Does the AGA chipset has been fully exploited ?

[TheFoxSoft]

I think Brian the lion is a good attempt to take advantage of AGA chipset

[nikosidis]

I think Alladin, Super Stardust and Banshee look nice for games not mentioned.

[kremiso]

thank you guys for all the explanations and also for the different opinions, truly appreciated

Originally Posted by Steril707

I haven't seen any 2D game really going to the max what I think would be possible in AGA.

well, this summarizes what i was exactly thinking before posting this thread

Originally Posted by roondar

Indeed, just look at the "Misadventures of Flink". That game runs in Dual Playfield mode and looks really, really nice - even though it's essentially a Mega Drive port.

i'll try a long shot here, because i've always thought that also games like Lomax, Rayman (the first one) and X2 (project x sequel on ps1) would have a good yeld on AGA too, of course downgraded in some things

[Gilbert]

AGA has been nowhere near exploited. The Amiga is more complicated than most hardware and most developers moved on to other machines before AGA games got anywhere near maxing out the hardware

The Amiga CD32 with it's Akiko chip and streaming ability similarly has also not been using anywhere near it's maximum

Originally Posted by roondar

Indeed, just look at the "Misadventures of Flink". That game runs in Dual Playfield mode and looks really, really nice - even though it's essentially a Mega Drive port.

That does look great although I think it has a smaller viewport/screen than the Mega CD which I found disappointing. I am a big fan of fullscreen games

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

That does look great although I think it has a smaller viewport/screen than the Mega CD which I found disappointing. I am a big fan of fullscreen games

Flink starts with a NTSC screenmode:

You press the Green button to switch to PAL:

[AmigaHope]

Breathless and AB3D2 do not use AGA at all, other than using an 8-bit screenmode. They're entirely CPU driven. The C2P in AB3D2 isn't even very good (as later patches with better c2p engines have shown). AB3D2 2 meg version does use the better AGA implementation of copper chunky (which still uses an OCS screenmode).

Almost every AGA game released only used AGA to enable 8-bit color, or enable dual playfield on an OCS game to have a 16-color background. Many games that had an OCS and AGA version just enabled dual playfield on AGA with that being the only difference.

To be fair, the only other features of AGA that can be exploited in lores NTSC/PAL are the better fetchmodes (enabled to exploit the dual playfield usually), and the wider sprites (almost never used). You could conceivably make a 2D game that would be impossible on OCS but possible on AGA in EHB by taking advantage of the better fetchmodes to do more stuff with the blitter plus the better CPU, but I don't think this was done. The longer blitter operations ECS introduced that carried over into AGA were almost never used because they required fast RAM to really be taken advantage of (if the CPU stalls the longer operation does no good).

Ultimately AGA is just OCS/ECS with some tweaks to expand bandwidth and use that bandwidth for more colors and wider sprites. i.e. it's what ECS really should have been (and in 1987 instead of 1990).

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

To be fair, the only other features of AGA that can be exploited in lores NTSC/PAL are the better fetchmodes (enabled to exploit the dual playfield usually), and the wider sprites (almost never used). You could conceivably make a 2D game that would be impossible on OCS but possible on AGA in EHB by taking advantage of the better fetchmodes to do more stuff with the blitter plus the better CPU, but I don't think this was done. The longer blitter operations ECS introduced that carried over into AGA were almost never used because they required fast RAM to really be taken advantage of (if the CPU stalls the longer operation does no good).

Demos used the wide AGA sprites as overlays for the HAM8 demos I mentioned, and the other tricks you mentioned, I'm sure, were utilised in demos, too.

You might reply with "but demos suck, I want GAMES" but you have to remember that AGA came out less than a year before Doom came out on PC, and so obviously, the chipset was never sufficiently utilised for the kind of 2D platform games that were a quickly-dying genre. As proven with the Sega 32X, Nintendo's 3D chip for Starfox, the upcoming Saturn and the eventual king, the PlayStation, everyone was keen to go 3D.

[VladR]

If I am reading wiki correctly, AGA didn't support chunky modes?
Meaning, C2P must handle 8 bitplanes?
In the other thread, a number of~20 ms for C2P was mentioned.
How much slower is C2P at 256-color modes?

[coder76]

Originally Posted by VladR

If I am reading wiki correctly, AGA didn't support chunky modes?
Meaning, C2P must handle 8 bitplanes?
In the other thread, a number of~20 ms for C2P was mentioned.
How much slower is C2P at 256-color modes?

Yes, no chunky modes in AGA. A C2P can usefully do 1-8 bitplanes for AGA, less bitplanes are faster of course. A C2P costs various amounts of time depending on CPU speed, bitplanes used, and pixel quality (e.g. 1x1 or 2x2), but ultimately the chip ram write speed is the limit, which is reached for C2P's for 68040 and 68060 CPUs. At fullscreen 320x256 and 256 colors this means a bit over 10 ms per frame, which is rarely reached in practice. Because another problem is that many faster CPU accelerator boards have a poor memory performance both for chip and fast ram access, and the max 7 MB/sec write speed to chip ram is reached only by a few boards for A1200 (at least 68030 Blizzard IV 50 MHz, and the new Warp 1260 68060 105 MHz board, maybe some other too).


Reducing screen size, having less colors, and using poorer pixel quality are common ways to speed up C2Ps.

