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Author Topic: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?  (Read 9089 times)

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Offline KhephrenTopic starter

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Looking for a new job, I found 'lucky mountain games' and their title 'racing apex'. Something about it makes me think of the Amiga. Maybe something an accelerated A1200 could do. If we had not been so facinated by textured poly's, could we have had something like this?

better screenshots here:  http://toucharcade.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65000
« Last Edit: March 29, 2011, 11:10:26 PM by Khephren »
 

Offline B00tDisk

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #1 on: March 29, 2011, 10:44:15 PM »
Wow, 1995 called and wants its Sega System 2 arcade games back...!

All kidding aside, for phone games those aren't bad looking.  Yeah, an upgraded 1200 probably could've thrown that many flat-shaded polygons around.
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Offline KhephrenTopic starter

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2011, 11:12:33 PM »
yeah thats what I thought, pure sega. i'd love to work on something like that. Although it has gourard shading as well, dunno how intensive that is to generate in software. Certainly plenty od demos do it.
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #3 on: March 30, 2011, 12:43:23 AM »
Quote from: Khephren;625844
Although it has gourard shading as well, dunno how intensive that is to generate in software. Certainly plenty od demos do it.
Gourad shading isn't intensive as far as shading models go, but any  model is going to suffer in comparison to flat-shading on the Amiga  simply because you can't use the blitter for fast fills like you can with flat shading. I suppose if you limited yourself to only a couple levels of shading you could divvy up each polygon span into sections of each color and use that, but it'd still be slower.

I'd expect that demos use precalculated shading or somesuch, but I dunno.
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Offline runequester

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2011, 01:17:00 AM »
well, if we're talking gaming future for the amiga, presumably we're also talking a post-AGA chipset :)
 

Offline fishy_fiz

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #5 on: March 30, 2011, 04:27:01 AM »
Ive said it a few times before, but Im still pretty intrigued about seeing some games made for at least moderately upgraded aga machines that suit its strengths . Yes, it (aga) may have been a little more moderate an upgrade over ocs/ecs than it could/should have been, but even ocs/ecs provided some impressive results sometimes, with a cpu 10 times+ slower, and running inside much less, and slower ram. I can see no reason why something akin to the sega 32x's versions of Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, etc. couldnt be achieved on an expanded 68k/aga syetm (not that there's are exactly the "strengths" I referred to earlier, more a reference to the game Khephren linked to) .
With the 68k side of the amiga being somewhat active in recent times (minimig/natami/aros68k) I've still not given up hope on seeing a game or two written to take advantage of a higher lowest denominator than in the Amigas heyday.
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 runequester

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #6 on: March 30, 2011, 04:28:42 AM »
Well, we have stuff like Genetic Species to show what could have been.
 

Offline fishy_fiz

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2011, 04:33:43 AM »
Yeah, but things like fps arent really suited to AGA. Sure there have been some decent fps shooters, but AGA handles flat polygons much better than texture mapping, not to mention the potential for "impressive" 2d stuff (even 68000/ecs did stuff like elfmania for example).
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 #8 on: March 30, 2011, 11:50:22 AM »
That's exactly what i'm talking about. An evolution of what went before, rather than an attempt to ape the PC.

Zeewolf, no second prize, frontier or cybercon 3. All done with a lot more colours/polys. Maybe with some vertex shading (gourard shading). Old school, but I bet they would look really nice on an 030 with plenty of RAM.

Genetic species is lovely, but everyone switched to trying to do doom, when the old school way of doing it went out the window.
 

Offline tasmanian guy

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #9 on: March 30, 2011, 12:08:38 PM »
I think there are a lot of iphone games / ipad games that rely on gameplay more so than graphics!
 
Angry birds being one of them and would love a port of that to the Amiga, no reason why an Amiga 500 couldn't run it!
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Offline Amiga_Nut

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #10 on: March 30, 2011, 12:29:09 PM »
I'm going to say no because that game would probably need 200mhz Pentium MMX CPU to do 30FPS. As that is into PPC territory the answer is no because nobody would spend £1000s to play games on an Amiga when a few hundred would get you a Playstation 1 with equal power for £300.

That game is massively CPU intensive, so unless Commodore had a secret 3D GPU project at half the cost of Orchid/Matrox/PowerVR OR suddenly the price of 50mhz 060 CPUs were half that of 60Mhz Pentium CPUs then never would have happened IMO.

Games like Super Stardust AGA do manage to do in 14mhz what a PC need 120mhz for BUT that is all custom chip assisted really. 3D always was CPU intensive in the 90s, Amiga was a slow CPU based machine with clever 2D custom chips....you see the problem ;)
 

Offline Britelite

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #11 on: March 30, 2011, 12:34:39 PM »
Quote from: tasmanian guy;625968

Angry birds being one of them and would love a port of that to the Amiga, no reason why an Amiga 500 couldn't run it!


I can think of a lot of reasons to why an Amiga 500 couldn't run Angry Birds ;)
 

Offline tasmanian guy

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #12 on: March 30, 2011, 12:50:22 PM »
Quote from: Britelite;625973
I can think of a lot of reasons to why an Amiga 500 couldn't run Angry Birds ;)

Please start listing them!  Enlighten me!
 
320x256 screen res would suffice
32 colours
scrolling is not an issue
physics would not be an issue (eg look at Stunt Car Racer).
Music not an issue
Sprites not an issue
 
Hell you could *almost* write the game in Amos!
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Offline KhephrenTopic starter

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #13 on: March 30, 2011, 12:54:46 PM »
Quote from: Amiga_Nut;625971

That game is massively CPU intensive, so unless Commodore had a secret 3D GPU project at half the cost of Orchid/Matrox/PowerVR OR suddenly the price of 50mhz 060 CPUs were half that of 60Mhz Pentium CPUs then never would have happened IMO.

No I don't see the problem. I have a machine here that's 10mips vs A500's .75. A lot of us have them. I can't see  a good reason why my machine can't throw around a lot more untextured polys, with more colours using a c2p routine? Perhaps we won't reach this quality, certainly not this resolution.

Perhaps I misnamed the thread, perhaps i'm just thinking that we could have stuff not a million miles away from this. I was thinking that 'flying high' for example would have been better if they'd concentrated on what the amiga could do, rather than what it wasn't built for.

Although would we have accepted it? I love looking at 'old school' graphics now...but when we were younger, would we have wanted this over something that attempted textures?
 

Offline bloodline

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Re: Sholud something like this have been the Amiga's gaming future?
« Reply #14 on: March 30, 2011, 01:17:04 PM »
Quote from: tasmanian guy;625968
I think there are a lot of iphone games / ipad games that rely on gameplay more so than graphics!
 
Angry birds being one of them and would love a port of that to the Amiga, no reason why an Amiga 500 couldn't run it!
All the big selling iPhone games are so simple they could all have come directly from the 8bit era :)