Port Wolfenstein on Amiga 500 / 1000 OCS

[AJCopland]

I'm also just going to throw this into the mix just for laughs
http://www.happydaze.se/wolf/

[Galahad/FLT]

All this talk of Stunt Car Racer using the blitter for drawing on Amiga, i'm pretty sure it doesn't at all.

When I did Stunt Car Racer Turbo, the only blitter code I found was in the RNC Sector loader.

Pretty sure Geoff Crammond lead on the ST with SCR and then ported across to the Amiga, the only real improvement being the sound.

[LongLifeA1200]

OCS Demos with 3D effects:

There are 2,950 demos that can run on OCS (don't know how many more for AGA). There is also another 523 others classed in the 64 bytes or above categories for OCS.

Here is just a few which were easy to find. Although there are YouTube videos of each of these, I think it's better to download and run them as intended.

Made In Croatia [Binary] Code by Amigo. Gfx by Nap. Music by Joe.
Minimum Requirements:
68000
OCS
Kickstart 1.2
512KB + 512KB RAM

At the 3rd minute mark and for about 40 seconds there is a nice dot matrix 3D sine scrolling effect with a basic spacecraft.

Wildcat [DMA] Code + Gfx by KK. Music by V0yager.
Minimum Requirements:
68000
OCS
Kickstart 1.2
512KB + 64KB RAM

This is the one that includes the "Wolf3D" at the 1 minute mark, for 40 seconds, mentioned by the OP.

Zener Drive [Altair] Code by KK. Gfx by mi-ku + malfunction. Music by x-ceed.
Minimum Requirements:
68000
OCS
Kickstart 2.0
512KB + 256KB RAM

Zener Drive includes code-work done by "KK" who also worked on the Wildcat demo. Gfx-work by "mi-ku" and "malfunction" is really interesting. At the 2 minute 40 second mark, for about 10 seconds, I wish it were a game.

Rink a Dink: REDUX [Lemon] Code by Paradroid. Gfx by Facet + Prowler + Paradroid. Music by Nuke + Magnar. Special thx to StingRay [scarab].
Minimum Requirements:
68000
OCS
Kickstart 1.2
512KB + 512KB RAM

There are notes included in the demo itself for anyone interested which you can pause to read with the left mouse button.

Flower Power [Anarchy] Code by mcm & tron^fr. Gfx by e toball. Music by Jester + 4mat
Minimum Requirements:
68000
OCS
Kickstart 1.2
512KB + 512KB RAM
DO NOT USE Turbo Floppy Drive Emulation Speed

Starts with an extra-widescreen 3D "driving" demo. Later, it shows a 102 light-faces (flat-shaded) polygon, but I only see ~40 in view at a time (maybe more, but it's too dark to see). Then 230 vector-lines (wire-frame). And last, 62 glenz-faces polygon, which is closer to the number of polygons seen on screen as the 102 model.

Will only know for sure what the machine is capable of once a test program is written.

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

All this talk of Stunt Car Racer using the blitter for drawing on Amiga, i'm pretty sure it doesn't at all.

When I did Stunt Car Racer Turbo, the only blitter code I found was in the RNC Sector loader.

Pretty sure Geoff Crammond lead on the ST with SCR and then ported across to the Amiga, the only real improvement being the sound.

I wonder how that rumor got started. From watching videos of SCR on Atari ST and A500, it seems the A500 version is a fraction quicker/smoother.

SCR & Assetto Corsa fans might be interested in a video of a "Stunt Car Racer Challenge in Assetto Corsa". /watch?v=8RRMsHYrcNM (Why I can't post YouTube links like normal on this forum - I have no idea why.)

Originally Posted by AJCopland

http://www.happydaze.se/wolf/

That is either some very serious dedication to Wolf3D or the game was picked at random. It didn't occur to me to make custom catridges for old consoles. Makes me think of Star Fox with its on board "Super FX" chip - great video on the histroy of that on YT /watch?v=Opzomu6mgYk

Someone could make a custom cartridge that accepts SD cards to increase the value of old consoles, much to the annoyance of companies like Nintendo (for all I know that's already been done). Heck, might as well do the same thing for Commodore-Amigas.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

Someone could make a custom cartridge that accepts SD cards to increase the value of old consoles, much to the annoyance of companies like Nintendo (for all I know that's already been done).

