Next game to port?

[ZEUSDAZ]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

an experience could be done with this one.

Pick the arcade program, redirect the video ports and other regs, and adapt as much as possible the sprite tile builder engine.

but anyway, SF1 is a 128 colors game, if you don't want to denature it, a good A500 port would be a mess to do, more complicated than an A1200 port.

this game would take at least 2mb of ram, considering the sprites size.

I have quite a number of stages already ripped......

All that's needed work on mostly is redrawing the fighters that Tiertex did such an awful job doing, speed them up and most importantly improve the AI IQ of those fighters,...the Amiga version (well all Tiertex versions of this game) just sees them standing around half the time swiping at thin air looking stupid,...god It's bad!
Also to include the 5 missing backgrounds and second bonus stage which are missing, oh and better attempts at creating the game music which shouldn't be difficult with the great Amiga sound chip sitting in the machine.

Not really bothered about less colours, I just would like to play a playable version of it on the Amiga just to prove even more without a shadow of a doubt Tiertex were utterly useless.

[saimon69]

Well DFR, if people in the 90s were thinking like you we would miss half of the ports we have in my opinion!

I feel the pain of Zeus, there is a good deal of games that got mistreated by US
Gold and others and would deserve a much better port, included but not limited to: Street Fighter, Pac Land, Rolling Thunder, Black tiger, OutRun, Shinobi, just to say those that hurts most....


...is just that if you think arcade is too powerful (and most of the time it was) then you need to squeeze your brain to do what could not be done; think like a dev in 1990 and see what could be done with an A500 and one meg, including - gosh! - running at two frames?!?!

[saimon69]

BTW, breaking a spear for my selection (Shinobi), i found a video from Sega Lord that says there is actually no arcade faithful port on any home platform - oooooohhhh....

[ Show youtube player ]

[Retro-Nerd]

But there will be (probably close or even better). Somebody is porting Shinobi to the Mega Drive. There are a few clips on Youtube and Dailymotion.


[ Show youtube player ]


https://www.dailymotion.com/Le_Furet

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Well DFR, if people in the 90s were thinking like you we would miss half of the ports we have in my opinion!

I feel the pain of Zeus, there is a good deal of games that got mistreated by US
Gold and others and would deserve a much better port, included but not limited to: Street Fighter, Pac Land, Rolling Thunder, Black tiger, OutRun, Shinobi, just to say those that hurts most....


...is just that if you think arcade is too powerful (and most of the time it was) then you need to squeeze your brain to do what could not be done; think like a dev in 1990 and see what could be done with an A500 and one meg, including - gosh! - running at two frames?!?!

I took a look at arcade ports the Amiga received at HOL...

With very few exceptions, all those games *could* had been properly handled. Yes, cut colors, cut graphics, maybe change some gameplay features and adapt for 1 button controller.... but nearly all of them could have done.

In Tiertex case I really think they were just beyond incompetent.

But bad arcade ports on amiga were usually a case of "not proper resources" + "ridiculous deadlines to port to 4-6 different systems at the same time" which lend to "Let's quickly hack this Atari ST basecode to work on Amiga"

It's true many of those were shit even as ST games, but many times even though using Atari ST assets, when the game actually used the Amiga hardware properly, most of the ports were from acceptable to pretty good.

And to be quite honest, running a game on 2 frames (I think you mean at 25 fps) was very acceptable back then and still many games are very good even at this "OH MY GOD" framerate. Swiv runs at 25 fps and it's a great game.

Shadow Dancer isn't running at 50 fps but it's a DAMN good port and a VERY SOLID Amiga game. With such big sprites, would it be possible to make it run at 50 fps? I really doubt it. But it's perfectly playable the way it is and it's a great game.

-
And after re-reading your post before clicking "send" I just understood you actually agree with me. LOL.

