Common amiga knowledge that's wrong

[BlackMonk]

You didn't (and don't) see PC developers develop games for the lowest common denominator.  You see them develop games for the smallest minority that has high end machines.

I think over the last 5 years, as developing for both PC and console platforms has become more common to help offset some of the huge development costs, you DO see PC developers develop games for the lowest common denominator.  In this case, it is considered to be game consoles.

If you look around at PC gaming forums you will probably find people lamenting that "PC gaming is dead" and "consoles ruined PC gaming" because many developers seem to concentrate on their console versions and do a half-ass port to the PC platform that performs poorly or has bugs and intrusive DRM.  You'll see games that aren't really tailored to PC-specific control schemes--mouse support just slapped on but the UI is still geared towards a TV and gamepad control.  The graphics will be the same just that sometimes you can run at higher resolutions and maybe enable antialiasing and anisotropic filtering.  The textures won't be any higher detail to account for more video memory available with PCs.  The geometry of the levels or models won't be any higher, either, for the more powerful PC video hardware.  

And really, if you want to maximize your investment nowadays, you'd be stupid not to make sure your game can run on as weak of PC hardware as you possibly can.  Games like Crysis are the exception, not the rule.  The $3 000 000 000 USD game franchise Call of Duty doesn't require much hardware to run and has probably had most of its sales from its console versions (I'm too lazy to try and find NPD breakdowns to confirm).  If your games now cost a few million to create you gotta make that money up somewhere.

[Moto]

As with everything else, there's a lot of
Common knowledge: Doom killed the amiga

Why it's wrong: Doom was released in December of 93. Commodore declared bankruptcy in April 94. There's plain not enough time for an entire platform to go from doing well to dying off, based on one game in about 4 months. (Doom was massively important in fuelling the PC as a valid games platform, but that's an entirely different story)

I won't speculate on what killed Commodore the company.  BUT I have to tell you that for my friends and I who had Amiga 500s at the time, DOOM was definitely the thing that made us (I had about 7 friends with Amiga 500s) switch from playing on the old 500s to the PC.  Before that, the PC was just a boring work box.  DOOM and all the 3D games that followed were the reason that I bought tons of video boards, CPUs and RAM for my PC and why my Amiga sat in the closet until last year.   Just telling you what happened from my perspective (in my early 20s at the time), because I lived it.

[desiv]

I won't speculate on what killed Commodore the company.  BUT I have to tell you that for my friends and I who had Amiga 500s at the time, DOOM was definitely the thing that made us (I had about 7 friends with Amiga 500s) switch from playing on the old 500s to the PC.  Before that, the PC was just a boring work box.  DOOM and all the 3D games that followed were the reason that I bought tons of video boards, CPUs and RAM for my PC and why my Amiga sat in the closet until last year.   Just telling you what happened from my perspective (in my early 20s at the time), because I lived it.

Yeah, I just don't get that.  (Not denying it)

I mean, I liked Doom.  It was fun.  That type of game is fun.  I think Redneck Rampage is my favorite, followed by Duke Nukem 3D.  :-)

But, I'd play Doom for a bit, then move on to Gobliiins or Jazz Jackrabbit or Commander Keen...

I just don't get how the rest of the planet (it seemed) decided that all games had to be FPS from that point on...  :confused::confused:

Different crowds, not being a hardcore gamer.  I knew several people with Amiga's, and they all moved to PCs, but for them it was all about business software.  We liked games, but we liked getting paid more.. :lol:

However, it was the same result..  

desiv

[save2600]

I just don't get how the rest of the planet (it seemed) decided that all games had to be FPS from that point on...  :confused::confused:

Or 3D  

3D literally killed my interest in video gaming and that's fine, because I was already in my mid-late 20's when it became all the rage, BUT! It's fine for driving and maybe the occasional shooter, just a shame it became the standard for almost any genre now though.

[ToddH]

I held on to my A1200 until the first 3DFX card was released for PC's. The incredible graphics that a Voodoo-based PC delivered was just too good to resist.

[Karlos]

I held on to my A1200 until the first 3DFX card was released for PC's. The incredible graphics that a Voodoo-based PC delivered was just too good to resist.

IMHO, the image 3D image quality of the voodoo 1 and 2 series was atrocious. Much preferred the output from the early ATI/nVidia boards even then. Matrox too, though 3D wasn't really their thing.

[Hell Labs]

Or 3D  

3D literally killed my interest in video gaming and that's fine, because I was already in my mid-late 20's when it became all the rage, BUT! It's fine for driving and maybe the occasional shooter, just a shame it became the standard for almost any genre now though.

Really? What killed my interest in videogames was the failure of the dreamcast (and to a lesser extent gamecube), and the move away from the PSX/N64/Saturn to newer systems. After those faded away, games companies went from trying to make videogames to "generic action film #145347, by an incompitent version of pixar. oh, and you have to push buttons too". I have to say that those four/five systems are probably the greatest consoles of all time.

3D didn't ruin videogames. aiming for the lowest common denominator, and people realising there was money in it did. I think there should be a "polygon ration", because the gta series always looked cack in 3D but were great games. GoW, Later NFS games, all sports titles since forever? Crap.

[koaftder]

IMHO, the image 3D image quality of the voodoo 1 and 2 series was atrocious. Much preferred the output from the early ATI/nVidia boards even then. Matrox too, though 3D wasn't really their thing.

I miss Matrox.

