Fujiology Archive/fujiology_archive_v1_0.iso/!MAGS/JEO/JEO_0103.ZIP/JEO_0103.TXT

Text File | 1997-10-15 | 241.5 KB | 5,164 lines

 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
 :: Volume 1, Issue 3      JAGUAR EXPLORER ONLINE       October 15, 1997 ::
 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
 ::                                                                      ::
 :: JAGUAR .............. News, reviews, & solutions ............ JAGUAR ::
 ::    EXPLORER ........... for the online Jaguar .......... EXPLORER    ::
 ::       ONLINE ................. Community .............. ONLINE       ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::      Published and Copyright (c) 1997 by White Space Publishers      ::
 ::                          All Rights Reserved                         ::
 ::     """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""     ::
 ::     Publisher Emeritus Plus .................... Michael Lindsay     ::
 ::     Publisher Emeritus .............................. Travis Guy     ::
 ::     Editor/Publisher ............................ Clay Halliwell     ::
 ::     WWW Spinner .................................. Frans Keylard     ::
 ::     JEO Mailing List Maintainer .................. Joachim Vance     ::
 ::     Genie Uploader .............................. Clay Halliwell     ::
 ::     CompuServe Uploader ......................... Richard Turner     ::
 ::     America Online Uploader ....................... Lonnie Smith     ::
 ::     FidoNet Uploader ................................ Troy Cheek     ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::                              Contributors:                           ::
 ::                        (voluntary and otherwise)                     ::
 ::                        """""""""""""""""""""""""                     ::
 ::                Scott Le Grand, Doug Engel, Mark Santora,             ::
 ::           Jeff Minter, Vince Valenti, Kevin Manne, Don Thomas        ::
 ::            Robert Jung, Wes Powell, Glenn Bruner, Brett Daly         ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::                      Telecommunicated to you via:                    ::
 ::                      """"""""""""""""""""""""""""                    ::
 ::                     GEnie: ST/JAGUAR RT Library 15                   ::
 ::        AOL: VIDEO GAMES FORUM Hints, Tips and Tricks II Library      ::
 ::               CompuServe: ATARIGAMING and VIDGAME Forums             ::
 ::                  FidoNet: ATARI_ST and VID_GAME Echoes               ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::       World Wide Web: http://www.ior.com/~fkeylard/aeo.htm           ::
 ::                       http://www.mcc.ac.uk/~dlms/atari.html          ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::       E-Mail Request address: [e-mail]              ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::       To subscribe to JEO, send e-mail to the request address,       ::
 ::       with the following line (no subject):                          ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::       subscribe JEO                                                  ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::       Your request will be automatically processed and your e-mail   ::
 ::       address will be subscribed to the list. To unsubscribe from    ::
 ::       the JEO list, send the following:                              ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::       unsubscribe JEO                                                ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::       to the same request address, making sure you send it from      ::
 ::       the same address you subscribed from.                          ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::       Subscription problems requiring human assistance can be sent   ::
 ::       to [e-mail].  Thanks to Maximized Software for   ::
 ::       hosting the JEO list.                                          ::
 ::                                                                      ::
 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


                             Table of Contents

* From the Editor ..................... Thought You'd Seen the Last of JEO?

* Jaguar Trivia Challenge: The Questions ............... Strain Your Brain.

* Jaguar Tackboard .................. Newsletters, Message Boards, Mailing
                                           Lists, FAQs, Codes, Development
                                                List, Mail Order Directory.

* CyberChatter .......................................... Overheard Online.

* Out of Sight! Atari Celebrates 25 Years! ..................... Don Talks.

* BattleSphere News ..................................... 4Play Marches On.

* Llatest from Llamaland ........................................ Yak yaks.

* JagFest '97 .............................................. The Aftermath.

* Zero 5 Review ............................................ Space Zap 3-D!

* AirCars Review .............................. The Game That Wouldn't Die.

* Lee Briggs Interview .................................. World Tour Racer.

* Steve Scavone Interview ..................... The Gorfian Empire Returns.

* DKG Extreme Joystick Review ........................... Gravis Meets Jag.

* The BFG FAQ .......................... More than you ever wanted to know.

* Jaguar Trivia Challenge: The Answers .............................. D'Oh!

* Shutdown ............................ Around the world and up your block.


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  From the Editor
   ||  By: Clay Halliwell
\__//  [e-mail]
       ------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to the third edition of Jaguar Explorer Online. This month (err...
season?) we've got reviews from "A" to "Z" -- AirCars and Zero 5. AirCars
has its own reputation to deal with, while relative unknown Zero 5 may be
the first N64-quality game to appear on the Jaguar-- awesome graphics
paired with crappy gameplay. <g> But seriously, I've been playing Zero 5
for a several days now, and it's not bad.

In the press releases section, I bend my "Jaguar news only" rule a bit.
Yeah, the Best Electronics catalog primarily sells Atari computer
equipment, but this thing is a must-have (no, really!) for any serious
Atari fan. I just got mine in the mail today, and have been blown away by
the page count (200+!), the variety of merchandise -- both common and
obscure -- and the pictures of rare and never-released Atari hardware. It's
like a Whole Earth Catalog of Atari. And anyway, it does have a nice
selection of Jag stuff. Every possible replacement part you could hope for,
plus goodies like Kasumi Ninja headbands and Jaguar hologram stickers.

CORRECTION: In the last issue of JEO, I stated that the music in World Tour
Racing was not Redbook audio. Turns out this is incorrect... oops! See the
Lee Briggs interview later in this issue for more info.

Included in the ZIPped edition of this JEO are screenshots of BattleSphere
and Native, and a shot from JagFest '97. Native is a very impressive-
looking little game in the R-Type genre, being developed on the Jaguar
Server. It's unknown at this time whether or not it will ever be published
though.


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Jaguar Trivia Challenge: The Questions
   ||  By: Clay Halliwell
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

Here's a little trivia quiz to see how well you know your Jag library.

1. What's the only Jag game with the stereo sound channels reversed?

2. What's the only Jag game with multiple light-sourcing?

3. What's the only Jag game with true transparent polygons?

4. What are the only two Jag games that use the Team-Tap?

5. What's the only Jag game that supports the VoiceModem?

6. What's the only Jag game that supports the VR headset?

7. What's the only Japanese arcade game on the Jag?

8. What's the only Jag game that uses MIP mapping?

9. What's the only JagCD game without any FMV?

10. Which two Jag games have Atari's former HQ hidden in them?

11. What's the only Jag game (besides Tempest 2000) with a soundtrack CD?

Answers are at the end of this issue. Don't peek until you've tried to
answer them all yourself!


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Jaguar Tackboard
   ||  Confirmed information about Atari's Jaguar
\__//  Compiled from online and official sources
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Atari Times Jaguar Newsletter
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Greg "Fruitman" George <[e-mail]> publishes a Jaguar-
specific newsletter called The Atari Times. The newsletter is FREE, but
cash donations are greatly appreciated. To subscribe, write to:

Greg George
1531 Stevens Loop Rd.
Babson Park, FL 33827

Also, an online version is available at:
<http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/8341>


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jaguar Message Boards
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Anyone with web browsing capability can join in on the discussions on two
web-based Jaguar message boards out there on the net. Note that, due to the
rapid message turnover and instant-update nature of these boards, they have
a tendency to burn through topics in a matter of days instead of weeks (or
hours instead of days).

Just point your browser to:

Jaguar Interactive (maintained by Ken Baum)
<http://www.magicalfox.com/ken/postit.cgi>

Toad Computer's JagTalk
<http://www.ataricentral.com/wwwboard/jagtalk.html>

Club Drive Avenue Atari Message Board
<http://www.insidetheweb.com/messageboard/mbs.cgi/mb7005>


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jaguar Chat
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Anyone with web browsing capability who wants to chat in realtime with
their fellow Jaguar enthusiasts, but has no access to IRC, should take
advantage of this Jag chat page:

JFPN's Jaguar Chat
<http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/5916/chat.html>


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jaguar Discussion Mailing List
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Anyone with Internet e-mail access can join the discussions on the Jaguar
mailing list. To "subscribe" to the list, send an e-mail to the following
address: <[e-mail]>

With the following as the body message:

subscribe jaguar FirstName LastName

(Where "FirstName" is your real first name and "LastName" is your real last
name.)

You should then soon receive the subscription information. Since the list
moved, digesting is no longer available.

The actual list address is: <[e-mail]>. All mail will go to the
list server and be sent to the dozens of readers of the list.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Atari Underground Mailing List
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Anyone with Internet e-mail access can request to be added to the Atari
Underground mailing list. This is a read-only mailing list maintained by
Matt "MHz" B., generating periodic messages describing current events of
interest to Atari Jaguar owners.

To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail request to <[e-mail]>.

Please do not confuse the Atari Underground mailing list with the Jaguar
Underground hackers.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jaguar FAQ
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Robert Jung <[e-mail]> still maintains the Jaguar FAQ (Frequently
Asked Questions) file, an updated list of Jaguar specs and facts. The
Jaguar FAQ is posted to rec.games.video.atari on Usenet around the first of
every month, and can also be found via FTP, address: ftp.netcom.com, in
Andy Eddy's /pub/vidgames/faqs directory.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jaguar Cheats and Codes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Clay "No Handle" Halliwell <[e-mail]> maintains the
Atari Jaguar Game Cheats and Codes FAQ. It's available by e-mail request,
from Andy Eddy's FTP site (see above), or from Jaguar Interactive
<http://www.magicalfox.com/ken/jagcheat.txt>.

Lonnie "The Mage" Smith <[e-mail]> maintains the Concise Compendium
of Frequently Asked Codes, Moves, and Cheats (FACMAC). It's available via
FTP from <users.aol.com:/TheMage1/jaguar>, or from <http://users.aol.com/
TheMage1/jaguar/jagcodes.txt>


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Independent Association of Jaguar Developers
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The IAJD (Independent Association of Jaguar Developers) is still accepting
members on Genie. The IAJD is a private group where confidential
discussions can be freely held. (Category 64 of the ST RoundTable is the
IAJD meeting place.) Consequently, membership in the IAJD is limited to
Jaguar developers who are registered with JTS Corp. To apply for
membership, send e-mail to ENTRY$ on Genie (or <entry$@genie.com> if you're
not on Genie). Regular e-mail correspondence with the IAJD should be sent
to IAJD$ (again, or <iajd$@genie.com> if you're not on Genie).


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// JEO Development List 1.2
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The following list of game titles has been confirmed to the best of JEO's
ability as of October 15, 1997. Entries in the "S"tatus column reflect any
"u"pdates, "n"ew titles, or "?"uestionable listings since the last JEO
list. Entries in the "M"edia column reflect whether the title is "C"D-ROM
or "J"aguar Server (blank entries indicate cartridge software).  "NEW"
indicates titles released since the last issue of JEO.

ETA dates are dates that have been provided by the developer or publisher.

//// Titles in Development or Limbo

S M Title                             ETA   Developer            Publisher
" " """""                             """   """""""""            """""""""
?   Arena Football                     ?    V-Real Productions
u   BattleSphere                     4Q/97  4Play                4Play
?   Brett Hull Hockey                  ?    Ringler Studios
? C Brett Hull Hockey CD               ?    Ringler Studios
?   Charles Barkley Basketball         ?    Ringler Studios
? C Creature Shock                     ?    Argonaut
?   Deathwatch                         ?    Data Design
? C Demolition Man                     ?    Virgin Interactive
n J Gorf 2000                          ?    Krunch Korporation
? C Highlander II                      ?    Lore Design Ltd.
?   Hyper Force                        ?    C-West
n   Iron Soldier 2                   12/97  Eclipse              Telegames
n J Jagmania                           ?    Matthias Domin
n J Native                             ?    Duranik Software
n   Painter                            ?    Sinister
?   Skyhammer                          ?    Rebellion
? C Soulstar                           ?    Core Design Ltd.
?   Space War 2000                     ?    Atari
u   Worms                            12/97  Team 17              Telegames


//// Current Software Releases

M Title                             Rated   Developer            Publisher
" """""                             """""   """""""""            """""""""
  AirCars                             5 NEW MidNite              ICD
  Alien vs. Predator                  9     Rebellion            Atari
  Atari Karts                         6     Miracle Design       Atari
  Attack of the Mutant Penguins       6     Sunrise Games Ltd.   Atari
C Baldies                             6     Creative Edge        Atari
C Battlemorph                        10     Attention to Detail  Atari
C Blue Lightning                      6     Attention to Detail  Atari
C BrainDead 13                        5     ReadySoft            ReadySoft
  Breakout 2000                       7     MP Games             Telegames
  Brutal Sports Football              6     Millennium/Teque     Telegames
  Bubsy                               5     Imagitec Design      Atari
  Cannon Fodder                       8     Virgin Interactive   C-West
  Checkered Flag                      4     Rebellion            Atari
  Club Drive                          5     Atari                Atari
  Crescent Galaxy                     3     Atari                Atari
  Cybermorph                          7     Attention to Detail  Atari
  Defender 2000                       8     Llamasoft            Atari
  Doom                                8     id Software          Atari
  Double Dragon V                     4     Williams Enter.      Williams
C Dragon's Lair                       5     ReadySoft            ReadySoft
  Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story         6     Virgin Interactive   Atari
  Evolution: Dino Dudes               6     Imagitec Design      Atari
  Fever Pitch Soccer                  6     U.S. Gold            Atari
  Fight For Life                      6     Atari                Atari
  Flashback                           7     Tiertex Ltd.         U.S. Gold
  Flip Out!                           6     Gorilla Systems      Atari
C Highlander I                        8     Lore Design Ltd.     Atari
  Hover Strike                        5     Atari                Atari
C Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands     7     Atari                Atari
  Iron Soldier                        9     Eclipse              Atari
C Iron Soldier 2                     10     Eclipse              Telegames
  I-War                               4     Imagitec Design      Atari
  Kasumi Ninja                        5     Hand Made Software   Atari
  Missile Command 3D                  8     Virtuality           Atari
C Myst                                9     Atari                Atari
  NBA Jam: Tournament Edition         9     High Voltage         Atari
  Pinball Fantasies                   6     Spider Soft          C-West
  Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure        8     Imagitec Design      Atari
  Power Drive Rally                   7     Rage Software        TWI
C Primal Rage                         7     Probe                TWI
  Raiden                              6     Imagitec Design      Atari
  Rayman                             10     UBI Soft             UBI Soft
  Ruiner                              6     High Voltage         Atari
  Sensible Soccer                     6     Williams Brothers    Telegames
C Space Ace                           3     ReadySoft            ReadySoft
  Super Burnout                       7     Shen                 Atari
  Supercross 3D                       5     Tiertex Ltd.         Atari
  Syndicate                           7     Bullfrog             Ocean
  Tempest 2000                       10     Llamasoft            Atari
  Theme Park                          6     Bullfrog             Ocean
  Towers II                           7     JV Enterprises       Telegames
  Troy Aikman NFL Football            6     Telegames            Williams
  Ultra Vortek                        8     Beyond Games         Atari
  Val d'Isere Skiing/Snowboarding     7     Virtual Studio       Atari
C Vid Grid                            6     High Voltage         Atari
C VLM                                 9     Llamasoft            Atari
  White Men Can't Jump                6     High Voltage         Atari
  Wolfenstein 3D                      7     id Software          Atari
C World Tour Racing                   6     Teque London Ltd.    Telegames
  Zero 5                              6 NEW Caspian Software     Telegames
  Zool 2                              7     Gremlin Graphics     Atari
  Zoop                                6     Viacom               Atari

Total Carts     48
Total CDs       14 (counting VLM)
Total Combined  62

Pts Stars  JEO Ratings
""" """""  """""""""""
 10 *****  THE ULTIMATE - Flawless, beautiful, deviously addictive.
  9 ****+  EXCELLENT - Something to throw in the face of N64-heads.
  8 ****   SMEGGIN' GREAT - Something to kick on the shoes of N64-heads.
  7 ***+   DARN GOOD - Plays as good as it looks.
  6 ***    DECENT - Plays better than it looks (or vice versa).
  5 **+    TIME KILLER - If there's nothing else to do, you play this.
  4 **     INEPT - The programmer's first Jag game?
  3 *+     INCOMPETENT - The programmer's first game ever?
  2 *      UNPUBLISHABLE - Heaven help us!
  1 +      INCONCEIVABLE BAD - ...but someone conceived it. Too bad.
  0 -      EXECRABLE - This is an April Fool's joke, right?


//// Current Hardware Releases

Item                           Manufacturer
"""""                          """"""""""""
Jaguar 64                      Atari
Jaguar 64 CD-ROM Drive         Atari
3-button Controller            Atari
6-button ProController         Atari
Team Tap                       Atari
Jag-Link                       Atari
Memory Track                   Atari
Composite Cable                Atari
S-Video Cable                  Atari
CatBox                         ICD/Black Cat Design
Lap Cat/Lap Cat Pro            Ben Aein
Jaguar Server                  Roine Stenberg (Istari Software)
Jag Extreme Joystick           Dark Knight Games (modded Gravis Blackhawk)


//// The Short Term Schedule

Here's the Jaguar software schedule for the next few months. Please bear in
mind that these dates represent everyone's best assumptions.

December:  Iron Soldier 2 (cart)
           Worms


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// JEO Mail Order Directory 1.10
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The following list of vendors carrying Jaguar software/hardware has been
confirmed to the best of JEO's ability. Please e-mail JEO for additions/
corrections.

//// B&C ComputerVisions
Mail   1725 De La Cruz Blvd #7
       Santa Clara, CA 95050-3011
Voice  408-986-9960 (Tue-Fri, 10am-6pm)
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.myatari.com/>

//// Best Electronics
Mail   2021 The Alameda, Suite 290
       San Jose, CA 95126-1127
Voice  408-243-6950

//// Bits of Fun
Mail   PO Box 12345
       San Luis Obispo, CA
Phone  800-FUN-JAGS
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.cwest.com/atari>

//// BRE Software
Mail   352 W. Bedford Ave., Suite 104
       Fresno, CA 93711
Voice  209-432-2684
Fax    [phone]
FaxBak 209-432-2644
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.cybergate.com/~bre>

//// Buy-Rite Video Games
Voice  919-850-9473
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.buyrite1.com>

//// Demand Systems
Voice  805-482-7900
Orders 800-593-0059
Fax    [phone]
       805-987-1998
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www2.demand-sys.com/demand>

//// Electronics Boutique
Voice  800-800-5166
Orders 800-800-0032
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.ebworld.com>

//// Flashback Video Games
Mail   2284 Kresge Drive
       Amherst, OH 44001
Voice  216-960-1622
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.sunmarkinc.com/products/flashback>

//// GameMasters
Mail   14393 E. 14th Street, Suite 208
       San Leandro, CA 94577
Voice  510-483-4263
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.game-masters.com>

//// Game Pedler
Voice  801-273-0787 (ask for Internet Sales)
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.gamepedler.com>

//// Games To Go
Mail   7632 Lyndale Avenue So.
       Richfield, MN 55423
Voice  612-798-5879
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]> (orders)
       <[e-mail]> (info)
Web    <http://www.gamestogo.com>

//// Hardysoft
Mail   24 Lawnside Drive
       Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
Orders 609-883-1083
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
       <[e-mail]>
       <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hardysoft>

//// STeve's Computer Technologies
Mail   405 Main Street
       Woodland, CA 95695
Voice  916-661-3328
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://woodland.net/wdm/steves>

//// Telegames
Mail   P.O. Box 901
       Lancaster, Texas 75146
Voice  972-228-0690
Orders 972-224-7200
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.telegames.com>

//// TigerDirect Inc.
Mail   8700 West Flagler Street, 4th Floor
       Miami, FL 33174-2428
Voice  305-229-1119
Orders 800-879-1597
       305-228-5200 (international customers)
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.tigerdirect.com/todays_special_012197.htm>

//// Toad Computers, Inc.
Mail   570 Ritchie Highway
       Severna Park, MD 21146-2925
Voice  410-544-6943
Orders 800-448-8623
BBS    410-544-6999
Fax    [phone]
FaxBak 410-544-0098
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.ataricentral.com>

//// United Game Source
Mail   210 Ring Ave Unit 104
       Palm Bay, FL 32907
Voice  407-726-6867
Orders 800-564-1458
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://members.aol.com/unitedgame/index.htm>

//// Video Game Advantage
Mail   6861 Anthony Lane
       Parma Heights, OH 44130
Orders 216-843-8815 (24-hr answering machine)
Email  <[e-mail]>
       <[e-mail]>
       <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.io.com/~vga2000>

//// Video Game Liquidators
Mail   4058 Tujunga Ave, #B
       Studio City, CA 91604
Orders 818-505-1666 (9am-5pm PST)
       888-944-4263 (toll free)
Fax    [phone]
Email  <[e-mail]>
Web    <http://www.vglq.com>


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Announcements & Press Releases
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

//// IS2 Cart!

Telegames is pleased to announce its plans for a limited edition cartridge
version of IRON SOLDIER 2. This product will only be available directly
through Telegames.

The cartridge version will be identical to the CD version except that the
FMV and red book soundtracks have been removed due to memory
considerations. Everything else is the same... same missions, same
adversaries, same weapons, same outstanding graphics and gameplay!

Each product will be packaged in a full color box just like the CD versions
and contain a cartridge with color label and an instruction manual.

Due to the significant cost to produce the cartridges, we will accept
orders through October 31, 1997, for shipping no later than December 15,
1997. Each order must be prepaid with credit card, money order, or personal
check. We will only build enough cartridges to satisfy these pre-
manufacturing orders.

Don't delay, place your order today for this outstanding product!

$69.95 (plus s/h)

<http://www.telegames.com >


//// Zero 5 Release Date Set

DALLAS, TEXAS (September 18, 1997) -- Telegames announces the official
release date of its next product for the Atari Jaguar, ZERO 5. ZERO 5 will
begin shipping worldwide on September 29th.

ZERO 5 is a futuristic space shooter set in a 3-D, 360 degree playfield.
The year is 2044 and the battle for Earth has begun. On the far reaches of
the galaxy, a massive invasion force is assembling. Scanners at DEFCON have
alerted you to the alien threat. The Earth's best pilots are dispatched in
their BAMBAM cruisers to engage the enemy. Multiple weapons, driving
soundtrack, non-stop combat, multiple power-ups, and 15 extended missions
contribute to a shooters game with real depth.

<http://www.telegames.com >


//// The Cat Comes Back

From the ICD home page <http://www.icdinc.com>:

BCD (Black Cat Designs) CATBOX

The return of a sell-out! The CatBox may soon again be available for a
limited time. Due to renewed interest in multi-player Jaguar gaming
surrounding the release of AirCars and in anticipation of future releases
(such as BattleSphere), ICD/BCD is considering making one more run of this
videogamer's Swiss Army Knife.

CATBOX FEATURES

[] Composite and S-Video Jacks
[] RGB Monitor Port (SC1224/SC1435 adapter optional)
[] Stereo/Mono Line-Out Audio Jacks
[] Two Powered Headphone Jacks with Volume Control
[] RS232 and RJ11 CatNet Communication Ports
[] DSP Pass-Through Connector
[] I/O and Power Indicator LEDs
[] Attractive and Durable Brushed Stainless-Steel Case

ICD is taking reservations and will decide how many CatBoxes to produce
based on response. This may be your last chance to get a shiny new CatBox
for your Jaguar. Reserve yours now!


//// The BEST Atari Catalog Around

THE LONG RUMORED CATALOG IS REALLY DONE!

After 36+ Months of Intense Labor our Over Due Baby/
Rev. 10 Best Electronics All ATARI Parts/Reference
Catalog has Arrived. This New Rev. 10 version Catalog/
Atari Reference Manual is Over 4 Times the size of our
last catalog (June 1991) and has Many Interesting New Features!

Just to tickle your interest here are just some of the features:
   * Catalog Index. Easy to find Item/Product format.
   * 55+ Best Technical/Repair Tips covering ST, 8 Bit and 2600/
     5200/7800 Atari Products.
   * 90+ Best Informative Information Tips.
   * Over 330+ Pictures of Atari products (last catalog had 137 pictures).
   * Over 2000+ New Atari part Numbers/Products.
   * Expanded Listing and Descriptions of 8-bit Software Titles.
   * Atari Memorabilia Picture Museum and Complete Atari I/O Connector
     specifications on just about every Atari product made!

As we start an Unprecedented 15th Year in the Atari Computer Parts
business, Our New fully Computerized Accounting System has had all of the
BUGS worked out, so each customer will Now have a Unique Customer Number
for easy Item Inquiries, Order Processing and Invoicing. We can efficiently
track our 4,000+ Line Item Inventory!

