Amiga vs PC

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Ricardo

Hmmm I can think of nothing more repugnant than a retro PC

I had a 386, my friends had amigas, i would not had swapped it for an amiga no matter what; to be honest.
I don't understand why people hate the reto pc, althought it was overall far superior than the amigas.

[dlfrsilver]

PC = no soul machine. Just power

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by Jgames

I had a 386, my friends had amigas, i would not had swapped it for an amiga no matter what; to be honest.
I don't understand why people hate the reto pc, althought it was overall far superior than the amigas.

The first time I saw a 386 it was struggling to play the Another World demo in Software Etc. Slow frame rate and the sound was horrible.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by Jgames

I had a 386, my friends had amigas, i would not had swapped it for an amiga no matter what; to be honest.
I don't understand why people hate the reto pc, althought it was overall far superior than the amigas.

386 might have more "computing power" than 68000 amigas back then, I would say they were somewhere around 68030 or a bit more powerfull. But when 386's were out people still had lame CGA or EGA or even Hercules gfx cards which were by far worse than Amigas gfx. Only when VGA became standard (which was around 486 DX I think) with the chunky 256 colour modes were Amigas surpassed in gaming abilities. Sound wise the SoundBlaster 16 sounded kinda OK, anything before that sounded really shite. But still the games had lousy sound compared to amiga, it wasn't until things like GUS, AWE32, etc. came out that amiga was surpassed in that area too (and that was way into late 486 area).

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Ricardo

p.s. A 386DX40 £ for £ was no match for an Amiga and MHz for MHz an 80x86 was no match for a 680x0, in my opinion. F1GP on an Atari ST was better than on a 386DX40 (fastest 386 chip, made by AMD). It was only a 486DX66 onwards which beat the ST's 8MHz 68000 with F1GP.

I had a 386DX40, it played ultima underworld (3d texture mapped rpg game) on highest settings flawlesly; this thing, not even a 68020 amiga can do (this has to be the greatest technically awesome game ever done);

Another thing, my 386DX40 played dos doom at ease on full screen and highest settings;
And, my friend had a 286, 16mhz (16 bits computer), it played wolfenstein 3D better than on my 386DX40!
I doubt, wolfenstein 3D would run as speedy on an amiga500 or atari st.
Also tried indianpolis 500 on the 286, the animation was exellent and the sensation of speed had no match to it.
Also stunts was wonderful, i don't know if there is an amiga version, but i am sure it can't be up to the pc one speed;

Graphic adventures and rpg are a dream playing them on my 386 pc, tried them on an amiga500, there is no comparison; (more colours, more speed/power, and more voices on sound blaster/pro/16 on the pc than on the amiga)
Example (eob2 on pc is much better than on the amiga on all points, exept perhaps the intro music)
Ah lands of lore!

Now to plateforme/action games:
- A lot of very good appoge games (commander keen), that ran on 286 pcs (the scrolling was not perfect, but was pleasant to the eyes anymay), and were for the most part better than many many plateform amiga games)
- Gods is on par with the amiga version (graphics and animations mostly identical), the pc version lacks the scrolling help text, and the animated inventory.
- Mortal Kombat on a 486dx 25 pc was better than on the amiga! (i would say, it was nearly arcade perfect!)
- Jazz jack rabbit had silk smooth 60hz animations, mod style music and ran 100% on my 386.

- Last, the Turrican II pc version is WAY better than the amiga one! (better graphics 320*240 Modex graphics), the "copper" background is present, and the 4 or more parallax scrolls of the flight levels are there; all this with 50hz PERFECT animation. (yes, in T2, the user can choose between 50hz up to 60hz)
And the MOD music, that sounds better than on the Amiga;
(This version has to be the greatest plateform game ever made for the pc on a technical point of view, and worked without any slowdown on my 386DX40)
All this in software, no custom chips, no hardware sound mixer or blitter;

As for f1gp on the st, if it was badly programmed for the pc (ie no assembler, and bad design), it's normal it will be slow as hell even on a pentium!

