What kind of graphical fidelity do you expect from an AGA game?

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by Foebane

What did I personally expect from AGA?

Only graphics like these:
[ Show youtube player ]

If it has 256 colours total, then it should be able to look just like PC VGA, with the same speed and everything. But NOOOO, AGA is somehow much slower and not able to handle the extra bit depths, especially in sprites, so it was really pointless on an unexpanded A1200.

I've seen the AGA chipset do glorious things on 68040/060 Amigas (even if it is WinUAE) so, unless you're going to boost the raw processing power, AGA is only really suited to slideshows or adventure game still screens.

And what requirements have these games for PC?


As Daedalus said You mistake overall power of config of hardware with graphic chipset. I had rather powerful (as for Amiga classic) config mentioned before and even Doom or Quake was fast enough. And not only Doom, etc prove that it's possible, see great work of CFOU! with Eye of the Beholder. Or Wing Commander AGA/CD32 which look same as VGA version.


Many games for AGA Amigas could be better if not these "only for unexpanded" thinking while doing game. Problem which was ommited for PC - you want play, you must expand/upgrade your hardware. And i mention this again, that's problem not AGA itself.

[Tigerskunk]

It's an interesting topic for me, since I think I have a kind of well enough understanding what OCS is capable of, and some ideas about AGA, plus some good knowledge about pixeling and palettes.

What I think is:

* OCS is overrated for arcade ports. It's simply hard to do justice to mid to late 80ies arcade games with their parallax layers and many colours on an OCS Amiga. If you wanna port something in that vein, you should usually go for AGA, like Geezer did with Rygar.

* OCS is underrated (usually) for original games made for the machine, though there are a few examples of games that really take the chipset to the limit, like Lionheart, Beast or Mega Typhoon.

* AGA (and the stock 1200) is underrated imo, since there never were that many examples of what it can accomplish back in the day, with a few exceptions.

[lesta_smsc]

Thanks for sharing that YouTube. Just discovered some great games to play!

[blade002]

The seldom mentioned Genetic Species does a beautiful job with AGA on a 50mhz 68030.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Steril707

It's an interesting topic for me, since I think I have a kind of well enough understanding what OCS is capable of, and some ideas about AGA, plus some good knowledge about pixeling and palettes.

What I think is:

* OCS is overrated for arcade ports. It's simply hard to do justice to mid to late 80ies arcade games with their parallax layers and many colours on an OCS Amiga. If you wanna port something in that vein, you should usually go for AGA, like Geezer did with Rygar.

* OCS is underrated (usually) for original games made for the machine, though there are a few examples of games that really take the chipset to the limit, like Lionheart, Beast or Mega Typhoon.

* AGA (and the stock 1200) is underrated imo, since there never were that many examples of what it can accomplish back in the day, with a few exceptions.

I agree with all of these. And I'll add: both OCS and AGA were IMHO 'hurt' by the prevalence of ports from other systems.

In the case of OCS there were so many games ported from lesser systems without any thought for the abilities of the Amiga (fun fact that's vaguely relevant here: I recently discovered that the Atari ST hardware does not support a 2nd fire button, but the Amiga HRM actually discusses native support for three buttons).

In the case of AGA there were many games ported direct from PC or consoles, without considering the differences here. So games only rarely showcased AGA's strengths but did expose it's weaknesses.

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by roondar

In the case of AGA there were many games ported direct from PC or consoles, without considering the differences here. So games only rarely showcased AGA's strengths but did expose it's weaknesses.

Problem is that there are not many games ported for AGA but they are mainly for OCS/ECS and max 1MB RAM. There are only few ports for AGA and mostly for unexpanded configuration (2MB Chip).

[Shatterhand]

I recently discovered that the Atari ST hardware does not support a 2nd fire button, but the Amiga HRM actually discusses native support for three buttons).

The Amiga does support 3 buttons, and for a while I've been thinking we should start hacking games to support the 3rd button even if there's no compatible joystick... it's so easy to build one!

But I don't think any game ever used the 3rd button, I don't think even any software did it.

[lesta_smsc]

I can't ever remember playing a game where Button A was any different to Button B! I always assumed it was for other compatible consoles via the selector switch.

[Daedalus]

A few did support 2 buttons - to use an example from earlier in the thread, Aladdin springs to mind. As for software supporting 3 buttons, well I remember DOpus 5 let you add actions to the middle mouse button, such as opening listers. There were commodities that did a similar thing for Workbench too, allowing you to flip screens or cycle through windows with the middle button.

[donnie]

Cd32 controller supports 3 buttons right? There are many whdload slaves that do right?

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

The Amiga does support 3 buttons, and for a while I've been thinking we should start hacking games to support the 3rd button even if there's no compatible joystick... it's so easy to build one!

But I don't think any game ever used the 3rd button, I don't think even any software did it.

Powder do, at least for the three button joysticks the coder built, including mine ^^

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

A few did support 2 buttons - to use an example from earlier in the thread, Aladdin springs to mind. As for software supporting 3 buttons, well I remember DOpus 5 let you add actions to the middle mouse button, such as opening listers. There were commodities that did a similar thing for Workbench too, allowing you to flip screens or cycle through windows with the middle button.

Ah... Aladdin was only ever AGA or am I mistaken. I recall never playing that on Amiga but I had it on MSDOS and it was great using keyboard lol.

[Daedalus]

Yep, it's AGA only, and quite a good game too

[lesta_smsc]

Seriously contemplating playing it on my PS Vita now lol. My A1200 in storage at the moment.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Powder do, at least for the three button joysticks the coder built, including mine ^^

I am building an Amiga joystick right now (Probably will finish everything on Sunday) and I thought about adding a 3rd button on it, but I thought no game uses it.

I don't think I'll do it just for Powder though :P

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

But I don't think any game ever used the 3rd button, I don't think even any software did it.

AmigaOS uses the third button to show all volumes in file requesters.

[dodke]

One difficulty with AGA software was also that the a1200 came with an antique double density disk drive. A HD one with ~1.7 MB per disk would have made a huge difference for games.

[lesta_smsc]

And less disk swaps! Lol

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

A few did support 2 buttons

I don't think it's "few", rather "some". Here is list of games.

[Solo Kazuki]

Originally Posted by dodke

One difficulty with AGA software was also that the a1200 came with an antique double density disk drive. A HD one with ~1.7 MB per disk would have made a huge difference for games.

That's not the problem IHMO if games had HDD install option. And that should be main concern of not forcing HDD as standard, not floppy format.