Next game to port?

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Actually it could get close, if you target one meg machine, dynamic copperlists like SWIV, use 32 colors or even EHB and decide to go 17FPS rather than 50; do not underestimate the number of stuff a 500 can move, see Powder
And,BTW, in 1988 people was not bothered by 17 FPS games, see Xenon 2

I don't see at all the A500 pulling off such a demanding game.

AGA machines expanded for the win !

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I don't see at all the A500 pulling off such a demanding game.

AGA machines expanded for the win !

Yes, but then will not be pushing, pushing is doing the seemingly impossible!

[turrican3]

finally why not doing a new game inspired of the best games of this era.
a little bit like they did with blazing chrome ??
Or perhaps looking too what kind of games the amiga is lacking the more.

[saimon69]

Or perhaps looking too what kind of games the amiga is lacking the more.

Those are in my opinion mostly JRPGs metroidvanias and cadash-style hybrids, pity those also to be well done require a good amount of planning and hands on...

[sandruzzo]

What about game like Commandos?

[ Show youtube player ]

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by turrican3

finally why not doing a new game inspired of the best games of this era.
a little bit like they did with blazing chrome ??
Or perhaps looking too what kind of games the amiga is lacking the more.

See here:

... Licenced GFX for my next project.
... New Game Idea: Movies- John Wick / The Raid & Games- Shinobi / Rolling Thunder

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by turrican3

Or perhaps looking too what kind of games the amiga is lacking the more.

I think beat em ups (like Final Fight, Punisher, Cadillac.. etc), are most lacking on Amiga.
Yes, we have the pretty good port of Golden Axe, but it's pioneer in the genre, and it lacks feel, and some of the moves of the later games (like grab move).
Imho, the most pointless ports would be platformers, because we have a bunch of the on the Amiga already (and great ones).

Originally Posted by DamienD

... New Game Idea: Movies- John Wick / The Raid & Games- Shinobi / Rolling Thunder

This is great!
However, I think that this thread could be a good recourse of ideas for some other coders, so I think it would be cool to people continue giving ideas, no matter mcgeezer started working on the game.

[Nishicorn]

Hm, Final Fight and Dragon Ninja (or 'Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja') already exist for the Amiga, and so does Shinobi.

So they wouldn't be technically 'conversions', but more like 'improvements' or 'properly done versions of already existing conversions'.

The thing about this sort of stuff is.. well..

.. MAME exists.

When you have a good setup for controllers and proper resolution for a nice CRT display device, MAME gives you pretty close to perfect arcade experience (except for the emulated sound, and such).

This is why I am resisting my urge to purchase PC Engine, Neo-Geo and Sega Genesis, because they're all so well emulated if you have the proper display and proper controllers. The only thing a real machine could bring is 'feel' and '100% exactness' to what the game is supposed to sound/look like; for example, the scrolling might be ever-so-slightly jerky or jumpy on MAME or MESS.

However, Amiga already has so many great games that are a joy to play, so you get the 'feel' that way, and then there's MAME side for the missing games, so it seems like an awful lot of work to achieve something you can already have with MAME.

Having the same game on the Amiga side that I can already play pretty authentically with MAME and my setup (with more buttons on my arcade controller, too, unless teh Amiga version can utilize the keyboard), doesn't seem like a very exciting prospect, or even something truly 'new' to me.

Is it really worth it to convert these things to Amiga, just to see if it can be done? I have already completed Shinobi on MAME, I have already completed Final Fight and The Punisher (even better than Final Fight) on MAME..

I don't think Golden Axe 'lacks feel' (whatever that means), by the way. It's instantly addictive, even when I showed it to my mom, she said 'I could play this game forever'.

If it can seduce someone that never played games in their life except in their retirement a little bit, we can safely conclude that it indeed has 'feel'.

