Can The Amiga CD32 Run Perfect Versions of Capcom CPS1 Games?

[DanScott]

With CD32 (even A1200 or any AGA), you could have the following:

16 colour playfield for your background (platforms, scenery, whatever...)

16 colour foreground playfield used for sprites (bobs, that don't need save/restore, and some big one could even be drawn first, without even having to mask it or even clear it, by having some blank space around the outside, as much space as the maximum distance it will move per frame)

2 x sprites (attached 16 colour) hardware sprites for the main player

4 x sprites (unattached 4 colours) for a background parallax layer of 256 pixels wide with colours changed down the screen using the copper

2 x sprites left over... (to use for whatever you want... for player overlay / shield / misiles... or even for foreground rain effect?)


of course, the player sprites could also be used at the top and bottom of screen for score, energy bars, lives counters etc..


with clever use of the hardware, you could produce some stunning looking games... you would need a good artist of course...

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Akira

BUT MUH PARALLAX!


That's how we ended up with things like Street Fighter II. but people still complained! (of course, it's shit)
Yet Super Street Fighter II doesn't ever get enough recognition because it looks different (but it plays really, really well).

I agree, I see people slating Street Fighter II. Its an awesome game.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by FOL

I agree, I see people slating Street Fighter II. Its an awesome game.

What, no, that's not what I said

[rare_j]

I absolutely love these threads. I'm waiting for the one that pops up and asks if a 68030 and 10mb fastram is good enough to do a port of port cyberpunk 2077

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by rare_j

I absolutely love these threads. I'm waiting for the one that pops up and asks if a 68030 and 10mb fastram is good enough to do a port of port cyberpunk 2077

What a ridiculous comparison.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by DanScott

With CD32 (even A1200 or any AGA), you could have the following:

16 colour playfield for your background (platforms, scenery, whatever...)

16 colour foreground playfield used for sprites (bobs, that don't need save/restore, and some big one could even be drawn first, without even having to mask it or even clear it, by having some blank space around the outside, as much space as the maximum distance it will move per frame)

2 x sprites (attached 16 colour) hardware sprites for the main player

4 x sprites (unattached 4 colours) for a background parallax layer of 256 pixels wide with colours changed down the screen using the copper

2 x sprites left over... (to use for whatever you want... for player overlay / shield / misiles... or even for foreground rain effect?)

of course, the player sprites could also be used at the top and bottom of screen for score, energy bars, lives counters etc..

with clever use of the hardware, you could produce some stunning looking games... you would need a good artist of course...

This is an excellent post - actually thinking about how to use the AGA hardware in clever ways rather than just being negative.

I think everyone agrees "an arcade perfect" (what we called arcade perfect back then) version is possible. But probably not an exact copy

I haven't done a colour count on Ghouls N Ghosts yet but I would guess it displays about 45-75 colours on screen at a time. So even this may be reproducable (to a degree where it is not noticably different) with raster colour changes.

EDIT : I under estimated : Ghouls n Ghosts has an average of about 90 colours on screen at a time on the first level. It doesn't look that much though so can probably be made to look very similar with less colours.

Originally Posted by rare_j

I absolutely love these threads. I'm waiting for the one that pops up and asks if a 68030 and 10mb fastram is good enough to do a port of port cyberpunk 2077

Halo is already on Atari 2600. They just took out the Z-dimension and made it 2D

Originally Posted by Akira

Amiga people get really uppity when you tell them "hey you can have a game that plays exactly as good, but it will look a bit different". Seems like how it feels aesthetically is far more important than how it feels like to play.

That's how we ended up with things like Street Fighter II. but people still complained! (of course, it's shit)
.

Street Fighter II is a bad example compared to other CPS1 game because you need a lot of memory on the Amiga to store all the animation frames in memory at once. Game like Strider and Ghouls n Ghosts don't have this problem on a 2Mb Machine like the CD32. And new graphics can be loaded in between levels. Music can be played direct from CD - save a lot of memory

Street fighter 2 : World Warrior (the original) arcade game is 58 megabit (7.25 Megabytes). Not possible on a normal Amiga. It does make me think it could be possible on a 2MB AGA machine - when you think that 7.25 Mb includes animation data for 12 characters and a load of backgrounds and sound effects/music. The AGA machines have big sprites and a better blitter. You cold easily fit the graphics data for 2 characters in memory at the same time - then just load new graphics data from the CD when you go to the next stage

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Akira

What, no, that's not what I said

Sorry your first sentence disagrees with your second.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by FOL

Sorry your first sentence disagrees with your second.

He probably meant the Amiga version.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Thorham

He probably meant the Amiga version.

Or maybe I missed the "Super" bit, . Still talking about older games now, doesn't work well as we are all spoilt today.

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by rare_j

I absolutely love these threads. I'm waiting for the one that pops up and asks if a 68030 and 10mb fastram is good enough to do a port of port cyberpunk 2077

No-one can fit that many bugs in only 10mb.

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

This is an excellent post - actually thinking about how to use the AGA hardware in clever ways rather than just being negative.

