new amiga 500 doom like !

[IanS]

Originally Posted by ESC

What is this grammar-Nazi shit, you know everyone hates people that are like this right? Who gives a crap, we know what people mean when they write it doesn't have to be perfect, no one cares but you.

As someone with a keen interest in history, I can state categorically that the Nazis weren't known for their enforcement of basic grammar, spelling and punctuation skills. The aims and actions of the Nazi party are well documented. Implying that what they did is in any way comparable to someone who simply bemoans the lack of basic language skills is, quite frankly, stupid and insulting. Literacy and numeracy are important life skills, genocide and enslavement are simply abhorrent.

Yes, I actually give a crap. I'm a native English speaker, and I hate it when people are too lazy to learn basic skills. Both primary and secondary educations are compulsory in the UK, with minimum standards that must be adhered to. It's also free, unless you choose to use a private school or tutor. So no, not everyone hates people that are like this. Some people are happy to better themselves, even if it's just in small ways, and having mistakes pointed out to you is beneficial. The rules of grammar exist precisely because of the need to understand each other. Spelling a word incorrectly, or just putting a comma in the wrong place, can change the whole meaning of a sentence. Some areas of life very much depend on the correct use of language.

Would you want to rely on someone claiming to be a lawyer, an engineer, a doctor, a teacher or a scientist, when they cannot be bothered to learn the basics of their native language?

There's really no excuse for not checking how to spell a word if you aren't sure. When I was at school, most of us had a dictionary and a thesaurus on a bookshelf, or even in your school bag. We used them frequently. Some of us enjoyed learning new words. Nowadays we even have instant access on your phone or PC. Make good use of the technology, and perhaps take pride in how you communicate with others.

[rothers]

Originally Posted by IanS

As someone with a keen interest in history, I can state categorically that the Nazis weren't known for their enforcement of basic grammar, spelling and punctuation skills. The aims and actions of the Nazi party are well documented. Implying that what they did is in any way comparable to someone who simply bemoans the lack of basic language skills is, quite frankly, stupid and insulting. Literacy and numeracy are important life skills, genocide and enslavement are simply abhorrent.

Yes, I actually give a crap. I'm a native English speaker, and I hate it when people are too lazy to learn basic skills. Both primary and secondary educations are compulsory in the UK, with minimum standards that must be adhered to. It's also free, unless you choose to use a private school or tutor. So no, not everyone hates people that are like this. Some people are happy to better themselves, even if it's just in small ways, and having mistakes pointed out to you is beneficial. The rules of grammar exist precisely because of the need to understand each other. Spelling a word incorrectly, or just putting a comma in the wrong place, can change the whole meaning of a sentence. Some areas of life very much depend on the correct use of language.

Would you want to rely on someone claiming to be a lawyer, an engineer, a doctor, a teacher or a scientist, when they cannot be bothered to learn the basics of their native language?

There's really no excuse for not checking how to spell a word if you aren't sure. When I was at school, most of us had a dictionary and a thesaurus on a bookshelf, or even in your school bag. We used them frequently. Some of us enjoyed learning new words. Nowadays we even have instant access on your phone or PC. Make good use of the technology, and perhaps take pride in how you communicate with others.

Yeah pal, I too like shooting Nazis in doom & wolf clones.


Anyhow, I wonder if the august beta is going to happen?

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by rothers

Anyhow, I wonder if the august beta is going to happen?

August beta you say? give it two more weeks

[malko]

Originally Posted by IanS

[...] When I was at school, most of us had a dictionary and a thesaurus on a bookshelf, or even in your school bag. We used them frequently. Some of us enjoyed learning new words. Nowadays we even have instant access on your phone or PC. Make good use of the technology, and perhaps take pride in how you communicate with others.

If I look at how teachers teach kids grammar and orthographic (at least here in CH) I think the time schoolboys and schoolgirls had dictionary in their schoolbag is a begone era .
You can't imagine how destructive are the new teaching methods they are using. Most teachers pretend that orthography can wait, as the most important is that kids learn how to express themselves. It turns me mad .
So, we do the job at home, after school...

