PC games that made the Amiga look like Shit

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

And you're not good with others, because they didn't upgraded their Amigas?

Lol, no. But these friends are lifers and at least 3 of them I only met in the first place due to the common interest in the machine.

[Megalomaniac]

Yea, I assumed you stayed close to some friends due to common interests in music production and programming, rather than losing other friends over bitterness at developers having to cram games into only ChipRAM because of them.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Karlos

The only people I knew personally that upgraded their Amigas I can count on the fingers of one hand. I'm still good friends with them all.

I personally didn't know anyone that stuck with their Amiga past 1995. Most of them switched to PC, some to consoles. That being said I'm still surprised to find out about the (sad) story of the Amiga past 1994 when I left. I don't know how many stuck around, but I would guess it was between 20 and 50 thousand users across Europe that didn't 'give up' on their Amigas until the 2000s and most of those upgraded their machines. Somebody said that past 1994 you 'preached to the choir' and that's why ClickBoom converted some games as they could be sure that 'those who remained' would soak them up

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

...or anyone but a skilled electronics hobbyist or engineer. I am one, but none of the TVs I looked at were easy enough to modify that I was willing to try it.

Unless it has 'hot chassis' then it should be not so challenging - some 4066 or 4053 should do the job - probably using some european TV with OSD/WST TXT could be reference - probably you could start offering such modifications .

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I have already made one of those. Problem is my TV needs the SCART switching voltages that an Amiga RGB to VGA adapter doesn't provide. So the answer is to modify one so it does (feeding the voltages through the VGA plug, which is non-standard and potentially dangerous), or just make a whole new cable.

I would use simple 9V battery (6F22 or similar, eventually some 12V car remote battery like MN27).
Current will be low so battery should stay operable long enough.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I like the idea of making VGA the 'standard' RGB connector, and have been doing that on other machines. So I will probably go that way. Many years ago I made an Amiga RGB to VGA adapter from an A520 modulator. However the VGA plug I used was ripped off an old VGA card and one of the pins I need for SCART voltage is broken off. I didn't have another one so yesterday I bought a couple. Today the build!

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

'Ideally', but was it in practice? I'm betting the answer is no. I have never seen a PC with VGA connected to a CRT TV for playing DOS games. Has anyone?

Of course not popular - imagine risk of V corruption by improper TV VGA mode or even home fire... definitely no one sane doing business willing to take such risk.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Lots of theory. But we all know that PCs were often problematic even with things that were supposed to work, let alone stuff that was only 'theoretically' possible.

This is not theory - i still recall some software solutions - even as this conversation triggered my curiosity back so i was able to find all information's with software VGA to TV.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Let's get real here. The idea that you could buy a typical PC clone and hook it up to a TV to save the cost of a monitor like many Amiga owners did is a bust. It didn't happen. Being designed to run on a TV set was a big factor in favour of the Amiga for budget-conscious gamers and hobbyists, same as it was for all those other home computers.

But of course - this is quite obvious - hooking PC to TV was bizarre idea as if you could afford gaming PC then also you could buy dedicated monitor.

Only CGA offered such functionality out of box...

But to be honest - it is quite tempting to build this https://hackaday.io/project/165634-t...scart-adapter/ or similar and try to run VGA in TV mode.

[sandruzzo]

so the real deal with Aga was the support from software house

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Lol, no. But these friends are lifers and at least 3 of them I only met in the first place due to the common interest in the machine.

You mean.. interest of upgrading the machine?
This explains why you hate others.



Joke, of course, my friend.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by TCD

I personally didn't know anyone that stuck with their Amiga past 1995. Most of them switched to PC)

You hear that Mr. Anderson?… that is the sound of inevitability…

[Karlos]

For me, PCs became more interesting when UAE began to outpace real hardware (not to mention Amithlon!). They just never inspired me in the the same way. A notable exception, I did enjoy exploring some new things, e.g. GPU programming using CUDA.

Gaming just wasn't a strong enough pull for me. Which is probably why my PC is now retro, lol.

[Lord Aga]

Originally Posted by freehand

You hear that Mr. Anderson?… that is the sound of inevitability…

One of my favorite movie quotes

[gimbal]

I counter that with "Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?". Create a Matrix where you're permanently living in the early 90's, hook me up immediately.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I counter that with "Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?". Create a Matrix where you're permanently living in the early 90's, hook me up immediately.

The peak of our civilisation.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Create a Matrix where you're permanently living in the early 90's, hook me up immediately.

Radical!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by pandy71

But to be honest - it is quite tempting to build this https://hackaday.io/project/165634-t...scart-adapter/ or similar and try to run VGA in TV mode.

Interesting project - it uses a PIC MCU with configurable logic cells to create the composite sync signal.

I finish my SCART cable yesterday. Here are some photos. Shadow mask on the low dot pitch CRT is very visible, and the picture is quite blurred at the edges. But it's sharp enough in the middle and has great contrast with clean colors - much better than composite!







