Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by grond

@roondar: I think my friend had a 386SX-25 and I would have sworn Ultima Underworld ran better than that...

Well, considering the video I posted, I think this might simply be a case of rose tinted glasses. It happens, I have done it myself plenty of times. You always remember the things you loved back in the day as better than they really were. I point out something similar further down this post when I reply to Dunny. Unless of course you have some footage of the game running on a 386SX-25? Because I'm always willing to accept new evidence.

But it played well enough for us to play it but probably not well enough to not want a better PC (my friend's stepfather had a 486DX2-66 we sometimes could use). In any case, UU has a far more complex engine than Ambermoon and even Doom. It had walls at arbitrary angles and floors and ceilings at arbitrary heights. It had some physics.

UU is a wonderful game with great complexity for it's time and I'm sure it would've been immersive even if it ran slow.

That said, there's really nothing a 386DX can calculate that a 68030 can't also do at pretty much the same speed, clock for clock. So if the game can run on a 386SX@16 MHz (which is the minimum requirement), it can very likely also run on a crippled 14MHz 68020 by virtue of the really rather crippled design of the 386SX. What I'm getting at here is that the engine may well have been complex, but it was designed around CPU grunt that was quite readily available to the AGA Amiga's.

If the Amiga has enough memory and a comparable CPU, the only challenge here should be the c2p and it only needs to cover about 1/3 of the screen.

Another thing to consider is that programming in the Amiga evolved and matured quite a bit over time.

Of course, but I'd bet that the Amiga crowd would still have been happy to have the game a couple of years later. I would've

Btw. I don't remember any way to increase resolution in AB3D in my 50MHz 030. Are those screenshots from the sequel?

Yes they are. And with good reason, as that was actually the game we were talking about at the time

In any case, it is true that a lot of good PC games could have been ported to the A1200. One I kept tiring my 386 friend about was "Alone in the Dark" (definitely possible, even with HAM-backgrounds). It just didn't happen because the market was too small already. Porting a game requires an investment and that was likely to result in a loss. Hence, nobody did it. I wonder how Monkey Island II and Syndicate sold, two great games with an Amiga version almost as good as the PC version running on a far more expensive hardware...

I fully agree with that.


-----

Originally Posted by Dunny

Oh, I'm not having a go at you - just that idiot who claimed it was a bad game. I doubt the Amiga AGA could have handled it tbh though, it was a very complex engine. Not only did it have bridges which you could walk under, but it had slopes and non-orthogonal walls too.

I don't believe it can't be done. If the 3D world can be calculated & rendered on a fairly low end 386, an Amiga with a 68030 running at the same clock speed should also suffice as they are just about exactly the same speed (assuming we're talking about a 386DX, the 386SX was much slower). There would perhaps be some performance degradation due to c2p requirements, but that's it. Effectively, this would mean that similar speeds as the 386 version should be quite doable with a somewhat faster 68030 to 'pay' for the c2p stuff.

It ran acceptably even at full detail - we didn't have games that generally ran at 60fps fullscreen back then, certainly not on a 386. Even PC arcade games (Zool springs to mind as being really bad) were jerky and janky affairs.

These days of course, we'd be foaming at the mouth at the 5-10FPS we got on the 386, but back then our jaws just dropped and we grinned like idiots as we hacked our way through the dungeons.

I beg to differ. In this thread, a key point has been that the AGA Amiga's couldn't do games with raycasters like Wolvenstein, DOOM, etc acceptably because they'd run at low fps. For people to now turn around and say "but low FPS is ok if it's on the PC" is really rather unfair, IMHO.

Either low FPS 3D games are ok, or they are not. You can't have it both ways and have one system be given a free pass and the other slagged off. Please understand, this is purely about the principle of it all. It's not meant to be personal and I'm not saying you are the one slagging off AGA 3D performance.

Originally Posted by Dunny

You remember correctly.

I must say I'm genuinely a bit disappointed by this remark. I showed a video of the actual game running on a real 386 and it, frankly, did not run nearly as well as you had me believe. Now, I do accept it'll run somewhat better without floors & ceilings, but so far - you haven't shown anything other than relying on your memories. I actually showed some footage from a real machine. I'd say that counts for more.

Isn't it more reasonable to accept you might simply have done the same as I have done from time to time*: remember things as being better than they really were?

It's very difficult to have a discussion about the abilities of systems if even video evidence gets discarded so easily.

And do note: I'm always open for new and better evidence. So if you have some footage of the game running better than the video I showed on a real 386SX-25, I'm more than willing to accept it.

*) Example: I did this it with St. Dragon on the A500. I was convinced it ran buttery smooth. Turns out, I was wrong. It doesn't. Found out by seeing a video on YouTube.