I can sort of understand this 'porting craze' to an extent, it's fun to see a game on your own computer that you normally wouldn't be able to. Oids is perfectly reasonable port, since it's a good game and only playable on ST emulator, if you don't have the real Atari.

But MAME is pretty universal, and there is no 'real machine', as each arcade cabinet is a separate individual thing, so it's unfeasible to have all these games in 'real' form anyway.

Back in the day, when arcade was outside of your home, instead of on your hard drive, ports made sense, and it was exciting to see the differences, and how a certain game might utilize Amiga's potential, and show it off, etc.

I was always envious to DOS PC players, when they had those gorgeous VGA games Amiga never saw (or Amiga versions were crappy).

But now it's so easy and cheap to get all kinds of old computers and systems, and MAME stuff, the idea of 'porting' a game starts to seem a bit useless or obsolete.

I mean, if you can play Shinobi perfectly fine on your MAME setup, why do you need it also on the Amiga? (I can't lie, though, I would be kind of excited about playing this masterpiece on the Amiga)

I can understand if there's a game that hasn't reached its full potential, and the port would unleash that potential. If the port improves the game in some way. To basically 'clone' a game to play it on the Amiga seems a bit unnecessary when you can play the original.

Desert Strike is a good example of a port done perfectly; it improved everything it could, and the end result got even a Sega Megadrive fanboy to admit to me - the Amiga version IS better.

The other problem is always going to be sound and music. Arcade games can utilize high-quality 16-bit samples with lots of channels for sound effects. They can also have YM2151 to play a real, living, 'realtime-synthesized' aural world to mesmerize the player.

Amiga has to rely on four channels of 8-bit 22kHz samples. Unless some kind of synth emulation or engine is programmed, this can be a real problem, especially with long, sweeping sounds and 8 or 9 channels playing simultaneously.

I am a bit pessimistic about how Shinobi's incredibly atmospheric music would sound on the Amiga. The official Amiga Midnight Resistance was a great conversion, but they really botched the music (just to give an example of what might happen).

By the way, I found an obscure, but playable and fun Final Fight-type game on Super Famicom, and I couldn't leave without completing the game, first.

Some of the graphics and music are 'so-so', but the playability is all right.

I think it was called 'Ghost Chaser' or something. I recommend Final Fight-fans to try it out. It's not as good as Final Fight, but I think it was pretty playable.

EDIT: Here are some photos from my japanese Super Famicom just so the aspect ratio looks normal.

The system uses such quirky resolution that screenshots will look 'flattened' from the sides.

Small versions:


Link to the gallery of the big versions:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/2l85lwbhk/

[sandruzzo]

@Nishicorn

I think you nail the point. Maybe we "only" would like to see what Amiga is camable of, speaking about Graphics and Sounds. But even this is good, since we feel that Amiga deserved better port...

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Nishicorn

I was always envious to DOS PC players, when they had those gorgeous VGA games Amiga never saw (or Amiga versions were crappy).

Huh? I'm pretty sure it was the other way around (at least until 1992 or so).

Overall, the thing about the ports is that of course it is much easier (but not "easy :) to port or make a conversion of a game than write a new one from scratch. I'm pretty sure it's a big factor. Of course I'd much rather see original new games than yet another port, which I can easily play elsewhere, but I'm not the one doing the hard work and davoting spare time so it's not really up to me to judge.

[mcgeezer]

It’s sometimes not always about what the gamer wants, but what the programmer wants to achieve on the platform they love.

Doing a near perfect port of an arcade game is not at all easy and don’t under-estimate the amount of effort that goes into it. The arcade software engineers had it very easy because the hardware engineers were awesome. But the most respect i hold is for the game designers, some of little things you learn by porting a game will transfer into other games that benefit later.

The two games i have ported have been enhanced for the amiga, and you wont get that on MAME.

[VincentGR]

I agree with mc.
Of course it's up to the coder to do whatever he wants and it's polite to ask the community for suggestions.
As for the arcade ports, yes. We have MAME but it is a challenge an a filling gap having a game that we needed so bad back then.

