The Amiga 1000 could of done a game like Wolfenstein in 1985 - shock!

[AndNN]

Originally Posted by Jackoland

For me it's all about evolution. Game ideas evolve over time, as newer ideas are realised. Same with music, art and film. Changing and developing. To get to doom we had to have wolfenstein and to get to wolfenstein we had to have what came before! No doubt if the idea was realised in 1985 the gaming landscape would have been different, but think of the games we would have missed out on, whilst people made clone after clone of wolfenstein.

Rich

All very true! For me it's proving that a piece of hardware from 1985 could of done a reasonably good job at it.

In hindsight for someone to actually do it at the time I think was actually impossible because that 1 person would have to solve all sorts of issues to do with planer graphics as well as implementing a ray caster.

In 2016 with the internet you can see years of experimentation to problems that the Amiga community has worked on. It's pretty easy to look at all the ways of doing things and choose the best methods... so the impossible could actually be possible because 31 years have passed!

[kovacm]

Why do you insist in using EHB? Will it be faster if you use 16colors? ST version looks prety good (but Ray mention that he used 32colors; I guess he used rater split for info bar).
Is it possible to add some raster effect to avoid to big pixels in 160x100 resolution? Maybe to write every sevond line but than image would be to dark...?
I try to add dithering of you existing pseudo-screenshot in 16 colors and it look really nice! But then it would not be 160x100 but rather 320x200

Btw
Doug measure around 40% of cpu time "wasted" on drawing in Wolf3D for ST.

[AndNN]

Originally Posted by kovacm

Why do you insist in using EHB? Will it be faster if you use 16colors? ST version looks prety good (but Ray mention that he used 32colors; I guess he used rater split for info bar).
Is it possible to add some raster effect to avoid to big pixels in 160x100 resolution? Maybe to write every sevond line but than image would be to dark...?
I try to add dithering of you existing pseudo-screenshot in 16 colors and it look really nice! But then it would not be 160x100 but rather 320x200

I chose EHB because it's good balance with the cpu running in fast memory to process the chunky pixels. The blitter can cope with the C2P in two frames easy so way not.

The 68000 can read texture data and write to fast memory at 160x100 in 1 frame at worst possible cases. If the resolution was doubled to 160x200 it would take 2 frames. And with the fast to chip memory transfer would take 1 frame. That would leave no bandwidth for game logic, ray casting and sprites.

Even if the bit planes were dropped to 16 colours it would struggle. If it was a demo then yes you could get something looking good but it has to run a game as well. With all the testing I've concluded 160x100 is nice and comfortable for OCS. When I set out to do this I wanted 160x200 res but unfortunately the Amiga OCS does not have the bandwidth.

[pandy71]

Well... first Amiga (later 1000) was equipped with ICS chipset where EHB was not implemented...
EHB may be beneficial to create special FX when BPL6DAT can be feed with Copper pattern or mask (for example create fake shadow to improve visual aspect etc) - this should save some memory cycles (5 and 6 bitplanes in Lowres will reduce available memory bandwidth).

[Dunny]

What universe are we in where an A1000 had 8MB of RAM? Mine (and all those of the people I knew) started off with 256Kb, then 512Kb when the expansion came out because most games coming out after needed it. When the 1MB expansion came out for A500s, nobody with an A1000 upgraded because 1) it was damned expensive and 2) there were very few games that needed it (that were worth playing) until the A600/A1200 came along...

So I'd like to see Wolfenstein on a typical A1000 with 512Kb RAM and no HDD

[Samurai_Crow]

8 megs of fast RAM could be added to the A500 and A1000 using the original Zorro 1 slot on the side. That's the slot where hard drive controllers plugged in.

[kovacm]

how much 8MB of fast ram would cost back in 80s?

[demoniac]

512KB was about $100 back in 1990. Maybe even a bit more.

[kovacm]

Atari 1040 ST was publicly acknowledge as first computer with price of less than 1$ per 1KB of RAM I think it was 1986. link

So 8MB of Fast ram in 1985. would be ridiculous expensive!

(btw: this talk remind me on dlfrsilver silly statement that "Adding more memory never made a computer more powerful" in another eab thread: http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...5&postcount=21

[roondar]

I do wonder if 8MB would also be required for a more simple game (meaning, same raycasting engine but less textures etc in use). This might not look quite as good, but would showcase the ability to do raycasting on say an A1000 with 512KB-2 MB of Fast RAM.

Which would still be expensive in 1985, but much more doable.

[AndNN]

The original PC version could run on about 600k I think.

So I would like to keep the memory to 512 chip and 1mb fast which makes it more realistic for 1985. But we will see... I may need to take short cuts with giant look-up tables.

[LuigiThirty]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Was on the 1989 STE hardware, would be even more impressive on an 1985 ST!

