Why are platform games on the Amiga really mediocre?

[Mrs Beanbag]

BC Kid was an Amiga conversion of a Japanese console game by Factor 5, so that one kind of proves our point!

It's interesting to look at the release dates of the others. Apart from Turrican II (1991) they were all fairly late. We were well into the "trying to copy Sonic" era by then.
Lionheart: 1993
Arabian Nights: 1993
Ruff 'n' Tumble: 1994
Kid Chaos: 1994

[davideo]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

thanks, i'm glad you like it. it has its faults though, i learnt a lot by making it, especially by watching other people try to play it.

and i'm there like "nonono why are you doing that isn't it obvious what you have to do"

Apparently not. This is the sort of thing the designer has to take into account.

Check out this video, for instance: [ Show youtube player ]
At the end, the player assumes the level is not completable, in fact all you have to do is stand on the raft and up it goes...

Forgive me for asking but what was it written in?

[Nibbler]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

BC Kid was an Amiga conversion of a Japanese console game by Factor 5, so that one kind of proves our point!

It's interesting to look at the release dates of the others. Apart from Turrican II (1991) they were all fairly late. We were well into the "trying to copy Sonic" era by then.
Lionheart: 1993
Arabian Nights: 1993
Ruff 'n' Tumble: 1994
Kid Chaos: 1994

I know, BUT B.C KID was even BETTER than the original !!!
That proves the point; if it done right , the Amiga could do it all

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by davideo

Forgive me for asking but what was it written in?

The original "prototype" scrolling platform demo was written in AMOS Pro, then gradually all converted into Asm.

Originally Posted by Nibbler

I know, BUT B.C KID was even BETTER than the original !!!
That proves the point; if it done right , the Amiga could do it all

Yeah there's nothing wrong with the Amiga, it was way ahead of its time, i still don't think anyone has really pushed it to its limit yet. Until there was serious competition from the 16 bit consoles, i think most games designers were more influenced by games on 8-bit home computers. Factor 5 are quite obviously inspired more by Japanese arcade titles.

In fact in the early days of the Amiga, the 8-bit home computers were still popular in Europe and the US so games were still being developed for them, Amiga titles were often only the "Amiga version" of C64 games, so they were designed with much lower specifications in mind. They managed to do even Turrican II for the C64.

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

The original "prototype" scrolling platform demo was written in AMOS Pro, then gradually all converted into Asm.

Youve moved over to ASM and thats great but I think people forget you still got to do all the Calculations yourself (unless someone gives them to you) under AMOS if you want the best endless scrolling or collision.

I know your more than capable, I dont want to see Amos or Blitz turned into a command line version of BackBone etc....

[davideo]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

The original "prototype" scrolling platform demo was written in AMOS Pro, then gradually all converted into Asm.

Thank you for the reply

[john1979]

I like Mr Beanbag but it makes me feel kind of dizzy after a while of playing. Something about the way the screen scrolls when jumping, like it stays fixed on the player rather than following him gracefully. Sonic was able to do fast scrolling without making me dizzified somehow whereas Mr Beanbag makes my eyes hurt. It's a great game though, that's my only minor gameplay complaint.

Yeah there's nothing wrong with the Amiga, it was way ahead of its time,

I agree back when it came out it was a leader, but by the time the two big 16bit consoles came out it was looking dated in the graphics power department and sound channel department. Too many tricks were needed to make Amiga do things like a console and they never came off as looking as good. Probably lack of on screen color pallette, especially when combined with parallax (see Kid Chaos for example) and lack of hardware sprites (+ they were often being used for backgrounds).

Amiga 1200 was a leap closer to the consoles. But it needed faster blitter, a high density floppy drive, more sprites, more sound channels and some fast RAM. Plus it was released too late.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by john1979

I agree back when it came out it was a leader, but by the time the two big 16bit consoles came out it was looking dated in the graphics power department and sound channel department. Too many tricks were needed to make Amiga do things like a console and they never came off as looking as good. Probably lack of on screen color pallette, especially when combined with parallax (see Kid Chaos for example) and lack of hardware sprites (+ they were often being used for backgrounds).

If only Magnetic Fields had developed sonic the hedgehog on Amiga with the Kid Chaos engine...

Fast multi directional scrolling at 50fps: Check
Large playfield area: Check
Multi layered parallax: Check
Music and SFX together: Check
Talented artists: Check

A guy can dream!

