new amiga 500 doom like !

[Spriteer]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

The Supra Turbo 28 is a super interesting design as it uses a 16kb cache instead of real fast ram. I think it works best for loops that fit in this cache. However, it is my understanding that Dread uses script generated unrolled loops and self modifying code. Would that be accelerated by a design like the Supra or other cache reliant accelerators like the AdSpeed?
Maybe KK could comment?

It's an interesting question

I will be happy to test this the first chance I get.

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by Spriteer

I will be happy to test this the first chance I get.

Hahaha, we all want to test
I have an A500 with a 14MHz 68000 here that is just itching to run Dread!
Just imagine if Dread would have been released back in the day! It would have been a real incentive to upgrade A500's.

[rothers]

Did the Amiga ever have a game that encouraged a CPU upgrade? I guess a few flight sims maybe?

Looking back such a game around 1990 might have actually done wonders for the hardware scene.

[d4rk3lf]

I highly doubt Dread would inspire A500 users to upgrade, back in the day, because it already runs nicely on 7Mhz (which is a goal).

Originally Posted by rothers

Did the Amiga ever have a game that encouraged a CPU upgrade? I guess a few flight sims maybe?

A500, or any Amiga?
Aga Amigas have lot's of games (mostly 3D shooters), that required upgraded A1200 to play at nice frame rates.
A500 not so much,... but still... there were games that could use extra speed, and is mainly, as you said, flight sims, 3D shooters, space sims, and 3D racing games.
Dune 2 and Civilization, even pure 2D, could also use extra boost, and there is probably much more..

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I highly doubt Dread would inspire A500 users to upgrade, back in the day, because it already runs nicely on 7Mhz (which is a goal).



A500, or any Amiga?
Aga Amigas have lot's of games (mostly 3D shooters), that required upgraded A1200 to play at nice frame rates.
A500 not so much,... but still... there were games that could use extra speed, and is mainly, as you said, flight sims, 3D shooters, space sims, and 3D racing games.
Dune 2 and Civilization, even pure 2D, could also use extra boost, and there is probably much more..

Most 3D shooters on A1200 required a lot of acceleration. Ever tried to play breathless, AB3D2 or the likes on a standard A1200? Even a 50MHz 030 was barely enough. So, to really get high framerates expensive accelerators were needed. Dread on the other hand runs very well on a standard A500 and even modest (affordable!) expansions are enough to let it run completely fluent.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

Ever tried to play breathless, AB3D2 or the likes on a standard A1200?

Yup!

I've spent hours and hours trying various Breathless resolution, and screen sizes, on my vanilla A1200... it was more fun to me to try that, then to actually play it.
I think I couldn't even start AB3D 2.. minimum is something like 4MB of Ram.. or something.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

Hahaha, we all want to test
I have an A500 with a 14MHz 68000 here that is just itching to run Dread!
Just imagine if Dread would have been released back in the day! It would have been a real incentive to upgrade A500's.

Yes, because being possible to play it on an A500 means many people would have, and then might have wanted to upgrade for a better experience.

The problem with 3D games that did come out for the Amiga was they needed a 'high end' system just to play them at all, or were so bad that they weren't worth it. This is where Doom hit the sweet spot for PCs - it came at a time when many people still had 386's that could run it poorly, which incentivized them to upgrade to a shiny new 486. The other master stroke was releasing it as shareware, so it cost almost nothing to try out.

[saimon69]

I think a game of this kind might work well too with the Dread Engine, i remember seeing it in progress when i did pitch Powder to Graffiti, though - and they did use Dpaint to put together the stop motion animations

[ Show youtube player ]

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

The Supra Turbo 28 is a super interesting design as it uses a 16kb cache instead of real fast ram.

I wonder how they've implemented invalidating/flushing of such a cache, since the OS (or any application software) can't be aware it's there.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Yes, because being possible to play it on an A500 means many people would have, and then might have wanted to upgrade for a better experience.

I repeat.. it's not only "possible", but Dread on A500 7Mhz is already very smooth experience... smoother then Gloom on A1200.
Citadel is good example of "possible" to play on A500, but even back then, framerates where waay to low.

I don't understand why do you guys think people would upgrade their A500, back in the day, so they get more speed on Dread, and they didn't upgraded their A500 for the likes of AAA games like Wing Commander (not even HD upgrade)?
Did you saw how Dread moves on 7Mhz?
Man.. back in the day, that framerate would amaze anyone that plays doom on 386DX/40 ..

The only way I see majority of people would wish to upgrade their A500 with faster processor, if Dread offered various resolutions, 1x1 px, better textures, and so on...

Maybe Dread 2.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I repeat.. it's not only "possible", but Dread on A500 7Mhz is already very smooth experience... smoother then Gloom on A1200.
Citadel is good example of "possible" to play on A500, but even back then, framerates where waay to low.

I don't understand why do you guys think people would upgrade their A500, back in the day, so they get more speed on Dread, and they didn't upgraded their A500 for the likes of AAA games like Wing Commander (not even HD upgrade)?
Did you saw how Dread moves on 7Mhz?
Man.. back in the day, that framerate would amaze anyone that plays doom on 386DX/40 ..

The only way I see majority of people would wish to upgrade their A500 with faster processor, if Dread offered various resolutions, 1x1 px, better textures, and so on...

Maybe Dread 2.

Yeah and, at least in France, cpu upgrade cards for the A500 were not widespread. I mean you cannot bought it in shops as it was the case for the 512Ko extensions. It was not natural at all to look for one and even less to bought one.

Frankly, when you think about it, C= could have made their own when the A500 took its momentum and push the card, promoting applications like Imagine or some fancy games requiring it, in short advertising it and make bucks.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

The only way I see majority of people would wish to upgrade their A500 with faster processor, if Dread offered various resolutions, 1x1 px, better textures, and so on...

