PC games that made the Amiga look like Shit

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Of course I've read it. That's why I'm asking just for this part because it doesn't seems to be in contradiction with Bruce opinion (that particular part). No sarcasm intended.

My point was about his insistence it's the "Amiga fans" who are to blame. This is a recurring theme - to be fair, not only in his posts but other people's as well.

The man's a turbo poster and I'm just an occasional lurker so I don't know whether he ever expressed opinion similar to "these numbers would be still minuscule compared to PC market penetration and would not change the unstoppability of the open-clone concept." It's possible, but from what I've seen it's definitely not the main idea behind his posts, which are usually a mixture of an unconditional Commodore praise, PC-hate & complaining about ungrateful "fans".

[freehand]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Since we're on the subject, Doom is a PC game that made the Amiga look awesome. I had more fun replaying Doom on doomattack on my 1200 68040 than I did on that original 486SX. Especially on RTG. On OS4 classic, it was playable at 640x400, on that same A1200.

And what does that have to do with the price of eggs ?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by freehand

And what does that have to do with the price of eggs ?

Doom being touted as a game that made the Amiga look bad, ended up being a great port. Just an observation.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Doom being touted as a game that made the Amiga look bad, ended up being a great port. Just an observation.

Doom did not make the amiga look bad it was just not up to the job in comparison there is no shame at the same time the PC was junk at scrolling games and such like.

The thread title is just click bait.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Doom being touted as a game that made the Amiga look bad, ended up being a great port.

Four years later. Just as a fun fact: Doom95 offering a 640x480 resolution option was released in August 1996.

[Karlos]

Let's also not forget that the Amiga was second only to the Mac for an official Quake port. And ironically, if my memory is correct, this was before the open sourcing of Doom itself.

[TCD]

The Saturn port was released in December 1997, Quake N64 was released in March 1998 and the Doom source code was released in December 1997.

[Bren McGuire]

after 1993 most PC games made the Amiga look like shit

[Promilus]

From thandor.net
i386DX25 4.6 fps (~0.18FPS/MHz)
Am386DX40 7.47fps (~0.18FPS/MHz)
Cx486DLC33 7.86fps (~0.24FPS/MHz - does have small integrated cache of 1KB)
i486SX25 14.06FPS (~0.56FPS/MHz)
i486DX50 26.17FPS (~0.52FPS/MHz)
i486DX2 66 31.37FPS (~0.48FPS/MHz)

Regularly 486 was considered to be twice as fast as 386 with the same clock. In this case it is even 3x faster... so no, Doom clearly WAS NOT optimized to use 8KB of L1 cache on 486 CPUs.
Also ... according to a page with bunch of retro and more modern x86 configs:

For all the Doom freaks out there: Id Software has released the source code (for non-profit use)! This has already resulted in several Amiga ports. This has also resulted in the development of DOSDoom, which can give significantly higher frame rates than the old shareware doom (in particular in combination with fastvid. However, DOSDoom is under development, so the results may change from version to version.

So here you have it.
I like fair comparisons. Not manipulated ones. What's so bad in seeking actual truth? That's not diminishing Amiga legacy. If someone loves only imaginary amiga with manipulated comparisons to PC I feel sorry for him. I love it for what it was and I don't seek justifications to let it "shine" against PCs of that era. The ugly truth for many is ... PC did get more games. And some of those released on both platforms were more advanced on PC. Like Dune and Dune II with actual soundtrack (and voices) and Die Siedler (The Settlers or for some countries Serf City) - svga mode.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Promilus

And some of those released on both platforms were more advanced on PC. Like Dune and Dune II with actual soundtrack (and voices) and Die Siedler (The Settlers or for some countries Serf City) - svga mode.

Syndicate is a good example. The in-game visuals were significantly better at 640x400 than 320x200, but the gameplay was identical (bug for bug).

[CCCP alert]

Because there was never a game designed specifically for the 1992 Amiga 4000/040 it's tough to know what the real difference is. The myth of Doom's greatness was based on using it on a 486DX266 and Roland and Diamond accelerated SVGA card and Soundblaster 16 on a 17" SVGA monitor, you could easily buy a used sports car for that sort of money in 1993 lol most ordinary people in the EU "enjoyed" Doom in super jerk-o-vision on their high street 386SX still under warranty.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

The myth of Doom's greatness was based on using it on a 486DX266 and Roland and Diamond accelerated SVGA card and Soundblaster 16 on a 17" SVGA monitor, you could easily buy a used sports car for that sort of money in 1993 lol most ordinary people in the EU "enjoyed" Doom in super jerk-o-vision on their high street 386SX still under warranty.

