Songbird Productions

JagFest is returning to Rochester, MN, on Aug 21-22! JagFest is a gathering of passionate Atari fans to celebrate their favorite systems, including the Jaguar, Lynx, and even Nuon. You can expect those systems on free play, high-score competitions, casual multiplayer gaming, demos of upcoming games, technical Q&A, and more. Tickets are limited to only 100 attendees. Can't make it in person? Become a Virtual Supporter, and gain access to the private live stream and Discord channel. Help spread the word, and let's make this the best JagFest ever! songbird-productions.com/jagfest

@TheRetroSlayer Lynx version is sooo much better, but still, this is a solid game on the 2600.

California Games - Atari 2600 (1988) Pixelated hacky sack and epic BMX wipeouts were the absolute peak of cool. 🏄‍♂️☀️ #CaliforniaGames #Atari2600 #GamingNostalgia

@LillyBeenyc @Atari_VB_Pod @greayson2532 @MoonPieDreams @MidlifeCrysis_ @RetroDirkGaming @XRPee1983 @The_Top_Loader @exolon @80s_retro56968 @VGMHero Yeah, Wolf 3D, Doom, and AvP were so well done on the Jag. Loved Raiden too.

@Atari_VB_Pod @greayson2532 @SongbirdPro @MoonPieDreams @MidlifeCrysis_ @RetroDirkGaming @XRPee1983 @The_Top_Loader @exolon @80s_retro56968 @VGMHero I was very happy with it, sad with 32 x version later. I got the jag used with wolfenstein that summer 94 waiting for doom and aliens vs predator in the fall. Good times!

Doom for the #Atari #Jaguar 1994 was the first official console port The engine was programmed by John Carmack of id Software using the NEXTSTEP platform Despite its limitations, the port became the technical and design foundation for nearly all subsequent console ports #90sGames

Got the round trophies working in the game!

@zcichy Target acquired.

I was today years old when I found out the Atari Power Pad existed. Now I think I need one…

Order has been locked in for JagFest t-shirts. Still have one each of L, XL, and 2XL available in case you were on the fence. 😎 songbird-productions.com/product/jagfes…

@Ruleof2Review 1. Batman Begins 2. Inception 3. Interstellar The Dark Knight is really good and probably my #4. Dunkirk is an amazing true-life story and the film does it justice. Tenet is a fun watch, if you don't take the science shenanigans too seriously.

My top three favorite Nolan films: 1. The Dark Knight 2. Inception 3. The Prestige Number four for me would be a three-way battle between Dunkirk, The Odyssey, and Batman Begins. Tough to decide.

Have you signed up for JagFest yet? Just over 1 month away! Even if you can't attend in person, join us as a Virtual Supporter, and you'll get access to the livestreams and exclusive merch discounts.

@dlchief58 @greayson2532 @MoonPieDreams @MidlifeCrysis_ @RetroDirkGaming @XRPee1983 @Atari_VB_Pod @The_Top_Loader @exolon @80s_retro56968 @VGMHero While both were released November 1994 (and true, the 32X port apparently came out first by one week), the Jaguar Doom source was in fact used to generate the (much-simplified) 32X version. Jaguar Doom was also used as the source for the subsequent 3D0 port.

@greayson2532 @SongbirdPro @MoonPieDreams @MidlifeCrysis_ @RetroDirkGaming @XRPee1983 @Atari_VB_Pod @The_Top_Loader @exolon @80s_retro56968 @VGMHero DOOM was first ported to the Sega 32X. Jaguar followed shortly afterwards. This was easy to confirm, not sure how you got it wrong.

@Philsan69 Great game on the 2600. Played it a bunch as a kid.

John Hardie and Atarimania discovered a version of the famous #Atari8bit computers game Mountain King before it was acquired and released by K-Byte and CBS Software atarimania.com/game-atari-400… #atari

Random #Evercade sales graph for the day. So weird that I sold zero VS-R units in May, two at the end of June, then 11 in July. But nice to see stock finally turning over. If it was you, then thanks for your support! 😁

@games_pants I agree! Assembloids on the Lynx is very similar, and it's a maddeningly addictive game. 😁

Back on to finishing off Quartet for Sega Genesis. Great little game this, it keeps your heart pounding! #SegaGenesis #IndieGameDev #indie #RETROGAMING #indiegames #gamedev

@Gaowing1992 @Philsan69 Would be very cool to see both someday!

@SongbirdPro @Philsan69 If Mike Mika has the demo of Bomberman Legends for the Atari Jaguar, he and the Digital Eclipse team most likely kept a backup of what is left of Lynx Dragon's Lair :-)

Dragon's Lair work in progress for #Atari7800 console #atari

@Gaowing1992 @Philsan69 Yep, I had heard about that many years ago, and even asked Mike at one point if he still had anything from that project. 😉

@SongbirdPro @Philsan69 Funny that you mention the Atari Lynx because there were apparently plans to bring Dragon's Lair to the platform at one point. Some of the work done for it ended up as basis for the Game Boy Color version: youtube.com/watch?v=upOdSG…

@indyjonas Nice accomplishment!

