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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: mantisspider on November 14, 2003, 06:13:23 AM
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Hi guys,
ive just been looking for Robocop 3 and it got me thinking. The 3D engine made by DID for Robocop 3 ran flawlessly on my A500+ (2mb) and i cry when i think how given the power of the AGA 68020 Amigas could have allowed DID to push it farther.
Just some nice textures added to give the illusion of more detailed polycount would have us saying "Doom who?"
thanks CU amiga for helping TFX come to the amiga.
gives the amiga a glimps of what DID went on to make.
TFX3-F22 from DID (http://www.compulink.co.uk/~go1/features/1997/hang9.htm) : this 5 year old game used a PC or PowerPC system that the Amiga has caught up with. 3DFX graphic cards, hey we have those. so come on DID bring these game over to the amiga...
check out this flight sim, I still cant find any amiga game that comes close to that detail. please someone correct me if im wrong and show me the amiga game that does, cos i really want to see this level of detail on my amiga.
the fact that amiga users wernt willing to all go out and buy A4000s or upgrade their 1200's to 68040 or 60 CPUs meant that developers wernt pushing for this kind of realism in their amiga games.
what stopped the Amiga from being a threat to the PC and killed off the amiga(ok kept us on life support in a dark corner of teh hospital)? we did! the Amiga owners who wouldnt all go out and upgrade their machine spending shed loads of money.
You could hear PC owners moaning when they parted with their cash for those graphic cards and new processors. but it what felt like an instant the PC went from being mocked as feeble 386 compared to the beautiful Amiga, to the machine that nearly every home had in their bedroom.
It took a long time for the 'upgrade at high cost or stay behind' mentality to hit home with teh Amiga users and developers. But we are here and we hope its just not too late for people to see. Thank the world for people like Hyperion (and the brave band of developers out there) who are working on the amiga.
If DID never left the Amiga we would have a list of the best flight sims ever made on the platform. The WARGEN II engine is still awesome in 2003.
check out this nice DID interveiw (http://www.combatsim.com/archive/htm/htm_arc1/did1.htm)
EF2000 had some incredibly low requirements to run it
80486 DX2, 66MHz, 8 MB RAM, 5MB EMS, 12 MB free Hard Drive space, 500KB Conventional Memory, VESA compliant SVGA graphics card and SVGA color monitor, 2X CD-ROM Drive, MS-DOS 5.0
Optimum: 90 MHz or faster Pentium, 16 MB RAM with EMS manager, 5 MB free Hard Drive space, VESA compliant SVGA graphics card with PCI or VESA local bus, MPC level 2 compatible quad speed CD-ROM drive, Joystick, Throttle, Rudder Pedals, Microsoft compatible mouse, Sound Blaster AWE32 or Gravis Ultrasound
the land of "what if's" is fun to play in. TFX pushed the A1200 as far as she would go without a graphics card. Robocop 3 played happily on my A500+. An optimised engine coded specifically for the Amiga improving on the engine made for Robocop 3 would definately have us playing in a much happier 3D world.
Damocles was awesome. IT WAS HUGE! ok graphics had a pretty low polycount BUT IT WAS A SOLAR SYSTEM TO PLAY IN! okay the badly drawn faces on square heads in Mercenary III wernt the best. Novagen were ahead of their time with these games though.
The playing area is not just a town, not just a city, not just a country, not just a planet, but a whole solar system – a good 4,000,000,000 km in circumference, packed with 19 planets and 19 moons. What's more, you have complete freedom. You can do anything, go anywhere, meet anyone and say everything. There's public transport and taxis to mooch about in, there are spaceships and battle craft for interplanetary jetsetting, there are casinos, shops, TV stations, farms, monuments
This game ran on a standard 68000 with 512Kb memory. COME ON there arnt any games since then that have that much depth. Wow GTA3 allows you to drive a city. We used to drive, fly and walk in a Solar system buddy, get with the program sister...
a collection of reviews for mercenary III with some small screenshots (http://www.classicgaming.com/amigareviews/mercena3.htm)
1988 saw StarGlider 2, but what was all the fuss for that StarFox game on the SNES? StarFox helped sell more SNES consoles that StreetFighter II probably did. Gaurdian CD32 on the Amiga showed to all that we too could do it but the controls were pretty hard. but check out StarFox screenshots:
screenshots of starfox on the SNES (http://www.mobygames.com/game/shots/p,/gameId,6629/gameShotId,47392/)
okay, now check out StarGlider 2 screenshots
starGlider 2 screenshots (http://www.classicgaming.com/amigareviews/stargli2.htm#starglider2zzap)
StarFox came out in 1993, StarGlider 1988, Mercenary 3 in 1992, Robocop 3 in 1992. Are we really gonna think that the Amiga couldnt kick ass with 3D games before Quake and even Doom were showing everyone up? Guardian could have been made sooner than it was but it seemed like the Amiga developers gave up hope when they saw Doom and the Quake engine.
Some great innovations were to come with a Voxel flight engine being made on the Amiga, The Shadow of the Third Moon did to the Amiga what Comanche was doing for the PC. Voxel flight engines do work, it would be good to see how far they could push this work now on a PPC amiga with a Voodoo3. Does anyone know if anymore games using their engine were made?
OOOH MY GOD! how much have i written? well its 5.40am and i better get some sleep, i gotta wake up in 4 hours time. aah a late night rant, always good for the system.
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DID was bought by Ocean, which in turn was bought out by Infogrames (now Atari) and they closed it down.
The DID guys all got jobs elsewhere. I've worked with a few of the guys from DID as some of them came to work at Warthog in Manchester where I was a coder (Phil Mervik, Jon Radcliffe, Jon Spencer). From what they've told me about the Amiga version of TFX is that it was bugged to f*** and this is why it was never released other than as a magazine freebie.
I suppose Atari still hold the rights to all the DID games and IP.
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Thanks mate, shame about all these take overs. Mark it up to another company and collection of rights owned by the all mighty Atari.