Did Commodore give Amiga 1000 developers enough support?

[ImmortalA1000]

I'm sure this could be highly divisive but personally, from what evidence I can see, Gould bought Amiga as a desperate measure, Commodore crapped out some A1000s, developers were pretty much left to get on with it to make decent games like Crown and Marble Madness on their own.

Is this actually how it was, the 'let them get on with it' C64 days kind of attitude towards probably the most complex and impenetrable machine to extract 100% potential from?

Is it Commodore's fault so many poor jerky Amiga games like Operation Wolf came out in the 80s?

Most software houses were run for pure greed, the owners of the big publishers didn't really care they were charging 25% extra for direct ST ports. They also farmed out projects without even making sure they were competent developers/staff working on projects too.

You could argue lack of coding talent is also down to a lack of developer tools worth a crap from Commodore too though. Artists and lazy musicians with craptastic PD instruments in MOD tunes on games have no excuse but if the coder can only manage 4 bitplanes can the artist be blamed for using identical graphics for ST and Amiga too?

Then again this doesn't excuse the fact any publisher working on 2.5D racing games could have asked Shaun Southern or the coders of the driving level of Batman to work on their projects, including the utterly horrible Chase HQ rubbish Ocean pushed out later.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

...Commodore crapped out some A1000s, developers were pretty much left to get on with it to make decent games like Crown and Marble Madness on their own..

Well, kind of, but not initially because Commodore didn't care, but more because they were just so much behind.
They barely got the Amiga finished and released, partially because of the issue with the original dev not being able to deliver CAOS so they had to swivel to TripOS...
Hard to get documentation written and out when you don't have the system finished... ;-)

That said, Commodore did eventually get out some decent docs in the Hardware Reference manuals...

But there wasn't anything like a gaming directed DevKit for developers to know how to write smooth scrolling games... ;-)

[Megalomaniac]

The A1000 did cost $1300 at launch, that's hardly the price range for a home entertainment system. I doubt there was much expectation that people would want to make or buy games for it. Maybe more should have been ready for when the A500 finally launched over 2 years later, but I suspect the prevalence of ST ports was more for economic than technical reasons - in Europe at least, there were a lot more STs out there than Amigas until probably late 1989, so it was a lot easier to lead with that version (Amstrad and sometimes MSX owners sometimes suffered similarly from Spectrum ports). Almost all games that were designed around the Amiga from the start are technically more impressive than the ones that weren't.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by desiv

Well, kind of, but not initially because Commodore didn't care, but more because they were just so much behind.
They barely got the Amiga finished and released, partially because of the issue with the original dev not being able to deliver CAOS so they had to swivel to TripOS...
Hard to get documentation written and out when you don't have the system finished... ;-)

That said, Commodore did eventually get out some decent docs in the Hardware Reference manuals...

But there wasn't anything like a gaming directed DevKit for developers to know how to write smooth scrolling games... ;-)

Yes, Guy Kewney loved having digs at Commodore with his buddy Dr. Tim King who sorted out their little Kickstart problem.

That said, the Amiga is one of the most horrendously complex machines to extract even 50% performance out of in machine code so the Hardware Reference Manual is nice but it is written for C coders etc. These are not the best tools for the job of writing games. Fine if you are writing a database or something similar.

It's worth remembering that in 1985/86 Americans did indeed play games on their EGA/CGA PCs they had bought as the only computer in the house for family use, as seen in the movie Big with Tom Hanks younger character and his PC game shown (which always looked crap to me back then as a European and A1000 owner).

Publishers wanted to release games, early 1985 Amiga games are very sort of Atari 800++ quality (like Archon). Marble Madness was nothing short of a 1986 miracle IMO.

