Fadest

Thanks you !

WOW, most coders stay away from RPGs. I can't wait to see this one! Oh by the way what the starting address? I like to try this one out.

This is not a RPG, but a boardgame inspired game. The kind of games you can make a whole game in something like 1 hour

Of course, if you are not familiar with this kind of game, the first approach may be a bit strange.

But I guess that I should not use all my spare time playing Mass Efeect on my 360 and rather use some of it to continue work on this little game.

Action 3/ Production

A very easy to understand action, the stock of each player will be incremented by the corresponding production.

Players who chosed production as action will get free materials as rewards...

This is basically the prodction action as defined in Puerto Rico or San Juan.

An interesting point in Puerto Rico is that reserves of goods are limited, so if you cannot get enough goods from reserve to perform production action, then you 'lose' a part of this action. This will not occur here...

I think the removers library can also be used with ASM...

His player can handle up to 8 tracks IIRC.

No, nothing new.

I have a little problem with this. In my mind, priority is S.PA.C.E, then Dazed, then eventually Project W...

I guess I can deal with S.P.A.C.E and an action game in parallel as S.P.A.C.E. will be soon in balancing stage (which will be very complex... but not really technical or programming issues), but not all 3 at same time, this would be the best thing to make nothing.

But it seems this small snippet of code got far more feedbacks that the others, so maybe I should reconsider priorities.

But even so, do not expect new demo before an eventual graphist joined on board, because, as FrediFredo said, the game need improved graphs ,and new playing modes, options...

Oh, and of course musics & sounds, but someone asked me already how to compose for Jag.

This week, I needed to calm down after weeks of pre-RGC rush for S.P.A.C.E and hard night coding at RGC

So I didn't really think about it yet.

Guess I will also need to find proper names for S.P.A.C.E and Project W

Action 2/ Terraforming

Basically, this is the same display than Exploration. Once again, this action is possible due to the use of a computer/console, because it would be a pain to do in real (too much time lost into actions).

The notion of range applies for everyone. A player can terraform any planet already discovered if it is into his range and if he already got a technology that allow him to terraform/colonise.

There is delay of terraforming in turns, during this delay, the planet will be intransition phase. The bonus given to player is to decrease this delay.

Once the terraforming is completed, depending on terraforming technologies built, the planet will be able to produce materials. So next time a production action will be performed, the planet will produce.

Now, a few words on action selection. Except for prospection, when a player chose an action, every other player will be able to perform this action. But the player(s) who chosed it wil get a special bonus. This is done to avoid player to wait to long for another player. And also, thi include a part of double-guessing in game (I think he will choose this so I can choose this other, but if no one...). With prospect action, you only get 1 free goods, randomly chosen (depending on your prospection skill).

Before the explanation of the explore action, just a few words on mechanism behind the action selection.

The Jaguar has a (nearly) unique feature which is the jagpad and the numeric pad. I wanted to use this specific plus, and a simultaneous selection is really adapted to numeric pad.

There are lots of boardgames with role or action selection, a brief history :

- Citadels (B. Faidutti) : there is 8 different roles, one is discarded secretly, then each player chose a role secretly. So you have a clue on what previous players may have chosen but you cannot be sure because of the discarded card. Then role are called in their order and player reveal itself, do the standrd turn action (take money or card then build) and his specific action, depending on his role. Note that role selection is based on Meuterer/verrater (MA. Casasole-Merkle)

- Puerto Rico (A. Seyfarth) : the role are visible, at his turn, a player choose between all available role, and all player perform the role. The active player get a bonus depending on the role. Then next player choose between remaining roles. When all player chosed one role, remaining role get one money as bonus, and all role are available. First player change, and a new turn begins. Note that there is one role (prospection) where only active player perform the action (get 1 money). Everithing is show in the game (except victory point gained at expeditions)

- San Juan (A. Seyfarth) is the card game based on Puerto Rico. Same mechanism for role selection, but the game use hidden card in hand.

- Race for the galaxy (T. Lehmann) was intended to be the Puerto Rico cardgame adaptation. But, as San Juan has been done before, the author changed his game into a spece theme, and adapt the role selection. Each player chooses between different roles simultaneously. Then all players reveal their choics. All player will perform all selected roles. A bonus is awarded to player's selected role.

So basically, the mechanism that fit best would be Puerto Rico/San Juan or Race for the galaxy. I choosed Race for the Galaxy, because it add a small part of double guessing, and because everyone choose his role at the same time, so we lose less time.

But the roles are different from R4TG, just because the game is not card oriented (in R4TG or San Juan, the money are your cards in hand, so you build a card in hand with other card that you discard). The prospector role come from Puerto Rico and is a wait & see role, when you do not want to give advantage to other player, but you get small reward.

Action 1/ Exploration

This action does not exist in this form boardgames that inspired me. There are similar action in San Juan & R4TG but this is just draw new cards.

