What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

[jotd]

the A4000 for all it's impressive specs still only has 16 sprites

no, it only has 8 sprites. They're AA sprites so they're more colored/larger maybe, but only 8 sprites, not 16. Same as CD32 BTW since the AA chipset is the same.

But yes, that's definitely the weak point of the Amiga for 2D games. All that blittling/masking/background restoring costs a lot of bandwidth in the end

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Sprites really don't cost a lot of money do they?

If that is so then why didn't they put more sprites in the Amiga? Answer - because they do actually cost money. More sprites means more gates used in the chip, and you only have so many available.

Literally 80% of Amiga coders like to move as many objects around as they can on the screen - so why not help them out with a basic hardware feature? It's like spending a load of money on an expensive PC and then giving it a low-end graphic card

In 1993 most 'high-end' PCs had graphic cards with no sprites, and no hardware scrolling, no blitter, no copper effects, no multiple playfields - just a bare frame buffer and a few latches. So that's exactly what people were spending a load of money on. And the A1200/CD32 beat the pants off them in 2D games, despite having a much less powerful CPU.

You might be right about coders wanting to have as many objects as possible speeding around the screen, but I find such games to be quite annoying. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

In 1993 most 'high-end' PCs had graphic cards with no sprites, and no hardware scrolling, no blitter, no copper effects, no multiple playfields - just a bare frame buffer and a few latches. So that's exactly what people were spending a load of money on. And the A1200/CD32 beat the pants off them in 2D games, despite having a much less powerful CPU.

Sure, in 2D games (or, arcade 2D games, to be precise). The ones PC crowd did not care much about because they were already leading with 3D games, and also had a slew of exclusive/superior adventure/RPG/strategy/sim ones. So perhaps not so "low-end" after all.

[DamienD]

Not before 1992-93 the PC didn't...

[dreadnought]

Not before, which is why I chose Amiga But we're talking about 1993 and onwards.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Konrad

I wholeheartedly disagree with you. I don't find your arguments convincing.
One can clearly see that you're a big fan of the CD32 and I stand to my opinion that you wear rose-tinted glasses ?.

That's fair enough but some of my arguments are pretty basic - like the CD music and the Amiga sound chip being available and the multi button pad and no disk swapping. All these really improve the Amiga gaming experience.

You are right about a lot of the games not being big improvements - but it was early days for the system! So that's just to be expected

I didn't like the idea of the system at the time (well never played it) so no rose tinted glasses for me at least

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by jotd

no, it only has 8 sprites. They're AA sprites so they're more colored/larger maybe, but only 8 sprites, not 16. Same as CD32 BTW since the AA chipset is the same.

But yes, that's definitely the weak point of the Amiga for 2D games. All that blittling/masking/background restoring costs a lot of bandwidth in the end

Oh wow i didn't know that. It's not even a AGA machine? The CD32 crushes it with it's advanced technology.

I was thinking it was the higher model from the A1200 before

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

If that is so then why didn't they put more sprites in the Amiga? Answer - because they do actually cost money. More sprites means more gates used in the chip, and you only have so many available.

In 1993 most 'high-end' PCs had graphic cards with no sprites, and no hardware scrolling, no blitter, no copper effects, no multiple playfields - just a bare frame buffer and a few latches. So that's exactly what people were spending a load of money on. And the A1200/CD32 beat the pants off them in 2D games, despite having a much less powerful CPU.

You might be right about coders wanting to have as many objects as possible speeding around the screen, but I find such games to be quite annoying. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

That's interesting. So do you think they considered putting in more sprites but decided the cost was too high then?

Oh yeah i was just saying that it still has the same graphics hardware as the cheaper model Amiga . So you get a much higher specced machine but still the same graphics hardware. But it costs you a fortune

On your final point - I do think it was struggle to match arcade games for objects on screen. So the Amiga def needed a bit more object-drawing ability. I do agree there is no point filing the screen with sprites etc. I like about 2 bullet hell schmups, That is enough for me!

Even what seems a simple arcade game like Rainbow Islands is massively demanding in terms of objects - think of Bub when he is powered up with his angel wings and lasers and then with the full 12 rainbows (each rainbow is 32 pixels wide?) on screen and all the enemies and their projectiles too. Even the Megadrive and PC Engine can't handle it with their 64 sprites. Flicker central! I'm pretty sure the Amiga gets round it by drawing the rainbows as part of the background but solutions like that aren't always available

[Konrad]

The other amigas also support the full cd32 Button set.
AA=AGA. A4000 is AGA.

[jotd]

CD32, A1200 and A4000 share the same custom chipset. AA aka AGA. It's just that A4000 has a 68030 or 68040 instead of 680EC20 like A1200/CD32 so more cpu power but same graphics ability.

The other amigas also support the full cd32 Button set.

true, except that some broken A1200 motherboards fail with lowlevel library joypad read routine. There's a timing issue but that was fixed by Wepl (author of whdload) in the readjoypad routine that we're using for whdload slaves. I also recently learned that the Vampire boards didn't support CD32 pads... shame.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by jotd

CD32, A1200 and A4000 share the same custom chipset. AA aka AGA. It's just that A4000 has a 68030 or 68040 instead of 680EC20 like A1200/CD32.

I didn't know AA was AGA. Yes you don't really need an advanced CPU for a games console, just good graphics hardware.

Imagine if they had made like a Super FX chip (an Amiga version) for AGA - as part of the architecture. That would have got people more excited. Even Frontier : Elite would have seemed exciting!