Maybe Dread 2.

Now you're getting it. You get them hooked on an exciting game with acceptable performance, then they want more - more complex scenery, higher resolution, higher frame rates. This is what drove pc gamers to upgrade their machines - and still does today.

I bet that many Dread players will be looking at what they can do to make the game even better with more powerful hardware, especially because it already runs quite well so the improvement from eg. a 14MHZ 68000 could be worth it - unlike most other Amiga 3D games which would still be agonizingly slow. I myself am thinking of building such an accelerator since I have a 16MHz 68HC000 that needs to be used, and this is one title that makes it worth doing.

[rothers]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I repeat.. it's not only "possible", but Dread on A500 7Mhz is already very smooth experience... smoother then Gloom on A1200.

Did you saw how Dread moves on 7Mhz?

I mean we would love to try it

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by TEG

Frankly, when you think about it, C= could have made their own when the A500 took its momentum and push the card, promoting applications like Imagine or some fancy games requiring it, in short advertising it and make bucks.

They really did miss the market for add-ons and upgrades. The A590 maxed out at 2mb fast ram, and no option for a faster cpu. It was left to the likes of GVP to provide the after market upgrades, which surely would have been a money spinner for C=.

I recall Frontier being like a slideshow on my A500, but I knew no better.

Really looking forward to seeing how Dread will run. I'll have to downgrade my Amigas to get the full experience

[KK/Altair]

The Supra Turbo 28 is a super interesting design as it uses a 16kb cache instead of real fast ram. I think it works best for loops that fit in this cache. However, it is my understanding that Dread uses script generated unrolled loops and self modifying code. Would that be accelerated by a design like the Supra or other cache reliant accelerators like the AdSpeed?
Maybe KK could comment?

It depends on what cache rules are used and what finally lands there. But 16kB is definitely not enough to cache the main drawing code, unrolled drawing, render buffers and source graphics.

Just imagine if Dread would have been released back in the day! It would have been a real incentive to upgrade A500's.

Sadly, not.
Dread runs well enough on an A500 not to provide any real incentive.

I wonder how they've implemented invalidating/flushing of such a cache, since the OS (or any application software) can't be aware it's there.

Wild guess:
- write-through - writes are not accelerated, just cached when they hit an active line,
- bus sniffing - any writes spotted on the bus can update or invalidate the cache

Citadel is good example of "possible" to play on A500, but even back then, framerates where waay to low.

Not really, as long as you are fine with one inch display.
(been there, done that, still have the boxed version)

C= could have made their own when the A500 took its momentum

As far as planning and marketing goes, it's not unusual for C= to make poor choices.

I myself am thinking of building such an accelerator since I have a 16MHz 68HC000 that needs to be used, and this is one title that makes it worth doing.

But how do you plan to hook it up to the bus?

I mean we would love to try it

I'm trying to hit the deadline of releasing a demo during August, so wish me good luck.

It was left to the likes of GVP to provide the after market upgrades, which surely would have been a money spinner for C=.

By "spinner" you mean earning or wasting money?
For each upgrade, you have to design it, test and provide installation and servicing services.
From C= perspective, such engineering bandwidth would be probably better spent just making new platform.
Which they did, considering number of Amiga variants and their release schedule until C= filled for bankruptcy.

I'll have to downgrade my Amigas to get the full experience

On the contrary - looking how smooth Dread works on A1200 makes me regret I don't own one.

[rothers]

We're all wishing you good luck!

On the subject of faster machines, is there any option(s) you could add to tax the engine more on higher end setups? Or is the engine very much hard coded to work in only one way?

[KK/Altair]

Originally Posted by rothers

We're all wishing you good luck!

On the subject of faster machines, is there any option(s) you could add to tax the engine more on higher end setups? Or is the engine very much hard coded to work in only one way?

Thanks!


Engine is currently hardcoded for 320x100 at 4bpp.
But as it is all in code, there's always possibility to add stuff.
Right now upgrading from A500 to a stock A1200 boosts from 10-14 FPS to a smooth 22 FPS, which provides super smooth gameplay.

But I'd be curious to listen to what upgrades would be most welcome beyond this point.

[Mathesar]

To me, I think the engine looks absolutely cool as it is.
The screenshots with the new artwork look absolutely amazing and I can't wait to see it all moving. I think the award for upgrading the machine to have a smooth 22 fps is already quite satisfactory.

But thinking about it... An a1200 has more (chip)ram! So maybe things like more sound effects and/or ambient music are easier to realize?

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

But thinking about it... An a1200 has more (chip)ram! So maybe things like more sound effects and/or ambient music are easier to realize?

Well, if KK is fine having extra content (and detecting and implementing it), the art team can see what it can do about that. Extra sfx should be easy to add. We need to see about music cause KK wants to go exotic with this (with wavetable synthesis) so the footprint of each track might not be that large in the end (hense having extra ram won't make much difference).

[nikosidis]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

To me, I think the engine looks absolutely cool as it is.
The screenshots with the new artwork look absolutely amazing and I can't wait to see it all moving. I think the award for upgrading the machine to have a smooth 22 fps is already quite satisfactory.

But thinking about it... An a1200 has more (chip)ram! So maybe things like more sound effects and/or ambient music are easier to realize?

A600 can also have 2MB chip and from A500 rev. 6 it is also possible with 2MB chip.

I did a simple mod to my rev. 6 to use the 0,5MB slow ram as chip so I now have 1MB chip.

I seen the video about the fantastic use of stereo sfx, but as option I believe it was talked about mono sfx and music?