Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?

[ChaosLord]

@AmigaClassicRule
If you find any bugs in Total Chaos then please tell me about it.

But if your Amiga crashes while playing TotalChaos and running Ibrowse or WookieChat or Amirc then I don't actually want to know about it  When I run those softwares for 3 days straight on a clean Amiga (no TC) I always crash.  Unless I run TLSFmem then I can make it for 5 days.

What I am saying is if your Amiga crashes and you really think it was the fault of Total Chaos then I really need to know because I take bugs seriously.  Die bugs die! :flame:

There is only 1 bug in the game right now that I know of and it only happens if you use SFS.  It allegedly does not affect PFS3 or FFS.  We have a patch that fixes the problem and I will send it to you.  Do you use SFS?

I hope you enjoy the game and don't worry about how small it is or how big it is

[ChaosLord]

I pulled up some YouTube videos of this game just based on this comment.  Shame the quality gets so chopped down on anything uploaded to that site, but still looks pretty good, and kudos for your hard work!  

Thanxx0rz dude!  I was starting to get bummed about the whole thing.  Your Raise Dead spell has revived me

Ok the thing about those videos is that the guy who made them did them on a 780Mhz Laptop so, some of the choppiness might be YouTube's fault but a lot of it is the guy's computer just plain chops the hell out of the anims.  Speeds up, slows down, lots of frames of animation go missing here and there, sound is not always in sync...  I hate it

I offered to make him a special version of the game with anims that play in super slow motion so that none of the frames would go missing (no more jarring steps) but he was not interested so I kinda forgot about it.

Now that I just bought myself a brand new 3.1Ghz bgcpc I might possibly make some videos of my own, where the gfx are all there and in sync with the sound so it will at least look and sound like it does in real life (hopefully)...  I have no idea how to record such a video but at least now I have the equipment.

To the best of my knowledge (which is not very far or anything) Total Chaos was the very first playable game on YouTube.  You can actually play it on YouTube.  Yeah its amazingly simplistic compared to the real game and honestly might make you hate the game for how simple the YouTube version is,  but it "works".

AGA: 1992 Lives Forever

[ChaosLord]

@Lord AGA

I agree!

And I used to load Wings into my 8MB ram disk.  Made things way faster.  I used to do that with several cinemaware games.  Cinemaware games were great but they sure did load a lot.

I also used to play Might & Magic II while multitasking a screengrabber.  I would grab the screen and save it to RAM (I did not even have a hard drive yet).  I would have Deluxe Paint running with my Might & Magic.  I would load up the screen grab adjust the colors and then print it out to my printer while moving on to the next area to be mapped.

Having a printed map that did not disappear between adventures, saved me a lot of time.

Everyone else was stuck with a tiny little $3000.00 640K pc but I was using 3000-4000K of my 9000K total just to play M&M2 with professional mapping ability. :laugh1:

[ChaosLord]

An interesting thing to note about Doom 3 (since it was suddenly brought into discussion although the Doom in question was quite obviously the original one)

I don't think anyone cares about the filesize of the Original Doom in 1993.  It is 2012.  By my reckoning that makes it 19 years ago.

If you want to compare archive sizes of 1993 games then in 1993 TC was either at the 5MB level or 16MB level.  I don't remember which.  Toooo long ago.   If I had to pick I would say 5MB.

For those who are obsessed with archive sizes:
Why can't we compare the archive size that today's Doom sequel is?

is that it doesn't require more than 256 MB RAM.

You mean for the PS3 version?

So translated into English: Doom 3 requires 100% of all the ram available to the hardware, correct?

Doom 3 on PS3 ties up all the hardware resources and a player may not type a letter to grandma while the game is paused.  Is that correct?

[ChaosLord]

If PS3 games can use 256MB then Amiga games should be allowed to use 256MB, right?

[ChaosLord]

A unlimited number of games can be written in the future that need 256MB or more.

[ChaosLord]

I don't mean the PS3 version of Doom 3.

Well tell me what you do mean.  I can't read your mind.

Are you saying PS3 version of Doom 3 uses more than 256MB?
Are you saying PS3 version of Doom 3 uses less than 256MB?

Are you saying PC version (which is a port of the PS3 or XBOX version) uses 256MB?

Or are you saying we should just drop this whole discussion since it doesn't actually matter how much ram DOOM3 uses?

[ChaosLord]

I have 256 on my A1200 and I ever use it all. But I do download to ram disk and use it for temp storage, so potentially I could use it all.

Do you consider your Amiga to have been "frankensteined"?

[ChaosLord]

You are the one who brought up Doom 3 in the first place to compare apples to oranges, remember? When the comparison stops being in your favor you suddenly decide that it doesn't matter.