Here, player will have the ability to explore map :

You notice on each player dashboard the notion of Range. When a player does not select Explore action, he is limited to explore to this range.

If he chosed Explore, he can explore all the map (like Dakoi and Kurk players in this screenshot). Basically, in final version, bonus will probably be less important (add +2 to range)

Of course, Range will be increased when buiding new technologies.

There are 4 starting planet on each corner, other plantes are hidden, when a player discover one, it will be visible for eveyone, but belongs to nobody.

There is also empty spaces and asteroids. When a player discover asteroids, his computer (the help bubble) will remember it. Asteroids give materials, more the first time, only 1 material other times. Other player can notice when you find asteroids, but unless they explore this case, there computer will not be aware of it.

Basically, you win 1 experience point when exploring an Unknown case (whatever it contains), 1 experience point when discovering a new planet, materials when exploring asteroids.

Great. Thanks you very much.

Yes no sound, no music.

This is just because I had no mod and no sounds in stock to add to the game, and the only one musician interested by the project at the show was not here on sunday and had to leave before the beginning of programmation.

Does this run on an NTSC Jag

Not tested yet as we didn't have one this week-end. Can you give me feedback if you test it, please ?

and are you going to add rotary control sport?

Yas, that would be a great idea. Other solution would be to use same paddles than VCS (180° only instead of 360 rotary) because as LBM41 said, Warlord is for 180° controller, not 360°. As he is one of the biggest fan of VCS in France (you chould see his VCS cas, with LCD display incorporated, his homemade joystick, and all his stuff, impressive!!!), and fond of Warlords & co, I tend to believe him . He would like to work on kind of 180° paddle for Jaguar...

OK, this will not be a technical topic, but I will try to keep alive a development log topic in public on my new project (no name yet : codename S.P.A.C.E.), explaining gameplay choices, where ideas come from, what is intended. even if this is not really Jaguar oriented but mostly game design oriented, I hope some of you will find this interesting.

See http://www.jagware.org/index.php?showtopic=620

Of course, if you want to participate and debate on the topic, do not hesitate

All the credits go to Fadest. My contrib is almost empty...

I knew you did not want to be related to this piece of crappy code

But even if you don't like Warlords, you may like to test this new compilation, with some minor changes from the last version you saw yesterday

Some of you may know, but I am also addicted to boardgames, and especially what we call Eurogames.

No geographic discrimination in this (some of the best eurogames are written by americans like Alan Moon or Tom Lehman), but this kind of boardgames have been reinvented in Germany (let's say that the starting poing could be Settlers of Catan) and define a new kind of standard :

- no random or limited random (light use of dices if needed)

- usually less than 2h of play (mostly 1h)

- the them is not the most important part, mechanism are the heart of the game.

Well, if you want more informations on boardgames, you can have a look on http://www.boardgamegeek.com in english or http://www.trictrac.net for french people.

This project is about using some mechanisms inspired by boardgames I like and practice into a new videogame. It will not be a straight port from an existing game. It will not be a straight transcription of a boardgame that I could create.

OK, let's start to explain the concept. This game is for 1 to 4 players. So, all informations must be visible, you cannot imagine to reproduce hidden card from player's hand if his opponent can look at the screen. Also, it must allow players to act simultaneously, and not to let one player at a time to play.

The theme is based on space exploration. Each player start from its own plante and will develop his empire by exploration, colonisation. In order to progress and get new technologies, he will need to do some research. In order to build these new technologies, he will ned to get materials...

The main screen of the game is a dashboard where every player can see some of his characteristics :

He can also choose one of the 7 possible actions. Every player choose in secret his action. Then, the turn can start.

The possible actions are :

Explore = explore intersideral map, in order to discover new planets, asteroids...

Terraform = colonise a newly discovered planet...

Product = for each of the 4 material, the stock will be incremented by the prod capacity...

Research = spend experience points into different capacities, in order to discover new technologies...

Build = build a new techology, once discovered...

Market = trade material...

Prospect = get 1 free material...

Once every player has chosen his action, a recapitulative dashboard is displayed :

Now, a few words on action selection. Except for prospection, when a player chose an action, every other player will be able to perform this action. But the player(s) who chosed it wil get a special bonus. This is done to avoid player to wait to long for another player. And also, thi include a part of double-guessing in game (I think he will choose this so I can choose this other, but if no one...). With prospect action, you only get 1 free goods, randomly chosen (depending on your prospection skill).

In next posts, I will explain each possible actions and specific bonus.

Here is the alpha demo version.

It allows only one player, and IA are not operant.

Build and Market actions are not active.

Terraform action is not active because Colonisation status is Off (it will be enable via Build action)

Space.zip

On title screen, you can adjust it to your TV set by pressing C button and moving D-pad.

