Someone, anyone, fill me in :)

[JagMX]

I've been away from this site for quite some time, if anything I may have made one post many many months ago real quick in another forum. Been busy and ran into a bunch of shit here and there so i've been 'out of the loop' for a while now.

Was wondering if the wonderful Jaguar community can fill me in on what's new for the Jag thats been released (hard or soft-ware), new projects being worked on and such.

Just really curious on what (if anything) i've missed out on!

 

would be much appreciated

[TheGrandPubaa]

Well, as far as i'm aware, the only actual release that's come about in the last few months would be the Jaguar Multi-Tap. There was a recent post about it, but to put it into a basic perspective, it would allow multiple people to have controllers hooked up to one controller spot, i/e: Many players could each have a controller for Worms, although only one could be used per turn. Otherwise, I believe it's the usual development period where things are still just being worked on.

 

If i've missed something, I apologise. Please correct me if my above info is erronous. Oh, and glad to have you back, JagMX.

 

*edit- I did forget one thing. Jagware Team and SCPCD announced that they are working on a way to use Compact Flash cards as an alternate form of cartridge. http://www.jagware.org/forums.php?m=posts&q=41

Edited September 4, 2005 by TheGrandPubaa

[jaysmith2000]

Been slow lately, but rumors are swirling about some upcoming releases!

[LanDi]

There's little 'new' releases at present, but there's lots on the horizon. There's the possibility of a new ZIP style storage device, a couple of games looming, one mystery title from songbird, starcats keeping busy, as is Matthias and the Graphics man. Things aren't dead just yet..

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

This is news to me...

Who is working on a zip storage device for the Jag?

Although I don't really understand what use a zip drive could have on the Jag?

The only area I know of, where it is used is for backup purpose.

 

I mean you have loading times, quite a lot if I remember correctly and the medium is not even as common as CDRs and the default size ones are "only" 100 MB, so a lot smaller than CDR.

And a zip drive unit for the Jag won't be cheap either I think. So what's the advantage compared to CDs?

 

Especially with Compact Flash on the horizon it doesn't seem to make much sense.

Afterall the only way any new medium could succeed is when there is decent software support. I know some people who want to support CF in their future titles already, but as I didn't even know about zip for the Jag until now, I'm not sure how many will support it.

 

Regards, Lars.

[walter_J64bit]

Hi!

 

This is news to me...

Who is working on a zip storage device for the Jag?

Although I don't really understand what use a zip drive could have on the Jag?

The only area I know of, where it is used is for backup purpose.

 

I mean you have loading times, quite a lot if I remember correctly and the medium is not even as common as CDRs and the default size ones are "only" 100 MB, so a lot smaller than CDR.

And a zip drive unit for the Jag won't be cheap either I think. So what's the advantage compared to CDs?

 

Especially with Compact Flash on the horizon it doesn't seem to make much sense.

Afterall the only way any new medium could succeed is when there is decent software support. I know some people who want to support CF in their future titles already, but as I didn't even know about zip for the Jag until now, I'm not sure how many will support it.

 

 

Regards, Lars.

926255[/snapback]

 

I had a zip storage device they are not stable I wouldn't use them to back anything. CDr's are the way to go! Just look at the "Jag-CD Ownership Survey" POLL there it's shows that most Jag users have the Jag-CD. So why reinvent the wheel with the CFs we can't even get a Jaguar Homebrew to full up a 700BM CD.

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

I read a bit about the zip drive topic and after what I've read (click of death and so on), I can just say, that it's absolutely no medium to publish a game on.

So I think it wouldn't make much sense on the Jag.

 

CF however makes a lot of sense, because it has many advantages compared to CD, not just theoretically more space (you can of course also get smaller ones if you don't need that much). For me the main advantage of CF is, that there are basically no loading times compared to CD, they are more reliable and people don't have to worry about getting a Jag CD unit anymore, which is rare, expensive and tends to fail.

 

As a developer I also hate the fact, that I can never be sure that a CD game runs on the unit of the player. With CF that problem doesn't exist.

 

Among many other development related issues when using JagCDs, which would be solved with CF.

 

Regards, Lars.

[justclaws]

Hello Lars,

 

I read a bit about the zip drive topic and after what I've read (click of death and so on), I can just say, that it's absolutely no medium to publish a game on. So I think it wouldn't make much sense on the Jag.

If you want to know about Jag Zip drives, read my old Alter Atari fantasy site!

http://justclaws.atari.org/altatari/

Personally all my machines have ZIP drives, and they never fail me. I have

internal IDE drives on 3 PCs, SCSI external drive on my Sun workstation, an

internal SCSI drive on my daughters' Mac, a Zip drive on my Dell laptop, and

a couple of parallel port external drives I used historically. As some of these

systems don't support USB memory sticks, and having a single 512MB stick

with all my backups on isn't a backup at all, I have still have many Zips too,

not that I don't backup to CD-R, or DVD-XX when I get a suitable drive soon!