@Tsak & KK : Thanks for the news and your amazing work on dread

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

No it's not that you post here too often, it's just I don't believe you It's like you are kidding yourself or something. You always say you prefer the shitter option over the vastly improved option. Like that time you said you think the graphics in Citadel were better than Doom So now you think plane polygons is better than texture mapped. Ok each to their own but really??? This is more like saying you prefer vintage cars over modern cars. And that's ok, but lets be honest, polygons are dated and if they could have done better all those years ago then they would have.

Dude.. lol..
I am not lying myself.
I don't understand how some of you Doom fans refuses to believe, that there were people that was NOT impressed with Doom at all, back in the day.
Yes - flat shaded polygons often looked waaaaaay better then low res ugly textured polygons.





Is it so hard to believe that I prefer visual style of the second screenshot, over the mass of ugliness from the first screenshot?

Also, what I liked about Cytadel is the fact that they sort of tried "hand drawn" textures, which gave it cartoony look, and in total, it had more coherent look, in comparison with Doom textures that had all kinds of different (unpleasant) colors, and different brightness values.

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

I think you are one of these people that has a real bee in their bonnet about Doom and the Amiga and all that stuff and you like the idea of Dread breaking down those boundaries and proving the past history wrong and going one step further by doing it on a lowest spec machine (A500). I too like this, in fact love this. I'm always for the underdog and I'm honest about it.

On some of the above things I can agreed.
But don't ever think that I would love less Amiga, if Dread was never developed. It's magnificent technical achievement, and I can't wait to get my hands on it's mod tools.. and that says also something... I primarily want to create... not to play.. although, I will play it, once it's done, out of respect to great graphics artist involved in this project, and to observe in what smart ways they did graphics.
Running around gathering keys, is not really what I am interested in (and will do it, only to "unlock" further levels, so I can observe new graphics), no matter how this shocking might sound to you.

[rothers]

I guess this thread ain't for you then. Bye?

[ESC]

Originally Posted by Tsak

August beta you say? give it two more weeks

No stress, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it but it's understandable if the deadline is not met, you guys take all the time you need

[Aladin]

Dread for Atari ST/STE (2h04m51s)

[ Show youtube player ]

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Photon

Any game designer worth their salt will tell you that Doom is a barren game with minimal gameplay.

Wow, this really is quite something...nearly made me choke on my tea A true transmission from a parallel universe.



I mean, okay, stating that "game X is dumb" as a personal opinion is fine, whatever - we're entitled to have them. But claiming that "any game designer worth their" says so, when talking about one of the gaming milestones celebrated by scores of industry professionals, not only silly fanbois like myself, is just incredibly lame.



I don't particularly like platformers and so I could apply this kind of 'logic" to, say, Super Mario - you just basically run right, jump, die, jump on some baddies or hit some blocks, die. OMG, how dumb and boring. But I won't, because I can recognize that despite being "not for me", it's also a design masterclass. Just like Doom


I suppose this type of rationalizing is at least partially due to some sour grapes residue from the time when games like UU, Wolf and Doom basically spelt the end of Amiga. But that was nearly 3 decades ago, please get over it already.

[Aladin]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Wolf and Doom basically spelt the end of Amiga.

You have to stop saying that fps put an end to the amiga, it has nothing to do with it. Commodore didn't need anyone to go bankrupt. They were big enough to do it on their own.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Yes - flat shaded polygons often looked waaaaaay better then low res ugly textured polygons.

Basically I 100% agree here. Using textures doesn't guarantee the art is good and that's what really matters eventually. Imho Frontier's clean & crisp gfx have aged much better than many of the early texture mapping attempts in several games. For me Doom's textures were often a hit & miss in that regard. There are some stuff that are good (especially the spritework) but with textures this wasn't often the case. The art style is far from coherent and ranges from hand-drawn pixel art stuff to resized high-res digital art, to super low-res photos with garish colors. It's a mishmash of styles.

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Also, what I liked about Cytadel is the fact that they sort of tried "hand drawn" textures, which gave it cartoony look, and in total, it had more coherent look, in comparison with Doom textures that had all kinds of different (unpleasant) colors, and different brightness values.

Right, though -honestly- Cytadel's pixelwork is way too amateurish for my tastes (with all due respect to the creators of this game). In that sense between the two I'd choose Doom in a heartbeat (despite it's shortcomings), there's really absolutely no comparison. If you'd like an Amiga fps example to compare, with really good and solid pixel art I'd go no further than Gloom personally.

