Why a new Amiga game in 2013? Your opinions.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by turrican3

i think a amiga comeback is always possible...
they will, i think, make an amiga compatible sort of ipad build by chinese...
it's what is sheduled for the moment....
this new amiga device if has success (and why not), could lead great games on amigaos... the amigaos on a light device could be a killer application : really fast, fastest boot ever. From this point they could make a cheap amiga like the old ones based on the ipad like, keyoard and motherboard in one case like the amiga classic + towered more powerfull amiga...
this is not impossible, many guys who knew the amiga will enjoy an amiga comeback and for the others it will be a brand new name.
if the ipad like has good quality and good price , the amiga is back, i'm sure of it... i think this is the goal...
wait and see... the last time i had news they had to adapt the amigaos for the ipad like, they had problem with something they didn't think about.
I think when they will solved the problem , you will know everything...
keep quiet, as said thargan end keep the faith...
they said we will continue if we don't loose money, the amigaone x1000 is always sold out then they surely didn't lost money, and if i remember well : they said they don't lost money.
the answer to why : because, i liked the the amiga cases, because the amigaos is just amazing, because the amiga is a computer legend, because like said leilo i love this computer...

amiga rules

is that serious? If yes it could give the platform a new additional boost. With all the emulated environments, AROS 68k and ROM Replacements, new developments like FPGA Arcade and TiNA and this new device it would become very interesting times

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

Thank you for your kind words Prowler, they are appreciated I deliberately made the decision to make Downfall freely available complete with source code as I felt it might have more chance of inspiring people to pick it apart and start to learn how to code themselves, which I felt was more important at that stage (and personally I felt it was a bit too thin to charge for but I really appreciate your thoughts!).

As for the topic at hand, I agree that there's nothing wrong with writing games for a standard A500. If you're going to start saying "what's the point?" you may as well take that to its logical conclusion and only write stuff for the PC or mobile devices. Personally although I own an A1200 with an '040 in it I will generally target either an 1MB A500 or a stock A1200 for my games. Indeed my next project which I am working on will run from disk on an A500. Although of course all games will be hard drive installable and that's not to say enhanced versions/features won't happen for expanded machines.

I would love to see somebody release a proper boxed game for people to own. It would be really cool and it is something I will be looking into when I get to the appropriate stage with this project I think, if it's good enough. It's not really about making money (although a little beer money would be nice, of course, but nobody's going to make major amounts from this let's face it), just seeing it packaged up like an old commercial game that people can buy and collect is surely an awesome feeling. I've seen some of the physical products for the C64 and the work that has gone into them is staggering, they look so professional and they would not look out of place on a shelf full of games. I'd love to have an Amiga game released in this way. Obviously the game does have to be up to scratch too...

it is nothing to say against using A500 as base. There are countless action games or platform games who look nice even today and were running on A500. The problem is you have to invest a lot of time in optimizations (you can correct me if I am wrong) expecially if you are normally doing games on and for other platforms. And the question is how many developers are today willing to do that. I think the low hardware was one of the reasons for the decline of the platform. So if we want to attract developers again the users should not insist on plain A500 as requirement. Novacoder shows with his ports what is possible with AGA when you have enough processing power so the trend goes to higher requirements and even most classic fans have at least 68030.

[daxb]

Repeat. If someone wants to make a game for a stock A500 he/she should go for it. I belive that people (like me) who prefer an 030+ AGA +RAM config want to have the advantages it brings. Why not?! almost everybody have it. You can do more things with faster CPU and some fastram. Think on round based games or better AI. However, everyone know what I`m talking about and would like the have games for A500 and accelrated ones.

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

it is nothing to say against using A500 as base. There are countless action games or platform games who look nice even today and were running on A500. The problem is you have to invest a lot of time in optimizations (you can correct me if I am wrong) expecially if you are normally doing games on and for other platforms. And the question is how many developers are today willing to do that. I think the low hardware was one of the reasons for the decline of the platform. So if we want to attract developers again the users should not insist on plain A500 as requirement. Novacoder shows with his ports what is possible with AGA when you have enough processing power so the trend goes to higher requirements and even most classic fans have at least 68030.

This is why modern games suck so much juice! The programmers got lazy and didn't spend the time to optimize their code, "We'll just add more RAM" is frequently heard where I work. It's a crappy programmer that blames the hardware for his program being crap. I've always felt that's why 'PC' games were always so much larger in size than the Amiga/Atari versions, where they had to be optimized to fit. I do agree with it being one of the reasons the platform declined. Not so much that the systems couldn't handle them, but that more and more developers had to make compromises in their software (Ultima 6 is a perfect example, the DOS version is 4mb, whereas the Atari ST version was 2mb (not sure about the Amiga version, but it should be the same, since both were simply EGA ports, the only difference is the music).

Funny story, a marketing person where I work was complaining about SugarCRM being 'sluggish'. "It takes 1-2 seconds whenever you click on a new tab to load! We'd better add more ram to it!" I checked the memory, with Linux, Apache, MySQL and SugarCRM it was using around 700mb out of 4GB.... We nicknamed him "RAM-Man" since he always says this.