 

CF however makes a lot of sense, because it has many advantages compared to CD, not just theoretically more space (you can of course also get smaller ones if you don't need that much). For me the main advantage of CF is, that there are basically no loading times compared to CD, they are more reliable and people don't have to worry about getting a Jag CD unit anymore, which is rare, expensive and tends to fail.

I'm still not convinced Lars, what I want to see is a cheap 4MB Flash cart really.

The Flash cart may be a nice gadget for developers, perhaps, but won't sell

in large numbers, IMHO, unless it's shipped with a must-have game included.

 

Regards,

JustClaws.

P.S. The "click of death" was a problem for a short while, years and years ago!

I've had only one ZIP disk fail, never had a ZIP drive fail, but I do back 'em up!

Edited September 7, 2005 by justclaws

[The_Laird]

As a developer I also hate the fact, that I can never be sure that a CD game runs on the unit of the player. With CF that problem doesn't exist.

 

Among many other development related issues when using JagCDs, which would be solved with CF.

 

Yes, I had this problem when I bought Ocean Depths from Nick at 16/32. Needless to say I was very Pi**ed off!

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. The situation is terrible for both developers and fans. And that problem alone proves that something more reliable is needed.

 

Justclaws:

I never used zip myself, so my comment was just based on what I read.

Anyway, the main reasony why I think it wouldn't make much sense on the Jag especially with CF coming up are: zip is not as common as CF these days, CF is more relieable, CF offers less loading times, CF probably is cheaper in total.

 

What confuses me is, that you mentioned 4MB flash carts now.

Some Jag fans I talked to still confuse compact flash and flash carts.

But it's a different medium. It's Jaguar cartridges on one side and compact flash carts on the other side.

While some developers might want a flash cart for development, personally I don't have much use for one. I actually sold my atari flash cart ages ago.

The problem I have with carts is, that they are expensive and a pain to produce, while they offer very limited memory compared to other possible mediums.

And as long as these problems remain, I won't be doing cartridge dev anyway, so a flash cart isn't really useful to me.

However Compact Flash simply is the best combination of the cartridge and CD advantages in my opinion. And all that with no real disadvantages.

 

Regards, Lars.

[Isgoed]

Talking as a gameplayer and not as a developer...

 

I would like to see new games coming out on cd, so I can make more use of my cdplayer

 

For me, when I just bought my Jaguar, the ultimate thing to get was the cdplayer add-on, which I still really like, despite the few games that are available

 

I can understand that the developers among us look at it from a technical point of view

 

I don't know all the technical aspects of the whole thing, but I own the Jag-Ads cd, which works fine with me

So I would think (with my simple gameplayers mind) that it must be possible to produce "errorfree" cd's?

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

Talking as a gameplayer and not as a developer...

 

I would like to see new games coming out on cd, so I can make more use of my cdplayer

 

For me, when I just bought my Jaguar, the ultimate thing to get was the cdplayer add-on, which I still really like, despite the few games that are available

 

I can understand that the developers among us   look at it from a technical point of view

 

I don't know all the technical aspects of the whole thing, but I own the Jag-Ads cd, which works fine with me

So I would think (with my simple gameplayers mind) that it must be possible to produce "errorfree" cd's?

926839[/snapback]

 

The problem is, that the CDs ARE error free. (Speaking about the ones I made, at least.)

Still some drives can't read them, because the quality of the drives varies a lot and espeically with CDR they are very picky.

It's a small number of drives that have these problems, but I think people don't care if it's a big or small number of drives that have these problems, when they own one that has problems.

So whatever you do, you can never be sure that a CD runs on the users JagCD unit. So at the moment, the user still has to make sure that his drive can read the CDs, which is of course a very bad and annoying thing.

 

Regards, Lars.

[walter_J64bit]

I'm still not convinced Lars, what I want to see is a cheap 4MB Flash cart really.

The Flash cart may be a nice gadget for developers, perhaps, but won't sell

in large numbers, IMHO, unless it's shipped with a must-have game included.

 

Regards,

JustClaws.

P.S. The "click of death" was a problem for a short while, years and years ago!

I've had only one ZIP disk fail, never had a ZIP drive fail, but I do back 'em up!

 

 

OH my I have to agree with JustClaws on the Flash cart. I don't get me wrong I think it's great that the Jag is getting Flash cart for developers or for Jag fans that want to play a protos or betas. A Jag fan is going to get a JagCD regardless how rare or expensive they get!

[JagMX]

Thanx people