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Running around gathering keys, is not really what I am interested in, no matter how this shocking might sound to you.

Everyone to his tastes I guess
However I should point out that games like Doom and Dread are NOT about running around, collecting keys. It's about running around and shooting stuff

----------------

@Everyone claiming Doom's gameplay is 'simple': I just can't disagree more. If that was really the case then it would be pretty trivial to replicate the experience with all the Amiga Doom-clones we've got. Which is far from truth unfortunately... People often focus too much on the technical aspect and completely fail to notice the gameplay intricacies that make such games tick.

Take Fears f.e. despite having a good engine with plenty features, good gfx and great atmoshpere, it failed quite a lot (imho) to compare from a gameplay perspective. Why? Let's break this down a bit:

1) Player moves like a tank. It takes like 10 seconds to turn around and the speed in which you also strafe is painfully slow (which often makes dodging projectiles nigh impossible). In comparison, mobility in Doom (and other PC titles of the era) is the absolute king. And this REALLY elevates the gameplay. Unfortunately this one crucial aspect is what 99% of Amiga fps games failed to get right.

2) Enemies in Fears also move like tanks themselves. They also tend to just hover towards the player in a straight line which completely kills the shooting aspect. No dodging, no diagonal movement, no complex movement patterns. All encounters boil down to the same loop: see enemy, stay put and keep fire pressed until he's gone. Where's the skill required or fun in that?

3) To make matters worse, there's really no variety with enemies either. Every single one is just a reskinned version of the exact same deal with only differences being their hit points and the damage of their projectile (and yes, literally every one just shoots a fireball). Which makes the gameplay even more uninspired. Compare this to Doom where every single encounter becomes a unique challenge on it's own, based on the type of enemy faced, their numbers, their placement on the map and their combination. Facing pinkies? Fall back and shoot. Facing hitscanners? Seek cover or move around quickly (or go for a fast kill). Facing imps? Strafe to avoid the slow, incoming fireballs. Practically every enemy forces the player to react and move in a different manner and engage with different strategies to get the job done. And when the game decides to pit you against different enemy combinations is where the real fun begins, as then you also need to start prioritising targets. See, this, THIS is what makes Doom tick. It becomes some sort of a dance, an intricate ballete of death and destruction. And thanks to a well made and expansive roster, the scenarios you can create from different combinations are practically endless.

4) Weapons are also a big missed opportunity in Fears. No variety, no meaningful stats and characteristics with each, no real reason to switch between them (other than ammo shortage). In contrast, with Doom there's a plethora of things that force the player to make informed decisions on what weapon to use, based on the the scenario and enemies faced. Shotgun is great for close up encounters but is lacking from a distance, machinegun is more precise and can mown enemies with a greater 'pain' chance, rendering them incapable of shooting back (or even moving), but eats up bullets fast. Launcher is quite powerful and can kill multiple enemies at once but it's quite slow and being a non hit-scan makes it less accurate. And the list goes on.

There are many, many more little gameplay details that also contribute to the big picture. From all the above you can see that the problem lies with the gameplay design itself rather than limitations of the engine or hardware. In a sense the creators of the game could easilly offer a somewhat comparable experience, if only they spent more time on the actual gameplay. Having said that, there are a couple extra issues that have to do with the engine itself indeed. For example Fears has a notoriously small field of view, you only see like a couple meters in front of you before everything disappears into obscurity. In most cases you can't even see the boundaries of the room you're into, unless you are in a room the size of a closet. And the narrow, rectangular point of view that favours height instead of width only makes matters worse. In retrospect I feel that all these come down to choices though, i.e. they could perhaps prioritise width instead of height although none can tell for sure.

Anyhow, hope the above analysis doesn't come off as me trying to bash the game. In all honestly I do respect the effort and I've enjoyed playing it (despite it's limitations). However I feel it's the exact same mentality of downplaying the importance of Doom's gameplay (and how well made and complex it actually was) vs the pure technical aspect, that has 'doomed' (pun intended) most attempts to replicate the experience on Amiga. Hopefully- Dread has a chance to also get these things right

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Aladin

You have to stop saying that fps put an end to the amiga, it has nothing to do with it. Commodore didn't need anyone to go bankrupt. They were big enough to do it on their own.

