Mechwarrior on the Amiga!

[Angus]

I always wanted to play a 3D Mech game on the Amiga and some time back I managed to get the original Mechwarrior pc game working with PCTask on my 1200. If anybody fancies it, I've just put it in the Zone.


It runs fine on my 1260 50mhz, although I haven't got the mouse working yet. Give it a go.

[skan]

Originally Posted by Angus

I always wanted to play a 3D Mech game on the Amiga and some time back I managed to get the original Mechwarrior pc game working with PCTask on my 1200. If anybody fancies it, I've just put it in the Zone.


It runs fine on my 1260 50mhz, although I haven't got the mouse working yet. Give it a go.

I hear your pain... Always wanted a proper 3D mech game on miggy and it's so sad we need an 060/50 to play a 286/EGA game, but I can live with that! Thanks for sharing!

[redblade]

it seems there is a X68000 Version. It has nice graphics too.

I wonder how the japs coded their 3d games on 68k if they used pre calculated sine tables like the sceners did?

[SSJTrunks69]

Sounds pretty interesting, I should give this a go on my WinUAE

[Valken]

Originally Posted by Angus

I always wanted to play a 3D Mech game on the Amiga and some time back I managed to get the original Mechwarrior pc game working with PCTask on my 1200. If anybody fancies it, I've just put it in the Zone.


It runs fine on my 1260 50mhz, although I haven't got the mouse working yet. Give it a go.

I would like to try it but I run it off WinUAE! So maybe a portable HDF file setup for it?

Originally Posted by redblade

it seems there is a X68000 Version. It has nice graphics too.

I wonder how the japs coded their 3d games on 68k if they used pre calculated sine tables like the sceners did?

I support all porting from the Sharp X68000 to the Amiga, but there would be issues of:

1. localization (maybe can get away with an Amiga Japanese or Chinese Font) or dissemble, translate, reassemble the text.
2. the UI from the Human68K which is going to be hard.
3. and any custom graphics mode or chip access such as special music or even MIDI.

The Sharp X68000 looks WAY better than the PC counterpart though.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by skan

Thanks for sharing!

No problem. Keen to hear how you all get on. :-)

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by redblade

it seems there is a X68000 Version. It has nice graphics too.

I wonder how the japs coded their 3d games on 68k if they used pre calculated sine tables like the sceners did?

That was really the only way to do it as transcendentals were way too slow on any microprocessor of the day, even if you had an external FPU.

localization (maybe can get away with an Amiga Japanese or Chinese Font) or dissemble, translate, reassemble the text.
the UI from the Human68K which is going to be hard.
and any custom graphics mode or chip access such as special music or even MIDI.

I don't know if there's any open-source text rendering solution for JIS on the Amiga, I think they were all closed source, but you could port one.
Human68k is not much of an issue as most software didn't use it for the UI. Human68k was a pretty crap OS with a rudimentary GUI. Somewhere between MS-DOS and early Atari TOS.
Custom chip access is the killer. The X68k's background planes are more numerous and deeper than what the Amiga can do, and it has tilemodes that the Amiga doesn't even have. The sprite engine is similar to AGA in terms of raw pixel data, but spread over many more, smaller sprites. This lets you create far more flexible shapes, or large numbers of independently moving objects. Most action games on the x68k heavily use this.
Music is a fairly solved problem and there are numerous approaches to porting from its built-in YM2151. The single PCM channel on the base x68k is actually far inferior to Paula.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

I don't know if there's any open-source text rendering solution for JIS on the Amiga, I think they were all closed source, but you could port one.
Human68k is not much of an issue as most software didn't use it for the UI. Human68k was a pretty crap OS with a rudimentary GUI. Somewhere between MS-DOS and early Atari TOS.

Interesting stuff. In terms of if they'd actually produced an Amiga specific version back then, I would have thought (with no actual technical knowledge!) That the game could have run splendidly on a 68000 Amiga, if you'd had somebody like Realtime (Carrier Command) doing the conversion. I'm sure it would have looked and sounded a lot better too.

[saimon69]

Human68k is not much of an issue as most software didn't use it for the UI. Human68k was a pretty crap OS with a rudimentary GUI. Somewhere between MS-DOS and early Atari TOS.

I tried it on an emulator and thought: workbench is light years ahead of it! Any japanese coder that want to port AROS 68k on x68k? Should work decently in RTG mode

[Valken]

X68000 with full AmigaOS is like a wet dream!