[Megalomaniac]

Do we know how many copies Amiga Marble Madness sold in its first year (before the A500 was launched, especially)? It's an impressive achievement and highly enjoyable to play (and probably highly enjoyable to program) but was it more profitable than an ST port, or even not doing an Amiga version at all until the A500 had established a home userbase? I suspect the inferior ST version sold more, globally at least, and the C64 one almost certainly did.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Do we know how many copies Amiga Marble Madness sold in its first year (before the A500 was launched, especially)? It's an impressive achievement and highly enjoyable to play (and probably highly enjoyable to program) but was it more profitable than an ST port, or even not doing an Amiga version at all until the A500 had established a home userbase? I suspect the inferior ST version sold more, globally at least, and the C64 one almost certainly did.

The good thing about Marble Madness it that it's just a vertical scroller so even the ST shouldn't of had much problem with the screen updates for scrolling. The game also doesn't look it has 256+ colours so ...

[desiv]

Originally Posted by redblade

The good thing about Marble Madness it that it's just a vertical scroller ...

What? Really?
(Checks youtube vid)
Wow, it is!
Somehow I would have sworn (and been wrong) that it wasn't just a vertical scroller... ;-)

[ImmortalA1000]

Been a while since I read the 2-3 page article about Marble Madness in Commodore Computing International magazine but the programmer pulled out all the stops, it's just as much an emulation as a conversion of the arcade.

The key thing with MM is the background collision detection with all the traps and cheats, I do believe it is running a modified version of the original arcade source code, but it's been years since I read the interview/feature about it in CCI so I could be wrong.

ST version is just indicative of a game that was developed with no love.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by redblade

The good thing about Marble Madness it that it's just a vertical scroller so even the ST shouldn't of had much problem with the screen updates for scrolling. The game also doesn't look it has 256+ colours so ...

Originally Posted by desiv

What? Really?
(Checks youtube vid)
Wow, it is!
Somehow I would have sworn (and been wrong) that it wasn't just a vertical scroller... ;-)

Thanks for pointing that out redblade Just corrected the entry on HOL. I wouldn't have sworn, but I also thought that it didn't just scroll vertically

[phx]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

the Hardware Reference Manual is nice but it is written for C coders etc. These are not the best tools for the job of writing games. Fine if you are writing a database or something similar.

Did you even read the Hardware Reference Manual, or did you confuse it with the ROM Kernel Reference Manual?

The HRM describes the hardware and the chipset in detail, without any reference to the OS. There is also no C code in it. It is full of assembler listings! It was quite perfect for game development.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

The A1000 did cost $1300 at launch, that's hardly the price range for a home entertainment system. I doubt there was much expectation that people would want to make or buy games for it.

Maybe not, but according to the HOL around 200 Amiga games were published before the A500 was even released, so there obviously was a market for games on expensive big box Amigas,

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Maybe not, but according to the HOL around 200 Amiga games were published before the A500 was even released, so there obviously was a market for games on expensive big box Amigas,

Then there is also Mind Walker published by Commodore itself. Defender of the Crown was published before the Amiga 500 was released too, so there was a market for games on the Amiga 1000 for sure.

[merman]

The facts that get forgotten...

Commodore provided dev kits to game companies and application developers before the A1000 was released. An example - Dynamix had access to an early kit housed in a wooden box, used to create Arcticfox.

That kit came with reference manuals. These were then substantially updated after launch.

There had been game development teams within Commodore (in the US and UK) for earlier machines, but most of those developers had left by the time the Amiga was needing software.

Commodore was expecting the majority of software to use the OS and built-in routines. That would ensure maximum compatibility, and it is what Mind Walker did - meaning it stayed compatible with all the hardware Commodore released.

It was after a change in leadership that the attitude at Conmodore shifted. There was a plan to charge developers for including Workbench on the disk, although that was dropped after an outcry. And by the time the Amiga 500 was released, Commodore in the US stopped directly supporting game development - and even went as far as refusing to send technical manuals to companies making games.

[saimon69]

Once again they screwed things up as usual -_-

[pandy71]

I assume this is not what you are expecting but perhaps it will be good to allow developer(s) to address your question:

Originally Posted by http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/amiganasa_en.php

Gary Jones, principal systems engineer for NASA's software systems at Cape Canaveral told us the Amigas take in all the telemetry data from the spacecraft, scale it by applying coefficients of up to fifth order polynomials and convert the data back to engineering units for display to the engineers working the launch.