[sandruzzo]

@Mc

Mad man task conversion is when real Man come true!

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Is another forbidden dream,together with the incredible (for 1988) Winning Run;
[ Show youtube player ]

should come decent with some cuts, thankfully we had some good poly and hybrid racers such as Vroom, No Second Prize and Formula One Racing, even though that was more simulation...

Winning Run was quite something back then when it came out. Late 88 /early 89. However if you look at the hardware it was running on you could guess that a "port" wouldn't be so easy. Although the Namco Sys21 used 68k as its main CPU, all the polygon crunching power came from 4 (four) DSP chips (Texas instruments). I dont see how that code would be easily ported to run nicely on a 68000 CPU only.
On the 68080 you could probably use AMMX to "replace" the DSP code, but otherwise its probably more of a rewrite than a port to get it running on a classic Amiga.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

However if you look at the hardware it was running on you could guess that a "port" wouldn't be so easy. Although the Namco Sys21 used 68k as its main CPU, all the polygon crunching power came from 4 (four) DSP chips (Texas instruments). I dont see how that code would be easily ported to run nicely on a 68000 CPU only.
On the 68080 you could probably use AMMX to "replace" the DSP code, but otherwise its probably more of a rewrite than a port to get it running on a classic Amiga.

I never thought a direct port was possible; however a reimplementation (a better name for a rewrite in this case) can be definitely done using most of Indy 500 and F1 tricks; actually, since Winning Run is an arcade, the physics and car implementation does not need to be that accurate

[VladR]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Is another forbidden dream,together with the incredible (for 1988) Winning Run;
[ Show youtube player ]

Well, this is like comparing PS3 vs GameBoy.


Winning Run is running on the legendary System 21:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namco_System_21


~100 MHz of DSP (4x 24.6 MHz)
~25 MHz 68000 (2x 12.3 MHz)


A 68040 wouldn't stand a chance here. I would argue that even 68060 wouldn't give you a good playable framerate with identical 3D scene complexity. Just look at the framedrops when curve changes into a straight line with full draw distance. The framerate gets butchered (as should be expected).

Originally Posted by saimon69

should come decent with some cuts, thankfully we had some good poly and hybrid racers such as Vroom, No Second Prize and Formula One Racing, even though that was more simulation...

Looks like you only see that the game is flatshaded, but you don't see:
- incredible draw distance
- much higher polygon count
- fog shading
- higher resolution
- zero pop-in


Unfortunately, the moment you "cut it down" to a manageable level on A500 it will look exactly like the Amiga games you mentioned and nothing like Winning Run at all.




Again, 7 MHz 68000 vs (25 MHz 68000) + (100 MHz DSP).


The closest you can get to a playable Winning Run on Amiga is on Vampire (and yes, I know how most of you feel about Vampire being an "Amiga", no need to mention that WorldView here).




A seriously butchered 3D scene of Winning Run could run in playable framerate on 68060.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

On the 68080 you could probably use AMMX to "replace" the DSP code, but otherwise its probably more of a rewrite than a port to get it running on a classic Amiga.

Still, it's a formidable scene complexity. I just watched the YT vid and it appears to be higher than Virtua Racing. The draw distance in straights is just bats*it crazy.


I didn't even spot any LOD pop, but that could sometimes be masked as a YT compression artifact. Would have to see it in person.



This would be a fair game even for 080 at this resolution. For sure there would be severe framedrops as the differences between curves and straights are quite drastic.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by VladR

Still, it's a formidable scene complexity. I just watched the YT vid and it appears to be higher than Virtua Racing. The draw distance in straights is just bats*it crazy.


I didn't even spot any LOD pop, but that could sometimes be masked as a YT compression artifact. Would have to see it in person.



This would be a fair game even for 080 at this resolution. For sure there would be severe framedrops as the differences between curves and straights are quite drastic.