The unique Best Catalog which is now shipped world wide to Atari end users
and dealers alike is priced at $7.50 (Actual Cost to Produce only) PLUS
$3.00 U.S. Priority Mailing.

(California residents must add your local 7.25% (.54), 7.375% (.55), 7.50%
(.56), 7.75% (.58), 8.25% (.62) or 8.50% (.64) cents sales tax to the
total.

So if you would like to get ahold of a hot off the press copy of our
catalog, just send us your NAME & ADDRESS and a check for $10.50 OR have us
include the new catalog for $7.50 in your next mail order and SAVE $3.00.

BEST ELECTRONICS
2021 The Alameda #290
SAN JOSE CA 95126 USA

408-243-6950


//// Jaguar Overlays

From the Jaguar Joypad Overlays! page <http://home.earthlink.net/
~mfmurdock/jaguar/jaguar.htm>:

The new Atari Jaguar joypad overlays!

*** Quality Printed Plastic *** Great Layout ***

These "look" and "feel" better than any Jag overlay! Quality thick plastic
w/ a glossy cover and high definition graphics on the overlay! Note that
these are printed but NOT DIE CUT, you have to cut them out with scissors
or an X-Acto knife etc... The size of these new overlays are the exact size
of the original style overlay (Very similar to Cybermorph overlay but of
course better!) These overlays are not reproductions and include all
original layout and concept. These overlays are in limited run, they are
printed and ready to ship... They are of collector quality and work great
for showing you the controls of games that don't have overlays.

Your satisfaction with this overlay is personally guaranteed. I will return
your payment if you don't like the overlay for any reason. I have been
selling Vectrex overlays for about a year now on the net without
complaint...

Each overlay is $5 and you get two of that overlay. I will not sell just
one, sorry. There is a $1 shipping fee to anywhere in the U.S. and $2
anywhere else in the world. E-mail me <[e-mail]> to place an
order or for additional inquiries. Order confirmation will include the
address to make payment to.

*** Limited Time Special ***

Order 6 or more overlays and I will include 2 free keypad dust covers with
your order!

Disclaimer:

These overlays are produced to make Atari Jaguar games more functional. The
overlays that I produce are for games that either no overlay existed for,
or the overlay that was provided was in paper form and not usable in the
Atari joypad or the Professional Atari joypad. All games for the Atari
Jaguar are property of their respective parties. This is a third party
creation and not required to play the game, it just makes it more playable.
I have no affiliation with any game company. The overlays I create are for
personal use only. Overlays are designed for games which do not have
functional overlays and will not have them unless made by an outside
source. All artwork used from scans are copyright by their respective
party. All original artwork used in the creation of the overlays is
Copyright Tony Price. Your satisfaction with the overlays is important to
me. Prices subject to change at any time. Design and artwork subject to
change at any time. Availability limited to the quantity I make in a run.
Creation of the overlays is limited only by my desire to create them.


//// Gravis Blackhawk for the Jag

That's right, Gravis Ltd. of Canada has licensed to us (Dark Knight Games
--Ed.) the rights to produce a Gravis Blackhawk controller for the Atari
Jaguar. This is a high quality flight joystick that will enhance your
gaming experience to the extreme.

No more D-Pad for those flight games like Blue Lightning, Cybermorph,
BattleMorph, BattleSphere, Defender 2000, Trevor McFur, or the highly
anticipated shooter Native by Duranik Software. Play them the way you
always have wanted to with a flight joystick.

With the A, B, and C buttons wired into the contoured grip stick, and then
an additional "D" button on the base, play your Jaguar games like never
before. Fighting Games will never be the same once you experience them in
full 360' motion. Just play Ultra Vortek once with this baby, and you'll
know exactly what we mean. Pull off those hard maneuvers on flight sims, or
those tricky combos in Ultra Vortek, Kasumi Ninja, Primal Rage, and White
Men Can't Jump with ease like never before with the Blackhawk.

Not only does this joystick deliver a incredible performance, but it can
also hook up to a Standard or Pro Jaguar controller, and you can not only
take advantage of the extra buttons, but also incredible co-op play! Play
Blue Lightning like you're actually in a plane, with yourself as the pilot,
and your best bud as the gunner. Play games like Doom, A.V.P, or AirCars
co-op and double your fun!!!! You don't get those annoying network errors
that you get with the Jag Link on this Joystick. Just sheer two player co-
op fun on all you favorite Jaguar Games.

The best part of all is the price. All this can be yours for $60.00. That's
$9.99 of the original intended price for the Pro, and just $10.00 bux more
for those who originally ordered the Regular.... But for everything you
will be getting... It's worth it!

Just send us your name, address, and phone number to order, and we will get
back to you as soon as we are ready to receive payment and ship. Please
note due to the new nature of our business, credit cards are not accepted.
We do accept Personal Checks, Money Orders, or for those in countries other
than the U.S. an International Money Order, payable in U.S. currency.
(Note: We are not responsible for money orders lost in the mail, although
this is rare and almost never happens, it could.) For those that send
Personal Checks, please be aware of a 3 week holding period so our bank can
clear the check. Make all payments out to Dark Knight Games.

Dave Bell
Dark Knight Games
<[e-mail]>


//// From the Mouths of Babes

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--July 24, 1997--Bicycles and Barbie
dolls will be flying off the shelves this Christmas, according to a survey
of more than 100 kids vacationing at two Holiday Inn resorts near Walt
Disney World.

Surprisingly, traditional toys such as bikes and dolls received twice as
many responses as high-tech toys, such as computer and video games.
Holiday Inn Hotel and Suites Main Gate East and Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort
Lake Buena Vista enlisted the help of "Santa" to conduct the poll, who,
while lounging poolside, asked kids between the ages of 3 and 16 what they
most wanted for Christmas this year. "We were more than a little surprised
by the results," said Terry Whaples, managing partner for the two resorts.
Known in the hotel industry as leaders in family friendly travel, the
properties regularly conduct surveys to monitor current trends and tastes.
"We expected most kids to ask for computer games and popular action
figures," she said. "Instead they asked for things I wanted when I was a
little girl."

Of all the requests for bikes, girls (59%) outnumbered boys (41%). Girls
also chose animals -- including Dalmatians, kittens and ponies -- while
boys requested cars, train sets and skateboards. Computers were equally
popular among boys and girls.

As expected, there were some outrageous requests that may stump even Santa,
including baby brothers, a brand-new Jaguar and gelatinous "goo."

"Kids never fail to surprise us," said Whaples. "That's why it's so
important to keep asking them what they like, because just when you think
you know, it changes." The hotels will use this survey to keep up to date
with toys and games kids enjoy. The two hotels cater to families traveling
with children with innovative programs and services, such as Camp Holiday,
a fully supervised child activity program; a kids-only Check-in Desk; free
Mascot Tuck-Ins; and the industry's first Kidsuites. Kidsuites are themed
rooms that provide children their own space, their own beds and their own
entertainment.

Located minutes from the Walt Disney World theme parks, Holiday Inn Hotel &
Suites Main Gate East and Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort Lake Buena Vista
provide free shuttle service to the Walt Disney World parks. For
information or reservations at either of the Central Florida properties,
call Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort Lake Buena Vista directly at 407/239-4500
or 800-FON-MAXX; call Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites Main Gate East directly at
407/396-4488 or 800/FON-KIDS.

Editor's Note: Survey Specifics
A total of 126 children were polled, ages 3-16 years old at both Holiday
Inn SunSpree Resort Lake Buena Vista and Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites Main
Gate East.

Location breakdown:
                        Girls  Boys  Total
Holiday Inn SunSpree
Resort Lake Buena Vista  23     13    36

Holiday Inn Hotel &
Suites Main Gait East    50     34    84

CONTACT: Dan Ward/Wendy Abbott, 407/423-8006


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// EB Updates
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

In the last issue of JEO, we reported that Electonics Boutique will be
stocking the new Telegames titles in their top 50 stores. Unfortunately, we
don't know which stores these are, so Vince Valenti of JV Games has been
tracking EB "sightings". This is the list so far:

List of Electronics Boutique stores stocking the New Jaguar Titles.
===================================================================
Towers II - Breakout 2000 - Iron Soldier II - World Tour Racing - Zero 5

10/5/97
Total: 58 stores.

(EBX) = Electronics Boutique Exchange
(WS) = WaldenSoft

St.| Location          | Address, City                 | Zip  | Phone
===|===================|===============================|======|============
Any|EB Internet Store  | http://www.ebstore.com        | N/A  | N/A
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
AL |Madison Square (WS)|5901 University #105,Huntsville|35806 |205-721-0899
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
CA |Lakewood Center    |108 Lakewood Center, Lakewood  |90712 |310-634-6354
   |Stonestown Galleria|3251 20th Ave, San Francisco   |94132 |415-564-7567
   |Tanforan Center    |113 Tanforan Ave, San Bruno    |94066 |415-794-0994
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
CO |Aurora Mall        |14200 E Alameda Ave, Aurora    |80012 |303-343-8404
   |Crossroads Mall    |1700 28th St Spc 318, Boulder  |80301 |303-440-7820
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
CT |Crystal Mall       |850 Hartford Turnpike,Waterford|06385 |860-437-3356
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
FL |Altamonte Mall     |451 Altamonte Ave#857,Altamonte|32701 |407-260-9443
   |Sawgrass Mills Mall|12801 W Sunrise Blvd, Sunrise  |33323 |954-846-8593
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
IL |Ford City          |7601 S Cicero Ave #1316,Chicago|60652 |312-585-5665
   |Gurnee Mills       |6170 Grand Ave Spc 343, Gurnee |60031 |847-855-1540
   |Woodfield Mall     |327 Woodfield Mall, Schaumburg |60173 |847-330-1080
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
IN |Greenwood Park     |1251 US 31N, Greenwood         |46142 |317-888-4951
   |University Park    |6501 Grape Rd Ste 382,Mishawaka|46545 |219-273-0698
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
KS |Oak Park Mall      |11421 W 95th St, Overland Park |66214 |913-541-1515
   |Towne East Square  |7700 E. Kellogg, Wichita       |67207 |316-686-7111
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
KY |Ashland Town Center|7th & Winchester Ave, Ashland  |41105 |606-325-9410
   |Fayette Mall (WS)  |3419 Nicholasville, Lexington  |40503 |606-271-4022
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
LA |New Orleans Center |1400 Poydras St, New Orleans   |70112 |504-525-8478
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
MA |Arsenal Mall       |485 Arsenal St, Watertown      |02172 |617-923-8331
   |Auburn Mall (WS)   |385 Southbridge St, Auburn     |01501 |508-832-5119
   |Independence Mall  |Independence Mall Way, Kingston|02364 |617-585-1437
   |Square One         |1277 Broadway Street, Saugus   |01906 |617-231-4750
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
MD |Columbia Mall      |10300 Little Patuxent, Columbia|21044 |410-730-7402
   |Lake Forest (EBX)  |701 Russell #123, Gaithersburg |20877 |301-990-4339
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
MI |Eastland Mall      |18000 Vernier Rd, Harper Woods |48225 |313-526-8340
   |Fairlane           |18900 Michigan Avenue, Dearborn|48126 |313-271-2449
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
MN |Mall of America    |124 E Broadway, Bloomington    |55425 |612-853-0223
   |Mall of America-EBX|342 E Broadway, Bloomington    |55425 |612-853-9981
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
NJ |Cherry Hill        |1026 Cherry Hill, Cherry Hill  |08002 |609-663-0875
   |Willowbrook Mall   |1336 Willowbrook Mall, Wayne   |07470 |201-785-8710
   |Woodbridge Center  |425 Woodbridge Dr,Woodbridge   |07095 |908-636-1611
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
NV |The Meadows        |4300 Meadows Lane, Las Vegas   |89107 |702-258-9177
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
NY |Crossgates         |Space C205, Albany             |12203 |518-456-7270
   |Eastern Hills      |4545 Transit #716,Williamsville|14221 |716-633-9987
   |Manhattan Mall     |901 Ave Of The America #C, NY  |10001 |212-564-4156
   |McKinley Mall      |108 Mckinley Mall, Blasedell   |14219 |716-823-2522
   |Staten Island      |2655 Richmond Ave,Staten Island|10314 |718-370-9848
   |Walden Galleria    |Space A 201, Buffalo           |14225 |716-685-3655
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
OH |Fairfield Commons  |2727-W227 Fairfield,BeaverCreek|45431 |513-320-9257
   |Forest Fair Mall   |726 Forest Fair Dr, Cincinnati |45240 |513-671-2203
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
OR |Lloyd Center       |955 Lloyd Ctr, Portland        |97232 |503-282-9091
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
PA |Exton Square       |Route 100 & 30 Space 107, Exton|19341 |610-363-8357
   |North Hanover Mall |1155 Carlisle Street, Hanover  |17331 |717-632-9262
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
RI |Rhode Island Mall  |156 Rhode Island Mall, Warwick |02886 |401-823-9520
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
TX |Northpark (EBX)    |744 Northpark Ctr, Dallas      |75225 |214-750-1441
   |Ridgmar Mall       |1702 Green Oaks Rd, Fort Worth |76116 |817-763-5830
   |Vista Ridge        |2401 S Stemmons 1144,Lewisville|75067 |972-315-8229
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
VA |Fair Oaks (EBX)    |11989 Fair Oaks, Fairfax       |22033 |703-385-0542
   |Landmark Center    |5801 Duke St, Alexandria       |22304 |703-914-0021
   |Patrick Henry (WS) |12300 Jefferson, Newport News  |23602 |757-881-9437
   |Tysons Corner (WS) |1961 Chain Bridge Rd, McLean   |22102 |703-760-8947
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
VT |Diamond Run Mall   |#240 Rt 7, Rutland             |05701 |802-773-1202
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
WA |Alderwood          |3000 184th St. SW, Lynnwood    |98037 |206-771-5712
   |Everett Mall (WS)  |1402 Everett Mall Way, Everett |98204 |206-353-5062
   |Northgate Mall     |410 Northgate Mall, Seattle    |98125 |206-440-9049
---|-------------------|-------------------------------|------|------------
WV |Huntington Mall    |Huntington #605, Barboursville |25504 |304-736-5395
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I guess EB actually placed the games in more than 50 stores. Although I
don't know how many more.

Send updates to Vince at <[e-mail]>.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jaguar VR Reborn?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Recently Virtuality <http://www.virtuality.com>, the designers of the ill-
fated JagVR headset, began offering the VRV Reference Design, a head-
mounted display for license to consumer product manufacturers. While it has
no head-tracking capability, this product looks very similar to the JagVR
headset.

Mike Adams of Virtuality had this to say:
"The same design teams were involved in both products. Other than that, and
the fact that both are head mounted displays, the similarities are pre-
dominantly cosmetic.  The Jaguar product was designed to be a VR system
with built in tracking, requiring specially written or converted games,
sadly, for a variety of reasons unconnected with the product itself, it
never made it to the consumer and of the software titles which were being
developed, only Missile Command VR was released (in its non tracked form)."

Currently Virtuality's VRV design is available from Takara Co, Ltd. as the
Dynovisor.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jaguar Emulator
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

[from the Digital Emutations web page <http://wsp3.wspice.com/~sexton/
demain.htm>.]

"Jagged" is the world's first attempt at an emulator for the Atari Jaguar
64-Bit Interactive Multimedia System.

//// Status

[] Progress has slowed due to school but it should be released by Christmas
   (December 25th).
[] One custom chip completely emulated along with two partially emulated
[] Began work on Tom and Jerry (GFX Processors).
[] Finished with the basic calls. Opcodes implemented and started to work
   on custom chips.
[] So far only basic CPU calls and functions have been emulated.

//// Coding

The CPU and other parts are written in Assembly. I am planing to add a GUI
similar to NESticle's in C.

//// Platforms

Jagged will be released for DOS and Linux/X-Windows.

//// How Can I Help?

[] Send me ROMs.
[] Send me more tech docs as the ones I have have major blind spots and I
   have to figure things out as I go along.
[] Make a Jaguar ROM dumper so ROMs can be dumped and write a program for
   the computer to convert this data.
[] Anyone interested in doing a port?
[] This is the most important one-- do not send me hate mail or mail
   nagging about when it's going to be released as most of the people in
   the emu scene don't know the difficulties of writing an emulator.
[] If you must send hate mail please direct it to /dev/null :)
[] NOT to ask for betas 'cause if there is a beta it's gonna be dEmu only.

//// Contact

If you can provide me with any of these I would be grateful, just send me
E-Mail at <[e-mail]>. You can also send me an ICQ message, my
uin is 454918 or you can send me a message at <http://wwp.mirabilis.com/
454918>.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// New Cheats and Codes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Thanks to Wes Powell for the World Tour Racing cheat codes, Kevin Manne for
the World Tour Racing level codes, and two unknown individuals for the new
AvP codes.

//// Alien vs Predator

Debug Info:
     Hold Pause.
     Press Option.
     Press 1+3.
     Release Pause.
     Press Option.
     Shotgun blast confirms.

"dec(nn,nn)" is your map grid coordinates.  "hex(nnnn,nnnn)" is your precise
coordinates (in hexadecimal).  "1(nn)" is the current level.

View Alien Ending:
     Enable the "Banana Stops" cheat.  Must have at least one fully-grown
cocoon.  Get killed.  When "Cocoon Hatching" appears, press Option+A or
Option+B.


//// World Tour Racing

Cheat Codes:
Hold down while selecting the option that starts the race (Race, Qualify,
etc...).
     Race as a Bus    4
     Track Edit Mode  0
          (abort race and restart to view changes)

Texture-Map Track:
     Anytime during play, press 8 to toggle texture mapping of the track.

First-Place Race Codes:
     #1 U.S.A.      #2 Hungary     #3 Germany     #4 Brazil
     00000000       00000000       00000001       00000001
     39721063       79441102       19216456       58991638
     37889812       40151109       30780394       42882646
     64384072       63200081       70080120       83520168

     #5 San Marino  #6 Monaco      #7 Mexico      #8 Canada
     00000001       00000002       00000002       00000003
     98766992       29801569       69577264       09297645
     34187162       19696667       55991186       03905186
     41920200       44320244       22720312       61120325

     #9 France      #10 England    #11 Portugal   #12 Italy
     00000003       00000003       00000004       00000004
     48963393       88739088       28514442       68180184
     53418674       89709025       80338310       88966342
     99520396       68960400       75840467       24640487

     #13 Egypt      #14 Australia  #15 Japan
     00000005       00000005       00000005
     08065487       47841182       78875418
     81124970       08711517       54587794
     08640556       96224567       39207006


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  CyberChatter
   ||  Compiled By: Clay Halliwell
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

Sheesh, I ought to just call this, "Things Scott and Doug Have Said".

=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jag Tech
=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject: Re: Jaguars are selling good.
From: [e-mail]
Date: Tue Jul 15 13:54:40 1997
Newsgroups: rec.games.video.atari

> The mortal BELJAN E wrote:
> : All grapical capability depends on how the system is accessed. Simple
> : as that.
>
> All systems have upper limits of performance. Even the theoretical limit
> of the Jaguar based on specs is below those of N64 and not quite as good
> as PS (although it probably beats the PS in 2D).

Anything beats the PS in 2D except maybe for the 3DO :-). Although at this
point I don't think we have enough data about the N64's 2D simply because
they mostly refuse to make 2D games at this point.

> But in the end we can only evaluate those limits based on the games
> released. Otherwise it's just religion.

Absolutely fair.

> I knew the Atari 7800 was capable of a lot more than Mario Brothers
> because of games like Tower Toppler, etc... The specs sounded good but
> the proof is in the pudding.

I sort of concluded the same from Ballblazer...

> I knew the Atari 2600 was capable of a lot more than Space Invaders
> because of games like Solaris, Radar Lock, Space Shuttle, and Survival
> Island. Those games were possible within realistic (although probably
> long, especially Doug's games) timetables.

Yep, give us another year and I honestly believe I could double our polygon
power, but what's the point? We couldn't do all that much more with t-
mapping because the Jag simply isn't built for it. Double our t-mapping
rate and it would still pretty much suck.

> With the Jaguar, the reference-game is Battlesphere so until something
> else manages better than 320x200 with a decent number of polygons and 99%
> 30fps framerate, that's the upper boundary. And hence my conclusion that
> it's not as good as the PS because the above means sacrificing texture
> mapping. It means no disrespect to 4-Play or the Jag. It's just the way
> it is.

No disrespect taken :-). The Playstation IS more powerful than the Jag at
3D rendering. However, developers frequently pay a price for this: low
color res textures and a really ugly 3DO look to most games without a
careful choice of palette, lots of polygon flicker, and when they finally
get to bang the metal, they find out that the R3000 has no scoreboarding
because it wasn't meant to be coded by hand. Of course, the Jag has its
very own problems, but I just want to make clear that all is not hunky
dorey in Sony town. They just have a lot more momentum and moolah and that
in the end is what made the difference if you ask me. Ditto for Nintendo. I
haven't seen a company make it on brilliance alone since the 1984 release
of the Macintosh although my eye is currently focused on 3DFX.

As an aside, here's my evaluation of the Jag: each individual RISC
processor pretty much clobbers a 486DX66 but a P5-133 pretty much clobbers
a Jag RISC. We've concluded this by watching ported demo code running on
the Jag and comparing it to the original code running on the PC. This is
pretty impressive IMO for a 26.6 MHz CPU chip slaved to 70ns DRAM if you
ask me, but of course, make up your own mind.

> It's 2D performance is fine but the Saturn is a good example of the
> uselessness of strong 2D performance.

I think a lot could have been done with the Jag's 2D: I remember back in
early '94 smoothly zooming in and out of a fullscreen 320x240 image at 60
fps and thinking someone would make an incredible game around this feature.
It never happened alas and I've yet to see the Playstation do anything with
2D that came anywhere near what the Jag's Object Processor did without
breaking a sweat. I really want to know what Mathieson, Millar, and Minter
have put together in their little Manhattan Project.

> Games that sacrifice framerate for glitter like AvP or Iron Soldier are
> of no consequence to me because we are beyond the point where slowdown
> is tolerated in 3D systems. PS titles with framerate drops below the
> occasional 15fps wind up in the bargain bins because of it.

Absolutely right. PS Descent was really fun for about 6 levels and then the
framerate died and I never touched it again. I would have preferred
gouraud-shading to the low framerate, but Interplay in its vast wisdom
(these are the guys who replaced the Yak logo with their corporate logo in
Tempest X and neglected to use him as a playtester for it) didn't see fit
to provide this option.

Scott Le Grand
Lead Coder
4Play

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Re: Jaguars are selling good.
From:         Customer Service <[e-mail]>
Date:         1997/07/16
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

Mark Rathwell wrote:
>
>         The Jaguar's specs are below those of the PSX, Saturn and N64?
> You don't say ... :-)
>
>         Jaguar release date:            1993
>         PSX Saturn release date:        1995
>         Nintendo 64                     1996
>
>         I wonder why? :-) As far as I'm concerned, the Jaguar was more
> innovative than any of those other machines.
>

     This has been my whole point. For machines years later, they are not
that much more impressive. The PSX has been around long enough to have a
much better level of gameplay in their games and they still do not. Jag
games lack graphically to today's machines yes, but the game play is
definitely superior. I like surreal and the Jag is very good at surreal
like Tempest 2000. The Jag needed more games like this early on.

          Steve


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Is Newer Better?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

From: Customer Service <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: BattleSphere textures
Date: 1997/07/19
Newsgroups: rec.games.video.atari

Len Stys wrote:
>
> In a previous article, [e-mail] (Sal Manfredonia) says:
>
> >Glenn Saunders wrote:
> >>
> >> Battleshphere acheives 30fps by sacrificing all texture mapping.
> >
> >ALL texture mapping? I was under the impression that BattleSphere simply
> >used limited texture mapping. Rather than texturing every polygon, they

Games are meant to have gameplay first.

> I'm hoping that the game has enough texture mapping to impress some
> of my friends.  My friends weren't impressed with Iron Soldier stating
> that the graphics were blocky and bitmapped.  Though, I was impressed
> by what I could do within the game.  Iron Soldier II (from what I've
> heard) is a good mix.  I am hoping Battlesphere is the same way.

Your friends seem like idiots because the "saw" the game and judged it.
Until they actually play it, they really shouldn't comment.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Re: BattleSphere textures
From:         "Carl J. Matumbo" <[e-mail]>
Date:         1997/07/21
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

Customer Service wrote:
>
>         Your friends seem like idiots becuase the "saw" the game and
> judged it. Until they actually play it, they really shouldn't comment.

Top of the line games like Quake, Diablo, or Tempest 2000 have rock solid
graphics AND great gameplay.

That combination is what makes a game awesome in 1997.