[Konrad]

Exactly, you didn't know about AA/AGA, but directly jumped on it to say that the advanced technology of the CD32 crushes the A4000

Also, other Amigas also support the full button set of the CD32. What made you think that's not the case ? I played Microcosm on my A4000, of course with all buttons availabe (but as I wrote, got bored very fast).
You didn't know, yet praise it as an exclusive for the CD32.

Again you mentioning CD audio. Yes, it is a plus. But the Amiga was very capable of good music+sound in games, as you can see from games as Turrican (1-3), Lionheart and many others, which you seem to ignore. Especially the music of the Turrican games is very praised. So CD audio is just a minor plus, nothing convincing argument for a buyer.

By now I'm at the point thinking if you're just trolling a little .

[jotd]

CD32 is just a vanilla A1200 without keyboard but with CD storage (that beats the floppy but not a hard drive) and CD audio that made full 4 channel sfx+audio possible (that only some rare games exploited to the full)

If all games ported to CD32 got ECS=>AA treatment + audio CD + reworked controls then the machine would have stood more chance, at least among amiga fans.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Konrad

Exactly, you didn't know about AA/AGA, but directly jumped on it to say that the advanced technology of the CD32 crushes the A4000

Also, other Amigas also support the full button set of the CD32. What made you think that's not the case ? I played Microcosm on my A4000, of course with all buttons availabe (but as I wrote, got bored very fast).
You didn't know, yet praise it as an exclusive for the CD32.

Again you mentioning CD audio. Yes, it is a plus. But the Amiga was very capable of good music+sound in games, as you can see from games as Turrican (1-3), Lionheart and many others, which you seem to ignore. Especially the music of the Turrican games is very praised. So CD audio is just a minor plus, nothing convincing argument for a buyer.

By now I'm at the point thinking if you're just trolling a little .

I blame young people shortening words that don't need to be shortened. Last I knew it was AGA. Anyway does the A4000 have an Akiko chip? If not it still got well and truly crushed!

You didn't play Microcosm on a CD32 - that's why you got bored. When I play Amiga games on my laptop - it's not as good as the real thing. I think you should buy a CD32 and find out what you are missing.

I only trolled with this topic's title to get people interested. And the Sega/Commodore thing. But the Atari/Sega lawsuit part was true. Thank god Jaguar died when it did or we would have seen Atari making terrible Sega games.

I agree with you. I love Amiga music. But all of the best Amiga music is 4 channels. To sound professional you need 2 channels at least for sfx. Which only leaves 2 for music. Listen to the difference between Xenon II title music and the in game music. 4 channels was for the 1985 Amiga. The AGA Amiga (whichever year that came out in) should have been at least 8 channels. But CD32 is the only AGA Amiga which maximum sound potential

[d4rk3lf]

I think we all love cd32, but I'd trade it for A4000 anytime
Even for A1200, because I can expand it in many more ways.

[Konrad]

The CD32 nowhere crushes the A4000, not even the CD32. You are leading now Akiko as argument, where I can just shrug with my shoulders. Seems you overestimate Akiko a little. But I understand you require positive arguments for the CD32 ;-).

And again you pull a bad example like Xenon2 to support your argument, ignoring that there were much better results possible. See my mentioned titles. Just pulling negative examples, where are also very good ones is not a really objective way to discuss.
Sure, more channels would be nice. But you pulled this argument to show how outstanding the possibilities with cd-audio are. And my examples show you that it's just a "nice" feature is, nothing more. As you say by yourself: more channels, now THAT would've been an improvement.

I played Microcosm not in an Emulator, but on an Amiga 4000 with cdrom and cd32 controller on an Amiga screen. There is factual NO difference in gameplay sound and everything else compared to CD32. I don't know where you get that idea from. It's a railshooter! It' boring to me. If you like it, good for you.

Also, no reaction to other Amigas also being able to fully address the CD32 gamepad :-D?

[jotd]

Akiko does chunky to planar but slower than a 040 would do... No game is using it, unless the game is using graphics library write pixel routines. But as everyone knows, using the OS for action games is just slow, and scrolling, double buffering are difficult (impossible?) to pull off.

What would have been awesome would have been native chunky 256 color mode and yes, 8 channels.

But then all games would have needed complete rewriting...

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I didn't know AA was AGA. Yes you don't really need an advanced CPU for a games console, just good graphics hardware.

Imagine if they had made like a Super FX chip (an Amiga version) for AGA - as part of the architecture. That would have got people more excited. Even Frontier : Elite would have seemed exciting!

AA had to be changed to AGA, as in UK, people would have thought AA the road side recovery company. Which was trademarked.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by FOL

AA had to be changed to AGA, as in UK, people would have thought AA the road side recovery company. Which was trademarked.

This is a new one to me. As far as I recall it was to distance themselves from the AA https://www.aa.org/.

Maybe it was both?

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

You were too lazy to understand the context in which I mentioned it. The guy I was talking to picked the most expensive Amiga system - A4000. So I was saying well if you are going to spend that kind of money - why not on an Arcade quality system like the X68000.

The other point I was making was that the A4000 for all it's impressive specs still only has 16 sprites. Sprites really don't cost a lot of money do they? Literally 80% of Amiga coders like to move as many objects around as they can on the screen - so why not help them out with a basic hardware feature? It's like spending a load of money on an expensive PC and then giving it a low-end graphic card

People spending 3000$ in 1992 on a 68040 A4000 weren't spending them to have arcade quality games but a powerful work machine with good software and lot of processing power... Do you even realize that the x68000 wasn't ever released outside Japan ? What software do you expect them to use on their fancy untranslated japanese system ? And do you know how much faster is a 68040 vs a 68000 or even a 68030 ?
And what about PC or Mac at the same time ? They didn't have sprite capacities at all, that didn't prevent people to buy them or even arcade games to be made on (on PC at least)