Cartridges like these have been available for ages and for pretty much all systems

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by britelite

Cartridges like these have been available for ages and for pretty much all systems

I own Famicom, SNES, Atari 2600 and Mega-Drive ones and just ordered a N64 one They are awesome.

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

All this talk of Stunt Car Racer using the blitter for drawing on Amiga, i'm pretty sure it doesn't at all.

When I did Stunt Car Racer Turbo, the only blitter code I found was in the RNC Sector loader.

Pretty sure Geoff Crammond lead on the ST with SCR and then ported across to the Amiga, the only real improvement being the sound.

It's an ST port through and through. It's also one of the greatest Amiga games of all time IMHO.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

All this talk of Stunt Car Racer using the blitter for drawing on Amiga, i'm pretty sure it doesn't at all.

I think the point being made was that a game like Stunt Car Racer would actually benefit from using the blitter, while a textured game like wolf3d not so much

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by britelite

I think the point being made was that a game like Stunt Car Racer would actually benefit from using the blitter, while a textured game like wolf3d not so much

I think only limited participants in this thread actually got that point

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by britelite

I think the point being made was that a game like Stunt Car Racer would actually benefit from using the blitter, while a textured game like wolf3d not so much

I remember at the time at my computer club people raving about Stunt car racer, I'm sure I remember people with ST's and Amiga's connecting machines together with a cable. I'd suspect that the developer(s) probably wanted a like for like port to keep the experience between the machines the same.

When I'm finished what I'm doing I might have a little peek in the code and see if I work out what's going on with SCR. I guess the the objective would be to patch it and the lose multi-play capability in favour of speed with the Blitter.

Could be a tough ask.

[LongLifeA1200]

Let's see if I now follow:

Atari doesn't get custom blitter chips until some time in 1989.

Stunt Car Racer was published in 1989 but developed on the Atari.

Custom blitter chips on the Amiga can draw polygons faster than the Motorola 68000.

SCR hasn't been optimized for the Amiga version to make use of the blitter to draw polygons.

It's possible Geoff Crammond didn't want to make Atari ST fans jealous, but that also means Miggy4eva was right about something; SCR on the A-500/1000 is technically classed as a "lazy" port.

[jizmo]

Reading this thread just gave me the biggest ice cream headache ever. Not only with the demand of someone else to get off their ass and to code a Wolfenstein for Amiga, but then the whole conversation getting sidetracked to Stunt Car Racer, an entirely different beast.

Bringing any vector game to run at the parallel speed with Atari already requires some optimisation to make up the processor speed difference. Secondly, there's more to a game than just the vector drawing routine. In Stunt Car Racer's case it was the whole car physics including the car suspension that really made the gameplay, and those things certainly hog some CPU cycles as well. Sure, it could be argued that the game could've been made faster by some further optimisation - but then again this is the case with almost any other game. Given the deadlines and considering the optimisations already put in place this rarely makes much sense at the time of the publishing if the game is already running at ok speed.

The Wolfenstein ports and adaptations on various systems are always a testament for the coder that made the port happen, not so much on the platform itself. Same thing here on our dear miggy: If someone someday puts in the vast work and manages to squeeze out a Wolfenstein on a A500, it's certainly because of the coder reigning, despite the obvious hardware limitations.

[nobody]

This is not the craziest thread, I have seen a guy asking how to port Cryengine to Amiga in Facebook. But this Wolfenstein thing could exist with a ton of work hours and probably run at 5 fps on A500. Maybe if using an Aca500+ with extra speed and memory could be done at full speed.

[khph_re]

Shame the citadel engine doesn't have source code. Turn off the walls and floors for a speed boost, and you'd be there. (And by there I mean low frame rate and small window).

