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AmigaDweeb · 29 November 2020, 11:31

Just left this on a YouTube comment elsewhere today but it kinda belongs here too really...

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Context Ref: [ Show youtube player ]

The developer speaks:

Firstly, thank you for your personal opinion as I/we try to read everything and take it onboard for the next great thing of course.

There is literally no budget for these new games and releases to pay anybody else as it's all run as a hobby here in reality. At around 1400 to 1500 man hours work by myself to bring Wiz to Amiga as it is now, we will never recover the cost of making it you understand. That is not a problem on it 's own, however, because it's nothing more than a pass time/hobby and love for the beloved Amiga itself that I even wrote it. Wiz takes over the machine plus is not system friendly code and the low level disk system (RNC dosio) requires FFS drives for HD install and does not support every drive format or file system out there, sorry. There are things that could be improved and there always are of course, but after starting the project in Jan 2020 and shipping it a month early in November; we here decided that that was indeed enough to hopefully please my past Mutation fans. In the most part, many are happy with Wiz and how it turned out ...I am for starters. Writing this game for ECS would be possible but it would mean removal of the AGA rear playfield and also affect the fps very badly (Wiz runs at 50fps on a PAL stock A1200). CyberPunks 2 next year will even further make use of AGA playfields however but will 'probably' run at lower 25fps so a lot more can by blitted to the screen as it's primarily an action game. Wiz uses the Tin Toy AGA engine and IMHO that engine pushes the AGA chipset pretty far and uses almost everything it has/had to offer, like dual 16 colour playfields, 64 bit HW sprites etc. The AGA chip set is not as 'holy' as some may think tho, and in some ways you also lose features when switching up from OCS/ECS. Also the blitter is locked to 7Mhz on all Amiga variants so you just can't move the data around any quicker with it on AGA chipset than an ECS/OCS machine (rather painful fact that). Having returned to Amiga (as a hobby remember) after about 25 years, I am hoping to up my game each new release but Wiz was a MASSIVE relearning curve for me to create from the coding scraps of Tin Toy from quarter of a century ago and it is what it is... good yes but not 100% perfect I know.

I only work alone now as am semi-retired. My 30 year's career in the games industry previously is now well behind me and over pretty much however.

We had Tony Aksnes onboard for further external testing with Wiz and TBH they don't come much better than him in the scene, but thank you anyway for your thoughts which are all appreciated OK.

'We aim to please many but never all' is our new moto here as it IS an impossible task for anybody to achieve regardless of skill level etc.

We hope many other developers in the scene now producing games are fortunate enough to have had the mostly warm welcome shown to us since Wiz was released.

AMIGAAAAA!

Adrian

29 November 2020, 11:31	#449
AmigaDweeb Mutation Software Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Sconnie Botland Age: 59 Posts: 811	Just left this on a YouTube comment elsewhere today but it kinda belongs here too really... --- Context Ref: [ Show youtube player ] The developer speaks: Firstly, thank you for your personal opinion as I/we try to read everything and take it onboard for the next great thing of course. There is literally no budget for these new games and releases to pay anybody else as it's all run as a hobby here in reality. At around 1400 to 1500 man hours work by myself to bring Wiz to Amiga as it is now, we will never recover the cost of making it you understand. That is not a problem on it 's own, however, because it's nothing more than a pass time/hobby and love for the beloved Amiga itself that I even wrote it. Wiz takes over the machine plus is not system friendly code and the low level disk system (RNC dosio) requires FFS drives for HD install and does not support every drive format or file system out there, sorry. There are things that could be improved and there always are of course, but after starting the project in Jan 2020 and shipping it a month early in November; we here decided that that was indeed enough to hopefully please my past Mutation fans. In the most part, many are happy with Wiz and how it turned out ...I am for starters. Writing this game for ECS would be possible but it would mean removal of the AGA rear playfield and also affect the fps very badly (Wiz runs at 50fps on a PAL stock A1200). CyberPunks 2 next year will even further make use of AGA playfields however but will 'probably' run at lower 25fps so a lot more can by blitted to the screen as it's primarily an action game. Wiz uses the Tin Toy AGA engine and IMHO that engine pushes the AGA chipset pretty far and uses almost everything it has/had to offer, like dual 16 colour playfields, 64 bit HW sprites etc. The AGA chip set is not as 'holy' as some may think tho, and in some ways you also lose features when switching up from OCS/ECS. Also the blitter is locked to 7Mhz on all Amiga variants so you just can't move the data around any quicker with it on AGA chipset than an ECS/OCS machine (rather painful fact that). Having returned to Amiga (as a hobby remember) after about 25 years, I am hoping to up my game each new release but Wiz was a MASSIVE relearning curve for me to create from the coding scraps of Tin Toy from quarter of a century ago and it is what it is... good yes but not 100% perfect I know. I only work alone now as am semi-retired. My 30 year's career in the games industry previously is now well behind me and over pretty much however. We had Tony Aksnes onboard for further external testing with Wiz and TBH they don't come much better than him in the scene, but thank you anyway for your thoughts which are all appreciated OK. 'We aim to please many but never all' is our new moto here as it IS an impossible task for anybody to achieve regardless of skill level etc. We hope many other developers in the scene now producing games are fortunate enough to have had the mostly warm welcome shown to us since Wiz was released. AMIGAAAAA! Adrian Last edited by AmigaDweeb; 29 November 2020 at 12:36.