Relations between Factor 5 and Graftgold?

[vulture]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Brian the Lion for one

Yup, those bonus levels fx were spectacular.

[mc68060]

Originally Posted by vulture

Yup, those bonus levels fx were spectacular.

And Amiga Format gave it 49%, Amiga Power even 42%. Idiots. Brian the Lion is such a polished game. Must have taken immense efforts to take it that far and then you're slapped in the face by arrogant reviewers. No wonder talented people ran frustratedly away from the Amiga in 1994.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Brian the Lion for one

That was developed by Reflections.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

That was developed by Reflections.

Whats that got to do with anything? Every single Reflections game was published by Psygnosis

Psygnosis wrote very few of their own games, most of their Amiga output was by other developers, fact remains, Psygnosis were generally pretty choosy over what they would release.

And even though the majority of their Amiga output was by outside developers, Psygnosis' own staff provided lots of assistance either with graphics artists to help polish a title or provide music, and the majority of those intro sequences were all done in house at Psygnosis.

To suggest that Psygnosis had no influence over the games they published is naive.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

That was developed by Reflections.

...not sure I get your point hewitson?

Last time I checked, Refections only did games with Psygnosis, see here.

Edit: Galahad responded better while I was writing my post...

[vulture]

As Galahad and DamienD said, I really think that when we're talking about Psygnosis games, we're talking about those which were published by the company, similar to Ocean, mainly a publisher, not a developer.

[Predseda]

Okay, then Turrican is from Rainbow Arts and Uridium from Renegade ;-) I am shutting up :-)

[vulture]

I think we're all around here for long enough to not have to get into semantics for such discussions.

[nobody]

Reflections was very close to Psygnossis. I think they also did some games for PS1 for them, maybe more for PS2.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by nobody

Reflections was very close to Psygnossis. I think they also did some games for PS1 for them, maybe more for PS2.

Yes the awesome Destruction Derby was by Reflections, as soon as Sony showed Psygnosis launch games i was sold to the PSX.

[nobody]

Psygnossis was always in charge in my opinion. The graphics style is common at most games so it was done by them. Also Lemmings done by DMA design but features a Beast level and theme. Probably not only publishers but also producers, commisioning and paying for all work by those teams done for them. Just a guess.

[saimon69]

Well, talking about impressive games by Psygnosis, the press release of Aquaventura, albeit unfinished, was DARN impressive for 1988...

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

It means NO - it is unlikely that you will achieve what you're trying to do in a single frame and we (Factor 5) can't think of a way to do it either...

Exactly. Based on Andrew B's words, he's not using the word "pretext" with any negative connotations. I figure you could substitute it with "on the understanding that...". As far as the OP goes, I don't think there was anything "conspiratorial" about the F5 huddle, I just think they needed to hash out the possibilities amongst themselves before giving Graftgold the correct answer - as opposed to making suggestions on-the-fly and wasting time.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Really? Turrican 2 and 3 didn't push the hardware to it's limits?

"Pushing to the limits" is a bit subjective, because games development and design (particularly back then) usually involved some compromise or trade-off between the machine's capabilities and the needs of the game in terms of design and playability. It seems clear that having T2 run at 50 FPS was a primary aspect of T2's implementation, and that imposes limits on other features of the hardware (as Andrew B's post states).

As I understand it, T2 was always supposed to be F5's Amiga showcase project, and it was designed to the strengths of the platform. T3 was designed around the Megadrive and back-converted from that platform, which is why quite a few players found it a bit less "solid" on the Amiga.

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

I remember reading a WIP on Uridium 2 in one of the Amiga mags, where someone sent him the source code to a plasma routine because upto that point, he didn't have a clue how to do it, its why Uridium 2 has a lot of neat copper effects because someone sent him code on how to do it.

You have to give him some credit for being honest!

Andrew Braybrook could program anything, but it wasn't until the Amiga was almost irrelevant to publishers that he finally got to grips with the machine.

True - for better or worse, mastering the Amiga hardware wasn't what he was being paid to do...

Originally Posted by mc68060

And Amiga Format gave it 49%, Amiga Power even 42%. Idiots. Brian the Lion is such a polished game.

As I recall, "Brian"'s Achilles' heel was that it committed just about every cardinal sin of platform game design. I've just re-checked the AF and AP reviews, and it seems they wanted to like it - because it was so polished - but the gameplay let it down.

Reflections didn't have a great deal of experience designing a pure platformer, it would seem...

[Subzero]

Phill i can ask them Dudes from Factor 5, or they may answer themself overhere , since they are also Members here afaik

[albino]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Really? Turrican 2 and 3 didn't push the hardware to it's limits? Factor 5 were absolute masters of the Amiga. I have no doubt those two games would have run at 25fps if coded by anyone else.

Don't take Turrican 3 as an exemple of coding reference as the programmer himself admited few years age that it coudl have been better if designed specialy for the OCS.
And yes i think beast 3 pushed the amiga much further than T2 did programming wise of course.
My personnal feeling is that the hardware hasen't been push to his limits because of commodore bankrupcy in 1994, If the gaming industry would have carry on his software devellopement for amiga you can be sure we would have seen eye blowing games using at least one megs of memory as standard plus new devellopment tools.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by mc68060

1) Braybrook says that they came over on a "pretext".

That Graftgold were going in the wrong direction and that Factor 5 could get their games to run at full framerate. That's why they visited.

Originally Posted by mc68060

2) I'm also confused by their answer "No" after the conspirational retreat into the back of the room. So what does this "No" refer to and what does it mean? !

Probably that no, triple buffering isn't always required to handle peaks (and perhaps also that peaks should be solved, not accepted).

During my job interview there in 1991, we discussed optimization. They used an object-oriented kernel and for as long as code wasn't written specifically for each game, I felt this was where you had to optimize, and if it were not to be changed functionally, perhaps not much could be shaved off. But I also think they chose half framerate in aiming for USA as a secondary market.

Apart from that, I think Galahad's description is accurate.

[albino]

[QUOTE=But I also think they chose half framerate in aiming for USA as a secondary market.

Apart from that, I think Galahad's description is accurate.[/QUOTE]
I don't get it...you mean the PAl version has to be slowdown so the NTSC version could work properly?

[Photon]

No, I mean it's a real challenge to make an arcade style game without slowdowns run 50 FPS, 60 FPS is that much harder. By choosing half framerate, you can release the same game for both NTSC and PAL.

A 50 FPS PAL game could be released as a 30 FPS NTSC game, but all the speeds would have to be changed for everything that moves, and collision detection could be affected.

[albino]

Originally Posted by Photon

No, I mean it's a real challenge to make an arcade style game without slowdowns run 50 FPS, 60 FPS is that much harder. By choosing half framerate, you can release the same game for both NTSC and PAL.

A 50 FPS PAL game could be released as a 30 FPS NTSC game, but all the speeds would have to be changed for everything that moves, and collision detection could be affected.

Pretty much every psygnosis game got ntsc realease don't they?

Itaught they had programes that make the needed changes so the game could work ntsc..

[Photon]

Well, as Galahad pointed out, Psygnosis is a publisher. Reflections developed Shadow of the Beast, maybe also The Killing Show runs 50 FPS, don't remember.

But the point is, it's not enough to change some factors, the maximum processing time must be 15% or so less than that of a PAL game to not cause slowdowns.

And it's also not enough to change some factors to make things move at the desired speed. Well it is, but nobody likes a stuttery movement of 0.83px/frame. so, without ever having played any NTSC games, I'm sure most devs kept the speeds identical, meaning the NTSC version ran faster and therefore required faster reflexes etc.