What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

Exactly like that? Without compromising colour count and the number of objects on screen? I can't seem to remember any Amiga game that does it.

The rare examples I can recall in the Amiga realm of something remotely like this is Jim Power, Apache, Shadow of the Beast, Chuck Rock 2 and Agony. The first two seem to not compromise colour, but all the others look too pastel to be as impressive as Coryoon is, with grainy colours and lots of dithering. I know none of them are AGA, though. If you say it's possible, then I believe it, but out of curiosity: what game has it implemented in the same ilk or form as Coryoon does?

There are other examples, like some bonus stages of Yo! Joe!, also an OCS game. I can't recall AGA examples other than Lion King (in parts) or the recent Rygar remake that have this sort of parallax implemented, albeit not as impressively (or exuberantly) as the little aforementioned PC-Engine game. I'm not talking about simple background scrolling like say Flink or Aladdin, I'm talking about what appears to be multi-parallax that give the impression of depth and that you defined as "different scroll values split down the screen". If AGA really can do it with relative ease, as you say, it would be very interesting to actually see it done in games.

Lots of games do it. For the Amiga it's quite easy because of the way the Copper works.

In Rygar I nicked the clouds from Macross Scrambling Valkarie for round 14.

[ Show youtube player ]

I don't think I used the technique in Rygar as I raw blit the background... but you get the idea.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Konrad

Gilbert, again you're confusing subjective opinion with objective arguments. You show StreetFighter2 on Megadrive and assume that this is the pinnacle of what was possible on the console.
"It was programmed by Capcom team, so it must've been the best result possible, right ?" This is why I can't take your arguments serious.
This was the same for your Battle Squadron post. Showing Amiga and Megadrive and derive from that technical capabilities. This is pure nonsense.
Also earlier taking the talk of a Commodore marketing person doing his job as 100% truth and not considering/accepting that this could also be exaggerated, because he wanted to sell CD32s.

To your screenshots:
Fighting Spirit amazed me when it was released. A worthy fighting game on Amiga. I also bought it back then. The graphics are good. But alot of blues and reds (possibly because characters had to share pallets, also with background). So in some places a not so good separation from the background. Again, a good game and good graphics. But not amazing.

See here a screenshot of the patched StreetFighter2ChampionEdition, called Remastered.
This looks already a lot better than your screenshot from the official version. So better quality still is possible on Megadrive. And this is an inoffical hack which could just be modified to a certain degree. Who knows what would've been possible in the hands of other talented programmers ?

[sarcasm on]
Time to be honest and admit the Megadrive really crushes the CD32. You can stop trolling and embrace reality[/sarcasm off]

I like you Konrad you are a good guy but so far everyone who has called me a troll - has proven to be a troll themselves so hope you don't fall victim to group-think or coder-worship that goes on on this board. That's why I don't come here much anymore because of the unpleasantness.

Like I said Fightin' Spirit has 64 colours on screen (I did a colour count) and as you know the Amiga has no colour palette selection limitations so it can choose what colours it wants. You are right about there being issues about objects or sprites using same colours but I don't think anyone notices that when they look at FS

That MD screenshot you sent me is altered - probably by the emulator you used. I did a colour count and got more than 256 colours. Always a sign of emulator interference. I had same problem with the screenshot I used. Even though I turned the filter off on my emulator.

I would say you cant compare an early CD32 game to a late game like that. Even the SF2 I used was probably a late game compared to Fightin Spirit! And why are sprites so small? A lot of people on this forum only know the Amiga limitations (often very well) but they have never coded for the Megadrive and don't know it's limitations.. I was playing Midnight Resistance on Megadrive the other day and was watching as various sprites disappeared when I shot my weapons. Try it. A lot of MD games really do lack colors on layers and sprites and use dithering all over the place.

Something else Amiga can do is drop the frame rate to 30 or 25fps and get twice as many objects on screen. As far as I know the MD can't do this because it only has hardware sprites. As we already said in the CPS1 thread there are actual arcade games that run at half the frame rate and no one knows - unless you tell them. Rainbow Islands on A500 ran at half the frame rate for example and no every asks for a 50fps version.

Roondar once told me how many sprites, bobs and processor-sprites AGA could get on screen at a full frame rate and if you add multiplexing to that I think AGA beats MD in many cases. Plus Megadrive has animation/VRAM/DMA limitations which the CD32 doesn't have. Pretty much all CD32 games were quick ports or if not - only enhanced in very small ways. If the system had taken off we would have seen games 30-40% (in a technical sense) better than FS. Imagine what the AGA's "Shadow of the Beast" would have looked like. The Megadrive can't get anywhere near the A500 game or even Gods for that matter in terms of gfx/colors

[touko]

The TurboGrafx-16 uses a Hudson Soft HuC6280 CPU—an 8-bit CPU modified with two 16-bit graphics processors—running at 7.6 MHz. It features 8 KB of RAM, 64 KB of Video RAM, and the ability to display 482 colors at once from a 512-color palette. The sound hardware, built into the HuC6280 CPU, includes a PSG running at 3.58 MHz and a 5-10 bit stereo PCM...