You don't even need the STE blitter. The CPU can do C2P cheaply on an ST because its bitplanes are laid out in memory in such a way that the 68k MOVEP instruction can quickly load them with chunky pixel data. It doesn't work on the Amiga (different screen memory layout) or anything with a 68010 or better (MOVEP was made much slower for some reason, probably because nobody used it). The limitation is that you're stuck with 160x200 graphics.

[Amiga1992]

Someone please change thread title to "could have done" before I go mental every time I see it in my new posts list :P

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by Akira

Someone please change thread title to "could have done" before I go mental every time I see it in my new posts list :P

Glad it's not just me being irritated by that!

Otherwise a really interesting thread, and I'm looking forward to seeing whatever comes of it.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Dunny

What universe are we in where an A1000 had 8MB of RAM? Mine (and all those of the people I knew) started off with 256Kb, then 512Kb when the expansion came out because most games coming out after needed it. When the 1MB expansion came out for A500s, nobody with an A1000 upgraded because 1) it was damned expensive and 2) there were very few games that needed it (that were worth playing) until the A600/A1200 came along...

While I agree that 8M was incredibly unlikely, expansions for the 1000 weren't uncommon.
Mine has an Insider II board with 2M..
I think 1M or 2M wasn't uncommon. (Wasn't common, but wasn't uncommon ;-)
Of course, if someone showed a tiny demo that ran in 2M and said "Full Game requires 8M", would some people have spent that money for that back in the day? ;-)
(OK, no developer would write a game to target a non-existent audience just to encourage purchase of more RAM.. Unless maybe the game was sold by DKB? ;-)

desiv

[Miggy4eva]

Any updates on this? I want to see Wolf 3d on Amiga OCS

Originally Posted by AndNN

Every system has the killer app that sells hardware... look what Doom did for PC graphic card sales. It just makes me wonder if someone released something like Wolfenstein before the A500 launch. And we are talking 1985 here so that would of been mind blowing to see textures moving around in 3D. I think if a game like that was released in 1985 then people would of bought fast memory no matter what the cost of it was... Just to play a game that was miles ahead graphically to any thing else. It's fun to think what might of been.

I wish so much your fantasy was real Amiga 1000, release title Wolfenstein 3d, whole world would be Amiga today

Originally Posted by AndNN

The whole purpose of this thread is to prove it can be done. I know the Atari ST got a port of Wolfenstein but with 16 colours and the fps been not that good that I know the Amiga can do so much better.
On the testing front I've written a blitter chain system using the blitter interrupt and have the C2P working. So that is basically taking my byte format for pixels and converts to 6 bit-planes for the EHB mode and of course 64 colours.

Originally Posted by AndNN

...So all that will probably work really well but it depends on a clever way to make the merge not double the writes. If there is clever way to do that then you can get 64 colours with 2x1 pixels. This is possible because the instruction timings are the same for byte or words. So instead of updating the chunky buffer with bytes you use words. So you would do 2 reads, let the cpu merge, then write out a word. That method I mentioned needs so much memory that there is not enough when you draw vertically with the pre-compiled drawing instructions.

If 16 colours at 2x1 pixels is possible then that is just an extra mode added to the 64 colours at 2x2 pixels.

The Atari ST version of Wolfenstein uses 16 colours with 2x2 pixels and the framerate is not that good (don't get me wrong the guy that did that went through hoops to get that to work) but the Amiga can do so much better.

I know there are demos that have done 2x1 pixels at full screen but there will not be enough time to run the cpu on game and ray casting logic so the framerate runs at 17fps on PAL and 20fps in NTSC... all the testing is just finding out what can actually be done without committing.

You are making my mouth water, I want to FINALLY see Amiga version come to life. It could be so much better. 64 colours, 20fps. The maths work out, let's do it. Time to make it happen.

Originally Posted by AndNN

With the tests that I've done on bandwidth it's possible to do Wolfenstein at 2x2 pixels with 64 colours running at 17fps which will make the Amiga version better than the ST version for sure.

The bandwidth tests also prove what the cpu is capable of doing to write 1 byte(pixel) into a chunky buffer. And the 68000 running from fast, reading and writing does not have enough time for 1x1 pixels.)

Please tell me there are updates to this project

[Miggy4eva]

And here is proof that all the calculations in this thread were correct.
Amiga 1000 / OCS should be able to DESTROY the ST port of Wolf 3d.

[ Show youtube player ]

[kovacm]

Calm down:

[ Show youtube player ]

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Miggy4eva

And here is proof that all the calculations in this thread were correct.
Amiga 1000 / OCS should be able to DESTROY the ST port of Wolf 3d.

[ Show youtube player ]

While the code is of course nice this doesn't prove anything at all. In a demo part you can cut A LOT of corners to make the code fast and there's no AI for the enemies etc. needed. A full game is a completely different story!

[kovacm]

@StingRay
Miggy4eva just want to show how demo is "proof" that Amiga can do better then ST.

@Miggy4eva
If you add FastRAM to Amiga then there is no doubt that she can do better raycast then ST.