To call gamers "idiots" for disliking a game based on a poor audio-visual
presentation is asinine.  With all the technologies and tools available to
programmers in this day and age it is a sure sign of incompetence when a
game has a bad frame rate, grainy visuals, bad artwork, and/or scratchy
sound.  If the Jaguar is too hardware limited to deliver beautiful smooth
playing games with world class sound then the console should be abandoned
in favor of those that can.  Systems that are powerful enough to deliver
GREAT games with AWESOME graphics are the wave of the future.  Why do you
think PSX and N64 have outsold Atari 100 or more to 1?

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Re: BattleSphere textures
From:         [e-mail] (Brian Jepperson)
Date:         1997/07/22
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] wrote:

> Carl J. Matumbo wrote:
> >
> > To call gamers "idiots" for disliking a game based on a poor
> > audio-visual presentation is asinine.  With all the technologies and
> > tools available to programmers in this day and age it is a sure sign of
> > incompetence when a game has a bad frame rate, grainy visuals, bad
> > artwork, and/or scratchy sound.  If the Jaguar is too hardware limited
> > to deliver beautiful smooth playing games with world class sound then
> > the console should be abandoned in favor of those that can.  Systems
> > that are powerful enough to deliver GREAT games with AWESOME graphics
> > are the wave of the future.  Why do you think PSX and N64 have outsold
> > Atari 100 or more to 1?
>
> Excuse me sir, but if your theory were true, that doesn't explain why
> the Atari 2600 (an 8-bit system designed around 1976) has outsold ALL
> 16+ bit systems from all manufacturers COMBINED.
>
> It also fails to explain why the NES (not SNES, the N-E-S... another
> 8-bitter) has a sales figure which is ALSO more than all the next-gen
> systems combined)
>
> Newer != Better.
>
>     Thunderbird
>     4Play

T-bird, that's an apples and oranges comparison.  NES *didn't* outsell the
16-bit+ machines because it wasn't in competition with them (different
times, different markets, different competition, different technology).
During the brief period in which it was in direct competition with them I'm
sure sales declined rapidly, and obviously at some point the 16-bit sales
overtook them.  The only thing you can conclude about Atari 2600 sales
figures, or NES sales figures is that they dominated the market in their
respective time periods.

Newer == Better (when we're talking about computers and games systems)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Reality Bytes was Re: BattleSphere textures
From:         [e-mail]
Date:         1997/07/25
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

In article <5r9j8p$[e-mail]>,
  Glenn Saunders <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> The mortal Thunderbird wrote:
> : The fact of the matter is that an 8-bit system with 2 sprites and a
> : ball and a 6502 CPU (the Atari 2600) is -laughing- at the "superior"
> : intellect... er... I mean laughing at the superior "Next Generation"
> : systems and their sales figures.
> : The 2600 games were fun enough to attract the sales.
> : These "Next generation" games are simply not fun enough to attract as
> : many people.
>
> Attributing the cause for this is hard to say.  There are many factors.

Absolutely true.

> For instance, in 1980 when the 2600 really caught on, the idea of a
> videogame console in the home was a novelty.  It also didn't have a heck
> of a lot of competition from its peers (Astrocade, Oddyssey^2) These days

As a certified old fart, I can testify that the George Plimpton
Intellivision commercials were providing head by head comparisons of most
of the 2600 games to various supposedly superior Intellivision games.
Sometimes they were dead-on: 2600 football was >DREADFUL<, and other times
the 2600 game ended up looking better with the 2600's cleaner colors.  Add
to that the 2nd tier of Odyssey IIs, Bally Arcades, Fairchild Channel Fs,
and the Colecovision and it was a very crowded market indeed no matter what
the young'uns think.  I myself would have chosen the Bally Arcade over the
2600 in 1977 when I bought mine for $179.99 from Sears had it not been
$299.  The 2600 was dogged with competitors right from the start. The same
Sears catalog that first listed the 2600 also listed the Fairchild channel
F (which I played at Macys 2 months before I even saw a 2600) and the Bally
Arcade.

> there are many more competitors for our free time.  VCRs, cable TV, the
> internet, PCs (more people have PCs than ever).  This all impinges on the
> share of the entertainment market in which consoles exist.

Well, actually, video and video game stores went hand-in-hand in the
beginning and caught on about the same time.  We used to rent movies and
videogames in the same trip.  I'd say however that you have a point about
Internet PCs and the World Wide Web which are a far more exciting
development than the latest incremental advance in console technology.

> Although I'd like to point to poor gameplay and FMV-like linearity as the
> reason, I think this is a simplistic conclusion.

I think it has something to do with it: video games are no longer the
novelty that they once were and not even multi-zillion dollar Nintendo has
been able to recreate the Power Rangers-like insanity that surrounded the
release of 2600 Pacman and other titles.  Oh they try, and a lot of 10-15
year olds center their lives around the next N64 release, and Nintendo
carefully choreographs the availability of these carts in order to inflame
their obsession, but it just isn't the same level of intensity that it was
when I was that age.  They used to run news stories on the major networks
whenever an important title came out.  I haven't seen that in years.

> As for the Next Gen systems being a failure, this is all relative.  PSX
> and Saturn were introduced when the "transitional" NG systems were waning
> (3d0 and Jaguar) while the 16-bit systems were still enjoying dominance
> (despite being long in the tooth, especially the Genesis with its limited
> number of colors).  It's hard to consider the PS a failure under those
> circumstances.  It has done quite well, which is remarkable as the first
> console from Sony.

Actually, the hard numbers argue that the consoles are dying.  Why this is
such a shock is beyond me.  35 million NESs, followed by 20 million SNESs
and 20 million Genesises, finally followed by only 7 million total 32+ bit
systems (source: DFC Intelligence, a videogame market analysis firm) argue
that while the video game market is growing linearly, it's not exploding
like the console manufacturers insist.  I won't be surprised if the PS and
N64 both top 10 million units by the end of their run, but I'll be shocked
if they top 15 million.

> There are plenty of problems with today's game industry, but you can't
> pin the blame on the hardware.  It's the problem with any artform when it
> becomes too corporate.  It happened to film.  It's what happened to rock
> and roll in the 70s.  It happened to videogames in the mid 80s.  It's
> more about commerce than creativity and the sad part is that today's
> youth are so used to the way things are that they seem content to judge
> games based merely on eye candy when it's just repackaging the same
> genres over and over again.  That's all they know.

Nintendo plays its audience like a kazoo.  But even so, it's a much smaller
audience than it once was and if they didn't exercise such strict content
control, the platform would be the same developer morass as the PS where
it's next to impossible to get noticed.  I will hand it to Nintendo however
for being the only console maker that knows what's appealing about console
gaming (the plug and play immediate thrill at the expense of depth) and for
having the cajones to stick to the console market without opening up a PC
development branch.  The PS and Saturn are glorified PC CD ROMs without the
keyboard and that's a major minus for them (I've owned one of each from the
day they were released BTW, but no N64 yet, nothing appeals to me on it).

> Actually, another analogy could be made between today's push towards 3D
> and the introduction of sound to motion pictures.  The early talkies were
> artistically a step backwards in cinematography and they relied on sound
> as a gimmick for its novelty factor.  I think many of today's games work
> on the TECHNICAL aspects of achieving greater and greater photorealism in
> their 3D engines first and think about the game elements last, and that's
> unfortunate.

Also true.  But the industry can throw as many excellent James Cameron-
quality 1st person perspective action games and I will buy them like a
mindless drone.    What I won't buy is Golan-Globus/Troma Films
mouthbreeders like Redneck Rampage, Blood, Seal Team etc.  They aren't fun.
All I really want is games that are >FUN<...

> I have to admit that I am dazzled by great graphics at first, but what is
> definitely missing from today's games is REPLAY VALUE.  It's a concept
> that seems to have been forgotten by gamers in the age of videogame
> rentals and the urge to constantly see the latest and the greatest (or
> the newest sequels).

Actually, Netrek is as good today as it was 6 years ago when it enveloped
me, ditto for Bolo.  It was games like this that got me obsessed with
networked videogaming.    Then Doom came along as the >breakthrough< head to
head videogame and the industry cloned it to death and now they're
scratching their heads as to why networked videogaming is a) no fun and b)
losing money like crazy (TEN is apparently losing 3 million bucks a month).

Yeah, there are all these apologist articles about building a sense of
community in networked videogames blah blah blah the MUDs had this figured
out 10 years ago and while these guys are at it, how about designing games
designed for the effective bandwidth of Internet connections rather than
expecting the throughput of a T3 line out of a 28.8Kbaud modem?

> Level 3 on Adventure for the Atari 2600 has more replay value than the
> latest Final Fantasy RPG because of the use of randomizers and a
> rudimentary sense of artificial intelligence which is all missing from a
> rigid linear spooled RPG.  Unfortunately in order to create more
> randomness, you need to sacrifice some detail and sense of an unfolding
> "story".  It's the kind of thing that makes me wonder if I'm out of touch
> or the industry is messed up.

Actually, it's not that bad.  What you really need to do is design the
level itself to unfold the same general events, but to randomize their
timing and location to a small extent.    If there are 20 "events" in a
given level and you give them 3 possible ways to happen, then the same
level can be played 3^20 different ways and still provide the notion of an
unfolding story.  Describe such concepts to the powers-that-be at places
like Interplay and Activision however and you'll just get blank stares
(been there, done that).

Scott Le Grand
Lead Coder
4Play

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Re: Reality Bytes was Re: BattleSphere textures
From:         Customer Service <[e-mail]>
Date:         1997/07/26
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

> As a certified old fart, I can testify that the George Plimpton

     I am an old fart too.

> Intellivision commercials were providing head by head comparisons of most
> of the 2600 games to various supposedly superior Intellivision games.
> Sometimes they were dead-on: 2600 football was >DREADFUL<, and other
> times the 2600 game ended up looking better with the 2600's cleaner
> colors.  Add to that the 2nd tier of Odyssey IIs, Bally Arcades,
> Fairchild Channel Fs, and the Colecovision and it was a very crowded
> market indeed no matter what the young'uns think.  I myself would have
> chosen the Bally Arcade over the 2600 in 1977 when I bought mine for
> $179.99 from Sears had it not been $299.  The 2600 was dogged with
> competitors right from the start. The same Sears catalog that first
> listed the 2600 also listed the Fairchild channel F (which I played at
> Macys 2 months before I even saw a 2600) and the Bally Arcade.

     The Bally was vastly superior hardware wise but the 2600 still ruled.
Bally got cold feet too early and that didn't help either. Astrovision
tried to take over but they too could not compete with the already ever
growing Atari. I own an Astrocade to this day and it is by far more
superior to any 8 bit of its time in term of power and expandability. The
2600 was still my all time fav game machine. It was more flexible in it
lack of dedicated hardware (like JAG) just not loaded with tons of hard
coded circuitry for support(PSX/N64). The Bally was a lot easier to get
nice displays going (psx/n64) but the 2600 could display 128 colors with
game play where the Bally maxed at 8. With tricks you could get more but it
wound up costing. The 2600 with all it's limits didn't have such problems.
I have written an Astrocade emulator. Still needs a bit of work but it is
operational.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Re: BattleSphere textures
From:         Exodus <[e-mail]>
Date:         1997/07/26
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

Gregory D. George wrote:

> Heck yeah. Tetris, probably one of the best games ever written, has
> absolutely NO TEXTURE MAPPING whatsoever. Neither does Pac-Man,
> Asteroids, Space Invaders... No graphics, pure gameplay.

True enough... but this is also why these games are still being played
nearly 2 decades after they were "state of the art".  I can't wait until
Robotron X is released for the N64... because IMO it made the transition
from excellent game to excellent graphically enhanced game... but the PSX
controllers suck as an interface... and I wasn't interested in spending
$200 on the two joysticks that would have made the game playable.

> These games also lack something besides eye-candy: An ending.

Like Starfox 64's ending?  The game is a showcase for all the cool things
that the machine could do... but it's tracked... left me feeling cheated...
and then the ending... left me feeling disappointed :(

Of course the classic games were born before the profit formula was set...
now everyone knows that a new 3D fighter is going to sell X number of
copies... a new racer (X-2)*1.5... and DOOM (X^2)*(3D fighter+new
racer)*6).  Which is why as "unpolished" as most Jaguar games are...
they're still fun... because they were written by people who were writing
games... not profit margins.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Game Endings (Was: Re: BattleSphere textures)
From:         "Gregory D. George" <[e-mail]>
Date:         1997/07/26
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

Exodus wrote:

> Of course the classic games were born before the profit formula was
> set... now everyone knows that a new 3D fighter is going to sell X
> number of copies... a new racer (X-2)*1.5... and DOOM (X^2)*(3D
> fighter+new racer)*6).  Which is why as "unpolished" as most Jaguar
> games are... they're still fun... because they were written by people
> who were writing games... not profit margins.

Game producers feel a game SHOULD end so that you will go out and buy a new
one when you're finished. They DO NOT want replay value! Arcade games
generally have better re-play because they WANT you to keep plunking
quarters in them. There's a definite correlation between a supremely fun
game and a game with re-play value. They're almost one in the same. I guess
this all boils down to the difference between an arcade game and a home
game.

--
         To reply, remove NOSPAM from my address...
 -----------------------------------------------------------
|  |||     Greg George                                      |
|  |||     Editor, The Atari Times                          |
| / | \    [e-mail]                      |
| ATARI                                                     |
| TIMES    http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/8341 |
| FREE!      The world's most FREE Atari-only Newsletter!   |
 -----------------------------------------------------------


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Jaguar Emulation
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Re: Jaguar Emulator... ?
From:         Thunderbird <[e-mail]>
Date:         1997/08/28
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

Patrick P.H. Nguyen wrote:
>
> In article <5ttcrf$[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (James R. Leek) wrote:
>
> >>
> >        Well, yes, the Atari 2600 with it's 3 seprate processors make
> >it particularly hard to emulate, but to say that a 233 Mhz Pentium could
> >have a prayer emulating 4 RISC processors and a M68000 is ludicrous.
>
> Are you saying the 2600 is harder to emulate than, say, a SNES?
>
> It comes down to the quality of the job by the hacker.  Remember, these
> are hacked projects.  They aren't done by people who have a money motive
> (otherwise, the job would be a lot better).  They are just be people who
> want a challenge and have the time to burn.
>
> The Jag doesn't have 4 RISC processors, and just because it has the word
> "RISC" doesn't mean it's all powerful.  A Pentium alone couldn't do the
> job but if you offload tasks off the CPU, you could do it.  The Voodoo
> chipset crushes the GPU/DSP combo.  A good wavetable sound card or the
> new PCI soundcards (e.g., Monster Sound) are so much better than what's
> offered on any console.

Ahem...

   It would take the full power of a P233 just to perform a
multiplication at the speed of one of the Jag's RISC's. Now, what if
BOTH of those RISCs were multiplying at the same time, while the 68000
were also doing a multiplication and the object processor was overlaying
transparent sprites on the screen and the Blitter were scaling and
rotating a bitmap.

   I think you might be looking for one of them new 64-bit 1000MHZ
systems Intel will make in a few years to have a prayer of emulating the
Jag.

   Sorry.


     Thunderbird
     4Play

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Re: Jaguar Emulator... ?
From:         Scott Le Grand <[e-mail]>
Date:         1997/08/31
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

Jeff Kilgroe wrote:
>
> Thunderbird wrote:
>
> > Ahem...
> >
> >    It would take the full power of a P233 just to perform a
> > multiplication at the speed of one of the Jag's RISC's. Now, what if
> > BOTH of those RISCs were multiplying at the same time, while the 68000
> >
> > were also doing a multiplication and the object processor was
> > overlaying
> > transparent sprites on the screen and the Blitter were scaling and
> > rotating a bitmap.
> >
>
>       Uh, T-Bird...  I've always found you to be a very sensible person
> when you have made claims about the Jag in the past.  However, this one
> about a P233 being needed to do a multiplication at the speed of one of
> the Jag's RISC's is just going a bit overboard, wouldn't you say?

Uh Jeff...  I've always found you to be a very sensible person when you
have made claims in the past, but with all due respect, you're whacked on
this one...

It took a 66 MHz 486 just to do a decent emulation of a 1 MHz Atari 2600
and a 133 MHz Pentium to perform decent (although still imperfect)
emulation of a 1.79 MHz Atari 800.  Are you getting the picture yet about
just how hard it is to emulate complex hardware?

A worst case analysis of but a single RISC of the Jag has it running at
26.6 MHz (and that's assuming everything else is plain off when
realistically you can have the DSP and the CPU running at full tilt at the
same time along with the Blitter and Object Processor doing their thing as
well).

These previous benchmarks indicate to me that you need a good 40-60:1
performance ratio to emulate elaborate hardware.  We're not even at a
factor of 10 yet with the best of the Pentium line.

It's not just a question of emulating the RISCs, the 68000, the Blitter,
and the Object Processor, it's also a question of having sufficient spare
bandwidth to emulate the exact timing of these chips.  I consider it
extremely naive to think that you could pull this off with today's consumer
hardware.

> If these chips were indeed as fast as you claim, then I wouldn't have
> wasted months trying to optimize my rasterization and fixed point math
> functions on the GPU just so I could pull off an ultra-fast (uh, 14fps)
> gouraud shaded landscape.

Objectively, I put the Jag's processor power somewhere between a 486 and a
133 MHz Pentium say maybe a P90.  But, the P90 has twice the bandwidth
under most situations.  And there's your answer.  Your landscape generator
was stuck doing things at which the Jag basically sucked.  Sure, you can
emulate everything at which the Jag sucks, but you're in deep doo doo when
you try to emulate its strengths and peculiarities.

Right now, there are things on the Jag right now that are effectively
faster than a 233 MHz Pentium.  Dream on trying to emulate them until you
have a nice wide performance margin with your emulating CPU.

>     Now, as far as an emulator is concerned, I think one could be done
> on a Pentium Pro or Pentium II system at 166MHz or greater.  Of course,
> the emulator would also have to make use of DirectX/3D hardware
> acceleration.  To do the emulator entirely on the PPro or PII CPU, it
> just wouldn't be possible right now.  Maybe when the 1GHz P7's, arrive
> sometime in late '99 it might be possible to do it all on the CPU.  Just
> because of the intricacies of the Jag's chips, especially the Blitter,
> it is beyond the scope of a PII.

A 1 Ghz CPU might just do it, but why bother (unless of course you just
want to be cool which is a fine motive)?

>     If someone were ambitious enough, a special API could be developed
> for the 3Dfx chipset to provide all the Jag's blitter functions and
> emulation of the other processors could be handled within a PII 266 or
> 300 with a little speed to spare.

OK, so how do you do the video feedback with the 3DFX (the Jag does it in a
rather odd non-standard way)?  Offhand, you'd need to do a color-remapping
blit on the 3DFX with a lookup table.  I don't think the Voodoo has that
feature right now.  How about all those rather odd tricks the object
processor can perform?  And reading the framebuffer with the CPU is dog
slow with the Voodoo chipset (although it's totally rocking in most other
ways).

This is the sort of thing I'm talking about that makes it impossible IMO to
emulate Jag code with our current generation of home computers.

> ...Side note:  I've got 4 Jag's here just waiting for BattleSphere and I
> can't wait to get it!

K00L!

Scott


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Scott's Job Interview
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Subject:      Re: PC Battlesphere-- that's what I want to see
From:         Scott Le Grand <[e-mail]>
Date:         1997/09/19
Newsgroups:   rec.games.video.atari

Have you actually seen anything >GOOD< come out of Activision in the past
few years?  Case in point: MechWarrior II.  Sure, the underlying Battletech
rules were excellent source material but look at the actual game they
designed around it past the engine.  Linear missions, lame arbitrary
changes in the rules to force you to solve each and every mission the same
way, and a lousy polygon engine.

Then of course there was my ill-fated job interview at Activision last
March.  I even brought 2 Jags and 2 copies of BattleSphere with me to show
it to them.  First they sent me to this AI dude who was actually pretty
cool and we talked all about A* and optimal path algorithm (on the off
chance you're reading this Ian, you were about the only cool guy in the
building IMO), then they sent me to this guy working on the next generation
graphics engine for Heavy Gear.  So I show this guy some Java and some
assembler (the parallelized code of my polygon engine and PDB3D, my
molecule viewer for web pages, and which flipped out anyone who understood
what a cool hack it was at the time - since utterly dethroned by Java
Quake) and since he only knew Intel assembler and had never seen Java, he
was lost but he seemed to know a little about B-splines.  Then I got to
talk to their  technology officer who used to be in the same branch of
science I was in and I don't think we clicked as he didn't like someone
that I respect, and finally I got to talk to David Crane (not the original,
but an inferior copy), CEO of the joint.  He mostly probed me for game
ideas and little else.  At each interview, I offered to show off Battle
Sphere and nobody was willing to take the time to let me hook it up. So
then they asked me what kind of salary I wanted and I stated 90K (which is
less than a lot of my friends in the industry make who have less experience
than me and pretty much acknowledge I know a lot more 3D math than they do
and well I already had offers higher than that from other companies not in
the video game industry) and they tell me that's ridiculous and it pretty
much ends there.

They told my headhunter that the reason they didn't make a job offer was
that there was no evidence that I could actually program...

Activision sucks... You'll find that to be a common impression in the
developer community...

Scott

"Misfortune favors the overconfident mind." - Me


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// In Defense of Zero 5
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Date received: 10/3/97 12:51 from bitsuser2.demon.co.uk (Matthew Gosling)
Subject: MG's Zero 5 comments
From: Jaguar Interactive

For those that don't know, I was lead programmer on Zero 5, and after some
extensive net-searching, I finally stumbled across this discussion forum,
so here's my comments on the whole Zero 5 thing.

Firstly, thanks to everyone who gave their feedback on the game. When you
are sitting in front of the same game for every waking moment of every day
for months on end, it is impossible to have an unbiased opinion on it, and
some days I would look at it and think "it's sh*t, the ships look like lego
blocks, there's not enough variety, nobody will be able to figure out the
controls" etc., and other days I might be playing it with the volume & bass
cranked right up in a darkened room and think "this is 10 times better than
anything I've played on the Jag so far, everyone will love it", it's
impossible to tell how people will react to it.

Regarding the difficulty level of Zero 5, yes it is hard, that was
deliberate, but in my opinion the difficulty level is acceptable _if_ you
are comfortable with the controls and are making intelligent use of your
power-ups and smart-lazers. We did have people come back and critisize the
difficulty level who, it later transpired, didn't even know that they could
replenish their shields by changing their powerup type. Incidentally, all
difficulty 'tuning' was done with the game in Cadet mode, in my opinion
many levels are too easy in Novice mode but we simply did not have enough
time to spend on each mission to get the difficulty as fine-tuned as we
would have liked. Thunderbird noted that some HitPak missions can be
completed by just hammering on the firebutton, this is probably the case in
Novice mode, and I was not happy about this, but it was a case of having
slightly rushed levels or no game, and if the missions were acceptable in
Cadet mode then we simply had to move on. One case that stands out is one
of the later missions where you're in an asteroid belt, but there's saucer
drones shooting at your from the sides, the difficulty was tweaked very
carefully in Cadet mode, but it was something of a no-brainer to get
through in Novice. Note that we spent 1 month on getting the missions in,
that means each mission was designed in 2 days, and without tools (ie, all
attack paths and trench maps were massive source files full of hand-typed
dc.w statements - my fingers still ache).

As far as 4-Play's comments are concerned, everyone is entitled to their
own opinion, and of course any game can be thought of as 'good' or 'bad'
depending on what you expect from it. I mean it would be very easy to over-
analyze Tempest 2000 and say "the player's craft is an unrecognizable blob,
the enemies are just a few brightly-coloured flat triangles, the gameplay
is too simplistic, the levels are repetitive, the game is essentially 2D
shown using a 3D perspective, etc. ..." but of course we all know that T2K
is an awesome game, and the graphical style and the raw, simplistic
gameplay is what appeals most about it. If you go loading up Zero 5 and
you're expecting Wing Commander 5 then forget it, you are seeing a game
that was hacked together by a couple of guys in a room, that had the lowest
development budget of any Jaguar product at the time. Zero 5 is, when you
get down to it, supposed to be a mindless blast, just like T2K or even
Galaxians, and as a mindless blast I think it works okay, but this is
(evidently) a matter of opinion.

Regarding the trench sequences: yes it is very fast, and yes it does get
easy when you learn the patterns, that is the whole point. The idea is that
you learn it almost subconsciously so when you do finally get through it,
you feel as though you have super-human reactions - just see how you feel
the first time you get through the mission 8 trench on expert mode without
taking a single hit...

