Atari Jaguar

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

From what I've heard and personally seen NES sprites are pretty bad, is this more due to poor programming than the actual hardware then?

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Programming, or more precisely design/layout, has a lot to do with it, but it still comes down to sprite pixels per scanline. NES has 8 sprites or 64 pixels (out of 256 pixels) before sprites are dropped on that given scanline - that's 1/4 of the screen width. On C64, you have 8 sprites or 96 pixels - but at doubled pixels that's equivalent to 192 pixels of a screen of 320 pixel width. Lower res, but more screen coverage.

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What are some of the more impressive NES sprite games? I'm sure there are hoards I'm forgetting but at the moment my memory is failing me unfortunately.

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To be honest, I can't really think of any. Maybe Recca? Look at the end boss and the bullet hell style... bullets. But the game still has flicker. Though youtube shows it as blank out because it only shows 30fps. I always try to capture at 60fps and frame blend down to 30fps so you can at least see some of the missing action/objects. For the NES, flicker's a necessary evil. I'll take flicker over less enemies/objects on screen.

I heard from some places before that Nintendo made a chip that turned the 16x16 palette blocks into 8x8 palette blocks, but how in the hell did they do that?

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Originally Posted by dragonboy

I heard from some places before that Nintendo made a chip that turned the 16x16 palette blocks into 8x8 palette blocks, but how in the hell did they do that?

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The chip is MMC5. The reason is, iirc correctly, is that even though you can have 1 palette assigned to four 8x8 tiles, the PPU does a redundant read on those same 2 bits for each one of those four tiles. Also, PPU address lines are on the cart port. Additional memory for more tiles maps is done through the cart. The MMC5 is able to tell when a redundant access to the same 2bits in the attribute byte is read. There exists an extended attribute array for the MMC5 that you define a palette for the other three 8x8 tiles. Other than that, I don't know more specific details because I haven't emulated that chip yet (and probably never will). It has some other tile extending features too, but I don't know the specifics on that either. But my guess would be like MMC3 where you swap out a single line of sixteen 8x8 tiles, just not manually or on an interrupt.

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

What are some of the more impressive NES sprite games? I'm sure there are hoards I'm forgetting but at the moment my memory is failing me unfortunately.

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In terms of number, or quality? Moon Crystal has very nice-looking, well-animated sprites.

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Originally Posted by MN12BIRD

Wow I actually thought Wolf3D was based on the Mac port, and I also thought it was amazing on the Jag!

Doom is also amazing if you can get past the fact it has no music. It was the first console port of Doom, runs full screen and smoother than the 32X, SNES or 3DO ports that followed.

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ID wrote a custom C compiler for the Jag just for DOOM... I know a lot of Jag programmers were looking for that compiler, but was unable to find it any where. It elegedly took full advantage of the Jags RISC and was the only C compiler to do so. The tools that Atari gave to the developers during those early days were crap to put it nicely thus is the reason why many of the games like Checkered Flag and other games didn't run 3D so smoothly. Another issue was that, from a hardware standpoint, the Jag was buggy due to design flaws most notably using a M68K instead of a Motorolla 68020 or something like that. Using a M68020, according to Internet research, would've offset a lot of the Jag flaws; it would be later used in the CoJag arcade system for "Area 51 and Maximum Force."

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

Maybe Recca?

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This is a MUCH better example. So many bullets.:daze:

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Originally Posted by philiptwood

ID wrote a custom C compiler for the Jag just for DOOM... I know a lot of Jag programmers were looking for that compiler, but was unable to find it any where. It elegedly took full advantage of the Jags RISC and was the only C compiler to do so.

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I can believe they did their own C compiler, but I doubt it did anything for RISC. If you look at the Jaguar DOOM code, the only C is in the 68000 files. The RISC stuff is all assembly. So id wrote at least an assembler for the RISC stuff. Perhaps they did a C compiler for the RISC as well, but they didn't need it given the code they were working on.

Given there were lots of C compilers for the 68000 floating around (for the Amiga, Atari ST, and Apple Mac), writing their own C compiler for the 68000 is also not much of a feat. More than likely, they simply adapted an existing one to their needs.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

In terms of number, or quality? Moon Crystal has very nice-looking, well-animated sprites.

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Well, I'd say i'm interested in seeing both, loads of sprites with a minimum of flicker. I find it pretty cool seeing the impressive big bosses made by attaching loads of sprites together for these old 8-bits, but just loads of on screen enemies is still interesting.

I'm going to have to play through Crisis Force again i think as I'm pretty sure there a lot of impressive stuff going on in that.