As you know, I've been dissecting Virtua Racing :-)
http://www.exretro.com/galleries/seg...ing/index.html

If you look at the game closely you'll notice that Virtua Racing actually has couple times more geometry visible and that makes sense since the Model1 hardware is 3x times as capable as System 21 (~180,000 vs 60,000 polys/s)

Nevertheless, WinningRun (there's a Winning Run 91 too) does have some interesting complexity not seen in any Amiga polygon game but if you want some sort of reference, there's youtube clips of ppl playing Geoff Crammonds F1 on 060.
For example here: (quality isnt the best but I guess its filmed of an actual screen as opposed to being capturen in Windows on WinUAE)
[ Show youtube player ]

Anyway, to get back to the topic. WinningRun is a tough cookie to "port". It would be more like a complete rewrite and getting it to run on Vanilla Amigas would require some serious downgrading... Would be like the Super monaco GP port on the SEGA Master System :-) (Whyyyy did they bother, seriously)

[roondar]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

It’s sometimes not always about what the gamer wants, but what the programmer wants to achieve on the platform they love.

Doing a near perfect port of an arcade game is not at all easy and don’t under-estimate the amount of effort that goes into it.
...
The two games i have ported have been enhanced for the amiga, and you wont get that on MAME.

Originally Posted by VincentGR

I agree with mc.
Of course it's up to the coder to do whatever he wants and it's polite to ask the community for suggestions.
As for the arcade ports, yes. We have MAME but it is a challenge an a filling gap having a game that we needed so bad back then.

I've always found part of the Amiga community's reaction to ports a bit odd.

I'm also a fairly active C64 user (but more of a forum lurker/collector) and I almost never see comments about ports being "useless" or "unnecessary" because of versions for other/better platforms/MAME existing. On the contrary, people are usually very positive about such ports and enjoy seeing the C64 getting pushed to do games above it's specs.

Also lurked about a bit on Atari and Sega forums, where the same thing goes: new games/ports are usually accepted and celebrated.

It's a strange thing to me to see these recurring posts about why people shouldn't bother with Amiga ports. To me, "Arcade Perfect" is a lofty goal, but not a requirement to still enjoy or even be amazed by some ports. All* new Amiga games are great to my eyes and I love to see just how close to better hardware we can get

*) For some values of "all", there's always bad games as well

[VladR]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

As you know, I've been dissecting Virtua Racing :-)
http://www.exretro.com/galleries/seg...ing/index.html

If you look at the game closely you'll notice that Virtua Racing actually has couple times more geometry visible and that makes sense since the Model1 hardware is 3x times as capable as System 21 (~180,000 vs 60,000 polys/s)

Interesting. I only had a quick look on YT, but got an impression of more complex scene. Did you perhaps run it in MAME or something ? Would be great to see how they achieved the effect. Perhaps it's just the fog in itself that helps with the effect ?

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Nevertheless, WinningRun (there's a Winning Run 91 too) does have some interesting complexity not seen in any Amiga polygon game but if you want some sort of reference, there's youtube clips of ppl playing Geoff Crammonds F1 on 060.
For example here: (quality isnt the best but I guess its filmed of an actual screen as opposed to being capturen in Windows on WinUAE)
[ Show youtube player ]

Yeah, I definitely prefer seeing how it runs for real, captured like this, instead of video out capture where you have no idea what it's actually being captured.
Is it really just 16fps as he says ? It sure seems pretty smooth for 16 fps - though most of the time the speed is low in Monaco curves, so it might be right.

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Anyway, to get back to the topic. WinningRun is a tough cookie to "port". It would be more like a complete rewrite and getting it to run on Vanilla Amigas would require some serious downgrading... Would be like the Super monaco GP port on the SEGA Master System :-) (Whyyyy did they bother, seriously)

We should be able to test this racing scene complexity soon. Spent last week with rewriting the clipping, and finally fixed all glitches today...