04 July 2024, 13:33 | #5281 | ||
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In this case, the Blitter is a real advantage ... as long as it does not block memory access for the CPU. When the transformations are pre-calculated, as in most demos, the advantage shrinks down, as you also need the CPU to set up the Blitter operations - so the difference between setting up the Blitter plus let it do the work and using the CPU directly to draw the polygons is quite small in many use cases. Quote:
Dread is also available for the ST and it is not much slower there - almost the same frame rate. |
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04 July 2024, 13:35 | #5282 |
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04 July 2024, 13:51 | #5283 | |
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An AGA motherboard upgrade in e.g. 93 for the A2000 and A3000(T) would have sold extremely well ... and it would not have hurt the sales of new machines much, since most owners of such machines would rather take the RTG-card option (as I did myself) than buying an AGA machine. And it would have helped to push the AGA install base, which in turn would have been an incentive for developers to go this route. Last edited by Gorf; 04 July 2024 at 15:30. |
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04 July 2024, 15:10 | #5284 | |
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The reaction time was instantaneous, 100% smooth whatever the speed you moved the controller and the object covered almost all the screen. It was just another planet. |
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04 July 2024, 15:34 | #5285 | |
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Commodore promised its RTG solution against GVP's EGS. CGX was released in 1995 and there's no Commodore on creating FUD against it. |
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04 July 2024, 15:42 | #5286 |
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Related topic in https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=77162 and https://github.com/Kalmalyzer/subpixel-blitter-line
Last edited by hammer; 04 July 2024 at 15:49. |
04 July 2024, 17:06 | #5287 | |
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3rd party gfx-cards for big box amigas where selling quite well in these years, even if the RTG software was mostly proprietary (EGS, Probench, PicassoRTG) and lacking features and compatibility. Multiple vendors were fighting over a very small install base and were developing quite astonishing products ... and all of them were outlasting Commodore. This shows that big-box-owners did hold on to their systems for quite some years - in the dire situation Commodore was in, offering a motherboard upgrade would generate some highly needed revenue - maybe even by just giving GVP or others a license to do so. Selling my A3000 at a loss to get an A4000 was no option for me. Also getting a slower and less expandable A1200 was no option. And the A4000 was missing SCSI, which would have meant a new controller, to keep my SCSI equipment. I assume most big-box-owners were in a similar situation... Last edited by Gorf; 05 July 2024 at 14:32. |
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04 July 2024, 23:59 | #5288 |
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I think main culprit was Irvin Gould who messed things up for Amiga. He hired mehdi and for a while they even thought to drop amiga and become a pc company. Got slapped back by dell, gateway, clones.
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05 July 2024, 00:19 | #5289 | |
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What is your source for the PC only company temptation? |
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05 July 2024, 04:32 | #5290 | |||
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When Eric Graham created The Juggler animation in 1986 we were all blown away by it. Commodore thought he must have used a mainframe computer to render it, but he actually did the whole thing on Amiga 1000 using software he wrote by himself. It generated so much interest that in 1987 he released Sculpt 3D so anybody with an Amiga could do the same. This spurred the development of many other 3D rendering and animation programs, and also segued nicely with the Amiga's ability to produced broadcast standard video and (with a genlock) combine computer generated images with video from a VCR or camera. If you had an A500 then you could be a part of that. Quote:
Retro Isle: Commodore 1571 troubleshooting guide Quote:
But this is all just technical nitpicking, the kind of stuff that only insufferable nerds like you and me pick up on (and can't agree on even among ourselves). You have more of a point about the spelling mistakes, though they were not at all uncommon back in the days before sophisticated spell* checkers were the norm. We see plenty of them today too on high profile news sites etc., too due to writers relying too much on the spelling checker to alert them. * an accepted usage of the word 'spell', despite the fact that as a noun it means "words held to have magic power", or "a state of enchantment" or "a strong compelling influence or attraction" - IOW all about magic and nothing to do with spelling. |
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05 July 2024, 09:23 | #5291 | |
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The game performance on the Amiga mainly profits from Fast-RAM systems where the Blitter can run in parallel to the CPU. OTOH the Atari ST has an advantage with the bitplane format where you can do C2P quite effectively using the CPU. Also Copper like "colour enhancements" can be done on the Atari ST as well. |
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05 July 2024, 16:31 | #5292 | |
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[ Show youtube player ] PiStorm32 Lite Emu68 (June 2023 build) with RPi 4B's ARM Cortex A72 @ 1.8Ghz (three ARM instructions per cycle) with Commodore's AGA display Result: 47.23 fps for 320x200 It's about 49 fps in recent Emu68 buids. From https://old.vgamuseum.info/benchmark...rendering.html With Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 Ghz, three X86 instructions per cycle), Soltek SL75-KAV (Via KT133A), 256MB SDR CL3 When both machines has similar class 1.8 Ghz CPUs, AGA will beat all ISA based SVGA cards at 320x240 resolution level. Best ISA SVGA card reached 36.2 fps. A high CPU performance removes the CPU from the bottleneck factor, hence it's pure display and CPU to video bus I/O capability. For 50 hz PAL, 25 fps is needed. For 60 hz NTSC, 30 fps is needed. |
