How do you port games from PC to Amiga?

[Starrfoxx]

I feel like I may be biting off more than I can really chew, but I thought I'd ask.  (Never hurts to ask.)  I think it is neat to see some games like Quake 3 make it to the Amiga, and Freescape looks really good too.  I was hoping I might be able to make my own contribution.

The problem is, I know nothing about programming with exception of using Basic on a Commodore 64 many, many years ago.  What I would like to do is make a port of my favorite PC game "The Sims" to the Amiga.  I was wanting to make that AGA compatible, and minimum to run would be a 68040.  I don't know how realistic that is.  The graphics on the original "Sims" is pretty basic, so I don't think it would be too bad.

I don't even know where to begin.  I assume I would need to get permission from EA Games.  Then I would need to get the programming code, which I'm not sure how to go about that.  I'm not even sure if they'll charge me for it.  And then there's the task of actually porting the code to the Amiga, and I have no clue on how to do that either.

I did see this over on Amigakit:

StormC v4 (Amiga CD)


Would this be useful, or is this for experienced programmers?  I'm more of a beginner, and like I said I'm probably biting off more than I can really chew here.  But I thought it would be nice to port the most popular PC game over to the Amiga community.

The Mac versions of "The Sims" and "The Sims 2" are done by Aspyr Media.  I'm not sure what they had to go through to do a port, but I'm interested to find out.

I suppose if a port of this game is way out of my league, I could always do a clone based on The Sims.  Perhaps it can be Amiga specific and we can call it "The Migs"?   :-P

[Starrfoxx]

Lol!

Yeah, I didn't think it would be easy.  Well, I'm glad I asked.  It gave me a dose of reality there.  I did see Quake 3 ported, or actually a patch made for it so I wasn't sure.

As far as another Star Wars movie, actually there are some really good "fan films" out there that are quite impressive.  Has anyone seen "Reign of the Fallen" and/or "Dark Alliance"?  Excellent stuff.

Ok, well, let's move away from the subject of doing a port and talk about actually building a game "based" on The Sims.  I'm not sure if there would be any interest in a project like this.  If not, I think my daughter would get a kick out of it since she loves playing the original Sims.  It would be a fun pastime also.

I think what I would want to do is get myself an A1200 to program on, or perhaps I could use WinUAE on my laptop.  Now what I need is the knowledge.  Are there any programs out there to make games for the Amiga or do I need to write it all in code, Amiga Basic, C?  I actually have a book somewhere on AmigaBasic.  It's a thick book.  I think what I need is Amiga Basic for Dummies.   :-D

[Starrfoxx]

Thanks for all the responses!

Well, I'm looking around to see where to start.  Amiga SDL sounds like a good start, so I found this site:

Amiga SDL

And then I found this for OS4:

OS4 SDL


I haven't downloaded the file, because I'm at work, but I can go ahead and take a look at this when I get home.  My real Amiga isn't internet ready, so I'll go ahead and check this out on WinUAE and my laptop.  It'll give me something to read and play around with while on my bus rides to and from work.

BTW, Lemmings is great on my laptop.   :-D   My daughter likes that game.

Would it be better to program using WinUAE or a real Amiga?  I'm guessing if I program with WinUAE, then I'm not addressing the custom chips.  I may need to invest in a A1200.  It would be nice addition to the "family" since my old A500 is rather dead until I can get it fixed.

Programming-wise, I want to keep my "Sims" clone in mind because it's inspirational to me.  I'll keep it simple though, and probably start with something basic like getting a square on the screen, change the color, and get it to move or something.

[Starrfoxx]

Piru wrote:

Source code to the bestseller titles such as Sims is worth hundreds of millions. It is likely never going to be available under open source license (at least not anytime soon, the Sims sequels/kits are still making tons of money).

This is true.  It's still making money.  I had seen that Aspyr had made conversions for the Mac, so I figured someone on the Amiga side could also.  But then I looked into Aspyr a bit more and found out that they make about 60% of the Mac conversions of a lot of games.  So, they probably have the money to get things licensed.  I also wasn't sure how involved it was to convert a game.  I didn't know if you just have to go line by line on code and rewrite it or some other way.

I can't view the source code on Quake here at work.... it's a blocked site.  But that would be interesting to look at.

I'm not going to really know how this is going to work until I do some studying.  Thanks for all the responses.  I'll let you know what I discover after reading up on the programming.