PC games that made the Amiga look like Shit

[Megalomaniac]

Making the A1200 a HD-floppies hard-drive-integrated system would have meant charging maybe £600 instead of £400 for it at launch. This may have weakened the A1200's initial appeal as a console rival for action games, but I think that would have probably been worthwhile at launch, especially as the only other Amiga available to the mass market was the A600 (a dreadful mistake in my view), which with no keypad and no option to install an accelerator was not a good option for people looking for more 'serious' games (though cheap IDE hard drives were some consolation).

The non-AGA Amiga was still competitive with the Megadrive and SNES for action games, and its limits were still being pushed - a lot of the most technically impressive non-AGA games came out in 1994 or beyond (Ruff 'n' Tumble, Brian the Lion, Elfmania etc) so I don't think the A1200 needed to be affordable to that market until much later.

As for Day of the Tentacle being well into development for the Amiga (in EHB mode?), that is news to me. I suppose once PC games started to be 256-colour only it became a bigger effort to make an Amiga version. Same reason why the 16-colour ST didn't get stuff like Flashback and Monkey Island 2 converted from 32 colour versions elsewhere, as it declined, I guess.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

The non-AGA Amiga was still competitive with the Megadrive and SNES for action games, and its limits were still being pushed - a lot of the most technically impressive A500 games came out in 1994 or beyond (Ruff 'n' Tumble, Brian the Lion, Elfmania etc) so I don't think the A1200 needed to be affordable to that market until much later.

I think that was pretty much what CBM thought as well.

[Megalomaniac]

Also, I think the later Escom-made Amigas had extra compatibility issues due to using HD floppy drives that were set using jumpers to write to DD disks, so could HD drives have caused extra issues there? Considering that the 020 already caused maybe 1/3 of previous games to fail (which wasn't trivial the way it now is in the WHDLoad era, though some incompatible games were later fixed), would it be worth making that worse? Would installing two disk drives, one HD and one DD, have been cost-effective if necessary? Or just too confusing for newcomers?

All a bit off-topic, and maybe its been gone over elsewhere, but still.

[sokolovic]

IMO, converting an hard drive only multiple High density floppies game to DD floppies to make it works on HDless Amiga was much more a problem than colors conversion. The Amiga 1200 should had an hard drive and an HD floppy drive right from the start, for sure. From 1991/2 every Amiga conversion of PC games were clearly cut to fit in DD disks and being playable on the most basic possible configuration. (I even wonder if there was an HD only game ever released for the Amiga before the Commodore Bankrupcy... Probably just Star Trek 25th anniversary as Castles 2 never made it to floppy version even if it was reviewed in some magazines)

[Megalomaniac]

Links and Hare Raising Havoc in 1992 (just before the Americans pretty much stopped making Amiga games) were HD only too, though the latter was crap and the former needed at least an 030 to update at a sensible speed. Might and Magic 3 needed a hard drive or a second floppy drive (or at least 2Mb memory if you knew how to make a RAMDisk, I think). Based on reviews that was fine on a 68000 if you had the other stuff, and it mostly scored 80% or higher, never played it as RPGs have never appealed to me for some reason. Maybe I should try something considered accessible like Legend and see where I get.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Also, I think the later Escom-made Amigas had extra compatibility issues due to using HD floppy drives that were set using jumpers to write to DD disks, so could HD drives have caused extra issues there?

I have an HD floppy drive in my Commodore A1200. It is there because before I had internet at home I used to download software at university, put it on floppy disks and bring it home. That was much more convenient using HD floppy disks. I never noticed any problem with it reading DD floppy disks. I think the problem with the Escom A1200 was that there weren't any drives manufactured any more that could do DD the way they used it in the Amiga and they had to come up with some kludge. Obviously, this problem would have been much better if the A1200 had come with an HD floppy drive from the beginning and you'd be playing lots of HD floppy disk based AGA games and only some top OCS games from DD floppy disks.

Considering that the 020 already caused maybe 1/3 of previous games to fail

Nonsense. The biggest compatibility issue the Amiga ever had was when switching from Kickstart 1.2 to Kickstart 1.3 and then to Kickstart 2.0 (the programmers were to blame, though, not Commodore). The compatibility issues specific to the A1200 weren't a big issue compared to those. Perhaps you thought there was a big problem with the A1200 in particular because you switched from an early A500 to an A1200 while in reality most of those problems were kickstart-related and had already been there with late A500s and ECS-era Amigas?

