Tiny Galaga

[VincentGR]

Originally Posted by coldacid

Summoning @VincentGR for an icon and disk image, and @TjLaZer for a WHDLoad package just like for Tiny Invaders.

Oh, I'm late

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Fantastic game!!!

[fandenivoldsk]

Would it be possible to add an option for inverted colors? White background really hurt the eyes.

[Minuous]

"Needs at least any Amiga" implies it should be compatible.

It's sad that 30 years after OS2.0 was released that Commodore guidelines are still being ignored.

[ross]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Really, happened to me twice now i.e. had 1 x fighter showing at the bottom, I get captured and it's Game Over

Anyway, no biggie... I just know not to get captured if I have 1 x fighter showing at the bottom.

LOL, never happened to me, but I only played to see if the trainer was working.
Well, be careful not to get caught when you have one life left

In fact I could change the type of trainer, but this way it's more 'singular', I like it
A trainer where a game over is difficult to achieve is amusing.

[DamienD]

All good ross; the trainer is fine the way it is

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Minuous

It's sad that 30 years after OS2.0 was released that Commodore guidelines are still being ignored.

It's simple. A developer basically gets to pick two out of the following list for their game/demo:

1. Run great on even low end Amiga's
2. Look and sound great (or alternatively, actually use the Amiga's hardware's abilities well)
3. Follow the Amiga guidelines

The above is simplified and there is some subjectivity in it, but it is basically true. The Commodore guidelines for development simply won't work at all well on low end Amiga's as they require too much CPU (and memory) grunt to be viable on them. You simply can't get 1, 2 and 3 at the same time. Which is fine I suppose, if you have a high end Amiga and don't care about the A500/A1200: just pick 2&3.

However, I wager most Amiga users do care about the low end machines and certainly that most developers do. So games get aimed at the low end. It's kind of like how the C64 scene doesn't aim their efforts at Super CPU powered machines with tons of expansions running a brand new multitasking OS, but rather mostly aims at the base machine

Edit: please note, the above post is only meant to help/explain why this might happen - it's not meant to say you can't feel that the choice should be made differently

[TjLaZer]

WHDload hack in Da Zone! (Doesn't work on 040 - 060 though. Maybe someone can fix the slave? It's a generic one). Works on 030 and below and Vampire 2!

[VincentGR]

Icon is in the Zone as requested.

[trydowave]

this was really good

[Minuous]

@roondar:

Following sensible guidelines to ensure compatibility doesn't have to mean a program runs slowly.

Why claim it will run on any Amiga in that case? And anyway if it is written properly it will run fine on various configurations, there are countless examples. Or at a minimum it should say why it can't run and exit cleanly without freezing the user's system.

Just because eg. an unpacker may work correctly on all CPUs without crashing doesn't mean it can't perform well.

[ruinashiro]

Looks great!

[roondar]

To make sure we're not going to have a massively off-topic discussion in a thread about a rather nice game, this'll be my last reply on this topic. Should you want to discuss it further, I'm happy to have a thread about it as it is an interesting topic to discuss

Originally Posted by Minuous

@roondar:
Following sensible guidelines to ensure compatibility doesn't have to mean a program runs slowly.

In the case of games and demos on low end Amiga's, it actually mostly does. Commodore's guidelines call for using the OS for graphics, sound & input. The problem is that the OS has very slow GFX/Sound/Input functions (compared to directly hitting the hardware). This isn't a dig against the OS, there are good reasons why those routines are not primarily written for performance.

To give an example of what I mean by slow: having the OS handle a keypress on an A500/KS 1.3 costs around 30% of the time it has in a frame*. Similarly, running the OS and doing nothing takes up to ~20% of the time in a frame*. On top of that you have those slow GFX functions. So hopefully you now see why using the OS has a pretty big impact on what you can expect out of your game code on low end machines.

*) this is without the OS printing/blitting, this is just the overhead of handling a keypress. I attached two screenshots of the WinUAE DMA debugger showing a freshly booted Amiga 500 (cycle exact, etc) running the OS without any programs running and the same directly after pressing a key. Which shows neatly just how large the overhead really is.