I think everyone agrees "an arcade perfect" (what we called arcade perfect back then) version is possible. But probably not an exact copy

Hey buddy, this is a good point, and a possible source of negativity.
Back in the day, it's unlikely people saw arcade machines and home computer ports side by side. So if a home computer port looked and played somewhat similar to the arcade, the term 'arcade perfect' got bandied about. Back in the day I beleived Ocean's Robocop to be arcade perfect, and it certainly is not.
Today, arcade perfect means, I think to most people, literally arcade perfect. What you can see in mame. This might explain some of the answers (including mine I'm quite sorry to say).

[Gilbert]

This was the maximum number of colours I could make on the screen in the arcade version btw



Colour count = 112 colours (including black) Again though you could probably make it look very close with a lot less colours

Originally Posted by rare_j

Hey buddy, this is a good point, and a possible source of negativity.
Back in the day, it's unlikely people saw arcade machines and home computer ports side by side. So if a home computer port looked and played somewhat similar to the arcade, the term 'arcade perfect' got bandied about. Back in the day I beleived Ocean's Robocop to be arcade perfect, and it certainly is not.
Today, arcade perfect means, I think to most people, literally arcade perfect. What you can see in mame. This might explain some of the answers (including mine I'm quite sorry to say).

Yes that's right about what was arcade perfect back in the day. Something that amuses me now is how many people slate the SNES version of Final Fight and think it's a bad version. Back then it was *literally* the arcade brought home. But now people will say "oh it's missing a level" or "there's one less guy on screen". BUT then it was amazing, no one thought it was bad!

It's already impossible for the Amiga to match the horizontal resolution of CPS1 games (it' something like 384 pixels) so it's a given it won;t be an exact copy anyway. I did field the idea of making it update at 30fps (but run at the same speed - this is possible) Because some arcade games run at 30fps anyway and no one can name which ones do - unless they already know from reading about them.

Originally Posted by Akira

how we ended up with things like Street Fighter II. but people still complained! (of course, it's shit)
Yet Super Street Fighter II doesn't ever get enough recognition because it looks different (but it plays really, really well).

I don't understand this because after I read what you wrote I watched the CD32 version of Super SF2 on Youtube and it was absolutely terrible. It was like it was running in treacle! Someone in the comments said the guy who coded it - did it in 6 weeks and that's why it was so bad. I think SF2 is a relatively easy game for CD32 to do - it can easily draw the big characters with it's enhanced sprites and blitter. It has 6 button controller and it has 2MB of memory. Plus it doesn't need to store music in memory because it can be played from the CD. It can do the background animations on different frames from each other. There is no reason for it to run slow like that!

[Konrad]

Gilbert, you watched the CD32 version, which is "Super Street Fighter IITurbo. Which looks nice, but is terrible gameplaywise. Which is exactly Akiras point:

Originally Posted by Akira

Amiga people get really uppity when you tell them "hey you can have a game that plays exactly as good, but it will look a bit different". Seems like how it feels aesthetically is far more important than how it feels like to play.

I think Akira means "Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers", which doesn't look as good, but plays really well.

Originally Posted by Akira

Yet Super Street Fighter II doesn't ever get enough recognition because it looks different (but it plays really, really well)

Here is is:
[ Show youtube player ]

[Tigerskunk]

I don't understand these threads.
You either create the game and then you know if it works or you don't and it's just lame speculation.

The only productive post in this thread is by Dan where he gives an idea how this could look like technically.

[mcgeezer]

Can the Amiga CD32 run perfect conversions of CAPCOM games? The answer is that it depends on the game. If the question was, can the Amiga AGA/CD32 hardware compete with the CPS1 then the answer is no.

But hardware is one thing and games is another and the Amiga has some tricks up its sleeve due to its awesome flexibility.

Here's a nice article on the capabilities of the CPS1 board, apologies if someone already posted it.

http://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/201...s1-part-1.html

To summarise....

CPS-1 Technical specs: (source: Wikipedia)

CPU
  Primary: Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz (some later boards 12 MHz)  
  Secondary: Zilog Z-80 @ 3.579 MHz

Sound Chips:
  Yamaha YM2151 @ 3.579 MHz
  Oki OKI6295 @ 7.576 MHz, Stereo

Display
  Resolution: Raster, 384x224 @ 59.6294 Hz
  Color Depth: 12 bit RGB with a 4 bit brightness value
  Colors available: 4096
  Onscreen colors: 3072 (192 global palettes with 16 colors each)

Sprites:
  Simultaneously displayable: 256 (per scanlines)
  Sizes: 16x16, max. 16 colors (15 unique + 1 transparent)
  Vertical and Horizontal Flipping capability

Tiles: Sizes 8x8, 16x16, 32x32 with 16 colors (15 unique + 1 transparent)
  Tile Maps: 3 Maps, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048 pixel
  68K RAM: 64 KB WORK RAM + 192 KB VRAM (Shadow)
  PPU: 192 KB VRAM + 16 KB CACHE RAM
  Z80 RAM: 2 KB WORK RAM

The Amiga isn't going to beat that.

