NeoGeo Metal Slug conversion to Amiga 500 - madman task ;-)

[sandruzzo]

I think that with some cuts, we can have a great port to A500

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

I think that with some cuts, we can have a great port to A500

It would need to be cut so much that it wouldnt do the Amiga or game justice.

[Retro1234]

Metal Slug is so unique the only way it would work is if someone worked with AnimaInCorpore otherwise just forget it don't even try to replecat because it won't work, and if you think it will it won't

[Tigerskunk]

yeah, it would have been cool to have some Metal Slug port back in the day.

Nowadays, who'd want to spend 2 years working on this and then get flak, because the result will probably look impressive for an amiga, but under par compared to other systems of the day, including SNES and Mega Drive.

I mean, do whatever you wanna do. It's your time.
I just know why I won't be touching this with a ten foot pole.

[saimon69]

Lots of people put down the 25fps but considered the amount and size of stuff we were able to move on Powder, 16 colors no-dual-playfield, some palette tricks and 25fps, if used good is not a bad solution at all...

[donnie]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

An absolute joke compared to the libraries of the SNES and Megadrive. As is the hardware capabilities.

Speedball II - 25fps
Golden Axe - A poor conversion compared to the Megadrive.
Chaos Engine - More 25fps ST shovelware.
Stardust - Simply too difficult to be called enjoyable.
Hybris/Battle Squadron - Two of the very best shmups on the Amiga, sadly they suck compared to MANY Megadrive shooters.
Shadow of the Beast - Impressive graphics/sound, basically unplayable game. Rubbish.
Superfrog - Yeah, compare to Sonic 3 and see what a pile of shit this game is.
Shadow Fighter - Can hardly be compared to almost arcade perfect ports of SSF2T and Ultimate MK3, can it?

We all love the Amiga but let's not make it out to be something it wasn't. It simply wasn't a great machine for games. The consoles absolutely ANNIHILATED it in the games department.

No, that is your opinion. And i completely disagree.


And amiga had completely different type of games library.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by donnie

And amiga had completely different type of games library.

I concur in that most games I was interested in that time were stuff like Bards Tale, Interceptor, Starglider 2, Eye of the Beholder, etc...

OCS would have needed a 4-2 Bitplane split in dual playfield and 32 px wide sprites for proper arcade ports of anything after 1986, though.

[roondar]

The Amiga was a great machine for games.

That the 16 bit consoles turned out to do better at arcade ports should not surprise anyone considering they where released 3 to 5 years after the original Amiga. Given Moore's Law and the 'minor' advantage of those machines having VRAM (which was very new, insanely expensive and completely out of reach of consumer level hardware when the Amiga was first released and thus rightly not used in the Amiga), it's pretty impressive the Amiga got as close to them as it did.

There are actually plenty of 50FPS games on the system that are in fact great fun to play. I could name Sensible Soccer or Cannon Fodder as two examples. And if you feel games must be Japanese or 60Hz to count, then please tell me how Dynablaster is not f-ing great? There are many more games to name, but the point should be clear - the notion that the Amiga didn't have great games is nonsense.

Oh and of course, as mentioned, there are also all the non-arcade games that were great to play as well

[sandruzzo]

a simple teach demo can de done on Amiga to see what can be archived

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

a simple teach demo can de done on Amiga to see what can be archived

Sandruzzo - You're an Amiga programmer, Why is it you think that a "simple tech" demo can be achieved on the A500 of Metal Slug? Honestly there is no point in doing it and would be a waste of time.

If we were still in the early 90's and selling thousands of copies of the game to unwitting Amiga owners was at stake then yes it would be worth doing it but we are not in that era any more and you would likely be responsible for the worst arcade port to ever be done (even worse than Rolling Thunder, Outrun, Shinobi etc)

I am all for porting arcade games, but porting NeoGeo titles to the Amiga, even if a tech demo just is not achievable as the machines are in two different generations.

A port today needs to be marginally achievable for it to be a success, otherwise it just gives people firepower to shoot at hobby developers and the legacy of the Amiga.

Here's some tech specs of the NEOGEO which was released in 1994 and even at the time was an astronomical price, an Amiga released in 1984-1992 simply would not do itself any justice in comparison.

