fact, I am working with CJ and we have countless in depht discussions about the Jaguar and how to make graphics work.

Not everyones is wearing "game developer" on his sleeves. So be assured, my POV is related to practical questions.

The general, more deeper flaw is that people with less knowledge will likely follow people that posture themselves as power figures, but disregard or ignore reasonable arguments made by people they regard as inferior.

Well I am not surprised!

 

Somehow Zero feels to show everyone that I was not worth his "secret knowledge" about practical data throughput and somehow he "forgot" that I am a game developer since 2017, and one of the games he even tested! 

Strange times!

But I will take my consequences, be sure! 

I had no idea. Like you said - not everyone wears ‘game developer’ on their sleeves. As you may know, the Jaguar section (from time to time) will get a random person who will comment on these topics, and argue over something they are not familiar with (i.e. namely the Jaguar’s internals) attached to the question, “Why can’t game X,Y, Z” be ported.

 

I meant no disrespect, and I really had no idea who you were and what you have done. It’s not about worshipping individuals in the community; it’s just that @CyranoJ and @Zerosquare are very active here on the boards, and for me (at least) came to mind when answering your question, not knowing who you really are.

 

If the Jaguar can handle Neo-Geo ports, I would be the first in line to support the project (i.e. to purchase a copy) if it ever happens. 

Edited March 24, 2022 by ColecoGamer

[agradeneu]

2 minutes ago, ColecoGamer said:

I had no idea. Like you said - not everyone wears ‘game developer’ on their sleeves. As you may know, the Jaguar section (from time to time) will get a random person who will comment on these topics, and argue over something they are not familiar with (i.e. namely the Jaguar’s internals) attached to the question, “Why can’t game X,Y, Z” be ported.

 

I meant no disrespect, and I really had no idea who you were and what you have done. It’s not about worshipping individuals in the community; it’s just that @CyranoJ and @Zerosquare are very active here on the boards, and for me (at least) came to mind when answering your question, not knowing who you really are.

 

If the Jaguar can handle Neo-Geo ports, I would be the first in line to support the project (i.e. to purchase a copy) if it ever happens. 

It probably  can, but as you see, it's also probably not worth the trouble

[TheGameCollector]

Oh here's an idea. Not Neo Geo, but do you think there is enough free space on the cart size of Doom to re-add the music to the music-free Jaguar version of the game?

[Gummy Bear]

14 minutes ago, TheGameCollector said:

Oh here's an idea. Not Neo Geo, but do you think there is enough free space on the cart size of Doom to re-add the music to the music-free Jaguar version of the game?

This has been in progress for quite a while now by some of the guys here. 

[Zerosquare]

35 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Just for the record: I am the designer and artist of Gravitc Mines and Jumping at shadows. Just look at my profile.

I know. And that would be relevant if we were discussing game design or graphics design.

But we're discussing porting NeoGeo games to the Jaguar. Low-level technical stuff.

Now I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the low-level parts of that game were coded by CJ, not you. Which is why I mentioned his name, not yours.

 

41 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Somehow Zero feels to show everyone that I was not worth his "secret knowledge" about practical data throughput

There's no "secret knowledge". It's just not worth discussing technical details with someone who handwaves them away, because he thinks they are "excuses".

 

Now if you think I'm "bullshitting" and never contributed anything to the community, just ask @CyranoJ what he thinks of me. In private, if you prefer.

 

And maybe next time, don't assume that if people disagree with you, it's because they don't know they're talking about.

[LordKraken]

Not taking a side here, but coming from the "real" game industry, you would be surprised by how technical some artists can be (not all of them I agree). And while they don't necessarily know the deepest arcanes of machines and/or game engines, they are smart and technical enough to come up with creative solutions to make the impossible somewhat possible.

 

So what am I trying to say here? That while a 1:1 NeoGeo port might be difficult, and I trust @Zerosquare on that, there are probably other ways to still make it happen, using both pixel art magic and the Jag strengths to compensate. The first example that comes to my mind, it's not a Jaguar one but it proves my point: Mortal Kombat at (almost) 16-bits quality on the Lynx! Who would have dreamed of that back in the days?

Edited March 24, 2022 by LordKraken

[+CyranoJ]

Came back for Blazing Star, it wasn't here ?

 

Skimmed all the responses and people quoting me.

 

Nope. Just Nope.

 

Everyone just chill and be cool.

 

I'm outta here.

[agradeneu]

50 minutes ago, Zerosquare said:

I know. And that would be relevant if we were discussing game design or graphics design.

But we're discussing porting NeoGeo games to the Jaguar. Low-level technical stuff.

Now I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the low-level parts of that game were coded by CJ, not you. Which is why I mentioned his name, not yours.

 

There's no "secret knowledge". It's just not worth discussing technical details with someone who handwaves them away, because he thinks they are "excuses".

