3D Racing Games from DOS era on Amiga (Screamer, NFS)

[VladR]

I didn't want to have this discussion in the Dark Forces thread, as it would be totally OT there, so I created new thread.

This is about the last SW rasterizer racing games before 3DFX became a thing (Screamer (Rally, I think - but perhaps also Screamer 2), for example, had a support for 3dfx).

Originally Posted by Jacques

I for one would be happy if we ever get a proper 3D racing/rally port. Something from DOS era like Screamer 1/2, Screamer Rally, NFS, Fatal Racing, Rally Championship (1995), Destruction Derby, Indycar/Nascar Racing etc.
But probably no free sources of them are available.

Did you actually play Screamer 2/NFS on PC yourself ? Because I spent 2 yrs of my life playing it, and those 2 games required many upgrades till they were truly *playable* in 320x200 (forget about 640x480, which both games supported, but it was more like a "magazine screenshot" feature).

By playable, I don't mean 5 minutes, but actually playing the Screamer's championship and winning all the races. To win the race, you can't have framedrops while you're drifting. This becomes obvious only on high-end configs.

I played both on several 486's (DX4) and Pentiums (100 MHz, 120 MHz, 166 MHz). NFS has definitely lower HW expectations than Screamer 2 - meaning, you can get meaningful gameplay on a way lower config - e.g. it's playable just fine on P100 (even though, if you enable cockpit, it's somewhat playable on a fast 486).

But Screamer 2 really needs P166 to keep framerate stable (so that you can steer it in curves). Even P100, with 4 cars on screen, in a curve, on the winter track (crazy overdraw, but fantastic effect), stutters brutally. At 320x200.

And it's not like it's not optimized. Screamer 2 has insane amount of overdraw. It's a next-gen game, basically. Way ahead of its time and HW available.


Amiga does not have a HW config capable of faithful, 60-fps Screamer.
Not even Vampire V4 (which, ironically, isn't even considered "Amiga" by most).

2 years ago, when I was coding my flatshader on Vampire, I did some texturing throughput on V4 (it was properly using both pipes in parallel, so basically full MIPS throughput), and while it's fast enough for some subtype of racing genre for texturing (e.g. axis-aligned texturing without camera roll - suitable for games like Doom or Wolfenstein), Screamer uses Camera roll (e.g. along Z-Axis). That means a generic texturing function, for which you need a crapton of MIPS. Way more than V4 has, if you want at least 30 fps.


I should really find some time to create a benchmark that anyone can run on their own Amiga config...

I wish everybody could spend an afternoon, coding their own little benchmark on their own amiga, so they would get a feel, for what its CPU can really pull off...

[Predseda]

If I wanted to play PC games, I would buy a PC.

[derSammler]

PiStorm can run Quake II in mid-res (512x384) with 20 to 30 fps. NFS or Screamer, which both run fine on a 486 DX4 in 320x200, would be no issue therefore. But the source code is not available, so we will never see it anyway.

Also, no one cared about 60 fps in the mid-90s in PC games. Why would it matter for a port to the Amiga?

[gimbal]

Fatal Racing I think would be a very Amiga-compatible racer especially coming from Gremlin. I especially like the cheat mode where you can press a key and launch a car ahead of you into the air with a cartoony sound to go along with it

[ Show youtube player ]

The game looks like garbage in 320*200 though so the system requirements should be taken with a grain of salt. Games back in those days if you switched them to SVGA mode your CPU would immediately turn to ash.

[utri007]

Best bet would be a Carmageddon.

https://github.com/dethrace-labs/dethrace

Watcom debug symbols for an earlier internal build were discovered named DETHRSC.SYM on the Carmageddon Splat Pack expansion CD release. The symbols unfortunately did not match any known released executable, meaning they were interesting but not immediately usable to reverse engineer the game.

CrayzKirk from the Carmageddon community picked it up and did a lot of painstaking work manually matching up many functions and data structures in the DOS executable to the debugging symbols.

We are slowly replacing the original assembly code with equivalent C code, function by function.

Now they have rewrote it 80 % to C.

[ Show youtube player ]

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Predseda

If I wanted to play PC games, I would buy a PC.

I hear ya, but did you actually miss on the experience of NFS1 and Screamer 2 ? Because they were incredible games at the time!

Originally Posted by derSammler

PiStorm can run Quake II in mid-res

NFS or Screamer, which both run fine on a 486 DX4 in 320x200, would be no issue therefore. But the source code is not available, so we will never see it anyway.

Run "fine" is very questionable. I played NFS on DX4 and it was alright and I thought it was really smooth till I upgraded to Pentium 100, which removed framedrops in NFS.

Originally Posted by derSammler

Also, no one cared about 60 fps in the mid-90s in PC games. Why would it matter for a port to the Amiga?

That's not true. These 2 games were one of the first ones that I can remember, where framerate really mattered. Especially for competitive racing.
Sure, you could "play" them in lower framerate and even get somewhere in the game.

But you could not enjoy both games to the max and achieve some great track times.

I recall my friend at the dorm had DX4 at the same time I had PI 100. We used to annoy each other with stopping by and making a great lap/track time and dominate the leaderboards.

We've literally played certain tracks over 1,000 times with manual transmission. You could not make the same great time on DX4, it just wasn't possible. Frames were skipped and the frame you were supposed to switch to lower gear didn't actually happen on DX4, which butchered the final time.