[coder76]

Some things about performance here:

A 68030/50 MHz accelerator with fastram on an A1200 should always be clearly faster than any standard 386SX/386DX machines. As 386DX had a max clock frequency of 33-40 MHz. But this is not enough for running fullscreen 1x1 pixel texturemapped games smoothly. As stated earlier, on the PC side a 486DX2/66 MHz was about the minimum requirement (also 486/50 MHz might still be enough) to run Doom and other similar games smoothly at fullscreen and 320x200 resolution.

Sorry to say, but on the Amiga side you'd need a highend 68040 (40 MHz) or a 68060 to compete with that. Which of course not many had. When games evolved to higher resolutions on the PC, a fast Pentium became the minimum requirement (120 MHz and up).

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by coder76

Some things about performance here:

A 68030/50 MHz accelerator with fastram on an A1200 should always be clearly faster than any standard 386SX/386DX machines. As 386DX had a max clock frequency of 33-40 MHz. But this is not enough for running fullscreen 1x1 pixel texturemapped games smoothly. As stated earlier, on the PC side a 486DX2/66 MHz was about the minimum requirement (also 486/50 MHz might still be enough) to run Doom and other similar games smoothly at fullscreen and 320x200 resolution.

Sorry to say, but on the Amiga side you'd need a highend 68040 (40 MHz) or a 68060 to compete with that. Which of course not many had. When games evolved to higher resolutions on the PC, a fast Pentium became the minimum requirement (120 MHz and up).

This is one thing I've noticed about Amiga vs PC demos these days, that the PC will invariably have up to 1920x1080 pixels as maximum for a demo, but the humble Amiga will only have 320x256 pixels (+overscan) as the norm, with the very occasional 640x512 routines, even in the highest-end 68060 demos with the very fanciest routines.

[sandruzzo]

picture this: with 1000 dollars, back in the, what would have been the best machine that we could buy from Amiga side and Pc side? Now we can talk..

[roondar]

Originally Posted by coder76

Sorry to say, but on the Amiga side you'd need a highend 68040 (40 MHz) or a 68060 to compete with that. Which of course not many had. When games evolved to higher resolutions on the PC, a fast Pentium became the minimum requirement (120 MHz and up).

Yes indeed, that is 100% correct and as I and others commented: this is one of the reasons why the Amiga failed - Amiga owners spend far less money on their Amiga's then PC owners did on their PC's. Many opted for a simple A1200 without even a harddisk. Which in turn meant no DOOM or other high end 3D games (or even 68040 powered 2D games, which also would've been interesting to see), which made things worse. Etc.

The reason it's so worth mentioning this fact is that the A1200 clearly never was, nor ever meant to be a competitor to PC's costing several thousands of dollars. Such as the 486DX/2 (at the time of the A1200 launch). This should be really obvious considering the A1200 cost $600 on launch. Now, there was the A4000/040, but as you rightly point out - no one bought it.

That said, the A4000 with AGA and a 25MHz 68040 does run DOOM reasonably well: [ Show youtube player ]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

picture this: with 1000 dollars, back in the, what would have been the best machine that we could buy from Amiga side and Pc side? Now we can talk..

Around 1992/1993 that'd probably have been an A1200 with a HDD added or a 386SX. Very similar machines from a performance standpoint, with the 386 edging out a win in 3D games and the A1200 being better for 2D games.

[spiff]

Yes, considering what every one else brought to the table around then..

But to be fair:
Any computer/console that didn't run Wing commander II, Comanche Maximum overkill or Ultima 7 was a disappointment in 92.

Things didn't get any better then next year, doom, Tie fighter, jedi knight dark forces, mech warrior,

The PC was just crushing it from 92 and onward, FPS genere was so fresh, warez CDs, internet becoming available, Intel / AMD delivering twice the performance every 18 months for the next 15+ years, LAN parties...and then came the 3d(fx) accelerators and even the arcade games couldn't keep up.

As a side note, at least the 1200 had a bunch of nice backwards compatible games and could still be used for graphics/music..
If I'd spent ~$700 for a 3d0 I'd been really pissed.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Foebane

This is one thing I've noticed about Amiga vs PC demos these days, that the PC will invariably have up to 1920x1080 pixels as maximum for a demo, but the humble Amiga will only have 320x256 pixels (+overscan) as the norm, with the very occasional 640x512 routines, even in the highest-end 68060 demos with the very fanciest routines.

Now that's clearly a silly comparison to make, or is that the point? You're comparing machines and architectures, and specifically in this case, graphics chipsets, 25 years apart. Time-wise, the Amiga 1200 is closer to the dawn of home computing than it is to a present-day PC.

