What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by FOL

Awwwww man and you were doing so well. Nothing wrong with Willy Biemish. I was a big fan of Sierra and Dynamix. Had loads of big box versions of their games. Willy and Red Baron were my treasures.

I was saying the burglar had bad tastes because it seemed like he didn't steal the Amiga to play on it - since he only took one game.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

... and then:

Interesting. Aside from the obvious irony, to presume you know what other people are thinking, and that they're somehow jealous, is incredibly arrogant.

It seems like one of two things are happening here: either you're imagining things in some sort of bizarre persecution complex arising from people pointing out flaws in your beloved machine, or people are genuinely having a go at you because of your attitude of not accepting criticisms or entertaining the idea that your opinions are just that, is annoying them. I can't see any other possibilities here - on the whole, people aren't abused simply because they have a CD32 that I've seen, and I've been in the Amiga community for 25+ years without a break. Other than from trolls (which can be discounted on that very fact), if someone is receiving abuse, it's more likely that they've brought it upon themselves.


Compression isn't magic. If you have 10KB of data to fit into 1KB of storage, you're going to struggle immensely. And that's just for one game - what if you have three games for your CD32 that you'd like to save? Can you name a suitable compression routine that can store, say, a SWOS save, a Theme Park save and a Frontier save in 1KB? I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to save three different games on one console, do you? But each one of those saves is too large for the CD32's NVRAM, and in the CD32-specific versions, SWOS simply doesn't save, and both Theme Park and Frontier dump data in order to fit: Theme Park doesn't save the actual park, and Frontier only saves to your last warp, not anything that you've done in that system since or any details of the state of the system, and even then, requires the entire 1KB.

But for pig-iron, I took a save file from each of those games at random from my setup. Using 7zip, which is a pretty good compression routine by modern standards, those three files add up to around 70KB. Seventy times too much for the CD32, and that's with a good compression routine. The smallest of those, the Frontier save, is around 17KB compressed. Incidentally, it was only 18KB uncompressed, which would suggest the data was already pretty well compressed.


Add-ons of this kind are non-trivial - you can't just stick a memory card in the CD32. The NVRAM itself isn't directly accessible by any expansion port so it can't be modified or taken over by a simple expansion. If a game uses the OS to access the NVRAM, then those calls can be redirected to other storage, e.g. a floppy drive. But the CD32 lacks the CIAs to use a floppy drive even if it had a physical connector for such communication, so any such expansion is going to be non-trivial. They did exist - the SX-1 and SX-32 would both allow attaching a floppy drive as well as providing some other enhancements, since if you're going to recreate a significant portion of the Amiga's functionality, you might as well go the whole hog and not limit it to just floppy support. But they were an extremely expensive solution to the problem.


That's all very subjective. Not being able to save games on a machine whose sole purpose is to play games is a pretty major issue in many people's eyes. You would do well to re-read your own sentence there with an objective viewpoint - it might help you see that it's basically nonsense.


What 3D processing chip? Akiko knows precisely zero about 3D, and the poor graphical standard of 3D games in comparison to any system with 3D acceleration shows that. Akiko does chunky-to-planar conversions, which is a very low level thing. It's useful for games that build a screen in pixels rather than planes, so *textured* 3D can benefit. But much of the 3D work comes down to complex mathematics, blending and visual effects, none of which Akiko can help with.


Again with that presumptive arrogance.


Every Amiga has the capability to emulate the CD32. Any software that uses Akiko the correct way can also be used on any AGA Amiga with OS 3.1, since that includes routines for emulating Akiko's C2P function.


DMA in itself doesn't mean much unless you're making significant use of that function. Given the limited use of Akiko's DMA, it doesn't really seem like a significant selling point. Or anything to get excited about really.


And the exact same applies with the A1200.


The CD32 wasn't designed with that approach in mind - if it was, it would have had a similar approach to the A500 and A600, both of which can very easily use a dedicated, RAM-only expansion, just like the N64 and Saturn. And how are these what-ifs different to any other Amiga? You can say the same about the A1200: what if they'd included fast RAM? Again, there were fast RAM expansions available for the CD32, but they were more complex than the equivalent required for the A1200, and thus were more expensive.

So I do have to ask directly: Are you being serious with all this? The CD32 definitely has some benefits, but it also has some significant drawbacks, and ignoring some criticisms or filling gaps with what-iffery instantly undermines any point you think you're trying to make.

