Hardware close to an Amiga - after the Atari ST

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by DamienD

I have to agree with you here idrougge.

Thread title changed to something more appropriate; hope this is ok turrican3?

No problem Damien.

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by meynaf

In terms of game porting, the closest to Amiga after Atari ST is the Mac 68k (on which the complicated OS is the problem). Then come Sega Megadrive and X68000, which both have "alien" hardware making game conversions extremely unfriendly to do (at least for me). Then comes everything not 68k related.

Hi Meynaf,
could it be possible to make a kind of wine for the amiga os ???
Like wine can run ms windows software on linux...
Could it be possible to do the same and make 68000 mac applications running on amiga os ???? I mean in theory... Perhaps it's more complicate than emulate a mac on amiga ???

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by turrican3

Hi Meynaf,
could it be possible to make a kind of wine for the amiga os ???
Like wine can run ms windows software on linux...
Could it be possible to do the same and make 68000 mac applications running on amiga os ???? I mean in theory... Perhaps it's more complicate than emulate a mac on amiga ???

What do you think current mac emulators do ?

[Locutus]

Create a paravirtualized environment to run the whole MacOS in.

Thats nothing like WINE ;-)

Ofcourse you could reimplement the Mac Toolbox etc, has (partially) been done before etc.

Probably to port Mac Games just implementing MacDraw would get you very far.

The thing with 'Closeness' and the 68k Mac is that there never was such a thing as 'The Mac' in hardware terms. A Mac Classic and a MacIIfx are about as different as a Atari ST and a Amiga 4000.

Mac software is all written to work against established API's (QuickDraw, etc) which is part of why Shapeshifter etc are fairly 'simple'

...Darn, i ended up posting in this thread again.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Create a paravirtualized environment to run the whole MacOS in.

Thats nothing like WINE ;-)

Less complicated, but based on the same principles. Wine isn't a full reimplementation of Windows, is it ?

Originally Posted by Locutus

Ofcourse you could reimplement the Mac Toolbox etc, has (partially) been done before etc.

A quite complex task this is.

Originally Posted by Locutus

Probably to port Mac Games just implementing MacDraw would get you very far.

Errh, no. I've ported one and can tell.

Originally Posted by Locutus

The thing with 'Closeness' and the 68k Mac is that there never was such a thing as 'The Mac' in hardware terms. A Mac Classic and a MacIIfx are about as different as a Atari ST and a Amiga 4000.

Mac software is all written to work against established API's (QuickDraw, etc) which is part of why Shapeshifter etc are fairly 'simple'

Yes but that's why we don't need to care about mac hw. Most of what runs on a Mac can run directly on an Amiga, that's why i see them as 'close'.

Originally Posted by Locutus

...Darn, i ended up posting in this thread again.

Me too

[honx]

Originally Posted by s2325

Some SAM Coupe games may be mistaken with Amiga but of course Commodore machine is superior. http://gamesdbase.com/Media/SYSTEM/M...our_-_1993.jpg

i'd like to see an amiga port of this game, if someone could do that.

[s2325]

Yes, it may be good Dizzy clone but on YouTube there is only one short video and with broken sound.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Less complicated, but based on the same principles. Wine isn't a full reimplementation of Windows, is it ?

ECOFF binary loader/dynamic linker...but with a (fairly) complete Windows userland API reimplementation included. Definitely not 'less complicated'

A quite complex task this is.

Depends to which level you want to do it, Executor did it well enough for some use cases and v68k also has a barebones implementation.

Not undoable :-)

Errh, no. I've ported one and can tell.

Out of interest, what other stuff did you run into? On from what basis did you port? I guess the insane MacOS memory handle model didn't help :-D

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Locutus

ECOFF binary loader/dynamic linker...but with a (fairly) complete Windows userland API reimplementation included. Definitely not 'less complicated'

No, i meant Mac emulator less complicated than Wine but doing more or less the same thing - execute code natively.

Originally Posted by Locutus

Out of interest, what other stuff did you run into? On from what basis did you port? I guess the insane MacOS memory handle model didn't help :-D

I don't remember exactly. It was more an accumulation of many little annoying things than something with a single, big problem to solve.
The MacOS is a lot more complicated than on Atari, games are (usually) much larger, and i didn't have any previous mac coding experience.

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

The Amiga has custom ships that the Atari ST, being based on off-the-shelf components, lacks.

like a parrots...

