PC games that made the Amiga look like Shit

[grond]

Originally Posted by TCD

In the early nineties the perception of computers changed from being something for children or enthusiasts to something that you needed/wanted to have access to. The era of the 'micros' was over (partially because they all had propietary formats for pretty much everything) and the 'PC' seemed like the only sensible way to go.

That was the time my parents turned to me for a recommendation for a computer. My mother was first (I think that was 1994). I remember excluding Amiga in a rush of maturity because of the software incompatibilities in exchanging texts with publishers and colleagues. On the other hand I didn't want to enter support hell by recommending a PC and then having to deal with the problems that would have brought with it. Thus, the first computer in the family not owned by me became a super expensive Macintosh (to this date the only Apple product in the family). It was the right choice at the time, it just worked for what it was intended to do. Since my mother's computer needs can be summed up as "glorified typewriter", it even served well into the new millenium justifying the horrendous initial investment. My father decided he needed a computer in something like 1998 and laptop PCs and Windows were already good enough to use by then. A laptop also meant that he could simply fold it and take it to show some colleague at uni if he had a problem and I wasn't available.

Commodore didn't have anything but its own line of PCs to offer for this market that quickly was far bigger than the market of people that actually knew what they wanted, needed and could expect from a computer. Commodore would have had to develop its own quality office suite of programs, optimally compatible with some of the big ones out there to be able to even target that market with no-worries all-in-one non-PCs. Since that wasn't the case, PCs were a safe recommendation to make to first timers. If they found that the PC sucked, they would automatically also come to the conclusion that computers in general sucked but were an inevitable curse of the modern times. It wasn't you that was at fault. If you recommended an exotic system such as the Amiga, all "I can't open the Word file my colleague gave me on a disk" problems were caused by you and nobody else.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by grond

If you recommended an exotic system such as the Amiga, all "I can't open the Word file my colleague gave me on a disk" problems were caused by you and nobody else.

I did not recommend Amigas to people after Commodore demise, i however taught to others what to do to keep theirs. Could not expect everyone to be able to set an emulated Mac environment for daily tasks, after all; not now and much more not in the 90s

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

So you did. You also said it was Catacomb 3D, not Wolfenstein 3D.

And?

The timeline:-

1990 John Carmack visits CES and sees the Ultima Underworld demo. Says he could write a faster texture mapper.

1991 Carmack develops Catacomb-3D, a 2.5D re-imagining of Catacomb II which he also wrote. Game is launched in November 1991.

1992 Carmack uses the same graphical technique in Wolfenstein 3D, now optimized for VGA. Game is released in May 1992, 5 months before the Amiga A4000 and A1200 (Commodore missed by that much!).

What's really interesting is that Wolfenstein 3D was originally going to use EGA graphics, just like Catacomb 3-D. Seems that even as late as December 1991 VGA was seen as limiting the market too much for shareware games, and that 1992 was the turning point (for ID Software at least).

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

And?

I posted in this thread solely because you claimed that John Carmack was 'inspired' by UU to make Catacomb 3D while gimbal said JC was 'inspired' by UU to make Wolf 3D. That's it.

P.S. Maybe next time just check that timeline of yours before making false claims?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

Maybe next time just check that timeline of yours before making false claims?

You're right! It was 5 months, not 4. The A4000 and A1200 were released in October 1992.

[sokolovic]

Don't know if it's interesting to report it, but in november 1993 ID Software told Joystick (a french magazine) in an interview that there were in discussion with "Amiga" to license them Wolfenstein 3D to make a port on the CD32.

[gimbal]

Hard to say if there was any truth to it, it can just be tactics to not have to say "no". Licensing out their tech was their business model so you always want to keep the door open.

[grond]

Could also be complete fabrication. I don't know the reputation of the magazine but fans wanted to hear those things and a lot of Amiga-related magazines wrote what their audience wanted to read and probably figured it was a way of supporting the platform.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by grond

Could also be complete fabrication. I don't know the reputation of the magazine but fans wanted to hear those things and a lot of Amiga-related magazines wrote what their audience wanted to read and probably figured it was a way of supporting the platform.

Even if it was true,

A letter to ID Software

[original letter to Id Software]

Hi. I would appreciate an answer to this letter from you or someone
who is able to do so... I noticed that you have recently released a
version of Doom for SGI, meaning that porting isn't a difficult task.
Perhaps a port of Doom for Amiga would also be a good idea ? I
realize that the Amiga lacks a chunky graphics mode and it is a
relatively limited market compared to IBM clones, but the game market
for Amiga is quite large. The lack of the chunky graphics mode has
been solved via fast conversion routines (which can be found in
ftp.wustl.edu:/pub/aminet or any other Aminet mirror) or as in the
case for Amiga CD32, the conversion routine is provided in hardware...

Many owners of Amiga 1200 have upgraded their systems with high
speed accelerators, bringing their machines performance similar to the
A4000, which has more than enough horse power to handle Doom.