 

Now if you think I'm "bullshitting" and never contributed anything to the community, just ask @CyranoJ what he thinks of me. In private, if you prefer.

 

And maybe next time, don't assume that if people disagree with you, it's because they don't know they're talking about.

Spin things how you want, but it's not working the way you think.  

[agradeneu]

41 minutes ago, LordKraken said:

Not taking a side here, but coming from the "real" game industry, you would be surprised by how technical some artists can be (not all of them I agree). And while they don't necessarily know the deepest arcanes of machines and/or game engines, they are smart and technical enough to come up with creative solutions to make the impossible somewhat possible.

 

So what am I trying to say here? That while a 1:1 NeoGeo port might be difficult, and I trust @Zerosquare on that, there are probably other ways to still make it happen, using both pixel art magic and the Jag strengths to compensate. The first example that comes to my mind, it's not a Jaguar one but it proves my point: Mortal Kombat at (almost) 16-bits quality on the Lynx! Who would have dreamed of that back in the days?

It's always difficult, but the mindset is to solve problems and make it work. 

If a hardware was a music instrument, which it is in a sense, you will hear very different results regarding who plays it.

Same with art design and really all things related to a game. 

 

There are countless examples of extraordinary achievents, like the guy that ports Another World to the Game Boy Color. And of course MK on the Lynx. (Did someone here noticed laoo joined Jaguar dev community? )

 

Its really oversimplifying to rule something out by throwing in some off context numbers that look convenient, e.g. RAM vs RAM. I mean anyone can do that, 4>2, ok, I get it, Do the math, 64 bit are better than 32 bit. Aha.

Anyway, lets move on!

 

 

 

[prog99]

Not touched jag assembler since 1994ish but if anyone wishes to match my 2022 salary I'd be happy to give up the day job and bang out a game for the most nichest of niche scenes.

[youxia]

Just imagine: instead of spending 4 pages squabbling about something that most likely will never happen (and even if it happens it'd be mostly pointless) you could be actually playing NeoGeo games! Crazy, I know ?

[joeatari1]

Gee guys, almost sorry I started this thread...

[Gunther]

7 hours ago, joeatari1 said:

Gee guys, almost sorry I started this thread...

Don't be.

They could be done, but only if you can find someone willing.

The best bet is to do it yourself.

[Arcadia]

22 hours ago, Rick Dangerous said:

To me it makes sense to port Atari ST games to the Jaguar.  They were contemporaries from the same company and not many people have access to a working Atari ST these days.

 

Porting games from other commonly available systems makes little sense to me, be it NES, SNES, Genesis or Neo Geo.   If you want to play those games, get one of those systems, or a Mister. 

You're 100% right, and the only exception I can think of where it would make sense to port a game to Jaguar would be if Atari developed or published a game on NeoGeo in the first place that never saw release on Jaguar (they didn't) or if a game was on both platforms but was superior on the NG which could then be ported to Jaguar yet again, but better this time (and no examples comes to mind). 

 

Or if a developer just wants to flex his skills for the hell of it. 

[joeatari1]

7 hours ago, Gunther said:

Don't be.

They could be done, but only if you can find someone willing.

The best bet is to do it yourself.

I definitely don't have the skills to do it myself.  And time is another story entirely.  Learning to code is like learning another language that has no roots in your own.  It would be like knowing English, but then wanting to learn Japanese or Cherokee.  Not only do you have to know how to speak it, you must learn how to write it too.

 

I was just hoping to inspire debate to see if it was possible.  You know, get the creative juices flowing.  I just hate seeing such great pillars of the Jaguar community fighting amongst themselves in such a non productive manner. 

[+cubanismo]

3 minutes ago, joeatari1 said:

  I just hate seeing such great pillars of the Jaguar community fighting amongst themselves in such a non productive manner. 

I dunno. That kinda seems to be what passes for fun around here. You say fighting, I say debate. Maybe it gets the heart pumping a little faster sometimes, but meh, sometimes these things end up being what motivates progress. Often not, but as long as no one is letting it bleed over into real life, I'll be here with my popcorn between rounds of Gravitic Mines or while the solder cools and the fumes dissipate.

[KidGameR186496]

The only Neo Geo games that i might see feasible on the Jaguar are the 1990, 1991 and 1992 libraries. As 1993 titles and beyond would prove too much for the Jaguar, i think.

Edited March 25, 2022 by KidGameR186496

[KidGameR186496]

On 3/21/2022 at 10:56 PM, TheGameCollector said:

Actually, Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis might even be an easier port to make due to the disassembly being available on Sonic Retro. I'd be kind of interested to see how different the Jaguar sound chip would sound with that game's music.

If the SNES could have Sonic 1, why the heck the Jaguar can't have a piece of that blue-spiked pie?