I programmed on pc 386 in c and assembler, i used to program everything in c and then port graphic functions to assembler (i ported them to 16 bits and 32 bits assembler) and did compare the two
The 16 bits assembler version was 10 times! faster than the c one;
The 32 bits assembler was 1.5 times faster than the 16 bits one;
It's all to do with clever programming.
Also the use of the unchained VGA modex video modes, that allowed for page flipping.

[Galahad/FLT]

Sorry, thats just such a lot of PC loving waffle!

Mortal Kombat did have a little more in it that i'll grant you, the music however was diabolical, managing to be slightly worse than the Megadrive version!

Sorry, platformers? It wasn't until the Amiga was almost done that the PC was in ANY way competing. I could list a load of platformers that a 386DX would have struggled with, but I don't need to bother.

Indy 500 was indeed on the Amiga, better sound on the Amiga obviously, but slightly slower running speed, though much improved on A1200.

As for your woeful Wolfenstein/Doom comparisons, i'd love to see a 14Mhz PC try any of those games..... Amiga didn't do badly at all recreating an environment it was designed to do.

Your Turrican 2 claims are also a misnomer. Amiga version was released in 1991, PC version didn't arrive until 1994, the graphics in the PC version are a DIFFERENT STYLE, that doesn't equate to 'better', or do you doubt the Amiga couldn't do that very Rico Holmes graphic style so often seen in Team 17 games... its really nothing special.

This music is also the same... I don't see how the 'same' can be 'better'.

And hey, well done to the PC for eventually realising a version of Turrican 2 precisely 3 years later, that it only used the processor to do it all isn't quite so impressive as to why it took so long!

Most of your 'brags' and 'boasts' about the PC are for games that came many years later than the originals on Amiga, the fact is, at the time when many of the Amiga versions were released, the PC simply couldn't cope.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Jgames

Now to plateforme/action games:
- A lot of very good appoge games (commander keen), that ran on 286 pcs (the scrolling was not perfect, but was pleasant to the eyes anymay), and were for the most part better than many many plateform amiga games)
- Gods is on par with the amiga version (graphics and animations mostly identical), the pc version lacks the scrolling help text, and the animated inventory.
- Mortal Kombat on a 486dx 25 pc was better than on the amiga! (i would say, it was nearly arcade perfect!)
- Jazz jack rabbit had silk smooth 60hz animations, mod style music and ran 100% on my 386.

Apogee games... Good laugh if you were used to Amiga games. Also please note that the games you listed as superior versions all came after the Amiga was 'dead'. Platformers and Shoot 'em Ups were the reason to use an Amiga and the PC took ages to keep up in that department.
To ease your pain I have to say that indeed VGA graphics and the increased CPU speed made RPGs, adventures and simulations better on the PC. The sound (until CDs became popular) is debatable though.

[Galahad/FLT]

Also 50Hz and 60Hz screen rates were not exactly alien to the Amiga either! Sigh

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Sorry, thats just such a lot of PC loving waffle!

Yeah, i just loved playing and programming on the pc, i am not the only one i think!

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Mortal Kombat did have a little more in it that i'll grant you, the music however was diabolical, managing to be slightly worse than the Megadrive version!

Agree on the music. All fm music on the pc sounds bad.

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Sorry, platformers? It wasn't until the Amiga was almost done that the PC was in ANY way competing. I could list a load of platformers that a 386DX would have struggled with, but I don't need to bother.

Agree, parallax scrolls are hard to do on a pc on VGA mode 13, but using the modex vga graphic mode, they are no longer an issue (T2, jazz, earthworm jim, pitfall for example), ok they are late, because the modex graphics programming didn't widespread until late into the 486 life;

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

As for your woeful Wolfenstein/Doom comparisons, i'd love to see a 14Mhz PC try any of those games..... Amiga didn't do badly at all recreating an environment it was designed to do.

I played wolf3d on a 286 sx16 mhz, it played perfect!, i am sure it would play as well on a 286 sx 12.
Doom can't work on a 286, this is for sure.

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

And hey, well done to the PC for eventually realising a version of Turrican 2 precisely 3 years later, that it only used the processor to do it all isn't quite so impressive as to why it took so long!

