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Author Topic: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?  (Read 9091 times)

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Offline yssing

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« Last Edit: March 30, 2011, 06:00:22 PM by yssing »
 

Offline fishy_fiz

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #30 on: March 31, 2011, 12:20:32 AM »
Ah, No Second Prize, great game once you get used to controls  :) (theyre quite touchy).

Hypothetically, what heavy(er) polygonal games would people be interested in ? A racer seems the obvious one, but personally Id also like to see a Virtua Fighters style beat 'em up and an updated Elite style game.
Near as I can tell this is where I write something under the guise of being innocuous, but really its a pot shot at another persons/peoples choice of Amiga based systems. Unfortunately only I cant see how transparent and petty it makes me look.
 

Offline KhephrenTopic starter

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #31 on: March 31, 2011, 01:46:12 AM »
something like elite/frontier for certain. and a nice pixel art rts would be cool- wasn't the bitmaps 'z' originaly meant to be for amiga before they switched platforms?

@amiga_nut
ARM's are lovely chips, but you are over playing their power by a great margin. I should know, i've been developing DS games for years. The archie was a lovely machine, but some times struggled with scrolling because it was cpu bound with no co-pro's.

the bitplane to chunky problem has been some what over come for some time now. novacoders scumm port is in 8bit, nargoth rpg is in ham8. many demos use 8bit or ham8. you mention 32 colours, i wouldn't even say no to that! most amiga sims are 16 and dithered.

zee wolf is nice, but does not really show how much you could throw around.

"if it was possible we would have seen it" not really. all the games companies began to desert the amiga,and those that remained gave us what we wanted- texture mapping and doom clones in the main  :)
 

Offline tasmanian guy

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #32 on: March 31, 2011, 10:30:18 AM »
More 3D games that were done well on the Amiga
 
Stunt Car Racer!  That was awesome with great physics!
 
But the questions is...who is going to port or do an Angry Birds clone for the classic Amiga...is there a competition in that?
Amiga 1200 1U Rack project
 

Offline Hattig

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #33 on: March 31, 2011, 12:26:23 PM »
Quote from: fishy_fiz;626020
As for the 8mhz cpu in early archimedes, its probably closer to 2x raw performance of the 68000 cpu in an a500, not to mention the fact that risc architectures often require more instructions for same end result as a cisc cpu.

The 10 MIPS 12.5MHz ARM60 in the 3D0 console was computationally around the same performance as a 25MHz+ 68030. Almost certainly the ARM2 in the Archimedes was at least 4x faster than the 68000 (4 MIPS vs 0.7 MIPS), if only because it was pipelined and had a 32-bit ALU. ARM of course has free predication and barrel shifting in its instruction set, so simple anti-RISC arguments aren't always applicable.

The GBA used an ARM7 chip at 16MHz. This has higher IPC (nearly 1DMIPS/MHz) as well as a higher clock speed. It's probably equivalent to a 50MHz+ 68030 - and only has to do 50% of the pixel rendering, so we'd need a 25MHz 68040 in an Amiga.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2011, 12:30:56 PM by Hattig »
 

Offline bloodline

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #34 on: March 31, 2011, 12:38:31 PM »
Why doesn't someone simply hook the MiniMig FPGA to an ARM chip, clock it down to 8mhz run AROS on it and see :-D

Offline KhephrenTopic starter

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #35 on: March 31, 2011, 01:21:35 PM »
@Hattig The ARM 2 was  very powerfull chip. Clocking in at 4 MIPS easy, VS the 68k 1MIP. But these are RISC MIPS, ARM2 had a much simpler instruction set (roughly one third the 68k), where you need to combine some instructions to equal one 68k CISC one. So some your throughput on MIPS are combined instructions. Rough comparison might x2 as powerfull. I would not say any more than that.

3D0= 25mhz 030, sounds about right. If we work on the basis of X2 as powerfull per clock as a 68k.
Bare in mind the 3D0 had a DSP, FPU and two video co-processors (unsurprising, as it's from ex Amiga designers).

3D0 ARM 60 (FPU)=.83 DMIPS/MHZ
GBA ARM 7DTMI (NO FPU)= .89 DMIPS/MHZ a 40mhz 030, at best then -without a maths unit.