[agradeneu]

9 hours ago, KidGameR186496 said:

The only Neo Geo games that i might see feasible on the Jaguar are the 1990, 1991 and 1992 libraries. As 1993 titles and beyond would prove too much for the Jaguar, i think.

Found another bug in the Jaguar hw - "1993"

[agradeneu]

19 hours ago, Arcadia said:

You're 100% right, and the only exception I can think of where it would make sense to port a game to Jaguar would be if Atari developed or published a game on NeoGeo in the first place that never saw release on Jaguar (they didn't) or if a game was on both platforms but was superior on the NG which could then be ported to Jaguar yet again, but better this time (and no examples comes to mind). 

 

Or if a developer just wants to flex his skills for the hell of it. 

Hm, all the NGDEV games are quite rare and would make sense. Besides that, not veryone can sell her/his car to buy a NEOGEO+games

[agradeneu]

10 hours ago, KidGameR186496 said:

The only Neo Geo games that i might see feasible on the Jaguar are the 1990, 1991 and 1992 libraries. As 1993 titles and beyond would prove too much for the Jaguar, i think.

A lot of NEO GEO games are down to impressive artwork. Video Games create illusions for the player, its not important what happens behind the curtain, for the player.

 

So, can you do similar gorgeous graphics on the Jaguar? You can!

 

The Jaguar is not only a much faster machine, it has also a lot more data throughput for gfx. And I mean a LOT more! Why I am thinking that?

 

The NEOGEO renders everything with 16x16 4 bit tiles. On the Jaguar, you can have 16x16 tiles in 8 bit or 16 bit color. 16 bit is 4 times the data size of 4 bit. OK?

 

But that is not all. You can render a full screen 16 bit sprite for a backdrop. Can you do that on NEOGEO? 

 

No.

 

You can scroll an 8 bit sprite several screens large, full speed. Can you do that on NEGEO?

 

No.

 

Summary: Could you port a game like Gravitic Mines 1:1 to the NEOGEO?

 

No, I don't think so! 

 

Since the comparison was brought to the table, Metal Slug X is a one direction, very linear sidescroller which is heavily scripted. Noticed the "GO" prompt when the game has loaded a new section into RAM?

One level appears to be divided into smaller sections that play in a very strict linear fashion. 

 

The graphics therefor can be heavily streamlined and scripted,e.g. it changes from 1 layer, to 2 layers backgrounds depending on what happens in the "scene". Of course, it can throw all kinds of sprites and animations at you, if it's streamlined within the limits. 

 

Now, Gravitic Mines is a wholly different game, you can go anywhere, its multidirectional scrolling, it is not linear. The game needs to process physics and run scripts behind the curtain, real time. It runs 60 FPS (instead of 30FPS and slowdowns )

 

 It is a different game with a different goal than something like Metal Slug. Its apples and oranges, once again.

 

So going by this, I suggest the Jaguar can do similar quality in 2D plus some extras, until proven otherwise

 

If there is one big lecture after 3 years of making games, at least for me,  its that videogames are about creating illusions for the player and that numbers and abstract things behind the curtain that the player cannot see or feel, do not matter for the expierence.

 

You can produce very clean code and be proud of it, but of your game looks butt ugly and plays like....you know what i mean...

 

There is an interesting part in an interview with the programmer of White Men Cant Jump and NBA JAM, where he compares his work on both games.

He basically said that he put quite some effort into WMCJ, and was particularly proud of more complex AI routines and more gameplay depth.

Problem, as we all know, the game sucked!

 

So this only enforces my point of videogames being all about trickery and creating illusions. It's not, absolutely not about numbers. Ironically, that sums up Ataris marketing slogan quite nicely. 

 

 

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by agradeneu

[+Sauron]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Video Games create illusions for the player

THIS. Many people don't realize just how important artwork is for a game. That doesn't make it any more or less important than clever programming, but if you're missing one or the other, you're probably not going to impress anyone. With the NeoGeo, there were a ton of extremely talented and experienced programmers and artists who worked on the entire library. While there were certainly some of those who worked on the Jag also, there weren't nearly as many. If there's one thing I've learned from many of the interviews done with past Jag devs, it would be that the majority of them were highly inexperienced and working with few resources. That makes a huge difference in the overall quality of a game.

 

[Lostdragon]

NBA and WMCJ coder was mentioned. 

 

 

Adisak Pochanayon was always happy to document his work and issues with the Jaguar hardware he encountered.

