virtua racing on amiga possible ?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by malko

Would love to see this running on A500

Remember the Pico-8 is a virtual console and so has all the CPU power of the host PC

[gimbal]

It even runs in a browser. Although with the existence of Web Assembly that is not so miraculous anymore.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Pretty nifty design. Here is an article about doing a pseudo 3d racer in pico-8, to get an idea of what is involved in creating a "classic" game.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=35767

Probably closer to doing a game in Amos than doing a game that hammers on the bare metal

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by alexh

Remember the Pico-8 is a virtual console and so has all the CPU power of the host PC

That's right - but on the other hand the RAM and "cardrige" space are very limited (on purpose) and so is the resolution:
128x128 - 16 colours

That is something that resembles copper-chunky or the "Dread" resolution ...

Amiga Mode 7 test (Copper Chunky):
[ Show youtube player ]

or of course Xtreme Racing for the A1200:
[ Show youtube player ]

[saimon69]

Am STILL not a coder, however:

[ Show youtube player ]

So this is indy 500 in a real A500 with low or middle level of detail, not sure. A machine like my 1200/030 with fast RAM and full detail makes around 15FPS, and indy also has the simulation engine beside the 3D to handle so more stuff compared to an arcade approach; make me think a little toned down version with polys optimized to the bone and raster like the pico above should be doable at that speed AND we should be able to see more stuff thanks to smaller pixels - then of course the usual question is WHO is going to do it

[eXeler0]

For me (big fan of the Arcade) Virtua Racing needs to run at minimum 30fps or I dont need it in my life ;-)
Also, the Pico 8 version is drastically reducedbin detail level. Thats another area where VR brought some new stuff to the table, detailed flat shaded poly world which has a nice look to it which IMO has aged better than some early textured 3d graphics.
Just any polygonal game with tracks that look like vaguely like VR wont give me much joy.

[turrican3]

I think about no second prize which run on a 7mhz a500, not too bad.
not so much details but it runs on a stock a500.
Falcon, gunship 2000 those kind of games, perhaps with a faster amiga ?
And guardian.

[Nishicorn]

Originally Posted by TCD

IAlso shame on them for making a 32X and not simply using that chip more often instead

I don't know - have you SEEN the 32X-version? It's superior in every way.

Did you mean, they should've made more games that utilize that particular chip? I don't know about that, either - the Sega Genesis-version of Virtua Racing is the most stripped-down, least attractive, visually most ugly, the most low-poly version of them all. It's the least desirable, the most useless version, if you can play ANY other.

Maybe there are some 'weird' versions, but even if you take the three main versions..

1) The superior coin-up that has lots of polys and looks good (though became obsolete pretty quickly when texturemapping emerged in games, now it just looks 'naked' - racing games ABSOLUTELY need some kind of "graphics" in my opinion, whether they are hand-pixelled stuff like in Pole Position, or good-looking textures in more modern games, like Sega Rally or Daytona USA).

2) The Sega 32X-version, which is like a mixture of the ugly Sega Genesis-version and the 'naked coin-up-version', it's like the middle ground, where you can still play this game on a home console, but it doesn't look QUITE up to par, while being VASTLY superior to the Genesis-version. It's a bit of good, a bit of bad, a passable, OK-ish version.

and

3) The ugly monstrosity that's the Sega Genesis-version, which, frankly, absolutely NO ONE would choose to play, IF they had a choice of anything better, like those two versions I listed above. I mean, be honest, what reason outside curiosity or "I want to play it on a console and can't have 32X" is there to choose _THIS_ version of the other two?

...there's still the question of 'why'?

People are so excited about porting this or porting that, without ever asking this question.

Why port a coin-up game to ANY computer platform, when you can, with good enough equipment (mainly for display and controls, the rest is trivial and irrelevant - who needs a cabinet if you have authentic display and authentic controls?), play on an emulator just as well, and probably better, because pretty much NONE of the ports I have seen, have been accurate in gameplay (some come close, but no cigar), and they usually mess up some kind of detail in visuals or sounds, even if it's just volume balance or timing of some jingle or wrong notes in the music or whatnot.

A port is always going to be weaker, it's always going to be inferior, it's always going to be obscure (most people will never know it exists), and since you CAN nowadays play ANY game of ANY platform (except the modern ones without acquiring/using the system) due to the massive amount of good emulators and such, the REASON and MOTIVATION for 'making a port' has to be questioned.

I am not saying you should never do it - sometimes it can be fun to satisfy the curiosity of 'I wonder what that would look on that platform'. It is, for example, interesting to take some 'high-resolution' thing and then try to convert it to 'low-resolution' thing, and trying to make it look as good as possible while still retaining your own personality in the art.

It's fun to take some 'style' and try to implement it in your own project.

