in which way the amiga beat the megadrive

[Calgor]

@Akira

Hence I did not offer my opinion on the sound as I cannot because I have not heard the Megadrive version. Re sound, I was stating what others have said on the internets if you read my comment.

[YoJoe!]

Originally Posted by turrican3

in which way the amiga 500 or 1200 beat the megadrive (technically) ?
personally, the sound (paula is far better) and resolution but for the rest ?????
If you can compare the two.

Amiga beats Megadrive in every technical way. ram, speed, grafix, sounds, musix, colors, software, massively more games, storage, connectors, keyboard, and so on.

[Zetr0]

@YoJoe

Hmmmm my friend, i am not sure one could really say that the Amiga beats Megadrive in EVERY technical way.

OK, An expanded A1200 / 3000 or 4000, most certainly, but if we are fair here, the only thing on the market at the time the MegaDrive was released was infact the A500+ and as much as I love Amiga, I will say that even the A500+ had short comings. On a technical *Feature* level the A500+ and MD are kinda even, surprisingly when one cost £399 and the other only cost £189 on launch in 1989/90

the MD can produce more colours on screen during play than the A500+, however the MD is limited to only 2 screen modes. where the Amiga has only 4 channel 8bit (Mono Pan) Stereo, the MD has two synth Chips that can use DMA and are controlled by a Co-Processor (not the main CPU) think of the sound processing of the MD as similar to an ADLIB sound card (as that is pretty much what it is)

yes the MD has only 64K of RAM, but as Akira has been trying hard to express (bless him, i am sure after this thread he is a broken man), this limitation is not so prevalent as one might suggest as the Cartridge stores all the routines, graphics, sound everything.

In the end, the REAL truth is the MD is a wonderful bit of kit, and one I am glad to own, infact i own 2 of them plus a MD on an ASIC (MD3 ) for much hackery later

An Amiga will outperform a MD on productivity and longevity as cart technology will only go so far until you hit a physical or more so financial brick wall. where as with an Amiga its oooo add a ROM drive.... or ooooo add some RAM / CPU / Sound Car / gfx card.. although its all true, its hardly fair to compare a static console built in 1989 to a computer of 1995...

but its fun and we all get to learn something

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

the MD can produce more colours on screen during play than the A500+,

Not so, with copper reloading the Amiga can significantly produce more colours.

[Zetr0]

Ahhh yes copper trickery! a very good a solid point....

some megadrive graphical specs

• Graphics modes:
  - 320 x 224 pixels, 512 colours (9 bit), 64 simultaneously, max. 80 to 90
• sprites (32x32 pixels), 2 scrolling playfields, 1 sprite plane (= 3 planes) FIXME
  - 40 x 28 text mode
• Video RAM:
  - 64 KB
• Color RAM:
  - 64 x 9 kbit

[Ian]

How many games actually did that though?

Other than for colourful backdrops I mean.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Ian

How many games actually did that though?

Other than for colourful backdrops I mean.

Lots did. Jim Power being probably the most excessive use of colour.

The Beast series did.

It wasn't just used for raster backgrounds, some of the better coders used it for reloading physical graphics on screen.

[Galahad/FLT]

Jim Power 1082 colours : http://hol.abime.net/pic_preview/scr...8_screen13.jpg

Beast 1 860 Colours: http://hol.abime.net/pic_preview/scr...91_screen4.jpg

Fire n Brimstone 874 Colours: http://hol.abime.net/pic_full/screen...44_screen6.png

Deliverance 1081 Colours: http://hol.abime.net/pic_full/screen...2_screen21.png
Just a few examples

[dlfrsilver]

Jim power push 106 colors on the title screen alone, where the credits are shown, and where there is the parallax.

In game show something like between 85-100 colors on screen, not more.

[Amiga1992]

1082 colors ?

*rolls eyes*

Come on, you can't put 1082 colors at once on screen.


HMM.. color count on the screenshot is 1082, but I mostly see samey color in the palette. Actually, I don't see any of these colors being used in the screenshot. The palette has more colors than those being actually used.

[Amiga1992]

Ah, may I remind you:
your picture has a watermark in it.
The original screenshot's been tampered with.
Do not consider PNG palette size to be equal to actual number of colors being used on screen by the game.

[Amiga1992]

That watermark will not allow me to do a proper comparison, buyt even reducing the watermarked image to 256 colors bears no change in the image, meaning it has less than 256. 128 doesn't seem to bring a difference either, thus, the game has less than 128 on screen at once. Reducing it to 64 starts bringing problems, but then again, there's the watermark.

So the game has less than 128 and more than 64, drfsilver's figures are probably spot-on

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

In game show something like between 85-100 colors on screen, not more.

The colour counter of Faststone says different.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Akira

1082 colors ?

*rolls eyes*

Come on, you can't put 1082 colors at once on screen.


HMM.. color count on the screenshot is 1082, but I mostly see samey color in the palette. Actually, I don't see any of these colors being used in the screenshot. The palette has more colors than those being actually used.

With copper reloading, of course you can, and all of the games mentioned above use copper reloading.

Jim Power is a dual playfield game, so 'technically' it only has 16 colours, but gets its rest from copper reloading.

[Ian]

I took my own shots with WinUAE and there was 94 in the first section and around 86 after the first "boss" when everything went sort of green.

[TCD]

The color analysis of Gimp 2 gives me 1515 colors
There are many colors on the screenshot, but I think like Akira and Ian said there are about 100 on screen.

[Amiga1992]

As I said, the screenshot in HOL has a watermark, it has been tampered with.
Whoever saved the PNG did so with a palette that has many more colors than those ACTUALLY USED.

Ian's figures are correct.
Use proper gfx tools for color counting and do not use HOL screenshots as gauge (I used the same screenshot you posted, Galahad, and as I said, i got to the same result, because of what I said, details you are overlooking).

You can get a shitload more colors using copper reloading but not as many as 1082 at the same time on screen. Not even 800.

[Marcuz]

5 colours are enough...

[Retro-Nerd]

spiff used irfan view for a colour counting last year. 107 unique colours for Jim Power. I don't know if it's really true.

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=353939&postcount=85

[dlfrsilver]

It's true. If the image you pick as been compressed or modified, the number of colors is CHANGED !

That's why galahad find 1082 colors. an uncompressed screen shot taken with winuae
with no artifacts give between 85-107 more or less.

HOL screenshots are not LOSSY screens, they are modified !

Risky woods is 64 colors as stated in the credits, with a big use of copper.