You can change the background by pressing B button and moving D-pad left and right (5 different background are available)

Press A to start game.

The player selection menu is displayed but not operative. Press C button to go to main game menu.

Then select an action with Jagpad. The red square near player avatar indicates that everyone has made his choice. Press A.

You can have a look on different action screens. I will get back to each of them later in this topic.

In the not so old videogame history, there are some myths or legends that will never die.

Warlords is one of them.

Go to a retro gaming convention and set 4 players in front of a VCS with the amazing Warlords and the also amazing Medieval Mayhem and everyone will come and stop in order to look at the game, and play one, even if retro gaming is a synonym of Playstation or Dreamcast for them.

This is the kind of game that you would like to have on your beloved <insert favorite device> system. This is the kind of game that some programmers say they may want to recode, just for fun.

Once again, last week, we spent some time on Medieval Mayhem on an incredible VCS box with flat monitor included. Once again, someone said that a Jaguar version would be nice. But this time, we decided to stop talking and start coding. So we just sat in front of our computers, digged some graphisms from previously unreleased games.

I went with the jaguar version during a part of the night and the morning, in order to let people try it during the afternoon.

So enclosed is the result of this part-night work, a simple Warlods-like game.

Of course, there is a lot of things that are missing, there are still a lots of bugs, and the code is so crappy that in 2 weeks, I won't be able to understand why I decided to add these nasty lines at 6AM, just in order to make it work. And maybe Seb will no more have his headache just because he spent some time in the afternoon, trying to understand code and debug some collision routs

Take this ROM as a test code, this is not a safe basis for a Warlord clone, not even a promise to realse such a game, but I would be stupid to forget it just because it is badly written.

Have fun and do not hesitate to give some feedbacks.

ProjectW.zip

Fadest, I was a licensed Lynx developer in '95, I eventually sold my manual off to people on the net, and these days I wish I'd kept it. I never got a project off the ground due to financing, but it was a lovely little machine and I spent a lot of time in the reference manual. None of your information, ideas, routines, etc, is visible here, though.

Basically, this is a Jaguar forum, I don't want to pollute it with dirty Lynx things

This is the same for other Jagware guys working also on other platforms (Playstation, Wonderswan, ...), all theses related topics are on other forums.

Well, which others forums ? Basically, my Lynx technical stuff (tutorals, trainings...) is mostly on Yaronet Lynx development forum (in french, sometimes in english when people come and ask).

I also posted some previews or mini games to Atari Age or JS2. Most of them are now published into Yastuna 1 or 2.

Well, it seems that I'm pretty lazy this year, just 1 small game to test free card graphics for Lynx and 1 routine that may become an engine for new games (a kind of tunneling using hardware Lynx zoom).

Would love to hear more from your past Lynx projects.

Not to be mean, as I've tried very hard not to feel slighted here, but there /is/ no important stuff being posted publically. In any given month, the only posts made publically are birthday announcements. Once every 2-3 months we may see an actual post about something jag related.

 

Even when you guys are doing releases, like Jagcode, you don't talk about it publically here. I raised that point at the time since I was really surprised that nobody said /anything/.

Well, as this board is mostly for developpers work, the most important part is hidden. When something pop out, there is a new, but basically, discussions occurs on others forum, with more visibility. Let's take Dazed vs (my small release after AC2k8) for example, I created topic on Yaronet and AtariAge because everyone here gave me their impressions during the Atari Connexion. GT thought this would be a good idea to have a news here, so he added it after.

Most people don't come here or do not even think to subscribe because this is mostly a developper forum. And brainstorming, technical topics or game design discussions migrated to private forum because this is more convenient. For example, I still don't uderstand certain remarks done on Dazed vs after release (but not on "officials" topics, so I didn't noticed them in time), so, I prefer to keep all my jaguar stuff private until hypothetical release. On the other side, I usually gave lot of informations on my Lynx work, alpha routines, ideas, even if some of them are just state of work and will never give something concrete.

I've got a sort of bug like this between Tempest and Jaguar.

It was just (for my case) the fact that Tempest's memory is always clear while Jaguar's one is in random state upon startup ...

This is a well known problem on Lynx with a BLL kit.

As a program is loaded into RAM (in order to be able to download program to test), the RAM is not clear of course. So if you don't initialize new variables (which is a really bad idea), you have (randoms) problems... Of course, in Handy, there is no problem as nothing is loaded into RAM before.

I suppose this must be the same with the BJL kit from Protector SE for example...

Thanks you GT for the headline on Jagware.

Of course, I wrote the text above at first person and GT just put it, but this is me speaking

This was really a pleasure to do this, and all the Jagware members who were present have been really helpful. Thanks you very much, guys !

Oh well - they used A2000 to develop on Lynx so maybe I should not be surprised after all.

