Release- ToeJam & Earl 3 Dreamcast Beta

PS: Apparently Greg Johnson did an interview last week where he talks about this beta. Starts talking TJE at 16:30 including the original concept for TJE 2 on Genesis and more recent Sony-based TJE game. Mentions the beta at 36:30, has a lot of nice comments about ZakhooiTM, though he had his homeland wrong!

 

Thank you so much for this, from a ToeJam & Earl fan ever since my childhood.

I played up to level 9, then the game locked up when i tried to access the level map. That seems to be the first level which starts giving trouble (I thought it was going to be level 10 since ZakhooiTM mentioned that). Too bad about these stability problems, since the prototype seems to have an extensive amount of content on place, especially when compared to the Xbox version. I guess the Dreamcast version was unfortunately cancelled in a fairly late state of development.

 

Best Christmas I've had in a while, will donate as soon as I know where my finances sit.

Pleasantly surprised at how well polished this is, hopefully a bit of hacking can get what isn't working working.

 

In the video above, Greg Johnson mentions it was about 4-5 months away from completion, so yeah it was quite far along before being killed off. Unfortunate, but what can I say, games get cancelled all the time.

 

Yeah, I just saw it a while ago. It's pretty much the time I thought it was left to finish the game by the looks of it. I liked that Sega Nerdcast a lot, especially the whole ToeJam & Earl part of it. Greg Johnson seems to be a nice guy and I like how he talks about the prototype in very friendly terms and also the fact of giving his OK for the release to happen as much as both Mark and him could do it from the legal perspective involving the IP. I'm glad the main property of the brand and characters are in such good hands, rather than Sega's.

PS: There's a long way from the Netherlands to Finland for sure, lol.

 

I hope you enjoyed it.
Lockups are very random, possible reason is that the dreamcast is low on memory when the game random generates larger and larger levels.
There are some times the game locks up at level 9, however from level 10 and up it's almost certain that it's going to lockup sooner or later.
Also sometimes it seems to lockup (such in your case) when you call the level map, possibly because of memory issues. So don't try to use it

Thanks, I'm actually happy that you didn't reply to my PM's


@Everyone else :
Thank you for the kind responses, if you have some money to spend do me a favor and donate it to Mardan, they are a private school and can always use the extra
If you already done a donation : You are AWESOME! or as the owner of school would put it : THANK YOU!!!

 

Great release. It's good that the community gets to play it.

 

You've heard it how many times already, but my sincerest thanks go out. This is an awesome release for the Dreamcast, and I can't wait to get home and give it a try. DLing it on my phone now. I really appreciate your generosity and open communication regarding the steps taken to bring TJ&EIII to fruition.

 

Thanks for sharing such a great prototype. It's a great Chrismas present!

 

Oh wow sweet, it's fun how more and more old protos keeps surfacing. Thanks a lot for a great Christmas gift.

 

Thank you so much for releasing this. Awesome stuff!

 

Thank you so much for this release!!!

 

Thank you for doing this.

Couple of questions.

Is the release properly optimized? By like ReviveDC standards?

Second, has anyone made printable artwork yet?

Sorry if I missed these answers previously.

 

I made it myself with all the files (e.g. not remotely as with GF, that was unpractical) it's sorted according to Zakhooi gd-m logs and dummied to 80min. Files that were not read in Zakhooi runs were put last and sorted by name as they're named thematically and that would hopefully reduce seek time if they're read at all. Overall the size of the game is pretty small and dummying is probably the most effective optimisation here.

I sorted the files from first accessed to last, this way loadings should be done with minimal seeking. If there was a lot of medium-sized files read all the time, it'd have been better to sort by number of reads, but I chose to sort it according to first access as it's where seeks are the most noticeable; you usually load lot of new stuff all at once, and once only, at a new level.

For inspiration here's the python code I used (http://pastebin.com/U3jT6msC) it requires a Katana GD-M log stripped of its header and a file with the name of all files in the game, files that are referenced in the log are sorted by earlier access time, remaining ones are sorted alphabetically and put after the others.

I was a bit overzealous at dummying it so it might require overburning (it's 79:59:74, one frame less than 80min) but it should not be a problem for any burner/cdr combination.

 

Thanks.

 

I will take that as a yes.

Thank you for your efforts sir.

 

I tried converting the image to use on Dreamcast SD/ISO adapters and was unsuccessful. Couldn't get it to run on Dreamshell 4.0 Beta 4 or RC 1.

 

Thank you for release this awesome game!!! I'm on level10.. how to get into the elevator?

 

Congrats!! '(Now DONT use the map or hit the water, those are really bugged in this level!!)
As for the elevator, You need to find it, it should be somewhere and if you're lucky it's not in the water you just can go to the next level.