Best Ever SINGLE DISK Amiga Game?

[Cpt. Hindsight]

Great Courts 2 aka Pro Tennis Tour 2

[AnnaWu]

Marble Madness (EA)

[Daedalus]

Frontier gets my vote too!

[Mrs Beanbag]

tbh i'm kind of amazed how big Frontier's executable is, because it's all procedurally generated. obviously there are sounds and graphics in it too, but, i dunno... i don't consider it a major feat in terms of disk space. Look at some 48k demos they are making for PC these days...

yeah it's a good game though, i spent a lot of time on it.

[Zak]

One of my disks that was destroyed recently

Kick Off 2 + World Cup 90

It was my favourite football game before Goal! came on.

But Lotus II is really good. I am a fan of Lotus cars ever since.

[ztronzo]

Rainbow Islands


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

tbh i'm kind of amazed how big Frontier's executable is, because it's all procedurally generated. obviously there are sounds and graphics in it too, but, i dunno... i don't consider it a major feat in terms of disk space.

Not particularly a feat I guess, though you should remember that there are lots of parts that aren't procedurally generated - the local galactic neighbourhood is all individually defined systems, the planet maps of our solar system and certain nearby systems (e.g. Lave) are also statically defined to fit in with the first game, and then you've got the imagery of the bulletin board photo-fits, logos, instrument samples and so on. They're all not much by themselves, but if you get enough of this together I'm sure it all adds up.

To start as well, it's apparently around 250,000 lines of 68k assembly code which I guess would be around 500KB in raw, uncompressed object code, give or take, before any static assets are loaded.

I suppose once you can get something to fit on one OFS floppy (~830KB), there isn't much point wasting effort trying to make it smaller, especially if it means compressing data and therefore increasing load times.

[PortuguesePilot]

Back on topic:

I cannot chose a single game since the quality is so great and every day I feel inclined to play a different game. I had a larger list but I compiled it down to the following games (which I consider landmarks on the Amiga software library).

So, in mere alphabetic order, here are my personal choices for the best single-disk games on the Amiga:

B.C. Kid
IK+
Dyna Blaster
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2
North & South
Pang
Prince of Persia
Rod-Land
Switchblade II
SWIV
Toki
Turrican II

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by seb132

Lotus Turbo Challenge... I.e. Lotus II

You can actually fit that on a disk 9 times..

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=16427

[dirkies]

You could push this topic even further by asking which single FILE game (compacted by hackers like Defjam or BS1) was awesome. Stunningly enough several games mentioned here already would still survive that criteria

[Michael]

SWIV
JamesPondII - Robocod
LotusII
JimmyWhites3DSnooker & Pool
and many many more '-) It's amazing what could be squashed in 800K

What was the biggest floppy game ?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Michael

What was the biggest floppy game ?

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=82665

[s2325]

Spell Bound (with atmosphere similar to TwinWorld) http://hol.abime.net/2050
Yogi's Great Escape http://hol.abime.net/1650
MegaBlast http://hol.abime.net/4584
Dyna Blaster http://hol.abime.net/462
CarVup http://hol.abime.net/2941
Toki http://hol.abime.net/1450
Midnight Resistance http://hol.abime.net/2468

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

To start as well, it's apparently around 250,000 lines of 68k assembly code which I guess would be around 500KB in raw, uncompressed object code, give or take, before any static assets are loaded.

you know what i really was just over-thinking the question, it's a great game and it fits on a single floppy, but in my mind it became a question about "which game is the most impressive use of disk space", when it wasn't really, but that is also an interesting question in itself, i think.

250,000 lines of code could generate a lot more than 500k binary, 2 bytes is the shortest m68k instruction, they can be up to 10 bytes in length. But then it also depends on whether "lines of code" includes comments and other lines that generate no object code such as labels, constant definitions &c..

But i'm amazed, because 250,000 lines of code is A LOT by my standards, that is far more code than i would have expected even for a game like Frontier, code-wise Mr Beanbag runs to about 35k for the main executable and about 5k for each individual zone. I've written a 3D polygon engine in about 10k. I know Frontier is a lot more involved than any of these things, but still... wow...

I suppose once you can get something to fit on one OFS floppy (~830KB), there isn't much point wasting effort trying to make it smaller, especially if it means compressing data and therefore increasing load times.

well maybe... load times can be improved with compression if the CPU is faster than disk access, especially true for floppies, which are slow.

Originally Posted by dirkies

You could push this topic even further by asking which single FILE game (compacted by hackers like Defjam or BS1) was awesome. Stunningly enough several games mentioned here already would still survive that criteria

Then it would still be Frontier! I think that was a single file even on an original, right?

[Zak]

Originally Posted by dirkies

You could push this topic even further by asking which single FILE game (compacted by hackers like Defjam or BS1) was awesome. Stunningly enough several games mentioned here already would still survive that criteria

Where do you know with NODOS games though? Often it´s many files disguised by the filesystem.

[hipoonios]

P.P Hammer! More than 70 levels, great graphics and music...

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

But i'm amazed, because 250,000 lines of code is A LOT by my standards, that is far more code than i would have expected even for a game like Frontier, code-wise Mr Beanbag runs to about 35k for the main executable and about 5k for each individual zone. I've written a 3D polygon engine in about 10k. I know Frontier is a lot more involved than any of these things, but still... wow...

There is also the fact that you probably are a much better coder than David Braben was at the time. He is not particularly well known for his coding prowess and did not have a huge experience of assembly on the 68k either so I would not be be surprised if the code was fairly bloated. After all, it runs fairly slowly compared to most other 3D engines of that time.

It is fair to think he was more concerned by design than by efficiency.

The fact that he needed an Archimedes to have Virus run smoothly is also a good indicator.

[ReadOnlyCat]

As for an answer to the OP's question:

Dungeon Master obviously!
Best ever use of a floppy disk.

After that: Turrican II, Battle Squadron, Hybris, Captive, Stunt Car Racer and I would put Lotus II if the game had more varied content and gameplay but as it is it feels too frivolous to me even though I like to play it.
Were Super Cars 1/2 on one disk? I think hey had two didn't they?

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

There is also the fact that you probably are a much better coder than David Braben was at the time. He is not particularly well known for his coding prowess and did not have a huge experience of assembly on the 68k either so I would not be be surprised if the code was fairly bloated. After all, it runs fairly slowly compared to most other 3D engines of that time.

well it also does some pretty amazing stuff, i still can't fathom how he's doing the planet's surface detail and illumination.

[dirkies]

Originally Posted by Zak

Where do you know with NODOS games though? Often it´s many files disguised by the filesystem.

I know of those, but I was rather talking about these "single-filed" cracks which were compressed to the max, often so small you could fit multiple "singled-filed" games on a single floppy. Those immaculate Defjam Compact Disks come to mind, but there were many more out there back then.