How much CPU does C2P consume?

[VladR]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

All threads lead to Doom

Whatever rocks your boat, but we played Quake 1/2 competitively in the late 90s on whatever hardware/connection was available (mostly low end Pentiums and Celerons) and still having hell of a time.

I envy you. I was livid after buying an expensive (at the time) Pentium 100 MHz and experiencing atrocious framedrops. I barely finished first Episode.
Yes, eventually, glQuake came (and made things better), but at that time, there were other games...

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Forcing the lowest-denominator frame lock would be a pretty crazy move since hardware setups were different, most people prefer to have it maxed wherever possible, and generally it wouldn't be as bad as you describe. And you could of course control it via console anyway (cl_maxfps if I remember correctly).

Yeah, it would, from commercial standpoint. But I had to go through several upgrades till I realized that I am extremely sensitive to framedrops from the 30-60 range.
Meaning, dropping to 8 fps from 12 fps doesn't bother me and I'll happily finish the game.
But dropping to 10 from 30 enrages me and I just turn it off.

Originally Posted by TCD

Quite an interesting article about that by Micheal Abrash: https://www.bluesnews.com/abrash/chap64.shtml

Thanks, that's the one I was referring to.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

I do not know what CGFfx does. I can only tell you what P96 does. The corresponding P96 function creates from your source data a transient chunky bitmap and then runs into BltBitMapRastPort, which performs the usual clipping at layer boundaries. Within each rectangle to copy,it runs into BltBitMap(), which at the low level, performs a memory copy if the target is chunky, or a C2P conversion if the target is planar.



No graphics card does C2P because that operation does not make sense in a chunky world. P96 has a primitive for P2C, and that conversion is offered by many graphic cards as also the windows API needs something similar to expand 1-bitplane wide graphics (as for example for drawing text) to a chunky frame buffer.

Thank you. I think it's clicking finally. So, there's basically 2 scenarios in the Amiga HW space:
1. RTG gfx cards - which support native chunky (thus no C2P per frame).
2. CPU accelerator cards - which still run on original HW (e.g. A1200), hence they must convert Chunky to Planar.

I think I just realized that RTG basically makes life easier for me as a coder, because I don't have to spend 2 weeks optimizing C2P routine. As long as the engine can support all color spaces (4-bit and 8-bit) - the RTG driver will make it "just work" even on the lowest HW (A1200@14 MHz).

Granted, 8 bitplanes on vanilla AGA on A1200 would be highly likely a slide show, but an 030 accelerator should provide some meaningful framerate ...

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Here's another interesting post from 'skolman' on Amiga.org, showing execution time of the Gloom c2p routine on various systems:-


Here we see that on a CD32 with FastRAM akiko does it 3.1 times faster than Gloom's CPU-based c2p routine, faster even than a 25MHz 68040! Seems that Gloom's c2p routine is not optimized.

This illustrates another reason for having akiko or chunky, less programming effort required to get optimum results. This could have helped to encourage developers to port games from the PC. Unfortunately the engineers working on the AGA chipset didn't think chunky was important enough to implement - which it wasn't for 2D games developed for the Amiga.

c2p Gloom 1x1 256 colors

68020/14 - 61.6 ms
68020/14+fast - 54.6 ms
68020/14+akiko - 24.2 ms
68020/14+fast+akiko - 17.6 ms

68030/50+fast - 21.7 ms
68040/25+fast - 18.6 ms
68060/50+fast - 9.1 ms

Oooh, nice. Wonderful benchmark !

So, a CD32/Fast/Akiko can do C2P in ~1.1 frame (17.6 ms) ?
That implies it's possible to do a 30 fps 3D game on CD32 (as long as you can fit your code into the ~0.9 frame), right ? Never thought that it would be possible before. Any games doing that ?

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Thorham

What's this obsession with Doom about anyway

IDK either. There was a chance for games with actual ideas and gameplay for a while, then it all turned into fighters, racers, and shooters.

It's a dull cardboard 2.5D shooter where you can't even press buttons, you have to bump into them. We are not impressed.

I blame Americans.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Photon

It's a dull cardboard 2.5D shooter where you can't even press buttons, you have to bump into them. We are not impressed.

That would be Quake.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Photon

There was a chance for games with actual ideas and gameplay for a while, then it all turned into fighters, racers, and shooters.

It's certainly better today because of indie games.

Originally Posted by Photon

It's a dull cardboard 2.5D shooter where you can't even press buttons, you have to bump into them. We are not impressed.

I liked it well enough when I played it on my A1200 in ~1997 (ADoom).

Originally Posted by TCD

That would be Quake.

You didn't like Quake?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Thorham

You didn't like Quake?

I meant that it was the game that you didn't press switches but had to bump into them.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by TCD

I meant that it was the game that you didn't press switch but had to bump into them.

Not all of them. Some you had to shoot. If you were a modder you could make switches work any way you liked TBH. It was more than flexible enough.

Quake's DNA is everywhere. Far more influential on the industry than Doom ever was in terms of titles either directly using or evolved from the engine. Take a look at the quake family tree.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Not all of them. Some you had to shoot.