Regarding repetitiveness / number of missions: Ideally we would have liked
to have spent a LOT more time on enemy behaviour, more enemy types, more
variety in the missions etc., but time and cartridge space simply did not
allow. Incidentally there was originally a 4th game mode, in which you fly
over planet terrain, which ended up getting canned for the same reasons -
and of course a lot of time that could have been spent adding to the
variety of the other missions was effectively lost. But even so, most games
start to get repetitive to some extent after a while, look at T2K... but as
I said, if you want more than a mindless blast then you're probably not
going to get much out of Zero 5.

Regarding the control system in BamBam mode: Yes, it takes some getting
used to. As a general rule, try to only rotate on 1 axis at a time - just
use left/right to point round to your side, or up/down to increase your
elevation, then when you get to where you want, use the roll control to re-
align if you're banking too much. Thunderbird made a comment about how when
you are pointing 'out' of the screen you can't see what you're aiming at
because they're 'behind' your head. This should not happen, the camera
zooms back to make everything visible. The camera panning was a little slow
at one point, one of the latest revisions of the code increased the camera
pan speed significantly, I certainly hope that this was the version that
Telegames put into production. I think the control system in BamBam mode is
a little unorthodox and does require a bit of time to get used to, but if
you don't like unorthodox ideas then what the hell are you doing buying
Jaguar games in late 1997? ;)

Now, can we all just be friends again?
=)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Date received: 10/3/97 13:48 from LEGRAND.ag3d.com (Scott Le Grand)
Subject: RE: MG's Zero 5 comments
From: Jaguar Interactive

Actually, anyone who can finish a game while under the Tramiel's "expert"
tutelage has my respect for that achievement alone. This puts you above the
wankers at HyperImage and all those other guys that took money from Atari
and delivered nothing but a few pre-alphas.

But that aside, I found myself giving up on Zero 5 around the 10th level or
so simply because it indeed got too hard to be fun anymore.

However, I love the Gerry Anderson Supermarionette look of the game, and
the sounds and graphics are quite nice. In many ways, the trade off to 256
colors allowed for better graphics than our own game, Battle Sphere, and I
salute you for that because I know just what a pain it is to get the Jaguar
to do much in real-time beyond trip on its own hardware bugs.

In fact, I really found myself enjoying the first 4 levels or so after I
figured out that you couldn't actually move the ship to avoid enemy fire
and had to shoot every shot. The look of the game is really cool as are all
the opening and transition sequences.

But then the difficulty kicked in and in the final level it's just too
damned hard to be fun. I think Doug almost made it to the end before he
gave up (consider this an open challenge to anyone out there to actually
finish the thing!).

I use Tempest 2000 as the poster child for a nice progressive difficulty
curve. I think it's the best shooter of the 90s. It starts out almost
braindead easy but by level 30 or so, you have to completely revamp your
strategy which then has to shift again around level 50 and so on right up
to the infamous level 64 which is just plain sadistic, and then it's yet
another difficulty curve until the final level of death. I tried to model
this kind of process in the Gauntlet play mode of BattleSphere.

The key is to learn from the experience and make new mistakes in the future
rather than the same old ones. I can't look at BattleSphere without picking
it to pieces, yet whenever anyone plays the thing, they seem to like it, a
lot. Rotate your playtesters often. We're paying the price right now simply
because there just aren't enough people out there with Jaguar dev systems
that can ferret out the final bugs of Battle Sphere and I'm extremely
nervous that the whole package will simply turn out to be too hard to be
fun.

And remember, opinions are like a$$holes and mine's no different...

Scott Le Grand
Lead Coder
4Play


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Out of Sight! Atari Celebrates 25 Years!
   ||  By: Donald A. Thomas, Jr.
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

Those who know me, know my undying commitment to remember how much fun I
had with Atari products throughout the early years of the industry's
evolution. Atari was once one of the most popular trade names in the world.
It ranked almost as high as Coca-Cola in brand name recognition and
household members either read about it, spoke about it or played an Atari
product virtually every day of their lives.

Aside from the pure entertainment value that Atari provided over the years,
Atari has influenced the industry in ways that most of us will never
fathom. Apple Computer was born of Atari employees and the first Apple
system ever manufactured is said to have been of parts "borrowed" from
Atari engineering labs. Today, Apple Computer suffers from many of the same
symptoms that Atari experienced prior to its unceremonious passing not long
ago. After all these years, even Steve Jobs is wisely backing away from an
"opportunity" at the helm. Apple might be wise to call on ex-Atari
executives to advise them what not to do. SC&T, a formidable maker of video
game driving controllers, was founded by an ex-Atari employee and so was
Activision. Ex-Atari people work at 3Com, AverMedia, Capcom, Creative Labs,
Electronic Arts, Intel, JTS Corporation, Midway, NetManage, Photronics,
Piiceon, Playnet, Reality Quest, Sega of America, Silicon Gaming, Sony
Computer Entertainment America, Sun Microsystems, Super Dimension,
Tecnomatix Technologies, U.S. Robotics, ...virtually every imaginable
Silicon Valley technology company in existence. In each case, their
experiences from Atari help shape what they do in their present jobs and
they will affect the way we enjoy tomorrow's technology.

Those like me that remember Atari so fondly clearly recall "Pong", but many
of us will remember different forms of the game. The Silicon Valley
remembers a coin-operated stand-up system that had electronics affixed to
an oversized electronics board and played through an off-the-shelf black-
and-white Zenith television. Much of the country may remember a dedicated
home-based console with two integrated paddles and several modes for one or
two players. But what assuredly everyone over 18 remembers is the Atari
Video Computer System (VCS aka 2600) and the elaborate forms of "Pong" it
could play in color. And soon forthcoming was "Air/Sea Battle", "Breakout",
"Combat", "Outlaw", "Slot Racer", "Super Breakout", "Surround", "Video
Olympics" and many other innovative titles that exploited the pixel in
every 2k way possible.

On Tuesday, June 27, 1972, Atari was incorporated. Although Atari had roots
that traced back more than a year prior, this is the date that many people
recognize was the formal birth date. . . making Atari 25 years old in the
year 1997.

On Friday, July 12, 1996, Atari Corporation was informed by the Securities
Exchange Commission (SEC) that their intentions to merge with Jugi Tandon
Storage, Inc. (JTS) was approved pending the formality of a shareholder's
vote.

On Tuesday, July 30, Atari Corporation hosted a special meeting of
stockholders in the offices of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. in
Palo Alto, California. The meeting was said to have taken about four to six
minutes. With an outcome of approximately 42 million votes in favor and
about 11,000 against, the stockholders ratified the decision to merge.
Trading of ATC shares were halted at the end of the day. Upon the
conclusion of the meeting, Mr. Sam Tramiel arranged to pick up the
severance checks for himself and his siblings. Mr. Jack Tramiel, former
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Atari Corporation, remained to assist with
a smooth transition with the handful of surviving Atari personnel.

Essentially, July 30 was the final day Atari existed as an entity of its
own. A handful of ex-Atari employees, who had remained faithful in a hope
that someone or something would hear a heartbeat and jolt it back to life,
accepted no new checks with an Atari logo. JTS stepped in, delegated any
remaining liabilities and reassigned the staff to the task of selling hard
disk drives.

On Monday, July 28, a friend of mine sent to my attention the following
notice:

=======================================================================
ATARI ALUMNI REUNION
Wednesday, August 13, 6-9 PM

San Jose Live!
150 South First Street, San Jose
(408-294-5483)

* 25 years ago, in June of 1972, Atari was born!
* Come join Atarians from all the ages as we celebrate 25 years of
  innovation, technology, and countless memories.
* Come play Pong (1972) and San Francisco Rush (1997) and see what
  25 years of technology hath wrought.

SPREAD THE WORD!
All current and former Atari employees are welcome!

* Bring old photos and memorabilia - come swap lies with some of
  the best!
* Open Bar from 6 to 8 PM
* Video Games. Video Games. Video Games.
* Spotlight Event: High Stakes cash prize Video Game contest
  starring former Atari executives.
* Please RSVP by phone, fax or E-mail to:

Karen (Graham) Jefferson
408-434-3738
408-434-3910 (fax)
[e-mail]

Deborah Geyer
408-473-9427
408-473-9488 (fax)
[e-mail]

COME CELEBRATE
ATARI'S
25th ANNIVERSARY

=======================================================================

The notice clearly states that the event on August 13 is open to "all
current and former Atari employees". The festivities will banner Atari's
25th Anniversary and historic being. I have a copy of the original flyer
and I noticed some interesting things:

* The word "Atari" (or a derivative) appears 6 times.
* There are 25 lines of type on the actual announcement.
* The expression "Video Game" is found 4 times.
* The term "25 years" or "25th anniversary" appears 4 times.
* Both RSVP e-mail addresses end in @agames.com

"@agames"? Atari Games? Hmmm. I don't know much about San Jose Live! or how
big the establishment is, but could this event be intended for just Atari
Games?

Flashback to the "wee hours" of Monday, July 2, 1984, when Tramiel
Technology, Ltd. (Mr. Jack Tramiel) acquired the assets of Atari from
Warner Communications by promising $240 million in long-term notes and a
32% interest in the home-computer and home-game divisions. The resulting
deal specified that Warner communications retain the arcade game and
telecommunications (AtariTel) divisions of Atari. The deal with the
Tramiels was initiated by Warner with a phone call to Mr. Garry Tramiel who
was working as a broker at Merill-Lynch in Sunnyvale.

Since that time in 1984, Atari Coin-op and Atari Home Consumer Products
were more than separate divisions, they were entirely separate companies,
but the deal that Jack made with Warner saved both companies and Atari
survived as two companies for over a decade more.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure what they will be celebrating at San Jose Live!
on Wednesday, August 13, but it definitely is not an Atari Alumni Reunion.
When I spoke to Karen to RSVP, she pointed out that this was only for the
coin-op company which is currently owned by Williams and still calls itself
Atari Games. Interesting, the terms "Atari Games", "Coin-Op" and "Consumer
Products Atari not invited" appear no where on the invitation.

How does that phrase go? ... Out of sight, out of mind?


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  BattleSphere News
   ||  By: Doug Engel, Scott Le Grand, and Mark Santora
\__//  [e-mail], [e-mail],
       [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// BattleSphere Update
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

[from Doug Engel's Thunderbird's Garage home page <http://home.sprynet.com/
sprynet/Thunderbird>.]

//// 9/29/1997

It's been quite a while since the last update of the ol' BattleSphere
Update Page, so now's probably a good time to post a little info about the
most amazing game ever to be created for a home videogame console, bar
none. It's been much more hectic at 4Play than usual, due to the fact that
we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and are working even
harder than ever to wrap this thing up.

The stage we are currently at is something approaching the neighborhood of
what could loosely be referred to as "Done". There's still a whole lot more
to do, and we are not in any sort of relaxed operating mode by a longshot.
We have basically finished all of the game elements in all of the play
modes. Every mode is now fully playable, and all of their basic features
are written.

What remains to be done are some rather nasty odd bugs that have turned up
in playtesting, as well as a bunch of housekeeping chores such as adding
configuration options to the controller code, writing the code to hide the
various "easter eggs", writing some code to manage the saved options in the
NVRAM, and perhaps tweaking some of the play features or improving things
we find are not quite perfect in playtesting.

These sorts of things are very unpredictable and hard to forecast or
estimate time to completion, so you can hold off on the celebrations for a
while yet. For example, Scott and I both concentrated our efforts to track
down a bug which caused the "Demo" mode to lock up only on certain Jaguars
and never with a development system connected to it. This type of bug is a
nightmare for us, because the development system is the only tool that can
be used to examine memory after a crash to determine what went wrong. Since
the screen blanks out if the hardware crashes, you can't very well print
text messages on the screen to aid in debugging. The other problem we faced
was that the crash would occur only after several hours of idle time
running the demo. That means any attempt to fix the bug requires a huge
waiting period to reproduce it or collect data about it.

The eventual solution I used was to build an LED display board which
connected to the joypad 2 connector to provide numeric codes depending on
what routines were active during the crash. Armed with my LED output device
I was able to obtain the information that enabled Scott and I to locate and
correct several "problems". (I use the term "problem" in quotes because the
code sequence in question was perfectly valid, but apparently triggered
some sort of hardware idiosyncracy in the hardware of those units).

At this point, I can see why playtesters feel they are not appreciated
enough. There's simply not enough credit given to playtesters. We've been
actively testing everything as we went along, and now we are attempting to
test the game as something like a whole unit, as opposed to just specific
modes. This is a very difficult task. There's simply not enough development
hardware around for us to be able to enlist any of the kind souls who have
offered to playtest for us, so we have to keep our testing inside 4Play.
That makes for a much larger burden on us as well. At least we get to test
a game with high replay value. The StarFox 64 testers must have had a lot
of attrition due to monotony. ;-)

In addition to our regular jobs, we've also had to do our regular life type
things, Scott and Steph have had to find the time to move to a new
apartment, and do all of the fun and time consuming chores that are
associated with this (more on this later). I've been busy myself building a
real garage (as opposed to my virtual one). Construction has been a
wonderful break from coding. But I had hoped to be done with code by now so
now I'm on triple-duty and getting no sleep! I can't wait to take a
vacation!

In addition to all the wacky debugging I have done, I have also managed to
get in a few hours simply playing "Alone Against the Empires" for fun,
rather then for debugging. I really enjoy this mode a lot. The elements of
strategy and resource management really come into play, and mesh very well
with the frantic arcade pace of the battle portions. When I'm not "playing
games" I have been busy finishing up some of the "easter egg" routines, AND
creating some more sound effects. Just a little advance warning for all our
customers: if you don't have a good set of speakers and a sub-woofer, GO
GET SOME NOW! The sound effects really kick bass! The warp speed sounds
turned out especially nice. A set of amplified stereo speakers will serve
you well with this game.

I understand that Stephanie has re-sampled all of our instrument tracks and
is putting together a ton of awesome new songs to go along with various
screens in the game. I can hardly wait to hear the new tunes, which will
take advantage of some new code in my music engine which should propel
BattleSphere(tm) into the record books as being the Jaguar cartridge with
the most music channels of all time... perhaps the most channels for a
cartridge on -any- system. Let's all make sure we remind Steph to take
advantage of the new code (after all, she asked for more channels!)

Did everyone get a chance to read in rec.games.video.atari the thread Scott
was discussing our efforts to move BattleSphere(tm) onto the PC next? If
you missed it, I suggest hopping over to Deja News and searching for it.
It's well worth the read. As you will see, building a great game doesn't
necessarily guarantee backing when it comes to PC game companies. We were
naive enough to think so once, now we are jaded. We might just have to come
up with new and creative ways to get support, if the game companies can't
recognize a hit when we dangle it in front of them!

Mark Santora has been busy helping with all the playtesting which has to be
done, as well as doing all the videography and editing of the
BattleSphere(tm) promotional video. Hopefully, this will convince someone
that we are serious about this game. I should have mentioned this above,
but Stephanie also composed music for the video. It's pretty nice. A small
clip of it was featured on Gamespot <http://www.gamespot.com> a few weeks
ago.

Finally, Tom has been up to the usual behind-the-scenes top secret sort of
Tom things. He's about to take on the majority of the burden when it come
time to start manufacturing these carts. I hear he is making a second run
of CatBoxes, so if you didn't get enough of them to suit your networking
needs, you might want to give him a holler and tell him you want some more!
Just head to the ICD website at <http://www.icdinc.com>!

Everyone check out the new screen shots which I have made over the past few
weeks. Some of the newest features are shown! You should be able to spot
the docking feature, and entering and cruising in warp-drive. There's also
a couple of shots where you can see some bases and capitol ships. Don't
make fun of the shots with the missiles in them... we just recently
discovered the bug that caused the low-detail models to be used all the
time, which makes them look really clunky in the screenshots. The real
models are much cooler!

That's about all the time I have for this installment. I apologize for the
long gap between updates. It's been so busy, I don't know where the time
went. Until next time!


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// BattleSphere Countdown
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

[from Scott Le Grand's Official BattleSphere Countdown page (address
currently in a state of transition).]

Last Updated 10/2/97

There are now:

*** 3 ***

coding days to the completion of Battle Sphere.

Here's what I have left to do in those 3 days:

General stuff

1. Playtest Training Mode
2. Enable Easter Eggs
3. Final Music Assignment

What am I doing right now?

7/14/97 - Spent a week moving my life to San Jose, spent the other week
debugging everything I'd spent the last month creating. I think we still
have one more RAM SPAM but I haven't seen it in two days. Since we're
redoing the docking sequence, expect another week or so of coding before I
complete the thing, but I'm expecting to have the whole game implemented by
the end of July. During August, I expect to playtest the game and debug the
remaining problems with the code. With luck, that means that sometime in
September, Battle Sphere will enter production. Keep your fingers crossed.
And JagFest guys, pay special attention to the Battle Sphere play mode: I
want to know what it needs to be play-balanced!

7/15/97 - The future is a changing thing. We've decided that an OpenGL
version of Battle Sphere is our best bet for a PC edition. To that end,
shortly after the end of coding the Jaguar edition, we intend to start
bringing Battle Sphere to the PC. However, expect it to take at least 6
months before anyone will see >ANYTHING< as this will be a ground-up
rewrite. Besides, Microsoft >HATES< OpenGL, and that alone makes it cool in
my book.

7/16/97 - Found aforementioned RAM SPAM (7/14/97) and guys, when I say you
won't see anything on the PC for >AT LEAST< six months, that does
>NOT< mean PC Battle Sphere is coming out in 1998. C'mon, we're going
through hell on Usenet with people quoting 3 year old text from AEO to
prove that I've broken promises to the Jaguar userbase about features and
release dates, don't start making stuff up: it only takes away from the
time I can spend writing the game. There is no release date/month/year/
century for PC Battle Sphere at this time, there is only the desire to
write it in OpenGL and a huge list of features. As of today, dumbfire
missiles are supported if you launch missiles without a current target.
This feature was implemented with 16 bytes to spare.

7/18/97 - JagFest edition is ready. Didn't get to finish all I wanted to in
AAtE but you guys will get the general idea. What's missing? Hyperspace,
docking, victory/defeat, and simulated combat for all those other sectors.
We're not far away from completion actually, but time just ran out.

7/21/97 - Well, despite a silly coding error (fixed in 5 minutes Saturday
morning) preventing the networked play of Free For All and Gauntlet,
networked Battle Sphere mode was alive and well and I think a good time was
had by all. Meanwhile, Alone Against the Empires got a step closer to
completion this weekend and even more silly bugs bit the dust.

7/22/97 - Added default behavior for AAtE escorts and fixed the starbase
collision bug in Battle Sphere mode.

8/7/97 - Finally fixed the JagFest stasis bolt crash and boy did that take
too long! I'm almost done with the reworked docking sequence and we're
designing the new hyper space effect.

8/13/97 - Bad news, I've got some Andromeda Strain antibiotic resistant
infection which has shut me down for the past 5 days. I feel a bit better
today, but Monday sucked bigtime. I have not been coherent enough to code
though I think I'll get a little done tonight.

8/16/97 - Back to work, finished new starbase docking sequence, adding new
sound effects and moving on to the new hyper space effect.

8/25/97 - Added a new sound effect for stasis, fixed some long-nagging bugs
in cooperation with Doug, and I'm about halfway through the new hyperspace
effect (killing bugs as usual).

9/02/97 - Hyperspace is done! On to the Options Screen! Even more new sound
effects added thanks to Doug! More music on the way from Steph! It's all
finally coming together!

9/05/97 - Options screen complete. Time to put in the end game and the
scoring...

9/15/97 - Alone Against the Empires crashed a lot until a marathon hacking
session this weekend. I didn't get to the endgame, but there were a lot of
loose ends to clean up as a result of the valiant playtesting by Mark
Santora and Doug. Tonight, I put the endgame in...

9/25/97 - Alone Against the Empires is Finished! All that's left is the
above list of to-dos along with the playtesting and Battle Sphere is
finally complete! This would be a really bad time for me to get hit by a
truck or something (well so would any other time but well you know what I
mean).

10/02/97 - ProController support is up! I have to add some more control
schemes and do something else >-), but it works and it's cool! Meanwhile,
all sorts of last minute bugs have popped up in playtesting and Mark thinks
hyperspace control is off so I need to tune it a little to the skill level
in play. Since Doug has mastered it, I'm not going to make it easier in the
harder skill levels, but I will make the difficulty more progressive than
on/off. The good news of course is that there will only be two more of
these updates before the game enters production. The next update will occur
when we have completed the remaining list items. The final update will
occur when all hurdles have been surmounted and Battle Sphere has entered
production at which point this page will move someplace else more
appropriate and become the Battle Sphere strategy guide.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// BattleSphere Playtester's Report
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

[from Mark Santora's BattleSphere Playtester's Page <http://home.earthlink.
net/~santora/playtstb.html>]

The July 17 1997 Report

THE PLOT

In the future, an intergalactic war is about to break out. Eight different
races were set to fight until they controlled the galaxy. But in a brief
moment of intelligence, the races agreed to save the galaxy from begin
ravaged by war. They did this by placing their best pilots in an enclosed
area of space to fight until one remained. Which ever race that was, would
rule the galaxy. Here lies the plot for Battlesphere.

ALONE AGAINST THE EMPIRES

I managed to get an early flash ROM of this mode. It is Star Raiders on
acid and is really a lot of fun. In the version I currently have, which is
two weeks before JagFest 97, you can zoom around the galaxy, use the
galactic map, and engage the enemies. You can also dock with the Star
Bases. There are no bells and whistles, at least not yet. By bells and
whistles I mean warp effects, docking sequences, things like that. I should
get a ROM dated from JagFest 97 soon where most of the bugs/crashes/
gameplay mechanics have been updated to work.

But what is here, it's the kernel of what I saw and loved in Star Raiders.
If you've never played Star Raiders, I suggest you download the Atari 8Bit
emulator XL-It! This is one of the best emulators I've seen around, and it
does run everything 8bit I've thrown at it, including the original Star
Raiders.

Sorry this one is short, but there really isn't a lot to tell until I get
the new ROM. I will update soon. Promise. No really. I mean it.


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Llatest from Llamaland
   ||  By: Jeff "Yak" Minter
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

[All of the following postings are taken from Jeff Minter's web page, Yak's
Zoo <http://www.magicnet.net/~yak/zoo.html>.  Check it out, and see what
else Jeff has yakked up lately.]

//// 20 Aug 1997

"And I sit in the canyon with my back to the sea

There's a blood-red dragon on a field of green

Calling me back..."

(Roger Waters, from the very excellent album "Radio K.A.O.S.")

It was decided, in the end, informally and over curry; most propitious
circumstances for any decision, in the Yakly books. The pace of things is
constantly picking up in the world of X, and in the end it just seemed
sensible that I should get the business and hassles of a transatlantic move
out of the way slightly earlier than I had originally thought possible, so
that I can be comfortably ensconced in a new Welsh abode, ready for when
the pressure is really gonna start hitting hard, so that I will be back in
my optimal coding environment. Wales, where Trip-a-Tron was made, where
Llamatron was made, where Tempest 2000 and the VLM were created... Wales,
where I have done my best work previously, and where I can live the semi-
hermetic rural life to which I am best suited, working on the stuff of
dreams, getting visited by my mates at weekends and going out down the pub
in the evenings... Wales, where a YaK belongs.

Wales.

Where Flossie lives :-)

So now here I sit, on the floor because all my furniture is in boxes,
probably in Santa Cruz by now, and soon to be in a container on a ship
heading towards a small but influential island off the coast of Europe;
listening to some rather interesting music that my Penty is kindly
composing in realtime for me (you may well hear more about that later, but
that's a whole nother story). The reason that I have been almost totally
unresponsive to email recently is that organising a transatlantic move
takes quite a bit of doing, plus I have been trying to get some work done
too, plus I have had the hell visited out of me by my mates who know I am
going away in the spare time that I have had. Answering all my email tends
to make matters worse, since I then get a bunch more replies to field... so
I am afraid I haven't bothered much. Sorry to anyone who has thought me
rude; not intended as such. Once I am safely back I will be more
responsive, I promise.

The process of disengaging has been quite long and crinkly, but it is now
almost all done. Moving out the furniture was the last major milestone -
that, and having the landlord see the place that I have been renting and
(thanks largely to the heroic cleaning-up eddorts of my mum, who visited
for that express purpose last week [I am about as naturally domesticated as
a billy-goat]) have him see that I have not trashed the place unduly and
will therefore get my deposit back. I still have the hardware here, and a
few extra things like the telly that I am going to give to a mate's mad
girlfriend - but tomorrow I will gather the hardware into the hire car
(sob! it was a wrench giving back the llovely Red Ship!), spend one more
afternoon at the office, then go out for a monumental pissup at the local
of my mate Ian Lightsynth in Sunnyvale, crash the night at his gaff and
then drive (doubtless in Hangover Mode) up 101 to SFO, there to board the
afternoon Virgin flight (Virgin cattle class... hmmm... I wonder if they
will let me sit with the virgin cattle? :-]) back to London... and on
Saturday night, UK time, I shall be down the Curry Garden for my first
proper British vindy for many months.

