Amiga scene desperately needs two things.

[DamienD]

Come on guys; the OP's post was about his opinion.

...don't turn this into another "person asking for stuff" hate threads.

[nobody]

The Amiga is behind the C64 simply because it's a lot more fun and easier to do things on the C64.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Foebane

We were, and in fact, some of us still are.

So what have you done lately?

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Come on guys; the OP's post was about his opinion.



...don't turn this into another "person asking for stuff" hate threads.

Well in this spirit I disagree with the original post in that there is a lot of new stuff for the A500 and the CD32 has recently has a revival.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by britelite

So what have you done lately?

I count myself as a "we were", and you as a "still are".

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by plasmab

Well in this spirit I disagree with the original post in that there is a lot of new stuff for the A500 and the CD32 has recently has a revival.

As I totally agree

Over the past 2 years there's been loads of cool stuff coming out for the "Amiga scene" in terms from hardware / software / games / demos / WinUAE

...too many things to list.

Point of previous post; let's get back on subject please.

[Shatterhand]

1. A cheap and easy to use sd/usb-cartridge for amiga 500 expansion side port. With cf-hdd and usb/sd slot for file transfer.

A Gotek does that. What else do you need? A Gotek is cheap and does that, Flashfloppy is a great firmware for it and its open-source. A Gotek + FF firmware is so much of a good/cheap option that even though the MSX *does* have a Cartridge with SD slot for loading games etc, I still went with the Gotek solution when I figured out the FF firmware works with MSX disks. I really don't think you need anything else (and a Gotek is way cheaper than the Everdrive solution of consoles )

2. A cheap and good version of the cd32 controller. This to encourage future games to be made with more than 2 buttons.

2 buttons are good enough, and you still have to cope with people who use 1 button joysticks (which seems to be the majority, quite surprisingly). You also have the keyboard for extra buttons

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Britelite

So what have you done lately?

[ Show youtube player ]





(the audio part of course)

[Amiga1992]

donnie, you are mistaken, maybe because you didn't research enough.
The expansions you say are "in desperate need" already exist.

You can expand an A500 cheaply with RAM, IDE and probably an accelerated processor, via the Wicher or the TF530. However as Shatterhand says, a Gotek is actually the cheapest and easiest way to use an A500 with an easy interface to provide it with disk images, much in the way an Everdrive works.

Also, you can build your own CD32 controller with kits sold for cheap by members of our community (search for Arcade CD32). Sure, DIY might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you don't want to put the effort, maybe you shouldn't be into retro-computing.
Again, as Shatterhand says truth again, most software will NOT take full advantage of a CD32 joypad, so any Master System controller will do just fine to start with.

The reasons why the "amiga scene isn't as good"have been discussed here many times and it's usually those who don't doanything that complain, waiting for some sort of divine Amiga mana to fall from the heavens without actually trying to do anything of their own. The reason those scenes you mention are more prolific, is because more people are willing to put the groundwork for making shit happen. Yes, the Amiga as a platform has difficulties, which makes it unfair to compare to lower spec 8-bit platforms, yet, the will is still not there in most cases, feels like there's a lot of "demand" but not one just goes "why don't I go ahead and do it myself?".

[AmigaRob]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I developed games on Amiga, and I agree with that assessment. It really does take a while to develop one game, and if it's just you, all that time in DPaint to do the graphics really makes up a lot of the time.

I wonder if one way it might move forward is if some Amiga artists start creating some tile sets and sprite sets tailored for ECS/AGA capabilities, so that coders could just drop them in to working engines. It might start getting the ball rolling.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by AmigaRob

I wonder if one way it might move forward is if some Amiga artists start creating some tile sets and sprite sets tailored for ECS/AGA capabilities, so that coders could just drop them in to working engines. It might start getting the ball rolling.

That never worked.

[lordofchaos]

Amiga desperately needs two things:

1. Time.
2. Passion.

No shortage of the latter, time is the real tricky one.