CPU
Main CPU processor: Motorola 68000 (often a second sourced version, usually by Toshiba or Hitachi) @ 12 MHz (16/32-bit instructions @ 1.75 MIPS[25])
CPU co-processor: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz (also used as audio controller) (8/16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS[25])
RAM
RAM: 214 KB SRAM[26]

Main 68000 RAM: 64 KB (32 KB SRAM ×2)
Video RAM: 84 KB SRAM
Main VRAM: 64 KB (32 KB SRAM ×2)
Palette memory: 16 KB (8 KB SRAM ×2)
Fast video sprite RAM: 4 KB (2 KB SRAM ×2)
Z80 sound RAM: 2 KB SRAM
Battery-backup save NVRAM: 64 KB SRAM
On-board ROM: 512 KB[26]

Zoom look-up table: 128 KB
Fix layer graphics: 128 KB
Z80 sound: 128 KB
68000 BIOS: 128 KB
Display
The SNK custom video chipset allows the system to draw sprites in vertical strips which are 16 pixels wide, and can be 16 to 512 pixels tall; it can draw up to 96 sprites per scanline for a total of 380 sprites on the screen at a time. Unlike most other video game consoles of its time, the Neo Geo does not use scrolling tilemap background layers. Instead, it has a single non-scrolling tilemap layer called the fix layer, while any scrolling layers rely exclusively on drawing sprites to create the scrolling backgrounds (like the Sega Y Board). By laying multiple sprites side by side, the system can simulate a tilemap background layer. The Neo Geo sprite system represents a step between conventional sprites and tilemaps.[26]

GPU chipset:[27]
SNK LSPC2-A2 (line sprite generator & VRAM interface) @ 24 MHz[26]
SNK PRO-B0 (palette arbiter)[28]
SNK PRO-A0, NEO-B1, NEO-GRC[29]
GPU graphics data bus: 24-bit [30][31]
Display resolution: 320×224 px (many games only use the centermost 304 px),[26] progressive scan
Color palette: 65,536 (16-bit) (not RGB565, but RGB666, where the lowest bit of each channel is shared with one bit)[26]
Maximum colors on screen: 4096 (12-bit)
Maximum sprites on screen: 380
Minimum sprite size: 16×16 px
Maximum sprite size: 16×512 px
Maximum sprites per scanline: 96
Maximum sprite pixels per scanline: 1536 px[26]
Static tilemap plane: 1 (512×256 px fix layer)[26]
Scrolling tilemap planes: 1-3 (optional, using sprites), with line & column scroll effects[26][32]
Aspect ratio: 4:3
A/V output: RF, composite video/RCA audio, RGB (with separate 21 pin RGB cable FCG-9, or European standard RGB SCART cable).

In my opinion it would be best to concentrate on ports that were done shoddy for the Amiga (like those mentioned), in fact there is a thread already about ports.

The community seem to want a good port of Double Dragon which is in my opinion very achievable so if you were to attempt a port then go for that one rather than something insane like Metal Slug which with due respect - would never come to fruition.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Sandruzzo - You're an Amiga programmer, Why is it you think that a "simple tech" demo can be achieved on the A500 of Metal Slug? Honestly there is no point in doing it and would be a waste of time.

If we were still in the early 90's and selling thousands of copies of the game to unwitting Amiga owners was at stake then yes it would be worth doing it but we are not in that era any more and you would likely be responsible for the worst arcade port to ever be done (even worse than Rolling Thunder, Outrun, Shinobi etc)

I am all for porting arcade games, but porting NeoGeo titles to the Amiga, even if a tech demo just is not achievable as the machines are in two different generations.

A port today needs to be marginally achievable for it to be a success, otherwise it just gives people firepower to shoot at hobby developers and the legacy of the Amiga.

Here's some tech specs of the NEOGEO which was released in 1994 and even at the time was an astronomical price, an Amiga released in 1984-1992 simply would not do itself any justice in comparison.

CPU
Main CPU processor: Motorola 68000 (often a second sourced version, usually by Toshiba or Hitachi) @ 12 MHz (16/32-bit instructions @ 1.75 MIPS[25])
CPU co-processor: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz (also used as audio controller) (8/16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS[25])
RAM
RAM: 214 KB SRAM[26]

Main 68000 RAM: 64 KB (32 KB SRAM ×2)
Video RAM: 84 KB SRAM
Main VRAM: 64 KB (32 KB SRAM ×2)
Palette memory: 16 KB (8 KB SRAM ×2)
Fast video sprite RAM: 4 KB (2 KB SRAM ×2)
Z80 sound RAM: 2 KB SRAM
Battery-backup save NVRAM: 64 KB SRAM
On-board ROM: 512 KB[26]

Zoom look-up table: 128 KB
Fix layer graphics: 128 KB
Z80 sound: 128 KB
68000 BIOS: 128 KB
Display
The SNK custom video chipset allows the system to draw sprites in vertical strips which are 16 pixels wide, and can be 16 to 512 pixels tall; it can draw up to 96 sprites per scanline for a total of 380 sprites on the screen at a time. Unlike most other video game consoles of its time, the Neo Geo does not use scrolling tilemap background layers. Instead, it has a single non-scrolling tilemap layer called the fix layer, while any scrolling layers rely exclusively on drawing sprites to create the scrolling backgrounds (like the Sega Y Board). By laying multiple sprites side by side, the system can simulate a tilemap background layer. The Neo Geo sprite system represents a step between conventional sprites and tilemaps.[26]

