Tiny Galaga

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by Steril707

When was the last time you wrote a game that worked on most Amigas?

Quite a while; most of my stuff requires OS3.0+. But I don't claim they will work on "any Amiga", and if the machine doesn't meet the requirements they exit cleanly with a suitable error message. Whereas this game doesn't have any requirements listed, and if you guess wrong about what configuration it wants, it just hangs the system.

Minimum requirements are one thing; maximum requirements are another. I have never written anything that won't run because an Amiga is too powerful; it's simply not necessary to restrict programs in this way.

And there is nothing "frankenstein" about running an official AmigaOS version like 3.9.

[pink^abyss]

Originally Posted by DamienD

...but it does work on Classic Amigas i.e. standard A500 / A600 / A1200 (with slight graphics issues i.e. some characters are not displayed).

The missing characters on A1200 in the title screen are fixed. Update:
http://www.abyss-online.de/static/do...TinyGalaga.zip

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Minuous

. Whereas this game doesn't have any requirements listed

And that's maybe the only problem here.

For Inviyya, with the help of Ross of this forum, I was able to get this running on almost any Amiga config. But still, from the hundreds of downloads of the demo, there are still one or two people reporting it doesn't run on their hardware.

And don't get me started on those who complain now, that the game needs to be started from disk and doesn't run with the OS anymore.

You simply cannot make everybody happy in Amiga land.

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by Steril707

When was the last time you wrote a game that worked on most Amigas?

Never , although I did program the Amiga waaaaay back ago.
But please don't be offended, I never meant to criticize.


However, I am just wondering. For example regarding CPU's. This game was written in C and compiled with GCC right? Isn't there a "universal" CPU setting that works with all CPU's? Surely there is a common set of instructions that are supported by all CPU variations. When programming in assembler I am sure it must be more difficult to avoid some instructions that are not supported on some CPU's. However, with C it should be easier as the compiler can handle it.

[Mathesar]

Guess what? Just tried it on my A3000/LC060 and...
It works! The only thing I did to make it work was disable cpu caches..
It even exits cleanly up clicking the left mouse button.

Your mileage may vary

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Minuous

And there is nothing "frankenstein" about running an official AmigaOS version like 3.9.

Of course there isn't. It's too bad we run into that attitude occasionally on EAB, sadly. There are a few 3.1.4 fanboys that will make similar statements such as I ran into the other day here to the effect of, "...3.1.4 is the most popular version of the Amiga OS. No one ever adopted 3.5/3.9 and very few people run it." I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist of it. Utter claptrap, sheer nonsense and in fact, the list of applications that specifically require 3.5/3.9 is a rather long one. We just have to accept that there are folks who seem to like to imagine that whatever they run *must* be the most popular version.

I have a lot of respect for people who like to run say, an OCS/ECS Amiga "stock" such as an A500 with OS 3.1 with no add-ons, preferering to get as much bang for the buck out of that particular Amiga experience. I have just as much respect for fans who, like me, want to push this wonderful OS to perform tasks for which the naysayers back in the mid-90s said it would never be capable, such as playing mp3s, viewing jpegs and PNGs (which I don't think existed in the mid-90s but no matter) and opening them very quickly thank you very much, playing Doom, Duke, and Quake - still the most popular FPSs ever written, not to mention being able to watch MP4 movies in FFPlay, although I admit I have to knock down 720/1080p files to 480p with Handbrake to avoid stutter and audio latency - still, I can remember when playing MPEG1 video on an Amiga was a stretch.

To insinuate that fans who run something other than a stock 500 or 1200 or who run a software or hardware emulator (or, *shudders*, run the "wrong* emulator) does a disservice in my opinion, to the entire community. I'm pretty active in a lot of Amiga groups and I've always tried my best to be as helpful as I can but no matter where you go, there's always that one person who behaves like it's 1995 and they're that 15-year-old Linux "admin" holding court on EFNET with their "RTFM!" attitude. Fortunately EAB is a great community and those types are rare here indeed. Most folks go out of their way to be helpful and informative and I can't say often enough how tickled pink I am that we have such an active development community still providing us with games, utilities, and rocking the Demoscene.

I have friends who run a variety of Amigas with a variety of software and hardware tweaks, running 3.1, 3.1.4, 3.9, 4.x, MorphOS, AROS, and Icaros and not one of those is anything like a "Frankenstein" Amiga configuration.

[nikosidis]

Originally Posted by Minuous

This needs further work, here (OS3.9, 68020) it just says "Please wait while decrunching..." and then freezes the system. :-(

Do you start the game from icon?


Works fine on my A1200/030


Thanks for the game. It is fun

[Minuous]

@nikosidis:

There was no icon, so I started it from CLI.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

I have friends who run a variety of Amigas with a variety of software and hardware tweaks, running 3.1, 3.1.4, 3.9, 4.x, MorphOS, AROS, and Icaros and not one of those is anything like a "Frankenstein" Amiga configuration.

If you expect an OCS game written to run on the A500 to run on all of those configs natively, I have bad news for you..

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Steril707

If you expect an OCS game written to run on the A500 to run on all of those configs natively, I have bad news for you..

I have no such expectation. Where did I say I did? I'm merely pointing out they are all legitimate iterations of the AmigaOS although I suppose I shouldn't have included MorphOS in the mix. The developer obviously had the intention that his game would run on other hardware given his own comments.

[ross]

For grumblers with strange configurations and KS, a patched version that should work everywhere (yes, also on 512KB only machines!).

A WHDLoad slave needed for game exit support.

Into the Zone!

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by ross

For grumblers with strange configurations and KS, a patched version that should work *really* everywhere (yes also on 512KB only machines!).

A WHDLoad slave needed for game exit support.