[Nibbler]

Originally Posted by john1979

I agree back when it came out it was a leader, but by the time the two big 16bit consoles came out it was looking dated in the graphics power department and sound channel department. Too many tricks were needed to make Amiga do things like a console and they never came off as looking as good. Probably lack of on screen color pallette, especially when combined with parallax (see Kid Chaos for example) and lack of hardware sprites (+ they were often being used for backgrounds).

Amiga 1200 was a leap closer to the consoles. But it needed faster blitter, a high density floppy drive, more sprites, more sound channels and some fast RAM. Plus it was released too late.

Well, i dont think the Mega Drive or The Snes had something like LIONHEART !!!

(and i know every Mega Drive game and SNES game - besides homebrew)
(Panorama Cotton/Flink is pretty much the best on Mega Drive & Rendering Ranger/Donkey Kong Country are pretty much the best on SNES)

This games where awesome !!! ( and both have some things, the amiga 500 dont have & vice versa )

BUT if you think of how old the OCS/ECS chipset is
and what it can do its pretty mindblowing.

No game on SNES or on Mega Drive have
THAT much colors as LIONHEART.

Just saying, there are places in Lionheart that have thousands of colors on screen ,,, pretty amazing stuff.

But i give you that, the A-1200 was to late and underpowerd.

AND i love my Mega Drive & SNES just to make that clear, and both learned A LOT from the AMIGA !!!

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by john1979

I like Mr Beanbag but it makes me feel kind of dizzy after a while of playing. Something about the way the screen scrolls when jumping,

I know, this is the most common complaint. I have tried to fix it, the latest version should be much better but it is not uploaded yet. I had tried to make the scrolling "look ahead" in the direction you were going, because the game moves so fast i thought people would want to see more in front of them than behind (i got this idea from Gravity Power, where it was quite useful), but it turned out to exaggerate your movements too much. It is ok sideways i think, but jumping and landing is such a sudden change of velocity that it really throws the camera around.

I agree back when it came out it was a leader, but by the time the two big 16bit consoles came out it was looking dated in the graphics power department and sound channel department. Too many tricks were needed to make Amiga do things like a console and they never came off as looking as good. Probably lack of on screen color pallette, especially when combined with parallax (see Kid Chaos for example) and lack of hardware sprites (+ they were often being used for backgrounds).

This is all true, but while the 16 bit consoles got games that really pushed the systems from day 1, the Amiga took years to match them. I think you exaggerate the Amiga's limitations a bit, the blitter speed isn't as much of a bind as you'd think, at least i've not been limited by it. The OCS Dual Playfield colour limitation is a pain but Flimbo's Quest for instance shows it needn't ruin the parallax party, and there are still plenty of useful things to do with sprites.

Think about it. Lionheart will run on OCS. So why was there not such a game in 1987? You can't blame hardware limitations for everything.

[mc6809e]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Think about it. Lionheart will run on OCS. So why was there not such a game in 1987? You can't blame hardware limitations for everything.

Excellent point!

I think this is a human factors issue rather than a technical issue.

Put yourself in the place of a programmer in 1985 considering whether or not to learn the technical details of a new system.

The Atari ST has come out. Will it beat the Amiga or not? Commodore has the Commodore 128. Are they committed to the Amiga? How long will it take to learn the more complex OS? What's Commodore's commitment to programming tools?

The uncertainties held back many programmers.

What's remarkable is how well the hardware held up over the years, despite all the economic, legal, and corporate buffoonery that held the machine back.

[Mrs Beanbag]

another issue was just the sheer novelty of the system's design. The graphics hardware in consoles were clearly designed around map-based scrolling games with lots of sprites. The Amiga had instead a bitplane-based frame buffer, which was very flexible, and a blitter that could copy data around fast-ish. The problem was, to get smooth map-based scrolling with a lot of action on top, takes a bit of lateral thinking. The obvious way to do things is just to blit everything every frame, and i think that's what a lot of games did. I know that's how i first attempted scrolling when i first started out, hardware scrolling seemed great if you only had a limited area to scroll around in, it never occurred to me at first that you could use the hardware to create an infinite area by wrapping around at the edges, using copper tricks. It's literally "thinking outside of the box". Plus 50fps hardly ever happened on 8-bit home computer games so even 25fps seemed amazing.

[Steve T]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

I have tried to fix it, the latest version should be much better but it is not uploaded yet. I had tried to make the scrolling "look ahead" in the direction you were going, because the game moves so fast i thought people would want to see more in front of them than behind. It is ok sideways i think, but jumping and landing is such a sudden change of velocity that it really throws the camera around.