Delag over the weekend, Monday's a bank holiday, then go see the bank dudes
on Tuesday about getting the dosh together for a house, then on Wednesday,
after much anticipation, I shall finally be returning over the Second
Severn Crossing, and I shall be in Rejoice Mode as I finally slip over the
border, into Wales, knowing that once again I am to make that fair and
frequently moist country my home. I shall inspect places until I find one
that is suitable for me and decent enough to bring Flossie home to, and
there I shall settle, and surround myself with beasties and computers, and
be an exile no more (except maybe for a week or two here and there as work
dictates).

And there I shall remain; happy in that gentle country, not far from the
pub, working my wizardry in peace, with only the occasional flicker of
unearthly light and ethereal music escaping into the valley betraying the
fact that strange and interesting things are afoot; connected to the world,
yet alone in my comfortable space, with my computers and my beasties around
me.

There, I shall be a happy YaK. And a happy YaK combined with awesome
hardware can work miracles :-)


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  JagFest '97 Field Reports
   ||  By: Kevin Manne, Glenn Bruner
\__//  [e-mail], [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Kevin Manne's JagFest Report
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

JagFest '97: The Aftermath

The JagFest, as most would agree, was a brilliant success. While the
scheduled events such as tournaments were totally abandoned, it was a good
time anyway. There were an estimated 40 guests who either attended all day
or stopped in for a few hours.

BattleSphere was undoubtedly the most popular attraction at the Fest, as
there was hardly (if ever) a copy not in play. There were 7 Jaguars linked
for BattleSphere at the start, but ended up at 5 due to some technical
difficulties. The BattleSphere play mode was the only multiplayer mode
available to us, but it was very fun nonetheless. The game was very
impressive, and very addictive. Many were found intently glaring into the
screen in complete concentration. In multi player mode, though, most were
yelling back and forth to each other. Stephanie Wukovitz of 4Play even
joined us for a bit, and even though she claimed to be "not very good," she
killed quite a few of us.

AirCars was also on display, having 2 Jaguars linked up for some head-to-
head play. Most people got a laugh out of hearing "primary target
destroyed" repeated over and over throughout the day. At one point, the
AirCars carts were replaced by two copies of Doom for some Deathmatch
action. Even Doom ran surprisingly well, with very few network errors. Must
be that there wasn't very much interference in Hell on Saturday or
something.

Tom Harker and ICD were in attendance, sporting various Atari wares for
sale, including their AirCars. Both Tom and Stephanie were very nice
people, and were very willing to answer all of our questions about
Battlesphere and everything else we could think up. Thanks for being so
cool, guys!

Visual Dimensions 3-D gave a small presentation in the mid-afternoon, and
discussed some upcoming games for the Jaguar and Lynx, including
Automaniacs (essentially Club Drive 2) and Defcon 1 ("Tomb Raider style"
game) for the Jaguar. These guys seemed very enthusiastic and professional.
Here's hoping for good things from this ambitious company.

After the Visual Dimensions 3-D presentation, Fard Muhammad showed his
computer animation celebrating the 25th anniversary of Atari. Hopefully a
Quicktime of this excellent animation will be on the net soon, as it was
quite impressive. There is no way to put it into words.

The rest of the evening was just free-play, everyone enjoying playing some
excellent Jaguar games with some fellow fans. It was quite an experience to
meet everyone in person, and an even bigger one to try to remember
everyone's names. Also, who could forget Jeff Grimshaw's Jaguar Kiosk,
standing tall in the corner of the room with the big yellow cat eyes
staring at everyone. It was a great piece of Jaguar memorabilia.

A few people (one being myself) had homemade controllers to show off. I had
my Joystick and Rotary controller combo stick, and my rotary controller set
up, and someone else (whose name I cannot remember) had an optical rotary
controller available for everyone to try out. It was a very impressive
piece of hardware.

On the Lynx side of things, Carl Forhan had made a demo card of three of
his Lynx products which are currently under development. Ponx, SFX and
Planar Wars were on the card and all showed promise, most notably Planar
Wars. Comlynx capability is a plus on all of his games, except for SFX
which is just a fun little sound effects program.

There were a few other Lynx's there, and there was some Comlynxing going
on. Quite a few of the available Lynx games were there, although the new
Telegames releases "Raiden" and "Fat Bobby" were unfortunately missing.

The majority of people left before midnight, but a few of us stayed until
2:00 am or so, playing two player AirCars, Doom, and even holding the only
competition of the event, Pong. Wes Powell was the lucky recipient of the
Defender 2000 soundtrack as a result of the competition. Most of the other
prizes were simply just handed out, because of the lack of competitions.

It was a great time, and hopefully was one that everyone will remember for
a long time. Let's hope someone takes the initiative to pull together a
second annual JagFest '98....

...Until next time,
-Kevin Manne


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
//// Glenn Bruner's JagFest Report
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The fest was great. It was great to see first hand Battle Sphere. I took my
video camera with me and recorded some of the highlights. Jeff
(Hyperturtle) did a great job putting this thing together. I don't think he
was able to totally recoup his costs (but he did get a lot from me with T-
shirt sales). Here are some of the highlights:

[] 5 Jaguars networked for BattleSphere play. The demo version was dated 18
Jul 97 (day before). For the most part is was working. The networking for
Free-for-All wasn't working and we were experiencing network lockups in
other areas. The training mode worked good and the game was playing fast
with no noticeable "slow-downs."  Stephanie was there to represent 4Play.
Very nice lady!

[] Tom Harker was there along with a guy named Bryan from ICD. Tom had
AirCars selling for $60 and two Jaguar's networked with it to play. AirCars
plays just like it does in the Atari, November 1994 demo video. Tom also
had other stuff for sale: Tweety boards - $10, various monitors $60-$100
(to use with the CatBox), null-modem and video adapters (for CatBox), a few
7800 games, some 8-bit manuals (Basic XL, SpartaDOS, SpartaDOS X), AdSCSI
boards, etc.

[] Jeff (Hyperturtle) was charging $10 for entry. With that $10 you got a
issue of The Jag Zone, two bumper stickers, and a $10 off coupon from
Telegames towards a Jaguar or Lynx product published by Telegames.

[] A Jeffery Thompson was there showing his optical rotary controller for
Tempest 2000 play. His controller worked good. Very sensitive to movement.
One girl playing it got hooked!  She said she was never able to get to the
bonus screen with the regular Jaguar controller, but was able to with his.
It proved to me the Jaguar can handle the original Tempest arcade
controller (I was wondering if the Jaguar could ever handle the speed of
the arcade). Jeff was doing a sign-up list of people interested in having
some made. Right now, his cost to make it is upwards of $60-$70. The reason
for this is that he's using a rotary controller sold by Digikey that costs
about $46.

[] A high school kid (didn't get his name) was showing his 30 second video
he made celebrating 25 years of Atari. He did a bang-up job on this video.
It was a 30 second 3-D rendered (on Pentium 75 PC) animation that took him
3 months to do. It basically went like this:
     --Atari fuji and name came spinning onto the screen
     --the original Pong machine spinned across the display
     --then a number 2 spinned on to the left of the fuji symbol
     --then a Jaguar machine appeared
     --then a number 5 spinned on to the right of the fuji symbol
     --finally, a 1972-1997 banner appeared
     --finished with a voice synthesized with a saying (I have to replay
       the video to figure out what it was saying)

Throughout the video were popular sounds from Atari. The video he said is a
30meg AVI file on the PC. People suggested he try and reduce it and put it
up on the web. He said he didn't quite know how to reduce it. Somebody out
there with the knowledge should be able to do it. Hyperturtle would
probably know this kid's name.

[] Three gentlemen were there from a company called Visual Dimensions 3-D
in North Carolina. They were presenting their plans of Jaguar development.
They said they've been contracted to do Defcon 1. They were there also to
work a deal with Tom Harker to get set up in Jaguar development with source
code. They don't plan on dealing with JTS because they feel they're not
going to get any support. The have some good ideas for games and also want
to hear from anyone on game ideas. They said it could be a idea from a
dream to a full complete story line. They also want to hear what people
think are the best things they've seen or liked in Jag games and the worst.
They have a web page at <http://www.abts.net/~starbase> and Email at
<[e-mail]>. Any game that they would work on would be done in 3-D.

That's about it for the highlights. I had a fantastic time. It was great to
meet Tom & Bryan (of ICD), Stephanie (of 4Play), Hyperturtle, Jeff Thompson
and his optical controller.


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Review: Zero 5
   ||  By: Robert A. Jung
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

Most die-hard Jaguar owners (and you must be die-hard, if you still own a
Jaguar these days) are well aware of 4Play's long-awaited space combat
cartridge, BattleSphere. But BattleSphere isn't the only starship in orbit;
another title, previously under development from Atari UK, finally reaches the
Jaguar by way of Telegames. Is this title a planet-busting dreadnought, or an
unshielded rust bucket that explodes after one hit? Let's hop into the cockpit
and take this baby out for a spin...


//// Overview

Like a lot of other video games before it, Telegames' new Jaguar cartridge,
Zero 5, centers around yet another alien invasion of Earth. This time, it's
the year 2044, and an unnamed alien armada is approaching Terra with
unfriendly intentions. In response, the Earth defense group DEFCON sends out
HIT-PAK space cruisers and BAMBAM fighters to stop them.

Zero 5 presents itself like a cartridge version of Wing Commander; the Earth
defense campaign is spread out over 15 missions, which are completed in order
to tell the story. Each mission consists of one of three sub-games:

[] Fly the BAMBAM fighter in open space and battle alien ships and drones.

[] Control the cannons of the HIT-PAK cruiser and blast assorted enemies
   and obstacles.

[] Fly the BAMBAM through tunnels and canyons in a high-speed assault on
   alien bases and ships.

The game ends when you take too much damage during a mission. Fortunately,
after finishing a mission, you can choose to skip it on subsequent games, so
you can avoid the tedium of repeating those earlier levels. Other options
available are three difficulty levels, normal or reverse joypad controls, and
the usual music/sound effects/voice volume controls (complete with bass/treble
adjustment).


//// Graphics

From the moment that you start up Zero 5, you're treated to a nonstop barrage
of terrific Jaguar visuals. The bulk of the package consists of fast, smooth
polygon graphics, both solid and textured. The colors tend towards bright
primaries, but that's just a small quibble - Zero 5 makes great use of its
polygon engine, with seamless zooms, pans, and fly-bys all over the place.

The other graphical elements are no slouches either, with Pixelshatter
explosions, darting sprites, and lots of subtle touches sprinkled throughout
the game. All of these goodies are coupled with a high frame rate that keeps
you immersed in the action.


//// Sounds

Zero 5's game sounds are just as impressive as the graphics. Voices and sound
effects are clear and distinctive, with enough richness to immerse you into
the action. Even better is the background music, consisting of several fast-
paced techno tracks that fit the game perfectly. The music is catchy without
being intrusive; you won't be consciously aware of the music unless you
deliberately listen for it. And the tracks are nice and long - considering
that the missions can take a while to finish, it's good to have tunes that
won't repeat every forty seconds and drive you nuts.


//// Gameplay

Unfortunately, while Zero 5 looks and sounds great, it falls down in the game
itself. It's not just that the three sub-games are a bit simplistic (which
they are); it's that each of the games have annoying problems that make
playing them fairly frustrating.

The worst of the bunch is the space dogfight sequence. The back of the box
calls this "360-degree full movement," but that's a lie, since you're not
flying your ship at all. You view the BAMBAM from a fixed third-person camera,
and steering the ship makes it turn and bank in different directions. When the
enemies come out, you've got to point your ship at them and fire away. Fancy
flying and evasive maneuvers are impossible; the enemies are always in the
same position, and their shots always fly towards you, no matter how you twist
and turn. Worse, the fixed external view makes it easy to get disoriented,
especially when your ship is pointed TOWARDS your view. And without any
crosshairs or sights or any other aiming instruments, this is a very difficult
and frustrating "game."

The other game modes aren't as bad, but they're still flawed. The gunnery mode
suffers from a loose, imprecise aiming cursor, which makes it a bit hard to
hit incoming enemies. It's also hard to tell where the bounds of your ship
are, so sometimes you'll get hit by something that you thought was clear. This
game mode reminds me a lot of the VR mode in Missile Command 3D, which
implemented the idea better.

The tunnel-flying mode is probably the best of the three, but that isn't
saying too much. Here, your fighter is locked in one direction - forward -
with only one speed - VERY fast. Destructible walls must be blasted;
indestructible ones must be dodged by riding along the walls (a la S.T.U.N.
Runner). Unfortunately, the high speed and the claustrophobic camera view make
this very hard to do.

Speaking of difficulty, I should also mention that Zero 5 is a TOUGH game.
Even at the easiest settling, I had to spend several frustrating hours just to
get through the first few missions. I also had to pace myself with rest breaks
between games, since there's a LOT of button-pressing involved, and I quickly
developed a sore thumb. Not since Raiden on the Jaguar have I had such a
painful experience.

I don't want to sound completely negative about Zero 5, though, because this
game doesn't deserve endless abuse. Even with the problems described above,
the tunnel-flying and gunnery games are somewhat enjoyable, but the dogfight
mode remains more aggravation than entertainment. The missions themselves are
fairly long, and with fifteen of them, you won't be finishing this cartridge
any time soon. And even the high difficulty can be tolerated, since the
enemies appear in fixed patterns, making it possible to develop patterns
against them.

But while you can live with Zero 5's problems, you can't ignore them
altogether. When you finally walk away from the game, you're left with a sense
that, with a bit more work, it could have been better...


//// Overall

Like other "hybrid" games that came before it, Zero 5 tries - and fails - to
take several weak games and turn them into one blockbuster title.  While the
graphics and sound are top-notch, the underlying game is soured with assorted
glitches and frustrating problems. Still, if your pain tolerance and your
determination are high enough, you just might be able to sit through Zero 5
and ultimately beat it.


//// Final Ratings

        Title: Zero 5                    JagNet: No
       Design: Capsian Software         Players: 1
 Published by: Telegames                  Media: 16 megabit cart
       Retail: $59.95               Availability: NOW

  A Summary of Ratings:
              "*" is a whole
              "+" is a half
               5 stars maximum

Graphics - ****+  Colors are a little bright, but you can't complain about
                  smooth polygon graphics.
   Audio - ****+  Terrific sound effects and top-notch techno tunes.
 Control - ***    It's a little sensitive in some places, but workable.
Gameplay - **+    Three undercooked mini-games do not equal one terrific game.
Overall -  ***    In the end, a bittersweet gaming experience.

Key to Robert's ratings
  (a graphical interface state of mind)

   ***** - Macintosh. Still superior after all these years.
    **** - Windows '95. A good kludge, but still a kludge.
     *** - Atari ST/GEM. Not bad for its time.
      ** - Windows 3.1. As friendly as a poke in the eye.
       * - GEM 2.0. Sadism, pure and simple.


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Review: AirCars
   ||  By: Clay Halliwell
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

AirCars... that game Jaguar owners have come to regard with a mixture of
curiosity, awe, and revulsion. Thanks to ICD, it now walks among us.


//// We're From the Government, and We're Here to Help

AirCars offers a slightly better-than-average premise for its mayhem. After
the obligatory nuclear holocaust, a cult of scientists called EBNERS rises
up, with the intent of imposing their own brand of order on the world. The
world of course objects, so the EBNERS plan to destroy all the major
capitals of the world by teleporting nukes into them, leaving themselves as
the major power.

In addition to their teleporters, the EBNERS have also developed
impenetrable force field technology, and speedy hovercraft called (drum
roll please) AIRCARS. All the EBNERS complexes are protected by these force
fields, and interconnected by teleporters. The good guys (that's us) manage
to duplicate the Aircars and teleporters, and have given our hero (that's
you) a mission. You will be teleported into the first EBNERS complex.
Unfortunately your teleporter only works one-way, so after destroying the
primary targets, you need to use the EBNERS' teleporter to proceed to the
next complex. And so on and so on until you've wiped them from the face of
the planet.

And so it begins...


//// The Battlefield

The object of every level is to wipe out all the primary targets. The
targets are usually buildings, but occasionally enemy vehicles. An arrow at
the top of the screen points the way to the closest target, but it's only
accurate to 45 degrees, so you'll have to keep an eye on the radar.

Here's the first tip-off that something is seriously wrong with AirCars.
You get an INFINITE amount of lives. The manual even says, "In AirCars
there are two ways to end the game, finish it or shut it off." Apparently
the true challenge in AirCars is finding some way of enjoying it.

The radar is nicely implemented, and would have been a welcome addition to
Cybermorph and Battlemorph. The default view is the immediate area around
your ship, with solid color-coded blocks representing the various objects,
and various shades of the level's ground color forming a sort of contour
map. You can toggle between the short-range view and a view of the entire
level, which is built up as you explore. There's a little pointer on the
radar which shows your current heading, but like the closest-target
indicator, it's only accurate in 45-degree chunks.

The levels are HUGE. Flying between opposite corners of these gigantic
square levels takes literally a minute. Normally I'd say this was a good
thing, but the problem is that the terrain is painfully homogenous, with
only a sparse smattering of trees (snowmen on the "snow" levels).
Everything is shades of the same color, and there are no extreme variations
in altitude. There are no impediments to your progress on the terrain... no
impassable mountains, no walls, no force fields. Getting from Point A to
Point B is reduced to nothing more than flying time.

There are a few transporters scattered around most levels. They're
represented as a pair of very phallic-looking posts which you must fly
between. If you don't approach these things head-on, there's an excellent
chance you'll crash into one of the posts, causing a good chunk of damage.
Transporters are mostly useless because a) They never seem to dump you
anyplace particularly important, and b) They never lead anywhere that you
couldn't reach just by flying there.

The game makes excellent use of the ProController. Left/Right turns,
Up/Down moves forward and backward, A and B fire your two weapons, the Left
and Right shoulder buttons drop mines and smoke, and the X/Y/Z buttons
select your view angles (left/right/front/rear). If you hold down C while
pushing Left/Right you can sideslip, but so incredibly slowly that this
feature is useless.

Terrain interaction is superb. Unlike Hover Strike, where your tank was
slaved directly to every jerk and transition of the polygonal terrain,
AirCars actually gives your car some inertia. Cruise up a slope at high
speed, and you'll actually spend a few seconds airborne. Also unlike Hover
Strike, it is entirely possible to park on the side of a hill. You will
occasionally take damage from the terrain, but only when going up a steep
slope at high speed.

Bad guys consist of enemy air cars, enemy tanks, and guard towers. They
have an uncanny ability to home in on your position from all over the map,
and will happily gang up on you. If you actually manage to inflict some
damage on an air car or tank, odds are they'll turn tail and run, dropping
smoke bombs all the way.

And now, the big, big problem with AirCars. It is simply impossible to
evade enemy fire while engaging the enemy. All enemies seem to shoot at you
at their maximum rate of fire, for as long as you're in range. This would
be fine if you were super-maneuverable or had a boatload of armor, but you
aren't and you don't. Since you have infinite lives, you end up not
particularly caring if you die or not, and just finish each mission by
making dozens of suicide runs on each group of targets. There's also no
incentive to soften up enemy defenses, since guard towers regenerate every
time you get killed. Count on losing at least ten ships per level if you're
doing good.


//// More Power!

The weapon system is a mix of good and bad. The good is that you can select
and use two different weapons simultaneously, and that whenever you kill a
bad guy, you get either the ammo from his weapon, or the weapon itself. The
bad is that there's isn't a whole lot of difference between the various
weapons. With a single exception, every one of the seven guns follows a
pretty linear progression from rapid fire/low damage to slow fire/extreme
damage. The only really interesting gun is the EDC-- Electronic Disruption
Cannon. Hitting anything with this paralyzes it for about 30 seconds.
Unfortunately it has a fairly low rate of fire and travels very slowly.
There are no homing/arcing/terrain-following/blast-effect/guided weapons.

The REALLY bad thing about the weapon system is that you have no way of
changing the elevation of your sights. Since there is no aim "assist" (like
in Doom), this means that, if you're parked on flat terrain and want to
shoot a guard tower above you... you can't. So you decide to drive up the
slope and go toe-to-toe... oops, now you're shooting _over_ him, while he
has a nice angle on your underside. Argh.

There are a variety of special powerups scattered about the landscape,
divided into Immediate and Savable types. Immediate powerups take effect as
soon as you collect them. They are:

[] Armor Repair - Restores current armor to 100%.
[] Reactive Armor - Doubles armor strength (almost makes the game fun!).
[] Invulnerability - Invulnerable for about 30 seconds.
[] Reserve Ammo - Doubles ammo capacity.
[] Reveal Map - Fills in your entire automap.

Savable powerups last for a specific amount of time, and must be manually
activated (you can have multiple powerups active at once). They are:

[] Radar Jamming - Makes it harder for enemies to find you.
[] Jet Pulse Accelerator - Accelerate faster.
[] Retro Brakes - Decelerate faster.
[] Infrared Vision - Turns enemies into solid red blobs. Useless.
[] Stealth Pod - Makes you almost invisible to enemies.
[] Stabilizer - Cancels effects of an EDC hit.

Generally speaking, you should activate savable powerups immediately.
Otherwise you'll likely never use them at all, due to the frightfully short
lifespan of the average air car.


//// Scenes from a Maul

AirCars runs at 320x240 resolution, in 16-bit color mode. Frame rate is a
tolerable and very consistent 20FPS. The terrain is a hilly, gouraud-shaded
expanse much like Cybermorph's, with approximately the same distance to the
visible horizon... perhaps a bit farther. There is no pop-up-- objects and
terrain fade in smoothly from out of the mist. AirCars' graphics engine
also makes good use of load management and disabling gouraud shading in the
distance to keep the frame rate up. Objects (mostly buildings) are fairly
simplistic and a bit crude-looking. There is NO texture mapping that I
could see.


//// Sounds of Pain and Suffering

This is yet another Jag title with no in-game music. I think that's a
blessing in this case though, as what music there is in this cart is quite
cheesy.

This isn't to say that the in-game experience is dead silence either.
Explosions sounds excellent, with lots of bass. Weapons fire sounds vary
from adequate to great, and each enemy type emits their own sound effect.
Since sound effects are in stereo, this really helps boost the "immersion"
level of the game. There's also the constant turbine-like hum of your
AirCars' engines.

No Cybermorph derivative would be complete without an annoying computer
voice, and in this respect MidNite outdid themselves. The computer voice in
AirCars is, bar none, the most wretched bit of voice acting in any Jaguar
game to date. It sounds like some poor woman being forced to read lines at
gunpoint (after being dragged out of bed... and she has to go to the
bathroom... and-- well, you get the point).


//// Misery Loves Company

AirCars' major claim to fame is of course its 8-console networking feature.
While I've heard that 8-player AirCars is an absolute blast, I've only
experienced 2-player networking, and have been less than impressed.

Getting a network session going is a bit of a hassle. Each player must "log
in" in sequence, manually entering their unique node number. By comparison,
BattleSphere does all this transparently to the user.

The big problem (for me anyway) with networked AirCars is that there is no
specific Deathmatch mode. When you network, it's Co-Op or nothing. This
wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, except that you end up getting killed
more often by the computer-controlled enemies than by each other. Also, as
noted above, the levels are HUGE, and there's no way to find the other
players short of random exploration. You can switch to the view of other
players on the network, but since everything looks the same, that's not
much help.

In AirCars' favor, network errors are very, very rare. You may end up
wishing for them anyway though, just to break up the monotony.


//// The Ugly Truth

To be honest, I derive some small pleasure from playing AirCars. The
controls are quite good (except for the glacially slow sideslip). Sometimes
I do try to play "smart" and not get killed, but it just doesn't work for
me. There are way too few armor repairs, and too many weapons that you
simply can't avoid (short of simply running away). The idea of having to
activate powerups after acquiring them is ludicrous, since the average
lifespan of an AirCar is at best 2 minutes. Smoke 'em while you got 'em!

It boggles my mind that MidNite produced such a gameplay-deficient title.
You may not get polish out of most "garage" developers, but usually you can
at least count on great gameplay. AirCars delivers neither.