I wasn't being sensitive - you missed the point. Why didn't you read what those guys said to me first? To get some context. And I didn't care about the F-word guy - I just got him mixed up with the guy calling me a newb.

To add some more context - I am the one who gets told off by people here for supposedly insulting people - when I haven't at all. Proof of bias against CD32 owners right there. I literally haven't insulted anyone at all.

I got into trouble earlier in this thread from moderator for calling a guy's post "lazy" after he called my thread a "deadend" thread simply because I mentioned the X68000. But everyone else can do what they want apparently...

As for the rest of your thread - I think you are going into a bit deeply. I am just discussing things with people - not insulting them for their views. This is just the narrative that has been fed to you by the non-CD32 owners in this thread and you believed it. I will discuss your points with you in a future post when I have some more time

Being a CD32 owner is like having right wing views these days - they might be reasonable right-wing views but everyone still hates you for it

[Daedalus]

Dear lord, all you're doing there is demonstrating more of your persecution complex. Again, you're making assumptions because it's the only way to fit what I've said into your warped perspective.

Take a step back for a while and have a look. Nobody else can do it for you.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Dear lord, all you're doing there is demonstrating more of your persecution complex. Again, you're making assumptions because it's the only way to fit what I've said into your warped perspective.

Take a step back for a while and have a look. Nobody else can do it for you.

I was the one who got told off by the moderator.... not the people using the F-word or the ones using lame insults. Please explain this then. I have only been discussing people's points here.

See again you are trying to bend everything to your weird narrative without looking at facts. I clearly don't have a persecution complex because the only people I was hard on were the ones who were the ones who came in hard on me first. And why would they do that? because...... they are insecure about not owning the best Amiga

I get you are supporting your non-CD32 owning friends tho. Everything is tribal these days.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Compression isn't magic. If you have 10KB of data to fit into 1KB of storage, you're going to struggle immensely. And that's just for one game - what if you have three games for your CD32 that you'd like to save? Can you name a suitable compression routine that can store, say, a SWOS save, a Theme Park save and a Frontier save in 1KB? I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to save three different games on one console, do you? But each one of those saves is too large for the CD32's NVRAM, and in the CD32-specific versions, SWOS simply doesn't save, and both Theme Park and Frontier dump data in order to fit: Theme Park doesn't save the actual park, and Frontier only saves to your last warp, not anything that you've done in that system since or any details of the state of the system, and even then, requires the entire 1KB.

But for pig-iron, I took a save file from each of those games at random from my setup. Using 7zip, which is a pretty good compression routine by modern standards, those three files add up to around 70KB. Seventy times too much for the CD32, and that's with a good compression routine. The smallest of those, the Frontier save, is around 17KB compressed. Incidentally, it was only 18KB uncompressed, which would suggest the data was already pretty well compressed.


Add-ons of this kind are non-trivial - you can't just stick a memory card in the CD32. The NVRAM itself isn't directly accessible by any expansion port so it can't be modified or taken over by a simple expansion. If a game uses the OS to access the NVRAM, then those calls can be redirected to other storage, e.g. a floppy drive. But the CD32 lacks the CIAs to use a floppy drive even if it had a physical connector for such communication, so any such expansion is going to be non-trivial. They did exist - the SX-1 and SX-32 would both allow attaching a floppy drive as well as providing some other enhancements, since if you're going to recreate a significant portion of the Amiga's functionality, you might as well go the whole hog and not limit it to just floppy support. But they were an extremely expensive solution to the problem.


That's all very subjective. Not being able to save games on a machine whose sole purpose is to play games is a pretty major issue in many people's eyes. You would do well to re-read your own sentence there with an objective viewpoint - it might help you see that it's basically nonsense.


What 3D processing chip? Akiko knows precisely zero about 3D, and the poor graphical standard of 3D games in comparison to any system with 3D acceleration shows that. Akiko does chunky-to-planar conversions, which is a very low level thing. It's useful for games that build a screen in pixels rather than planes, so *textured* 3D can benefit. But much of the 3D work comes down to complex mathematics, blending and visual effects, none of which Akiko can help with.


Again with that presumptive arrogance.


Every Amiga has the capability to emulate the CD32. Any software that uses Akiko the correct way can also be used on any AGA Amiga with OS 3.1, since that includes routines for emulating Akiko's C2P function.


DMA in itself doesn't mean much unless you're making significant use of that function. Given the limited use of Akiko's DMA, it doesn't really seem like a significant selling point. Or anything to get excited about really.


And the exact same applies with the A1200.


