An unbiased comparison of Megadrive vs A1200 graphics?

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by cz101

Bit of a stretch.
Great visuals. Absolutely, no question.
But take off the Amiga shades for a second and what really matters - gameplay and playability - it falls short.
Hybris/Battle Squadron are rightfully regarded as Amiga shooter top dogs for good reason.
For arcade quality, a couple of seconds of something like Flying Shark on Mame will tell you all you need to know.
Maybe unfair to compare with Toaplan, who were absolute masters of the genre, but still, that was the arcade standard in 1987

It's the same question all over again, what if Japanese developers embraced the Amiga and made some great ports/original games for OCS and AGA?

[vulture]

Originally Posted by cz101

Bit of a stretch.
Great visuals. Absolutely, no question.
But take off the Amiga shades for a second and what really matters - gameplay and playability - it falls short.
Hybris/Battle Squadron are rightfully regarded as Amiga shooter top dogs for good reason.
For arcade quality, a couple of seconds of something like Flying Shark on Mame will tell you all you need to know.
Maybe unfair to compare with Toaplan, who were absolute masters of the genre, but still, that was the arcade standard in 1987

Personally, I disagree on both counts.

A. Banshee's gameplay is really well crafted
B. Regarding Flying Shark, are you still talking about the gameplay or are you trying to convey that Flying Shark's gfx are better than Banshee's? Cuz it's night and day.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by cz101

Bit of a stretch.
Great visuals. Absolutely, no question.
But take off the Amiga shades for a second and what really matters - gameplay and playability - it falls short.
Hybris/Battle Squadron are rightfully regarded as Amiga shooter top dogs for good reason.

Well it's all very subjective imho, for example on Lemon, Battle Squadron averages at 8.56 and Banshee follows close-by at 8.49 with a similar number of votes. SWIV comes 3rd with an average score of 8.31

So as you see, regarding Banshee as one of the top amiga shooters is not that much of a stretch really. At least by popular vote.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Well it's all very subjective imho, for example on Lemon, Battle Squadron averages at 8.56 and Banshee follows close-by at 8.49 with a similar number of votes. SWIV comes 3rd with an average score of 8.31

Also when looking at review scores from bitd you get pretty much the same picture (Banshee actually scores a bit higher there).

[cz101]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

It's the same question all over again, what if Japanese developers embraced the Amiga and made some great ports/original games for OCS and AGA?

am not really asking that question tbf

Originally Posted by vulture

B. Regarding Flying Shark, are you still talking about the gameplay or are you trying to convey that Flying Shark's gfx are better than Banshee's? Cuz it's night and day.

Gameplay, gameplay, playability, flow, feel, difficulty balance and, oh yeah gameplay. Appropriate in-game music with sfx adds enormously also
I just picked Flying Shark because while visually it looks pap, underneath it was highly polished and has all the above in spades.
But yes, *visually* Banshee wipes the floor with it.

Originally Posted by Tsak

Well it's all very subjective imho

Absolutely yes.
Was just comparing it to the top Amiga shooters and Banshee, even though it looks fabulous, doesn't quite topple them never mind the arcade classic

Originally Posted by Tsak

Oh and btw, here's a video with all the shoot'em'ups ever released on the Megadrive for good measure
[ Show youtube player ]

back to the thread, cut the chase and go straight to Thunder Force IV. You'd have your work cut out

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by cz101

Absolutely yes.
Was just comparing it to the top Amiga shooters and Banshee, even though it looks fabulous, doesn't quite topple them never mind the arcade classic

Well, even if it is subjective indeed, the fact that the game averages with such high scores and often finds itself at the very top, means (by any metric and objectively) that it IS a top Amiga shooter

People are also not fools, judging by the gfx alone. Cause if that was the case, other shooters with similar fancy gfx (like Disposable Hero, Project X, T-zer0 and many many others) would score much higher. But they don't. So the game must be doing at least something right other than having nice gfx.

And -mind you- Banshee also has the huge disadvantage of NOT being a widely well known (or played) Amiga game, so there isn't much nostalgia associated with it.

Originally Posted by cz101

back to the thread, cut the chase and go straight to Thunder Force IV. You'd have your work cut out

I'm guessing you haven't seen Boss Machine for a1200 yet?
Of course this project is still WIP, so not exactly material for direct comparisons, however it does seem like Thunder Force IV has been a huge influence for it. And so far it also seems it has more than enough potential to compete.

[vulture]

Reshoot R does more things than Thunderforce IV on screen.