//// Final Ratings

        Title: AirCars                   JagNet: Yes
       Design: MidNite                  Players: 1-8
 Published by: ICD                        Media: 16 megabit cart
       Retail: $59.95               Availability: NOW

  A Summary of Ratings:
              "*" is a whole
              "+" is a half
               5 stars maximum

Graphics - ***    Solid, serviceable frame rate; terminally bland terrain.
   Audio - **     Meaty explosions, but no in-game music, and that voice!
 Control - ****   Excellent use of ProController. Sideslip useless.
Gameplay - **     Tedious, repetitive, frustrating... need I go on?
Overall -  **+    Like so many other Jag games, it coulda been a contender.

Key to Clay's ratings
  (a blitzed state of mind)

   ***** - Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster
    **** - Jovian Sunspot
     *** - VitaMeataVegaMin
      ** - Screaming Viking
       * - Vanilla Extract


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Lee Briggs
   ||  Interview By: Clay Halliwell
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

Lee Briggs is the programmer of World Tour Racing. He was kind enough take
time out of his busy schedule to answer a whole lotta questions.

//// Personal Tidbits

[JEO] First of all, I'd like to verify that you are indeed the fellow who
posted the WTR info to Jaguar Interactive a few months back [see JEO #1 --
Ed.].

[Lee Briggs] Yes, I am the individual who posted that stuff up at Jaguar
Interactive. I found the site during the time I was dealing with Atari
again, to get WTR duplicated. I was curious what was happening in the Jag
scene. I still keep an irregular eye on the site.

[JEO] How did you find out that WTR was finally going to be published?

[LB] From my old company Teque, they needed help as Atari couldn't locate a
CD master of the game. I also had to produce the screenshots that were used
on the Telegames web site.

I finally received a copy of the released game, they did a slightly better
job on the packaging than I expected. The other thing that surprised me was
the manual, it looks like they used the rough draft I did ages ago for
Atari.

[JEO] A little biographical info... how old are you?

[LB] 26.

[JEO] Yikes!  And here I thought you were some old dude. <g> How did you
get started in gaming/programming?

[LB] Programming is down to curiosity, I built a ZX80 in the early 80's the
same as a lot of the coders in the UK, from there I sort of fell into
games.

[JEO] What other games have you done?

[LB] Before the Jag stuff I was involved in contracted conversion work in
the UK software industry, I first started out doing Spectrum work in the
80's and went on to Atari ST and Amiga later on.

[JEO] What are some of the ST/Amiga games you were involved in?

[LB] I try to keep quiet about those games, I find most of them a bit of an
embarrassment these days. It was fun working on them as I learn't fairly
early on how not to do things.

[JEO] What are you doing these days?

[LB] I now work for Eidos Interactive's internal development team. I've
been here for about 15 months and I've spent a large part of that time
working on Deathtrap Dungeon <http://www.eidosinteractive.com/deathtrap/
dethtrph.html>. I handled the initial porting of the 3D engine to the
Playstation and worked on some driver components of the PC version. Other
bits and pieces during that time included getting a Saturn game through
submission and a big lump of R&D on internet based games.

I'm now setting up a new team to work on a project due for release in 1999,
on which I am the lead programmer. This should be my life for the next two
years, all other details are covered by my NDA, but with the current
schedules an early demo will on public display at E3 next year.

One of the things that has changed the most whilst I've worked on games is
the size of the teams. Deathtrap has a core team of about 15 people, about
half of them programmers, with many other people involved. WTR had a core
team of only about 5 people.

[JEO] Any advice to offer to people trying to get into professional game
programming?

[LB] Games programming has changed a lot in the last few years. It's not
that different from any other large software project. The real difference
is that most of what you're going to be doing will be blue sky work, which
means that it's totally impossible to schedule (something which almost
everyone finds difficult to accept) and the pressure can be a lot higher at
times.

From an education standpoint, a maths degree will do you a lot more good
than one in computer science. Your personality is also a surprisingly large
factor, as you will have to work very closely with the other members of the
team for upwards of 18 months. If you can't work with other people then
your programming skill is almost irrelevant.

[JEO] Had you worked on or started any other Jag titles?

[LB] We had some other projects at Teque which never got very far as Atari
was dying at the time. There was another racing game that was loosely
planned, which would reuse some code from WTR, but with a cleaner faster 3D
engine (the WTR engine suffered from being pulled about by the whims of a
dozen different people).

We also had an Olympics game which went through 3 months of prototyping, it
would have been released for the 1996 Olympics.


//// World Tour Racing

[JEO] Why doesn't WTR support the Memory Track?

[LB] When the game was first designed it was intended to be a cart based
game, it was moved to CD right in the middle of development. Atari
delivered the CD dev kits very late, and as any developer will tell you,
they didn't work. All of this pushed the schedules back quite a bit.

By the time that someone told me that there was such a thing as a Memory
Track, it was the last thing that the project needed. Sometimes, due to the
pressure of schedules, things get dropped, simple as that.

[JEO] What data is saved in the save-game code?

[LB] I think it's just the championship points and a few details about
which tracks have been raced, not much really.

[JEO] How strong is the encryption on the save-game codes?

[LB] Not very, if someone really wants to they should be able to crack it.

[JEO] Does that "Teque Guy" in the opening FMV have a name?

[LB] I describe the quality of the FMV as variable, I think the game over
sequence is great, but if I were to point out that the guy is a girl I
think you would understand what I think of that sequence.

[JEO] Is WTR written mostly in 68K or RISC?

[LB] A huge amount of it was written in RISC, it's time consuming and very
difficult to debug. The RISC processors were fairly nice, not that
different from the SH-2's in the Saturn, it's just that Atari didn't build
in any real debugging support.

[JEO] Are there any other easter eggs beside the bus?

[LB] I don't think so. Using the term easter egg implies that it's
something that was placed into the game as something that was meant to be
found by end users. In this case it wasn't, there were quite a few thing
like this that we did for our own entertainment, and most of them were done
in around a minute of coding.

The bus thing isn't done very well and it shows, you can still see bits of
the car inside it. I can remember doing one where the world was upside
down, the cars raced on the ceiling, which was quite funny, but I'm certain
that this isn't included in the release version.

[JEO] Any clues on how to use the debug mode?  Like, can you completely
turn off t-mapping?  The most people have been able to accomplish in this
mode so far is turn patches of the track green. <g>

[LB] I assume you're referring to the mini track editor that seems to be in
the build of the game that Telegames used. The game had a separate stand-
alone editor for the track design, this mini editor was used by one of the
playtesters to fix some problems with the track. I knocked it up towards
the end of the project, you need a full devkit to use it properly.

As for totally turning the texture mapping off, no you can't, and I wish
you could. As with any racing game it plays better with a higher frame
rate, so why does it have so much texture mapping? In a single word, Atari.

[JEO] Any other secrets hidden in there?

[LB] Unlikely, but as I said above, I did various things, and I still don't
know exactly which build Telegames released.

[JEO] How fast do you think WTR would run if all t-mapping was shut off?

[LB] 30fps, the same as Ridge Racer.

[JEO] Weren't you tempted to put in a code that would do this?

[LB] Yes, but Atari wanted texture mapping with everything. They felt that
they had to take on the competition in the graphics stakes, even though the
machine couldn't do it.

I did have a design for a new rendering system that would have been quite a
bit faster than WTR. Basically it was a lot cleaner and more elegant and
used all of the best techniques whilst only introducing a few restrictions.

One of the things that degraded performance in WTR wasn't the speed of the
polygon renderer, it was the GPU overlay manager-- lots of chunks of code
were being swapped in and out of the small 4K of memory within that chip
during the game and that was something I really wanted to tidy up.

[JEO] Would WTR have been a 16 or 32-megabit cartridge?

[LB] We were developing it for 16mbit as we didn't have a 32mbit Alpine
board, but that was fairly early on before it was moved to CD and the whole
product was upgraded. Back than it didn't have anywhere near as many
texture maps.

[JEO] Any idea why the decision was made to make WTR a CD game?

[LB] To promote the CD unit. It was one of the options to be the game that
got bundled with the CD hardware. The whole handling of the CD format was
one of Atari's bigger mistakes.

[JEO] What do you think Atari should have done with the CD unit? Other than
build a better devkit of course. <g>

[LB] The CD hardware was shoddy, the only thing it had going for it was the
VLM, it had bugger all sex appeal and the market instantly summed it up as
a cheap device that made your Jag look like a toilet.

Add on units have never really worked in the console market, the Jag should
have stayed as a pure cartridge machine, with all the development effort
being pushed into producing games.

The Jag was a machine with a price advantage compared to the competition.
Instead of capitalizing on this Atari produced an unattractive add-on unit
and then transferred lots of the games that were in development to the CD
format, thus lowering the appeal of the base machine.

[JEO] Why doesn't WTR use redbook audio for the music?

[LB] Stick it in your CD player and press Play. Unless Atari have screwed
up somewhere in the mastering process, it is real redbook, it's certainly
CD quality.

The only piece of music in the game that isn't redbook is the piece that
plays over the top of the frontend menus. This uses an 8:1 ADPCM type
compression scheme, which is buffered up in memory whilst it played. This
was done so that short video clips could be streamed off of the CD whilst
the music was still playing. The quality is still very high, about the same
signal/noise ratio as FM radio.

[JEO] Agreed... the music is very good. I've only tried sticking WTR in my
CD player once... got two tracks of white noise and nothing else. Any idea
what they might have done to it to make it unplayable by normal means?

[LB] Haven't a clue, I haven't received a copy of the released disk and I
still don't know exactly which build was mastered. Atari no longer have any
technical staff, they just have the equipment, so it's quite likely that
they made some mistake in the mastering stage.

[JEO] What's going on during the 1-2 second delay whenever you switch menu
screens?

[LB] The frontend music is stored as a series of compressed packets, which
are loaded off of the CD in clusters and placed into a ring buffer where
they are played. This allows other modules within the code to access the CD
unit without stopping the music, but the buffer has to be full enough, so
that it doesn't run out before it can get access to the CD again.

The frontend has lots of little video clips, which run for a few seconds
and a little bit of audio often has to be preloaded before they play to
make sure this doesn't happen. At some other points game data is loaded up
instead to reduce the overall load time when you go to the track. This is
one area where I think I did quite well, compare WTR to half the
Playstation titles where you have to stare at a loading screen for 15
seconds.

[JEO] What do the "THT" and "iMi" banners all over the tracks mean?

[LB] Absolutely nothing. Due to a technical problem, we couldn't guarantee
that a banner would be seen the right way around. It could have been fixed,
but the artist just suggested making them symmetrical, and no one seemed to
mind. It really is as stupid as that.

[JEO] I noticed that one of the tracks is referred to as "Britain" on the
main menu, and "England" on the race screen. Come on now... that's the sort
of mistake I'd expect an American to make! <g>

[LB] All of the race screen's graphics were re-drawn towards the end by an
artist who hadn't worked on the project until that point. I have a vague
memory of that being something that was fixed very near the end, which
probably means the Telegames CD isn't one of the very final master ones.

There was a flag within the code that detected whether the game was running
on an American or European Jag and adjusted some of the spelling
accordingly.

[JEO] Why is the "Last Lap" announcement almost never heard?

[LB] Haven't a clue, I don't get that problem from my gold master and I
don't have a copy of the Telegames release. As a point of interest we
originally had quite a few voice samples in the game, but they were
whittled away due to memory shortage, and the fact that we didn't really
like half of them. Somehow the "Final Lap" stayed as it worked quite well.


//// Playing the Game

[JEO] Any tips for playing World Tour Racing?

[LB] Make the car very unstable, lots of front wing and bugger all on the
back and learn the technique of braking as you turn. You can throw the car
through corners at stupid speeds if you get it right with that setup. When
it comes to overtaking be very aggressive, brake very late, or as an
alternative use the other car as a brake by ramming into it on the inside
line.

I wish the 2 player game had worked better, as things like this work so
well. You can watch players gradually getting madder with each other as
they start using suicidal tactics to outbreak one another.

Every time I find an interview in which some programmer describes a racing
game as highly realistic it makes me laugh. I don't want realism, I want
fun.

[JEO] Have you read the JEO review of WTR? If so, any specific criticisms
you'd like to respond to?

[LB] Yep, I've read it along with one or two others. Overall the game has
been received better than I thought it would be, it along with the Jag have
aged quite badly in the last 18 months. I played the game fairly recently
for the first time in about a year and it was obvious to me just how far
console technology has come in that time. I was still quite happy with the
control system and the AI though.

I will reply to the issue of the "design flub" though. Almost every single
racing game has a control interpreter of some kind. I play a lot of racing
games and I can spot driving aids in almost every single one. The problem
with WTR was that with the frame rate and the nature of the driving style
it became a touch too noticeable. I can look back at it now from a totally
fresh perspective and see ways that I could have improved it a little, but
fundamentally the game needs a more powerful machine.

[JEO] It seems like the steering helper gets confused sometimes and drives
your car straight into a wall. Is it just my imagination?

[LB] One of the most difficult things about getting a control system right,
and one of the less obvious things, is the problem of getting all of the
information to the player. If you're in a real car you can sense the forces
and rotation that are occurring; in a game all of that information has to
be given by visual and audio cues. If you go through a set of corners too
fast and you're totally off of the racing line you're going to hit the
wall. But how does a player know he's going too fast?

If you hadn't already noticed, the wings are set up differently for each of
the tracks; some of the tracks have difficult chicane complexes, yet the
car has fairly low wing settings because the rest of it is fast. On these
tracks you can't throw the car around using a fast opposite lock in the way
you can on tracks like Monaco; you've got to use the brakes.

From the testing we did (which went on for months) the control system is
pretty well behaved.

[JEO] Why is it so difficult to drive your car into the pits? Or is that
just my imagination kicking in again?

[LB] No, it's a real problem, I own up to that one, it was a persistent
problem that was improved slightly, but obviously not enough. It's a lot
worse on some tracks than other, but as I've probably said before there is
only so much time on a project and always so many problems.

[JEO] But what was the intent of this "barrier"?

[LB] One of the jobs of the control interpreters was to understand when you
were just trying to change your position on the track rather than go around
a corner. To help explain this, on something like Burnout, if you tap left,
the bike moves to the left... it doesn't turn left, it just slides left.

In WTR if a car is charging down a straight at 200mph and you tap the pad,
the controls have to know that you're just trying to adjust your racing
line, or position yourself to overtake, otherwise you would simply turn
into a barrier. Lots of racing games do this, and it's very rarely noticed.

The problem with the pit entry is that you flash past it very quickly,
normally in a few frames, and the control system has trouble adjusting in
that time to the idea that it's something you want to turn into, rather
than slide into.

The whole control system isn't the easiest thing to explain in words, I
normally end up drawing lots of diagrams.

[JEO] Do enemy cars ever wipe each other out or pull into the pits? It
seems almost impossible to run them off the road.

[LB] They do, but it's quite rare. The game style was a bit of an odd mix,
formula one style cars and extensive set up options, but an arcade style of
racing, with the ability (requirement?) to crash into and ram cars.


//// Rambling About the Jag

[JEO] How did you like programming the Jag?  Was there anything about the
hardware that you particularly liked or disliked?

[LB] The Jag had a wonderful object processor, which really could throw 64
bits of data around pretty efficiently, even with cheap standard DRAM that
generates page faults. You can get easily get a dozen layers of hicolour
parallax scrolling on screen, and I know that you can't do that on a
Playstation. The problem was that Atari wanted to do the texture mapped 3D
thing, and it's just not up to it.

One of the big mistakes that Atari made, was screwing up in the development
of a C compiler. They did produce one for the RISC chips, but it was so
bugged it was funny. The only piece of code that used it in WTR was the
piece that did the number overlays on screen, and Atari were amazed that I
managed to get it to work well enough to be able to do that!

It's very easy for me to name the worst thing-- the CD unit. It put a lot
of demands onto the system, as the CD unit uses up quite a lot of resources
from the base unit, a couple of interrupts and a bit of memory from the
GPU, etc.

I remember being quite impressed with how bad Atari's Cinepak streaming
code was as well-- it required 1.5Mb of base memory!  It put another week
onto the project as it had to be rewritten to bring it down to 128k.
Someone at Atari just didn't know what a ring buffer was.

[JEO] WTR has some of the highest-quality FMV I've seen on the Jag. I don't
think I've ever spotted any of the "pixel droppings" that Cinepak usually
leaves behind. Did your rewrite of the Cinepak decoder include any
optimizations to the algorithm?

[LB] The core Cinepak decoder remained the same, but the CD streaming was
totally rewritten. My version had a data transfer rate that was about 20
percent higher, so the quality was also slightly higher. The whole FMV
thing went on for months, as lots of it had to be changed due to the
license deals. We learnt as we went along how to improve the quality.

Atari paid a lot of money for Cinepak, and one party in that deal was
probably very happy with it. Nuff said.

[JEO] Do you still have your JagCD dev kit? I know some developers who'd
love to get their hands on one.

[LB] Yes I do still have a devkit, but it's already spoken for. At the peak
of the project I had 4 CD devkits, due to the simple fact that they were so
unreliable. I needed that many so that I always had at least one that
worked! Of the original 4 systems at Teque I think I have the only one that
still works, they were bloody unreliable. I can remember coming in one
morning and they were all dead, I was pretty fed up with them by then, so I
just got a screwdriver and took them all apart, swapped the parts around
and put them all back together again-- two came back to life.

[JEO] Can you say who you're donating your CD devkit to?

[LB] For now it's staying with me. At the peak of the project I had 4 full
CD devkits, and due to the rush towards the end I had one of them at home.
I was allowed to keep it when I left Teque, as a sort of leaving present.

It does still get used, mostly for the VLM, but quite a few of the coders I
work with are into retro coding and it's likely I'll lend it to some of
them in the near future.

If anyone is seriously considering doing a CD based game, I would strongly
advise them against it. Working with the Jag CD unit is not easy, to put it
mildly. Cartridge is a hell of a lot easier.

[JEO] Have you played IS2? Those German hackers never cease to amaze me.

[LB] I haven't played the release copy, I played a pre-release copy almost
2 years ago thanks to a flying visit from Atari's developer support.
Technically it was quite impressive, a second generation title.

[JEO] Do you have a favorite "evil Tramiel" story?

[LB] Nah, not getting into that sh*t, I might find them working somewhere
that matters one day.

[JEO] What do you know about the Jag2? Do you have a copy of the specs?

[LB] I never had a personal copy of the papers, all I know is from memory.
I will say that it was disappointing. The papers I saw were dated mid 95
and described a machine intended for release in the Christmas 96 market.

[JEO] I'd like to thank you for taking the time to answer all these
questions. Good luck with your future endeavors!


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Steve Scavone
   ||  Interview By: Wes Powell
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

Here's an interview with Steve Scavone, a programmer working on Gorf 2000
for the Jaguar. This interview is far from complete. As more progress is
made on the game, I'll be asking more questions about the Plus and 2000
modes. Stay tuned!

[JEO] First off, who's handling Gorf for the Jag? What does the team
consist of?

[Steve Scavone] Krunch Korporation is:
  Coding      Steve Scavone (me)
  Graphics    Steve Scavone (myself)
  Sound/music Steve Scavone (I)

[JEO] What is your programming background?

[SS] 18 years of 6502, Z80, 68000, 80x86 and all related chips. Nothing
commercial but a lot of hacks.

[JEO] What type of game is Gorf? I'm told it was an Atari arcade game.

[SS] Actually it is an old Bally/Midway game programmed by Jay Fenton who
also created the Astrocade home console using the same chipset as the
arcade machine.

[JEO] What are you using to develop the game?

[SS] Roine and Sven's Jaguar Server. An under-$300 solution to Atari's
$5000 dollar (minimum) dev kit. It is mostly used for hacking around the
Jaguar.

[JEO] How long has the project been going on, and about how long will it
take to finish?

[SS] Heh heh. You won't catch me in that trap. No dates please. This is
being done in what little spare time I have. Hopefully not too long.

[JEO] I understand you don't want to dig yourself into a hole. But, at the
rate you're going, can you estimate 1 year etc.?

[SS] Sorry, I won't say.

[JEO] Do you have a publisher?

[SS] Not as of yet. I need a product to show. I have only elements of the
classic version up and running. I am just getting used to what the GPU can
do. Very awesome chip. I still need to figure out the Blitter. The DSP will
be easy as it is almost the same exact chip as the GPU.

[JEO] Can you tell us some of the game's specifications?

[SS] Ok, A little story...

The Evil Gorfian Robot Empire has attacked. Your assignment is to repel the
invasion and launch a counter attack. You will engage various hostile
spacecraft as you journey toward a dramatic confrontation with the enemy
Flag Ship.

Now more tech:

[] Classic mode will have 5 screens.

Astro Battle (Space Invaders clone)
Lazer Attack (Kamikazes with lazer beam ships)
Galaxians (Duh) ;)
Space Warp (kinda like Gyruss before Gyruss was released)
Flagship (THE BOSS hurling all kinds of stuff at you)

You move in succession from screen to screen gaining a new rank for every
time you defeat all five episodes. Ranks are:

Space Cadet
Space Captain
Space Colonel
Space General
Space Warrior
Space Avenger

The game gains difficulty as each set of episodes if completed. Space
Avenger is the highest rank you can go but the game continues infinitely
'til your last ship is gone. Like the good old games used to be. :)

As all of this transpires, the GPA (Gorfian Propaganda Agency) sends hails
of insults, promises of defeats and chuckles over Earth's communication
circuits. You only wish you can turn it off but the Gorfians have jammed it
as a further distraction to your efforts of repelling the Gorfian Empire.

[] Gorf Plus Mode:

Will have several new screen and several new characters using awesome
renderings of the spaceships and creatures of the actual arcade machine's
side art and marquee. A lot hasn't been worked out yet with Plus but it
will be hairy alright.:)

[] Gorf 2000 Mode:

Still in the thought process stage but will hopefully be 3D. I am hoping to
do a lot more with 2000 mode than just make Gorf 3D. I want to add other
neat stuff like maybe a Doom-like level where you dock your ship, go in and
blast the place up, turn on its self destruct sequence and get the hell out
before it goes KABLOOEY! Perhaps even a screen where you land on Planet
Gorfia and do battle with the Gorfians in tank-like vehicles.

Color?

[] Classic Mode
4 to 8 colors with effects. Yes, that is 4 to 8 colors used most
effectively.

[] Plus Mode
At very least 256 colors.

[] 2000
Lots and lots. This still needs to be worked out.

Resolution?

All modes will be hopefully 320x240.


                             --==--==--==--==--

   ||  Review: DKG Extreme Jaguar Joystick
   ||  By: Brett Daly
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

With the Jaguar being without a joystick to speak of, the folks at Dark
Knight Games decided to try to fill the void by coming out with the Jaguar
Extreme Joystick. It is Dark Knight Games' first release. As you have
probably heard, it is a conversion of the popular PC Blackhawk joystick.

First I'll describe the makeup of the joystick. It is very similar to the
stock Blackhawk stick with a few differences. The first difference is there
is a plug on the right side of the joystick that you can use for adding a
Jaguar controller. In the prototype I have a cord which is hanging out, but
in the final version it will be mounted inside the case. Also, the throttle
on the left side was replaced by a toggle switch which can disable the fire
buttons on the controller (I'll get into the specifics of these features
later in the review).

As far as the button placement, the A button is located where you rest your
thumb, the B button can be found where the fire button is and the C button
is the lowest button on the stick. Also there is a fourth button located at
the base of the joystick which acts as the option button.

With there being the three main buttons on the joystick they added the plug
and switch to allow you to plug in the ProController if you'd like to go
that route and it also gives you access to the keypad. This also gives you
the option for two player co-op play. An option that I felt was very nice
was the toggle switch. What this does is it gives you the option to disable
the fire buttons for those using the regular controller in co-op play. As
anyone knows who has tried to play co-op, it can become quite confusing if
both players have access to the fire buttons, so that was a nice added
feature.

I have played with the PC version of this joystick several times and was
quite fond of it and this one did not let me down either. I found this to
be the best for flying games such as Battlemorph and racers though it
worked quite well with the other array of games the Jaguar has to offer. It
is certainly nice to be able to play games on the Jaguar with something
other than the standard controller.

I know a few people have questioned a few things regarding the joystick
prior to release and I'll put in my two cents regarding the issues. The
main issue seemed to be the lack of a keypad. Obviously they combated that
with the plug that allows you to add your own controller. If you are
playing one player it may not be the most convenient thing to do if you
have to reach for the other controller, but very few games use the keypad
often and really you have to go a bit out of your way for the keypad on the
regular controller too. So all in all I thought that was a nice compromise.

