Magician Lord, the most Amiga in the NeoGeo catalogue?

[kremiso]

i like a lot that game, always considered the most Amiga in the NeoGeo games set

cool gfx, great tunes, parallax scrolling

[ Show youtube player ]

a beauty played on crt

what Amiga config you think could handle a good port of this? i know, no source code
personal dream, nothing more

[Locutus]

Comparing to the level of many of the side scrollers on the Neogeo, this honestly feels mediocre.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Comparing to the level of many of the side scrollers on the Neogeo, this honestly feels mediocre.

Not really surprising as it was a launch title.

[d4rk3lf]

@kremiso

Maybe you should tell us specific time in the video, where the screen is with most moving objects, parallaxes, and all crazy stuff... so people from this forum, that knows Amiga inside out, can answer you with most precision.

For me personally (and I don't know Amiga hardware well), this doesn't look nothing that A1200 could not pull out.. or maybe.. a little bit expanded A1200... maybe 030 in worst case.

[DanScott]

base A1200 should have no problem with this...

Just would need to work out the most efficient way to use playfields and sprites, but this could be done very easily IMHO

[Cris1997XX]

I'm still hoping for Amiga 1200 ports of some early Neo Geo games. Fatal Fury shouldn't be too taxing either, maybe it would finally encourage use of the CD32's redbook audio capabilities

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by TCD

Not really surprising as it was a launch title.

That's fair and i didn't know that.

[saimon69]

@18:54 evil catgirl ninjas? o_O

[PortuguesePilot]

Y'all very optimistic, aren't ye?

The game may look deceivingly Amiga-like in the graphical department but a clever eye will spot a lot of Amiga no-nos. Even the Mega Drive's VDC - littered with tiles and sprites - would have a hard time to replicate this game on a 1:1 way. The poor little Amiga would suffer a lot more...

1) Look at the parallax scrolling (not only the scrolling itself, but the richness of its colouring). The Amiga can't have bitplanes that colourful. Even celebrated Amiga games like Agony, Shadow of the Beast or Lionheart prove exactly that.

2) In spite of being somewhat lacklustre for Neo-Geo standards, the graphics are 256 colour (AGA would be obligatory).

3) Sound and Music simultaneously: my ears aren't refined enough but the sound seems to sport at least 8 independent channels (the Neo-Geo could handle 15 total). Paula can only handle 4 (or "pseudo-8" with CPU+RAM-intensive trickery).

So, it's not just a matter of throwing a 68030 or a 68040 at it, the Amiga chipset (either OCS or even AGA) is the bottleneck here. The Amiga simply doesn't have the needed hardware sprites/bitplanes/tilemaps/etc and the usage of BObs to achieve the same results would render it too slow and needing huge amounts of RAM and a very powerful CPU. Paula can't handle more than 4 channels, so the usual either music or SFX trope that we love to hate would have to be employed. And want to talk about floppies? The Neo-Geo game is almost 6MB (would redound in roughly 10 Amiga disks). Wanna talk about disk swapping? Ah, OK, a hard disk would be required, then... Yep. All things accounted for, it seems that a simple A500 or a plain A1200 wouldn't be able to run this as is. Compromises (some of them quite serious ones) would have to be made in order for an Amiga version of Magician Lord to exist. Sorry to be such a buzzkill, but...

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

Y'all very optimistic, aren't ye?

The game may look deceivingly Amiga-like in the graphical department but a clever eye will spot a lot of Amiga no-nos. Even the Mega Drive's VDC - littered with tiles and sprites - would have a hard time to replicate this game on a 1:1 way. The poor little Amiga would suffer a lot more...

1) Look at the parallax scrolling (not only the scrolling itself, but the richness of its colouring). The Amiga can't have bitplanes that colourful. Even celebrated Amiga games like Agony, Shadow of the Beast or Lionheart prove exactly that.

2) In spite of being somewhat lacklustre for Neo-Geo standards, the graphics are 256 colour (AGA would be obligatory).

3) Sound and Music simultaneously: my ears aren't refined enough but the sound seems to sport at least 8 independent channels (the Neo-Geo could handle 15 total). Paula can only handle 4 (or "pseudo-8" with CPU+RAM-intensive trickery).

So, it's not just a matter of throwing a 68030 or a 68040 at it, the Amiga chipset (either OCS or even AGA) is the bottleneck here. The Amiga simply doesn't have the needed hardware sprites/bitplanes/tilemaps/etc and the usage of BObs to achieve the same results would render it too slow and needing huge amounts of RAM and a very powerful CPU. Paula can't handle more than 4 channels, so the usual either music or SFX trope that we love to hate would have to be employed. And want to talk about floppies? The Neo-Geo game is almost 6MB (would redound in roughly 10 Amiga disks). Wanna talk about disk swapping? Ah, OK, a hard disk would be required, then... Yep. All things accounted for, it seems that a simple A500 or a plain A1200 wouldn't be able to run this as is. Compromises (some of them quite serious ones) would have to be made in order for an Amiga version of Magician Lord to exist. Sorry to be such a buzzkill, but...

You're maybe right but It seems to me that the A1200 is really underconsidered. An Engine like the one presented for Hyperborea would have seems probably totally unreasonable if presented as an hypothetical question here yet it does works perfectly on a plain A1200.

I would'nt discard the A1200 habilities that fast, especially considering what people are doing on the system by now. I'm pretty sure that the chipset wasn't exploited at its best back in the days.