Gary went on to tell us that their first choice was the Macintosh, but as it was a closed system, Apple wouldn't give NASA enough information to get into it at the level that was needed. Talk about blowing a marketing opportunity!

He continued "We then looked at the PC, but the hardware architecture was really as bad then as it is now. So Hal was the first one who brought out one of the Amiga 1000s and we played with it."

Hal Greenlee added; "I brought it out and showed it to Dave Brown, and not more than about a month or two later, Dave had one of his own, and we were both saying to Skip, "We need to get some of these babies, and find out if we can make them work for this job"."

Gary Jones replied; "And Commodore was easy to work with back then. When we asked for documentation, they sent us a stack of documentation about four feet high. They were willing to tell us everything about their machine. Since we had to design some custom hardware to go inside, it really helped to know exactly how everything worked."

"It just turned out that it was a good machine. The things that make a machine good for playing games also tend to make it good for processing and displaying data, because you've got some of the same problems. You need a very efficient, very fast operating system, and the Amiga has that and very little overhead too. That's what makes it nice; we don't load down the system running the overhead; we can just process the data."

[Megalomaniac]

Looks like they were more helpful in the A1000 era than the A500 era, surprisingly. Immortal may be selling them a little short., although the companies who weren't on board before the A500 launched were generally the ones responsible for the ST ports we really cringe at. Maybe Commodore were naïve expecting developers to stay within the OS though.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by pandy71

I assume this is not what you are expecting but perhaps it will be good to allow developer(s) to address your question:

It might have been something like this tho:
Tech 1: Hey, Nasa wants some help/info to develop some softare...
Tech 2: Nasa? Heck yeah! Let's give them everything we have! I'll volunteer to go help them!!!
Tech 1: I know. Me too!!

---

Tech 1: Hey, some dev wants some help writing games...
Tech 2: Activision or EA?
Tech 1: Naw, just some small company...
Tech 2: Send it upstairs, I think they have some flyers they can send them..

[redblade]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

That said, the Amiga is one of the most horrendously complex machines to extract even 50% performance out of in machine code so the Hardware Reference Manual is nice but it is written for C coders etc. These are not the best tools for the job of writing games. Fine if you are writing a database or something similar.

Maybe the assembler examples could have been better in the Hardware Reference Manual so that instead of using fixed addresses in the examples they had used relocatable labels which became the normal later so it might have improved compatibility in the long run.

I remember seeing fixed addresses in the examples of the copper list and saying that the Amiga had to be reset after although I don't think that there was a assembler standard for copying data to CHIP memory at the time.

A68k was SECTIONNAME,DATA,CHIP
Devpac was SECTIONNAME,DATA_C
Metacomco was ???
Lattice C/Manx Aztec C was ??

I guess they could of had just used the longword hex hunkcode whatever that was? $03F3 ?

I'm assuming when the Hardware Reference Manual was released companies might have still been using SUNs to do cross development?

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by desiv

It might have been something like this tho:
Tech 1: Hey, Nasa wants some help/info to develop some softare...
Tech 2: Nasa? Heck yeah! Let's give them everything we have! I'll volunteer to go help them!!!
Tech 1: I know. Me too!!

---

Tech 1: Hey, some dev wants some help writing games...
Tech 2: Activision or EA?
Tech 1: Naw, just some small company...
Tech 2: Send it upstairs, I think they have some flyers they can send them..

Perhaps you are right but it is even more weird that Commodore never ever mentioned fact that NASA use Amiga... I don't see any profit so... It will be double dumb marketing strategy of Commodore.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Perhaps you are right but it is even more weird that Commodore never ever mentioned fact that NASA use Amiga... I don't see any profit so... It will be double dumb marketing strategy of Commodore.

Yeah, that's why my "bit" used techs...
Commodore business wasn't smart enough to leverage that as they should have (IMHO)... ;-)