GPU chipset:[27]
SNK LSPC2-A2 (line sprite generator & VRAM interface) @ 24 MHz[26]
SNK PRO-B0 (palette arbiter)[28]
SNK PRO-A0, NEO-B1, NEO-GRC[29]
GPU graphics data bus: 24-bit [30][31]
Display resolution: 320×224 px (many games only use the centermost 304 px),[26] progressive scan
Color palette: 65,536 (16-bit) (not RGB565, but RGB666, where the lowest bit of each channel is shared with one bit)[26]
Maximum colors on screen: 4096 (12-bit)
Maximum sprites on screen: 380
Minimum sprite size: 16×16 px
Maximum sprite size: 16×512 px
Maximum sprites per scanline: 96
Maximum sprite pixels per scanline: 1536 px[26]
Static tilemap plane: 1 (512×256 px fix layer)[26]
Scrolling tilemap planes: 1-3 (optional, using sprites), with line & column scroll effects[26][32]
Aspect ratio: 4:3
A/V output: RF, composite video/RCA audio, RGB (with separate 21 pin RGB cable FCG-9, or European standard RGB SCART cable).

In my opinion it would be best to concentrate on ports that were done shoddy for the Amiga (like those mentioned), in fact there is a thread already about ports.

The community seem to want a good port of Double Dragon which is in my opinion very achievable so if you were to attempt a port then go for that one rather than something insane like Metal Slug which with due respect - would never come to fruition.

Sometime is good to programm just for fun. I don't like a lots porting, i prefer design game around Amiga HW. But like i said having fun it's the fire of our passion: make game!

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by donnie

No, that is your opinion. And i completely disagree.

Not opinion, fact. Time to take off the rose tinted glasses and see most Amiga games for the complete pieces of shit that they were.

Originally Posted by roondar

The Amiga was a great machine for games.

Right. Thats why most games run at 25 fps, or in some cases even lower... The A500 couldn't even manage to run a basic platformer like Fire & Ice at 50fps for christ's sake. Pathetically underpowered.

Don't get me wrong though. There are some AMAZING games on the Amiga. There's just not very many of them.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Not opinion, fact. Time to take off the rose tinted glasses and see most Amiga games for the complete pieces of shit that they were.

Whether a game is 'complete shit' or not is almost always subjective. Facts generally do not come into it.

Case in point: you keep picking examples of games that in your eyes are poor and pretending that these games are objectively poor when they often happen to highly regarded and thus clearly not objectively poor.

You keep doing this - claiming that games you don't like are in some way factually poor when it's just your opinion and nothing more.

Right. Thats why most games run at 25 fps, or in some cases even lower... The A500 couldn't even manage to run a basic platformer like Fire & Ice at 50fps for christ's sake.

Yes it could, it had a number of platformers running at 50FPS, including a bunch that utilized two layers. That your example isn't part of that list doesn't change the facts in any way.

Pathetically underpowered.

Absolute nonsense. Incorrectly utilized maybe. But not pathetically underpowered. Specs & results wise, it eats the competition that was available when it was released for breakfast.

That consoles released several years later do better is to be expected and claiming the Amiga specs are poor because of the MD & SNES is, IMHO, extremely silly. You don't strike me as someone who doesn't understand these basic facts of how technology works, so I'm rather surprised you keep doing this.

Don't get me wrong though. There are some AMAZING games on the Amiga. There's just not very many of them.

The same goes for all platforms. To drive this point home: the vast, vast majority of Sega Megadrive & Super Nintendo games are junk. There are a few really good games on there, but like all systems the rest of them are utterly forgettable.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by roondar

Case in point: you keep picking examples of games that in your eyes are poor and pretending that these games are objectively poor when they often happen to highly regarded and thus clearly not objectively poor.

Anything that runs at less than 50fps is "objectively" crap.

Originally Posted by roondar

Yes it could, it had a number of platformers running at 50FPS, including a bunch that utilized two layers. That your example isn't part of that list doesn't change the facts in any way.

My example was about Fire & Ice. A game that should have ran at 50fps without the Amiga breaking a sweat. Yet it didn't. Poor coding? Maybe, but this is Andrew Braybrook we're talking about. Hardly an amateur.

Originally Posted by roondar

Absolute nonsense. Incorrectly utilized maybe. But not pathetically underpowered. Specs & results wise, it eats the competition that was available when it was released for breakfast.

Specs wise maybe. But give me a Sega Master System or NES over an Amiga for gaming any day of the week.

Originally Posted by roondar

That consoles released several years later do better is to be expected and claiming the Amiga specs are poor because of the MD & SNES is, IMHO, extremely silly. You don't strike me as someone who doesn't understand these basic facts of how technology works, so I'm rather surprised you keep doing this.