Yes. In Quake you didn't have a dedicated 'press button' action, in Doom you did. Just to make sure: In Doom you also had walk over triggers and shootable triggers in addition to the 'press button' ones.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by TCD

Yes. In Quake you didn't have a dedicated 'press button' action, in Doom you did. Just to make sure: In Doom you also had walk over triggers and shootable triggers in addition to the 'press button' ones.

The solution to this from a modding perspective would be to reserve an impulse value (there are 255, but some are fixed/reserved) and design your switch to react to that value (few lines of Quake C). Next, put an alias in the quake.rc for the impulse and let the player bind it to the key of their choice. Et voila, your mod has switches they you need to press a key to activate.

[TCD]

I could point out that you completely missed the point of my posts, but I don't think it would help

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by TCD

I could point out that you completely missed the point of my posts, but I don't think it would help

No, I got it, I'm just being a bit over literal. I'm pretty fond of Quake and had a lot of fun writing quake C mods years ago.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Quake's DNA is everywhere. Far more influential on the industry than Doom ever was in terms of titles either directly using or evolved from the engine. Take a look at the quake family tree.

At the root of Quake's family tree is Doom (well, Wolfenstein 3D, really) so saying Quake is "far more influential" than its groundbreaking parent is a strange way of looking at things.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

At the root of Quake's family tree is Doom (well, Wolfenstein 3D, really) so saying Quake is "far more influential" than its groundbreaking parent is a strange way of looking at things.

Quake isn't particularly based on Doom's sourcecode though. There are some common utility bits, but that's it. The quake family tree are engines/games derived directly from quake's original source code, either under license or since going GPL.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Quake isn't particularly based on Doom's sourcecode though. There are some common utility bits, but that's it. The quake family tree are engines/games derived directly from quake's original source code, either under license or since going GPL.

Sure, but code itself is just a part of the lineage - the ideas, concepts, and their implementation matter more imo.

If we took only code and its subsequent derivatives as the yardstick then it could be said that Unreal is actually the most influential FPS ever...and I don't think it's exactly true

[VladR]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

If we took only code and its subsequent derivatives as the yardstick then it could be said that Unreal is actually the most influential FPS ever...and I don't think it's exactly true

Unreal 1, however, delivered an emotional cinematic experience for the first time. The first level with the tall mountains, waterfall, birds - it was absolutely unreal and totally next-gen.

The ambience in Unreal 1 is most definitely a yardstick that neither Quake 1, Doom nor Wolfenstein delivered.

And I played Wolfenstein, in small window, on 80286 and it was amazing, but sure as hell wasn't as cinematic as Unreal 1, despite making the jump from Atari 800 XL's TwoMaze straight to Wolfenstein.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by VladR

Unreal 1, however, delivered an emotional cinematic experience for the first time. The first level with the tall mountains, waterfall, birds - it was absolutely unreal and totally next-gen.

The ambience in Unreal 1 is most definitely a yardstick that neither Quake 1, Doom nor Wolfenstein delivered.

And I played Wolfenstein, in small window, on 80286 and it was amazing, but sure as hell wasn't as cinematic as Unreal 1, despite making the jump from Atari 800 XL's TwoMaze straight to Wolfenstein.

Comparing W3D to Unreal...way to turn an argument on its head This is a textbook example of "sophistry".

Of course Unreal looked unreal, and then Half Life did a little thing or two too, and Halo after that, but these games did not appear out of thin air. id Software was first to the party (inb4 3D Monster Maze from ZX81) and there's just no wiggling out of this one.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Sure, but code itself is just a part of the lineage - the ideas, concepts, and their implementation matter more imo.

If we took only code and its subsequent derivatives as the yardstick then it could be said that Unreal is actually the most influential FPS ever...and I don't think it's exactly true

Don't conflate the game with the engine. And yes, in that respect, Unreal, like Quake has had a huge impact.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

id Software was first to the party (inb4 3D Monster Maze from ZX81) and there's just no wiggling out of this one.

I wasn't trying to argue whether id was the first to bring us the mass-appeal FPS, that's indisputable regardless of the fact if some one other FPS/RPG/Whatever game technically used the same technical approach (but wasn't mass-appealing).

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Of course Unreal looked unreal, and then Half Life did a little thing or two too, and Halo after that, but these games did not appear out of thin air.

You're right about the HalfLife1 doing a little thing - it was barely an incremental upgrade that merely took scripting to an absurd level.

But it brought us a loading screen in the middle of an empty corridor - that I think is the greatest technical achievement of HL ! Nothing beats a 10-second loading screen in the middle of a shootout with an enemy in the empty corridor - that, for sure, I never experienced before !

Do not get me started on Halo - the power of marketing. Indisputably it proved that if you spent $100M on marketing, any turd can become a mass hit (even Halo !!!). I still remember the long lines in ECTS (at Earl's Court in London) of people spending half day just to get a 10-15 minute slot. It was surreal!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Don't conflate the game with the engine. And yes, in that respect, Unreal, like Quake has had a huge impact.

Perhaps you are right, but this is way off-topic here. All we are concerned about is what impact c2p routines had/have on games for the Amiga. In general I reckon the initial effect was not great because developers forgot that game design is more important than the engine.

The Quake engine brought us true 3D, but what use was that when the game itself sucked? Doom was 'only' 2.5D, but made much better use of it IMO. The 2D enemies were more realistic and had more character than the polygon creatures in Quake, and the scenery was a lot more interesting too.