Vampire Games

[Sinphaltimus]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Absolutely, I agree. Every piece of hardware needs its purpose. It's the "exclusive" part that is of concern though - do you mean exclusive in that you need Vampire levels of grunt to run them, or do you mean using Vampire-only features to ensure it doesn't work on any other hardware, regardless of capability?

Why not both?

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by nobody

I guess it could do things like these

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This isn't actually such a stretch of the imagination

Rather than trying to port lots of old DOS games it is better to just get DOSBox running well on the Vampire. It should be possible although it might require the larger FPGA of the A1200/stand-alone version to get the speed needed (DOSBox is very CPU hungry!).

I ported a cut-down version for AGA which is unfortunately still too slow for real HW, should be very easy to add RTG support to this for the Vampire

http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/DOSBox_AGA

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

This isn't actually such a stretch of the imagination

Rather than trying to port lots of old DOS games it is better to just get DOSBox running well on the Vampire. It should be possible although it might require the larger FPGA of the A1200/stand-alone version to get the speed needed (DOSBox is very CPU hungry!).

I ported a cut-down version for AGA which is unfortunately still too slow for real HW, should be very easy to add RTG support to this for the Vampire

http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/DOSBox_AGA

Instead of DOSBox it's better to optimise PC-Task or PCx for the Vampire, since they are native Amiga applications and utilise the Amiga and the 68K best.

[arti]

Originally Posted by nobody

I guess it could do things like these

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3rd game from the list is already ported and works great on Vampire
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[sandruzzo]

Vampire seems like an enanched Classic Amiga, that's way it's interesting!

[Amiga1992]

I was playing these last night on my Dreamcast and I was wondering: can the Vampire do games of this level? It would be great:

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All by NG: DEV.TEAM

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Akira

I was playing these last night on my Dreamcast and I was wondering: can the Vampire do games of this level? It would be great:

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All by NG: DEV.TEAM

If 16 bit YUV is used as the screenmode, it will be beautiful and still have sufficient bandwidth to work.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Instead of DOSBox it's better to optimise PC-Task or PCx for the Vampire, since they are native Amiga applications and utilise the Amiga and the 68K best.

I don't agree, the Amiga 68k ports of PC-Task/PCx are ancient. My DOSBox port is based on version 0.74 so it has more features and support for more games (and DOSBox is so easy to use).

If I ever get a stand-alone Vampire then I'd love to help port DOSBox to Vampire and try to get it fast enough to be usable

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[amigoun]

PCTask runs great on Vampire and I am still amazed how good was/is its speed and compatibility. But it lacks lot of features (mainly the soundblaster emu). PCx would need large improvement too, which possibly will not happen.
DOSBox would be great, but currently Vamps do not have enough power for good DOSBox experience. But NovaCoder was sometimes doing miracles /scummvm as an example/ so we can look forward and hold our thumbs up.

[grelbfarlk]

It's a real shame that the later versions of ScummVM after Novacoder retired stripped out CAMD support.

PCTask has some kind of basic JIT support where much of the speed comes from but no means of adding sound or MIDI (not counting adding a Goldengate card).

The fastest way of running DOS games with sound that I've found is running Softwindows in Ifusion (yeah an emulator inside an emulator), but still runs better than Dosbox on 68k.

[Cobe]

What about this enhanced classic?

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Thimbleweed Park would feel like home on Amiga too but it's another story..

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Cobe

What about this enhanced classic?.

Isn't there an AmigaOS 4 port of this already? Perhaps porting it to OS3 isn't that hard.
But yeah all ports and it would be lame. Let's have an original idea instead.

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

I don't agree, the Amiga 68k ports of PC-Task/PCx are ancient. My DOSBox port is based on version 0.74 so it has more features and support for more games (and DOSBox is so easy to use).