[SquawkBox]

Amiga version of Disney's Lion King is a good example of the possibilities of AGA chipset being vastly underused.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by coder76

Yes, no chunky modes in AGA. A C2P can usefully do 1-8 bitplanes for AGA, less bitplanes are faster of course. A C2P costs various amounts of time depending on CPU speed, bitplanes used, and pixel quality (e.g. 1x1 or 2x2), but ultimately the chip ram write speed is the limit, which is reached for C2P's for 68040 and 68060 CPUs. At fullscreen 320x256 and 256 colors this means a bit over 10 ms per frame, which is rarely reached in practice. Because another problem is that many faster CPU accelerator boards have a poor memory performance both for chip and fast ram access, and the max 7 MB/sec write speed to chip ram is reached only by a few boards for A1200 (at least 68030 Blizzard IV 50 MHz, and the new Warp 1260 68060 105 MHz board, maybe some other too).


Reducing screen size, having less colors, and using poorer pixel quality are common ways to speed up C2Ps.

How long would it have taken the Commodore engineers to add a native chunky mode for both 256 colours and HAM8, I wonder?

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by DanScott

I'll have to disagree with you there... Clever use of 16/16 dual playfield and hardware sprites could result in the most amazing & technically accomplished AGA games that really push the use of the chipset to the limit. There is certainly nothing lazy about using dual playfield to create interesting visuals.

Using 16/16 dual playfield just doesn't give enough of a visual boost compared to OCS games, imo.

Compared to OCS's 4BPL+spriteParallax it still looks like a 16 colour game, just with more details in the backgrounds.

I'd love to see a 64 color game, for instance.

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by Foebane

How long would it have taken the Commodore engineers to add a native chunky mode for both 256 colours and HAM8, I wonder?

A doubling of the coppers speed would give a full copper chunky 320 x 256 if starting from super high resolution wouldn't it? Or is thst not how it works.

[skan]

Originally Posted by kremiso

i'll try a long shot here, because i've always thought that also games like Lomax, Rayman (the first one) and X2 (project x sequel on ps1) would have a good yeld on AGA too, of course downgraded in some things

Good point, but I suppose those would be downgraded in MANY things!

X2 is pretty massive, I think the closest example of what we can achieve on AGA is T-Zero (and that game needs an 030+FastRAM to shine anyway). But gimme a T0-level graphics on vanilla 1200 with X2 gameplay (japanese re-release, not original Team17 one ) ...and I'll be happy!

Rayman on the other hand... If the reference is the unreleased SNES version and not Jaguar/PSX ones, maybe that could work.

Originally Posted by Steril707

Using 16/16 dual playfield just doesn't give enough of a visual boost compared to OCS games, imo.

Compared to OCS's 4BPL+spriteParallax it still looks like a 16 colour game, just with more details in the backgrounds.

I'd love to see a 64 color game, for instance.

I partly disagree. On AGA you have a deeper and wider 24bit palette to choose from anyway and that can give some pretty results in DPF - if you know your stuff, of course!
On top of that you have other 16 independent colors sprites (or up to 24c if not attached) and that can give a further boost visually - again, if you know your stuff.

Completely agree on the 64 color game!

... and still fancing about that full arcade port of Puzzle Bobble!

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by skan

I partly disagree. On AGA you have a deeper and wider 24bit palette to choose from anyway and that can give some pretty results in DPF - if you know your stuff, of course!
On top of that you have other 16 independent colors sprites (or up to 24c if not attached) and that can give a further boost visually - again, if you know your stuff.

Hmm, I don't know..
So you have a bit of a finer stepping in your color ramps, but still only 16 colors to work with.

I acknowledge you can have more colors on screen with the sprites doing their thing, but that's hardly scalable in a generic engine usage.

[skan]

Originally Posted by Steril707

I acknowledge you can have more colors on screen with the sprites doing their thing, but that's hardly scalable in a generic engine usage.

Is there such thing as a "generic engine" on Amiga really...or need of one?!?

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by skan

Is there such thing as a "generic engine" on Amiga really...or need of one?!?

Well, I went from "create something super unique and special" with dual playfield, palette, copper and sprite tricks around each and every corner to something a lot more generic with Inviyya over the course of its development.

Saves so much work.
I would have never finished this game if I didn't switch over. Took me half a year to redraw all those assets and readjust my engine. Was worth the work, though.

It's all fun creating one level with all those special quirks and stuff, but creating assets for a whole game with all these restrictions in mind is horrible.

[mcgeezer]

Purely for technical purposes, does anyone have a working download link for Flink for the CD32.

I want to check what screen mode / fetch mode the game is running in and what it does with the sprites.

Alternatively, if someone know a good webpage with the information I would be most grateful.

Geezer

[skan]

Originally Posted by Steril707

Well, I went from "create something super unique and special" with dual playfield, palette, copper and sprite tricks around each and every corner to something a lot more generic with Inviyya over the course of its development.

Saves so much work.
I would have never finished this game if I didn't switch over. Took me half a year to redraw all those assets and readjust my engine. Was worth the work, though.

It's all fun creating one level with all those special quirks and stuff, but creating assets for a whole game with all these restrictions in mind is horrible.

Oh, "generic" as in "game specific" anyway, now I get it. Well, that's one of the first thing you should do early on in your DD anyway, baremetal or not.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by skan

Oh, "generic" as in "game specific" anyway, now I get it. Well, that's one of the first thing you should do early on in your DD anyway, baremetal or not.

Or to give another example, I understand why there are only three dual playfield levels in Lionheart.

Off course those levels look amazing when you first see them, but if every level had only those shades of brown and grey in the foreground it would start to look boring after a few levels.
Plus, on Agony where they do this, you could barely make out the enemies in front of the same coloured background.