Thanks very much for taking the time to do this. It fired right up. It's dinner time but this is definitely on the list to play later tonight.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

I have no such expectation. Where did I say I did? I'm merely pointing out they are all legitimate iterations of the AmigaOS although I suppose I shouldn't have included MorphOS in the mix. The developer obviously had the intention that his game would run on other hardware given his own comments.

OS != hardware

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Steril707

OS != hardware

*sigh* I never said that either. I said OS 3.9 and others weren't "Frankenstein" configurations. YOU said I couldn't expect to run a game written for an A500 (no where did the developer say it was written for an A500) and I said I had no such expectation - the developer actually said "any." But since you obviously need to be right, I'll leave it at that. If you want to have an argument with someone, I'm afraid you're going to have to choose another target. I won't participate further.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by pink^abyss

The missing characters on A1200 in the title screen are fixed. Update:
http://www.abyss-online.de/static/do...TinyGalaga.zip

Nice one pink^abyss

To be honest though, I just run on a standard A500 config so

...but I'm sure this will make others happy

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

*sigh* I never said that either. I said OS 3.9 and others weren't "Frankenstein" configurations. YOU said I couldn't expect to run a game written for an A500 (no where did the developer say it was written for an A500) and I said I had no such expectation - the developer actually said "any." But since you obviously need to be right, I'll leave it at that. If you want to have an argument with someone, I'm afraid you're going to have to choose another target. I won't participate further.

I respect your opinion that the different OSes are vital for the Amiga and its users, but that's not contrary to my argument. It's not even really a part of this discussion.

My point is, that the Amiga is a shit platform to code games for because of all these existing configs. A large reason for why the scene of coders who actually do something on it is still so small compared to other, more unified platforms.

The thing is, that, most people are coding for either Vanilla A500 or 1200, and usually on bare metal (means asm and directly altering RAM and registers, circumventing the OS) to get the most speed out of the machine.

So, as a Amiga game coder I couldn't care less about the OS. I am not coding for OS 1.3 or OS 3.1.4 or OS 3.9.
My target is an OCS machine with 512k+512k and a disk drive.

Yet many people in the Amiga scene don't seem to get this difference and are complaining that their exotic hardware setup doesn't support this most basic Amiga config anymore.

In the end, they basically want games to start and behave like on a PC.

ps: We can be thankful that we still have people like Ross who know about how to get a new game compatible with almost any hardware config.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Steril707

ps: We can be thankful that we still have people like Ross who know about how to get a new game compatible with almost any hardware config.

We can certainly agree on that!

I'm not a coder so I don't have the kwowledge or experience to debate the validity of what you wrote. I will assume you are correct.

The only thing I have to go on therefore is my experience as a user. So far, there hasn't been a single WHDLoad game which hasn't worked on my "exotic" system although I doubt there's anything exotic about it, that is, compared to configurations that utilize hardware emulation such as the Pi or Vampire stuff.

However, I cannot say whether the person responsible for the WHDLoad configuration did what Ross did to make the game compatible across a variety of hardware and OS configurations. When I first downloaded the WHDLoad components, I tried my hand at creating my own WHDLoad conversions and they worked - all I did was follow the instructions. The ones that failed didn't fail to run - they failed to convert using the tools. Thanks, I had my fill of that and started acquiring WHDLoad games like everyone else does...

I can same the same thing for applications. They work, although as I mentioned a few comments ago, there are a LOT of applications that list OS 3.5/3.9 as requirements.

So - bottom line, I haven't experienced any issues with the games, apps, and demos I've downloaded and run barring what you would normally encounter with beta and other development versions.

This means absolutely nothing - I realize that. I take what you wrote at face value and I consider myself extremely fortunate that I have a configuration I can enjoy to the fullest experience.

My entire issue with this thread is the hostility and animosity some Amiga fans show toward others who don't run *their* OS version or *their* hardware, not game compatibility. It smacks of fanboyism and/or outright jealousy. I wish I would have limited my original comment simply to thanking the developer instead of mentioning it didn't run on my setup. I got slammed for not filing a proper bug report and for not describing my setup, and when I did, I got slammed because of the perception I was bragging about my exotic Frankenstein Amiga which was running on the wrong UAE flavor and then I got slammed for not changing the profile as if I didn't know how it worked.

However, thanks to Ross, I got to play the game last night and I thought it was a lot of fun.

Again, I deeply appreciate the efforts made by developers such as yourself to bring new content to the Amiga, whether it runs on my setup or not.

[nobody]

Good stuff. I played a bit on my cellphone with controller. Reached stage 19 and 81.600 on first go. Much easier than PC engine's Galaga '88 that i casually play. I like the gameboy look too

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

My entire issue with this thread is the hostility and animosity some Amiga fans show toward others who don't run *their* OS version or *their* hardware, not game compatibility. It smacks of fanboyism and/or outright jealousy. I wish I would have limited my original comment simply to thanking the developer instead of mentioning it didn't run on my setup. I got slammed for not filing a proper bug report and for not describing my setup, and when I did, I got slammed because of the perception I was bragging about my exotic Frankenstein Amiga which was running on the wrong UAE flavor and then I got slammed for not changing the profile as if I didn't know how it worked.

That's simply not true.

You got "slammed" (in your words) for exepecting this small game to run on anything other than a classic Amiga OS (KS 1.3 / 2.x / 3.0 / 3.1) and standard hardware.

Also, conidering you emulate; being lazy and not just setting an A500 configuration and inserting a disk; which would have taken you all of 5 seconds...

[manossg]

@Weaselrama

You just come across as lazy, grumpy and entitled, man. You can solve the problem with 2 clicks and you behave as if you should buy a new computer. Not cool.