could the atari jaguar ever handle the quake engine??

[doctorclu]

I dont think any games did that, from coments that i have read from Gorf and other coders here at AA. I think i read that an unfinished version of AVP was running at 30 frames per second or higher (cant remember), without any AI going on. Then they used the 68000 for the AI (probably to save time, Tom and Jerry take more effort to code), and we all can see what happened to the beautiful frame rate, it went down the drain.

Someone please correct me if i am wrong, this is stuff that i read a while ago. By the way, is there a place to see a videoclip of this version of AVP, if it actually exist?

 

That sounds right. Currently reading up on the Tom and Jerry dev manual and I have to say, I plan on focusing on using those chips for any programs I write. That IS the power of the Jag.

 

Kinda like on the Atari 800, you program towards the Antic and Pokey, but not so much for the 6502.. I see the Jaguar in a similar light.

[sd32]

I dont think any games did that, from coments that i have read from Gorf and other coders here at AA. I think i read that an unfinished version of AVP was running at 30 frames per second or higher (cant remember), without any AI going on. Then they used the 68000 for the AI (probably to save time, Tom and Jerry take more effort to code), and we all can see what happened to the beautiful frame rate, it went down the drain.

Someone please correct me if i am wrong, this is stuff that i read a while ago. By the way, is there a place to see a videoclip of this version of AVP, if it actually exist?

 

That sounds right. Currently reading up on the Tom and Jerry dev manual and I have to say, I plan on focusing on using those chips for any programs I write. That IS the power of the Jag.

You writing a new Bubsy game ?

[Zerosquare]

You writing a new Bubsy game ?

Please don't

 

Or rather, do, but fix the issues of the original version. With less slippery controls and a more realistic difficulty, the game would not be considered so frustrating. With improved graphics and sounds, it could even be a pretty good platformer. If you want to see your love of Bubsy shared, that would be an interesting thing to do.

 

But whatever you do, just don't try to make it 3D

[Gorf]

I dont think any games did that, from coments that i have read from Gorf and other coders here at AA. I think i read that an unfinished version of AVP was running at 30 frames per second or higher (cant remember), without any AI going on. Then they used the 68000 for the AI (probably to save time, Tom and Jerry take more effort to code), and we all can see what happened to the beautiful frame rate, it went down the drain.

Someone please correct me if i am wrong, this is stuff that i read a while ago. By the way, is there a place to see a videoclip of this version of AVP, if it actually exist?

 

That sounds right. Currently reading up on the Tom and Jerry dev manual and I have to say, I plan on focusing on using those chips for any programs I write. That IS the power of the Jag.

 

Kinda like on the Atari 800, you program towards the Antic and Pokey, but not so much for the 6502.. I see the Jaguar in a similar light.

 

 

I assume you mean the Blitter and OPL parts...the RISC's are nothing more than general purpose processors

that direct the big guns and do AI and game logic and user input. In that respect...kinda....the Antic needs

is similar to the OPL in a lot of ways. With a bit of clever code, you could easily emulate any Atari hardware

before the Jaguar with the Blitter and the OPL idling. Have a nice 6502 emu running on the GPU and have

the DSP do all pokey and IO.

 

I could see an Atari 8 bitter emulated on the Jag full speed with not too much trouble.

[sd32]

In regards of the Jag handling Quake, what if say a mute version was made, and Jerry was used on all its capacity to help Tom with the games engine, no music or SFXs. Would it be a big gain?, or maybe Jerry wouldnt be much help with the graphics/rendering.

Lets take Hover Strike CD, its superior in all regard to the cart version even though the CD format is crippled by the lack of RAM. HSCD has better frame rate, superior texturing and of course CD audio. Does the fact that Jerry isnt being used to play the games music have anything to do with the superior frame rate and texturing?, or is Jerry resourceful enough to play music and sound effects, while helping Tom on anyway it can with the rendering, and thus making the superiority of HSCD over HScart reside somewhere else.

Sorry if its a really stupid question (wouldnt be surprised ), i dont really understand much about how the hardware works or what its supposed to do. So keep it easy .

Edited October 20, 2008 by sd32

[walter_J64bit]

I dont think any games did that, from coments that i have read from Gorf and other coders here at AA. I think i read that an unfinished version of AVP was running at 30 frames per second or higher (cant remember), without any AI going on. Then they used the 68000 for the AI (probably to save time, Tom and Jerry take more effort to code), and we all can see what happened to the beautiful frame rate, it went down the drain.