[malko]

Originally Posted by Akira

[...] and it's usually those who don't do anything that complain, waiting for some sort of divine Amiga mana to fall from the heavens without actually trying to do anything of their own.

Agree (because you said usually) .
(I laughed so much with your "divine Amiga mana to fall from the heavens" ).

Originally Posted by nobody

The Amiga is behind the C64 simply because it's a lot more fun and easier to do things on the C64.

Things "become" funnier and easier as soon as you begin having interest in it (and having, or freeing, some time for it ). Therefore, in my point of view, fun and simplicity is not related to a platform .

Originally Posted by ajk

It requires extraordinary skill and commitment to make a game which could surpass the top games from back in the day. Much more so than with the 8-bit systems.

Why surpassing the top should be a point ? And who defines what is top ?
Just to mention a few, gfx spoken, 'Beyond the forbidden forest' (C64) or the 'KQ', 'PQ', 'SQ' games (Sierra) (Amiga) were really not the "summum". But they had nice/interesting/funny scenarios/playability, so, many people enjoyed playing them.
Faery Tale Adventure is credited to one guy (David Joiner), Prince of Persia too (Jordan Mechner), etc... I do think theses guys wanted to make the best game they "felt" (not to surpass the top). I personally enjoyed 'Marble Madness', 'Sentinel', etc... but were they top games for others for this reason ? .

Originally Posted by Amigajay

The Amiga scene is fragmented more than my pc hard drive, this will only dwindle more each year unless the bone heads who own the copyrights come together and put something together to grab some of the retro pie that is driving sales, and get more people back and interested in the Amiga again.

Amiga was (is?) the best computer around . It is true indeed that too many actors pushing in their own direction can be a lot confusing for a normal human being .

Originally Posted by DamienD

Come on guys; the OP's post was about his opinion.

Agree .

Originally Posted by donnie

I feel the amiga scene is hampered by two major bottlenecks.

10 readers = 10 opinions. Regarding the answers this thread received, maybe creating a poll would have been a better idea. What will be done with the result will then depend on the "desire" of the poll maker .

[ajk]

@malko

Well that is what the original poster considered lacking in the Amiga scene: "Just look at c64. The games coming out today are better than the ones that came out in its prime."

Certainly good games can be coded by a single person and in some cases they can even be extremely impressive, but I still maintain that it requires many times the effort to fully use the resources of even a basic A500 (let alone a higher end model) compared to any 8-bit system. And that's why we don't see many "top tier" games for the Amiga these days, while we do for the C64 for example.

[nobody]

The C64 has no blitter, no copper, only 16 colors and it forces you to draw graphics in a certain way, as a result guiding you. It probably is 10 times easier to draw graphics on the C64 than the Amiga 500.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by nobody

it forces you to draw graphics in a certain way, as a result guiding you.

So did the ZX Spectrum with its colour attribute system. That was more pronounced, yes, but these limits result in weird visuals.

The Amiga has no such limits.

[nobody]

Of course the spectrum is even easier than the C64 but also more possible to create horrible graphics with such low limitations. It has to be either black and white or black background as seen in Myth(System 3).

But the point here is that it is easier to do something on the C64.

PS some time ago I did these, it took me 3 hours on the C64 one and about 18 hours on the Amiga-like one with 16 colors, not even 32 drawing pixel by pixel

[meynaf]

Sure ugly graphics are easier to draw than nice ones !

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by nobody

The C64 has no blitter, no copper, only 16 colors and it forces you to draw graphics in a certain way, as a result guiding you. It probably is 10 times easier to draw graphics on the C64 than the Amiga 500.

And if you go for the simple graphics route on an Amiga game you get people complaining "The Amiga could do so much better" .

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by nobody

The Amiga is behind the C64 simply because it's a lot more fun and easier to do things on the C64.

I don't think this holds true really.

The Amiga is a much more powerful machine than the C64 and as such controlling that extra power is much more of a rush.