Terraria on Amiga

[TCD]

Okay, seems like we got two contenders to put Terraria A500 to a test!

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

here we go with the focusing on details already!

the graphics just look the same as Superfrog to me, anyway. and what's so special about the sound effects?

I can't help myself, always with the details.. I don't find any thing special about the graphics either, although I would say it's style is quite unique.. Certainly not comparable to Superfrog in the way it looks. And as for the sound effects, again nothing special just lot's of them. And if were still talking about running in 1MB then all that stuff will soon add up.

[Mrs Beanbag]

it'll have to wait until i get my accelerator fixed.

well it'll have to be Terraria A1200 if it's from me, anyway.

[Thorham]

Perhaps an A1200 with some trapdoor fastmem and an HD would be more suitable, but indeed, nothing an Amiga couldn't handle. The peecee version has ridiculous requirements, of course, but that's just because of the lazy/shitty coding job they did. Means nothing.

Tone down the number of colors a bit (designing better graphics using fewer colors would be even better) and it probably is pretty easy to make.

[Mrs Beanbag]

i wouldn't bother going for a "conversion", just make a similar style of game, that way we can fit it to our hardware limitations without being accused of changing things. i'd use 16x16 blocks rather than 8x8, for starters.

call it Amigaland or something.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Perhaps an A1200 with some trapdoor fastmem and an HD would be more suitable, but indeed, nothing an Amiga couldn't handle. The peecee version has ridiculous requirements, of course, but that's just because of the lazy/shitty coding job they did. Means nothing.

Tone down the number of colors a bit (designing better graphics using fewer colors would be even better) and it probably is pretty easy to make.

Contender number three? I really see why people think it's 'pretty easy to convert', but I'd really like any of them to actually just make a 'proof of concept'. I'll keep an eye on this thread

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

i wouldn't bother going for a "conversion"

But isn't that the point of this thread?

[lordofchaos]

I think Galahad threw down the gauntlet with his first statement? Terraria on 1MB A500, you got to be twisting my melon man! Let's see some proof Ok wishful thinking perhaps.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

Terraria on 1MB A500, you got to be twisting my melon man!

Perhaps that's a bit too optimistic. But have you seen the peecee specs? 1.5 gigahertz

When you throw AGA+50 mhz 68030+16mb RAM at it you can probably make a better game. Not that I've played the actual game, but judging from the video I watched, it's almost a glorified level editor.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Thorham

When you throw AGA+50 mhz 68030+16mb RAM at it you can probably make a better game. Not that I've played the actual game, but judging from the video I watched, it's almost a glorified level editor.

I actually would love to see any kind of 'port' to an Amiga. I have the PC version to check if a test is needed

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by TCD

But isn't that the point of this thread?

I don't know i didn't see the word "conversion" used, when someone says something like "could you do Terraria on the Amiga" i tend to read it as "could you do a game like Terraria on the Amiga".

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Perhaps that's a bit too optimistic. But have you seen the peecee specs? 1.5 gigahertz

When you throw AGA+50 mhz 68030+16mb RAM at it you can probably make a better game. Not that I've played the actual game, but judging from the video I watched, it's almost a glorified level editor.

That sounds more like it, I think the logistical side of getting all the game mechanics to work might prove the most difficult, the sheer amount of crafting variations.. I have the game on ps3, it's not too bad for killing a few hours here and there.

Originally Posted by TCD

I actually would love to see any kind of 'port' to an Amiga. I have the PC version to check if a test is needed

+1

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

the sheer amount of crafting variations..

What numbers are we talking about?

[lordofchaos]

Don't know exact numbers, but looking at the wiki should give you a rough idea.

http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Recipes
http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Crafting_station

A mountain of work if ever I saw one. Probably best to cull most of the functionality/crafting options and keep it simple. Terraria-Lite.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

I don't know i didn't see the word "conversion" used, when someone says something like "could you do Terraria on the Amiga" i tend to read it as "could you do a game like Terraria on the Amiga".

Okay, then how do you define "a game like Terraria on the Amiga"? The thread title says "Terraria on Amiga" which implies a conversion in my opinion.