Screamer2 was similar - you could fudge through the game and unlock few new tracks on an suboptimal CPU, but to get really good times, you needed to avoid framedrops too.

F1GP was another game that was barely playable on DX4. I recall hearing my friend bitching about how it still stuttered on Pentium. It still had framedrops even there at 320x200.

For a competitive racing, 30 fps lock (or 60 fps) is a requirement. And in my circles it was in mid 90s (or whatever the actual year was).

[BSzili]

Originally Posted by utri007

Best bet would be a Carmageddon.

https://github.com/dethrace-labs/dethrace



Now they have rewrote it 80 % to C.

[ Show youtube player ]

Unfortunately it's not that simple, as Dethrace is missing a crucial component: the software renderer. Even if it had one, this is how the original Carmageddon runs on a 486 DX-66:
[ Show youtube player ]
They weren't kidding with the Pentium 75 MHz as a minimum, and that's with the well optimized BRender software rasterizer. Late 90s 3D DOS games are usually too heavy even for 68060 machines.

[gimbal]

What's wrong with that? You can really appreciate that gouraud shading at 3FPS.

[Aladin]

Carmageddon is far from being a racing game, it's just a game of violence. I would much prefer Screamer/RidgeRacer/NeedForSpeed type games...

[BSzili]

It's a vehicular combat, but you can actually complete races the normal way if you so desire. The enemy AI cheats though, this was verified during reverse engineering

[TCD]

Originally Posted by BSzili

The enemy AI cheats though, this was verified during reverse engineering

From personal experience that's the case in all racing games

[BSzili]

Sure, but in Carmageddon the buggers sometimes teleport behind you when you're not looking.

[TCD]

Okay, that's another level I know that MVG made a video about Mortal Kombat 2 cheating, but is there a website about cheating computer enemies?

[Seiya]

Camargeddon could be very heavy for real 68000, but good for WinUAE/Pistorm users.

However i'd like to remember the nice Death Rally.

[Zak]

I don't really get the point of this thread. Would a 3d racing game be doable on an Amiga? Is that the question? Answer:

Flyin' High
[ Show youtube player ]

[Photon]

I see this as a question whether Amiga could do pseudo-3D racers before 3D racers.

It could. The evidence should be overwhelming. Arcade games could. The evidence should be overwhelming. Racing is a simple game idea that allows taking advantage of superior hardware, or rather hardware that unlike all hardware before it, isn't worthless for games.

If the question is similar to, "but could the Amiga do this which I can't prove I have a rig less than $2000 back in the day to run", you're doomed to fail. There were none. The PC didn't know what Vsync was. What is this strange thing.

[utri007]

Originally Posted by Zak

I don't really get the point of this thread. Would a 3d racing game be doable on an Amiga? Is that the question? Answer:

Flyin' High
[ Show youtube player ]

I think the point of this thread is that there are very few 3D racers for an 68040/60 Amigas, and maybe there could be more of them? Are there any sources for 1990s racing games floating around?

Flyin High, playable, almost fun, at least with updates.
Turbo Racer, it works, not fun.
XTreme Racing, nice game, fun to play.
Virtual Karting, ugly no way to remove black lines.
Virtual GP, simulator, looks nice.
Street Racer, looks nice, playing is not nice.
Joyride, looks nice, but boring.
Desert Racing of Bardos, impossible to play.

This one was announced to Amiga [ Show youtube player ]

[sokolovic]

This one was announced to Amiga [ Show youtube player ]

It wasn't this one but the previous one :
[ Show youtube player ]



I'd be curious to know if there is anything left of it.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Zak

I don't really get the point of this thread. Would a 3d racing game be doable on an Amiga? Is that the question? Answer:

Flyin' High
[ Show youtube player ]

Uhm, sorry, but no. Flying High isn't a 3D textured racing game by any stretch of imagination - it has zero tilt along the view vector, doesn't have a full-blown 3D matrix with separate LookFrom/LookAt vectors - it's all just axis-aligned texturing, with about 25-40% of the view distance.
Which is the reason why it can run just fine even on something as slow as 68040 with mere 20 MIPS / 5 MFLOPS.

Take a look at Screamer 2:
[ Show youtube player ]


In short, Screamer 2 is a Quake of racers in terms of how it looks, feels and performs.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Photon

I see this as a question whether Amiga could do pseudo-3D racers before 3D racers.

It could. The evidence should be overwhelming. Arcade games could. The evidence should be overwhelming. Racing is a simple game idea that allows taking advantage of superior hardware, or rather hardware that unlike all hardware before it, isn't worthless for games.

Of course, there's myriad of arcade racers that run great even on vanilla 68000.

Originally Posted by Photon

If the question is similar to, "but could the Amiga do this which I can't prove I have a rig less than $2000 back in the day to run", you're doomed to fail. There were none.

Didn't 68060 arrived kinda late to the party ?
Meaning, 68040 was the fastest config that could have been targeted ? I wonder what were the actual adoption numbers of 68040 back in the day...

I suppose that on PC it didn't matter that the games required ultra expensive PCs, because of the sheer numbers of PC users, fraction of which always bought the game even if there was no HW for it (hence it still made sense to develop and release the game)...