Would installing two disk drives, one HD and one DD, have been cost-effective if necessary?

This sounds like a bad idea. HD disks would only be readable in the right drive, costs would almost double, not enough space in the case to house two drives.

[Zak]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Partially true, but most accelerated systems could be downgraded to run those naughty A500 only games.

But that's not the point. There are Amiga games that could need more CPU power but don't run on accelerated systems. Those were better on PC.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Zak

But that's not the point. There are Amiga games that could need more CPU power but don't run on accelerated systems. Those were better on PC.

I can't imagine that inter-model compatibility was worse for the Amiga than it was for the PC. When did the "turbo" buttons disappear on the PCs?

[Zak]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Guess I must have just imagined having a network card in my A3000 then.

You didn't, but the software was poor. I know by practise that it was impossible to secure the Amiga against unwanted network access or to even block out certain drawers / folders from network access. When I had my Amiga with network card all other participants in the network could just download or upload everything they wanted from or to my Amiga. And that's just one example. The Amiga wasn't ever ready for networking.

Originally Posted by grond

I can't imagine that inter-model compatibility was worse for the Amiga than it was for the PC. When did the "turbo" buttons disappear on the PCs?

Fact was that you had fast PC's in 1991 with running modern software quickly and not like Amiga where everything was 68000 and didn't even run on 030, no matter if poorly or well.

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by Zak

You didn't, but the software was poor. I know by practise that it was impossible to secure the Amiga against unwanted network access or to even block out certain drawers / folders from network access. When I had my Amiga with network card all other participants in the network could just download or upload everything they wanted from or to my Amiga. And that's just one example. The Amiga wasn't ever ready for networking.

With respect that sounds more like you weren't ready for networking than the Amiga. My guess is you were using NFS on either AS225 or AmiTCP? I've used both and it's possible to lock them down (as much as they could be at the time) but the issues required a knowledge of AmigaOS, Unix and TCP/IP services as well as their configuration and interactions. I can't blame you for not having knowledge across all of those domains at the time, but it's almost certainly not the Amiga at fault.

Originally Posted by Zak

not like Amiga where everything was 68000 and didn't even run on 030, no matter if poorly or well.

Aside from TCP/IP, which typically required a 68020 or higher (unless you're getting into really niche stuff like KA9Q, which again I've run but not bitd).

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by Zak

Fact was that you had fast PC's in 1991 with running modern software quickly and not like Amiga where everything was 68000 and didn't even run on 030, no matter if poorly or well.

This is just factually wrong mate. What are you talking about?

[Megalomaniac]

I think Commodore themselves said that about 60% of older games worked on the A1200, though I recall that Amiga Format tested quite a few and it was more like 70% (can't find a link) - http://www.verycomputer.com/2_a13eba3eb86c2558_1.htm (seeingly created in 1993, so very soon after the A1200 launched and obscenely early for a web page) suggests about the same (though I think one or two are wrong, the Lotus games working with fastram sounds like BS to me, but it's a ballpark figure), and Relokick solved very few of them. Obviously there were compatible versions of some of them made later though. Workaroundable nowadays due to WHDLoad (or the relative cheapness of buying a secondhand A500 alongside your souped-up A1200) but an issue BITD

Agreed that it was generally the programmers at fault, especially after the A3000 had launched I'm not sure any game should've been released without being checked, and fixed if necessary. I think I read once that Commodore sent out compatibility guidelines for Kickstart 1.4 (as it was going to be called) in mid-1989, so assuming they didn't change much there should have been very few A500+ issues for games released in the 90s.

This was pretty much just games I think, serious software almost all worked fine.

[Zak]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

This is just factually wrong mate. What are you talking about?

Just read what I said before. When you got an Amiga game in 1991 it was for 68000 and you had problems running it on accelerated Amigas. The fact that you can downgrade your Amiga to run it, doesn't make the program run any quicker, does it? So you had a useless accelerated machine for only a handfull of games and applications really using the power.

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I think Commodore themselves said that about 60% of older games worked on the A1200, though I recall that Amiga Format tested quite a few and it was more like 70%

From the disk boxes I had it was more like 10% running on my 4000/030. And that computer was not downgradeable to run old software. I still had modern software running on it and that was far later than 1991. In 1991 the range of 030 software was much smaller.

[sokolovic]

Well doesn't WHDLOAD proves that this was purely a software problem easily fixable and not an hardware one ?

