Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[sandruzzo]

Cos chunky-copper is free and doesn't require more chip, more complex motherboard.

Hammer, why when someone talk about some Amigas' chip, you're gonna hammering us with data that we already know?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Cos chunky-copper is free and doesn't require more chip, more complex motherboard.

It's not free with the programmer's time and effort.

VGA's chunky pixels are translated into four planar planes which makes the programmer's job easier. EGA has C2P hardware. IBM tried hardware C2P with EGA.

The Amiga would need a similar gateway for chunky pixels that translates into bitplanes (related to the memory subsystem).

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Hammer, why when someone talk about some Amigas' chip, you're gonna hammering us with data that we already know?

You don't know the basic economics of 101.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by hammer

It's not free with the programmer's time and effort.

Amiga is Amiga, and doing a few coppers' line isn't too much..

Originally Posted by hammer

You don't know the basic economics of 101.

I don't know a lot of things, but I know when too much is to much

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Amiga is Amiga, and doing a few coppers' line isn't too much..

It wasn't realistic for most mainstream game studios when Amiga lost its premier game platform status around 1992. Relates to the A600 debacle.

From Xmas 1989 to Xmas 1991, the Amiga was the premier games platform with many games optimized for the Amiga that showed superiority over Atari ST. There are signs of weakness with game ports from Japanese games.

Commodore doesn't have 1st party game studios like Nintendo to promote near-uniform SNES game optimizations.

Your idea is okay when Commodore has Nintendo-level 1st party game studios to promote near-uniform SNES game optimizations. Commodore Amiga Technical Support (CATS) is not geared for games like Nintendo's. Commodore is a master of none.

Microsoft ported Doom twice i.e. Windows 3.1/WinG/Win32's WinDoom and Windows 95/DirectDraw's Doom95. Microsoft DirectX has more gaming API coverage when compared to Commodore's AmigaOS 3.1.

[sandruzzo]

It's a myth that a developer can do things without effort. Look at the PC situation: a lot of different machines which is a nightmare for developers.

Back in the day it was even worse. So are you sure that fw more coppers' lines that are gonna work on ALL AMIGA was the problem???

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

It's a myth that a developer can do things without effort. Look at the PC situation: a lot of different machines which is a nightmare for developers.

That's old news when there are only two GPU vendors to worry about.

For major games, AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel have software teams geared for game optimization intervention. Intervention is done on a case-by-case and they have a co-marketing GPU branding.

The main reason for AMD's focus on the game console business with tiny profit margins is to cause game development to be biased towards its GPU architecture with less intervention effort when compared to NVIDIA's software teams.

In the mid-1990s, Quake culled many 586 clones from the market and forced AMD to design K6-III FPU to behave like Intel's. This is known as the PC's defacto standard.

Software optimizations have limits that couldn't solve the raytracing performance issues with RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 GPUs. The solution is RDNA 3.5 and RDNA 4.0 with specific raytracing hardware fixes. AMD is forced to fix its GPUs in a certain direction due to NVIDIA's market dominance. This is known as the PC's defacto standard.

If a "different machine" doesn't conform to the PC's defacto standard, it is culled from the market i.e. S3 dies, Matrox dies, 3DFX dies, 3DLabs dies and 'etc'. NVIDIA has many kills on its list.

[sandruzzo]

@hammer

Look at their bugs that report on their drivers' page: every time some are gone, some are back! What a mess!

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

@hammer

Look at their bugs that report on their drivers' page: every time some are gone, some are back! What a mess!

1. Buy a games console. Buggy games with "show stoppers" will be withdrawn from sale by the platform holders e.g. Sony forcing a game to be withdrawn from the market.

2. Bugs need to be separated from "show stoppers" vs minor graphics glitches. Gaming PC's baseline gaming experience should match the game console's counterpart.


Why compare complex modern 3D games with 1990s CPU-powered 2D/3D games with VGA?

[sandruzzo]

Why? Good question? Have you ever been a professional well-paid Research and Developer? I was, and I can tell that they make shit smell better. I am not talking about 3d shit, I am talking about software, please. We did advance 3d shit back in the day when I was professional...

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Why? Good question? Have you ever been a professional well-paid Research and Developer?

Currently for the Windows platform.

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

I was, and I can tell that they make shit smell better. I am not talking about 3d shit, I am talking about software, please. We did advance 3d shit back in the day when I was professional...

Many games on 3DO didn't extensively use its custom graphics acceleration, but 3DO's ARM60 CPU is good enough for a fast 386DX-40-level gaming box.

Sony's PS1 has 1st party studios and a good game-centric SDK.

[sandruzzo]

Can we get back to Amiga related topic? Shall we? It is a lot funnier! I want steal time to it

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Can we get back to Amiga related topic? Shall we? It is a lot funnier! I want steal time to it

Read https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p...24&postcount=1

A1200 needs a few changes e.g. packed pixels, and math power increase i.e. to make better use of Lisa. AGA is fine for legacy Amiga games with some 2D game advancement e.g. Reshoot Proxima 3.

For a proper commercial Reshoot Proxima 3-level game development in the early 1990s, the AGA install base needs to be larger since Amiga OCS/ECS has "Atart ST'ed" the Amiga AGA.

[sandruzzo]

Yes, Aga was too late to few, but it is still fun to work with. With just a little bit of fast-ram you can do a lot more!