[saimon69]

Well i am convinced that neither the OCS/ECS chipset was fully squeezed, albeit of course we cannot expect the same level of performance

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

You're maybe right but It seems to me that the A1200 is really underconsidered. An Engine like the one presented for Hyperborea would have seems probably totally unreasonable if presented as an hypothetical question here yet it does works perfectly on a plain A1200.

I would'nt discard the A1200 habilities that fast, especially considering what people are doing on the system by now. I'm pretty sure that the chipset wasn't exploited at its best back in the days.

Yeah after Reshoot R, Reshoot Proxima, Hyperborea, Boss Machine etc. I don't think the A1200 should be underestimated. Ultra Violent Worlds has that kind of color fidelity with a little Fast RAM. With the copper on the background, a multiplexed 64 pixel wide sprite for the middle layer and dual playfield I think a good artist could recreate that first level pretty closely. If you just used sprites for the background then I think a non dual playfield front layer could be done 1:1.

[PortuguesePilot]

I know and I agree. The feisty Amiga was a lot more able and capable than its own creators were aware of. An 1985 design that outdid basically anything that was available at that time and was able to remain competitive right 'till the end of its parent company and even after that, through its fans, it still continues to amaze us all, still packing a punch or two.

But come on, guys... We're talking the Neo-Geo here. It's just the most powerful 16bit console in the history of the world. The AES console was basically an MVS arcade board inside a small box made of black plastic. When it comes to arcade games, it's on a class of its own. I know we're talking about one of the weakest games of the Neo-Geo catalogue, but even so. Apples and oranges.

Now I'm not saying a version of Magician Lord couldn't be done but it had to be seriously compromised. Look at another powerful hardware that shared some characteristics with the Neo-Geo: the CPS1. The Amiga got quite a few games from it. Lately we even got a great remake of a somewhat lacklustre original Amiga release of a CPS1 game: Final Fight. The remake is awesome and shows just how much the humble little Amiga is capable of. But is it a 1:1 version of the original Final Fight? Not even the X68000 managed that (would be a 0.8:1 in my book) how could the Amiga do it? What we got now is great but could NEVER be as good as the arcade version. Now replace "Final Fight" for "Magician Lord" and "CPS1" for "Neo-Geo" and the scenario remains exactly the same.

Again, sorry to sound so glum and be a bearer of such foul tasting news but... thing are what they are.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Comparing to the level of many of the side scrollers on the Neogeo, this honestly feels mediocre.

One thing that is a very annoying thing on the later games, mostly beat 'em ups is the constant zooming in and out like some crappy MTV interview from the 90s. Really off-putting.

IIRC the Neo Geo had 4096 colours on screen and no Amiga can do more than 256 per scanline in non-parallax at best. Plus the AGA sprites are in improvement but not really useful as you still only have 4 per scanline in 16 colours so it's all blitter and copper magic. Something like it could be done with world class 1980s/90s talent on the case but identical is impossible even with a 68060, problem is the lack of innovation to the OCS chipset over the years by Commodore engineers.

[Cris1997XX]

How about making the game 25fps? Should that be enough for some extra speed?

[kremiso]

a couple of homebrew demo attempts on other platforms (all just a bit of the first level)

SNES
[ Show youtube player ]

SuperGrafx
[ Show youtube player ]

Megadrive (not properly the same)
[ Show youtube player ]

[Tigerskunk]

Those few parallax stages are a bit difficult to recreate probably.

The rest, not so much.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

One thing that is a very annoying thing on the later games, mostly beat 'em ups is the constant zooming in and out like some crappy MTV interview from the 90s. Really off-putting.

IIRC the Neo Geo had 4096 colours on screen and no Amiga can do more than 256 per scanline in non-parallax at best. Plus the AGA sprites are in improvement but not really useful as you still only have 4 per scanline in 16 colours so it's all blitter and copper magic. Something like it could be done with world class 1980s/90s talent on the case but identical is impossible even with a 68060, problem is the lack of innovation to the OCS chipset over the years by Commodore engineers.

The real problem with neogeo is the dynamic palette. Otherwise, the neogeo displays 256 unique colors......

You go A1200, Hard Drive, Fast RAM. Otherwise bad luck.

There are 2 candidates that i see an A1200 could do without too much problems : Super Sidekicks, and Art of Fighting (for which we have the full source code !)

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The real problem with neogeo is the dynamic palette. Otherwise, the neogeo displays 256 unique colors......

You go A1200, Hard Drive, Fast RAM. Otherwise bad luck.

There are 2 candidates that i see an A1200 could do without too much problems : Super Sidekicks, and Art of Fighting (for which we have the full source code !)

I don't know much about the Neo Geo hardware technically, I just remembered the 4096 colours comment in things like ACE magazine(?) etc as it was the same figure quoted for HAM mode.

I played one of the beat em ups and it was doing everything you'd expect an arcade quality beat em up to do and then zooming the screen in and out in hardware Sega style. Magician's Lord and Nam 75 are the two previews I remember but I don't think they use that feature, been a while though.

Always liked Viewpoint though, considered getting a Neo Geo CD in the late 90s to play it.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

I don't know much about the Neo Geo hardware technically, I just remembered the 4096 colours comment in things like ACE magazine(?) etc as it was the same figure quoted for HAM mode.

It has a 15 bit palette plus 1 "dark bit" (works a bit like half brite on Amiga). So that's more than the Amiga's 12 bit, and it shows.

Also, every sprite tile (16x16) can have its own 16 color palette out of 256. Which can lead to a lot more colors on screen.