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Author Topic: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?  (Read 7287 times)

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Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« on: November 17, 2002, 02:01:13 AM »
OK, the Amiga, in the good old days, was the don as far as games was concerned. But it began to lose it's footing and crumble against PCs in the mid 90's.

Being a Mac user I have seen what impressive software feats can be acheived as far as gaming is concerned on an 800MHz G4 (sadly not mine - I only have a G3/400 :-( ) with a good NVIDIA card in it.

What I want to know is does anyone, honestly please :-), think the AmigaONE/AOS4.x (or Pegasos/MOS), with it's releatively low OS overhead, modern architecture and powerful CPUs, will be able to grab anything significant back of the games market it once held in the late 80's/early 90's?

I'm not posting hate-mail or anything I just geniunely want to know, as someone wha has seen the only other consumer PPC platform struggle continuously to keep up with the PC and consles in games because of a combination of Apple's apathy, developers reluctance to poor effort into a tiny market share and being hard to port the inevitably less-well written games from the PC (not all I hasten to add - just some). Hopefully Amiga Inc. will be backing games companies for starters with ready-made APIs for stuff like joysticks, grahics handling etc., something Apple is dragging it's feet with (I will stop whining about them one day - promise :-D). As for the market share I think that is something only sound marketing, investment and a good start can boost. And badly written games? Well that's not OUR fault is it ;-)

I'd like to see the Amiga back and snapping at the heels of the PC and Playstation 2. The competition will do them good!
 

Offline 4pLaY

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2002, 02:08:13 AM »
in a perfect world hell yeah! but in the real world! not a chance in hell! if any of the camps make it half of what Apple has these days i will be more then amazed! to dream of anything beyond this is just pure unreal unless someone puts a lot and i mean A LOT of money into it.

Offline KennyR

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2002, 02:13:06 AM »
It's not really the hardware that counts, it's the games companies. Games these days can cost literally millions of dollars to make and a team of dozens of coders, artists, etc - well out of the power of Amiga coders. So to get games of the same quality as other platforms, we'd have to have them ported. We couldn't afford ports of the most successful games, so we'd have to put up with less sucessful ones. So the other platforms would get these better games faster for only a fraction of the hardware price. This cannot continue, or the Amiga has no chance.

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but this is a huge problem. Games companies must somehow be lured back to the Amiga to release games natively instead of ports by 3rd parties years later. To do that will require a bigger user base and some clever commercial maneouvring by a company dedicated only to that cause - and we have, for better or for worse, AInc to do that. Now all we have to do is try to stop the pro-x86 and anti-AInc ppl undermining everything we do so we are big enough and look like a serious enough platform to develop for.

The more people decide that the A1 route is not for them, the less chance we have of that happening. That's really the sad part.
 

Offline Kay

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it
« Reply #3 on: November 17, 2002, 02:21:43 AM »
Honestly, no, I don't think so. Not OS4.x. Maybe OS5.x or higher, if all goes exceptionally well. But to be at the forefront with such a tiny fraction of the userbase, no.

There's always a slight chance, though. I don't think today's games market is very good. Remember in the old days, when you could load up a new game, and don't know how to play it, because you hadn't played anything quite like it before? Those were the golden days of gaming. Nowadays, most games are just some refinement over something which has already been made. If AmigaOS4 could offer something original, then maybe it could attract some attention. I'm not sure how likely that is, though.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think gaming on the AmigaOne will suck. There will probably be some good new games, and many of the games we have today will run a lot better than before. Additionally, we can tap into the Linux and Mac games market. Which means I will get access to Alpha Centauri...:-D

Kay
 

Offline legion

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it
« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2002, 03:03:41 AM »
Kay has an interesting point.  I have thought about this a bit, and (hear me out) this is my conclusion:

How many people do you know that run Windows "just for the games?"  

If I were an investor in AInc, you know what I would throw money into?  getting Team17 to start hacking away on a KILLER game.  Something that will look kick-ass on a Radeon 8500 or a Matrox Parhelia (these cards DO have untapped potential).  This game would ONLY be available on amiga, and it would make the gamer mags/sites drool.  

Would they be pissed that it wasn't a windows game?  without a doubt.  But if it was worthy of the hype, they'd fall all over themselves to get an A1 to review it.  

Granted, coming up with the KILLER game would be a somewhat daunting task, but it would be HUGE step forward for our platform.

The naysayers are going to attack here, saying "a G3 isn't powerful enough to support games like the x86 boxes..."

You're wrong.  Offload all the graphics to the GPU, and the sound mixing to the EMU10k1 chip, and you free up a whole lot of cycles.  This technique wholly why the PS1 was a great gaming rig, and partially explains why the Amiga was so efficient.

*throws out 2 cents*
Have you hugged your KennyR or Paul Gadd today?
 

Offline Tomas

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2002, 03:19:02 AM »
actually its a g4 800mhz, not a g3  ;-)

Only the cheapest model of AmigaOne has a g3 cpu.
 

Offline Rob

Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2002, 03:46:17 AM »
For Amiga to get the attention of the rest of the gaming world it would have to have several "must have" games, games that could you not get for any other system.  Maybe Clickboom's 666 could turn out to be one of those killer apps.  I really don't know though as I have no details of the game.  All their games have been very well produced and polished looking to date though.

I cant see any possibility of this happening in the short term though.  If we are still here in one years time things may begin to change depending on what sort of projects people already have planned or might start soon.  Generally it takes at least two years to develope a really good game.
 