Also, some wanted it to have six buttons, but again it was combated with
the plug option and really very few games utilize the six key pad anyways
(mainly fighters) and really there is little way to add six buttons
comfortably on a joystick. Also, the switch allowing for two player co-op
play was a nice addition as I mentioned, as it made co-op play a bit more
viable as you lack the confusion of two people trying to shoot!

Really, I was quite happy with the joystick, it fills an obvious void and
the stick itself is very nice. The people at DKG did a pretty nice job with
the modifications and the overall package is very nice. They marketed it
towards games such as Cybermorph and the forthcoming Battlesphere and those
are the types of games that will probably best utilize the Joystick. I will
opt not to give the joystick a point rating as it's the lone joystick on
the Jaguar, but to conclude-- if you are in the market for a breath of
fresh air from the standard controller then this is an option worth taking
a long look at.


//// Positives

[] The toggle switch (allowing for better co-op play)
[] Great for flight and racing games
[] First and only joystick on the Jaguar in production


//// Negatives

[] Keypad must be accessed via plugged-in controller


//// Comments

"Dark Knight Games' first effort looks like it was a success as the
joystick is of good quality and fills an obvious void. If you want a
joystick for the Jaguar this is certainly worth a look."


//// DKG Contact Info

Website: <http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/6859/dng.html>

E-mail: <[e-mail]>


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  The BFG FAQ
   ||  By: Tony Fabris
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

[This FAQ is written for the PC versions of Doom, but I've found the info
herein to be highly applicable to the Jag version as well. --Ed.]

=========================================================================

              THE           _/_/_/_/    _/_/_/_/_/    _/_/_/_/
                          _/      _/  _/           _/        _/
                        _/      _/  _/          _/          _/
                      _/_/_/_/    _/_/_/_/    _/
                    _/      _/  _/          _/    _/_/_/_/
                  _/      _/  _/          _/           _/
                _/      _/  _/           _/         _/
              _/_/_/_/    _/             _/_/_/_/_/           FAQ

============== The BFG FAQ, Version 1.3, December 28, 1995 ==============

                Frequently Asked Questions About the BFG9000

                               By Tony Fabris

                    Contributors, in alphabetical order:

                Doug Bora ....... Content, Editing, Proofing
                Tod Bouris ............ Content, Playtesting
                Chris McAllen ......... Content, Playtesting
                American McGee .............. Technical Data
                Dean Stretton ..................... Proofing

=============================== Disclaimer ==============================

  This text is intended to give the public information about some elements
  of the computer game Doom and its sequels, by id Software. This text was
  not written by id Software, so bugging them about its contents is
  probably a very bad idea.

  Additionally, the computer game referenced in the text is of an adult
  and graphic nature. In no way is this text intended to promote violence
  of any kind. Any references to violence in this text are meant in
  relation to the playing of the computer game, not real violence. The
  author is adamantly non-violent.

  Additionally, this text is being presented in the form of a text-only
  computer file. Any illegal or damaging activity related to the use or
  transfer of this or any other computer file is not the responsibility of
  the authors.

========================= Trademark Information =========================

  All specific names included herein are trademarks and are so
  acknowledged: id Software, DOOM, DOOM II, THE ULTIMATE DOOM, QUAKE. Any
  trademarks not mentioned here are still hypothetically acknowledged.

=========================== Copyright Notice ============================

   This article is Copyright (c) 1995 by Tony Fabris. All rights reserved.

  You may make and distribute copies of this work in original form, so long
  as the copies are exact and complete, the copies include the copyright
  notice in its entirety, and the copies are in electronic form. You may
  not charge any sort of a price or fee relating to any copies of this work
  in any form.

========================= Table of Contents =============================

  Section 0 - Introduction
    0A. What is this FAQ about?
    0B. How was the information is this FAQ obtained?
    0C. How accurate is this information?
    0D. Where is the latest version of this and other FAQs?

  Section 1 - BFG Basics
    1A. What is the BFG9000?
    1B. What does 'BFG' mean?
    1C. Where can I find the BFG in the game?
    1D. What is the cheat code for the BFG?
    1E. Why is the BFG missing in my version?
    1F. What's this I hear about the original BFG?

  Section 2 - The Direct Hit
    2A. What is a direct hit?
    2B. How much damage does a direct hit do?
    2C. What are the limitations of a direct hit?

  Section 3 - The Blast Area
    3A. What is the blast area?
    3B. How much damage does the blast area do?
    3C. How long does the blast effect last?
    3D. How exactly does the blast area work?
    3E. What are the limitations of the blast area?
    3F. How many targets can it hit?
    3G. How does altitude affect it?
    3H. If I am only partially exposed, do I only take partial damage?
    3I. What happens if the attacker is fragged before detonation?
    3J. What about multiple BFG shots?

  Section 4 - Deathmatch Techniques
    4A. What is considered unfair when using the BFG?
    4B. What is the best way to defend against the BFG in a deathmatch?
    4C. What is the best way to attack with the BFG in a deathmatch?
    4D. What is the Silent BFG trick?
    4E. What is the Level One Strafe trick?

  Section 5 - Submitting Corrections
    5A. Common misconceptions
    5B. I think the FAQ is in error. How do I get it corrected?

=========================================================================

-- Section 0 - Introduction ---------------------------------------------

0A. What is this FAQ about?

  A FAQ file, stated simply, is a Frequently Asked Questions file.

  This FAQ file describes, in as much detail as possible, the behavior of
  the BFG9000 weapon in the MS-DOS version of the games Doom, Doom II, and
  The Ultimate Doom. It is not intended to answer general questions about
  the game itself. Please refer to the other FAQ files for help in other
  areas of the game. You can also frequent the rec.games.computer.doom.*
  newsgroups for more information.

  We began writing this FAQ out of necessity. We were frustrated at the
  apparent inconsistencies in the way the weapon seemed to behave during
  game play, especially during deathmatches. There were times when we
  would get killed by the weapon when we thought we were completely safe.
  Conversely, there were times when we thought we had used the weapon
  correctly against an opponent, but they walked away unscathed.

  Our intent is to provide players with enough information to attack
  effectively with the BFG, and to correctly defend against it in a
  deathmatch. Our hope is that this information will give players a new
  attitude toward the weapon. We want to transform it from "The weapon we
  love to hate" into "The thinking man's weapon".

0B. How was the information in this FAQ obtained?

  The primary source of information was American McGee at id Software. He
  patiently answered our questions while this FAQ was in its draft stages.
  He corrected several serious errors in our descriptions of the way the
  weapon calculates damage. He provided us with a great deal of detailed
  information, and reviewed the file during its development. His help was
  invaluable in putting this FAQ together.

  Most of the other information here is a result of careful testing during
  game play. Testing was performed on Pentium computers running the MS-DOS
  versions of Doom II and The Ultimate Doom. Tests were done both in single
  player mode and in 4-player deathmatch mode. Testing was performed on the
  regular levels as well as custom made levels. In some cases, a special
  .WAD file was created to test situations that would be difficult to
  reproduce with the regular levels.

0C. How accurate is this information?

  Fairly accurate. Accurate enough to base your playing strategies on.
  However, it has not been tested with every single version of Doom, and
  there may be differences among platforms. In addition, at the time of
  this writing, we were unable to verify every single item with American
  McGee. Quake is the big project at id Software at the moment, and he
  didn't have a lot of time to devote to us. As a result, some items in
  this file are strictly conjecture, regardless of how carefully they were
  tested. Please see section 5 if you suspect this FAQ contains erroneous
  information.

0D. Where is the latest version of this and other FAQs?

  The latest Doom-related FAQ files and other documents can be found at
  all of the Doom mirror FTP sites. The central location for the Doom
  mirrors is at ftp.cdrom.com. However, that site is usually quite busy,
  and you may need to locate another mirror site from which to download.
  Listing all the mirror sites is beyond the scope of this document.
  See the 'DOOM: Rec.Games.Computer.Doom FAQ' or 'DOOM: FTP and WWW
  Sites' postings in the rec.games.computer.doom.* newsgroups for a
  complete list.

  The URL of the directory that contains the Doom FAQ files (usually in
  TXT format, compressed in a ZIP file) is:

  ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/docs/faqs/

  The latest official version of the BFG FAQ is also posted monthly to
  the rec.games.computer.doom.announce and .playing newsgroups. This is
  part of the RGCD Periodic Information Postings (PIPs). If your news
  server does not keep the articles long enough for you to find one of
  the PIPs, they are archived at:

  ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/docs/rgcd-pips/

  The official location for the hypertext version of the BFG FAQ is
  DoomGate on the World Wide Web. The hypertext version is highly cool.
  Check it out here, along with some other good documents:

  http://doomgate.cs.buffalo.edu/docs/

-- Section 1 - BFG Basics ----------------------------------------------

1A. What is the BFG9000?

  The BFG9000 (or BFG) is arguably the most powerful weapon in the
  computer games Doom, Doom II, and The Ultimate Doom. It is also the
  most difficult weapon to use well in a deathmatch (multi-player
  competition), because it does not behave in a simple 'point and shoot'
  fashion.

  When you have it in your arsenal, the BFG is selected by pressing the
  7 key on your keyboard.

  When you pull the trigger, there is an excruciatingly long pause as the
  weapon warms up. Then a large green ball of plasma is emitted from its
  barrel. The plasma ball flies in the direction you fired it until it
  hits a target or a wall. Like all weapons in Doom, it will fly straight
  through decorative objects like torches or trees.

  When the green ball hits a solid object, it detonates and does two
  types of damage: Direct Hit and Blast Area. Each damage type is
  outlined in its own section, later in the FAQ.

1B. What does 'BFG' mean?

  The general consensus is that BFG stands for Big Fragging Gun. Well,
  that's the G-rated version at least. That's from Hank Leukart's
  "Official" Doom FAQ.

  The term 'frag' is used in Doom to represent a confirmed kill in a
  deathmatch game. This comes from the idea that in a deathmatch, you are
  killing your fellow space marines. The definition of frag, according to
  the dictionary, is:

    frag Slang. Verb, transitive
    fragged, fragging, frags
      To wound or kill (a fellow soldier) by throwing a grenade or
      similar explosive at the victim: "He got fragged. Blown away"
      (Bobbie Ann Mason).

  Other good name suggestions that have found their way to the authors
  are "Big Funny Gun" (Chris Somers) and the much more logical "Blast
  Field Gun" (William D. Whitaker). As of this writing, we have not
  confirmed any of these with id.

1C. Where can I find the BFG in the game?

  Listing all the locations that the BFG can be found is beyond the scope
  of this document. For detailed information on the location of all
  weapons, please consult the other FAQ files. Keep in mind that the BFG
  appears more often in deathmatch games than it does in single-player
  games.

1D. What is the cheat code for the BFG?

  While you are playing the game, type the keys IDKFA to give your marine
  all weapons, keys, and ammunition. Then press the 7 key to select the
  BFG.

  Note: This cheat code is disabled in multi-player games and single-
  player nightmare-skill games.

1E. Why is the BFG missing in my version?

  If you perform the above cheat correctly, but do not get the BFG, you
  may be playing the shareware version of Doom. You must purchase the
  commercial version of Doom from a retailer or id Software before the
  BFG can glorify your screen.

1F. What's this I hear about the original BFG?

  The current version of the BFG is not the way id's designers
  originally envisioned it. According to a recent thread on the
  newsgroups, the BFG behaved quite differently in a pre-release beta
  of Doom. Several people independently reported this feature:

  Apparently, it worked by shooting multiple streams of different types
  of plasma and fireballs. Because this required an unusually large
  number of moving objects, it tended to slow down the game. Therefore,
  the BFG was redesigned with the invisible blast area that is used
  today.

  This may explain why the behavior of the blast area is so unusual.
  It seems that the trace calculations still use some of this old code.
  See section 3A for more information.

  Note: Please don't bug the authors for copies of the Doom beta. We
  don't have one. The information in this section was obtained by
  reading a newsgroup thread.

-- Section 2 - The Direct Hit ------------------------------------------

2A. What is a direct hit?

  A direct hit happens when the BFG's green plasma ball directly hits a
  target. The target can be a monster, an exploding barrel, or an opposing
  player in a multi-player game.

2B. How much damage does a direct hit do?

  A direct hit with the BFG will cause a random amount of damage between
  100 and 800 points. Keep in mind that these are the base values as
  stored in the game engine. The actual amount of damage taken by a
  player is modified depending on skill level. How much is it modified?
  We don't know.

  A note about skill levels: Testing seems to show that weapons always
  do the same amount of damage to monsters, but that the player objects
  can absorb the weapons better at lower skill levels. Therefore, it
  takes more shots to kill a player at lower skill levels, and fewer
  shots at higher skill levels. This is why some players prefer to
  deathmatch at the higher skill levels: The frags are quicker that way.

  If your target is lucky enough to survive a direct hit, he is still
  susceptible to damage from the blast area. This happens sometimes in a
  deathmatch. Since there is a brief pause between the direct hit and the
  blast area calculation, your victim may go through several stages of
  fear and elation in the space of one second:

    1) Victim sees the BFG coming towards him (Uh-oh.)
    2) BFG scores a direct hit (D'oh!)
    3) Victim realizes he has miraculously survived (Woo-Hoo!)
    4) The flash damage kills him a moment later (D'oh!)

2C. What are the limitations of a direct hit?

  The direct hit is not limited by the same parameters as the blast area.
  There is no range limit, and the damage does not decrease with distance.

  The hard part is that the BFG's plasma ball travels at a fixed speed,
  and can be avoided by an alert deathmatch player. The reference number
  for the BFG ball's speed, as stored in the .EXE file, is 25. For
  comparison, rockets travel at 20 and plasma gun shots travel at 25.

  If it seems like this is too fast, and would not be easy to avoid,
  remember that the plasma gun fires in a continuous stream. The BFG can
  only be fired once every few seconds. The BFG's green ball is also very
  bright and large on the screen. All of those factors make it generally
  easier to avoid in a deathmatch game.

  A direct hit in a deathmatch (against good players) is usually the
  result of luck, or the result of a player that did not know the BFG ball
  was coming towards him. See section 4 for details of a trick that can
  help you achieve the latter scenario.

  The direct hit can only damage one target. If there are two targets
  very close together, the green ball can only hit one of them directly-
  whichever one it touches first.

-- Section 3 - The Blast Area ------------------------------------------

3A. What is the blast area?

  After the green plasma ball detonates, and after the damage is
  calculated and deducted from the target that received the direct hit (if
  any), the area effect of the BFG is calculated. Targets that fall within
  a specially defined area will take varying amounts of damage.

  Simply put, the blast area is like an imaginary 'cone' or 'fan' of 20
  damage traces that briefly extends outward from the attacking player.
  The cone always points in the direction that the weapon was fired. For
  instance, if you originally fired the weapon in the northwest direction,
  the cone will always face northwest, regardless of which direction
  you're facing at the moment of detonation.

  Note that this does not mean that the attacker must continue to face in
  that direction. The attacker is free to turn away from his targets, as
  long as he moves to a position that keeps this imaginary cone pointed at
  them. Common misconceptions are that you must be facing either the
  targets, the detonation point, or the same direction as the weapon was
  fired. None of those things are necessary in order to inflict damage.

  Also note that this imaginary cone has no relation whatsoever to the
  detonation point. The location of the detonation point is only important
  for the direct hit (see section 2). Only the moment of detonation is
  important, not the location. It is possible to have the green ball
  detonate twenty miles away in a completely different room at a totally
  different altitude, but the blast can still cause damage right next to
  you.

  The paragraphs above cover the basic concepts of the blast area. More
  detailed information can be found in section 3D, below.

3B. How much damage does the blast area do?

  The 20 traces that make up the blast area's damage cone each do a
  random amount of damage between 5 and 15 points. Again, these are only
  the base values stored in the game engine, and may do different amounts
  of real damage at different skill levels. See section 2B for more info.

  Because these traces radiate outward from the attacker in a fan shape,
  a target will more likely be hit by a given trace if he is close to the
  attacker. Therefore, targets closer to the attacker will generally take
  more damage because they are hit by more traces.

  If a target is very close to the attacker (for instance, standing right
  next to him), the target might be within the hit range of all 20 traces.
  The amount of blast area damage in this situation would be between 100
  and 300 points. However, all 20 traces would not necessarily be absorbed
  by that target, and might move on to other targets. See section 3F,
  below, for more information on this phenomenon.

  This blast damage is calculated in addition to the direct hit damage (if
  any), making the total possible damage points for the BFG a whopping
  1100 points.

  A note about random numbers:

  A phenomenon known as the 'bell curve' happens when you combine the
  outcome of multiple random numbers. Players of book-and-paper role-
  playing games may recognize it. In those games, you would often use
  three dice to generate a random statistic. In theory, adding the three
  dice would generate a random number between 3 and 18. But in reality,
  the actual results would be weighted towards the middle of the range,
  around eleven. The odds of getting a three or an eighteen are rare
  because you'd have to roll 1+1+1 or 6+6+6. There's only one possible
  combination for each outcome. On the other hand, rolling an eleven is
  relatively easy: 6+4+1, 5+5+1, 3+3+5, etc. If you were to graph the
  outcome of a thousand rolls, the graph would be shaped like an arc or
  a bell, with more rolls coming up in the middle of the range of
  possible values. Hence the name 'bell curve'. The role-playing games
  use this to make certain random statistics more fair.

  This applies to the damage traces, as well, because they are
  essentially a group of multiple random numbers. For instance, if you
  hit your victim with all twenty traces, the possible damage should be
  between 100 and 300 points. But the odds are that the total damage
  will more likely be around 200 points, due to the bell curve. The odds
  of doing 100 or 300 points damage in that situation would be extremely
  rare.

3C. How long does the blast effect last?

  Testing has shown that there is a brief time window in which a hapless
  player can wander into the damage cone after detonation and still take
  some blast damage.

  There seems to be two factors at work here:

  1) There is a brief pause between the moment of detonation and the
     moment that the damage traces begin to work. This pause seems to
     have been inserted deliberately by the designers. The exact
     duration of this pause is not known. Some evidence suggests that
     the pause is about four-tenths of a second long, but this is not
     confirmed. It's not known exactly how it affects the trace
     calculations, but it seems as though all calculations begin
     -after- the pause.

  2) It seems as though the traces are not calculated instantly. If a
     player moves into the damage cone during the trace calculations
     (after the deliberate pause), he might still take some damage. At
     the time of this writing, the exact duration of the calculations
     has not been determined. It is possible that the trace calculations
     work more slowly when there are many things happening in the game,
     i.e., when there are a lot of monsters on the screen. However, this
     has not been confirmed, and we might even be imagining the whole
     thing. It's possible we're mistaking this for the deliberate pause
     mentioned above. This question will hopefully be addressed in more
     detail in a later version of this FAQ.

3D. How exactly does the blast area work?

  The blast area is a spread of 20 invisible traces that radiate outward
  from the attacking player. The damage for the traces is calculated
  shortly after the green ball detonates against a target or a wall.

  The traces radiate outward in an imaginary cone that is roughly as wide
  as the player's view, i.e., about 45 degrees to either side of the
  centerline. The cone always points the same direction as the attacker
  was facing when he fired the weapon. For instance, if you fire the
  green ball in the southeast direction, your cone of traces will always
  radiate towards the southeast.

  Regardless of how much you run and turn between the time you fire and
  the time the green ball detonates, the traces will always radiate from
  your location. Think of it like a tank with a gyroscopically stabilized
  turret: only the cone's origin point moves around with you, not its
  direction. The cone's direction remains fixed on the same compass
  heading.

  From a technical point of view, the game engine does not actually keep
  track of the cone while you're running around. That's just the effect
  it seems to have. Most likely, it simply stores the vector of the
  direction of the green ball's flight in a variable. When the time comes
  for the ball to detonate, the variable is retrieved to begin the
  calculations for the traces.

  Because of this, the cone's direction is based on the direction that
  the green ball was actually fired, not where you were when you pulled
  the trigger. As far as the game engine is concerned, you haven't fired
  it until it actually leaves the barrel of the gun.

  Here's a diagram of how it works:

        * <- Blast
             detonates         \   Damage  /
             here               \   Cone  /
                                 \       /
        ^                         \     /
        |                          \   /
        |                           \ /
        X          X -->             X
    Attacker      Attacker       Attacker
    fires BFG     runs east      is here at
    northward                    detonation

  Note that this diagram is foreshortened. The detonation point would
  have to be quite far away in order for the attacker to run that far.
  But the principle is the same, regardless of how far the green ball
  flies: The damage cone is calculated after the green ball detonates.

  When the green ball detonates, the traces are calculated one at a time,
  using the same criteria for calculation that the engine might use for a
  bullet: If there is a solid object (a wall, etc.) between the target
  and the attacker, the trace is harmlessly absorbed by the object. With
  one exception: In order to hit a target with a bullet, you had to be
  facing the target. You don't have to be facing your target in order to
  do damage with one of the traces.

  Quick review:

    - The cone of traces always points in the same compass direction, the
      direction you originally fired the BFG.

    - You sort of 'carry the cone around' with you as long as the green
      ball is still flying.

    - When the green ball detonates, the cone of traces does its damage
      depending on where you're standing at that moment, and who is in
      the cone.

    - You do not have to be facing the targets to do damage, you only
      have to maneuver into a position where the cone is pointing at your
      targets.

3E. What are the limitations of the blast area?

  There is no range limit for the blast area, but the farther a target is
  from the attacker, the less of a chance it will be hit by a given trace,
  therefore the less damage it takes.

  Because of this, the effective range of the blast area ends up being in
  the neighborhood of 1000 units. At the outer edges of this range, a
  deathmatch opponent will only get hit by one trace, taking only 5-15
  points of damage. Farther out from that range, it becomes increasingly
  unlikely that a target will be hit by any traces at all. Of course,
  larger targets such as spiderdemons have a wider radius, and therefore
  the BFG's effective range is slightly farther against such targets.

  Keep in mind that there is no part of the program that explicitly
  prevents traces from hitting targets outside the 1000 unit range. It
  can happen, and does in fact happen, it is simply less likely. For the
  purposes of learning how to use the weapon in a deathmatch game, base
  your strategies on the idea that its main effective range is about 1000
  units, and you'll be OK.

  If you are unfamiliar with the Doom engine's units, remember that a
  standard teleporter pad is 64 units across. Line up 16 of those and
  you've got a basic idea of what 1000 units is.

  The blast damage is also limited to targets that have an unblocked
  line of sight to the attacking player. This does not mean the attacker
  must see the target. It means that the attacker must be in a position
  where his traces can see the target, i.e., he could see the target if
  he were facing in that direction.

3F. How many targets can it hit?

  The blast area can only hit as many targets as its traces can touch.
  Since one trace can damage more than one target, you can theoretically
  kill more than 20 targets. In tests on an artificially created grid of
  monsters, it is not uncommon for a single shot to kill 25 imps. But in
  regular game play, rarely are that many targets standing in such a
  perfectly aligned pattern. Usually, some individual targets will soak
  up more than one trace, while other traces miss targets completely.

  The traces are calculated on a 'first come, first fragged' basis. For
  each trace, the damage is calculated and subtracted from the target and
  the trace. Where applicable, any target that dies from the trace is
  removed from the map. Then the engine moves on to the next target in
  the line of that trace. When the trace runs out of damage, the
  calculation routine moves on to the next trace.

  Here is how it works:

  (Please note: In the discussion below, we refer to 'line of sight'
  loosely. Remember that the attacker does not need to be looking at his
  targets to inflict damage.)

  In the following scenario, imagine that the attacker is standing in a
  direct line with several targets (imps, perhaps) lined up in front of
  him, and the green ball detonates on a wall somewhere:

  Attacker:  X->         X X X X X X X       Detonation point: X
                            (Imps)

  The first couple of imps are close to the attacker. They crumble,
  having soaked up some of the traces that are pointing ahead of the
  attacker. The next few imps are a little farther away, and absorb some
  more of the traces, but not as many. They absorb fewer traces for two
  reasons:
    1) because the imps in front of them absorbed some of them
       already, and
    2) because they are farther away and the traces are more
       spread out.
  But they still die. The next imp gets damaged, but does not die. He
  has soaked up the last trace that was headed in that general direction.
  The last imp is not damaged at all because there are no more traces
  left in his direction.

  In order for the above scenario to work, the targets must be perfectly
  aligned. For instance, in the following scenario, all of the targets
  take full damage, because there's no one in front of them to soak up
  traces.
                              X
  Attacker:  X->            X                      Detonation point: X
                          X    Y

  The one target in the back (Y) is still susceptible because it is not
  blocked by another target. The attacker can see him through the gap.
  So, for example, an imp standing directly behind a cyberdemon is
  fairly safe, but an imp standing next to a cyberdemon is a sitting
  duck.