It's fun to mimic something else that's well-known, and seeing if anyone will notice - like taking a demo soundtrack and making it your own, or re-creating a high-res 3D realtime demoeffect in 2D hand-pixelled version that's slightly different, and so on (all of these I am guilty of).

For example, if there's a game that could've been made to a platform, but never was, and the other platforms are different enough, curiosity sometimes dictates you have to try to make some kind of effort to determine what that MIGHT have looked, sounded or felt like. Some Sierra classic or Amiga/DOS favorite on a C64 or C16? I wonder..

But converting a whole game is a different matter. You need an ENORMOUS amount of motivation and even more really, really hard work, and even then, if you do it all well, after months or years of ridiculously HARD work, the BEST possible scenario is, "It is as good".

This goal is much harder to reach than people think, so many people have egodanced something 'almost similar' onto the screen with their 'talents' and such, but then the end result has been awful, because the coder didn't have a CLUE about how to create good gameplay (a master democoder might not know how to create a good game, for example).

You can't just take 'gameplay' and port it to another platform. You have to basically reverse-engineer it and create your own interpretation, using that platform's limitations and features, that might be completely different in the source platform.

As it's a MASSIVE project to 'port' anything from another platform (unless you can use the same code), you need a different motivation than just 'curiosity'. There are plenty of people that think it's a good idea to just port port port everything to every platform, without ever considering to think how it's not really necessary, and how much work is involved.

When we look at the motivation, it starts becoming a little bit sad. Let's say there's a 'skilled coder', but none of their own projects are noticed by anyone. They get the 'grand idea' of taking an ALREADY EXISTING game, and just "port" it to some platform that has an active 'scene' of sorts.

Now they can get famous - not because they are a skilled coder, but because they EXPLOITED a famous name. Making a 'Guthberd the Rope-Climbing-Accountant' game is not gonna get you any views.

But making a 'Spiderman vs. Beyonder' game, that's the EXACT same game, except now it has a tiny blue-and-red sprite, you get millions of people interested in your project. It doesn't matter if your project is good, or if the gameplay is accurately ported - you hire some graphician to create 'accurate graphics', and BOOM! you have fame and fortune, and now everyone praises how skilled a coder and creator you are.

You get applause, you get kudos, you get approval, you get appreciation - all for basically stealing someone else's idea or property and making "a version" of it.

So before being so enthusiastic about porting this or that, please consider the motivation. Please consider if it's necessary. Please consider whether an ORIGINAL project might actually give you more artistic freedom and the end result might be better than just making another clone of something that people are already bored with.

It's a lot like 'license games' of the 1980s and 1990s - Ocean and other corporations were very sneaky about it; they bought the NAME, then haphazardly put out any old garbage game, and it sold like hotcakes. Regardless of if the (usually platform) game was any good, it made them money. Massive amounts of money.

Porting is no different; it might not be about money, but it's still gonna get you things you could never get 'on your own'. Your own projects might be brilliant, but they won't get people's attention like making a Batman game or porting some obscure, obsolete racing game to a platform that was known for CREATIVITY and ORIGINALITY.. .

Amiga used to be a computer for the CREATIVE MIND, now it's just a trashcan for failed and crappy porting ideas that shouldn't have been considered in the first place. No creativity required or even allowed.

How the mighty have fallen.. it's really SAD.

[Nishicorn]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

... detailed flat shaded poly world which has a nice look to it which IMO has aged better than some early textured 3d graphics.

I have a few points about that.

- games do not age. They stay the same, they don't change. You can reasonably say something ages ONLY if something happens to them during the passing of time. If they remain identical, like BITS do (data doesn't change just because of passing of time), you can't say it ages (with wisdom anyway).

- of course it's 'easier on the eyes', because it looks like 'nothing'. You can't get bored with 'nothing', as you can get bored with 'specifics'. This is why you can't get bored with white walls, because it looks like 'nothing'. Just plain surface is not something your mind and eye can grasp the same way they can grasp a certain shape or a texture. Doom looks boring, because you've seen the same textures over and over so much. A polygonized game doesn't look like anything, so your eye can't get bored with it, so you think it has 'aged well'.

It hasn't. It's just pure boredom to begin with, so it reached its maximum boredom capacity instantly, so it can't "age" more.

- nothing is as mind-numbing to look at as filled polygons. Non-filled polygons at least provoke your imagination and let you imagine something better, but when you fill them, that's it. It's just a 'shape of flat surfaces everywhere', and it's like looking at a cubicle, or a bland office filled with cubicles. Lots of detail, but nothing pleasing to the eye.

For something to be pleasing to the eye, it needs actual graphics, not just flat polygons, no matter how well they're shaded.

This kind of 'visual style' (if it can be called such) falls to the uncanny valley-type crack between 'beautifully hand-pixelled graphics' and 'beautifully textured world with lots of detail'.

This looks like.. 'nothing'.