Just because eg. an unpacker may work correctly on all CPUs without crashing doesn't mean it can't perform well.

This is kind of true, but I see applications and games as different classes. For an application it's usually fine if it's slowed down due to the OS being busy. For games, not so much.

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Now, returning to the topic of the game itself:

I really dig the graphics style, it's very nice. There's something about low colour games that can be quite appealing. The chip music and the arcade samples also rocks

And it's Galaga, which I love - so yeah, great stuff alround

[Minuous]

I don't see what is off-topic about pointing out that it doesn't actually work.

I didn't mean OS functions had to be used for everything, I just meant that it is possible to hit the hardware in a way that will work on all Amigas. Otherwise things like WHDLoad would not be possible.

That's nothing to do with reading the keyboard, doing graphics & sound, etc. The decruncher has no need to do any of those things.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Minuous

I don't see what is off-topic about pointing out that it doesn't actually work.

...but it does work on Classic Amigas i.e. standard A500 / A600 / A1200 (with slight graphics issues i.e. some characters are not displayed).

It just doesn''t work on suped-up hardware and non-classics OSs like 3.5 / 3.9 / 4.0 / 4.1.

Again, you can't expect developers to be testing on these and making sure their games run on everything

The majority of Amiga users don't use 3.5 / 3.9 / 4.0 / 4.1 or have expensive hardware with accelerators and massive amounts of RAM...

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Minuous

I don't see what is off-topic about pointing out that it doesn't actually work.

I think this is a bit of a miscommunication then. See, I wasn't talking about whether or not it works (on this topic I fully agree with DamienD). I was specifically responding to this:

It's sad that 30 years after OS2.0 was released that Commodore guidelines are still being ignored.

And I was trying to show why following those rules is not going to work for games that aim at low end Amiga's (as they specifically mean not hitting the hardware).

[Tigerskunk]

It's really by far the worst thing about coding on the Amiga that you have so many different higher configs to care for, while aiming to use all the resources an OCS machine gives you.

Everybody wants to have their weirdo Frankenstein Amiga supported

Compare that to the C64, where you usually only have to care about how the two different SIDs sound.
Or the Vectrex, Atari2600, or any other oldschool console, where it's even more unified.

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by roondar

And I was trying to show why following those rules is not going to work for games that aim at low end Amiga's (as they specifically mean not hitting the hardware).

Making a game run on most Amiga's shouldn't be too hard.
the Amiga guidelines were meant to make sure software would be compatible with future Amiga's. Well, these future Amiga's never came so the hardware never really changed much.
So, "any Amiga" always has at least 512kb chip ram starting at $0, at least 512kb ranger or real fast ram (ask the OS), an 68k processor (or some higher processor and instruction traps in place) and either OCS, ECS or AGA.

But, I don't want to join this discussion at all so to get back on topic:

Really nice little gem of a game. I think the white/black/grey color scheme works really well and it is smoooottthhh.

Well done (played on my A500)

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

Making a game run on most Amiga's shouldn't be too hard.
the Amiga guidelines were meant to make sure software would be compatible with future Amiga's. Well, these future Amiga's never came so the hardware never really changed much.
So, "any Amiga" always has at least 512kb chip ram starting at $0, at least 512kb ranger or real fast ram (ask the OS), an 68k processor (or some higher processor and instruction traps in place) and either OCS, ECS or AGA.

But, I don't want to join this discussion at all so to get back on topic:

With that in mind, I'll keep this really short: I agree with all of that, in principle. The devil is in the details though, which is where the discussion I won't continue started

Really nice little gem of a game. I think the white/black/grey color scheme works really well and it is smoooottthhh.

Well done (played on my A500)

Yeah, it's a great game. Very smooth and the looks work really well.
Gonna play it some more later I think

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

Making a game run on most Amiga's shouldn't be too hard.

When was the last time you wrote a game that worked on most Amigas?

[manossg]

If there was a commodore fridge, I bet there would be entitled people asking for Tiny Galaga to play there as well.