It can't be done on a 1991 pc with programming the VGA mode 13, but after modex went public, it was not an issue anymore (scrolls and parallaxes)

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Most of your 'brags' and 'boasts' about the PC are for games that came many years later than the originals on Amiga, the fact is, at the time when many of the Amiga versions were released, the PC simply couldn't cope.

For plateform games with parallaxes, and for audio i grant you that; but for rpg/adventure games, the VGA, the harddrive and cpu power made a big difference.

[Tom Walker]

Originally Posted by Jgames

Agree, parallax scrolls are hard to do on a pc on VGA mode 13, but using the modex vga graphic mode, they are no longer an issue (T2, jazz, earthworm jim, pitfall for example), ok they are late, because the modex graphics programming didn't widespread until late into the 486 life;

Mode-X was common from about 1991 onwards - using mode-X hardware scrolling/screen splitting/page flipping was the only was to get fast VGA on 286 and 386 with ISA. Later on platformers and others did parallax scrolling by rendering in memory and just copying to the VGA in mode 13h, this usually wound up needing something daft like a 486/33 and a local bus graphics card for a platformer.

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Mode-X was common from about 1991 onwards - using mode-X hardware scrolling/screen splitting/page flipping was the only was to get fast VGA on 286 and 386 with ISA. Later on platformers and others did parallax scrolling by rendering in memory and just copying to the VGA in mode 13h, this usually wound up needing something daft like a 486/33 and a local bus graphics card for a platformer.

name a VGA 1991-1992 platformer with modex?,

I don't think they were many at that time, as the first article making modex accessible to the large public was in 1991 by michael abrash on DDJ.

T2, Jazz, epic pinball, earthworm, pitfall and many others were modex and it shows in their graphics (320*240) and animation (perfectly fluid (page flipping))
The ones that did not do modex, did double buffering with mode 13, were 320*200, and the animation was not 100% fluid, i can give you examples(
cool spot, oscar, trolls, soccer kid, nicky boom, ssf2t etc...)

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Mode-X was common from about 1991 onwards - using mode-X hardware scrolling/screen splitting/page flipping was the only was to get fast VGA on 286 and 386 with ISA.

EGA games used page flipping in 16 colors mode, but this was not modex.

[Tom Walker]

Originally Posted by Jgames

name a VGA 1991-1992 platformer with modex?,

Mobygames reckons The Humans and Krusty's Fun House were 1992, so if they are then them. Though almost every VGA game used mode-X back then (even things like Jill of the Jungle), as it allowed page flipping and fast VRAM->VRAM copies. Even Wolf 3D, come to think of it, was mode-X.

T2, Jazz, epic pinball, earthworm, pitfall and many others were modex and it shows in their graphics (320*240) and animation (perfectly fluid (page flipping))

Jazz doesn't run perfectly fluid on anything less than a 486/50 - it drops frames all over the place. Pitfall doesn't exist for DOS, and the Windows version doesn't use mode-X as it's not possible there (at least not with any speed). I'm pretty certain Earthworm Jim runs in mode 13h, and needs a decent local bus 486.

The ones that did not do modex, did double buffering with mode 13, were 320*200, and the animation was not 100% fluid, i can give you examples(cool spot, oscar, trolls, soccer kid, nicky boom, ssf2t etc...)

Many mode-X games ran in 320x200 (eg Jazz did). Out of your list, I can say that Soccer Kid is mode-X and does hardware scrolling at 60fps on a 386. Not sure about Cool Spot, it's probably just badly coded mode-X. And I've never played the rest.

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Though almost every VGA game used mode-X back then

I doubt that very much, they were using the slow VGA mode 13;
Give me proofs that for example:
Gods, nicky boom, joe and mac, prehistorik, wrath of the demon were modex; i seriously doubt that.

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Jazz doesn't run perfectly fluid on anything less than a 486/50 - it drops frames all over the place.

On my 386dx40 it runs silk smooth with music enabled, no frame dropping.

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Out of your list, I can say that Soccer Kid is mode-X and does hardware scrolling at 60fps on a 386.