But that's it. I never expected PERFECT 1:1 ports on home 16 bits system, but you can get some very close and good results even on Amiga. You just have to do proper work, have the resources, time and talent... and choose wisely what you will adapt/cut to make it work. No need for 128/256 colors or to keep parallax intact.

[Foul]

Voted Shinobi, but Double Dragon and Rastan are on my whislist !

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Well DFR, if people in the 90s were thinking like you we would miss half of the ports we have in my opinion!

I feel the pain of Zeus, there is a good deal of games that got mistreated by US
Gold and others and would deserve a much better port, included but not limited to: Street Fighter, Pac Land, Rolling Thunder, Black tiger, OutRun, Shinobi, just to say those that hurts most....


...is just that if you think arcade is too powerful (and most of the time it was) then you need to squeeze your brain to do what could not be done; think like a dev in 1990 and see what could be done with an A500 and one meg, including - gosh! - running at two frames?!?!

Very honestly, an A1200 version first, and then try to make an A500 version.

But we're not in 1990, but 2019. You need foremost a great graphist to reduce down the palette. But in a number of case, it's very complicated.

It's not a problem of power, it's a problem of games unsuited for the the A500. Either due to the amount of sprites to move, too much colors, and the RAM required, not mentionning the need for a hard drive.

Street Fighter 1 fighters take 150kb each in 16 colors (32 for both).

the game code is around 390kb, add up the musics and sfx, plus the memory needed for graphical operation, and you need 2mb of ram.

otherwise, the arcade code need to be splitted per parts to gain memory, and then go multiload.

[Tigerskunk]

I also think that the OCS Amiga is simply unsuited for most of its contemporary arcade games.
Usually there are more objects and colours on screen than it can handle, plus you usually got at least one layer of (non repeated) parallax.

There is usually no other option than going for 25 fps to get into this territory, imo.

With original games, you have the convenience of shaping the games graphics to the OCS Amiga's strengths.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Steril707

I also think that the OCS Amiga is simply unsuited for most of its contemporary arcade games.
Usually there are more objects and colours on screen than it can handle, plus you usually got at least one layer of (non repeated) parallax.

There is usually no other option than going for 25 fps to get into this territory, imo.

With original games, you have the convenience of shaping the games graphics to the OCS Amiga's strengths.

Yes. For instance, when i started extracting Shinobi's assets, i had to accept the fact that the too numerous sprite objects have their 16 own colors palette, and it's like you have almost 1024 colors for background and sprites, and those uses unique colors that you can't reduce, or otherwise you get something absolutely horrible.

An A500 can't do Shinobi in 32 colors ; you either hit the RAM barrier or the game will be too slow.

Let's use instead the 1200, more suited, more capable, able to use more colors on screen and more RAM.

[Anubis]

A1200 would get my vote too.

Some older arcade games such as Phoenix, Scramble etc. might suit Amiga well, but newer arcade games would play better on A1200.

[Shatterhand]

Yeah, yeah... no, I mean, Richard Aplin managed to retain most of the features of Shinobi in a system that can't scroll for fucks and has just 64 kb of Ram.

[ Show youtube player ]

But we Amigans need 2mb AGA 14 mhz CPU parallax fucking everything to make it work. If it hasn't parallax 50 fps and all colors of arcade version is not good enough.

And people were giving away money to Coco Banana.

I really don't get it.

I guess Toki, Liquid Kids, Shadow Dancer, Silkworm, Ninja Warriors, Dragon Breed, Saint Dragon, Mortal Kombat, The New Zealand Story, etc etc were all not good enough for your guys as they had to cut down colors/parallax/music/effects/framerate ??

-

Really, you can cut colors and parallax for most of those games and they would still be great. I think one (of many) problems of Amiga Shinobi was exactly using Dual Playfield to keep the parallax in a game that you barely notice it. The game look awful because the artist obviously couldn't cope working with such a low number of colors.

Look at Ninja Warriors. Great port. Did anyone complain about the lack of parallax there?