Commodore John brought up Doom first.  CommodoreJohn compared apples to oranges.  He compred a game for a different genre (FPS vs TBS), made for a different platform, using a different engine, using a different type of gfx and produced in a different century.

If you want to compare 2 games then you need to compare the latest versions don't you?

Or at least versions from the same century?

Doom 3 came up because 1. he provided no size.  2. its the first thing in the list when I looked for Doom.  None of that is my fault.

Its 2012 not 1993

[ChaosLord]

@AmigaClassicRule & Linde.

ChaosLord was getting stick for his stance of making high spec games that required an upgraded machine on the grounds that he should aim at a lower spec, I was just pointing out that if you haven't got the spec another choice exists.

I made an A1000/A500 Total Chaos for many years.  Low-spec.  Lores gfx.  Ran from a single floppy.  Nobody really cared.  In the present day I know of 3 ppl who prefer the ancient games in the series complete with their gawdawful gfx and sfx that sound like they escaped from a burning buiilding of C64s.

Once I made a higher specced game reuiring AGA Amigas and a hard drive and extra memory more ppl started to enjoy the game.  All the extra colors allowed me to greatly improve the user interface.  Extra cpu power meant I was not afraid to code better AI. etc. etc.

Just for the record, I loathe emulation and would rather use classic hardware anyday and with games like TotalChaos around buying all that RAM and CPU power becomes more worthwhile. Sadly, if it needs an 060, I still need UAE

Whether Total Chaos "needs" an 060 is a subjective opinion.  I say it "needs" it becuase all the compression and decompression goes noticeably faster.  The framerate of the anims is higher.  The unlha time of the archive goes noticeably faster.  The AI in a complex situation goes a bit faster.  its just a whole bunch of little things.  My main reason for recommending 060s is simply that the 060 has dual 8K caches that can hold 7 tiles at once and give the animations a speedboost.  All Amigas should have cheap mass-produced 200Mhz 060s AFAIC.

But alas we live in a different world.

Many ppl play the game on a 50Mhz 030, 33Mhz 030 or (GASP!) 25Mhz 030.  To me this would be agony.  But to them they are totally kewl with it.  "So the onscreen monsters animate more slowly?  so what?  Its the gameplay that counts!"  And I can't argue with that.  The game play is exactly the same no what CPU you are using.  As long as u don't mind waiting an extra few seconds for your Autosave file to be generated each turn then an 030 could be for you.

But for those of you who love ur miggy enough to feed her an 040 or 060 you will get noticeably faster Frames Per Second thruout the game, faster save/load.  Faster AI.

My dream is a hires game where all the onscreen anims move at least 60fps.  060 gets me closest to my dream.

Since you meantioned WinUAE, recently someone complained about how long it takes to start the game.  I immediatlely knew the problem was because he had run Ibrowse and other MUI software first which fraggled out his RAM real bad, this slows -everything- down teribly.  + He is using unmodified plainjain IDE A1200 port.  arrrgh.  slowest IDE on the planet.

So anyway a bunch of ppl got together and raced our startup times.
Lots of interestng times on different configs.  To make a long story short I show you the 2 fastest times:
Amiga 1200      50Mhz 060 old slow ram old SCSI hard drive 15 seconds
PC multicore  3100Mhz Winuae new fast ram new IDE UDMA hard drive 12 seconds.

I was really expecing WinUAE to go faster than that!  C'mon its got SUPERFAST DDR3 RAM and superfast brand new high density drive and superfast brand new hard drive controller.

What if the amiga had a 100Mhz 060 in it?  It might have beaten the 3000 mhz pc or at least tied it.

[ChaosLord]

There's of course also the possibility that your WinUAE is badly configured

Can you give an example of "badly configured" ?

Where is the "Badly Configured" / "Properly Configured" option located in WinUAE?

[ChaosLord]

That's impossible to answer, considering I don't know what you're trying to emulate.

 Fastest Amiga possible.  That actually works.

But assuming you're aiming for maximum speed, are you using 040 emulation

Why did you say 040 instead of 020 or 030 or 060?

Most ppl have their cpu set to 020 or 030 in WinUAE for maximum compatibility and speed.  So why do you suggest 040?

with JIT enabled

Without JIT WInUAE runs at the speed of a 1Mhz a500 if I am lucky.  Less if I am unlucky.  So I -always- have JIT on all the time.  Turning it off is unbearable.

 and disabled cycle exact chipset emulation?"

Yes of course.  But the option says "Fastest possible but maintain chipset timing"

[ChaosLord]

At least in the past 040 emulation was the best option when developing for the 060, might have changed since.


Well, on my Pentium4 running stuff without JIT is surely slow, but not 1MHz A500 slow
I also use JIT all the time, and it makes a huge difference for me, even on my old netbook. The speeds I get are way beyond anything an 060 Amiga can produce, including diskaccess. Which is why I wondered if you have it turned on, considering your loadingtimes don't differ that much.