If I ever get a stand-alone Vampire then I'd love to help port DOSBox to Vampire and try to get it fast enough to be usable

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So, you are advocating doing ports for the Vampire, instead of enhancing the native Amiga software? That's lame. Not many people will buy Vampire for ports, when they can have these ports naively on much faster hardware. The Vampire needs either unique software, or giving better experience of Amiga software, else it's pointless. Alien Bread 3D Vampire SE would be great. Doom on Vampire...... I can play it on 68040 pretty decently.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

Why not both?

Because making it exclusive for the sake of exclusivity is a bit lame don't you think? If you're writing a game engine from scratch then fair enough, you could naturally use the Vampire's enhanced features. In that way it's akin to limiting yourself to AGA coding when you've got a Radeon in your machine, and there's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do. But "modern" games that could potentially be ported will never have been designed in such a way that lend themselves to the Vampire, instead using things like SDL and so on. Why use the enhanced 16-bit Paula modes when you can use AHI for no difference in audio quality for example?

In those cases, making it Vampire-exclusive is something that would only be done to prevent it working on other platforms, which would be pretty lame.

[Dunny]

We want fullscreen 1x1 pixel AB3D

[Havie]

Yes we do!

[Sinphaltimus]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Because making it exclusive for the sake of exclusivity is a bit lame don't you think? If you're writing a game engine from scratch then fair enough, you could naturally use the Vampire's enhanced features. In that way it's akin to limiting yourself to AGA coding when you've got a Radeon in your machine, and there's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do. But "modern" games that could potentially be ported will never have been designed in such a way that lend themselves to the Vampire, instead using things like SDL and so on. Why use the enhanced 16-bit Paula modes when you can use AHI for no difference in audio quality for example?

In those cases, making it Vampire-exclusive is something that would only be done to prevent it working on other platforms, which would be pretty lame.

OK, not just to make it exclusive. I may have misread your question on my phone. Making it exclusive to vampire showcasing the Vampire capabilities is what I've said all along. Perhaps Exclusive was a bad word to use. But if the capabilities of the Vampire are such that it cannot be replicated on any other system then I guess it would be exclusive. I can't see any sane reason not to do a Vampire only game. Not to purposefully cut others out of the show but to take full advantage of what the hardware can do. If nothing else available can do it then exclusivity is simply the by-product.

EDIT: And there are games out there today - now ones, that have NVidia exclusive effects. Sure you can play them on a Radeon, but you won't get the "nvidia exclusive" capabilities.

EDIT2: I reread your second question - "or do you mean using Vampire-only features to ensure it doesn't work on any other hardware, regardless of capability" I agree, that is lame. for instance, i do not think making a game that would work on multiple platforms and then say, put in a Vampire board check and if no vampire board don't allow game to run. If that's what you mean, then I agree THAT is lame. So no I do not endorse purposefully making a game vampire only if the game itself may run on other Amigas configured differently without a vampire on board. That's not at all what I'm trying to convey here.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Instead of DOSBox it's better to optimise PC-Task or PCx for the Vampire, since they are native Amiga applications and utilise the Amiga and the 68K best.

Since it's an FPGA, it's better to just implement enough of the x86 instruction set as downloadable code.

[Cobe]

Originally Posted by Akira

Isn't there an AmigaOS 4 port of this already? Perhaps porting it to OS3 isn't that hard.
But yeah all ports and it would be lame. Let's have an original idea instead.

yup. phx did it.

Originally Posted by Dunny

We want fullscreen 1x1 pixel AB3D

Most definitely!

i had hopes something would come out of this:
https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=49786

[demolition]

Just make whatever you feel like. It is important to work on something which gets you excited. If it is not fun, you will quickly abandon further development. It is better to have something made for an exclusive platform than to not have anything done at all.

Some people like to develop software for even more ancient machines which might only exist in running versions 1-2 places in the world. Yes the business plan is horrible on such projects, but who cares if you're having fun and you're learning something while doing it?

If you would like to make something that benefits from the new 68080 instructions then do that and ignore what anyone else thinks. No matter what you do there will always be people who think it would be better if you worked on something else.