I really think you could do Shinobi on Amiga without the parallax, 16 colors for playfield, player drawn as a HW sprite with his own 16 colors.

[malko]

Even what we can see here is nice work
[ Show youtube player ]

[DDNI]

I voted for Wonder boy.

However if I had my wish it would go to Karnov [ Show youtube player ].
Played it to death on a family holiday to Butlins at Bognor Regis.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

But we Amigans need 2mb AGA 14 mhz CPU parallax fucking everything to make it work. If it hasn't parallax 50 fps and all colors of arcade version is not good enough.

Nobody said anything about faster processor or anything different than plain A1200. Why limit to only A500. Good example where developer did not port something to A500 - Aladdin. Try to imagine that game on A500.

[Retro-Nerd]

Good choice: Somebody should port Aladdin to proper 50fps on AGA.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Yeah, yeah... no, I mean, Richard Aplin managed to retain most of the features of Shinobi in a system that can't scroll for fucks and has just 64 kb of Ram.

[ Show youtube player ]

But we Amigans need 2mb AGA 14 mhz CPU parallax fucking everything to make it work. If it hasn't parallax 50 fps and all colors of arcade version is not good enough.

And people were giving away money to Coco Banana.

I really don't get it.

I guess Toki, Liquid Kids, Shadow Dancer, Silkworm, Ninja Warriors, Dragon Breed, Saint Dragon, Mortal Kombat, The New Zealand Story, etc etc were all not good enough for your guys as they had to cut down colors/parallax/music/effects/framerate ??

-

Really, you can cut colors and parallax for most of those games and they would still be great. I think one (of many) problems of Amiga Shinobi was exactly using Dual Playfield to keep the parallax in a game that you barely notice it. The game look awful because the artist obviously couldn't cope working with such a low number of colors.

Look at Ninja Warriors. Great port. Did anyone complain about the lack of parallax there?

I really think you could do Shinobi on Amiga without the parallax, 16 colors for playfield, player drawn as a HW sprite with his own 16 colors.

I have to admit that i don't quite understand why this obsession about doing remakes on Amiga 500, since the games in question where originally made for or from the Sharp X68000 or any other PC like machine with shitons of colors and minimum 2mb of ram ?

The more colors we have, the more we need RAM. The A500 is locked to 1mb. Only the A500+ and A600 can have 2mb of chip.

About Shinobi, i can tell you that even with the coin-op assets with all good colors that i have, it's out of question to have the game using less than 64 colors (and even there, a BIG rework is needed as there are too many unique colors used).

This game is also a perfect target for the 1200, running from hard drive, with 2mb of ram minimum.

[Foul]

Originally Posted by DDNI

I voted for Wonder boy.

However if I had my wish it would go to Karnov

Yeah !! i love Karnov too !!!

[malko]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

[...] The more colors we have, the more we need RAM. The A500 is locked to 1mb. Only the A500+ and A600 can have 2mb of chip. [...]

Tss, tss, tss. You forgot to mention my A2000 : 2MB chip also.

Since 1990/1991, 2MB for A500 & A2000 exists : http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/2mbchipram

or (A2000) http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/...-2MB-chip.html

or (A500) https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/shop/product/ace2.html

[Shatterhand]

Nobody said anything about faster processor or anything different than plain A1200. Why limit to only A500. Good example where developer did not port something to A500 - Aladdin. Try to imagine that game on A500.

The A1200 processor is clocked at 14 mhz . Yes, nobody said anything about faster processor, not even me.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I have to admit that i don't quite understand why this obsession about doing remakes on Amiga 500, since the games in question where originally made for or from the Sharp X68000 or any other PC like machine with shitons of colors and minimum 2mb of ram ?

The more colors we have, the more we need RAM. The A500 is locked to 1mb. Only the A500+ and A600 can have 2mb of chip.

About Shinobi, i can tell you that even with the coin-op assets with all good colors that i have, it's out of question to have the game using less than 64 colors (and even there, a BIG rework is needed as there are too many unique colors used).