Yep, a competing platform being full of killer apps has absolutely nothing to do with anything (or perhaps "competing" is actually being generous at this stage). Sigh. Unfortuntely this narrative, in which it was just a few bad business desicions which sunk Commodre (and not the general inevitability of its fate) is another fantastical rationalization so popular around here.

Unless you're just being sarcastic, if so, then ignore my comment

I don't want to derail this thread so will refrain from further replies regarding this well-worn angle. Wouldn't normally bother to start with, it's just Photon's comment was so ridiculously far-out, and betraying fundamental ignorance of the very principles of videogame design he himself was invoking, that I couldn't resist replying.

[Aladin]

commodore was already in the red before FPS. The amiga was non-existent in the USA and Asia. The open source PC has finished the job.

[malko]

Originally Posted by Aladin

Dread for Atari ST/STE (2h04m51s)
[ Show youtube player ]

For a computer that had bad reputation for coloring the screen, Dread is quite nice. Well done on the ST as well KK

[ESC]

Originally Posted by Aladin

Dread for Atari ST/STE (2h04m51s)

[ Show youtube player ]

This is pretty cool, I didn't know an ST-Port was in the works, what kind of ST is required? Does this work on a 520?

[KK/Altair]

Mm, and yeah, when I'm already here, couldnt you "copperize" the sky a bit?

I could, but I would lose one color for the rest of the scene. Bad deal, imho.

Take Fears f.e. despite having a good engine with plenty features, good gfx and great atmoshpere, it failed quite a lot (imho) to compare from a gameplay perspective. Why? Let's break this down a bit:

Yes, all points noted. I'm particularly sensitive to finetuning the game mechanics and still wonder, why nobody took the time to tweak some details that would actually make the game fun.


But don't worry, Dread won't be like that at all.

For a computer that had bad reputation for coloring the screen, Dread is quite nice. Well done on the ST as well KK

Thanks! It's actually STe on the stream.
Dread runs on ST, too, but has washed out colors and no SFX.

This is pretty cool, I didn't know an ST-Port was in the works, what kind of ST is required? Does this work on a 520?

Should work on any ST machine with 2MB of RAM.

[ESC]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

Should work on any ST machine with 2MB of RAM.

That's awesome, I can imagine the ST-crowd was happy to see this in the works, was it hard porting this to the ST?

[KK/Altair]

Originally Posted by ESC

That's awesome, I can imagine the ST-crowd was happy to see this in the works, was it hard porting this to the ST?

Not really. Just the usual overcoming of generic platform quirks and a few new procedures for CPU drawing menus, status bar and weapons to the ST screen.
Playing SFX on STe was fun, because I had to come up with a way to play reasonably using only one channel - and a short queue plus minimal playing time for each sound did the trick.
Still, I was kind of disappointed with how C2P has to be done. The usual ST trickery wasn't even close to what I did with Blitter, and having extra LUT reduced logical pixel color combinations from 256 to 64, mostly destroying the new extra resolution trick.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

Still, I was kind of disappointed with how C2P has to be done. The usual ST trickery wasn't even close to what I did with Blitter, and having extra LUT reduced logical pixel color combinations from 256 to 64, mostly destroying the new extra resolution trick.

Did you used the STe blitter?

[masteries]

Originally Posted by KK/Altair

I could, but I would lose one color for the rest of the scene. Bad deal, imho.


Yes, all points noted. I'm particularly sensitive to finetuning the game mechanics and still wonder, why nobody took the time to tweak some details that would actually make the game fun.


But don't worry, Dread won't be like that at all.


Thanks! It's actually STe on the stream.
Dread runs on ST, too, but has washed out colors and no SFX.




Should work on any ST machine with 2MB of RAM.

Congratulations Altair!

Its awesome to see a Doom clone for these machines (Amiga and ST/E)

If you want to take the maximum capabilities of STE's blitter, take a look at EMX2 sprite format from DML at Atari Game Tools Engine.

Did you see the Metal Slug port running at 50 fps? This is only possible using extremely advanced sprite drawing routines.

As well a 2 Channel PCM mixer at 12 or less KHz will take 3% of CPU time. If STE its the target, you can take the advantage of 4 MB RAM (precalculate, or preshift textures into RAM) with no major problem. Its not hard or expensive update STE to 4 MB RAM. Also you can get rid of
YM2149 usage in favour of performance.

I can help with these two things,

Best,
Masteries