Amiga Vs ST - Page 15

dlfrsilver · 09 September 2009, 23:20

why lousy ? the target machine do what it can (heh chaos engine is very complex game).

No HRM needed to see that

frank_b · 09 September 2009, 23:56

I just patched the Mac version of Hatari version 0.95 to pump out some debug every time the blitter emulation is hit. Sadly the game always fails to detect the second disk which means I can't get as far as playing the game but I can say with absolute certainty it is not using the ST blitter in at all in the intro.

dlfrsilver · 10 September 2009, 00:02

Well honestly, why would you use the blitter in the intro ?

frank_b · 10 September 2009, 00:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Well honestly, why would you use the blitter in the intro ?

Umm.. for the text transitions.. It's rather good at rectangular bit aligned copies

You'd know what blitters are for if you read the HRM

Anyway silly me. It seems the game from both cracked versions reads disk 2 from drive B

I've been able to run it with the blitter detection hack in and run around the first level. The blitter is *not* being used in that game as expected. I'm 100% certain of that. So please tell me again why the ST blitter is useless. Read the manual and come back with some *technical* points please.

kamelito · 10 September 2009, 00:17

Well look at him now, he should have stop sooner

http://www.edge-online.com/files/pitfall2.jpg

kml

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Thanks for the name kamelito

Still vouch for my nomination

TCD · 10 September 2009, 00:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by kamelito

Well look at him now, he should have stop sooner

http://www.edge-online.com/files/pitfall2.jpg

Jeeez...
Okay, I expand it to 'retro geek of the 00's' award

This guy surely knows how to look weird

frank_b · 10 September 2009, 00:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Jeeez...
Okay, I expand it to 'retro geek of the 00's' award

This guy surely knows how to look weird

Shh... You almost named someone else there! :0
Last thing we need is someone talking about military grade ST blitters

kamelito · 10 September 2009, 00:27

Hi,

Its useless maybe because it hasn't being used in enough games to stop the Amiga while being introduced in june 1987, the year of the A500.
So Atari ST equal year of release of the A1000.
Atari ST with blitter year of release of A500. The user base of the first ST killed itself. Its sad that it hasn't being detected and used if when available, the gap would have been narrowed...In the meantime the PC was digging our graves

Its like the MegaCD, the 32X...kind of things.

kml

Quote:

Originally Posted by frank_b

Umm.. for the text transitions.. It's rather good at rectangular bit aligned copies

You'd know what blitters are for if you read the HRM

Anyway silly me. It seems the game from both cracked versions reads disk 2 from drive B

I've been able to run it with the blitter detection hack in and run around the first level. The blitter is *not* being used in that game as expected. I'm 100% certain of that. So please tell me again why the ST blitter is useless. Read the manual and come back with some *technical* points please.

TCD · 10 September 2009, 00:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by frank_b

Shh... You almost named someone else there! :0
Last thing we need is someone talking about military grade ST blitters

Oh sh*t... sorry 'bout that

Really these two words just came to my mind when I saw that pic. Now let's settle the subject and get back on topic.

It take it that Obsession, Star dust, Zool and Chronicles of Omega use the STE blitter. I should really have a look at them then.

frank_b · 10 September 2009, 00:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Chaos engine uses the blitter, someone has checked on atari forum inside the game code.
And it's stated that on STE blitter is used.

From Unseenmenace :

"It uses the STE hardware scrolling which explains why it only needs 512KB on an STE and 1MB on an STFM since it probably has preshifted map blocks or something on the STFM. Sadly it doesn't use the STE's DMA sound hardware, not even for the title music let alone the in-game sampled effects that they left out for no good reason."

The reason is that the RAM requirement would have been too much on STF (2mb +) and the game would have been slowed down too much. Since ST and STE version are on the same disks, i guess the music had to move. I'm sure they have done (BB) test and saw that it was crippling the game too much.