A bit of precisions, the CPU run @7.16 (not 7.6), and the sound hardware is not a stereo PCM chip but a 6 voices PCM chip, in fact this chip is close to the amiga one (6 DACs, it can do LFO FM with voices 0 and 1), it can also do white noise with voices 5 and 6 and all the voices can be set to do direct PCM playing, but in contrary to the amiga, there is no DMA to do it, you must use the CPU .
The standard was to use white noise and the 6, 32 bytes buffers(one for each voice) .
You can see here what it can do,and see it is not a PSG :
[ Show youtube player ]

The SGX is the same than the PCE, but with a second GPU (so with its 64kb of VRAM and 64 sprites,for a total of 128kb of VRAM and 128 sprites),a second background layer, 32ko of RAM,a chip for priorities, and merging the two GPU outputs .

Strange that they never released a CD version.

it's just a technical problem,SF2 cannot be done without a massive downgrade with only the 256kb of CDram,that's why a 20MB hucard was used.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

The only game shared by both systems that is better on the Amiga is BC Kid, though, again, the subsequent BC Kid games on the PC-Engine use the new main sprite and are better games.

Missed that one.


There are quite a few games that seems better on the Amiga VS the PC Engine :

Jim Power, Saint Dragon, Shadow of the Beast (maybe one of the best conversion though), Turrican, Golden Axe for example


And for some games like Falcon, Ninja Warriors, Parasol Stars, Liquid Kids, Populous, I'm not sure which version is the best but they seems very close to me.



I really love the PC Engine, but you can't just cherry pick game comparison on both systems, especially when knowing game developpement differences between western Europe and Japan at that time.

[Gilbert]

It's refreshing to see people talking normally in this thread

Sokolvic - also note those are A500 games (often with only 512k of memory, like SOTB) not AGA games with 2Mb of memory and CD quality music. I think the PCE is more powerful in general than the A500 - because don't forget most of the games ran at 50/60 fps. But the PCE uses lots of enhancements - e.g. arcade pro cards, interface card etc, and the initial add-on CD ROM drive was incredibly unreliable.

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I feel this thread was settled when all the people who were arguing the Megadrive was more powerful than the CD32 quickly (not talking about roondar) ran to the SF2 thread to show off their knowledge as to how even the standard AGA Amiga could do a much better version of that game than the Megadrive! Like I said the people calling others trolls - *always* are the trolls themselves.

People earlier were saying David Pleasance invented the CD64 for publicity - but this pod with Michael Tomczyk at 1:20:00 shows Commodore were seriously planning to make it.

[ Show youtube player ]

To those people, do your research before insulting others! and maybe be a bit nicer as a person. I think both of those are good advice.

[Konrad]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I feel this thread was settled when all the people who were arguing the Megadrive was more powerful than the CD32 quickly (not talking about roondar) ran to the SF2 thread to show off their knowledge as to how even the standard AGA Amiga could do a much better version of that game than the Megadrive! Like I said the people calling others trolls - *always* are the trolls themselves.

People have shown that a much more faithful conversion is possible on the Amiga (not 1:1 conversion, we should be clear about that)
Why does it make the Amiga or CD32 now more powerful than a Megadrive now ?

No one said that a "standard AGA Amiga could do a much better version of that game than the Megadrive" generally.
Even when it could be better than the EXISTING, CURRENT AVAILABLE version for the Megadrive, you can't assume the Megadrive port the best version possible on the console.
Some decent Megadrive coders could also do a "proof of concept" and develop a better version than currently available.

So there's no proof in the SF2 thread that the Amiga is better than the Megadrive. Just your subjective opinion assuming the Megadrive version being the best result possible on the console and comparing this to mcgeezer's proof of concept.

Other way around FACTS are known about the internals and features of the Megadrive. And those have been brought up here.
So the SF2 thread doesn't change a thing and doesn't make the Amiga or CD32 now magically smash the Megadrive .

[Foebane]

Oh look, it's Konrad's 666th post! Or rather, his Damien Thorn AKA Antichrist post! What are the chances of me catching it, huh?

[Konrad]

How dare you reveal this and endanger my true intention to incite people on this thread?

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I
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I feel this thread was settled when all the people who were arguing the Megadrive was more powerful than the CD32 quickly (not talking about roondar) ran to the SF2 thread to show off their knowledge as to how even the standard AGA Amiga could do a much better version of that game than the Megadrive! Like I said the people calling others trolls - *always* are the trolls themselves.

What's the matter Gilbert, Are you annoyed because your thread and time wasting didn't get you the attention you crave?

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

What's the matter Gilbert, Are you annoyed because your thread and time wasting didn't get you the attention you crave?

Konrad is saying something similar now, suggesting that the MegaDrive conversion of SF2 could very likely not be the best version possible on THAT platform, neither.

It's all pointless tit-for-tat, really.

[BippyM]

I woke up at like 2am, couldn't sleep and thought.. . Hmmm nice hot bath and check out eab... Got to this thread.. Now my bath water is stone cold and as unpleasant as this thread.. Oh my god....

Firstly.. Gilbert you're either a troll or an idiot.. .I'll go with troll (this isn't up for discussion). Some extremely talented guys who know hardware much better than you and you argue with them.. Go and write a game on cd32 that smashes the absolute best MD game.. When you or anyone else does that I'll concede, until then please... Shhhhhhh.

Everyone else.. Stop playing with him..

Now I am closing this abomination of a thread, anyone takes offence feel free to pm me where I will soundly tell you where to go, with directions on how to get there..

If any anyone wants some of the better discussion splitting pm me with links and explain why i should move it out...

I'm now going back to bed... Cold and freezing...

Ps... It's 2021.does it fucking matter?