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

I can believe they did their own C compiler, but I doubt it did anything for RISC. If you look at the Jaguar DOOM code, the only C is in the 68000 files. The RISC stuff is all assembly. So id wrote at least an assembler for the RISC stuff. Perhaps they did a C compiler for the RISC as well, but they didn't need it given the code they were working on.

Given there were lots of C compilers for the 68000 floating around (for the Amiga, Atari ST, and Apple Mac), writing their own C compiler for the 68000 is also not much of a feat. More than likely, they simply adapted an existing one to their needs.

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It was rumored that they "ID" made a C compiler for the Jag RISC but it got lost somewhere. It was supposedly the only compiler that took advantage of the RISC chips in the Jag. Atari had their own but it was apparently considered unusable thus you had to know Assembler to program the Jag. I'm fairly new in assembler so I wouldn't know too much about it, but as buggy as the Jag was the 64bit Blitter was enough to get me interested into the Jag homebrew hobby.

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Originally Posted by philiptwood

but as buggy as the Jag was the 64bit Blitter was enough to get me interested into the Jag homebrew hobby.

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Yeah, the Jaguar does look like a fun machine to code for as a hobby. :D

If I wasn't currently working on the 32X, I'd probably be working on it.

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

Well, I'd say i'm interested in seeing both, loads of sprites with a minimum of flicker. I find it pretty cool seeing the impressive big bosses made by attaching loads of sprites together for these old 8-bits, but just loads of on screen enemies is still interesting.

I'm going to have to play through Crisis Force again i think as I'm pretty sure there a lot of impressive stuff going on in that.

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Super Turrican.

I think the 32X is long over due for homebrewing... For a while now it didn't look like there was that much of an interest in the 32X; I remember when Good Deal Games were releasing new Sega CD games there must have been some interest with Sega CD owners, but no one was making anything for the 32X. It would be a benefit to see how far the 32X can be pushed; that 32X demo video I believe was just the tip of the iceberg.

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Yeah, the Jaguar does look like a fun machine to code for as a hobby.

If I wasn't currently working on the 32X, I'd probably be working on it.

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The Jag has a lot of potential... However, it's riddled with all types bugs simply due to the way it was designed. The Jag was rushed out the door before all of the bugs were ironed out... The biggest issue with the Jag, to my understanding, is that the M68K hogs the BUS, which is why Checkard Flag was so choppy in frame rate. Plus the Jag has a score boarding system that has something to do with how the BUS is managed thus it hinders some parallel processing. If you ever get interested in Jag deving, I think it's safe to say that it'll be best to use the M68K to a bare minimum and then cut it off when using the RISC chips... The M68K was never meant to be used as the CPU it was only put there to communicate to the outside world and manage the other 4 Jag chips. AVP would've ran much faster if it was programmed without the M68K. Those are just some general tidbits in a nutshell I'm hoping will help me conquer the Jag... I'm just getting started. LOL

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Originally Posted by j_factor

Super Turrican.

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Great idea, that'd be not only the same game but I believe Manfred Trenzs coded both versions personally himself so it's the same skilled programmer too....

How different would programming for the NES be for a C64 programmer? I've just been playing through Super Turrican on NES (god I hate that game) and it doesn't compare well to it's C64 counterpart at all.

The fist is now 2/3 the size of the C64 version and even though it's smaller it flickers much more

It's missing the big fish boss entirely

it's missing the big square thing from the jet pack flying level (and the flying level is now another platform level?)

Every boss I can find in it is medium to small sized.

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

Great idea, that'd be not only the same game but I believe Manfred Trenzs coded both versions personally himself so it's the same skilled programmer too....

How different would programming for the NES be for a C64 programmer? I've just been playing through Super Turrican on NES (god I hate that game) and it doesn't compare well to it's C64 counterpart at all.

The fist is now 2/3 the size of the C64 version and even though it's smaller it flickers much more

It's missing the big fish boss entirely

it's missing the big square thing from the jet pack flying level (and the flying level is now another platform level?)

Every boss I can find in it is medium to small sized.

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It's not "missing" anything -- it's not meant to be the same game as the original.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

It's not "missing" anything -- it's not meant to be the same game as the original.

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The level designs are exactly the same though, so it's meant to be the original level designs with less bosses, enemies, secret areas and extra lives?! :confused:

I wouldn't say it's any kind of original Turrican game because all it is, is an "enhanced" port, I put enhanced into quotation marks because at the end of the day Super Turrican may well have a handfull of new stages, in-game music and a coupla' new bosses but it plays like crap, is coincidentally missing every single large boss from the C64 version, as well as large sections of the levels, and loads of the extra life secret areas.