[koaftder]

Really? What killed my interest in videogames was the failure of the dreamcast

SoulReaver for the win! Dreamcast was awesome. Still got mine, still fire it up from time to time.

[playgeneration]

The problem was developers and users decided they wanted amiga games to be like those on PC and the newer 3D consoles. An 030 card and RAM was expensive enough, and even that isn't upto much for 3D gaming.
 
What we should have had is 2D games refined beyond what we had seen before, rather than tons of blocky Doom clones. If you aimed at 1200 with say some fast RAM and a hard drive you could produce some great 2D games. Look at the Neo Geo, games such as Metal Slug took 2D gaming to new heights. Instead of jumping on the 3D bandwagon, devs should have played to the Amigas strengths and created great 2D games instead.

[ElPolloDiabl]

It's not 3D that ruined their creativity, it's all the buyouts and takeovers. They can't make challenging games because occasional gamers will not buy the game. They make them mouse driven so people without a joystick can play.

Take an RTS if you play online both sides build up a small army and rush each other. The game lasts less then 2 minutes. There is no variation to this type of play. The only stand out to this Starcraft, it was designed a lot better and you can get long games happening.

More and more effort is put into 'looks'. I'm sure it impresses the execs who control the budget. You simply won't get the same quality of games nowadays unless it is done by a small developer.

[Hell Labs]

SoulReaver for the win! Dreamcast was awesome.  Still got mine, still fire it up from time to time.

What's it like in comparison to the psx version, better graphics? I have a copy of it but I've never actually played it, my RF cable is knackered and I can't be arsed replacing it.

More and more effort is put into 'looks'. I'm sure it impresses the execs who control the budget. You simply won't get the same quality of games nowadays unless it is done by a small developer.

Do valve still count as small? I mean, TF2 doesn't seem to be profitable in the slightest, what with them costantly working on free content for an "old" game, nor does counter strike or any of their other less well known multiplayer games. They genuinely seem to be doing it for the fans (pretty much every game developer there is a modder valve hired, including the origional HL team). Of course, the games publishing "hobby" probably counts as a licence to print money.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I like Team fortress.

[johnklos]

Actually even more wrong ....

The CS-MK1-manual (1st print) is from April 95, even if some units gone on sale in 94 they certainly weren't "available" in the common. If your in for a shocker, someone might even pull out an invoice from that time. I remember paying 1800DM for my Blizz2060 (must have been 96) shortly after they came out. Inflation corrected that would have been well over 1000Euro.

Sure GFX-Cards did exist, in the form of a Picasso2 at 800DM hardly a gamers-card today, and back than there was no CGX or P96, all you had was costom WB-emu and/or EGS. Pretty much useless for anything but specialized productivity SW.

Btw. RAM was really expensive back in those days, I only bought 8MB for that 2060 card and I do remember it being even worse before.

So to get a "high-end" Amiga in lets say 1996 (since 94 is to unrealistic for such specs) consisting of:
68060 with 32MB or more
A4000(T) (no point in playing games over Z2)
CV-64 (guess that should be the best non-3D card of that time)

You would easily need over 6000DM (3000Euro), to get what ?

A CPU/mobo comparable to a P90 ?
A GFX-card featuring a chip otherwise fond in bargain-bin VLB-cards ?

Or in short a 2000DM (1000Euro) PC ....

I spent $2000 USD for an Amiga 1200, a Blizzard 1260, the SCSI IV kit and a 64 meg 72 pin SIMM. The SIMM alone was $600 of that price. I used a SCSI drive, monitor and 16 meg SIMM I already had for a total of 80 megs - I was the envy of all my friends. This was in 1995, and PowerMacs were pretty darned new. Part of the reason I bought it was to run Mac software, and compared to a PowerMac the price wasn't bad. Plus, it was faster at running most programs than a PowerMac 8100 - I ran my machine along side of a PowerMac 8100 for quite a while.

It was definitely MUCH more useful than a Pentium 90 system and very much worth the price. Plus, it's lasted much longer than other computers. It's been in constant use since I bought it:

http://www.ziaspace.com/~john/lilith/

So I'd have to say that the comparisons to PCs aren't really fair because there are lots of things you can do with Amigas you can't do with Windows machines.

[B00tDisk]

Common Knowledge: You can turn an Amiga off at any time

Why it's wrong: Only God knows if file handles are actually closed. While writes to disk are immediate, programs may not actually make the library call after you clikc on interface buttons.

I killed my first set of WB disks 'just turning it off'.

No idea what was going on, but I shut 'er down just as I simultaneously noted the drive activity light was on.  Booted back up and...NDOS:

It was months before I had a functional set of disks again

[desiv]

I killed my first set of WB disks 'just turning it off'.

No idea what was going on, but I shut 'er down just as I simultaneously noted the drive activity light was on.  Booted back up and...NDOS:

It was months before I had a functional set of disks again

This was the beauty of putting the on/off switch on the PSU!

When you wanted to shutdown your Amiga 500/1200, you have to reach way to the back of the desk or bend down to the floor to get to the PSU.
By the time you do, all the applications have finished.

If you thought you were smart and put everything on a power strip so you can just reach over and kill it, well then it's your own fault!

:roflmao::roflmao::roflmao:

To be honest, that can always happen with any computer, and it's always a good idea to wait, but I can't remember that happening to me...
I think I was in the habit of always waiting for drive activity lights tho.
I even remember on the DOS side when we had to use the PARK command.  :-)

I'd say it's pretty rare on the Amiga, but possible..

desiv