And before you say I contradicted myself in this post, I didn't. I just tried to express the same thing in various different ways so you get the full picture - I didn't want my post to be as flat as Virtua Racing's 'non-graphics'.

It's unfortunate these games were made, as their gameplay is good, there's some 'energy' involved and so on, but it was obsolete when it was released, because filled polygons are not graphics at all, they're the most boring computer-generated visual garbage that doesn't even look as interesting as actual garbage, you can imagine (or NOT imagine, as imagination produces something actually interesting).

The only 'good' thing about this kind of non-graphics, is that it can create a 'real 2D-projection of a 3D-world'. I mean, since it's not a 'gimmick' or 'trick' to create the illusion of 3D (although it is, because it's still 3D projected on a 2D display), like the early racing games were, Pole Position, Chase H.Q., Out Run, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge and such, so you can actually make 'three-dimensional movements and things happen'. When something is shown to move three-dimensionally, mathematically speaking, it really does.

However, in my opinion, this is not enough, because computer, arcade and video games in general, are very much a visual medium, it should offer something visual. That's where this kind of graphics fail. It's like the whole world consists of flat surfaces everywhere instead of anything beautiful or hand-pixelled or even 'well-made textures' (there ARE 3D games that have really beautiful textures and thus great-looking worlds, although many are really ugly, too. World of Warcraft's 'Val'Sharah' with all details turned on, is mesmerizingly beautiful).

Would anyone really want to live in a world that looks like the one in Virtua Racing? I'd rather live in the world of "Pit Stop" (C64-version), because at least the trees look nicely hand-pixelled, and thus inspiring.

There's nothing inspiring about flat surfaces or world completely rendered by a computer, if there's NO human touch or detail, like good textures anywhere. Just 'flat shading' leaves me COLD.

Just like you said, there's no joy in it, although you possibly talked about something a bit different, but the end of your post sort of illuminates my point; it's just a mystery to me how you can create such separation and not see the whole thing that way. How can you get joy out of this, but not if it's done slightly differently, is a mystery to me.

In any case, I always look at some cool wireframe object or world, and imagine all kinds of greatness - but then I see it 'filled', sometimes even with textures, and it just leaves me completely cold, now it's suddenly boring.

Don't underestimate the human touch or beauty of textures.. a racing game absolutely needs one of those, or - as someone said, it doesn't bring any joy.

[saimon69]

Hello debbie Downer, missed you (not)

Backport powerful games in my opinion need a mind shift to the past: the 2022 you will NOT be satisfied, while the 1994 you would like that darn 15 FPS much more, so mind shift in the past AND don't think like Nishicorn

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by turrican3

gunship 2000

My thoughts exactly.
Always loved the Gunship 2000 engine.

[dreadnought]

Gunship 2000 = Virtua Racing = Half Life 3 confirmed

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

My thoughts exactly.
Always loved the Gunship 2000 engine.

Well it's 60% hud, but it would definitely be in the ballpark of what you would need.

But Epic comes closer, no?

[turrican3]

[ Show youtube player ]

[gimbal]

Very impressive (even with transparency!) but something tells me the tricks they used in that cannot be used to make an interactive game run at that speed.

[turrican3]

You need an 060 and it's 2x2.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by gimbal

But Epic comes closer, no?

Perhaps... I was just saying that I liked Gunship 2000 engine... it had some unique feel (and look) on it.

Probably, what comes closest is, what was mentioned several times on this thread, a No Second Prize game.
That engine is insane.
Running THAT fast on slowest Amigas, really makes you wonder how it would run on an 030, with even much more polygons (like Virtua racing have).

[saimon69]

One Year later... still on 060
[ Show youtube player ]

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Perhaps... I was just saying that I liked Gunship 2000 engine... it had some unique feel (and look) on it.

Probably, what comes closest is, what was mentioned several times on this thread, a No Second Prize game.
That engine is insane.
Running THAT fast on slowest Amigas, really makes you wonder how it would run on an 030, with even much more polygons (like Virtua racing have).

As much as I loved Gunship 2000 (*AFTER* upgrading the 1200 with a blizzard 1220 back in 1994) detail level just isnt comparable.
Take a look at this sluggish CD32 version: (jump to say 6 mins)
[ Show youtube player ]
...compare it to Geoff Crammonds Grand Prix: (which is probably the closest we have to VR on Amiga, but Car interior is a bitmap etc.. )
[ Show youtube player ]
...and finally behold the polygon density of Virtua Racing. (Gallery of images)
https://www.exretro.com/galleries/sega/VirtuaRacing/
Edit: Road is anything but flat in VR --> https://www.exretro.com/galleries/se...ing/#vrx08.png

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by saimon69

One Year later... still on 060
[ Show youtube player ]

It's faster but is it 1x1 or does it still a 2x2 display ?

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by turrican3

It's faster but is it 1x1 or does it still a 2x2 display ?

This is a 1x1 with also cel shading simulation in some areas