I am not claiming the Amiga specs are poor when compared to MD and SNES. Everyone already knows they are. What I am claiming, is that the quality of games on those two consoles is in a completely different league. Even if the Megadrive had identical specs to the Amiga, the games would be far superior.

Originally Posted by roondar

The same goes for all platforms. To drive this point home: the vast, vast majority of Sega Megadrive & Super Nintendo games are junk. There are a few really good games on there, but like all systems the rest of them are utterly forgettable.

I agree the same goes for all platforms. But remove all the shit games, crap arcade conversions, and 25fps ST shovelware and there's not an awful lot left on the Amiga.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Anything that runs at less than 50fps is "objectively" crap.

Which is why the various cross-platform 'top 100/200/500 games of all time' lists are littered with games that run at less than 50FPS. Heck, there's at least one 1985ish Arcade game that just about everyone considers to be an absolute classic, while it only runs at 30FPS. As such, I'm going to disagree here: there is nothing 'objective' about your 50FPS standard for games.

Don't get me wrong here, if you feel that 50FPS is needed for a game to be considered good that's your business. But such a position being objectively true? Nope, sorry.

My example was about Fire & Ice. A game that should have ran at 50fps without the Amiga breaking a sweat. Yet it didn't. Poor coding? Maybe, but this is Andrew Braybrook we're talking about. Hardly an amateur.

And my point is that singling out a game is irrelevant, as there are plenty of very similar games that do in fact run at 50FPS.

Now, we could have an in-depth discussion about why Fire & Ice doesn't run at full frame rate and whether or not Andrew Braybrook did a good job here, but it's ultimately irrelevant - if you want 50FPS platformers on the Amiga, there's plenty of them to choose from.

Specs wise maybe. But give me a Sega Master System or NES over an Amiga for gaming any day of the week.

There is no maybe involved in terms of specs.

Also, please don't change the subject here - the part I quoted was one were you were talking about specs and other technical stuff. Thus, I answered about specs. But now you suddenly shift to 'I like the games available on consoles better'. Discussing game quality is obviously also fine, but not relevant when the thing we're talking about is specs.

I am not claiming the Amiga specs are poor when compared to MD and SNES. Everyone already knows they are. What I am claiming, is that the quality of games on those two consoles is in a completely different league. Even if the Megadrive had identical specs to the Amiga, the games would be far superior.

When it comes to console games and their quality* (I'm including the 8 bit ones here), I'd say that you're overstating the quality difference by quite a bit. Not only are these 'classics' few and far between, but the average console game is not 'high quality'. There is an insane amount of shovelware for all the 16 bit consoles. People just remember the few good games and forget how bad it really was.

As for quality* games on the Amiga, IMHO there are more than a few that easily rival any console game for 'quality'. And that's not even me going into the games (and even genres) that are great and yet not available at all on the consoles. You know, all the more in depth, non-arcade games you never seem to want consider.

*) this all assumes you can objectively determine quality, which I find a rather doubtful proposition to begin with.

I agree the same goes for all platforms. But remove all the shit games, crap arcade conversions, and 25fps ST shovelware and there's not an awful lot left on the Amiga.

Indeed, no more than a hundred games or so out of the thousands available. Which is pretty comparable to the number console 'gems' per system.

---
Anyway, I'm more than willing to discuss this further, but I don't think this is the thread for it. Should you want to reply, I'd suggest opening a thread for it so that we don't clutter this one. Apologies for the Bold bit, it's only there because I tend to create walls of text and people sometimes miss parts of my rambling

---
Now, on topic:

To be fair, this thread is a rather silly one to begin with. A game like Metal Slug is great because of all the parts coming together. Converting it so it runs well enough on any of the many, many weaker systems always leads to fairly uninspired results (IMHO). Those conversions might be good games, but they clearly 'miss' part of what made the original great.

I'd never try converting this to the Amiga. No one would be happy with the results.

[Retro-Nerd]

Apidya scrolling in 25fps is just fine. Just to prove this bullshit. Faster scrolling games though need 50fps or it looks ghosted/smeared like Wolfchild or Ruff'n Tumble.

[Hewitson]

Appreciate your replies roondar, always interesting to read your posts. Point taken about creating another thread for the discussion and mods please feel free to move irrelevant posts.

Retro-Nerd: Apidya may scroll at 25fps but I believe the rest of the game runs at 50.

[Retro-Nerd]

Apidya objects are probably 50fps. But according to Chrille there are other 25fps scrolling parts, some of the mid boss/end boss stuff iirc.

[zero]

Metal Slug has plenty of slow down. In fact, doesn't it run at 30 FPS normally anyway? I don't recall it being that smooth.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by zero

Metal Slug has plenty of slow down. In fact, doesn't it run at 30 FPS normally anyway? I don't recall it being that smooth.

It often slows down to well below that.