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it
« Reply #7 on: November 17, 2002, 03:49:30 AM »
the 2D days where also alot more profietable for the individual considering it took a very small team if a team at all the produce a 2D game... whereas 3D games take teams...and take much longer to produce it's a way bigger gamble and it isnt done for the fun of it very often..
I think if AOS gets a game foothold it'll be in 5.0+... to me 4.0 will be a stepping stone not a final place to rest...and no i dont think MorphOS will do much bettter...in fact given the stability and the lack of variety of even  classic AOS games that run properly I think MOS will do alot worse...
 

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain
« Reply #8 on: November 17, 2002, 08:21:32 AM »
OK, the resounding reaction seems to be that it will be unlikely. Nice to know everyone on here is realistic, makes a change from all the head-in-the-clouds Apple zealots I have to put up with who constantly whine becuase no-one wants to buy their 'obviously superior' computers ;-)

So, seeinag as not many people so far seem to thing Pegaos/MOS is going to managed at all using A-Box, how is AmogaONE going to be for running old games? I know it will have a hardware solution, in the form of a port to attach an A1200, but will the cost, seeing as you seeem to need a very large tower case and a special one at that maybe, drive people away and instead drive them towards an Emulator also?
 

Offline AmigaMac

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« Reply #9 on: November 17, 2002, 09:26:35 AM »
Well hopefully the Mac game developers will take a chance on the Amiga game market and start porting over their goods... it would only make sense for them to (in my mind)!  Yeah and you're correct about Apple dragging its feet where supporting joysticks and such, Macally finally sent out the drivers for the iShock II, which I have been waiting for since summer!  I hate playing games on the keyboard, which is the main reason I prefer game consoles over playing games on Macs and PCs!

Well we could start sending emails to the various Mac game developers to help the situation, anybody else game for that?
 

Offline yssing

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« Reply #10 on: November 17, 2002, 10:26:07 AM »
Well the way I see it.
The amiga has far better HW than any console out there, that is, as soon as the amiga is released.
Coding for the amiga is not that difficult, even using a low end developer system.
As for 3D the amiga can do alot of that, the new warp3D along with mesa and miniGL can do alot.
Couple that with powerfull 3D HW and a fast PPC, then there is no stopping it.

To be honest, as it is now, the amiga would never even come close to competing with anything out there, this is only because amiga lacks the funding that other big companies have, Nintendo, MS and Sony.
But maybe the partnership with MS will do just that.

Anyway, now is the time to support the amiga, support developers and support the users.
 

Offline game_fan

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« Reply #11 on: November 17, 2002, 10:32:01 AM »
Home computers (whether it be Mac, PC, Amiga, Linux Box) don`t have a great standing with video gaming at the moment.

I have worked at two computer stores for a longish period of time who stock and sales of new major title PC games were always very very poor compared to consoles, the majority of PC software sold was budget software and both stores had considered pulling out of the PC gaming market.

Consoles have taken over and sooner or later the line between computer and console will merge, for instance by the time the PS 3 comes out I wouldn`t be suprised if it offers Web Access, Some Kind of Office Suite and the few other applications that MOST home computer users use

If the Amiga was to succed as a games system again it would have to do something pretty special, as the PC gaming market is failing badly in the eyes of most retailers and another alternative is just not an option unless :-
A) The price of the system was cheap.
B) Original Games
C) Big Title Software Support.
D) Lots of buyers for the system.

I`d love for the Amiga to be a huge gaming system, but in the modern day world consoles are much much more popular and much more reliable and easy to use for gamers.

The Amiga was good as it could be programmed like a console (only having to support one set of chips) thats why it was huge.
 

Offline Step

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« Reply #12 on: November 17, 2002, 11:27:35 AM »
Its hard to say really.
As I see it, the focus of game developers tend to shift from desktop computers to consoles from time to time, today we seem to have a strong market for console games despite their relatively high costs, eventually we might see the focus shift towards the desktop platforms again and perhaps then the Amiga can take a part of it.

As for titles, i think it is important to have titles not present on other platforms, but since most games get ported for finacial reasons, there is most often no titles to show off with, especially when it comes to Amiga.

To grab a big marketshare, i believe we need good quality games not avaible on other platforms, they also need to be cheaper than both consoles and PC games, an unlikely combination.

Perhaps there is a potential if developers within the Amiga community cooperate more, and more open source solutions become avaible, like 3D engines etc, that are of high quality.

Education is also an important part, online courses and material might boost the number of developers, aswell as titles.
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Offline Rob

Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« Reply #13 on: November 17, 2002, 02:16:37 PM »
>Education is also an important part, online courses and material
>might boost the number of developers, as well as titles.

It would also be nice to see new books like the ones Bruce Smith used
to publish.  A new book which teaches you how to program for Amiga and
covers modern aspects of the OS including AHI and Warp3D would be
great for beginers.
For me nothing beats a book.
 

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Re: Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?
« Reply #14 on: November 17, 2002, 03:24:22 PM »
Quote


For me nothing beats a book



Not everyone likes learning via books. I am dyslexic and find reading a chore. Unless you can present the data for the Warp3D and AHI systems in the form of a rivveting Terry Pratchett novel I'm not likely to go near a book on the subject ;-)

Seriously though. Books are not everyones way of learning. Online courses (I am doing one in Network support at the moment) are flexible and useful to a broad range of people.

I'm sure all these ideas are good. They should be put to Amiga Inc. and Hyperion to see what we an get.