Alien Breed 3D 2 TKG

Hello all! Has anyone got AB3D2TKG running at a playable framerate? I know it can be done as I remember my brothers friend having a monster amiga back in the day and it ran very well. When I try the WHDLoad v1.1 it runs smooth for the intro but then in the main game it runs terrible. Talking 5fps if that.

Any tips or settings would be greatful

[trixster]

AB3D2TKG runs very well on hardware with an 040 or better; on 060 at 66mhz+ if flies, especially if you use the patched version. In emulation make sure you are using jit and it will also run very smoothly indeed.

[alexh]

If you can get it to work the RTGMaster patch used to make it "come alive" on my A4000 with PicassoIV

http://aminet.net/package/game/patch/AB3DII_RTG
http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/rtgmaster_user
http://aminet.net/package/driver/audio/ahiusr_4.18
http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/Picasso96

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by trixster

AB3D2TKG runs very well on hardware with an 040 or better; on 060 at 66mhz+ if flies, especially if you use the patched version. In emulation make sure you are using jit and it will also run very smoothly indeed.

I wouldn't say it "runs very well" on 040 (more like "OK") but then again you didn't specify if you mean running it at 1x1 or some degraded setting (1x2, 2x1, 2x2)
I played it on 060 back in the day, then I tried it on 040 years later, then back to 060 and IMHO you need a 060 to enjoy it properly on an A1200 even with patched C2P routine.

Disclaimer: Never tried the RTG version as I only had AGA;

And these days, the Vampire is there to give you some new options to explore...

[alexh]

You would have thought that WinUAE/FS-UAE should be able to get close to Vampire in terms of performance with a modern PC/Mac x86 behind it?

[ Show youtube player ]

[trixster]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

I wouldn't say it "runs very well" on 040 (more like "OK") but then again you didn't specify if you mean running it at 1x1 or some degraded setting (1x2, 2x1, 2x2)

Ok, i employed a bit of artistic licence and 'very well' might be stretching it a bit but an 040 certainly was a lot more comfortable than the 28mhz 020s and 50mhz 030s we had back in the day and by Amiga standards full screen at 6 or 8 fps was 'very well'!

Some stuff for me to tinker with for sure.

I thought the same alexh to be honest. I thought I would be able to select A4000 high end settings and it smash it. I'm tempted to delete my FSUAE setup then start again just in case there was a setting I changed and forgot about.

[Dunny]

I ran it back in the day on a Blizzard 1230-IV 50MHz, on an A1200. It ran very well indeed, at least 25FPS - enough for me to be able to finish it.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I ran it back in the day on a Blizzard 1230-IV 50MHz, on an A1200. It ran very well indeed, at least 25FPS - enough for me to be able to finish it.

Graphical settings gave you choices...
Shrink the window and /or run it at 2x2, 2x1, 1x2, 1x1
So stating it ran at 25fps at a certain CPU should be accompanied by info about the graphical settings used to reach this frame rate to be of value

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Graphical settings gave you choices...
Shrink the window and /or run it at 2x2, 2x1, 1x2, 1x1
So stating it ran at 25fps at a certain CPU should be accompanied by info about the graphical settings used to reach this frame rate to be of value

Well, it was fullscreen, no window shrinkage. I may have run it at 2x2, but I'm not sure - it was a long time ago. I do recall having to run Breathless in 2x1 (or 1x2) in order to get a decent framerate, and I'm thinking that AB3D2 was more demanding than that.

[redblade]

Was this game sprite based or polygons?? I'm guessing Polygons??

[Dunny]

For the level geometry, it's polygons but a lot of the non-static stuff is sprites. There are some polygon-based enemies but not very many.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Well, it was fullscreen, no window shrinkage. I may have run it at 2x2, but I'm not sure - it was a long time ago. I do recall having to run Breathless in 2x1 (or 1x2) in order to get a decent framerate, and I'm thinking that AB3D2 was more demanding than that.

I'll bet a dollar it wasnt running great in 1x1 on 030 ;-) But then the framerate would vary dependiong on level , enemies etc..
Ye, the TKG engine was noticably more advanced that Breathless.
What made breathless look good IMO is that they chose fewer but more high res textures for the levels and the mapping simply looked better because it matched the simpler and more limiting level "geometry" better than TKG (but levels *are* visually repetitive).
But breathless is really a simple Doom style engine whereas TKG was probably closer to Quake than Doom, more so than for example DukeNukem 3d.. and it had very irregular level geometry, nicely faked dynamic lightning, reflections...etc..

In Breathless for e.g. you don't even se your own weapon.. not even a sprite.. several of the weponons in TKG are actually true 3d objects (polygonal)...
(Also, Andy Clitheroe was more or less solo on the TKG project at the end, and I doubt he felt like optimizing the hell out of it.
Everyone who has looked at the code has said its "impossible" to do anything with it, so his priority was probably to just make it work and never look back.
For example, it only took a short while before Aki Laukkanen (with help from Mikael Kalms and Jyrki Saarinen) posted a much more effective C2P routine on Aminet.

Anyway, last time I saw TKG run the way we would have loved to see it run back in the day is on the Vampire2 with the latest core. ;-)
Would be interesting to compare speed vs WinUAE running on a low end PC.

Edit: (fixed credits for c2p routine)

[britelite]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Would be interesting to compare speed vs WinUAE running on a low end PC.

Define low end PC. An old Atom N270 based netbook low end enough (as I could try it on one)?

[Dunny]

I have a GPD pocket here that might fit the bill

Hey guys, I started from scratch with FSUAE and deleted and configs etc and tinkered with the settings and I had 8x8 AA enabled which was KILLING performance so I disabled that and also Enabled JIT Compiling. Now we're talking smooth 30fps+ if I go full screen but if I keep it in it's border we're talking 50fps+

I'm running that with A4000 and 3.1 kickstart.

Thanks for the input on this. I love the amiga and grew up with it but never really tinkered. I think I may have to start educating myself with it lol

[alexh]

Did you use the RTG patch or is that the normal AGA mode?

That was the normal AGA mode. I couldn't figure out how to get the RTG patch to run as I havn't installed workbench yet which I assume I need.

[utri007]

There is this :

http://aminet.net/package/game/patch/TKGTurboPatch

It gives noticeable speed up to AB2 TKG, but it requires original (unpacthed) game files, so it is not useable in most of cases. I think that very few people has actually used/tested it. It doesn't even remove copy protection.

Would it be possible that somebody could aply those patches to tkg's exe?? so that it would be possible whdloadize it?

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by britelite

Define low end PC. An old Atom N270 based netbook low end enough (as I could try it on one)?

Yea ok that was a bit vague, i had my own "nearly obsolete" third PC in mind.. But that wasnt really interesting, I guess what I actually wanted to say was "at what spec does a PC + WinUAE outperform a Vampire with Gold 2.7 core.