Note: the moire pattern on the bottom photo was caused by reducing the image size. In reality it wasn't present.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Interesting project - it uses a PIC MCU with configurable logic cells to create the composite sync signal.

IMHO more important is protection against unsafe (from SCART perspective) signals at the VGA output.
Ideally it should have two outputs and active splitter VGA/SCART with VGA protection against TV valid signal so you can use regular VGA compatible monitor and TV.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I finish my SCART cable yesterday. Here are some photos. Shadow mask on the low dot pitch CRT is very visible, and the picture is quite blurred at the edges. But it's sharp enough in the middle and has great contrast with clean colors - much better than composite!

Problem with TV's is usually lower bandwidth, commonly not going significantly higher than 5MHz.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Note: the moire pattern on the bottom photo was caused by reducing the image size. In reality it wasn't present.

Violated (re)sampling criteria...

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by pandy71

...so you can use regular VGA compatible monitor and TV.

Won't be needing that on my A500.

Problem with TV's is usually lower bandwidth, commonly not going significantly higher than 5MHz.

If that was the primary limitation it wouldn't be so bad. Problem with this TV is poor focus towards the edges (workbench title bar is barely readable) and coarse dot pitch. I could try realigning the tube geometry but it probably wouldn't make much difference. These sets weren't that great when they were new (and to be fair, getting good alignment over the whole face of a CRT is very difficult - one reason computer monitors like the 1084 were more expensive than a small TV).

This set wouldn't be very nice for hires productivity apps, but fine for games.

Next challenge is to make an RGB to component converter so I can use my 2 larger flat-screen CRT TVs. Then we can compare the pictures to see if a more up-market set is any better! I may also get an A520 modulator to see what the A500 looked like through that.

[CCCP alert]

The thing that happened for PC games in my experience of early to mid nineties DOS gaming days, but not for Amiga when I owned an A1200, was game developments that blossomed on hard disk. This really changed the scope and complexity of PC games between when I had a 486 and later a Pentium. Cinemaware had gone but the desire to play ever more rich and immersive games with much more diversity in their stock of graphics and sounds to draw from the hard drive was obviously a hit. It gave the impression of a more powerful machine running more complex games but I only had 4mb on my 486, and VGA graphics and Soundblaster 16 files take up more RAM in a game engine anyway.

Amiga 1200 games felt kind of old-fashioned to me at the end, more of the same, almost all designed to be runnable from floppy disks. Maybe that HD floppy was just as essential as the 2mb RAM in the spec and developers should have been given both. 1.8mb x 5 floppy disks = 9mb. It felt like the Amiga publishers were too small to do these type of games for the most part but the PC publishers had grabbed onto this advantage and run with it.

[Megalomaniac]

High-density drives would have added extra compatibility issues, so I think having a hard drive in every A1200 might have been better - a £499 launch price (which would allow for about a 40Mb drive?) was still the same as the A500 had launched at 5 years earlier, even £599 (which would allow for more like 100Mb) wasn't much more than £499 in 1987 once you factored in inflation, and that would also keep the A600 and A1200 nicely separate. Pitch the A1200 more for 'heavy' games (adventures / sim / strategy etc) and productivity initially, and let arcade games grow into it over time.

It took 18 months to get any A1200-designed action games as it was, but at least with a hard drive there's immediate benefit for many existing games (and, potentially, more HD-installable games which don't need AGA? How infuriating must it've been to buy something like Bump 'n' Burn on six disks and not be able to install it? Or most Streetfighter-style games, where at least one disk swap after each best of three bout lasting 2 minutes tops was the norm)

[grond]

I agree that the lack of HD floppy disk drives and harddisks as a standard held AGA back as a new hardware generation. These two features would have meant much more of a difference and upgrade to the platform than two more bitplanes did. They would have opened the platform to the more data intensive games of the 90s.

[Amigajay]

PC developers didn’t give a hoot about supporting older PC’s, lets face it more new models came out the month they released their game in. The Amiga was different, older models were used alot than throwaway PC’s, and developers were reluctant to make games hdd installable, let alone requiring a hdd would have been commercial suicide, which afaik only happened a handful of times (latter Maxis games?) but we don’t know how few copies were sold on those.

The fact is budget Amiga’s were the majority of total Amiga sales, having a HDD in new models as standard would have fell flat on its face, a £399 A1200 sold poorly vs A500 sales, a £599 A1200 would still be sitting on the shelves today! It simply would have pushed even more people to budget 386 PC’s imo.

[TCD]

Requiring a HDD would have been commercial suicide, but raising the base price of the A1200 by 200 pound would have driven more people to the 'budget 386 PCs'. Huh

I guess that's the whole problem of Commodore right there. You cling to your 'mommy can buy it for their kids' machine philosophy while one end of the spectrum (PC) just marches on not giving a hoot about the price and the othe end (consoles) just being much cheaper to get into.