Someone please correct me if i am wrong, this is stuff that i read a while ago. By the way, is there a place to see a videoclip of this version of AVP, if it actually exist?

 

That sounds right. Currently reading up on the Tom and Jerry dev manual and I have to say, I plan on focusing on using those chips for any programs I write. That IS the power of the Jag.

 

Kinda like on the Atari 800, you program towards the Antic and Pokey, but not so much for the 6502.. I see the Jaguar in a similar light.

 

 

I assume you mean the Blitter and OPL parts...the RISC's are nothing more than general purpose processors

that direct the big guns and do AI and game logic and user input. In that respect...kinda....the Antic needs

is similar to the OPL in a lot of ways. With a bit of clever code, you could easily emulate any Atari hardware

before the Jaguar with the Blitter and the OPL idling. Have a nice 6502 emu running on the GPU and have

the DSP do all pokey and IO.

 

I could see an Atari 8 bitter emulated on the Jag full speed with not too much trouble.

That would be sweet to be able to play 5200/400/800 games.

[Gorf]

In regards of the Jag handling Quake, what if say a mute version was made, and Jerry was used on all its capacity to help Tom with the games engine, no music or SFXs. Would it be a big gain?, or maybe Jerry wouldnt be much help with the graphics/rendering.

 

Jerry would not be much help in the rendering department other than the math side of the rendering

but its a big help at least. Most developers did not take advantage of this either.

 

It is a very underutilized processor. Most games use it for a sound engine and are wasting a

tone of processing power that could be put to use.

 

Lets take Hover Strike CD, its superior in all regard to the cart version even though the CD format is crippled by the lack of RAM. HSCD has better frame rate, superior texturing and of course CD audio. Does the fact that Jerry isnt being used to play the games music have anything to do with the superior frame rate and texturing?, or is Jerry resourceful enough to play music and sound effects, while helping Tom on anyway it can with the rendering, and thus making the superiority of HSCD over HScart reside somewhere else.

 

The problem is not Jerry. the problem is the memory bus to Jerry. It is only 16 bits wide in the

console Jaguar. In the Cojag is it using all 32 bits of the jerry to the main bus. This is because

the Jerry has to follow the bit width of the host processor, which is the 68k in the Jag consoles

case. If the Jaguar had a ton or megabytes, it would be able to do much better music in memory

than it can now. With only two megs of ram, you can only fit so much sound in the first place.

The Jag CD could play the music of Quake and leave the DSP to simple sound effects.

 

Sorry if its a really stupid question (wouldnt be surprised ), i dont really understand much about how the hardware works or what its supposed to do. So keep it easy .

 

No its a good question actually. I hope I answered it for clearly enough for you.

 

[Gorf]

That would be sweet to be able to play 5200/400/800 games.

 

Easily and this should have had a big chucnk of the focus in development.

Imagine at the Jaguar release, they had adapters that allowed you to

use, 2600,7800,5200, and 8 bit carts in your Jag?.....Im sure it would have

helped. There is gold in those classics.

[sd32]

In regards of the Jag handling Quake, what if say a mute version was made, and Jerry was used on all its capacity to help Tom with the games engine, no music or SFXs. Would it be a big gain?, or maybe Jerry wouldnt be much help with the graphics/rendering.

 

Jerry would not be much help in the rendering department other than the math side of the rendering

but its a big help at least. Most developers did not take advantage of this either.

 

It is a very underutilized processor. Most games use it for a sound engine and are wasting a

tone of processing power that could be put to use.

 

Lets take Hover Strike CD, its superior in all regard to the cart version even though the CD format is crippled by the lack of RAM. HSCD has better frame rate, superior texturing and of course CD audio. Does the fact that Jerry isnt being used to play the games music have anything to do with the superior frame rate and texturing?, or is Jerry resourceful enough to play music and sound effects, while helping Tom on anyway it can with the rendering, and thus making the superiority of HSCD over HScart reside somewhere else.

 

The problem is not Jerry. the problem is the memory bus to Jerry. It is only 16 bits wide in the

console Jaguar. In the Cojag is it using all 32 bits of the jerry to the main bus. This is because

the Jerry has to follow the bit width of the host processor, which is the 68k in the Jag consoles

case. If the Jaguar had a ton or megabytes, it would be able to do much better music in memory

than it can now. With only two megs of ram, you can only fit so much sound in the first place.