May I ask what your host system is?

Can you run the timing test on your system and lemme know what you get?

Download TotalChaosAGAr6.lha from aminet.
1. unlha it. (time how long this takes)  This is just for fun since someone mentioned it earlier.
2. Run the game.  This means double click its icon and start your stopwatch.  stop the stopwatch when the blackish screen comes up that allows you to enter your wizard names and teams.  This is for historial purposes.  Just interesting.  The first time the game runs, all the audio in the game must be decompressed.  Its thousands of files, loads of disk thrashing.

Having completely that test  we are about to do the REAL timing test that so many ppl did the other week.  Its called the "2nd run test"

Quit the game


4. Double click the game icon and start your stopwatch.  When the black screen with the wizard names and teams comes up. stop the stopwatch.  This is the meaninful test because this is what the player experiences every time he loads the game.  All that other stuff was just a once in a lifetime thing.

Be sure to say the hardware you used. what kind of Drive, HD?  what size?  SSD?  Is ur drive on SATA 300 OR SATA 600 or PATA ?  How many Ghz you have?  How many cores?  the usual stuff.

Thanxx0rz

[ChaosLord]

@BriteLite
Interesting that u got faster times than the other guys....

Was your AGA emu on?
Was your PAULA emu on?

Did the gfx look right?

Music sounded ok?

I wonder if yours loaded faster than his because you had 040 set.  020 and 030 (+FPU) are supposed to be fastest.... :confused:

If 040 is faster then 060 should be even fastererer

What filessystem did u run the game from?

Did u unlha the game from within your amiga?
Or did u unla from outside your Amiga with 7zip?


I will get brand new 3.1Ghz bgcpc and try this myself at some point.

[ChaosLord]

The 060 option doesn't speed up anything, as it really doesn't emulate a 060.

But "The 040 option doesn't speed up anything, as it really doesn't emulate a 040.", right?

I've mounted a directory in Windows as a harddrive (instead of using a hardfile), so that might actually speed up loading times.

AHA!  u cheated!

I appreciate ur test results and everything but as the NTFS dirs option has multiple bugs that corrupt the game, it does not count.

Unless Toni fixed the bugs in the intervening years (4?).  It has been quite some years since I documented the bugs so it is possible.  Yes it acted like more than one bug iirc.

All I can say is that until I can certify that all NTFS dir bugs have been fixed, timing tests have to be done from some kind of hardfile.  FFS, SFS, PFS3, or some other more exotic one.  Hardfiles are supposed to be pretty fast.  I would be very interested to see your times from a hardfile, to see how much difference it makes, if any.

I am wondering how PFS3 compares to SFS compares to FFS 4k compares to FFS 16k.

I wanted to release Total Chaos on an FFS 4K hardfile way back before PFS3 was released for free.  But I was in horrible pain and could do absolutely nothing but watch the world go by all these years.

I have now recovered just a little bit to the point that I can write a few forum msgs here and there, but I hafta be real careful not to over do it.

Anyway I figured a FFS 4K or 16K with a bunch of Addbuffers would really whoopass. :cool:  But now PFS3 is out and that throws a monkey wrench into my plans for world domination :kitty:

I can share my WinUAE configuration-file, if you want to try it yourself.

Maybe later after I have my new 3.1Ghz quad-core WinUAE machine set up.  I bought it for the purpose of performing as close to a 50Mhz real Amiga (or better) as possible.  I would love for it to solidly go at 100Mhz speed but I have never seen it do that.   I have a few ideas for making WinUAE go faster.  We shall see.

[ChaosLord]

Took 3:10min

My machine is an old Pentium4, ~3GHz and single core. Old regular (not SSD) 160GB SATA harddrive which hasn't been defragmented in ages. 5 year old WinXP installation and WinUAE 2.4.1

Based on the time to unpack all the audio files your 3000Mhz pc runs at the speed of a 100Mhz 060.  Or you could say it runs at about the speed of a 50Mhz 060 which has been connected to 50Mhz SRAM.

This is either good or bad depending on how you look at it.

I was really hoping for more speed than that.

I need 400Mhz 060 power to do the things I want in a game.

I really want to add in .mp3 playback for the WinUAE edition.  But if all ppl can get is 100Mhz 060 speed.... playing a .mp3 will place a huge strain on the game.  (remember the game has a zillion other things it has to do besides the music).

I also want to add .xm and .s3m  16-32 channel mod support.  But once again these can really drink CPU power.

We have actually supported 64 channel med mods for many many years but never really used them as too many ppl are playing the game on sloooooooooow 030s which just can't deal with 64 channel mods and an entire game with heavy animation at the same time.

P.s. what is your frameskip set to?