- Atari ST had four custom chips, but yes, they were not designed for games.

[Quazar]

Originally Posted by honx

i'd like to see an amiga port of this game, if someone could do that.

The Witching Hour - is still available for the SAM Coupe, as I was able to re-release it with full permission from the author on the coverdisk of my SAM magazine "SAM Revival" - issue 24 - www.samcoupe.com

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive? Also 68K

The only problem being the Megadrive is a MUCH more powerful machine.

The way the MD can throw sprites around the screen makes the Amiga look absolutely worthless.

[PortuguesePilot]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

The only problem being the Megadrive is a MUCH more powerful machine.

The way the MD can throw sprites around the screen makes the Amiga look absolutely worthless.

Yes. But the Amiga's sound chip is superior and the whole graphic power of the MD was only noticeable in some genres, namely action games, shoot'em-ups or platformers. Several games that were available on both machines were actually better on the Amiga. The SNES was overall better than the Amiga, the MegaDrive wasn't. It was a much closer call.

[Locutus]

And the SGI IRIS was ofcourse a way more powerful 68k system than any of these.

/threadcap

[demoniac]

Most of the SGI IRIS machines had moved to MIPS processors by the late 80s.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

Several games that were available on both machines were actually better on the Amiga.

Maybe. But far more games that were available on both formats were superior on the Megadrive. For example when Turrican 3 was converted to Amiga the quality of the graphics had to be reduced.

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

The SNES was overall better than the Amiga, the MegaDrive wasn't. It was a much closer call.

From a gaming perspective, they both kicked the Amiga's ass.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Maybe. But far more games that were available on both formats were superior on the Megadrive. For example when Turrican 3 was converted to Amiga the quality of the graphics had to be reduced.


From a gaming perspective, they both kicked the Amiga's ass.

Well because it developed for the Megadrive, if you are taking the strengths of a machine then converting it, it will have to be compromised somewhere, there are plenty of Amiga games on the Megadrive that are worse.

Why are you on a Amiga forum to slag off the machine, i owned them all at some point, and as far as choice, and price the Amiga kick both their butts imo.

[PortuguesePilot]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

(...) From a gaming perspective, they both kicked the Amiga's ass.

That's highly debatable. The Amiga was much better than any of them on the so-called "serious gaming" with games such as Civilization, Colonization, Sim City, D-Day, Syndicate, Dune 2, Defender of the Crown, Theme Park, etc... Those were all better on the Amiga for the simple fact that it was a computer. Many of those weren't even converted to the Genesis or SNES for the simple fact that they would be impractical to play. Also, whatever graphical prowess that the MegaDrive could have compared to the Amiga (the difference wasn't really THAT big. AGA machines could equal and even top the MegaDrive on that department), there was no single game released for the SEGA console that had better music/sound. Not a single one. That sort-of evens the score, for games aren't only graphics.

You could now argue that by 1992/1993, the PCs were better than the Amiga for the aforementioned "serious" games, but then again the Amiga was still better than the PC for action games so, in the end, the Amiga sat quietly in the middle of the PC and the consoles, displaying its very considerable versatility. And this on a computer designed in the early days of the 1980's (as opposed to any of the other mentioned machines) and that was sold at a fraction of the price of the most powerful PCs of the mid 90's and could still give the 16bit consoles a run for their money. In my book, that makes the Amiga a very meritorious machine, even at the end of its life-cycle (1994/1995).

[s2325]

I think Skeleton Krew had better music on Mega Drive but it may be personal taste as compositions were different.

[PortuguesePilot]

Originally Posted by s2325

I think Skeleton Krew had better music on Mega Drive but it may be personal taste as compositions were different.

Well, in order to be comparable, the music must have the same composition or else the comparison would not be fair. I, for example, love what David Whittaker did with the AY-3-8910 in the main theme of the Atari ST version of UBI Soft's classic Zombi. The music is great musically speaking and has a special "chiptune" charm to it. The Amiga music, though better sonically, is no match to the ST's music in the same game (sadly, since both David Peres and Alain da Silva are first-generation portuguese-french).

That, however, is not the same as sating that the Atari ST had better music abilities than the Amiga. I think that no-one argues with the notion that the Paula chip was much better than the (admittedly charming) AY-3-8910 PSG chip. The same could be said for the MegaDrive's YM2612 OPN2.