This game is also a perfect target for the 1200, running from hard drive, with 2mb of ram minimum.

First I don't even get why the obsession on porting games at all. I think the exercise to think about how to make it work is pretty interesting - but then it only make sense if you are talking about the old-school hardware. The more power you have, the easier is to do it, so there's not much "How would you face the task?" discussion. But actually doing them.... we can play those games using MAME, what's the point?

That said, kudos for people doing it, and I can clearly see how fun can be porting a game, trying to get everything right, etc etc. But I personally think the fun part is exactly to make it work on the hardware most people had back at the time. Any other than that, in MY MIND it makes no sense. Just port it for a PC then. Or better, stick with MAME. What's the point?

Now the claim "it cant be done with less than 64 colors" is ridiculous. I mean, Shinobi was ported to the CPC, C64, Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga, Master System and NES, to say the least. None of those versions had 64 colors and not all of them look like shit.

But in the end, is all up to people who are doing it. You want to make a Shinobi port that requires a Vampire and 128mb Ram? Go for it. I don't see the point, but if someone wants to do it, all power to you. But claiming "It can't be done on an A500" is really plain ridiculous. You just have to know how to deal with it. It's not impossible and obviously the Amiga could handle a better version than what we've got. But if you want to go 2 MB Aga-only... you are the one doing it, so you can do whatever you want.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

The A1200 processor is clocked at 14 mhz . Yes, nobody said anything about faster processor, not even me.



First I don't even get why the obsession on porting games at all. I think the exercise to think about how to make it work is pretty interesting - but then it only make sense if you are talking about the old-school hardware. The more power you have, the easier is to do it, so there's not much "How would you face the task?" discussion. But actually doing them.... we can play those games using MAME, what's the point?

Why ? Because the 1200 lacks great port using his abilities.

Even with a 14mhz CPU, things are not that easy, and do not come for free.

Playing Mame is the coin-op and is one thing, the trick is to get the challenge to make the game on a computer that has 256 colors palette, but with restriction, and see what we can get from here.

Plus the 500 has been used to the maximum. Not the 1200.

That said, kudos for people doing it, and I can clearly see how fun can be porting a game, trying to get everything right, etc etc. But I personally think the fun part is exactly to make it work on the hardware most people had back at the time.

These days most of us own an A1200.

Any other than that, in MY MIND it makes no sense. Just port it for a PC then. Or better, stick with MAME. What's the point?

Port it to a PC ? nonsense. It would be the carbon copy of the coin-op.
And Mame emulates the original.

Clearly, i don't see the point of pulling hair out on A500 to run a game that will lose in the process its identity.

And none of us is paid to do that. in the 90's programmer were paid to cut hairs in half.

Now the claim "it cant be done with less than 64 colors" is ridiculous. I mean, Shinobi was ported to the CPC, C64, Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga, Master System and NES, to say the least. None of those versions had 64 colors and not all of them look like shit.

the ST version look like shite, Amiga version the same. Why ? Because they forked the graphics with a frame grabber. Today, i can work out the arcade assets from the roms, so there's no point.

But in the end, is all up to people who are doing it. You want to make a Shinobi port that requires a Vampire and 128mb Ram? Go for it. I don't see the point, but if someone wants to do it, all power to you. But claiming "It can't be done on an A500" is really plain ridiculous. You just have to know how to deal with it. It's not impossible and obviously the Amiga could handle a better version than what we've got.

Simply look Rygar AGA. McGeezer uses the full 2mb of chip and it's a game made in 1986 ! the X68000 use the same amount of ram to run the arcade adaptation.

We won't pass 1 year and a half to klunck a coin-op game in a floppy disk machine like the A500.

But if you want to go 2 MB Aga-only... you are the one doing it, so you can do whatever you want.

AGA means 64 colors or more, bigger sprites, and more space for graphic frames.