Err where does it say in the text from U.M that it uses the blitter? Hardware scrolling and DMA sound have nothing to do with the blitter. You do realise they are different aspects of the hardware. Please tell me you understand this at least! Anyway I can post the "patch" for Hatari and you can test it yourself if you like.

dlfrsilver · 10 September 2009, 00:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by frank_b

Umm.. for the text transitions.. It's rather good at rectangular bit aligned copies

You'd know what blitters are for if you read the HRM

Anyway silly me. It seems the game from both cracked versions reads disk 2 from drive B

I've been able to run it with the blitter detection hack in and run around the first level. The blitter is *not* being used in that game as expected. I'm 100% certain of that. So please tell me again why the ST blitter is useless. Read the manual and come back with some *technical* points please.

EDIT : Ooops, yes unseen was talk about HS, not blitter, you're right

! My fault then, so no blitter at all on STE ?

frank_b · 10 September 2009, 00:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Oh sh*t... sorry 'bout that

Really these two words just came to my mind when I saw that pic. Now let's settle the subject and get back on topic.

It take it that Obsession, Star dust, Zool and Chronicles of Omega use the STE blitter. I should really have a look at them then.

Heh I'm only kidding

TCD · 10 September 2009, 00:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by frank_b

Heh I'm only kidding

Me too

(anyway that guy *is* scary

)

s2325 · 10 September 2009, 00:39

Chronicles of Omega is nothing special, you can find better games on ST. I really like platform games but something is wrong with this game.

frank_b · 10 September 2009, 00:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Please don't ask that to me, unseenmenace said it uses the STE blitter.
I don't think this guy is talking bullshit, so go and ask him

I don't think so either since he has a decent grasp of the Atari hardware. From the quoted post text though it looks like speculation. I just proved that in this case he is wrong. Happens to the best of us. He gave the bitmaps too much credit

That's beside the point though. You said the ST blitter was useless without backing up the statement technically. You then pointed to a game as an example which turned out to be a red herring based on speculation from someone else. I'm telling you from experience and I've provided figures in this thread on how fast it is* compared to the CPU that it is *not* useless.
Quite the reverse.

It's sad how little it was used in games because it seriously outperforms the 68k. To use an analogy it's like pointing at a rubbish ST port on the Amiga and claiming the Amiga hardware sucks. I keep banging on about this but you need to read the HRM instead of misinterpreting other people's posts. The Amiga is a gorgeous machine and once you read (and understand!) the HRM you will see why.

Frank

*40,000 bytes per frame copied with an arbitrary shift. You will not get close to this on an 8 mhz 68k

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

EDIT : Ooops, yes unseen was talk about HS, not blitter, you're right

! My fault then, so no blitter at all on STE ?

Not on this game, sadly. If it was being used it wouldn't be running in 3 vbl

Quote:

Originally Posted by kamelito

Hi,

Its useless maybe because it hasn't being used in enough games to stop the Amiga while being introduced in june 1987, the year of the A500.
So Atari ST equal year of release of the A1000.
Atari ST with blitter year of release of A500. The user base of the first ST killed itself. Its sad that it hasn't being detected and used if when available, the gap would have been narrowed...In the meantime the PC was digging our graves

Its like the MegaCD, the 32X...kind of things.

kml

Yes you are correct. They didn't introduce it till the mega st came out and it didn't become standard till the STE arrived. Not in the base machine.. doesn't get targeted by game developers

Frank

Quote:

Originally Posted by s2325

Chronicles of Omega is nothing special, you can find better games on ST. I really like platform games but something is wrong with this game.

It's one of the few games which uses the STe hardware and runs in at 50hz but the gameplay is... off somehow.

Ian · 10 September 2009, 12:03

Frank, out of interest how do you build Hitari?

I am going through a spate of trying to build every emu I use, just for the experience of it and cannot find instructions on how to do so on the internet.

Ahle2 · 10 September 2009, 15:50

dlfrsilver said...
Too much hatred ? Did they harass you by mail or something ?
All your statements were correct.......

E-mails, YouTube comments, Private YouTube messages.... and so on...

frank_b said...
Ah you're the guy that called Wings of Death a crap game on the ST on you tube? LOL BTW that was rather a nice game on the ST to say the least.

