English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Sprites are the weakest part of the Amiga specification

AnimaInCorpore · 10 August 2022, 20:11

The unpopular truth is: the weakest part of the Amiga is the OCS/ECS chipset itself but it was also the strongest part in the early years.

When you'd have some knowledge about the Amiga hardware you should also know why developers decided to use 16 colours for certain games.

Actually it was rather simple: choose wisely the things the Amiga hardware DMA bandwidth offers (screen resolution, bitmap depth => number of colours, sprites, copper effects, chip RAM memory limits, sound channels) and find the best solution for your needs. Be aware that the result might disappoint you. This was the real problem programmers had.

In some cases you simply take a CPU based solution and you're done. Sometimes these approaches are called 'Atari ST shovelware' because many do not understand that a 'perfect' Amiga version is impossible to realize.

So in conclusion you have to design and develop a game around the limitations of the Amiga and it will shine but M68k based Arcade games like CPS are out of reach for a perfect port.

10 August 2022, 20:11	#60
AnimaInCorpore Registered User Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Willich/Germany Posts: 232	The unpopular truth is: the weakest part of the Amiga is the OCS/ECS chipset itself but it was also the strongest part in the early years. When you'd have some knowledge about the Amiga hardware you should also know why developers decided to use 16 colours for certain games. Actually it was rather simple: choose wisely the things the Amiga hardware DMA bandwidth offers (screen resolution, bitmap depth => number of colours, sprites, copper effects, chip RAM memory limits, sound channels) and find the best solution for your needs. Be aware that the result might disappoint you. This was the real problem programmers had. In some cases you simply take a CPU based solution and you're done. Sometimes these approaches are called 'Atari ST shovelware' because many do not understand that a 'perfect' Amiga version is impossible to realize. So in conclusion you have to design and develop a game around the limitations of the Amiga and it will shine but M68k based Arcade games like CPS are out of reach for a perfect port.