More colours, more effects, more objects, more layers, bigger gameplay area.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Tsak

People are also not fools, judging by the gfx alone. Cause if that was the case, other shooters with similar fancy gfx (like Disposable Hero, Project X, T-zer0 and many many others) would score much higher. But they don't. So the game must be doing at least something right other than having nice gfx.

I guess the case is closed now. Great answer. :

Originally Posted by vulture

Reshoot R does more things than Thunderforce IV on screen.

More colours, more effects, more objects, more layers, bigger gameplay area.

Indeed, it is a game that showcase quite well what the AGA could do. Very impressive effects, not sure the Megadrive could do that.

[touko]

Originally Posted by vulture

It was impressive no doubt, but SNES doesn't run the Doom engine either, it's a tailor made one to fit its hardware the same as Dread is for the Amiga.

Dread is impressive no doubt about it, but it's not a doom engine but a between doom and wolf3D .

Neither does a stock SNES....
A stock A1200 in undubitably better at real time 3D than a stock SNES (even an Atari ST is)

I agree,but a simple add-on like a superfx,wich is a really cheap CPU, could do that a more expensive A1200 cannot.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by touko

Dread is impressive no doubt about it, but it's not a doom engine but a between doom and wolf3D .


I agree,but a simple add-on like a superfx,wich is a really cheap CPU, could do that a more expensive A1200 cannot.

Well that's not a simple add on nor it wasn't cheap.
You (and also the publishers) have to pay for that. There is a reason why there is just eight games using that chip on the SNES.

[Megalomaniac]

Hybris outscores SWIV on LemonAmiga as well, though from much fewer votes (my impression, and its before my time, is that Amiga exclusives got less attention that games which were also on the ST, such as Xenon 2, when to me Hybris and Battle Squadron are far better in almost every way - I'm ashamed to say I never played Hybris until the emulation era, whereas I was all too aware of Xenon 2). Indeed, Deluxe Galaga outscores SWIV too, so you can't accuse voters of simply looking at graphics.

I'm not convinced that StarWing is beyond the A1200's potential. Contrast the rigid view with COALA's early virtual cockpit (though StarWing is the better game). Even with the later doubled-speed version of the chip, does SNES Doom really outperform Fears (poor game though it is) or Gloom on an even fastRAMless A1200?

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Hannibal

Hey all, thanks for mentioning Banshee. I wanted to share some memories about that, and opinions:

I personally disagree with the comment about the game having OCS visuals, but to each their own - I felt like we used the AGA chipset quite extensively, and the game wouldn't be possible on OCS (or MegaDrive) without severe quality cuts - both in the pixel quality, special effects, and the size and variety of enemies and backgrounds.

So there's not *that* much I'd do different if I were to write Banshee with all the knowledge of today:
I'd have built the game around streaming like SWIV - that should have been built first. However, I don't know how well system-friendly loading of A1200/CD32 works with hardware-hacking game logic.
With streaming, I would probably have done palette splits, too.
I'd probably build a copper-driven blitter queue. A little tricky when running less than 50fps, but possible.
With a modern cpu sample mixer it would be fairly cheap to have 3-channel music and 4 channels of sfx.
We chose not to use the sprites for the player and bullets, maybe we should have - maybe lock players below the bosses so we could use the AGA sprites for both. We would have to make compromises with the color palette for players, hud, enemies, and bullets, so not sure that would be worth it. I could also have reused the 2 effect bitplanes that I used in level 4 for 2-color bullets in level 1-3.
But overall, not much I think I could improve technically. I have no regrets :-)

Congrats on the excellent game.
What development tools did you use and what was your system at the time?
What was the speed difference when the game detected Fast RAM and do you think it might have been possible to get up to 50/60FPS with Fast RAM?

Was there any consideration to support 31kHz screen modes?

Were you guys official Commodore developers and if so did you get much support for what you paid?

Thanks

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I generally found that the A1200 and the MD were pretty much nose-to-nose for graphics - in practice the MD may have just nudged ahead in stuff like arcade conversions. What really annoyed me though was the sound. I'd far rather listen to the miggy.

Yep, a good comparison example of that is Flink.
Pretty darn comparable graphics wise, but the Amiga has (IMHO) better sound.

But both are very nice versions..

[vulture]

Originally Posted by touko

Dread is impressive no doubt about it, but it's not a doom engine but a between doom and wolf3D .

While what you're saying is true, KK has actually found a way to incorporate variable heights with little overhead, it's just he never got around to actually implement it.

[Hannibal]

Originally Posted by redblade

Congrats on the excellent game.
What development tools did you use and what was your system at the time?
What was the speed difference when the game detected Fast RAM and do you think it might have been possible to get up to 50/60FPS with Fast RAM?