This was a funny point with Lynx, but as Atari bought the Lyx to Epyx, they also bought the dev tools. As Lynx conceptors worked on Amiga conception, they used Amiga to create dev tools for Lynx... Pretty logic. But it seems that Atari removed every Commodore or Amiga stickers on computer before sending then to Lynx dev team

Here is a quick translation of the 2 new posts in french.

Hello, I am new here

Is the Jag CF available ?

 

I didn't understand how it will work

 

salutations

Welcome

 

The JagCF is not yet available, but should be sooner

 

In fact, the jagCF is a cartridge which will be plugged into Jag cartridge port (or JagCD cartridge port)

 

This cartridge will have extra RAM in order to increase transfer rate from CF, 2 PS2 interfaces (keyboard & mouse), a highspeed serail port (for networking, and high-speed connection with a PC in order to ease Jag development), it will be able to stream audio drom CF (like in CD audio)

Hope this can help...

SCPCD gave more information in his latest post...

question qui n'a rien à voir, avec quoi tu ferais un cable BLL (Lynx)? Est-ce qu'il existe des plaques génériques pour pouvoir faire des circuits simples?

Demande à Vince, il en avait fait 2 il y a 2 ans, mais la partie hard était entourée, scotchée, je n'ai jamais regardé comment il avait fait.

Depuis, comme j'utilise la flashcard de Karri, je n'ai plus besoin du cable BLL donc je lui ai rendu (et Vince utilise plus son flasher et ses cartouches tests je pense)

Pour avoir une idée des réactions du public potentiel, je vous invite à relire les topics sur AA parlant de Gorf, ou un autre sur JS2 parlant d'Atomix (noyé au milieu de leur record de post en 1 jour, à la base, ça parlait de l'avenir du Jag CD je crois)...

Les "yoshi", ce sont des dinosaures qui apparaissent quand on explose leurs oeufs. Ensuite, il est possible de monter dessus, ça permet de se déplacer plus vite, et ça offre une sorte de vie supplémentaire (la première bombe qui touche le joueur tue son yoshi et il redevient un piéton)

Ben, je me fais chier sur les ISS, PES, Fifa du gamin...

Il manque quelque chose dans ces jeux, ou il y a trop de trucs en trop, mais je ne saurais pas dire quoi.

Bref, à part les goals merdiques de Kick off et la vitesse très exagérée, je n'ai trouvé aucun jeu de foot intéressant depuis.

PS : Kick Off, c'est plutot 86, en 76, la balle restait collée aux pieds du joueur et on ne pouvait pas faire de grands ponts du coup

Un vrai jeu de foot, ce n'est pas une vue à la Kick Off ???

D'après une discussion que j'avais eu avec Cooper il y a bien longtemps sur IRC, il disait que ce n'était pas si complexe que ça, mais :

- il m'avait expliqué la base mais je ne me rappelle plus comment il fallait faire

- il n'avait pas essayé (à l'époque, depuis, je ne sais pas), mais quelqu'un lui avait expliqué la méthode

- en tous cas, ça marchait pour des routes planes, dès qu'on abordait les montées et descentes, ça se complexifiait un chouia

Voilà, c'était ma réponse inutile du jour... mais j'avoue que j'aimerais bien moi aussi une réponse précise car c'est un truc qui m'a toujours impressionné.

Disons que je ne vois pas trop l'intérêt sur écran.

Je n'aime déjà pas spécialement le Sudoku (j'en ai fait 1 ou 2 comme ça), mais ma femme, mon gami, mon frangin, sa femme sont fans et font des très difficiles (enfin, pas le petit), et je voyais bien leurs méthodes à Noel, ils gribouillent partout autour de la grille et dans les cases, alors, sur écran, je ne vois pas trop, ou alors il faut apporter une aide (genre afficher quelles sont les valeurs possibles sur telle case) et il faut des grilles complexes... D'ailleurs, aucun d'entre eux n'a envie d'en faire sur PC (quand ils vont sur un site de grilles, ils impriment)

Bref, pas convaincu, mais vu le succès que les logiciels PC remportent, je veux bien croire que beaucoup de monde ne pense pas comme moi. Visiblement, on en aura un sur Lynx, j'attends de voir.

Pour Mariaud : rien de t'empeche de remplacer les chiffres 1 à 9 par 9 jolis dessins

A noter que dans un des mes mags de jeux de sociétés, ils donnent quelques sudoku en 6x6, 7x7 (ce ne sont plus des carrés mais des zones à l'intérieur). Ca peut être une piste à creuser pour faire des challenges quio ne soient pas pratiques sur papier mais jouables sur écran.

Quelqu'un a une idée du nombre de polygone pour une moto dans No Second Prize ?

Logiquement, la Jag est capable de faire mieux (enfin, sauf que je l'ai juste testé sur Falcon et son 68030 16mhz, et non sur ST et 68000 8mhz)