 

 

WMCJ: I  have optimized and

optimized the game everywhere and right now it runs at about 15 fps
at a resolution of 320x220. However, this could be faster if I didn't
need to unpack all the character animations on the fly but since there
are 12-15 Megabytes of sprite frames, I need to keep them compressed
and I unpack them immediately before they are displayed. This amounts
to megabytes of compressed data being slung around which obviously
requires some additional work

However, the game looks very good and has a very smooth feel to it
with the AI camera tracking the characters and all their moves. The
entire zooming thing is amazingly non-annoying (I've played games with
continuously moving cameras and most tend to make you a bit dizzy or
simply detract from your ability to control the game). Finally, I
have been spending a lot of time fine-tuning gameplay and paying
attention to little details (such as the the rim actually bending when
the ball bounces off of it).

 

 

NBA JAM:

 

Originally, I had to use Atari's music
code (even though I had my own code). Atari's music code caused all
sorts of bandwidth problems which involved major bandwidth hogging (two
reads per cycle per channel regardless of the sample rate). In order
to allow the DSP to access the bus during display, I had to drop in
tons of "null" objects with the release flag set. Anyhow, the Atari
music code caused major nightmarish headaches which three months of patching
my code couldn't fix (yep, threw away a lot of time trying to make shit
fly). Anyhow, I finally just wrote my own music code that worked and
I got a 30% boost in my framerate immediately. The new music code
would also allow the DSP to help perform tasks. Unfortunately, I didn't
have time to move some of the decompression threading to the DSP which
had plenty of time left over with my code running. If I had been
able to use my music code from the start, WMCJ could have very well been
running at 5-10 FPS faster!!!!!!! It still runs at a respectable 12-15 FPS
but 17-20 FPS would have been a definite possibility.

 

One of the reasons why NBAJ TE runs sooooooo fast and sooooo
smooooooooth is that I didn't have to deal with any code conflicts like this.
I got complete freedom over the programming design and it really shows
in how good and how quickly the project turned out.

 

 

NBAJ TE also decompresses sprites on the fly. All the
sprite frames are compressed and expanded as needed. All the audio is
compressed a 4:1 though through filtering, the effective bit-rate
for the audio is 2 bits per sample (16-bit output though ;). The audio
is decompreesed on the fly as well which allows me to put tons of samples
on the CART (including all the player name calls). It's the use of
phenomenal compression (in speed and efficiency) that allow the Jag NBAJ TE
cart to literally blow away all the other cart versions and compete with
the CD versions (with the small exception of NO LOAD TIMES!).
 

PS Thanks to Brian McGroarty for the on the fly sprite decompressor in
NBAJ TE. All main graphics are done in SLZ (like WMCJ) and audio
in ADPCM.

 

 

 

[+CyranoJ]

On 3/26/2022 at 7:31 PM, agradeneu said:

A lot of NEO GEO games are down to impressive artwork. Video Games create illusions for the player, its not important what happens behind the curtain, for the player.
......
If there is one big lecture after 3 years of making games, at least for me,  its that videogames are about creating illusions for the player and that numbers and abstract things behind the curtain that the player cannot see or feel, do not matter for the expierence.

 

21 hours ago, Sauron said:

THIS. Many people don't realize just how important artwork is for a game. That doesn't make it any more or less important than clever programming, but if you're missing one or the other, you're probably not going to impress anyone. With the NeoGeo, there were a ton of extremely talented and experienced programmers and artists who worked on the entire library. While there were certainly some of those who worked on the Jag also, there weren't nearly as many. If there's one thing I've learned from many of the interviews done with past Jag devs, it would be that the majority of them were highly inexperienced and working with few resources. That makes a huge difference in the overall quality of a game.

 

A game is not fancy code (Most 'wowzers look at how fast my code is' games play like utter crap)
A game is not fancy graphics (A lot of superbly looking games.... play like utter crap)
A game is not awesome sound (A lot of great music is accompanied by utter crap games)

 

A game is the sum of its parts. None more important than the other. All providing the final experience.

 

Crap graphics? Instant turn off. No thanks, I'm out of here.
Crap music/sound? Turn off that terrible noise! No thanks, I'm out of here.
Crap code with slowdowns or clunky interfaces? No thanks, that takes me out of my illusion and or makes it too frustrating to play.

 

Balancing art/music/sfx/code is extremely important.

 

Spending the extra time (sometimes several months) certainly pays off. It's why Reboot releases one big game every 2-3 years instead of 2-3 unpolished games per year. 

 

2D platformers come out on the Dreamcast and literally NOBODY screams about 'why isn't this 3D?' at the devs.

 

My point is, people often ask "so how much GPU, etc is this game using?" and the answer is, regardless of what the game is doing... "Did you have fun? does it matter?" ...  Folks, stop judging Jaguar games based on whats under the hood, and start looking at the quality of what you are playing and if you are having fun.  If you want to be snobbish about what games you play and only want to play 3D balls to the walls superfast code and refuse to accept you might possibly enjoy something that is extremely well presented and fun, then might I suggest you kindly fuck off to another console?