[response from Id software]

From johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com Sun Sep 4 02:52 EST 1994
From: John Carmack <johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Sep 94 11:50:23 -0600
To: G.Sanderson@ais.gu.edu.au
Subject: amiga doom

The amiga is not powerfull enough to run DOOM. It takes the full
speed of a 68040 to play the game properly even if you have a chunky
pixel mode in hardware. Having to convert to bit planes would kill
it even on the fastest amiga hardware, not to mention the effect it
would have on the majority of the amiga base.

John Carmack

3 years later the Doom source code was released, and 3 days after that it was ported to the Amiga. Requirements were any Amiga with a 68020+ CPU and 8MB RAM.

[rothers]

They probably emailed Id software on a bad day, that seems to be how things were then.

See the fiasco of the Saturn Doom port for an example.

[sandruzzo]

Wasn't Carmack a genius?

[Karlos]

To be fair, saying the minimum requirements are a 68020 is a bit misleading. The more optimised doom ports from that time ran well on my A1200 + Apollo 1240 @ 25MHz but they weren't exactly 25fps solid under AGA.

I don't think Carmack made a bad call really, since the source was released eventually and the rest is history.

[oscar_ates]

Doom on my A1200 Blizzard 1230 IV 16MB ram ran like 8-9 fps. I would not say He was wrong since majority was using A500 1MB then

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Doom on my A1200 Blizzard 1230 IV 16MB ram ran like 8-9 fps. I would not say He was wrong since majority was using A500 1MB then

Don't know about versions released that time but I have exactly the same setup and Doom (ADoom I think) run fairly well on my A1200 as long as you don't put details, resolution and screen size to the maximum.


IMHO he was deeply wrong, especially when saying "It takes the full speed of a 68040 to play the game properly even if you have a chunky pixel mode in hardware".

He have been proven wrong a few day after the source code of the game was released. He just didn't care at all about the Amiga, that's all.

Originally Posted by Karlos

To be fair, saying the minimum requirements are a 68020 is a bit misleading. The more optimised doom ports from that time ran well on my A1200 + Apollo 1240 @ 25MHz but they weren't exactly 25fps solid under AGA.

I don't think Carmack made a bad call really, since the source was released eventually and the rest is history.

We're speaking about conversion made by lobbyist developpers and yet it was better than commercial Doom conversion like the SNES one. Had the game been converted by an Amiga specialist team like Mark Sibly's Black Magic probably it would have been at least on par with the SNES version, even on a 68020.

On a side note Team 17 even considered buying Doom license when they first saw Andy Clitheroe engine before going for Alien Breed 3D according to Amiga Power issue 47, PP8/9 : http://amr.abime.net/issue_48

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Had the game been converted by an Amiga specialist team like Mark Sibly's Black Magic probably it would have been at least on par with the SNES version, even on a 68020.

Have you seen and played the SNES Doom version?

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by TCD

Have you seen and played the SNES Doom version?

Saw vids like this one
[ Show youtube player ]

The game seems a bit jerky, no texture on ground and cellar. I will try it on an emulator as soon as I can but the game seems heavily compromises to me.

Anyway, we won't remake history (again...) but had Doom been released on the Amiga by 1993/1994 and recquiring an accelerator board to be playable, I'm sure many (many) people would have upgraded their machine.

This version is running perfectly on an Blizzard expanded 68030/50mhz Amiga 1200 for instance.
[ Show youtube player ]

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

The game seems a bit jerky, no texture on ground and cellar. I will try it on an emulator as soon as I can but the game seems heavily compromises to me.

It's quite a difference to the PC version to say the least. Just looked up the story behind the SNES port and it is quite interesting how it came to be: https://www.shacknews.com/article/11...p-to-super-nes

[sokolovic]

Yep. Interesting indeed as it also shows that John Carmack wasn't reluctant to make compromised version of the game (he did works on this version).

Not releasing an Amiga version was purely a political choice. Atari Jaguar did have an official port done by Id Software yet I'm really not sure that the installed base of this machine was much greater thant Aga Amigas, even expanded ones.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Not releasing an Amiga version was purely a political choice.

Eh, not so sure about that. id never released an Amiga game, so I'd say that it was mostly unfamilarity with the system. If somebody would have approached them with a partially done reverse engineered engine they might have supported it like they did with the SNES version. We'll never know.

I was just saying that making a version like the SNES one would just have confirmed that the Amiga was inferior to the PC.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

Wasn't Carmack a genius?

There are many forms of genius, it does not imply "all-knowing god". And as his recent 5 hour interview detailed, he made many mistakes along the way nonetheless. The most sobering thing I found is that he admitted to actually not be that great at math at all and had little more than high school math knowledge, it was more perseverance that made him succeed in implementing all the cool tricks. And as of the Quake timeline, it was Michael Abrash that made it possible. If he hadn't had Michael to fill the gaps in his own math limitations, there probably would have been no Quake.