Does the AGA chipset has been fully exploited ?

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by DanScott

I think the most important question that has yet to be answered....

Does the title of this thread has been bugging you since it was first posted?

It does has been bugging me everytime I see it.

[JohnnyWalker]

The answer to the original question is clearly "no". Comparatively few games were written FOR the AGA chipset (which is sad to think about). And those that were only represented the beginning of utilising that chipset. (Like comparing Seven Cities of Gold to Populus II -- we were just seeing the beginning with (terrible) games like Capital Punishment.)

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Steril707

It does has been bugging me everytime I see it.

Me too, for the terrible grammar alone.

Originally Posted by JohnnyWalker

The answer to the original question is clearly "no". Comparatively few games were written FOR the AGA chipset (which is sad to think about). And those that were only represented the beginning of utilising that chipset. (Like comparing Seven Cities of Gold to Populus II -- we were just seeing the beginning with (terrible) games like Capital Punishment.)

I remember looking at ACE magazine back in the day and seeing those wonderful VGA 256-colour shots of PC adventure games, and I was baffled as to why they weren't ported over to Amiga. It would've been so easy.

The only ones I can think of that were were Simon the Sorcerer (which may not have been a PC original) and Monkey Island 2.

Or when I saw Eye of the Beholder on PC and thought it looked amazing, but again, AFAIK, there was no AGA version released on Amiga.

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by roondar

No, the problem is that the chipset has to disable sprites if the DMA fetch for bitplanes overlaps with them. This is made worse on AGA, because the higher fetch modes operate in increments of 64 pixels rather than 16. Horizontally scrolling a 320 pixel wide screen means adding one more fetch. In the case of 4x fetch, this will have to happen 64 pixels to the left of the start of the 320 pixel area.

That extra fetch happens to overlap either all, or all but one or two of the sprite channels, so you can't use them. It's essentially the same problem that causes sprite 7 (and sometimes 6) to be lost if you add scrolling to a 320 pixel wide screen on OCS Amiga's. However, since the Copper/CPU can't reload 32 or 64 pixel wide sprite data, you can't compensate the way that OCS machines do allow.

It's all a bit messy, really.

Can you compensate by just narrowing the active part of the screen to 256 pixels?

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

Can you compensate by just narrowing the active part of the screen to 256 pixels?

You could do that, and have bitplane fetch mode as 32-bit, and not (i believe) lose any of the sprites. Still not getting the full 64bit speed advantage though, but still better than nothing

[JohnnyWalker]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I remember looking at ACE magazine back in the day and seeing those wonderful VGA 256-colour shots of PC adventure games, and I was baffled as to why they weren't ported over to Amiga. It would've been so easy.

The only ones I can think of that were were Simon the Sorcerer (which may not have been a PC original) and Monkey Island 2.

Or when I saw Eye of the Beholder on PC and thought it looked amazing, but again, AFAIK, there was no AGA version released on Amiga.

I remember playing an AMOS demo of DAY OF THE TENTACLE and wondering why I couldn't have the whole game on my Amiga. I guess the money just wasn't in it, sadly enough. I would have LOVED to have had Day of the Tentacle.

Of course when I finally saw it running properly on a PC, I was extremely jealous. It was another world. Sigh.

[alain.treesong]

Originally Posted by JohnnyWalker

I remember playing an AMOS demo of DAY OF THE TENTACLE and wondering why I couldn't have the whole game on my Amiga. I guess the money just wasn't in it, sadly enough. I would have LOVED to have had Day of the Tentacle.

Oh I think "it is Go with the flow" https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=12316

Yes a very neat demo. Actually AMOS is probably the best langage to do Amiga OCS demo.



(I joke, let's remain on the main thread idea, about AGA...)

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by DanScott

I think the most important question that has yet to be answered....

Does the title of this thread has been bugging you since it was first posted?

Originally Posted by Foebane

Me too, for the terrible grammar alone.

oh, thanks for saying that
i'm loosing many points in english language, 30 years ago was surely better, during high school.
as italian, has been google translated, like other replies here around, seems with a bugging effect, and with broken grammar too
i was just trying to synthetize the first two questions in this thread, with an unwanted result, sorry

if some moderator can fix at least the grammar side, please do it

thank you also for trying to reply to a bugging question then

on a side note, i like to read on it, also the little off-topic replies
i'm here to learn, 360 degrees

[Foebane]

Whoops!

No worries, Kremiso, English is hard to learn, from what I've gathered from learners.