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

Most Amiga users and magazines seemed to be very happy with the A1200 when it came out. I wasn't at all, and a look at the first games pretty much ended my association with Amiga gaming. I just saw the same games with more colours and a bit smoother. There was no wow factor. After that I stuck with the Amiga 500 (with half meg memory expansion) and my Super Famicom (Jap SNES).

Here's what Commodore got wrong in my opinion

1. Too much focus on creating higher-res screen modes with more colours (and also making the blitter work in these different screen modes) and not enough on enhancing gaming(8 or maybe 16 sprites when the comparitively old Megadrive and SNES could manage 64 and 128 respectively). It's a bit like the original Amiga - yes it can display 4096 colours on screen, but the majority of the games for the system were 16 colours (Albeit some had added some Copper magic) and most didn't even run at 50/60 fps. That was fine back in 1985 but 7 years(!) later you expect a significant upgrade.

2. There was a mild improvement to dual playfield mode. Great!... when the SNES had 5(?) playfields and could scale and rotate whole screens. Commodore seemed to have no sense they were competing here....

2. Sound chip needed 6 channels to get a decent track playing with sound effects. Again SNES and Megadrive have 6 channels each. Using the same sound chip from 1985 was ridiculous!

3. Like the original Amiga, if you wanted to get a good number of objects on screen with a lot of colours and scrolling, you had to spend ages using hardware tricks or specific techniques. Time = money and developers aren't going to want to spend 2 years making an arcade quality game on the A1200 when simpler systems exist....

I do have a CD32 now, but it's not very impressive from a technical point of view, even the mighty Banshee is bettered on both the SNES and Megadrive. The reason I like it is because it offers something a bit different and it's an Amiga It's fairly obvious it had no hope of competing long term. I just find it hard to see what Commodore was thinking with the AGA architecture??

For Amiga AGA...
[ Show youtube player ]
Reshoot Proxima 3 can hold the line against SNES's top-down shooters.


[ Show youtube player ]
Reshoot R can hold the line against SNES's horizontal shooters.

[sandruzzo]

Even without Chunky pixel they could have pushed Amiga Architecture to the limit:

020 at 28mhz, so the whole chip-set, with 32 bit data. One cycle ram access, 8 channel 16 bit paula. Et voilà a lot of horsepower to use! Not a big deal, sure more expensive than Aga...With a little bit of fast mem on top of that

[sandruzzo]

Not bad for an old chip-set! It would be great to see it on Aga too

[ Show youtube player ]

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Yes, Aga was too late to few, but it is still fun to work with. With just a little bit of fast-ram you can do a lot more!

AGA had potential.

1. Fast RAM, enables full concurrent performance for CPU and AGA.

2. If Commodore has a game-centric SDK. A good library for Amiga game graphics effects. Standard SDK with optimized blitter assists C2P source code library. Need a good 1st party studio for creating game-centric SDK.

The purpose is to improve AGA game graphics quality consistency across multiple games.

3. Release AGA early without a hard disk mandate (override Commodore Germany's demands) to build a sizable install base.

SNES's 1990 release shouldn't remain unanswered for almost 2 years.

Avoids A600 debacle.

4. 1-day job Akiko-style C2P included with AGA standard.

5. The effort spent on the FMV module (with at least 512 KB local RAM) is spent on DSP3210's or 68EC020-25's inclusion.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Even without Chunky pixel they could have pushed Amiga Architecture to the limit:

020 at 28mhz, so the whole chip-set, with 32 bit data. One cycle ram access, 8 channel 16 bit paula. Et voilà a lot of horsepower to use! Not a big deal, sure more expensive than Aga...With a little bit of fast mem on top of that

For 16-bit audio, the quick fix is the effort spent on the FMV module.

Four-channel 8-bit Paula + two 16-bit DACs with $20 DSP3210.

No changes for Paula due to strict backward compatibility.

CD32 already has two 16-bit DACs in addition to a four-channel 8-bit Paula. A1200 should have CD32's minimums.

[sandruzzo]

Are we sure that optimized blitter assists C2P made by Commodore would have been better than what we have now?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Are we sure that optimized blitter assists C2P made by Commodore would have been better than what we have now?

https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...t.aspx?id=1604
Commodore's official position for packed pixel issue with AGA.

The “chunky to planar” logic was thought out in a lunchtime conversation between Beth Richard (system chip design), Chris Coley (board design), and Ken Dyke (software) over Subway sandwiches on a picnic table in a nearby park one day, because Ken was telling us how much of a pain it was to shuffle bits in software to port games from other platforms to the Amiga planar system. We took the idea to Hedley Davis, who was the system chip team manager and lead engineer on Akiko and he said we could go ahead with it. I showed him the “napkin sketch” of how I thought the logic would work and was planning on getting to it the next day as it was already late afternoon by that point. I came in the next morning and Hedley had completed it already, just from the sketch!

Commodore's software engineer Ken Dyke's statement nearly mirrors John Carmark's 1994 statement.

Meanwhile, 3rd party Amiga zealots figured out an optimized Blitter assist C2P. A certain amount of zeal and talent are important factors.

Games like Dread/Grind has disproven Commodore's software engineer Ken Dyke. Grind runs pretty smooth on stock A1200. Fast RAM equipped A1200 with Grind is very smooth.

Akiko's C2P design was less than a day job and should been included with Budgie.