Why was Z never ported to the Amiga?

[gimbal]

Apparently there are some bugs in the game that never got fixed. So yeah, sounds like you just want to play the DOS original.

[sokolovic]

There is an interview of the Bitmap brothers where they speak about porting (or not, in that case) Z on the Amiga in a preview of Chaos Engine 2 in CU Amiga.

[Lord Aga]

Utterly shocked by the lack of propositions to reduce the number of colours to 8, for a possible port.

Shocked I tells ya!

[gimbal]

I don't think that will prevent the CPU from melting in this case

[Lord Aga]

Would it help if we went negative 16 colours?

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by jotd

also: not porting that to the amiga...

time to put that in your message footer right?

[sokolovic]

That said, I remember a time when games where converted on various supports using specificities of each. Japanese developpers we're (again) especially good at that. Every iteration of Castlevania is perfectly suited to its console. Same thing for SNK or Capcom games (not on home computers of course !)
Probably a straight 1:1 port of Z would be a little too ambitious for an A1200 with just fast ram, but a faithful conversion adapted for the system maybe not.
I always think of the Amiga conversion of Colonization which is brillant even on an 1MB Amiga 500/600 while it recquires a 386SX minimum to work on a PC. I'de be curious to know what are the recquirements for the MacIntosh version since it seems that there is one, according to Wikipedia.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

That said, I remember a time when games where converted on various supports using specificities of each. Japanese developpers we're (again) especially good at that. Every iteration of Castlevania is perfectly suited to its console. Same thing for SNK or Capcom games (not on home computers of course !)
Probably a straight 1:1 port of Z would be a little too ambitious for an A1200 with just fast ram, but a faithful conversion adapted for the system maybe not.

As games got more complex, the amount of work required to do a custom version for each platform increases too, making it a much more expensive proposition. In the early-mid-'90s this started to become prohibitively expensive to do for all but the biggest markets.

I'de be curious to know what are the recquirements for the MacIntosh version since it seems that there is one, according to Wikipedia.

The Mac version needs a Performa (so a 68030), System 7.0 and 8MB of RAM according to the box.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

The Mac version needs a Performa (so a 68030), System 7.0 and 8MB of RAM according to the box.

Thanks. It makes me think that if Colonization was never been (briliantly) converted on the Amiga, probably we'll had people saying "no way a stock A600 can manage a 256 colors game that needs a 68030 and 8MB of ram to work properly. It would need an A4000 with some fast ram at least to make an Amiga conversion".

[gimbal]

Z is realtime, Colonization is turn based. How fun you find Colonization on slower machines all depends on how patient you are. I played it on a 486 DX33 and even the there can be some waiting time here and there, especially when a new world is generating I don't know if I would have found it so much fun on a 386 machine, I can imagine the wait time for a turn to end ramps up.

[oscar_ates]

Well, I played Colonization on Amiga 500, there were quite waiting moments. I could handle that by that time but UFO Enemy Unknown was totally unplayable on stock A1200.

[sokolovic]

I'm not sure that's very fair to judge the playability of a game with our 2023 criteria.
UFO wasn't "unplayable" back then. We were a bit more tolérant with slow pacing games and disk swapping.
I read sometimes that even Frontier was unplayable on stock A600. It wasn't for sure for the 14 years old me who spend hundred of hours on trip to Barnard star.

Gimbal I wasn't making a comparison between Colonization and Z. Just saying that Colonization is a good example of a game perfectly converted to the Amiga with much higher recquirements on similar machines (computers).

[gimbal]

Dune 2 would be another, although the Amiga version is lacking some flair.

[Megalomaniac]

UFO did get pretty mixed reviews on the A500, and Colonization at least had the advantage that much of it was reused Civ code - the PC version had very low requirements for late 1994. Turn based games can be tolerable with long gaps between turns though (I quite happily played Monkey Island 2 from 11 floppies, or Championship Manager with 20 minute waits between seasons, and I wasn't alone), for real-time stuff like Theme Park or Napalm, or potentially Z, it will have a bigger effect on playability.

[sokolovic]

Well if you want a real time strategy game, maybe the Settlers would be a good example ? PC version needs a 386sx (like Colonization) and 4MB of ram while it runs quite well on an 1Mb Amiga 500.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Well if you want a real time strategy game, maybe the Settlers would be a good example ? PC version needs a 386sx (like Colonization) and 4MB of ram while it runs quite well on an 1Mb Amiga 500.

True, but calling Settlers a real time strategy game is a bit far fetched. Comparing it to Z doesn't hold up, but i do agree that the PC version looks a bit off in performance.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I'm not sure that's very fair to judge the playability of a game with our 2023 criteria.
UFO wasn't "unplayable" back then. We were a bit more tolérant with slow pacing games and disk swapping.

Perhaps, and as said, turn-based games are far more forgiving of underpowered machines.

I read sometimes that even Frontier was unplayable on stock A600. It wasn't for sure for the 14 years old me who spend hundred of hours on trip to Barnard star.

It depends greatly on what you're doing. Some people have more tolerance than others too. I played Frontier a lot on a stock A1200 and just put up with the slowdowns, but it became a vastly more playable game when I got an accelerator. And when I was playing it on a stock A1200, I found it almost impossible to play on my friend's A600, it was that much slower. Yes, these days people expect and demand 100+ FPS, but even back then when games would drop to 1 or 2 FPS during heavy action it definitely took away from the experience.

Originally Posted by gimbal

Dune 2 would be another, although the Amiga version is lacking some flair.

Indeed. Again, on the stock A1200 I kinda put up with the slowdowns, but the gameplay was negatively affected. It's much easier to control things in the thick of a battle when you've an accelerator in there.

[TCD]

Playing Monkey Island II or Indy 4 on an Amiga 500 with one extra drive is possible, but I'd say the experience is best described as 'slightly painful' Of course it's down to personal taste and I played Skyrim first on a potato PC that could run the game at max 10 FPS on lowest settings. It was fine at the time, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it now

[gimbal]

Waiting. Sooooo much waiting. I didn't mind at the time because there was a strong feeling of anticipation, it was almost exciting to wait for the next screen to load. Yeah that's completely gone now.

[grond]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Waiting. Sooooo much waiting. I didn't mind at the time because there was a strong feeling of anticipation, it was almost exciting to wait for the next screen to load. Yeah that's completely gone now.

Tell me about waiting. I was a datasette kid. When I came home from school, I started the computer and had lunch while the game was loading. Then eventually there was this magic "oh, there is music coming from my room, the game must have loaded" moment.