Real AGA 256 colors game?

[Seiya]

Sometimes you find AGA indication in the filegame. But these games are real 256 Colors?
I found this game that show that AGA game are not 256 colors.

[Amiga1992]

That a game is AGA does not mean it has 256 colors on-screen.
USually 256 colors is a theoretical, improbable number.

[Mrz]

Originally Posted by Seiya

Sometimes you find AGA indication in the filegame. But these games are real 256 Colors?
I found this game that show that AGA game are not 256 colors.

surely you are comparing this amiga game with the SNES version which is the best one
in this case lion king Amiga version is a bit buggy, lack some levels, some colors etc

a real AGA game is something like olofight
http://hol.abime.net/5806
buggy beat'em-up game but lot of AGA colors in the screen, you will see is impossible to make this game in the ECS chipset

[Daedalus]

AGA has more to it than just the colours on screen. Yes, the maximum is 256 colours, but that will often be very slow. 64 or 128 colour modes also needs AGA (EHB mode aside), and AGA will also allow things like dual playfields with 16 colours each (ECS only allows 4 colours each), sprites up to 64 pixels wide (ECS is only 16 without combining sprites), and subpixel scrolling. So you can have a game that is still only 32 colours but requires AGA for the 64-pixel-wide sprites or super-smooth scrolling for example.

And then there are games that specify AGA simply because they need 2MB of chip RAM - they'll actually run on an ECS machine with 2MB of chip RAM, but such machines were probably rare amongst the gaming target market.

[dlfrsilver]

Lion king is a 128 colors game.

[Ian]

Originally Posted by Mrz

surely you are comparing this amiga game with the SNES version which is the best one
in this case lion king Amiga version is a bit buggy, lack some levels, some colors etc

Its the PC version, it says so at the bottom of the title screen if VGA wasn't a big enough give away to the fact.

[s2325]

IrfanView can count unique colors on screen

Ace Ball 245
Alfabet Smierci 218
Albion 172
Abuse 154
Alien Breed 3D 147
ACSYS 123
1869 92
Aladdin 79
Action Cat 66
3D Space Battle 49
Alfred Chicken 44
Air Bucks 36
Fayoh 2 31

[matthey]

AGA in the 1200/4000(T)/CD32 was slow, especially without fast memory and an accelerator which was often the target hardware (lower spec=more users). FPGA AGA can be several times faster (FPGA Arcade, MIST, SAGA, etc). My Mediator with Voodoo 4 RTG is over 100 times faster in 640x480 256 colors on average than AGA compared with similar CPU performance.

[nobody]

That's because it is too slow for moving around 256 colors. For adventures with static screens probably is fine.

[BSzili]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

AGA has more to it than just the colours on screen. Yes, the maximum is 256 colours, but that will often be very slow. 64 or 128 colour modes also needs AGA (EHB mode aside), and AGA will also allow things like dual playfields with 16 colours each (ECS only allows 4 colours each), sprites up to 64 pixels wide (ECS is only 16 without combining sprites), and subpixel scrolling. So you can have a game that is still only 32 colours but requires AGA for the 64-pixel-wide sprites or super-smooth scrolling for example.

And then there are games that specify AGA simply because they need 2MB of chip RAM - they'll actually run on an ECS machine with 2MB of chip RAM, but such machines were probably rare amongst the gaming target market.

People often forget about the dual-playfield mode, which Lion King uses judging from the parallax scrolling. That means only 31 colors, which looks about right.

[idrougge]

A lot of AGA versions simply improve on the A500 versions by using AGA dual playfield to add an additional 16 colour backdrop.

[Samurai_Crow]

I would love to see someone double buffer color changes using the bank switching in dual playfields and Graphics.library's MrgCop() capabilities. So many people bang the hardware that there are few example codes that do system friendly copper lists in C using Graphics.library.

[s2325]

Aladdin have these vertical lines which were more common on Mega Drive which will work only with CRT display.

[Mrz]

Originally Posted by matthey

AGA in the 1200/4000(T)/CD32 was slow, especially without fast memory and an accelerator which was often the target hardware (lower spec=more users). FPGA AGA can be several times faster (FPGA Arcade, MIST, SAGA, etc). My Mediator with Voodoo 4 RTG is over 100 times faster in 640x480 256 colors on average than AGA compared with similar CPU performance.

AGA is slow only in high resolutions ie 640x512 or 640x400 you are right it sucks
but in low resolutions 320x256 is very fast even faster than any RTG on the Amiga
ie quake in AGA /256 colors running at 320x256 is a bit faster than RTG similar resolution
also in lot of games ported from PC versions, the AGA version running in 320x256 is always faster than RTG

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

AGA will also allow things like dual playfields with 16 colours each (ECS only allows 4 colours each)

OCS and ECS have 8 color dual playfield.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

So you can have a game that is still only 32 colours but requires AGA for the 64-pixel-wide sprites or super-smooth scrolling for example.

Super smooth scrolling doesn't require AGA.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Thorham

OCS and ECS have 8 color dual playfield.


Super smooth scrolling doesn't require AGA.

Are you referring to RTG antialiased subpixel precision? That does not require AGA, true. The scrolling resolution of AGA is in super-high resolution pixels optionally even when in low resolution screen modes. You can't beat that with ECS.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Thorham

OCS and ECS have 8 color dual playfield.

Sorry, that's right, have been programming with sprites and had 4 colours in my head. Still, it's double the colour count without being explicitly 256 colours.

Super smooth scrolling doesn't require AGA.

Well, yeah, it can be smooth on any chipset if synchronised, but I was referring to the subpixel scrolling I had mentioned earlier in that post, which I'm pretty sure is AGA only.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Are you referring to RTG antialiased subpixel precision?

I'm referring to the fluidity of the scrolling.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

I was referring to the subpixel scrolling I had mentioned earlier in that post

Somehow I missed that

[jayminer]

Originally Posted by Mrz

AGA is slow only in high resolutions ie 640x512 or 640x400 you are right it sucks
but in low resolutions 320x256 is very fast even faster than any RTG on the Amiga
ie quake in AGA /256 colors running at 320x256 is a bit faster than RTG similar resolution
also in lot of games ported from PC versions, the AGA version running in 320x256 is always faster than RTG

Uhm, no. AGA is not faster than RTG, especially for a game like Quake where you have to do Chunky to Planar conversion for each frame. In that case RTG is way faster, even with a "slow" RTG-card.

However when it comes to games like Lion King AGA definitely helps due to hardware scrolling, dual playfield, sprites and similiar functions.

[zipper]

AGA might be faster than RTG on ZorroII - max 7 megs/sec vs. 3½.