The effect is sometimes called 'rubber banding'... its mostly caused by the side to side movement... if you study Sonic he's locked in the centre, but his sprite can move upward within the frame, so he'll go so far upward and *then* the screen starts to scroll with him... so perhaps consider locking the sideways movement, and allowing some vertical play instead. i feel like its also a little bit more zoomed in than sonic, making it feel more disorienting... i think it would be a really nice game if this can be resolved, its certainly smooth, fast, and well thought out.

Its a shame it doesn't work better (as a general technique) because your thinking is good, it would be great to see further ahead than behind and some games really benefit from this... I generally dislike games which have the opposite - where you can see 1/3rd (or even less) ahead of you, and most of the screen is behind the player, wasted space... I can think of one very well liked amiga game (a whole series infact) that I find unplayable because of this.

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Not quite underwear, but looks a bit chilly...
http://hol.abime.net/2838

Hehehehehehe.

[Arne]

When I do camera leading in platform games I usually give the camera a mass - it has a position and a velocity and tries to follow a (wildly moving) aim-point set by the player character (usually the character velocity*leading). Now, in a platformer there's gravity so a jumping player often comes down quickly, so vertical (especially -Y) leading can be a bit slower, experiencing more friction and slower acceleration. I think a similar approach would make the camera in Beanbag feel a bit less disorienting. There can also be timers controlling when the leading position moves away from the player, preventing some quick turn jitter. If the player has accelerated movement this helps to smoothen things too.

[Mrs Beanbag]

yes that is what i was already thinking, implement a sort of spring force with damping towards the target point.

[john1979]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

I know, this is the most common complaint. I have tried to fix it, the latest version should be much better but it is not uploaded yet. I had tried to make the scrolling "look ahead" in the direction you were going, because the game moves so fast i thought people would want to see more in front of them than behind (i got this idea from Gravity Power, where it was quite useful), but it turned out to exaggerate your movements too much. It is ok sideways i think, but jumping and landing is such a sudden change of velocity that it really throws the camera around.

It is great to know you are still working on this game. Looking forward to your modifications. I think with the minor scrolling changes it will be one of the best platformers for the system.

Think about it. Lionheart will run on OCS. So why was there not such a game in 1987? You can't blame hardware limitations for everything.

Lionheart is very impressive. Although it took every trick in the book to get something that great and there were a few compromises made, such as making screen size smaller. There are a lot of colours on screen but most of those are copper trick to produce gradient which is not massively flexible.

The hardware is certainly very capable but I'd be very surprised if the Amiga 1200 could pull off something like Gunstar Heroes at 50fps.

Plus 50fps hardly ever happened on 8-bit home computer games so even 25fps seemed amazing.

A lot of C64 platformers were certainly 50fps! I tend to find 2D C64 games usually have a better framerate than Amiga games.

[Cpt. Hindsight]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Plus 50fps hardly ever happened on 8-bit home computer games so even 25fps seemed amazing.

I don't know which 8-bit home computers you are referring to, but you'd better not say that in a C64 forum.

[Mrs Beanbag]

it seems a lot of folks here had C64s... well i have to say they were also well ahead of their field, i watched some of the Turrican II C64 longplay the other day and was amazed. C64 had smooth hardware scrolling* and hardware sprites, quite unique for its era.

But owners of Sinclair Spectrums, Acorn Electrons, Amstrad CPCs etc didn't have such luxuries. Especially on the Spectrum, any kind of scrolling was a major feat, and that was the most popular machine in this country.

Anyway the bottom line is, 25fps was considered a perfectly acceptable framerate for an early Amiga game. And it's so common on the Amiga that it seems many people still accept it.

*some other 8 bit platforms could do coarse hardware scrolling, or programmers managed to hack smooth scrolling on machines that weren't designed for it

[Michael Sykes]

Playing Turrican on the 64 as a kid and a few years later on the amiga was like watching a movie remake in HD.The game itself was basically the same. And as a platformer it is definitely not mediocre. On both systems it has excelent gameplay and graphics. It can even compete with similar games of the genre on other platforms like metroid/megaman on the snes or nes.

But I wouldn't dare to compare with a Donkey Kong,Mario or Sonic.These games might fall into the same category as platformer(jump&run) but they are also totaly different games imho.

And there is the typical 1 button layout for most amiga games. That way it was a lot harder to port a console title that was made for a 6(+2) button snes controller for example. If we only had a CD32 like controller, back in 1985, included in the original A1000 pack. Things would look a little different today.