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05 July 2024, 16:33 | #5293 | ||
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68020 has a higher IPC (and includes hardware barrel shifter) when compared to 68000, hence adding Fast RAM for A1200 has greater benefits. Amiga's custom chips are designed to patch 68000's low IPC and incompetent multimedia capability. Amiga Dread's line draw is Blitter accelerated, hence conserving CPU resource. Quote:
CPU upgrade affects Atari ST's game backwards compatibility more than Amiga since the Copper isolates most of the graphics effects from the CPU. Amiga's 8 hardware sprites has separate color palette and the Copper can be applied on hardware sprites. Dread's main player gun graphics are hardware sprites on the Amiga. Copper can be use to move hardware sprites. Copper usage conserves CPU resource. Atari ST doesn't have hardware sprites. If only the Copper was updated into vertex co-processor. There's 3DO. Last edited by hammer; 05 July 2024 at 17:14. |
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05 July 2024, 17:28 | #5294 | |
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A pure game console has little consideration for 32-bit desktop OS road map, hence SNES direction. When EGA is not enough, Amiga's 4096 color palette targets similar era workstation class' 4096 color palette solution e.g. IBM PGC (1984) and NEC uPD7220 for PC-98 (1982). Amiga 1000 was "workstation class for the masses" attempt. Commodore made it cheap for the masses with the A500. "Workstation class for the masses" ideology was lost by Commodore's post-A500 road map. Today's GpGPU and X86 companies has "workstation class for the masses" ideology via assimulated or stolen or influenced by workstation IP. DEC couldn't sustain a legal fight against Intel, hence assimulated DEC's CPU teams. Samsung couldn't continue Alpha R&D since they are missing CPU designers. SGI couldn't sustain a legal fight against NVIDIA hence assimulated SGI's graphics team. Microsoft hired the VMS designer. AMD assimulated SGI rebels i.e. ArtX. NVIDIA assimulated SGI rebels i.e. 3DFX. AMD assimulated DEC rebels i.e. NexGen. X86 collective assimulated the best of workstation CPU and graphics personnel and their skillset is gained. Last edited by hammer; 05 July 2024 at 17:46. |
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05 July 2024, 18:00 | #5295 | |
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Even some simple 3D trick like Mode 7 on the SNES requires a chunky mode (and even the SNES is actually wasting halve of the bandwidth in this mode with 8bit pixels and 16bit fetches) |
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05 July 2024, 18:03 | #5296 |
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05 July 2024, 19:06 | #5297 | |
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If 68k wasn't suitable for consoles, why would Sega use it? The SNES doesn't have chunky pixels, although you can sort of fake it in Mode 7 by filling each tile with a single colour and then zooming the display so each uses 1*1 (or 2*2.or whatever) pixels. Then changing any given "tile" in the map effectively plots a "pixel" and it's a bit like having a chunky bitmap format. The tiles themselves are stored in a planar like format, however. |
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05 July 2024, 19:14 | #5298 |
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Then I'm confused. Was the Amiga not capable of 'dazzling 3D graphics manipulation and animation'? Why shouldn't they have promoted it, because a machine costing over 20 times more could maybe do it better?
The extent Amiga fans will go to to denigrate their girlfriend is amazing. Never a good word to say about her. [ Show youtube player ] |
05 July 2024, 20:15 | #5299 |
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05 July 2024, 20:18 | #5300 | |||||||
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386SX wasn't 'half baked' either. It was a deliberate (and successful) attempt to bring 32-bit technology to the masses. The idea behind the 386SX was that it could be fitted to cheaper 286 motherboards without a major redesign of the board or chipset. Quote:
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The Apple IIGS had 4096 colors in 1986. By 1990 the Amstrad CPC and Atari ST had it to (and the C65 would have had it). But none of them had HAM mode and a copper that could put all 4096 colors on screen at once. IBM PCG was ridiculously expensive and had very poor bitmap animation capability - not even worth mentioning in the same space as the Amiga. PC-98 was NEC's proprietary MS-DOS machine that was only sold in Japan. It too was very expensive and a nonentity in the West. Quote:
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Commodore's actual attempts at workstation class machines included the A2500 with 68020 and then 68030, and the A3000, all of which were designed with UNIX in mind. But the engineers didn't have the skills to pull it off, and were always one step behind SGI. That 'road map' had to die before it killed Commodore. Quote:
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Here's the truth. In 1981 the desktop computer industry was desperate for a way to be taken more seriously. That came in the form of IBM with their PC. The industry seized on the PC as their holy grail and the rest was history. Anything else would either be stomped on or assimilated, because they had chosen the 'one' architecture that would be their roadmap for the future, wherever that might lead. Nobody could buck it for long - not even IBM itself. Commodore valiantly fought against that for almost a decade, constantly putting faith in a different architecture that was bound to fail eventually - simply because it wasn't IBM compatible. |
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