[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Because BEFORE writing the C code, he has ressourced the ASM program and commented it.

I know that, I read his blog from start to finish (it's still ongoing btw) and that's precisly why I mentioned that the parts with the most work were hardware related.

The gameplay and road system are fairly generic and although he mentions that the road system code is way too convoluted and heavy handed for what it does that's very unlikely to require a lot of CPU power. What require power and attention is the sheer number and size of roadside objects to draw each frame.

Before having any difficult to move as many bobs, there is a problem with the way the graphic system is working. there is a big work in this field to do, before wanting to get bobs moving on screen.

I'm not sure of what you mean here. I'm not talking about a port and how it should proceed, I was just listing the performance issues that the Amiga version faces. These have to be solved beforehand: Outrun is 50 fps or nothing so all the constraints on assets derive from what can be physically achieved by the Amiga.

Lotus III is excellent, but you'd need 64 colors on screen at least to get the grip with outrun original graphics.

There is a work to do on the original assets BEFORE starting to work on the conversion.

Before working on the assets you need to know what you are able to draw: how many objects per frame, which size, which number of bit planes per object, which bitplane depth for the screen, etc.
That's done by prototyping using dummy bobs with patterns until you can manage the achieved frame rate. Only then you know what kind of butchering can be applied to the assets.

super hang on is an atari ST port, what did you expect ?

This is certainly the reason why it is as it is but I'm making a value judgement on the final result as a player, not a reflexion on how it became so. It is a bad port and a crappy game overall and as a player that's all I am interested in. Maybe they had good reasons for that but I play the game for its fun factor and quality in the end so that should be the measuring criterion.

I must say that despite this I finished the game in its day. Which is why it was also important to me to buy an original (even got an unopened one with its 1990 sticker ): I wanted to pay for the time I spent on it even though I didn't like it.

space harrier is very good, circa 1989. Amiga programming went ahead than that, with new tricks.

The graphics clearly were redrawn and not converted which significantly lowers the quality and that has nothing to do with the year, that's just sloppy work (likely justified by management constraints but then again as a player it's not my problem: I judge on the result, not on the effort). But most importantly what kills the game are the controls and that has nothing to do with technology, on the contrary it's revealing of the conditions it was shipped under and these likely had more influence on the result than the skills of the coders.

I am of the opinion that it could have been much better even at that time without any particular tricks.
With tricks, well, it could be simply amazing.