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Author Topic: Cinemaware's Wings Remastered coming to Amiga NG platforms  (Read 22282 times)

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Offline Aegis

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Re: Cinemaware's Wings Remastered coming to Amiga NG platforms
« on: February 16, 2016, 06:46:15 PM »
I just got the demo up and running in WinUAE/OS4 using Wazp3D - it's a little shonky (lots of missing graphics and it's pretty ugly @ 320x240) but I'll be damned if if doesn't work - it's actually kinda playable too :D
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Offline Aegis

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Re: Cinemaware's Wings Remastered coming to Amiga NG platforms
« Reply #1 on: February 18, 2016, 12:30:21 PM »
Quote from: Daytona675x;804197
@Aegis
on WinUAE with Wazp3D? You're crazy :)
Well, I don't know the detailed latest limitations of such a setup right now, but AFAIK there's still that VRAM limit. And the game requires quite some VRAM (otherwise you get your missing gfx). Maybe Wazp3D could get around that if doing pure software rendering.


Call it curiosity :D The beta of WinUAE 3.3.0 allows you to use uaegfx with OS4 so 512mb video RAM's now possible (I was running Wings with 32). The real bottleneck is speed - even on an i7, the emulated PPC + software rendering is too slow to really 'play' wings but as you say, it's fun to see it running.

Toni plans to implement Voodoo 3 emulation at some point - presumably running on its own core - that should open the door to a few more apps and games running nicely on OS4/WinUAE (although fast RAM's still stuck at 128mb until Hyperion patch it).
Catapultem habeo. Nisi pecuniam amnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.
 

Offline Aegis

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Re: Cinemaware's Wings Remastered coming to Amiga NG platforms
« Reply #2 on: February 18, 2016, 02:22:42 PM »
Quote from: Niding;804209
A bit offtopic, but somewhat not :)

With the current level of emulation, nerds like me that aint forking out the money needed for PPC machines, but owns AOS4 FE Classic; the customer base for people like Daytona just expanded quite a bit.


There's three big limitations unfortunately: speed, fast RAM and hardware accelerated 2D/3D.

My WinUAE setup (which is a nice compromise between freeing up precious RAM and not strip-mining the OS of all its functionality) boots with 81mb free - by turning off a few things I can get that up to around 96mb. You can do a lot with that - I've even run Blender and done a few (small) renders with it (and of course, Wings loads and runs :D). But there's some OS4 software that expects large amounts of free RAM and emulation currently falls over there - maybe Hyperion will fix that - we'll see.

uaegfx doesn't support hardware compositing and whilst you can emulate 3D with Wazp and compositing with patchcompositetags, these are being run at the expense of CPU power which given that the PPC emulation is somewhat comparable to a SAM460 is a problem for games like Wings - there simply isn't enough grunt left over to run a complex game at playable speeds with these overheads.

Or to put it another way - on my i7, the OS4 port of Quake gets around 28fps @ 320x200 - quite playable but still much slower than hardware-accelerated systems.

I would however urge devs to look into the possibility of running their apps/games without compositing - some stuff like BubbleShooterDX looks like it should run easily under emulation but in my tests it was unplayable. On the flipside, Chocolate Doom runs blazingly fast and even Hyperion's Freespace port is playable under WinUAE.

Quote from: Niding;804209
Looking forward to the pdf or whatever format of "how to best setup WinUAE/AOS4.1FE Classic", which I belive you mentioned somewhere. :)


Stay tuned ;)
Catapultem habeo. Nisi pecuniam amnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.