"The myth of Doom's greatness"...lol. What a load of 2023-centric rubbish

Back then nobody gave a toss about modern PC master race 144Hz-is-not-enough standards. People were well used to "jerk-o-vision" because we were a lot who spent countless hours playing the likes of Castle Master, Mercenary, Midwinter or Fighter Bomber on our 8/16-bit machines and enjoying every minute of it.

That beside the rather obvious fact that Doom's greatness didn't depend on fps but was rater a reflection of that game's explosive mix of groundbreaking tech and gameplay.

[Promilus]

I'd say both our imagination and CRT technology did allow for less fps be acceptable. I do remember "3D" games on C64 when single frame was "rendered" several seconds. And it still was fun! AFAIK typical movie framerate was ~24 - and it was enough for titles like Star Wars or Indiana Jones... now ppl sell their 120Hz monitors to buy 144Hz because screen is too slow... lol

[freehand]

I loved my spectrum never thought about slowdowns elite I become deadly

Friend had a c64 we would battle which was the better lol i see uridium in a mag and wet my pants so saved up for a commodore 128

[Megalomaniac]

In fairness, the 14FPS that Doom supposedly hits on a basic 486 was faster than people enjoyed a lot of untextured 3D games on Amigas and STs, or wireframe games on the 8-bits (how much optimisation would it need to hit that speed for even wireframes on a <>1Mhz C64?). Those numbers from Cammy suggest that, even optimised, no 030 could get close to that speed, and was slower than a 386 of similar clock speed - for this type of 3D, at least.

It's true that no top-level commercial coders ever designed a game around the 040 or 060, so we'll never know with certainty what they could achieve. Still, magazines did tend to review PC games based on how they performed on the newest top-of-the-range systems, and Amiga games based on how they performed on a minimum system, so people probably did overestimate the difference in what could be done.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

It's true that no top-level commercial coders ever designed a game around the 040 or 060, so we'll never know with certainty what they could achieve.

It may not have been designed around it specifically, but you needed an 040 or 060 to play AB3D2 at anything approaching a playable frame rate.

[oscar_ates]

I found an interesting article from 1994 summarizing the Amiga situation:


The AGA Chip Set & Amiga Gaming: Too Little, Too Late? review

https://amr.abime.net/review_51629

Publishers looked to common denominator platform to release their games not the 10k guys who bought a Blizzard 030/50MHz.

Doom was a great game which opened a new age in gaming which we are still in. That's 3d and fps era. Game was a revolutionary kind

[Megalomaniac]

Actually from early 1994 in the US, but an interesting read, and seemingly written by someone who wanted the Amiga to survive, even if he didn't believe that it could. Interplay aside, almost no Amiga games were being developed in the US, and I'm not sure they were selling in real numbers (the issue of so many Amiga games being done in PAL will have further impacted the potential for US sales, meaning you'd need a later Amiga to run them Stateside). I know that Your Sinclair and ST Format encouraged their readers to write to software houses and demand more games for those systems at different times, not sure how successful it was in the grand scheme of things, but this US attempt certainly did nothing.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Interplay aside, almost no Amiga games were being developed in the US, and I'm not sure they were selling in real numbers (the issue of so many Amiga games being done in PAL will have further impacted the potential for US sales, meaning you'd need a later Amiga to run them Stateside).

Early on (1986-1988) quite a few Amiga games were developed in the US. Especially EA supported the platform when only the Amiga 1000 was around. In Europe before the Amiga 500 showed hardly any games were developed. That being said the situation certainly changed quickly beginning in 1989 when the US market took a nose dive and Europe started to embrace the Amiga.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

I found an interesting article from 1994 summarizing the Amiga situation:


The AGA Chip Set & Amiga Gaming: Too Little, Too Late? review

https://amr.abime.net/review_51629

Thanks. That's is indeed a very interesting article. Nice to read US point of view, especially from the developpers.