The Jag CD could play the music of Quake and leave the DSP to simple sound effects.

 

Sorry if its a really stupid question (wouldnt be surprised ), i dont really understand much about how the hardware works or what its supposed to do. So keep it easy .

 

No its a good question actually. I hope I answered it for clearly enough for you.

 

Thanks for the answer Gorf, you put everything pretty clear, so that even a knucklehead like myself could understand . I guess all we can do is wait for the tools you guys are developing and hope taht someone is up to the task or porting Quake at some point. I am not a big fan of the game, but it would be a milestone for the Jaguar and would shutup a lot of nonbelievers. Me, i would settle for a super fast, gouraud shadded, first person game of Berserk!

[Gorf]

Thanks for the answer Gorf, you put everything pretty clear, so that even a knucklehead like myself could understand . I guess all we can do is wait for the tools you guys are developing and hope taht someone is up to the task or porting Quake at some point. I am not a big fan of the game, but it would be a milestone for the Jaguar and would shutup a lot of nonbelievers. Me, i would settle for a super fast, gouraud shadded, first person game of Berserk!

 

I would go with the later myself...if I were to port quake....and I have zero intent on doing so.....

I would not port it but rewrite it from scratch(another reason you wont ever see me atempt

quake on the Jaguar.) I think a 1st person 3D Berzerk should have been a cart availabel at Jag's

original release.

[koekiemonster]

I know I've read an article (with pictures!) of Quake on the Atari Jaguar. The article was form 1995 and was centered about quake saving the Jaguar from dead. It was in gamefan or another American games magazine.

 

Too bad I've just dumped all my old magazines. I'm 100% sure there was a quake in development for the Jaguar by ID.

 

This FAQ also mentions QUAKE:

http://www.electric-escape.net/atari/Jaguar/FAQ

[Godzilla]

why not use the 68000 for sound and leave t&j for 3d goodness?

[Zerosquare]

You can't make sound with the 68000 alone, you'd need at least a small bit of code on the DSP to actually play the audio.

You *could* do the sound computations on the 68000, but for performance it's better to disable it completely, and use the GPU and the DSP only.

But if you had some leftover processing power on the DSP, you could share the 3D computations between the GPU and the DSP ; it's probably not trivial, but it can be done.

[Beau]

So did this 11 page slug fest light anyones pilot light?

Lots of interesting things said in here, and techniques not performed on any current game out there, at least as far as I can tell. With that being the case maybe some of you guys could work together to get something done?

[supercat]

why not use the 68000 for sound and leave t&j for 3d goodness?

 

From what I've read, the Jaguar has a limited total memory bandwidth, and executing an instruction on the 68000 uses twice as much bandwidth as executing an instruction on one of the other processors; in very few situations will one gain any performance by having the 68000 execute any significant amount of code.

[Gorf]

why not use the 68000 for sound and leave t&j for 3d goodness?

 

From what I've read, the Jaguar has a limited total memory bandwidth, and executing an instruction on the 68000 uses twice as much bandwidth as executing an instruction on one of the other processors; in very few situations will one gain any performance by having the 68000 execute any significant amount of code.

 

 

Nope, there is absolutely NO advantage to using the 68k in the Jag at all.

I wish it were only twice as much a BW issue. The fact is, you are not only

running at half the clock, you are running at one quarter the bus width and

your cycle efficiency is probably even worse than that compared to the J-RISCs.

 

The 68k was the nail in Jag's coffin. At best it should boot the system and

be shut down.

[Paul Westphal]

Would having a m030 or m060 helped?

[Chilly Willy]

Would having a m030 or m060 helped?

Yes, but they would have been much too expensive. At best, you could have seen an EC020. Now that would have been nice compared to the 000.

[Lost Dragon]

Going through my old, diminishing Retrogamer Magazine collection at moment.Issue#93, Signature series:Quake (feature)-We pick the brains of John Romero and John Carmack to get an insiders perspective....

 

Dunno if it's just me here, but as in the situation when they've covered Core Design Ltd and Tomb Raider etc, would it really of been asking too much to of asked about rumours of Jaguar version? and/or if the hardware could of handled it?.

 

You know, put the debates to rest, once and for all, now you were speaking to the very people that could of answered the questions?.Hell even if they said no comment, at least it'd of been something...