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by kremiso

oh, thanks for saying that
i'm loosing many points in english language, 30 years ago was surely better, during high school.
as italian, has been google translated, like other replies here around, seems with a bugging effect, and with broken grammar too

Apologies, no offence was intended, just a light hearted observation about a thread that I am constantly coming to with a lot of interest

[alain.treesong]

Originally Posted by kremiso

oh, thanks for saying that
as italian, has been google translated, like other replies here around, seems with a bugging effect, and with broken grammar too

By the way, for those who don't know, I use often deepl.com that I find better than google for translation.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

Can you compensate by just narrowing the active part of the screen to 256 pixels?

Originally Posted by DanScott

You could do that, and have bitplane fetch mode as 32-bit, and not (i believe) lose any of the sprites. Still not getting the full 64bit speed advantage though, but still better than nothing

I suppose it might be possible to do a 256 pixel wide screen that is aligned to the right into the overscan area. But that wouldn't look great. And I'm not even sure there's enough space to actually do this.

[ross]

Originally Posted by kremiso

i'm loosing many points in english language, 30 years ago was surely better, during high school.

And you were lucky, in my case I didn't have English lesson either in middle or high school .. (was not mandatory at the times)
So in this forum I always write something made up, hoping it makes sense

as italian, has been google translated, like other replies here around, seems with a bugging effect, and with broken grammar too

I don't know if google translate is the same for other languages too, but for Italian it's a pain..

Originally Posted by Foebane

No worries, Kremiso, English is hard to learn, from what I've gathered from learners.

It's not hard per se, but since its core and grammar are proto-Germanic based, while its lexicon contains a majority of Latin or derived words, speaker who have a language with Latin legacy are screwed.. (you think you understand and write it well, but ..)
Especially if you have not been taught on foreign sentence structure and grammar in school.
We just tend to use the phrase in our language with some translated words, but it doesn't work like that

However, of all foreign speakers, English people are usually the worst speakers of other languages

Originally Posted by roondar

I suppose it might be possible to do a 256 pixel wide screen that is aligned to the right into the overscan area. But that wouldn't look great. And I'm not even sure there's enough space to actually do this.

Yep, it can be done (but it's ugly to see..).

[mcgeezer]

Some English can't even speak their own language.
It frightens me because the youth of today who write on social media with words such as "wot (what), lol (laugh), lik (like)" will make it into the dictionary along with them stupid Emoji's.
The movie Idiocracy was spot on, except it will take less than 500 years for us to become completely stupid.

[ Show youtube player ]

[DanielAllsopp]

Some of you already know this, but I'm busy messing about learning ASM and the Amiga innards, slowly and with lots of trial, error and frustrations but I have this so far:



Breaking this down, I have:

- 228x256 pixel wide viewport
- 320x256 double-buffer bitmap setup
- 4x Fetch Mode with SSCAN2 enabled (FMODE $800f)
- 64 pixel wide, 16 colour sprites used for the two parallax layers

As you can see, I have an issue with a sprite artefact at the bottom which I can't figure out at all but I'm happy with what I've figured out so far, of course, with a lot of help from the guys on EAB.

Next steps are to introduce some smooth scrolling, which may unravel all of this and make it go bang, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it

[Havie]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Some English can't even speak their own language.
It frightens me because the youth of today who write on social media with words such as "wot (what), lol (laugh), lik (like)" will make it into the dictionary along with them stupid Emoji's.
The movie Idiocracy was spot on, except it will take less than 500 years for us to become completely stupid.

[ Show youtube player ]

Can I just say that you are brilliantly grumpy!

ROFL!!!!

[Havie]

And to be fair - Kremiso comes from Italy so his grasp of English is pretty good.

But yes - thread title is up there with the classic:

[ Show youtube player ]

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Some English can't even speak their own language.
It frightens me because the youth of today who write on social media with words such as "wot (what), lol (laugh), lik (like)" will make it into the dictionary along with them stupid Emoji's.
The movie Idiocracy was spot on, except it will take less than 500 years for us to become completely stupid.

[ Show youtube player ]

I always put those shortcuts down to "1337 speek" or whatever that rubbish was back in the day. I personally don't use shortcuts, even when I'm having to navigate a smartphone keyboard, something I haven't yet mastered after all these years.

As for Idiocracy, I'd say that future has already arrived, no thanks to a certain orange guy who hastened the process in the last four years, and who has millions of morons following him.

[Gilbert]

I think Trump just proved what advertisers already know - people will believe anything if you keep telling them it.

I really like the title of this thread - it makes it better.

Daniel - that Star Wars game looks great. Hope you keep going with it. I want to see how many sprites/bobs you can get moving around

[DanielAllsopp]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Daniel - that Star Wars game looks great. Hope you keep going with it. I want to see how many sprites/bobs you can get moving around

Haha, aye, me too. It's just a part time thing I do when I get some spare time. It's highly satisfying when things work and highly frustrating when they don't.