It always boils down to the arcade boards having very advanced tile and sprite based video hardware compared to the Amiga's bitmap display. The CAPCOM boards along with any other games console are designed around playing games - nothing else. The Amiga was designed with one eye on games and the other on personal computing, I suppose Commodore were hedging their bets.

But there was no excuse for the CD32 to really have backward compatibility or such weak hardware specs, it was aimed at gamers and what they produced didn't even beat the established competition (SNES) let alone a CAPCOM arcade board that in all honesty, probably recruited the best games programmers on the planet.

A classic case of inward thinking from Commodore. I suppose in a business like that when all you do is live on your past success you can expect to get eaten at some point.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Can the Amiga CD32 run perfect conversions of CAPCOM games? The answer is that it depends on the game. If the question was, can the Amiga AGA/CD32 hardware compete with the CPS1 then the answer is no.

But hardware is one thing and games is another and the Amiga has some tricks up its sleeve due to its awesome flexibility.

Here's a nice article on the capabilities of the CPS1 board, apologies if someone already posted it.

http://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/201...s1-part-1.html

To summarise....

CPS-1 Technical specs: (source: Wikipedia)

CPU
  Primary: Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz (some later boards 12 MHz)  
  Secondary: Zilog Z-80 @ 3.579 MHz

Sound Chips:
  Yamaha YM2151 @ 3.579 MHz
  Oki OKI6295 @ 7.576 MHz, Stereo

Display
  Resolution: Raster, 384x224 @ 59.6294 Hz
  Color Depth: 12 bit RGB with a 4 bit brightness value
  Colors available: 4096
  Onscreen colors: 3072 (192 global palettes with 16 colors each)

Sprites:
  Simultaneously displayable: 256 (per scanlines)
  Sizes: 16x16, max. 16 colors (15 unique + 1 transparent)
  Vertical and Horizontal Flipping capability

Tiles: Sizes 8x8, 16x16, 32x32 with 16 colors (15 unique + 1 transparent)
  Tile Maps: 3 Maps, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048 pixel
  68K RAM: 64 KB WORK RAM + 192 KB VRAM (Shadow)
  PPU: 192 KB VRAM + 16 KB CACHE RAM
  Z80 RAM: 2 KB WORK RAM

The Amiga isn't going to beat that.

It always boils down to the arcade boards having very advanced tile and sprite based video hardware compared to the Amiga's bitmap display. The CAPCOM boards along with any other games console are designed around playing games - nothing else. The Amiga was designed with one eye on games and the other on personal computing, I suppose Commodore were hedging their bets.

But there was no excuse for the CD32 to really have backward compatibility or such weak hardware specs, it was aimed at gamers and what they produced didn't even beat the established competition (SNES) let alone a CAPCOM arcade board that in all honesty, probably recruited the best games programmers on the planet.

A classic case of inward thinking from Commodore. I suppose in a business like that when all you do is live on your past success you can expect to get eaten at some point.

the biggest difficulty, with no access to the source code of these games, is that to fit the memory with have, these games need to be sliced instead of being unified. SF2 in rom files requires a lot of ram. On the sharp X68000, you have the main code, the level files and sprites files, plus the music partitions in file played by the YM2151.

with 128 colors, a game like Daimakaimura assets could be ported. The real problem starts with the animations, and the CPU power needed to move all the sprites.....

[DanyPPC]

On Amiga we can talk only about "adaptions", not "conversions".

[khph_re]

Just spool the level graphics from CD or HDD like laser disk.
I always thought you could do an Amiga wipeout like that.

[Gilbert]

Tech specs are misleading and the CD32 would actually smash almost every one of those specs on paper



It has higher resolution, more colours on screen, bigger colour palette, faster and more powerful processor, Bigger game size, more RAM, CD quality music, 3 playfields (if you use sprites for one), 8 Sprites + infinite number of blitter objects. The CD32 is also arcade hardware.

Take that CPS1!
---------------------------

BTW on a serious note does anyone know how many sprites CPS1 can display on one line? It must be less than 80 I would guess. It just seems like 256 on one line is far too high for a 1988 arcade system. Can it really do that?

EDIT : It can display 64 sprites per line.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Tech specs are misleading and the CD32 would actually smash almost every one of those specs on paper

It has higher resolution, more colours on screen, bigger colour palette, faster and more powerful processor, Bigger game size, more RAM, CD quality music, 3 playfields (if you use sprites for one), 8 Sprites + infinite number of blitter objects. The CD32 is also arcade hardware.

Take that CPS1!

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

BTW on a serious note does anyone know how many sprites CPS1 can display on one line? It must be less than 80 I would guess. It just seems like 256 on one line is far too high for a 1988 arcade system. Can it really do that?

This is my problem with you Gilbert, you write things that are just not true and you'll argue with people who know what they're talking about. People new to the forum will come and read the drivel you spout and I fear they might take it as Gospel.

I suspect you don't understand what tile based hardware is.

The answer to the number of sprites it can push around in total seems to be 256 so I would reckon it has no problem displaying that number per scan line.

PS. Do let me know where you got the "infinite blitter objects" statement from... because that's bullshit too.