Am I the only one who doesn't hate AGA?

[fishy_fiz]

Interesting topic, so I thought I'd add my 2 cents...  

Well, 1stly I think AGA suffered from 2 things. Firstly, it's base model ('020, no fast 2meg chip), was a little crippling. To take advantage of the improvements in aga it really needs cpu to be using fast ram. Not just for the added raw cpu grunt, but so aga itself isnt as crippled. A 68000 + ocs/ecs can get away with living on chip ram, an aga machine not so much.
Secondly Im not sure AGA really got much of a chance to show what it's capable of. Most of the more impressive amiga games are written specifically for the machine and with it's strengths in mind. By the time AGA was around and the "base" aga systems where typically good enough to let aga spread its wings the obsession for amiga coders was "doom on the amiga", and very few AGA games where written to its strengths.

If a 1 meg 68000 ocs/ecs machine can do things like Elfmania, Lionheart, Ruff n Tumble, etc. surely an aga machine with even a 68020 and a few meg fast ram could be capable of something beyond the snes/megadrive. It's a shame we'll probably never know for sure.

All this aside though, while Ive predominately used RTG based systems for a number of years now, aga, and the limitations it imposes I get a kick out of.Seeing how nice looking a Workbench I can make while using limited color depth and so on, while still having it fast enough, and functional. For practical use I much prefer using RTG, but AGA has it's own charms  

[fishy_fiz]

Games like Kid Chaos and some of the stuff in Mr. Nutz (for 2 examples) show quite clearly that an aga machine would be capable of Sonic, especially being that theyre only ocs/ecs games and have similar speed scrolling with lots of parallax (more than sonic).
While conversions where often better for the megadrive, when the amiga was used properly it's a superior experience in my opinion. Movement is usually somewhat slicker in a well coded amiga game and sound is superior (you cant just judge sound on the number of audio channels, in nearly every other department the amigas sound wins hands down when compared to megadrive). Sword of Sodan was infinately better on the amiga for example,.. sprites had to be shrunk for the megadrive version due to technical restrictions,..... just one example of a decently made amiga game. As for being "crippled" by the amigas hardware, it's hardware is what it's hardware is. To get the best results out of it you have to program specifically for it, buch like any machine. Would you begrudge a megadrive game developer for using its sprites and other custom hardware ?  It's hardly crippling and inflexible either,... the very nature of the amigas custom hardware makes it flexible and no-one can really say what it can and cant do due to that flexibility.

[fishy_fiz]

Firstly, it seems some of you need to brush up on your amiga hardware. "Color" cycling was occasionally used, but it rarely had anything to do with why ocs/ecs games could look so colorful. They look colorful, because sometimes they are. It's entirely possible to have 200-ish colors on the amiga when using only 4 bitplanes, and I dont just mean copper gradients either. You can change register values multiple times duting frames if a person choses to. as for sprite hardware, you can also multiplex hardware sprites, making it effectively possible to have dozens of 64 pixel wide sprites simultaneously. The only restriction there that's not easy to over come is that per scanline youre limited to "sprite channels x pixel width" (ie, 64x4 for 16 color hardware sprites (256 pixels), or 8x64 for 4 color psrites). You can however have multiple sprites within that total width. This is just hardware sprites however, bobs of course are unlimited (memory aside).

Perhaps a little ironcally a week ago I mighnt have argued a megadrive vs aga point, but after getting a megadrive and 15 games for Christmas I found myself a little surprised at the lack of quality in a lot of the titles. Golden Axe for example is much better on the Amiga, both to look at, and in terms of movement.

At the end of the day I enjoy both machines, but Ive yet to see anything on the megadrive that AGA couldnt do, while the reverse isnt true.

[fishy_fiz]

In regards to the whole Ambient using true color gfx vs aga,... jeez ppl, grow the heck up. Of course a machine running hardware literally hundreds of times faster and with a gfx bandwidth difference just as extreme is going to be capable of nicer results. And on the other side of the coin a mac or pc isnt crap,.... they both do the same thing as a classic amiga, and these days not in too dissimilar ways, only that modern gear is so much more powerful that its silly. Just because your mac is crap running mac os doesnt mean the machine itself is crap. AROS installed on an industry standard pc suddenly gains character when AROS is installed on it. In fact it feels *very* much like a more powerful amiga system.

There's something wrong in the world when Im marvling at immaturity/stupidity. Iggy, disguise it all you like, you instigated this with your comparison screenshot,... it wasn't "innocent" as you may like to pretend,... it was yet another episode in your unending need to tell people how great mos is and that you have a 1.8ghz sonnet card (which incidently I couldnt be bragging about,... if people wanted to they could laugh at that weak a system much in the same way you mock weaker systems (I mean really,... its what,... 1/4 of the power at best of a new $50 cpu?). Franko, youre no better here with you insults of things you dont like, or havent even used if what you proudly claim regularly is true.


Seriously, its conversations like you 2 are having that make me wonder why Im here..... sure, disagree about things, no problem, but this whole head in the sand/pretend innocence/etc. type thing is infuriating. Ever thought of just enjoying your systems rather than having a big dick contest that you'll both lose violently in the world of computing outside of "amiga"?