When I see contests like the 96k games ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger ) it just makes me think of all the waste that is done on the PC these days. Mobile devices sort of bring back the feeling of "Let's see what coders can do within the confines of these little things!" It's why the demoscene is still around. Sadly I show some of the demos to people now days (even the newer ones) and they just say "oh, that's kind of cool" and don't really appreciate that they are running on 7mhz machines with 1mb of ram.

slaapliedje

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by slaapliedje

This is why modern games suck so much juice! The programmers got lazy and didn't spend the time to optimize their code, "We'll just add more RAM" is frequently heard where I work. It's a crappy programmer that blames the hardware for his program being crap. I've always felt that's why 'PC' games were always so much larger in size than the Amiga/Atari versions, where they had to be optimized to fit. I do agree with it being one of the reasons the platform declined. Not so much that the systems couldn't handle them, but that more and more developers had to make compromises in their software (Ultima 6 is a perfect example, the DOS version is 4mb, whereas the Atari ST version was 2mb (not sure about the Amiga version, but it should be the same, since both were simply EGA ports, the only difference is the music).

Funny story, a marketing person where I work was complaining about SugarCRM being 'sluggish'. "It takes 1-2 seconds whenever you click on a new tab to load! We'd better add more ram to it!" I checked the memory, with Linux, Apache, MySQL and SugarCRM it was using around 700mb out of 4GB.... We nicknamed him "RAM-Man" since he always says this.

When I see contests like the 96k games ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger ) it just makes me think of all the waste that is done on the PC these days. Mobile devices sort of bring back the feeling of "Let's see what coders can do within the confines of these little things!" It's why the demoscene is still around. Sadly I show some of the demos to people now days (even the newer ones) and they just say "oh, that's kind of cool" and don't really appreciate that they are running on 7mhz machines with 1mb of ram.

slaapliedje

I agree with you. Novacoder shows what is even possible with good old AGA (of course with enough firepower behind it). And with enough optimizations even modern games could run on smaller devices like A1200 (unexpanded). But the style has changed. Nobody (at least no commercial developer) would invest a lot of time to optimize a game for a (limited) submarket. So we can moan about that and stay a small retro-community or try to evolve to some degree and for that we need faster processors, more RAM and so on. Example would be the Antiryad Gx 3D-Engine on 68k. It would definetely not really work on a A500 or A1200, I assume that you end more at 68060 (perhaps with RTG). For a platformer or scrolling action game 68030+AGA could be enough but that depends on the game and how it is written. Many ports will even need more power than that because they are developed on PCs and propably poor optimized.

[discomeats]

I think the answer here is simple, if you want to sell a game in 2013 on the amiga, make it, sell it, if people like it they'll buy it, if it's poop some might still buy it.

Thing is, if you are going to do it in 2013 then I'd point out we're nearly halfway through 2013, and this thread will need to be retitled in 6 months time and there still won't be any new game on sale.

Just break out the c/asm/blitz/amos/amigabasic whatever and make a game.

[killergorilla]

Why a new Amiga game in 2013?

Because someone wants to make one and gets some form of satisfaction out of it.

Whether or not anyone will want to play it is down to whether or not that game is shit or not.

A shit game is a shit game regardless of what platform it's on.

I think most platforms (Amiga included) have PLENTY of shit games.

So, if someone wants to make a non-shit game go for it! I love non-shit games.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by discomeats

I think the answer here is simple, if you want to sell a game in 2013 on the amiga, make it, sell it, if people like it they'll buy it, if it's poop some might still buy it.

Thing is, if you are going to do it in 2013 then I'd point out we're nearly halfway through 2013, and this thread will need to be retitled in 6 months time and there still won't be any new game on sale.

Just break out the c/asm/blitz/amos/amigabasic whatever and make a game.

it is (normally) not that simple. A good game is not only coding, you need good graphic, sound, music, create animated elements and so on. You need a team of specialists (at least a couple of people) for it. So except you are a genious that can do all and have a lot of time it is not that "simple".

[discomeats]

Well, thanks for educating me in the technicalities of interactive software creation and the requisite multiple skillset acquisitions for such things, I had no idea that the management, asset creation and software development for such things requires a variety of endevour by a diverse team of skilled individuals.

And yeah, the answer *is* simple, if you want stuff done, make it done, if folk don't have the time or inclination to do it, then that's really fair enough. It doesn't take genius, like anything else, the result is the product of effort, there is no magic here. Even if someone has no skills they may be able to come up with a game concept or design that someone else might find interesting.

[Marcuz]

I just know that to create for PC a good first person RPG adventure, like Eye of the Beholder, with comparable graphics, so nothing requiring large teams of people, it still requires a two people team more than two years, working on it ten, fifteen hours a week.
It is scary how good the teams doing this kind of stuff > 20 years ago were, how much they invented.

I started this thread curious about Amiga specificities that would factor in such a choice today, to develop for Amiga, and now, with little exceptions, I'm convinced that there would be no point at all.
It still could work for a very odd project, imho, something so very creative, even in the use of the platform, that it could make sense, if the whole thing would not be expensive to produce.

Something like that adventure game out few years ago on Commodore 64, amazing for the kind of game it was on that unsuitable platform, and commercially sold.
But everything less than that in creativity, no matter ho good or how "AAA" could be done at least equally, on current platforms.

[turrican3]

if you are a good coder and love the amiga, you should make turrican 4 aga...
And if, your skill is very high and you push the amiga 1200 to the max, you could even sell it for 20 euro. for a new turrican 4 on aga, i could pay perhaps 50 euro but even more if chris huelsbeck accept to make the music.
Just think about it turrican 4 aga chris huelsbek.