[Brainstorming] Power Drift and pseudo 3D circuit games

[malko]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Look, I love the SEGA arcade stuff just as much as anyone.
I was brought up on Outrun, Space Harrier, After Burner and Galaxy Force.
But put simply... an Amiga cannot do them games real justice because they simply don't have the hardware to do it.

What you have to put into perspective is that them SEGA programmers just didn't have to worry about 90% of the stuff an Amiga programmer needs to worry about because the game designers had already blue printed the requirements from a hardware and software perspective.

Making games like Power Drift, their software engineers simply didn't need to worry about performance... taking on a SEGA (I can't remember the board name exactly) game with that sprite scaling hardware would be just pure madness.

Go for it if you think you can though, i know some people have a few things in the pipeline but you must be realistic about what an Amiga can produce.

Fortunately, some people can think out of the box and thanks to those talented teams, diamonds like "Dread" and "Metro Siege" (among others) are coming to A500 .

[roondar]

Originally Posted by malko

Fortunately, some people can think out of the box and thanks to those talented teams, diamonds like "Dread" and "Metro Siege" (among others) are coming to A500 .

I don't really think that's a fair comment. McGeezer has already ported several arcade games quite well and clearly knows his stuff. He's had to do some of his own 'out of the box' thinking to get his games to work.

That said, I am very interested in hearing more about how this is intended to be done. I'd say it all depends on how much of a compromise is made between the actual Arcade game and what is being proposed here.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by malko

Fortunately, some people can think out of the box and thanks to those talented teams, diamonds like "Dread" and "Metro Siege" (among others) are coming to A500 .

Fortunately i actually know what i’m talking about, i’m well adapt at thinking outside the box as well and have proven it. You haven’t.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Look, I love the SEGA arcade stuff just as much as anyone.
I was brought up on Outrun, Space Harrier, After Burner and Galaxy Force.
But put simply... an Amiga cannot do them games real justice because they simply don't have the hardware to do it.

What you have to put into perspective is that them SEGA programmers just didn't have to worry about 90% of the stuff an Amiga programmer needs to worry about because the game designers had already blue printed the requirements from a hardware and software perspective.

Making games like Power Drift, their software engineers simply didn't need to worry about performance... taking on a SEGA (I can't remember the board name exactly) game with that sprite scaling hardware would be just pure madness.

Go for it if you think you can though, i know some people have a few things in the pipeline but you must be realistic about what an Amiga can produce.

Isnt this a simple task of
1. The max throughput of the Amiga bus(benchmark per accelerator card, with/without fastram) vs max arcade throws around?
2. The amount of memory required to have prescaled objects vs arcade which will scale via hardware.
Number 1 above will show this is not possible. Number 2 above is understandable and if it required an Amiga with 6meg ram in total im all for it.

Im very sure compromises could be made for a port with gfx which would realisticly be achievable on an Amiga but the above 2 points are the main sticking points,
Id love an Amiga power drift game that makes the best of the hardware vs trying to look like the arcade and looking like crap !

[Adrian Browne]

I hope its an original project rather than a port- more fun from a creative point of view; and perhaps expectations do not get set unduly high that way. I will help out if the project happens.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

Isnt this a simple task of
1. The max throughput of the Amiga bus(benchmark per accelerator card, with/without fastram) vs max arcade throws around?

No, because that doesn't account for human ingenuity to break through limits. An Amiga game does not have to push the same amount of data as an arcade game, it needs to fool the human brain into thinking it is seeing something very similar.

[saimon69]

A game like this on Amiga is however a mostly unknown territory; if tweaked properly something good cam come out - even the port itself was showing it can be done, but then there was no optimization like reducing number of ladyfingers visible at once to keep a certain frame rate or keep player sprite smaller

[saimon69]

As a curiosity, i think this was the first game to use Vectorballs to simulate 3D shapes in the space - Phozon by Namco

[ Show youtube player ]

[saimon69]

Do anyone has an email address or a way to get in touch with ZZKJ?

[saimon69]

I did stumble in this review last night that shows how performance of the game are quite better on a NTSC Machine - still choppy when lot of objects shows but less - hence i suppose that the if game run in a 1200 in NTSC mode might be actually decent - plus if there is a way to edit courses (too tight) and graphic assets (copperfills for the large elements) and replace the music might even get on the edge of good! Who want to work in an AGA version?

[ Show youtube player ]

[rothers]

Originally Posted by saimon69

I did stumble in this review last night that shows how performance of the game are quite better on a NTSC Machine - still choppy when lot of objects shows but less - hence i suppose that the if game run in a 1200 in NTSC mode might be actually decent - plus if there is a way to edit courses (too tight) and graphic assets (copperfills for the large elements) and replace the music might even get on the edge of good! Who want to work in an AGA version?

[ Show youtube player ]

Looking at it like that you can see it's a really advanced engine for the time.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by rothers

Looking at it like that you can see it's a really advanced engine for the time.

Pretty surprised nobody else tried to do better either - have seen plenty of vectorbobs on demos but nothing came to fruition; the closest thing are Unreal flying scenes, drivin force and the press release of Aquaventura (1988)

[Solo Kazuki]

I'm wondering that nobody mention neither Turbo Racer 3D nor Flyin' High.

Turbo Racer 3D
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Flyin' High
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[saimon69]

Well mainly because am talking of the OCS/ECS games and in particular those who use vectorbobs, while those use mixed vector/bob techniques and require a somehow beefy amiga(030+ and fastram) - this particular style of game graphics does not have too much examples on Amigaland

[saimon69]

Am sorry that the Unreal Amiga 3D sequence source code got lost because was a very good one; can you imagine this game remade using that engine? The Dementia port uses the same 3D scaling techniques of the game Corporation (stretching the height only) but too small play screen and no visual references for the ship beong close to the ground - plus some depth on the tunnel screens would have helped - RAM shortage or rush job again?

[ Show youtube player ]

[saimon69]

And another question: is possible to bend the screen using the copper to simulate curves? (of course not rotate, just bend slightly vertically)

[rothers]

Originally Posted by saimon69

And another question: is possible to bend the screen using the copper to simulate curves? (of course not rotate, just bend slightly vertically)

I've seen that done in demos but I'm not sure I can think of a game which does it. It would be intensive I'd have though with everything else going on.

[Cobe]

Originally Posted by saimon69

And another question: is possible to bend the screen using the copper to simulate curves? (of course not rotate, just bend slightly vertically)

You meant horizontaly?

[saimon69]

Horizontally might be an option but was thinking at when people take a curve and the horizon tilt at an angle; arcade power drift and galaxy force actually rotate the screen while i was thinking some sort of post processing in trapezoidally vertical bending the picture (might require a triple buffer though)

Arcade does this, now imagine that the picture is tilted (not rotated) on the same direction, and much less to keep the effect decent

[Cobe]

Ahh...
That seems totally unlikely for Amiga chipset...