The CD32 wasn't designed with that approach in mind - if it was, it would have had a similar approach to the A500 and A600, both of which can very easily use a dedicated, RAM-only expansion, just like the N64 and Saturn. And how are these what-ifs different to any other Amiga? You can say the same about the A1200: what if they'd included fast RAM? Again, there were fast RAM expansions available for the CD32, but they were more complex than the equivalent required for the A1200, and thus were more expensive.

So I do have to ask directly: Are you being serious with all this? The CD32 definitely has some benefits, but it also has some significant drawbacks, and ignoring some criticisms or filling gaps with what-iffery instantly undermines any point you think you're trying to make.

The CD32's save system was fine for early adopters of the system. Commodore no doubt had plans for an add-on to give more space. Like you say in your post - it is possible. Also you can fit whole games in 1K of memory. So people who can't fit their save data in it - suck. It's not just about raw data - it's about being clever about what data to save. That's how some games use passwords to represent game status. Have you checked out Exile? I bet that game does it right - given it's BBC Micro 12k origins (effectively 12k since the BBC Micro uses 20k for it's graphical display out of a total of 32k)

I never said the Akiko was a 3D processing chip. I was replying to a guy that did. I saw a benchmark test of it used when running Doom and it was superfast compared to other Amigas.

"Again with that presumptive arrogance." See what i mean. This is very rude. But we CD32 owners are used to worse...

You can't emulate a CD32 on a standard Amiga, that's like saying you can emulate an Amiga on a PC. It's not the same unless you have the real hardware. Even the sticker that says "32 bit" also adds a lot to the experience.

I think that given the Akikio has DMA in it we can say it has a blast processor.

Again you said it's possible to upgrade the CD32 memory. So we agree that's an option for the future. I bet when the CD32 came out people didn't even think it could be turned into an enhanced A1200. But turns out it could.

[manossg]

I was very positive about the CD32 (although not the best Amiga by a looooong shot), yet I am starting to dislike it because of this thread.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Oh I'm sorry, did I offend and insult you for writing utter crap in your posts?

For some reason you seem to be in this self created bubble of Amiga sub-class with an "us and them" attitude. Your thread appears to be aimed at causing friction instead of discussion so excuse me if I've offended or insulted you but you deserve it.

Perhaps if the your thread title was "Is the CD32 the best Amiga platform?", and came up with reasonable arguments about why YOU think it is then you'd get different responses.

The CD32 isn't the best Amiga - for reasons I have given, it's my opinion, I think the A1200 is the best Amiga but I don't go whinging like a pussy when people say the A500 is the best Amiga. I simply take it on the chin, and so should you.

This is another person spreading a false narrative because I have never insulted this guy but he keeps trying to insult me. All I have done is talk about the CD32 - so that can be the only reason for his rude maanner

Again I have never complained about your opinion - that the A1200 is the best Amiga. But this is a discussion forum I am allowed to discuss your opinion - unless you are worried that I have started to change it? Interesting.....

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by manossg

I was very positive about the CD32 (although not the best Amiga by a looooong shot), yet I am starting to dislike it because of this thread.

Don't worry about it mate. Read the thread and notice how the CD32 owners are the polite ones. That will make you feel better about it

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Don't worry about it mate. Read the thread and notice how the CD32 owners are the polite ones. That will make you feel better about it

I’m sorry but you really are an idiot. I’m sorry if this offends you but you are.
You’re trying to jam a wedge between owners of an amiga computer and an amiga console, all i see is amiga owners. It’s for this reason i’m short with you and what you post is nonsense. Sometimes i do swear in posts where i think it’s applicable.

Nobody has it in for CD32 owners, only you think you do for some bizarre reason. Btw - go and download my latest Santa game released yesterday on ........... CD32.

[jotd]

Rygar also works on CD32 BTW.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

that's like saying you can emulate an Amiga on a PC.

That's got to be the stupidest comment I've read in a very long time

...mind you this thread is full of them; mainly from a certain fanboy.

Ever heard of WinUAE?

These days it's better than real hardware, and you can emulated every Amiga model known to man.

...and you do know that gamedevs / WHDLoad authors etc. use WinUAE to do their stuff before testing on real Amiga models?

If it wasn't for emulation you wouldn't be seeing the number of new games that we have been over the past 5 years or so

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Also you can fit whole games in 1K of memory. So people who can't fit their save data in it - suck. It's not just about raw data - it's about being clever about what data to save.

Either you don't understand memory capacity or you've offended just about every Amiga game developer that developed a game for the Amiga.

