Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[lordofchaos]

Ok I feel like a gimp for asking this question but here it goes:

Many years ago I had a Memory expansion for my A500, the kind that plugs into the side like a wedge, I think it was 1.5 meg or similar? Without the Expansion it had 1MB. How would I reflect this in WinUAE on the memory settings? Do I increase the "Slow" RAM or the "FAST" RAM? I`m pretty sure it's not the Z3 Fast?

[demolition]

That would probably be regular fast mem. A typical A500 would have 0.5MB chip and 0.5MB slow (in the trapdoor). A plain A500 cannot have Z3 fast mem.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by demolition

That would probably be regular fast mem. A typical A500 would have 0.5MB chip and 0.5MB slow (in the trapdoor). A plain A500 cannot have Z3 fast mem.

Yes that's what I have, for the life of me I can't remember the type of memory the expansion module had but from what you say I`m guessing it's FAST. Cheers.

[felixkat]

What makes some Amigas turn yellow? Looking around on ebay etc, some look as new and some are turning yellow. Is it nicotine or some other factor?

[Vot]

Originally Posted by felixkat

What makes some Amigas turn yellow? Looking around on ebay etc, some look as new and some are turning yellow. Is it nicotine or some other factor?

Bromine In the fire retardant in the abs plastic google retro bright you will find a wiki with a full description

Uv light is required to make it go yellow/brown, also is used as the catalyst when you reverse the reaction

[felixkat]

Wow thanks. I found the wiki, very interesting read and amazing work done on the subject.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by felixkat

What makes some Amigas turn yellow? Looking around on ebay etc, some look as new and some are turning yellow. Is it nicotine or some other factor?

Well, nicotine certainly doesn't help...

[felixkat]

lol @prowler.

I managed to find the thread in the forums about the subject as well, started 5 years ago.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=37808

Really amazing!

My 500 is pratically brown and I thought it may have been from the days of lots of smokey bedrooms!!!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by felixkat

My 500 is pratically brown and I thought it may have been from the days of lots of smokey bedrooms!!!

That's what I thought too, until I found that thread!

[alewis]

What is an inverse chessboard scroller? It was - if i recall - in the Elysium demo.

[sokolovic]

I don't understand anything in the sprite management of the Amiga. I've seen the fantastic website of Codetapper but it is far too complex for me :/

If there is only 8 hardware sprite on the Amiga how did they manage to do games like Lemmings, SWIV, Battle Squadron that have much more animated objects on screen ?

Really embarrassing question for me

[demolition]

I don't know how they designed Lemmings but you don't need to use sprites for all small moving objects, as you can do 'sprites' in software. Think about having a clear background in memory with your sprites somewhere else, then after copying the clear background you can just copy your 'sprites' onto it, e.g. using the blitter. If you have many objects, you might not be able to make it in one frame, but as I am sure you know, Lemmings doesn't always run at full 50 Hz (exploding all the lemmings will cause severe frame slowdowns).

That being said, you can have more than 8 hardware sprites on the screen simultaneously since you can change them while the screen is being drawn. Thus, you could actually change them every scanline, meaning 8 sprites per line.

[retrogamer]

What is copper and blippers on the Amiga?

[demolition]

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/customchips.html

Short explanation:
Copper: Short for Co-Processor. Can run its own program using a very simple instruction set, reading/writing the graphic registers without the main CPU having to do anything (except for setting it up to begin with).

Blitter: Another coprocessor, capable of doing quick memory copy operations.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by demolition

I don't know how they designed Lemmings but you don't need to use sprites for all small moving objects, as you can do 'sprites' in software. Think about having a clear background in memory with your sprites somewhere else, then after copying the clear background you can just copy your 'sprites' onto it, e.g. using the blitter. If you have many objects, you might not be able to make it in one frame, but as I am sure you know, Lemmings doesn't always run at full 50 Hz (exploding all the lemmings will cause severe frame slowdowns).

That being said, you can have more than 8 hardware sprites on the screen simultaneously since you can change them while the screen is being drawn. Thus, you could actually change them every scanline, meaning 8 sprites per line.

Thx

I understand (a little) better.

Another things is when I see an advanced game like Jim Power, made in 1992, I don't understand why the technogical curve of developing amiga games wasn't evolving.
I mean, when you compare first generation Megadrive/SNES titles with the last ones, you can see how devs have managed to stretch out the technical specs of these consoles (Compares Altered Beast with Alien Soldier on the MD, it's impressive !).
In the contrary, on the Amiga, Battle Squadron was released in 1989 and I cannot see a better made shoot'em'up. Same for games like Apidya, Jim Power, Beast. All these games we're technically much more advanced than laters games. When you see Zool1/2 or Superfrog, it is hard to think that they we're released in 1993 !
...And I won't say nothing about James Pond III released in 1994 as an "AGA" game... :/

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Another things is when I see an advanced game like Jim Power, made in 1992, I don't understand why the technogical curve of developing amiga games wasn't evolving.

I think it is business rather than technical reasons. There just wasn't as much money in Amiga games so the time was not spent on them. I think some of the best Amiga games were written for the love of it.

[Hewitson]

I do know what you mean, but at the same time I don't think you can get much more advanced than games like Turrican 2 or 3, Jim Power, etc on the 500 hardware. I think the Amiga programmers simply figured out how to get the most out of the hardware more quickly than the MD programmers did.

I'll always wonder what the games would have been like if they had have been written for decent machines, imagine what a developer like Factor 5 could have managed with a 1200 with 040/060 and a few meg of fast. Sadly we'll never get to find out.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I do know what you mean, but at the same time I don't think you can get much more advanced than games like Turrican 2 or 3, Jim Power, etc on the 500 hardware. I think the Amiga programmers simply figured out how to get the most out of the hardware more quickly than the MD programmers did.

I'll always wonder what the games would have been like if they had have been written for decent machines, imagine what a developer like Factor 5 could have managed with a 1200 with 040/060 and a few meg of fast. Sadly we'll never get to find out.

Yes, but my interrogation was more on why they didn't pursue doing games with those technical advancement ? In 1994, they cannot say that parallaxes, smoth scrolling and larges sprites were impossible to do on Amiga, since it have already been done !

I agree with what you've said about Factor 5. But without speaking of an expanded Amiga AGA, I wonder how could they have managed to do a game on the CD32 that gives him justice.

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

I think it is business rather than technical reasons. There just wasn't as much money in Amiga games so the time was not spent on them. I think some of the best Amiga games were written for the love of it.

Totally agree with that

[Noth]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Thx

I understand (a little) better.


I mean, when you compare first generation Megadrive/SNES titles with the last ones, you can see how devs have managed to stretch out the technical specs of these consoles (Compares Altered Beast with Alien Soldier on the MD, it's impressive !).

You have to remember that the console games could have additional coprocessor chips added to their cartridges which allowed devs to really boost their games. This was particularly true on the SNES/SuperFamicom/Super Nintendo, and to a lesser level on the Megadrive/Genesis which had hardware extensions like the SegaCD or the 32X. No such thing happened on the Amiga apart from RAM, apart maybe from the Akiko chip. Commodore never even managed to specify a multibutton joystick/pad protocol FFS!

[tin]

Originally Posted by Noth

Commodore never even managed to specify a multibutton joystick/pad protocol FFS!

Yeah that was stupid, they could have implemented the CD32 pad a lot earlier than they did! Surely the C64GS taught them they needed to do that?!