NeoGeo Metal Slug conversion to Amiga 500 - madman task ;-)

[Cris1997XX]

Right, so...Sonic Mega Drive to Amiga 1200??

[Rob68K]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Right, so...Sonic Mega Drive to Amiga 1200??

Quite possible in 2 frames but you'd lose a fair bit because of that.
Sonic is undeniably more 'feel' than game.
Plus you're up against the perennial lack of sound channels.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by Rob68K

Quite possible in 2 frames but you'd lose a fair bit because of that.
Sonic is undeniably more 'feel' than game.
Plus you're up against the perennial lack of sound channels.

I think Kid Chaos and Mr Nutz and parts of Dr. Cube's Magic Lands and Blaze show that Sonic could be done on the A500 at 50fps if it was allowed and a team was motivated.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by lionagony

I think Kid Chaos and Mr Nutz and parts of Dr. Cube's Magic Lands and Blaze show that Sonic could be done on the A500 at 50fps if it was allowed and a team was motivated.

Blaze saturated the chip bus so much that real fast RAM would be required (not belly-slot ranger memory).

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Blaze saturated the chip bus so much that real fast RAM would be required (not belly-slot ranger memory).

Well I don't think we really need to go beyond Kid Chaos to make the case for the A500. Kid Chaos to me surpassed Sonic technically, it had almost 100 colors so more than Sonic https://www.amigapd.com/interview-andrew-morris.html and I think the backgrounds were a lot nicer looking.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by lionagony

Well I don't think we really need to go beyond Kid Chaos to make the case for the A500. Kid Chaos to me surpassed Sonic technically, it had almost 100 colors so more than Sonic https://www.amigapd.com/interview-andrew-morris.html and I think the backgrounds were a lot nicer looking.

Maybe so. But is it such an absolute sin to want the maximum performance that is only unleashed when adding real fast RAM?

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Maybe so. But is it such an absolute sin to want the maximum performance that is only unleashed when adding real fast RAM?

Definitely not. The two 2D action games that require Fast RAM that I can think of, Ultra Violent Worlds and Turrican 2 AGA both looked great, especially regarding color depth. I still think Ultra Violent Worlds has the best use of color I've seen on the Amiga and I imagine the Fast RAM had a big part in enabling that. Would love to see it used more.

[Rob68K]

Originally Posted by lionagony

Well I don't think we really need to go beyond Kid Chaos to make the case for the A500. Kid Chaos to me surpassed Sonic technically, it had almost 100 colors so more than Sonic https://www.amigapd.com/interview-andrew-morris.html and I think the backgrounds were a lot nicer looking.

OK, put it this way:
I'm not saying that it couldn't be done; just that *I* couldn't do it.
And I say that having programmed both systems quite a bit.
That's not to say you couldn't do *a version*, just like there was *a version* for the Master System.
Just take any level that uses any reasonable amount of tile animation and stick on a load of sprites like when Sonic loses his rungs and the Amiga would utterly crap itself. There's no 'clever way' to get around emulating a character-based screen where all you need to do to animate huge areas of it is to update a few bytes of VRAM per frame. In order to do this, the Amiga would require massive amounts of heavy lifting from the blitter.
The games mentioned above are all impressive examples of what can be done with the Amiga hardware but you can immediately see where compromises are being made in all of them to keep things running in a frame.
You always get this with the Amiga when you're trying to do a 16-bit console style game because it simply doesn't have the balls to pull it off.
Sure, you can give the illusion that you're doing it but 9/10, if you're fixated primarily on running a game at 50hz, you're going to be shortchanging the player somewhere in there.
And it's not just Shadow of the Beast, although that's probably the best example of it.
You can generally offer the player loads more at 25hz than you can at 50. Conceding that your game is going to run in 2 frames from the outset rather than 1 gives you so many more options and it means that you can concentrate on making the game better during development than continually optimising the to make sure it doesn't 'slow down'.

[Rob68K]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Maybe so. But is it such an absolute sin to want the maximum performance that is only unleashed when adding real fast RAM?

It's not a sin but you have to weigh up what it is you're trying to achieve.

Commodore really dropped the ball not adding even just 64k of fast ram to ALL Amigas from day one as this would have really opened up the system.

But they didn't. So there's a school of thought, and one to which I subscribe, that there's no point in even considering having fast ram as a requirement of your specification because while it's part of the 'expanded universe', it's not 'canon'.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Maybe so. But is it such an absolute sin to want the maximum performance that is only unleashed when adding real fast RAM?

I am very sure nobody here is preventing you from coding a game that's using fast RAM.

[jotd]

I tried to see if graphics can be ripped in MAME by using F4 and I was greeted by a black screen

To some who think "it's a 68000 12Mhz so a 68020 14Mhz can do it", but the 68000 only computes object positions and select tiles & x/y. The graphic tile engine converts 4 or 8 bytes of coordinates/tile/sprite info into 16x16 or 32x32 or whatever colorful graphics instantaneously. That's why console/arcade to computer conversions are so frustrating.

[Rob68K]

Originally Posted by jotd

I tried to see if graphics can be ripped in MAME by using F4 and I was greeted by a black screen

Has this not already been done?

[jotd]

maybe but where? And sprite sheets are usually no good as they tend to lose tile/sprites indexes.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by jotd

maybe but where?

Here: https://www.spriters-resource.com/neo_geo_ngcd/ms/ ?

[jotd]

Superb rips but exactly the type of sheets that are no use with the original code.

[Rob68K]

Originally Posted by jotd

Superb rips but exactly the type of sheets that are no use with the original code.

Yeah. Basically you need to decompile the animation system to get a proper handle on how stuff works. It's effort. But rewarding.

[jotd]

no you don't have to do this, not in the detail at least. It already works.

[Rob68K]

Originally Posted by jotd

no you don't have to do this, not in the detail at least. It already works.

I don't understand. I was just saying that in order to set the frame sequences, it's at the very least useful to see how those sequences are encoded.

I'm only speaking from the experience of my current project.

You've certainly done more of this sort of thing than I have.

[jotd]

That's exactly why I'm not re-coding games anymore (in which case you have to know which frame goes where and probably decompile the original code)

I meant that when using the original code, you don't have to know exactly which frame is for what, unless there's a bug, in which case you investigate to fix the logic error. But there since the code is 68000, sticking to the original code & data would be enough to display proper sprites/tiles, without knowing the animation sequences.

[x-vision]

Originally Posted by roondar

Not to mention it actually uses an actual advantage the ST(e) has over the Amiga (yeah, I know - the shock for some people, right ): the ability to access much more GFX RAM with the ST Blitter.

The requirements have gone down somewhat, but I believe you still need 4MB of ST-RAM for the latest version of this port, which would translate into needing 4MB of Chip RAM.

It's a great example of using a system well for sure. The 'interlacing' the whole game to get more colours trick is done very well too.

AFAIK Nope. That "advantage" does not exist, as currently all graphic memory data is calculated in Fast ram, and chip ram is only used to render, as it is the fatest and smartest thing to do.

Maybe we need 4MB of Fast ram. Or 6. thats' ok. But come on: are we really saying, after all these years of experiences, that an ST can outperform an A500?? or even that an ST can run some game that an Amiga don't?