GBA screen= 76.8% of NTSC low resolution, 60% of PAL low.

So bearing in mind that the GBA has no maths unit, and that the 030/50 is probably a bit faster, and that I am talking about plain polygons, and perhaps gouraud, not textured as the 3DO  and GBA throw around, I think your backing up my ideas, thanks very much! :)

*edit* If what your saying about the speed of the 3D0 is true, maybe the Amiga could run something like Star Fighter 3000, I used to love that on the 3D0.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2011, 01:28:14 PM by Khephren »
 

Offline Amiga_Nut

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #36 on: March 31, 2011, 01:42:25 PM »
GBA could not run that game anyway. Amiga would never have moved to ARM either, they [Commodore] publicly dismissed this as a possibility.

And to be honest, that game with that level of track/vehicle detail is not even possible on a Playstation1, one of the most efficient custom 3D designs only. 3DO is not very good for polygons like that, just play Starblade(? Namco game) and you will see.

So what you have to ask yourself is....how long would it take for Commodore to be able to produce in a financially viable form a PPC machine as powerful as the £149.99 - £99 Sega Dreamcast? Say £499 is the cut-off point for a home computer without monitor.

Also there was the prototype Hombre chipset which Haynie proclaimed had better 3D potential than the Sega Saturn. This could have been exactly what the doctor ordered :)

Alternatively......maybe someone can tell us about the NatAmi 3D performance, there are some still shots but no videos of the screenshots shown on the website!
 

Offline KhephrenTopic starter

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #37 on: March 31, 2011, 02:00:46 PM »
The GBA can do some impressive stuff, considering it's all CPU driven:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr_DkfO_Csg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5_cnZabhig&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XNo1auSJhY&feature=related

As iv'e said plain polys are an order of magnitiude easier to draw than Texture mapped ones, this is why you see no texture mapped racers on the A500.
The GBA can draw quite good textured+vertex shaded poly environments. It would be able to draw a hell of a lot more polys if it dropped the texture maps.

Same for the Playstation (although it's a GPU equiped machine, made for textured polys, so you only get a x2 performance boost in poly count by dropping texturing).

No plain poly racer was ever released for either of these machines, so i'm not sure how you can say it would not be possible? (not at the quality of the pic I added, certainly).

NatAmi: They reckon an improved 060 at 150mhz last I heard. I'm still skeptical....but not as skeptical as the last few years!  :)

anyway, great discussion! I had hoped some coders would chime in and give us some actual figures.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2011, 02:07:55 PM by Khephren »
 

Offline Hattig

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #38 on: March 31, 2011, 03:00:38 PM »
Quote from: Amiga_Nut;626248
Alternatively......maybe someone can tell us about the NatAmi 3D performance, there are some still shots but no videos of the screenshots shown on the website!


Gunnar just posted some N68050 FPU stats - apparently a 100MHz N68050 will perform like a 300 to 800 MHz 68040 in FPU performance depending on how optimised for the N68050 the FPU code is, or a 1.5GHz 486. But that's just based on instruction throughput and latency figures.
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #39 on: March 31, 2011, 03:00:52 PM »
Quote from: Khephren;626241
@Hattig The ARM 2 was  very powerfull chip. Clocking in at 4 MIPS easy, VS the 68k 1MIP. But these are RISC MIPS, ARM2 had a much simpler instruction set (roughly one third the 68k), where you need to combine some instructions to equal one 68k CISC one. So some your throughput on MIPS are combined instructions. Rough comparison might x2 as powerfull. I would not say any more than that.
I'm not going to claim any numbers knowledge, but the "more instructions per operation" thing isn't all that accurate; as Hattig pointed out, the ARM instruction set is designed around that, so many of the "simpler RISC operations" are built right in as options for any given instruction.
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Offline Hattig

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #40 on: March 31, 2011, 03:09:31 PM »
Quote from: Khephren;626241
@Hattig The ARM 2 was  very powerfull chip. Clocking in at 4 MIPS easy, VS the 68k 1MIP. But these are RISC MIPS, ARM2 had a much simpler instruction set (roughly one third the 68k), where you need to combine some instructions to equal one 68k CISC one. So some your throughput on MIPS are combined instructions. Rough comparison might x2 as powerfull. I would not say any more than that.