[Codetapper]

What exactly is the context of this completely random thread without any kind of link/video? Has someone in the press said it couldn't be done? A new version released or someone boasted they could do it on an A500 or something?

To me it's as random as me just replacing Terraria with "Grand Theft Auto" or any other random game and opening up a thread without any context. So what's so special about this game?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

Don't know exact numbers, but looking at the wiki should give you a rough idea.

http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Recipes
http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Crafting_station

A mountain of work if ever I saw one. Probably best to cull most of the functionality/crafting options and keep it simple. Terraria-Lite.

Not really. You have those lists that tell you the ingredients for each item. Those lists simply need to be converted, and that's pretty easy. All you have to do is convert the item names to tokens. A simply hash table will help you do that quickly.

What's more work is assigning the right function to each item, but it's obviously not too much to handle for an A500. Such a list is nothing for an A500. You can easily have all those recipes, and have a nice (and fast) search feature, too.

Really, you're overestimating this. Doing the whole game might be a little much for an A500, but those crafting options sure aren't.

Terraria Light would only make the Amiga look bad, and there's absolutely no need for a functionally stripped down version.

Edit: Source code is available!

[Leffmann]

I think what lordofchaos and Dunny are getting is that it's not just about the speed of the CPU and Blitter and things like that, but that it's easy to underestimate the amount of work needed to finish a game like this.

This is in my opinion what separates the good programmers from the "coders"; the "coder" looks at micro-optimizations and other minute details, failing to see the bigger aspects of the software, while the good programmer has the mindset needed to correctly plan and estimate the process, requirements, tools, and methodologies required to actually see the project through.

It's really easy to dive into a project, even before you've failed completely to estimate its size.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

I think what lordofchaos and Dunny are getting is that it's not just about the speed of the CPU and Blitter and things like that, but that it's easy to underestimate the amount of work needed to finish a game like this.

Writing a complete piece of software is always a lot of work. In this case, a lot of work would go into the items. However, the decompiled C# source code is available, and this makes getting all the items and crafting recipes into a port MUCH easier.

See here: https://github.com/dptug/Terraria

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by TCD

Okay, then how do you define "a game like Terraria on the Amiga"? The thread title says "Terraria on Amiga" which implies a conversion in my opinion.

Well, you know, the same sort of game, with the same kind of rules and a similar aesthetic style. It doesn't have to be an attempt to literally copy it (which would be a copyright violation in any case). I just don't know why you would do that in this case, when you can easily just play the original. Why not just take inspiration from Terraria's game mechanics and style, and make something original that's a best fit to the Amiga's capabilities?

(Also i think it quite strange that anyone would worry about "making the Amiga look bad" by not being able to do an exact conversion of a game from 2011 on 1987 hardware)

tbh i get the impression Terraria doesn't do anything an Amiga can't do, only that it does everything on such a massive scale. Even a "small" Terraria map, for instance, is 4200x1200 blocks, which if it were 1 byte per block would take 5Mb in memory. So i kind of agree with Lordofchaos, we should start with a simpler game "of this sort", but i wouldn't even pretend that it was a conversion. Perhaps then the game engine can be expanded later and work towards a full implementation of Terraria later on but it would be better to start small and get something complete, than to start something huge for it to be in a perpetual state of incompleteness. (I know that from hard experience now.)

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

(Also i think it quite strange that anyone would worry about "making the Amiga look bad" by not being able to do an exact conversion of a game from 2011 on 1987 hardware)

I was referring to leaving out most of the crafting recipes (and therefore items). Yes, a Terraria Light would make the Amiga look bad, considering that you can probably do all of the game mechanics properly. It's just not going to look and sound the same. Stripping away such a core element leaves you with a shadow of the original. Also, we're not talking about porting/converting/cloning some 3D game here (even then there are some possibilities, eg Grimrock and similar games).

Also, this game is ridiculously heavy for what it is. It requires 1.6 ghz. That's total and utter madness for something like this. An A500 may be a little on the light side, but really, an A1200 with some fastmem in the trapdoor and an HD/CF should be able to do a very good job here. No need for stripping away core mechanics like crafting.