Still, fit a graphics card capable of those sorts of resolutions to your Amiga, and there's no reason it couldn't do demos of a similar class - my A1200 has a graphics card from 1999, and is perfectly capable of running a 1920x1080 screen. Of course, PPC-based Amigas will find it even easier. For example:

[ Show youtube player ]

While it might not compete with a demo for a present-day PC (the hardware's from around 2003), it shows that the limits of AGA and 68k can easily be overcome by using more modern hardware, just like the PC world.

The reason most Amiga demos tend to stick to the original chipset is because developers like having the exact hardware limits to push. It's far less impressive pushing more high resolution graphics around when all you have to do is fit a faster GPU.

[sandruzzo]

It seems that very Aga Limit bandwidth....

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

It seems that very Aga Limit bandwidth....

The blitter and copper lacked page-mode updates. The display DMA was fine.

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

The blitter and copper lacked page-mode updates. The display DMA was fine.

Yes I Know that. But cpu as I've read can only access to 7mhz. ins't possible to hack Aga bus and make cpu able to go to 28mhz Like display Dma?

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by spiff

But to be fair:
Any computer/console that didn't run Wing commander II, Comanche Maximum overkill or Ultima 7 was a disappointment in 92.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Now that's clearly a silly comparison to make, or is that the point? You're comparing machines and architectures, and specifically in this case, graphics chipsets, 25 years apart. Time-wise, the Amiga 1200 is closer to the dawn of home computing than it is to a present-day PC.

Still, fit a graphics card capable of those sorts of resolutions to your Amiga, and there's no reason it couldn't do demos of a similar class - my A1200 has a graphics card from 1999, and is perfectly capable of running a 1920x1080 screen. Of course, PPC-based Amigas will find it even easier. For example:

[ Show youtube player ]

While it might not compete with a demo for a present-day PC (the hardware's from around 2003), it shows that the limits of AGA and 68k can easily be overcome by using more modern hardware, just like the PC world.

The reason most Amiga demos tend to stick to the original chipset is because developers like having the exact hardware limits to push. It's far less impressive pushing more high resolution graphics around when all you have to do is fit a faster GPU.

Apologies, Daedalus, you're absolutely right. I'm speaking strictly from a viewpoint of using plain AGA only, with no RTG or even PPC stuff in consideration. It was just an observation, anyway.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I've never ever played Tomb Raider,

Yes, that's obvious.

a game where wild animals are the targets to be killed is reprehensible, as they're endangered enough without having some crazy gung-ho daughter of rich people going around killing them almost for sport, like a fox hunt.

Many of the animals in Tomb Raider won't attack unless you shoot at them first, most can be avoided, and some can only be avoided (or not, if cuddling up to wild animals is your thing). Those that attack regardless are fair game of course, but killing them for sport is not the goal.

just wasn't my cup of tea.

How do you know if you haven't tried it?

Tomb Raider 4 for the PC came with a level editor, and hundreds of stand-alone games have been created by users. Download them from Lara's Levelbase.

But don't bother with the later commercial games produced by Crystal Dynamics. While 'technically' far superior, they play like crap.

The original series was produced by Core Design, who had previously published many Amiga games. If the CD32 had been given PlayStation level performance then we might have gotten Tomb Raider on the Amiga!

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by grond

And, of course, the best operating system is Linux.

Obviously you've never used a Mac.

I used Linux for nearly 20 years. Everything from Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, Debian, and the rest... It sucks. It's hundreds of different distributions and package management systems are a complete and utter fuck up, there's no standardisation between distros, all the X window managers suck (except twm), it takes hours just to configure the kernel for a custom build, KDE/GNOME are bloated pieces of shit... The list goes on and on.

Linux is so bad, that it should have been made by Microsoft.

[grond]

@Hewitson:

I thought that the way I had worded that sentence made it clear that what I really meant was that this shouldn't be the place to discuss present day operating systems.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by activist

that just makes no sense sorry..

How does that statement not make sense?

At the time of the CD32's release, Core Design were still developing on Amiga, Tomb Raider was their title, not Sonys, and for sure if the CD32 had the power to do Tomb Raider, they would have released on it.

I don't even know how its a debate?!

[CrazyPepsi]

I was disappointed with the demos it was all the same spinning doughnuts not impressed at at all

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by CrazyPepsi

I was disappointed with the demos it was all the same spinning doughnuts not impressed at at all

The Demoscene is the single greatest thing about the Amiga, even the games pale into utter insignificance. Don't diss it in front of me.

[Antiriad_UK]

Originally Posted by Foebane

The Demoscene is the single greatest thing about the Amiga, even the games pale into utter insignificance. Don't diss it in front of me.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by CrazyPepsi

I was disappointed with the demos it was all the same spinning doughnuts not impressed at at all

You were probably given a neogeo for xmas, right?
Right!