[Gilbert]

I found this that shows how fast Akiko is:

c2p Gloom 1x1 256 colors

68020/14 - 61.6 ms
68020/14+fast - 54.6 ms
68020/14+akiko - 24.2 ms
68030/50+fast - 21.7 ms
68040/25+fast - 18.6 ms
68020/14+fast+akiko - 17.6 ms
68060/50+fast - 9.1 ms

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Either you don't understand memory capacity or you've offended just about every Amiga game developer that developed a game for the Amiga.

Lighten up dude. It's just a fact you can write a game in 1k. Games didn't start with the Amiga.... Atari 2600 carts go from 2k upward and that's with sound and music data too

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by jotd

Rygar also works on CD32 BTW.

Lol.
All is good until mcgeezer got so pissed of, and change the code not to work on CD32.
I hope that never happens.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

I’m sorry but you really are an idiot. I’m sorry if this offends you but you are.
You’re trying to jam a wedge between owners of an amiga computer and an amiga console, all i see is amiga owners. It’s for this reason i’m short with you and what you post is nonsense. Sometimes i do swear in posts where i think it’s applicable.

Nobody has it in for CD32 owners, only you think you do for some bizarre reason. Btw - go and download my latest Santa game released yesterday on ........... CD32.

How have been trying to jam a wedge between Amiga owners when all I have been doing is discussing the CD32? Anything else that happened was a result of a few people getting angry about it and starting to use insults. People tell me all the time here why CD32 isn't as great as I think it is - I don't get offended like you guys do.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by DamienD

That's got to be the stupidest comment I've read in a very long time

...mind you this thread is full of them; mainly from a certain fanboy.

Ever heard of WinUAE?

These days it's better than real hardware, and you can emulated every Amiga model known to man.

...and you do know that gamedevs / WHDLoad authors etc. use WinUAE to do their stuff before testing on real Amiga models?

If it wasn't for emulation you wouldn't be seeing the number of new games that we have been over the past 5 years or so

I have WinUAE and it's not as good as using a real Amiga. Emulation is great if you don't own real hardware but it's no match for the real thing. I have a few old consoles too for the same reason. When you have a stack of ROM or Disc images on your SSD or HD then it devalues them. You need to put the time into loading up a game. And learning it. Once you have save-states and the ability to switch to a new game when things get tough - the experience isn't the same

If you bought a real CD32 you could see for yourself how great it is

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Lol.
All is good until mcgeezer got so pissed of, and change the code not to work on CD32.
I hope that never happens.

I think he should make a CD32 enhanced version to make up for his grumpiness

[jotd]

my proof of bias against CD32 users:

cd32load: https://github.com/jotd666/cd32load
cd32launch: https://github.com/jotd666/cd32launch
enhanced cd32 games: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=94158

yeah, I hate cd32 users so much that I spend my evenings finding ways to run games on this damn thing, just to annoy them.

[Konrad]

@Gilbert:
You are clearly not discussing . People have tried, but your lack of knowledge (regarding emulation and possibilities of 1k) and apples&orange arguments (atari 2600 games, savegame size comparison with Exile) doesn't help.

You received technical information of people who know their stuff. But instead of considering them you try to convince people with walls of text.

Also thinking that people hate cd32 "owners" just because they criticise the cd32 is very far-fetched. In fact people are just annoyed of you as there is almost no SUBSTANTIAL discussion from your side.

You just want to convince, no matter how far-fetched the arguments are you bring up.

I really thought in the beginning that you're just trolling a little for fun. But I'm really shocked at how stubborn you are not accepting valid arguments, but sticking to nonsense and accusations (f.ex. hate for cd32 owners).

Everyone can have his own opinion. But that doesn't mean that you can't accept valid arguments. No one wants to convince you to dislike the cd32. If you like it best, so be it. But be more realistic and don't misunderstand critic on the cd32 as personal attack on you.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I found this that shows how fast Akiko is:

c2p Gloom 1x1 256 colors

68020/14 - 61.6 ms
68020/14+fast - 54.6 ms
68020/14+akiko - 24.2 ms
68030/50+fast - 21.7 ms
68040/25+fast - 18.6 ms
68020/14+fast+akiko - 17.6 ms
68060/50+fast - 9.1 ms




Lighten up dude. It's just a fact you can write a game in 1k. Games didn't start with the Amiga.... Atari 2600 carts go from 2k upward and that's with sound and music data too

I had a ZX81, I l know what can be done in 1kb.