Was there any consideration to support 31kHz screen modes?

Were you guys official Commodore developers and if so did you get much support for what you paid?

Thanks

It was using SNASM so it was some PC with a 100mb hard drive, and deploying to and debugging the A1200 from the PC. It worked pretty well actually.
I don’t remember if the artist used dpaint or brilliance or personal ping, but it was one of those standard ones. He did use a Silicon Graphics workstation for some 3d work. A number of the objects were actually 3d rendered to get animation and lighting right, and then drawn on top.
We used an internal Core Design map editor for the tile map. Nothing special, but it worked ok.

We didn’t optimize for fast ram - the market was already tiny enough, so that wouldn’t financially make sense. I did at one point test frametime on an a4000, and it was only 25% faster as it was pretty blitter bound. So going to 50 fps would never happen.

Never considered the other screen setups - again, market was too small for that to make sense

I didn’t interface with commodore, so I don’t know. But Core was a big developer, so that’s likely

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Hannibal

It was using SNASM so it was some PC with a 100mb hard drive, and deploying to and debugging the A1200 from the PC. It worked pretty well actually.
I don’t remember if the artist used dpaint or brilliance or personal ping, but it was one of those standard ones. He did use a Silicon Graphics workstation for some 3d work. A number of the objects were actually 3d rendered to get animation and lighting right, and then drawn on top.
We used an internal Core Design map editor for the tile map. Nothing special, but it worked ok.

We didn’t optimize for fast ram - the market was already tiny enough, so that wouldn’t financially make sense. I did at one point test frametime on an a4000, and it was only 25% faster as it was pretty blitter bound. So going to 50 fps would never happen.

Never considered the other screen setups - again, market was too small for that to make sense

I didn’t interface with commodore, so I don’t know. But Core was a big developer, so that’s likely

Thanks for this, I remember seeing the game and seeing the status bar and wondered how the scrolling worked but when I read that it was a 64 sprite overlay it made sense.

I'm guessing that's what the programmers for Raiden did.

Are you still programming games?

[touko]

There is a reason why there is just eight games using that chip on the SNES.

There is a ton of snes's chips, even a superfx2 .Some were most used like anti-piracy system .
http://www.ffviman.fr/switch-snes/chip-jeux-snes.html

The SFX's price was around 15$(maybe less), so we can tell it was cheap .

You (and also the publishers) have to pay for that. There is a reason why there is just eight games using that chip on the SNES.

I see no point using a chip wich is not required for a game, in a very large majority of games(98/99%), the stock hardware is enough .
[ Show youtube player ]

Most games were in slow rom so the snes CPU run @2.68 mhz (even RR²), the simple use of fast rom boost the CPU wich can runs @3,56 mhz .

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by touko

There is a ton of snes's chips, even a superfx2 .Some were most used like anti-piracy system .
http://www.ffviman.fr/switch-snes/chip-jeux-snes.html

The SFX's price was around 15$(maybe less), so we can tell it was cheap .


I see no point using a chip wich is not required for a game, in a very large majority of games(98/99%), the stock hardware is enough .
[ Show youtube player ]

Most games were in slow rom so the snes CPU run @2.68 mhz (even RR²), the simple use of fast rom boost the CPU wich can runs @3,56 mhz .

15 dollars isn't cheap when a game cost 50/60 dollars (and when you have to buy thousands or millions of these chips, in addition to the cardridge and the licensing fee asked by Nintendo. Even it it was less than 15 dollars it was still not cheap).


I'm aware that the SNES use a large number of chips. SuperFX 1&2 weren't that much used because it was costly to use.

[ImmortalA1000]

Somebody mentioned that the AGA chipset has a bandwidth of 7mb/s (presume on the unexpanded A1200 as that was what the thread was about). So you can work from there, no point looking at the A1200/CD32 games vs Megadrive games, the developments were world's apart in quality so it's an unfair comparison.

This is more of an 'in the right hands' type situation rather than a game that may have come out on both machines. Beast 1 start/above ground level and Lionheart on my A1000 look more impressive than all but Flink on CD32.

For me, the real question is can you do a graphically indistinguishable port of Thunderforce 3/4 or Castle of Illusion on A1200 2mb stock spec 'in the right hands' ?

[Tsak]

At least for the end user this is definitely not cheap. Cause with every game you buy that uses this chip you end up purchasing the same hardware several times over. In general consoles were definitely more costly overall, with just 4 50$ games you end up spending a whooping 200$. Together with the cost of the console itself that's more than the cost of a brand new a1200.