Just a short reminder that Command & Conquer is now available for Atari ST, Atari TT and Atari Falcon.

@birt_shannon @TonimanGalvez Amazing! I love that look of early 90's polygon games.

** Sega Genesis 3D Engine Update 8 ** Significant improvements all round as you can see and hear from the last update !! Foremost - A huge thanks to @TonimanGalvez who has joined the project to create a bit of 16bit low poly magic. Toni's an Amiga fan but also crazy about game dev in general, he's worked on GBC, GBA, PC, MD, PSP, C64, CPC, MSX... and others. Gaming titles include War Times, Metal Gear, Rocketman, Tintin & Asterix to name a few. He's provided the great new ship model you see on screen - new striped buildings, all the backgrounds / palettes etc. There's a lot of models he's given me which need to be added, also he will be planning a lot of the level design. Very happy to have him help me turn this into something more than a tech demo as I have my hands tied pushing the MD as far as it can go haha - there is no cpu cycle to be spared. Also many thanks to my good friend @laurent_crouzet for the Music for this showing , I wanted to have the music load occurring so we have a realistic benchmark for performance and he was only too obliging. If you're into MD chiptunes check him out !! Since last update : New player model , substantially more detailed than the Arwing. Last update had a 23 triangle Arwing , this update has a 39 triangle custom model from Toni. We had several to choose from , others will be used for enemies . 3D Buffer size increased 25% to 256x160. This was quite tricky as I'm close to the DMA limit even with an extended vblank . Spent a few days thinking of how to do this as like anything retro every solution has a drawback, finally got a workable solution. It makes a big difference to have a bit more vertical height . Z Rotation added ( the screen tilting left to right ) , small hit to vertex transform on cpu thanks to look up tables doing the heavy lifting, saving 4 multiplies per vertex. Multiple speed ups in rendering code. Onscreen paths with no range checking used until Z is close enough to cause clipping , partial onscreen drawing pathes that need to check boundaries, quad rendering completely rewritten - was very very painfull to get right . I found out the hard way that things are great when they are not rotating in the Z axis haha . Partial buffer draw optimisations - which have helped with the massive dma load , sending up to a 20kb buffer in a single frame needs a lot of optimisation. Min / Max tile lines are analysed and only sent if dirtied , reducing most buffer swaps substantially. Still some issues to sort out , at times you can see the flicker near top of screen when frames are near full height . I need to optimise that a bit. Due to the onscreen buffer system a full Sprite background had to be implemented almost Neo Geo style. This flips the usual MD rendering system on its head as it uses both foreground and background layers for a foreground 3d plane and sprites for the background. This presents a few issues, one is to get a tilt effect on the background by using narrow sprites (16x32) we run out of sprites when trying to cover the screen. Thankfully the MD is not limited to 80 sprites, to fix this a 114 sprite multiplexor is used to draw the background, its completely made up of 16x32 sprites ! Why do things this way ? speed . Its the interleaved foreground/background layers that allow a double buffered ram system writing to write to vram using dma in a completely linear fashion - virtually no tile translation needed. The negative is you have no planes for the background, that's where the sprites come in . Thanks to H40 mode we still have a few sprites we can use for effects in the forground also . Thankfully we can implement a fairly good tilt still for the background using sprites, in future updates this will be able to move horizontally also and a bit of vertical movement. XGM1 music driver in use to simulate music cpu load, XGM2 unfortunately with the massive DMA needed to shift the 3d buffers would slow down at times rendering it unusable, XGM1 plays at full speed - albiet with a bit more of a cpu hit. Together with the sprite multiplexor and the music driver active theres a 10 % hit to cpu so I've had to play around with draw distances / object heights and other optimisations to offset that. Not to mention the larger buffer takes more cpu to fill also. Everything is placeholder so will be changed with proper stage design. We are averaging 20 FPS in the current video, I'll push for more as always !! Progress continues on my other projects , updates soon on those - retirement can't come quick enough . #SGDK #SegaGenesis #SegaMegadrive

I love the smell of retro coding progress in the morning.

@Ruleof2Review Thanks, appreciate your support!

@SongbirdPro Gotcha. Well hey that’s awesome! I absolutely love Ultra Vortek. One of my favorite Jaguar games. Once this one is available I’ll probably finally buy myself a new Lynx (lost mine like 20 years ago) just to play this. Looking forward to it, my man.

More progress on Ultravore Zero for the #AtariLynx: - Round 1/2/3 graphic is displayed - Fight ends when one fighter wins 2 of 3 Last thing I need to do on this feature is add the little trophy graphic each time a fighter wins a round (mockup shown here).

@Ruleof2Review Yes, the same company Beyond Games started Ultra Vortek on the Lynx, before pivoting to Ultra Vortek on the Jaguar. Songbird acquired the rights and source code to the unfinished Lynx version over 25 years ago! Some call me slow. I'm just... really slow.

@SongbirdPro This is the game that started as a Lynx game before eventually turning into Ultra Vortek, is that right?