How much CPU does C2P consume?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

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.

C2P itself very quickly ceases to be the problem as you get faster CPU and more complex rendering - the fundamental limitation is the Chip Memory access time.

A good demonstration of that was Clicklboom's commercial port. RTG didn't add much (though 16 bit was nice) since most of the time is spent doing stuff other than C2P.

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.

Quake didn't suck, IMO, but it did have a troubled history and it shows. What Quake gave people, beyond 6DOF 3D levels, was a fully programmable game logic interpreter. Duke Nukem had something similar earlier, but QuakeC (despite some annoying foibles) was excellent for creating new behaviours.

[dreadnought]

@Karlos/VladR - I'd reply, seeing as I'm quite fond of early FPS games, but after looking again at the thread title I guess it's indeed best left for another day.