[grond]

Originally Posted by Zak

Just read what I said before. When you got an Amiga game in 1991 it was for 68000 and you had problems running it on accelerated Amigas. The fact that you can downgrade your Amiga to run it, doesn't make the program run any quicker, does it? So you had a useless accelerated machine for only a handfull of games and applications really using the power.

I didn't own an Amiga in 1991 but in 1994 I never had many compatibility problems with my A1200 featuring a 50 MHz 030.

From the disk boxes I had it was more like 10% running on my 4000/030.

Perhaps the disks were bad? I have never heard anyone claim such a low compatibility rate for a not even very fast processor such as the 25 MHz 030 in the A4000.

And that computer was not downgradeable to run old software.

Of course it was. Just press both mouse buttons during boot and then disable caches, harddisks, AGA chipset in the boot menu.

[Megalomaniac]

I guess that comes down to interpretation sokolovic. I'm not sure how much work or recoding went into the WHDLoad fixes, some probably just needed the removal of copy-protection routines which assumed a certain clock speed, but some might've needed much deeper reworking.

I assume (I've never used it) all WHDLoad fixed versions do still work with a 68000 at an identical speed and performance to the boxed versions if enough memory (usually more than the standard version needed, I gather?) is present? If so, it would have theoretically been possible for all A500 games to work on the A1200 (and probably beyond, maybe all the way up to 68060), if programmers had been aware of the issues and had paid attention to solving them?

As for Zak's 10% figure, Maybe the boxes of disks in question were copies rather than originals? Otherwise I'd expect far more than 10% of even 1989 games to work on an 020 or 030.

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I assume (I've never used it) all WHDLoad fixed versions do still work with a 68000 at an identical speed and performance to the boxed versions if enough memory (usually more than the standard version needed, I gather?) is present? If so, it would have theoretically been possible for all A500 games to work on the A1200 (and probably beyond, maybe all the way up to 68060), if programmers had been aware of the issues and had paid attention to solving them?

Its pretty hard to find a game that did not work AT ALL on the 1200 through either the startup menu, relokick or a cracked version.
It was mainly a concern with very early titles, some of which require very specific configurations to run.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I guess that comes down to interpretation sokolovic. I'm not sure how much work or recoding went into the WHDLoad fixes, some probably just needed the removal of copy-protection routines which assumed a certain clock speed, but some might've needed much deeper reworking.

I assume (I've never used it) all WHDLoad fixed versions do still work with a 68000 at an identical speed and performance to the boxed versions if enough memory (usually more than the standard version needed, I gather?) is present? If so, it would have theoretically been possible for all A500 games to work on the A1200 (and probably beyond, maybe all the way up to 68060), if programmers had been aware of the issues and had paid attention to solving them?

Considering that almost the entire Amiga library was WHDized by a few people in their free time, I'm not sure that this task was impossible to achieve for professional in house coders.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Considering that almost the entire Amiga library was WHDized by a few people in their free time, I'm not sure that this task was impossible to achieve for professional in house coders.

Certainly not impossible, but I guess nobody cared as long as the game would run on an A500. Most games were released under time pressure and I think compatibility with better CPUs and later kickstarts was very low on the priority list

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Zak

Just read what I said before.

Originally Posted by Zak

Fact was that you had fast PC's in 1991 with running modern software quickly and not like Amiga where everything was 68000 and didn't even run on 030, no matter if poorly or well.

Like he said, factually wrong.

The fact that you can downgrade your Amiga to run it, doesn't make the program run any quicker, does it? So you had a useless accelerated machine for only a handfull of games and applications really using the power.

If the program is a game then it was most likely designed to run at the speed it did on the machine it was made for. Of the few that really needed a faster CPU, most supported it. Some programs had latent bugs of course, that only became apparent when run on a system with different CPU, memory layout, OS etc. - but that's the fault of the programmers not the platform.

Applications that didn't work on accelerated systems were soon updated or made redundant by better programs. One of the worse offenders was Amiga BASIC, which apart from breaking Commodore's guidelines by using the upper 8 address bits for its own purposes (making it incompatible with memory in 32 bit address space) had an incorrectly encoded instruction that causes 68020+ CPUs to crash. Commodore should have refused to pay Microsoft for this turd. The hole left by dropping Amiga BASIC was soon filled by other better programs such as Hisoft BASIC.

Of course PCs never had any problems with compatibility, because if a program didn't run properly it was your fault for not buying a '100% IBM compatible' machine! In reality compatibility issues were rife, and dealing with that was one the main requests I had from PC owners.