[ Show youtube player ]

[eXeler0]

I think a lot of clever people have already done the math and proved that a straight 1x1 *playable* port is impossible on a vanilla A500 due to a bunch of reasons. So next obious step is maybe doing something "downgraded".. Smaller screren, 2x2 etc..
But.. Another remaining question is if there are still unexplored ways to cheat your way to a good enough result.

I rather enjoy those videos about how they cheated with Sonic games on the Megadrive.. its almost never the obvious solution, always a number of clever tricks.
Example:
[ Show youtube player ]
Now, the result, whatever it would be... probably wouldnt count as a "real port" but, hey. If it looks and plays like, maybe it would have been good enough back in the day..

[saimon69]

@eXeler0

Actually i would consider this video more on-topic (and btw the coder is coming from the demoscene )

[ Show youtube player ]

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by saimon69

@eXeler0

Actually i would consider this video more on-topic (and btw the coder is coming from the demoscene )

[ Show youtube player ]

It's really good exemple and i think could be done on the amiga 500 and the copper will help for the floor and the roof. The coders could proove me wrong but i think this kind of false 3d is possible on the 500.
Could it be used to make a wolf 3d... I don't think so, wolf 3d is not so simple. But perhaps a kind of wolf3d, could be possible but very more simple.

[Megol]

Originally Posted by turrican3

It's really good exemple and i think could be done on the amiga 500 and the copper will help for the floor and the roof. The coders could proove me wrong but i think this kind of false 3d is possible on the 500.
Could it be used to make a wolf 3d... I don't think so, wolf 3d is not so simple. But perhaps a kind of wolf3d, could be possible but very more simple.

This is exactly how anyone that can code would write it on a system without hardware scaling and chunky pixels.

In fact this is how Wolfenstein 3D did it. Wall only mapping -> the easiest kind of texture mapping possible (constant Z per column means only axis have to be mapped). Unrolled code per height of wall segment.

The problem doing things on the Amiga is the lack of chunky pixels. That means doing it like that requires texturing and then doing a c2p wasting a lot of cycles.
Either that or doing copper chunky - which means low resolution but many colors. IIRC 80x100 4096 color pixels would be possible on ECS.


There isn't really any type of optimization possible that could speed up the rendering on a standard system while doing things like in the video.
The best possible way to do it would be having enough RAM so for every possible texture there is a set of routines for every possible wall height per texture column so that the inner loop consists of moves. But that isn't realistic.

So what is required for making coders interested in trying this type of routine again? Some new way to do it. A demonstration or at least enough theory that somebody want to test the idea.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by saimon69

@eXeler0

Actually i would consider this video more on-topic (and btw the coder is coming from the demoscene )

maybe this could help along:

how about using a repeating pattern for these mentioned "stripes"?
something around 10 - 20 pixel starting all over again and again until the stripe has reached its full hight.
For shorter stripes we use scaled-down versions of the same pattern.

you could keep all needed heights of all relevant patterns in ram - so you just have to move things around - scaling is already done.


to put things in the right space with copper and blitter, something like this could be used:

CharMode

(think of our repeating patterns instead of "fonts")
quoting:

CharMode shows how the Amiga graphics hardware can generate
grid-based graphics modes with animated fonts and automatic
rendering from a byte code to patterns on screen without any
CPU overhead! It uses the Copper to program the Blitter to
program the Copper to program the Blitter so that one write
to a chipRAM buffer can update a whole pattern rectangle on
the screen, or all patterns corresponding to a certain code
- and all the work is done by the custom chips.
...
it could also be useful in many other
applications where a large display needs to be updated with a
very small CPU load - such as terminal and teletext software,
and many sorts of demos.

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by turrican3

It's really good exemple and i think could be done on the amiga 500 and the copper will help for the floor and the roof. The coders could proove me wrong but i think this kind of false 3d is possible on the 500.

The point here is that the Genesis has 2 chunky pixels per byte, which is what really makes the difference compared to the amiga - all the other speed-ups mentioned are trivial.

[Galahad/FLT]

Also, the Amiga for a 16 colour bitmap display has to repeat those copy routines 4 times for each bitplane, and 5 for 32 colour, so right away, the Amiga is at a distinct disadvantage.