  The moral to this story is: In deathmatch, do not depend upon other
  players or monsters to absorb the BFG blast unless they are exactly
  between you and your attacker. And you'd better hope they're very
  healthy. In all other cases you take full damage.

3G. How does altitude affect it?

  For the most part, it does not. With a few exceptions.

  Again, in the discussions that follow, we refer to 'line of sight'
  loosely. You do not have to look at your targets to hit them.

  If a difference in altitude brings your target out of the sight of your
  traces, then yes, it makes him safe from the blast damage. But if your
  traces can see any part of him, he takes full damage regardless of how
  much higher or lower you are than he is.

  As far as altitude is concerned, the traces seem to use the same
  criteria as your view does to determine if the target is visible. In
  other words, if both you and the damage cone are facing the target, but
  the target is above the top of the screen, you can't hit him.

  But there is a catch. The upper and lower angle limit of the traces
  seems to be the same as your view would be if your screen was fully
  zoomed in. For instance, if you are displaying the status bar at the
  bottom of the screen, your view window is slightly cut off at the top
  and bottom. Press the plus (+) key repeatedly to zoom all the way in,
  and you can see what this means. The BFG's traces seem to use the same
  angle as this full view does to determine if they can hit the target.
  So if you've got the status bar showing, you can actually hit someone
  who is off the top of your screen. If you are fully zoomed in, your
  view seems to be an accurate representation of the damage cone's angle.

  If you are standing on a ledge above your target, and you are so close
  that you can 'touch' him (i.e., you can't step off the ledge because
  you're bumping into him), your shots will go right over his head and
  the blast damage will not affect him. This is because, technically, the
  traces can't see him. Well, if you could look down you would see him,
  but you can't look down in Doom. Must be those darned restrictive space
  helmets.

3H. If I am only partially exposed, do I only take partial damage?

  No such luck. The only thing that reduces your damage is getting hit
  with fewer traces. Here is how it works:

  If you are hiding behind a decorative sprite (such as a tree or a
  technical column) you are fully exposed. All weapons in Doom always
  pass completely through decorative sprites.

  If you are peeking over a podium, or partially obscured by a raising
  lift, or a closing door, and only half or one-tenth of you is showing,
  you still take the full amount of damage. The traces are calculated
  based on the game's two-dimensional block map. As far as the game
  engine is concerned, all of the traces can still hit you.

  If you are hiding behind a vertical wall with your rear end peeking
  out, you might take a little less damage because some of the traces
  may hit the wall instead. But don't count on it. Tests seem to show
  that your distance from the attacker is more important than how much
  of you is exposed. This is an observed phenomenon, not necessarily
  supported by hard facts. It is difficult to test due to the random
  nature of the damage traces.

  Also remember that what counts as 'showing' may not be what you think.
  The Doom engine uses the radius of the player to determine visibility.
  Your player's aspect ratio does not change when you rotate. It also
  seems as though your radius is slightly larger (in some cases) than
  the sprite (picture) that represents your player. In tests, it is
  possible to inflict damage upon a player that seems to be out of sight
  (no visible pixels) but whose radius is large enough to count as
  'visible' to the BFG traces.

3I. What happens if the attacker is fragged before detonation?

  The BFG's traces are still active, even if the attacking player is
  dead. So if you fire the BFG, then get fragged, do not press the space
  bar to respawn your marine right away. Wait until the green ball has
  detonated before you respawn.

  Here's why:

  Even after being fragged, you can still see the action from your fixed
  point of view on the ground (your 'dead' state). The traces remain
  active and can still frag an opposing player (hopefully the one that
  fragged you). The traces will radiate from your dead body's 'eyes'.
  The traces still follow the same rules, i.e., they radiate in the
  direction the green ball was fired, regardless of which direction your
  'dead view' is facing.

  In a previous version of this FAQ, we reported that you will lose
  the chance to frag your opponent if you respawn before detonation.
  Several people pointed out to the authors that the statement was in
  error. The traces remain active even after respawning. Testing shows
  that the traces do, in fact, continue to radiate from the dead body
  even after you have respawned in a completely different area of the
  map. This testing was performed at the prompting of Kirby Nixon, who
  insisted that it was true. Whaddya know? He was right.

  This means that, technically, you don't need to hang around and watch
  your opponent in order for the traces to work. But Kirby pointed out
  a good reason to wait for the detonation before respawning: Your dead
  body's traces can frag you, too! Just because they were once your
  traces doesn't mean you're immune. If you are unlucky enough to
  respawn within your dead body's damage cone, you can kiss your butt
  goodbye.

  Of course, the same thing applies to projectile weapons like the
  rockets and the green ball. It has long been known that those items
  behaved in that way. But this information about the damage traces is,
  to the authors' knowledge, new.

  Please note: Any projectile kills made by a respawned player (whether
  by rockets, plasma, BFG traces, etc.) do not contribute to that
  player's frag count. Killing -yourself- in this manner does not change
  your frag count, either. This appears to be because the game engine
  creates a new instance of the player-object at respawn-time, and
  therefore 'forgets' to award that frag. In any case, if you wait
  before respawining, you will get credit for the frag as long as you're
  still dead. This is another reason to wait for detonation before
  respawning. Special thanks to John Castelli for pointing this one out.

3J. What about multiple BFG shots?

  Each BFG shot is tracked and calculated independently. Testing seems
  to indicate that the game engine's code is object-oriented, and has no
  trouble keeping track of multiple blast areas. Each damage cone's
  direction is based on the direction of its corresponding green ball.
  The origin point of the damage cone is based on the current location
  of the marine who fired it (even if that marine is just a dead body-
  see section 3I for more info).

-- Section 4 - Deathmatch Techniques -----------------------------------

4A. What is considered unfair when using the BFG?

  Many deathmatch players moan and groan when the BFG is used successfully
  against them. 'What a cheap frag, you craven coward!' they shout. Well,
  they usually use fewer words to express the idea, but that's what they
  mean. This is usually due to a lack of understanding about how the
  weapon works.

  The purpose of this FAQ is to educate players about how the BFG behaves.
  If you know how it works, you will know how to defend yourself against
  it. You will also know how to effectively attack with it. If both (or
  all four) players have the same knowledge about how the weapon
  functions, then the BFG by definition is not unfair. If you play against
  an opponent who does not know how the BFG works, then you should make
  sure to educate them on its behavior before turning them into paste.

  Having said that, the following things are debatable regarding fairness.
  I'm not saying they are patently unfair, I'm just saying that their
  fairness is debatable:

  - The Silent BFG trick (see section 4D).

  - 'Sitting on' or 'guarding' the BFG when you are playing deathmatch
    2.0, and picking it up again every time it reappears.

  - Having a BFG left over from a previous level when there is no BFG
    available to the other players on the current level.

  In the last two examples, four-player deathmatch tends to cancel out
  any advantages to those techniques. The remaining three players usually
  coordinate and attempt to bring down the king of the hill in these
  situations.

4B. What is the best way to defend against the BFG in a deathmatch?

  AVOID THE DIRECT HIT, AND GET OUT OF THE CONE OF DAMAGE.

  (Duh.)

  This requires, of course, that you know where the cone of damage
  actually is. That, in turn, requires that you know where your attacker
  is and in what direction he fired the weapon. That, in turn, requires
  that you know the weapon was even fired at all. Which, in turn, may be
  difficult against a player who has mastered the Silent BFG trick
  (See section 4D).

  It still helps if you are playing the game with a stereo sound card
  and headphones. This allows you to hear how far away and in which
  direction your opponents are. If you think in three dimensions, the
  sounds you hear in the game will give you a great tactical advantage.

  You must understand completely how the weapon works before any
  avoidance technique would be meaningful. So if you skipped ahead to
  this section, go back and read the gory details.

  With all that said, here are a few ideas. These are just things to
  try, not necessarily good things in all cases.

  - Run past the attacking player so that you end up behind him. This
    assumes that he is still facing the same direction as his damage
    cone. You will be completely safe if you're on the opposite side
    of his cone. This can backfire if you're not careful. You could end
    up three feet from him and inside his cone when the green ball
    detonates, and soak up some rays. Twenty of them, to be exact. That
    SPF 60 sun block won't help, either.

  - If you think you're about 1000 units away from the attacker, and
    you don't think he's running towards you too fast, you can try
    running away, and hope that the traces will be too thinned out to
    damage you seriously.

  - You can duck behind a nearby wall or a solid column. If you can see
    your attacker, simply move so the column is between you and him.
    Wait for the blast to detonate and die down, then step out from the
    column and place some ordnance in his face. This technique works
    well on Doom II's 'Circle of Death' level (11).

  - If you are very close to him, you can attempt to frag him before his
    shot gets off. When he pulls the trigger, there is a slight pause
    while the weapon warms up where you can still stop him dead in his
    tracks. There is nothing more exhilarating than hearing his BFG
    spinning up, then the sound of his scream as your super shotgun
    removes his face. Muahahahaha...

  - If you are involved in a turning, running, spinning melee in an open
    area, keep it up. Learn how to circle-strafe (use a combination of
    mouse and keyboard controls to turn, run, and strafe all at the same
    time). If you keep your attacker running in circles, his cone of
    damage will hardly ever be pointing at you. He will eventually run
    out of ammo, or you will frag him with conventional firepower. This
    technique works well in the main courtyard of Doom II's 'Citadel'
    level (19). In this kind of melee, it is nearly impossible to keep
    track of the cone (for either you or your attacker), so you are
    really taking a gamble that the turning fight will be to your
    advantage. But the exhilaration of winning that kind of fight is one
    of the best rushes you can get.

  - If you are well armed and very healthy, you can judge whether or not
    you can survive a blast area hit at your current distance. Then take
    advantage of the fact that he's trying to keep you in his sight. He's
    got a moment or two where he must leave himself exposed while he
    tries to soak you with his traces. Pepper him with rockets or plasma.
    Grit your teeth and take the blast area hit, but keep on him. Just
    don't get too close.

  - Anything else that takes advantage of the particular quirks of the
    weapon. Remember that you can use your knowledge of BFG attacking
    techniques to your advantage, like the example above.

4C. What is the best way to attack with the BFG in a deathmatch?

  KEEP YOUR TARGETS IN THE CONE OF DAMAGE.

  (Sha, nice try.)

  This requires, of course, that you know where the cone of damage
  actually is. So if you looked here first, go back and check out the
  rest of this FAQ for details.

  Anyway, here's some ideas. Not necessarily comprehensive:

  - The best universally accepted method is to shoot a wall or solid
    column that is very close to you. In this situation, your cone of
    damage roughly equals the visible targets on the screen. This is
    because you don't have much time to move around before detonation.
    Your targets don't have much time, either (You will notice that all
    of the 'defense' tips in this FAQ assume having time to react).
    Because we already know two things:
       1) The direct hit is difficult to achieve,
       2) The location of the detonation does not matter,
    there is no reason to try shooting the green ball at your targets.
    Your goal is to get the green ball to detonate as quickly as
    possible after you decide upon your targets. Just make sure you're
    facing your targets when you fire. If you have to rotate away from
    the direction of fire in order to see your targets, your cone of
    damage may not hit them.

  - The next best thing is to use the strafe feature heavily. Don't
    rotate, just keep strafing and keep your targets in sight while you
    wait for the detonation. This also keeps your cone of damage roughly
    lined up with your view, allowing you to use your view as a
    reference. If your targets are trying to run behind you to get behind
    your damage cone, running backwards while strafing may also help.

  - Combine the two previous attack methods: Shoot a nearby wall, then
    strafe toward your targets. This takes advantage of the pause that
    happens after detonation. You have a few heartbeats before the traces
    are calculated, so use this time to strafe your targets into view.
    The best example would be at a 90 degree hallway intersection: Shoot
    the wall at the corner, then strafe out into the hall. This is really
    just a shortened version of the level one strafe trick, except you
    don't have to wait for detonation.

  - "Everything I need to know, I learned at Top Gun." Avoid turning
    fights. See the related item under the defense techniques, above.

  - "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer." Really. The
    closer you are, the more traces will hit their faces. Don't even
    bother firing if your opponents are more than 1000 units away: you
    will either miss, or do very little damage.

  - Don't be afraid to use it in close quarters. You might think the BFG
    is designed for open-area use, but it actually works best when things
    get cramped. The 'shoot the wall' trick really mulches 'em in a
    narrow hallway.

  - Keep it loaded, then use it liberally. Find lots of ammo for it. Use
    a backpack to double your ammo capacity. Then shoot it off whenever
    you get the urge. For instance, every time you enter a new room or
    open a door.

  - Set up pre-timed shots that take advantage of its long warm-up time.
    Like this: pull the trigger, *then* open the door. Or pull the
    trigger, *then* drop off the ledge into the room with your target.

  - Shoot the green ball at a very distant wall (such as outdoors or
    down a long hallway), then run into the room where your target is.
    He may not know you even fired, or he may think it already detonated.
    Either way, you can just stand there. When the ball eventually
    detonates, your target will simply see himself crumble to the ground,
    realizing too late that you were standing still because you were
    keeping your traces on him. See section 4E for an example of this.

  - Use 'combo' moves. Use the above 'distant wall' technique, but switch
    to a conventional weapon as you run into the room. Your traces still
    work, even if you have switched weapons. Blast 'em with both the BFG
    traces and something else at the same time. Special thanks to Dan
    Christensen for this suggestion.

  - Bait your prey. Use the above 'distant wall' technique, but switch to
    the pistol and fire it while running into the room. They will hear
    your pistol and attempt to get very close to frag you. If timed
    correctly, they will be right in your face at detonation time. Splat
    city.

4D. What is the Silent BFG trick?

  Defending yourself against the BFG pretty much depends on your ability
  to know precisely when it is being used against you.

  If you are fortunate enough to play deathmatch with a stereo sound card
  and headphones, you know that sound cues are vital to playing well in
  deathmatch. In many cases, the only way a potential victim knows the
  green ball is in the air is by the distinctive sound the weapon makes
  when fired. The headphones can give him directional cues as to its
  origin, and therefore point the way towards a proper escape.

  So if you wish to get the drop on someone, wouldn't it be great if you
  could put a silencer on that weapon? Well you can. A limitation in
  Doom's sound code allows you to silence the firing sound of the BFG.
  Regardless of the 'Number of Sound FX to Mix' that you chose in Doom's
  setup program, your character can actually only utter one sound at a
  time. This includes all weapons firing. If you cause your character
  to grunt, i.e., you jump off of a ledge or press the space bar on a
  blank wall, you have a brief period while the grunting sound is being
  played in which you can pull the trigger and no sound will be emitted
  from the weapon. Your grunt makes a little noise, but it's relatively
  quiet and is sometimes ignored by your opponents.

  While it works well in theory, in practice the trick is hard to
  perform. It also may be a little unfair. As with all secrets, it
  definitely makes the game unfair if you don't share this information
  with your opponents.

  As of this writing, there seems to be a small handful of players on
  the Doom newsgroups who use this trick. The first person to submit
  this trick to the author of this document was John Fedor.

  Interesting anecdote: When reviewing a draft copy of this FAQ,
  American McGee at id Software informed us that they have been using
  the Silent BFG trick in their deathmatch games since day one.

4E. What is the Level One Strafe trick?

  The level one strafe trick is not a deathmatch technique per se, but
  it's a demonstration of the BFG behavior that educates many folks on
  how the BFG really works. The act of performing this trick tends to
  open one's eyes to the amazing possibilities of the weapon. It also
  proves some points made in this FAQ.

  Doug Bora first pointed this demo out to our particular group. Credit
  for the original version of this demo goes to John Ripley of the UK.
  The full deathmatch demo file PETALK2.ZIP is the first example of this
  specific action. This file should be available at:

    ftp://{INS site}/lmps/doom2/1.9/petalk2.zip
    where {INS site} = any DOOM ftp site, eg. ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames

  Since that time, this has been repeated by many folks on the Doom
  newsgroups.

  How to do this:

  - Set up a deathmatch game with Doom II, starting on level one, no
    monsters, deathmatch 2.0, ultra violence skill level.

  - Player one (Green) will most likely appear on the ledge with the
    chainsaw, BFG, rocket launcher, and super shotgun. Tell him to move
    so that he is within view of that first entrance room, standing on
    the ledge where he can see down the brightly lit hallway from his
    perch above the brown room. Tell him to sit tight right there. He is
    frag bait for this demonstration.

  - Player two (whoever) will stroll into the brown room and pick up the
    BFG behind the column. Wave to the nice guinea pig waiting patiently
    on the platform above. (Hi Phil. Hi Ralph.)

  - Player two strolls down the brightly lit hallway to the intersection
    where he can see the other dark room, way down the long hallway. You
    can just make out the plasma gun sitting on that podium in there.

  - While facing the plasma gun from the intersection in the bright
    hallway, fire the BFG. When the shot actually leaves the barrel of
    the gun and begins traveling toward the plasma gun, strafe quickly
    back toward the intersection where you can see Greenie standing on
    the ledge in the first brown room.

  - If you reached that hallway intersection in time (before the green
    ball detonated in the plasma gun room) you will be rewarded with
    seeing the frag bait get fragged. Well, at least damaged. Maybe
    fragged.

  - One extra credit point to anyone who guessed that you don't have to
    be facing Green Boy to kill him. You just have to make it to that
    intersection in time. You could be turned completely away from him,
    he will still be hit by the traces. You can prove this by running
    straight to the intersection rather than strafing to it.

  This demonstration proves the following:

  - You don't have to be anywhere near, or even facing the detonation
    point to damage your targets. You only have to move to a position
    where your cone of traces is on them.

  - The cone of traces always points the same direction regardless of
    which direction you turn.

  - You do not have to face your targets in order to hit them.

  - You can fire the BFG in a totally different area than where you want
    your targets to be damaged.

  Players who perform this stunt successfully the first time are usually
  amazed that it actually works. This is also a good practice for using
  similar moves in real deathmatches.

-- Section 5 - Submitting Corrections ---------------------------------

5A. Common misconceptions

  This is a list of the most common misunderstandings about the behavior
  of the BFG. Please review this list before submitting corrections.

  1) You have to be looking at your target in order to inflict blast area
     damage.

     This is untrue. The target must be within an imaginary line-of-sight
     to you at detonation time, but you can be facing away from the
     target, provided it meets all the other criteria.

     This is an easy mistake to make because you tend to be more accurate
     in positioning your cone of damage if you keep your eyes on your
     targets. Especially if you are strafing instead of rotating.

     See section 4E for proof of this.

  2) You have to see the detonation point in order to inflict blast area
     damage.

     Nope. The detonation point can be completely out of your range of
     sight, and can be separated from you and your targets by a hundred
     solid stone walls.

     Again, see section 4E for proof of this.

  3) The location of the detonation point is a factor in the blast damage
     area calculations.

     Only the moment of detonation is important. The location of the
     detonation point is not used. See number 2, above.

  4) The location you were standing when you fired, or the location of
     targets at firing time, is a factor.

     Only the location where you are standing when the blast detonates is
     important. The compass direction that you fired is important, but
     not the location where you fired. The traces are only calculated at
     detonation time. The game engine does not care where the targets are
     until the traces are calculated.

     Again, see section 4E for proof of this.

  5) You have to be facing the same direction at detonation time as you
     were at firing time.

     No, the cone of traces extends outward in the same compass direction
     regardless of which way you are facing at detonation time.

     Again, an easy mistake to make because you tend to be more accurate
     if you keep your eyes on your targets. Again, especially if you are
     strafing.

     Again, see section 4E for proof of this.

  6) Your BFG blast can frag someone behind you, but only if they are
     close enough to touch you.

     You can frag someone behind you if they fall anywhere within the
     cone of traces. Sure they can be behind you, but they don't have to
     be touching you. In order to frag someone behind you, you must
     rotate away from the direction you fired, then maneuver so that
     your targets are within the cone behind you.

     Having said that, if the victim is standing right next to the
     attacker, at 90 degrees perpendicular to the cone of damage, they
     will fall within the cone if they are in front of the attacker's
     centerline. But if they are truly behind the attacker's cone of
     damage (behind the centerline of the attacker), they will walk away
     unscathed.

     This seems to be due to the fact that the player's 'hittable'
     radius is larger than the player's 'walk into' radius. When you
     walk up to a player and bump into him, his 'hittable' area is
     overlapping into your area.

     This is an easy mistake to make when looking at a deathmatch game,
     where everyone is moving around each other so quickly that it's
     hard to keep track of the location of the cone of damage. If you
     really think you fragged someone behind you, it's probably because
     of one of two reasons:
       1) They were actually next to you and slightly forward of your
          centerline.
       2) You rotated away from the direction of fire, and the victim
          stepped into the cone of damage that still existed behind you.

5B. I think the FAQ is in error. How do I get it corrected?

  Please go through this checklist before submitting information:

  1) Read the entire FAQ to be sure we did not cover your point in
     another section. Check the 'Common Misconceptions' section, above,
     too.

  2) If you have a theory about the BFG behavior, please test it
     carefully before submitting it. If you can't reproduce the effect
     under controlled conditions, you were probably witnessing a side
     effect of one of its known behaviors. Or perhaps it happened in a
     deathmatch game, where the action is so fast that you often can't
     keep track of what's going on.

  3) If you think you have tested your theory thoroughly and are ready
     to submit the theory as proven, please prepare a short description
     statement that details how to reproduce the effect during game play.
     Please make sure the description is short and precise.

  4) When you have composed your description message (please make it as
     short as possible), e-mail it to [e-mail] and wait patiently
     for a reply.

  5) Note: Do not attempt to send us information for FAQ files other than
     this one. We do not maintain other FAQ files and we do not echo
     information amongst other FAQ authors.

============================ End of BFG FAQ ============================


                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||  Jaguar Trivia Challenge: The Answers
   ||  By: Clay Halliwell
\__//  [e-mail]
       -----------------------------------------------------------------

1. What's the only Jag game with the stereo sound channels reversed?
   Hover Strike (cart)

2. What's the only Jag game with multiple light-sourcing?
   Hover Strike

3. What's the only Jag game with true transparent polygons?
   Club Drive

4. What are the only two Jag games that use the Team-Tap?
   White Men Can't Jump, NBA Jam: TE

5. What's the only Jag game that supports the VoiceModem?
   Ultra Vortek

6. What's the only Jag game that supports the VR headset?
   Missile Command 3D

7. What's the only Japanese arcade game on the Jag?
   Raiden

8. What's the only Jag game that uses MIP mapping?
   Iron Soldier 2

9. What's the only JagCD title without any FMV?
   Primal Rage

10. Which two Jag games have Atari's former HQ hidden in them?
    Club Drive, Myst

11. What's the only Jag game (besides Tempest 2000) with a soundtrack CD?
    Myst

                             --==--==--==--==--


   ||
   ||  Shutdown ....................... Power off, * + #, EOL, Game Over
\__//  -----------------------------------------------------------------

Well, this issue of JEO took a bit longer than planned to come out, but JEO
#4 should rear its head MUCH more quickly. If all goes well, that will be
the JEO (or AEO) that people have been looking forward to for over two
years now-- the BATTLESPHERE JEO. I can hardly wait...!

Buzzword Index:
     Buzzword    Occurrences
     HTTP        45
     Texture     23
     Bug         15
     Polygon     13
     Render      5
     Network     20

Useless Fact O' The Month: Remember the $50,000 grand prize sword for the
SwordQuest contest Atari was running? Well that sword is hanging over the
mantle of Jack Tramiel's fireplace.


Until the next issue of JEO, I remain,

Your Editor
Clay Halliwell
<[e-mail]>


                             --==--==--==--==--

                 (This issue printed on recycled photons)

                             --==--==--==--==--

                              Avoid The Ground

                             --==--==--==--==--

                             Save the Humanoids

                             --==--==--==--==--

                   Where do you want to play Atari today?

                             --==--==--==--==--

Jaguar Explorer Online Magazine is a bionic publication covering the Atari
Jaguar community. Reprint permission is granted, unless otherwise noted at
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Opinions presented herein are those of the individual authors and do not
necessarily reflect those of the staff, or of the publishers. All material
herein is believed accurate at the time of publishing. The truth is out to
lunch.

                             --==--==--==--==--

Atari, 400/800, XL/XE, 2600, ST, Mega ST, STe, Mega STe, Atari Falcon030,
Blitter, Atari Lynx, ComLynx, Atari Panther, Atari Jaguar, Pong, and the
Atari Fuji Symbol are all trademarks or registered trademarks of JTS
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                             --==--==--==--==--

Jaguar Explorer Online Magazine
"Your Source for Jaguar News"
Copyright (c) 1997, White Space Publishers


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 :: Volume 1, Issue 3      JAGUAR EXPLORER ONLINE       October 15, 1997 ::
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