How do you port games from PC to Amiga?

[SamuraiCrow]

Learn to walk before you run.  If you only know Commodore Basic then you'll need to get an Amiga Basic first.  If you want to program for classic Amiga, I'd recommend getting AmosPro even though it doesn't support AGA yet becuase when you first write games you'll probably need to do your own artwork anyway.  There is an effort in progress to make an AGA, PowerPC and PC compatible sequel to Amos tentatively called Mattathias.  Using Amos to write games will soon become portable.

If you're writing games just for classic Amiga and don't care about getting them to run well on PowerPC or better, then download AmiBlitz instead.

Quake3 is out for the AmigaOS version 4 on the PowerPC processors but it has bugs due to the poor implementation of OpenGL currently available.

As for learning C, that's a good idea but a difficult task.  StormC 4 is good for classic Amigas but I currently am using a cross-development environment on both Linux and Windows.  See Zerohero's website for free downloads to the GCC cross-compilers and if you want a graphical environment for them, see AmiDevCpp instead.  Of course you'll need to run WinUAE to test your code but that's not a huge problem if you have both a PC and a classic Amiga.

If you have another platform besides classic Amiga, I'd recommend learning sdlBasic since it has been ported to both AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS on the PowerPC.  Program games using SDL and OpenGL which can be easily ported to AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS.  Unfortunately these programs slow to a crawl on AmigaOS 3.x due to the old 680x0 processors.

[SamuraiCrow]

Don't use AmigaBasic.  It has too many bugs and is written by Microsoft.  Use Amos or AmiBlitz instead.  See my previous post for information.

[SamuraiCrow]

I think the classic Amiga version of SDL requires a graphics card or WinUAE running Picasso96 to run.  Of course SDL programs will compile natively on Windows anyway so why not look into writing SDL programs on your laptop and then let a cross-compiler port them to the Amiga for you.

-edit-

Since "Little Computer People" originated on the Commodore 64 it should be possible to do something simple on the Amiga kind of like that.  But do keep it simple.  It is hard work to write software.

[SamuraiCrow]

trekiej wrote:
I hope this is not too off topic.
Can the Amiga do matrix math? (Single Instruction Multiple Data)
I guess the FP Math unit would be responsible for this if it is available.

Some AmigaOne models running AmigaOS 4 have G4 processors with an Altivec SIMD unit, as do some Pegasos IIs running MorphOS.  SIMD processing was a little after the time of the Classic Amigas.

[SamuraiCrow]

For more information on AmosPro, log in to the forums on http://liquido2.com .  Also, there's printed copies of the manual for sale at Software Hut (see the fifth entry on the page linked).

[SamuraiCrow]

@Bishman

Why'd you have to dig up this old opinionated thread just to tack a message on the end?  If you want to start a new thread with a new title, look for a button on the screen that says New Thread or something similar.  :-x