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LongLifeA1200 · 13 December 2017, 05:56

Thanks for compiling that showcase list. Ambermoon gives me an idea for another project that I otherwise would have missed. And that link to the raycasting engine was an interesting read.

Although I'm not much of a fan of Wolfenstein 3D (which I always misspell "Wolfenstien"), I can't help but wonder if porting to the system you suggest is feasible, so I began with trying to get a hardware timeline:

1982 Intel 286 6mhz (up to 25mhz)
1985 Intel 386 12mhz (up to 40mhz)
1985 Amiga 1000 7mhz 256kb RAM (up to 8.5mb)
1987 Amiga 500 7mhz 512kb RAM (up to 9mb)
1987 Macintosh SE 8mhz 1mb RAM (up to 4mb)
1987 Macintosh II 16mhz 1mb RAM (up to 8mb)
1989 Intel 486 20mhz (up to 100mhz)
1992 Wolfenstien 3D

Really difficult to pin-point the average household PC specs in 1992. PCs were very expensive. Around '92, it was common to see PCs being sold with 25mhz and 4mb of ram (Apple doing something similar). I don't mention Commodore here because you're only interested in porting to a stock Amiga 500 / 1000.

A stock A500 is just a few kilobytes short of the minimum memory requirements for Wolf3D, so there is a chance it might have to lose a few things. A stock A1000 has only half the memory of the A500 so there is a high possibility of dismissing a lot more, unless you're prepared to make drastic changes to the way the map works, such as partitioning rooms so that when you activate a door, you teleport to the connected room in front of the door you just activated, after loading has finished swapping memory space for different objects, textures, animations etc.

When it comes to 3D, any Commodore-Amiga without an Akiko chip (the CD32) has no magic tricks that it can perform to outdo a PC of the same CPU speed. All the 3D calculations and placement of pixels are handled by the Motorola 68k processor.

Finding an example of Wolf3D running on a PC of 7mhz to get some idea of performance is difficult. Wolf3D was written to be compatible with a 286. While 286's started at 6mhz in 1982, by the time Wolf3D was written in 1992, it was common to find 286's running at speeds of 10mhz. Although the minimum system requirements for Wolf3D states a 286, a 386 was strongly recommended since those CPUs started at 12mhz and most 286 owners with a CPU speed of 10mhz reported having a "playable" experience of around ~15 frames per second when "full windowed".

If you search for the following videos on YouTube (sorry, links I post to YouTube don't appear on this forum) you will see the difference in performance within the range of 5 to 10mhz:

~5mhz "Wolfenstein 3D hacked to work on 8086/8088 CPU"
10mhz "Wolfenstein 3D on 10 MHz 286 computer"

So as you may see, the A-500/600/1000/2000 is only 2mhz more than the small windowed "slideshow" example but 3mhz less than the full windowed "playable" example.

Of course, to achieve a "full" port, you will need to shift the goal posts to that of the A-1200/3000/4000/CD32. But then we wouldn't see anything interesting (unless you like Wolfenstein 3D).

At the very least, this challenge provides the motivation to learn 2.5D/3D techniques to be used on the Amiga for other games.

13 December 2017, 05:56	#19
LongLifeA1200 Registered User Join Date: Nov 2017 Location: Amiga Kingdom Posts: 368	Thanks for compiling that showcase list. Ambermoon gives me an idea for another project that I otherwise would have missed. And that link to the raycasting engine was an interesting read. Although I'm not much of a fan of Wolfenstein 3D (which I always misspell "Wolfenstien"), I can't help but wonder if porting to the system you suggest is feasible, so I began with trying to get a hardware timeline: 1982 Intel 286 6mhz (up to 25mhz) 1985 Intel 386 12mhz (up to 40mhz) 1985 Amiga 1000 7mhz 256kb RAM (up to 8.5mb) 1987 Amiga 500 7mhz 512kb RAM (up to 9mb) 1987 Macintosh SE 8mhz 1mb RAM (up to 4mb) 1987 Macintosh II 16mhz 1mb RAM (up to 8mb) 1989 Intel 486 20mhz (up to 100mhz) 1992 Wolfenstien 3D Really difficult to pin-point the average household PC specs in 1992. PCs were very expensive. Around '92, it was common to see PCs being sold with 25mhz and 4mb of ram (Apple doing something similar). I don't mention Commodore here because you're only interested in porting to a stock Amiga 500 / 1000. A stock A500 is just a few kilobytes short of the minimum memory requirements for Wolf3D, so there is a chance it might have to lose a few things. A stock A1000 has only half the memory of the A500 so there is a high possibility of dismissing a lot more, unless you're prepared to make drastic changes to the way the map works, such as partitioning rooms so that when you activate a door, you teleport to the connected room in front of the door you just activated, after loading has finished swapping memory space for different objects, textures, animations etc. When it comes to 3D, any Commodore-Amiga without an Akiko chip (the CD32) has no magic tricks that it can perform to outdo a PC of the same CPU speed. All the 3D calculations and placement of pixels are handled by the Motorola 68k processor. Finding an example of Wolf3D running on a PC of 7mhz to get some idea of performance is difficult. Wolf3D was written to be compatible with a 286. While 286's started at 6mhz in 1982, by the time Wolf3D was written in 1992, it was common to find 286's running at speeds of 10mhz. Although the minimum system requirements for Wolf3D states a 286, a 386 was strongly recommended since those CPUs started at 12mhz and most 286 owners with a CPU speed of 10mhz reported having a "playable" experience of around ~15 frames per second when "full windowed". If you search for the following videos on YouTube (sorry, links I post to YouTube don't appear on this forum) you will see the difference in performance within the range of 5 to 10mhz: ~5mhz "Wolfenstein 3D hacked to work on 8086/8088 CPU" 10mhz "Wolfenstein 3D on 10 MHz 286 computer" So as you may see, the A-500/600/1000/2000 is only 2mhz more than the small windowed "slideshow" example but 3mhz less than the full windowed "playable" example. Of course, to achieve a "full" port, you will need to shift the goal posts to that of the A-1200/3000/4000/CD32. But then we wouldn't see anything interesting (unless you like Wolfenstein 3D). At the very least, this challenge provides the motivation to learn 2.5D/3D techniques to be used on the Amiga for other games.