Didn't tried soccer kid to be honest, but from what i saw on magazines, it was like 320*200 graphics, so most probably video mode 13, again if the game does only one scroll with no parallax, it can be mode 13 and smooth, like superforg was and chaos engine, super smooth, and i think not modex.

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

I'm pretty certain Earthworm Jim runs in mode 13h, and needs a decent local bus 486.

Maybe, as i saw it on 486dx2 computer.

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Mobygames reckons The Humans and Krusty's Fun House were 1992, so if they are then them.

Actually, the dedicated pages list them as released in 1993:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/humans
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/krustys-fun-house

Although they have 1992 displayed in search result listings

I'll try to ask on the moby forums if this is supposed to happen or a bug or leftover after some corrections.

Also, specifically for The Humans, the first screenshot states 1992, but I suppose it refers to the date of the copyright for the original game, not of the PC conversion.



And to please lopos2000, since this is a thread about Richard Costello and nothing else, hello Richard Costello.

[Tom Walker]

Originally Posted by Jgames

I doubt that very much, they were using the slow VGA mode 13;
Give me proofs that for example:
Gods, nicky boom, joe and mac, prehistorik, wrath of the demon were modex; i seriously doubt that.

I just tested all those on PCem.
Gods, Nicky Boom and Prehistorik all run in 16-colour mode.
Joe & Mac and Wrath of the Demon all run in 256-colour mode with chain-4 disabled, ie mode-X.

On my 386dx40 it runs silk smooth with music enabled, no frame dropping.

On my 386DX/40 it drops enough frames to be noticeable.

Didn't tried soccer kid to be honest, but from what i saw on magazines, it was like 320*200 graphics, so most probably video mode 13, again if the game does only one scroll with no parallax, it can be mode 13 and smooth,

Nope, definitely mode-X. Remember, ISA VGA cards are slow, most will struggle to do more than 2mb/sec, and some are slower in mode 13h than in all other modes (due to the layout of the mode). Scrolling 320x200 at 60fps needs at least twice that, on ISA it just can't be done. And Soccer Kid is 60fps on ISA.

like superforg was and chaos engine, super smooth, and i think not modex.

Fairly certain Superfrog is mode-X, and I think Chaos Engine is 16-colour.

Actually, the dedicated pages list them as released in 1993:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/humans
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/krustys-fun-house

Although they have 1992 displayed in search result listings

Seems to be different years for different countries.

Just to remind everyone, This thread is about Ricardo not PC vs Amiga.

Maybe a thread split would be sensible?

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

I just tested all those on PCem.
Gods, Nicky Boom and Prehistorik all run in 16-colour mode.

I don't understand the 16 colour mode? those games are VGA, thus potentially 256 colours?

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Joe & Mac and Wrath of the Demon all run in 256-colour mode with chain-4 disabled, ie mode-X.

How did you know they are modex?

[Tom Walker]

Originally Posted by Jgames

I don't understand the 16 colour mode? those games are VGA, thus potentially 256 colours?

Loads of old VGA games run in EGA 16-colour mode, but use the VGA's extended palette (so 16 out of 262144 instead of 16 out of 16). A lot of these will be EGA/VGA selectable, with the only difference being the colour palette used.

This is done for reasons of both memory and speed.

How did you know they are modex?

Because the emulator register logs show the games turning off chain-4, which is how you enter mode-X.

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Seems to be different years for different countries

You are right. I did not think of that. The Released section should give the first release date rather than the date for the majority of releases (supposing this is what is done. I'll investigate a bit on this as I never really paid attention to that previously).

[Jgames]

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Loads of old VGA games run in EGA 16-colour mode, but use the VGA's extended palette (so 16 out of 262144 instead of 16 out of 16). A lot of these will be EGA/VGA selectable, with the only difference being the colour palette used.

So Gods in VGA has 16 colours anytime on screen? so xenon2? (hard to beleive )

Originally Posted by Tom Walker

Because the emulator register logs show the games turning off chain-4, which is how you enter mode-X.

Thanks, if you could see if chaos engine/mortal kombat/ssf2t/oscar/soccer kid/xenon2 modex also, while you're at it