Yep, ARM2 appears to have around 35 instructions, so less than the 68000. Of course with predication you don't need some branches in the code, and you also avoid separate shift instructions as they're built in (and that also reduces the instruction set). As an aside, the 68000 code will be more compact because ARM uses 32-bits per instruction, and 68000 starts at 16. It took until Thumb2 for code density on ARM to match 68000.

We could use benchmark MIPS - like Dhrystone, although of course these have flaws too) ARM2 could get 0.33 DMIPS/MHz (so 2.66 DMIPS for an 8MHz ARM2). I'm having difficulty finding 68000 figures though, although I did see 0.2 DMIPS/MHz for the 68030 mentioned, which could let us assume ~0.1 DMIPS/MHz for the 68000.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2011, 03:13:23 PM by Hattig »
 

Offline KhephrenTopic starter

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #41 on: March 31, 2011, 03:25:30 PM »
Yes of course, but you cannot entirely mitigate the fact that you have to combine instructions in a RISC architecture (you have two thirds less than a 68k), this is especially true of ported software. Hatiqs initial data that a 12.5mhz 3D0= 25mhz 030 sounds correct. Your RISC nets you a x2 performance increase per clock cycle, with the rest lost during combiner operations.

It's hard to compare the actual machine architectures though. As I pointed out, the 3D0 has a DSP, FPU and twin co-pro's. A 25mhz Amiga will not match this.

The Amiga has bitplane problems, or a chunky convertion overhead.

The GBA is probably the purest CPU renderer, but hampered by a lack of ram.

Doom on an 030/50 will run at a higher resolution, but about the same frame rate as the GBA version, but the GBA version looks worse than it has to because they down rezed the textures, not the CPU's fault in this case. Still not comparing like with like, because the Amiga and GBA versions are optimised for their architectures. Probably as close as we will get though.

@Hattiq
Yes it's very elegant instruction set. That's probably why it's poised for domination :) while having 1/3 the instructions it will not need to combine 3x as much. They were very careful in their instruction choice, and use of branch prediction.

Moto used to quote 1 MIPS standard, 2 MIPS peak at 8Mhz. I always thought they inflated their figures though. 1 MIPS sounds about right, given the Amiga never got the best out of a given processor. So .125DMIPS.

*edit* Iv'e posed the question "what's the render penalty for plain shaded polys VS gouraud VS textured on a CPU bound architecture?"  over at 'the chaos engine' profesional game dev forum. Lots of 3D programmers over there, including some old Amiga guys. I reckon a textured poly is about 8x slower, but it's just a guess..
« Last Edit: March 31, 2011, 03:38:35 PM by Khephren »
 

Offline fishy_fiz

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #42 on: March 31, 2011, 03:31:22 PM »
roughly:
68000 = 0.1mips per mhz
68030 = 0.3mips per mhz
68040 = 1.1mips per mhz
68060 = 1.33mips per mhz
Near as I can tell this is where I write something under the guise of being innocuous, but really its a pot shot at another persons/peoples choice of Amiga based systems. Unfortunately only I cant see how transparent and petty it makes me look.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #43 on: March 31, 2011, 03:42:07 PM »
Quote from: fishy_fiz;626278
roughly:
68000 = 0.1mips per mhz
68030 = 0.3mips per mhz
68040 = 1.1mips per mhz
68060 = 1.33mips per mhz

That's the only valid mips based post in the entire thread.
And, no, early (lower clocked) ARM processors did not outperform Motorola's later (higher clocked) 68K models.
Instead of raw benchmarks or mips figures you need to compare comparable software products running under an OS.
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Offline KhephrenTopic starter

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #44 on: March 31, 2011, 03:49:22 PM »
Doom is the closest iv'e come across. But as I pointed out, they are each optimised for their platform :(   MIPS are not really all that valid between architectures. We could compare Archie games, but as most were ported from amiga CISC to Acorn RISC, that would be a bit unfair.