I Never said that the ST version was crap.... just the Amiga version because it wasn't better then the ST version.
Any Amiga shooter running in every third Vbl is crap.
The intro music is among my all time favourite though.

On my STe Zool runs in 1 Vbl ONLY when there is a maximum of two enemies on screen and the game does not scroll more than approximately 3 pixels per frame.
It can get EXTREMELY slow (1/4 VBL?) when there is many enemies on screen and you scroll around at maximum speed. The Amiga version is WAAAY faster.

frank_b · 10 September 2009, 20:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ahle2

dlfrsilver said...

I Never said that the ST version was crap.... just the Amiga version because it wasn't better then the ST version.
Any Amiga shooter running in every third Vbl is crap.
The intro music is among my all time favourite though.

On my STe Zool runs in 1 Vbl ONLY when there is a maximum of two enemies on screen and the game does not scroll more than approximately 3 pixels per frame.
It can get EXTREMELY slow (1/4 VBL?) when there is many enemies on screen and you scroll around at maximum speed. The Amiga version is WAAAY faster.

It drops frames but it drops frames on the 500 too from memory. I don't think I ever saw it drop four frames tho. The blitter on the STE is fast enough to mask about 1/3rd of the screen at 50 hz. Runs like a dog on an ST. Nice game on the 1200.

Like I said STe owners should have been whinging W.O.D didn't run any faster on their machines

It's a fantastic game on a 512k STFM.

Frank

frank_b · 10 September 2009, 20:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian

Frank, out of interest how do you build Hitari?

I am going through a spate of trying to build every emu I use, just for the experience of it and cannot find instructions on how to do so on the internet.

Hello. I just opened the xcode project and built it on my mac. I don't recall having to do anything special to get it to build.

Frank

dlfrsilver · 10 September 2009, 20:43

Well what i always like on ahle2 statements is that he has the technical knowledge.
When he said X game is crap BECAUSE, you always got the explanation following.

09 September 2009, 23:20	#281
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,412	why lousy ? the target machine do what it can (heh chaos engine is very complex game). No HRM needed to see that

09 September 2009, 23:56	#282
frank_b Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Boston USA Posts: 466	I just patched the Mac version of Hatari version 0.95 to pump out some debug every time the blitter emulation is hit. Sadly the game always fails to detect the second disk which means I can't get as far as playing the game but I can say with absolute certainty it is not using the ST blitter in at all in the intro.

10 September 2009, 00:02	#283
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,412	Well honestly, why would you use the blitter in the intro ?

10 September 2009, 00:39	#294
s2325 Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Gargore Age: 43 Posts: 17,789	Chronicles of Omega is nothing special, you can find better games on ST. I really like platform games but something is wrong with this game.

10 September 2009, 12:03	#296
Ian Global Moderator Join Date: May 2001 Location: Derby, UK Age: 46 Posts: 2,287	Frank, out of interest how do you build Hitari? I am going through a spate of trying to build every emu I use, just for the experience of it and cannot find instructions on how to do so on the internet.

10 September 2009, 15:50	#297
Ahle2 Registered User Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Gothenburg / Sweden Posts: 11	dlfrsilver said... Too much hatred ? Did they harass you by mail or something ? All your statements were correct....... E-mails, YouTube comments, Private YouTube messages.... and so on... frank_b said... Ah you're the guy that called Wings of Death a crap game on the ST on you tube? LOL BTW that was rather a nice game on the ST to say the least. I Never said that the ST version was crap.... just the Amiga version because it wasn't better then the ST version. Any Amiga shooter running in every third Vbl is crap. The intro music is among my all time favourite though. On my STe Zool runs in 1 Vbl ONLY when there is a maximum of two enemies on screen and the game does not scroll more than approximately 3 pixels per frame. It can get EXTREMELY slow (1/4 VBL?) when there is many enemies on screen and you scroll around at maximum speed. The Amiga version is WAAAY faster.

10 September 2009, 20:43	#300
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,412	Well what i always like on ahle2 statements is that he has the technical knowledge. When he said X game is crap BECAUSE, you always got the explanation following.

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