So much memory... what to do?

[slaapliedje]

So if this is Alice that limits the memory, and thinking about how the Indivision ECS works (or how I had read that it works) by basically replacing the ECS graphics chip with an FPGA equivalent, wouldn't it also be possible to do this with Alice, and replace it with the emulated Alice that WinUAE uses to enable 8mb of Chip RAM?  

Just a thought..

[slaapliedje]

Yes any new Amiga with faster fastram and faster chipram would make our old Amigas so much better!

[/q]Sure would make our old Amigas seem slower!  That goes off topic and I'm sure those conversations have been done to death.

[q]Its more about the gameplay than the gfx.  Just imagine a gfx card version of it that takes 16x as much memory.  1280x1024 is 4x bigger than 640x512 AGA and 32-bit pixels are 4x bigger than 8-bit AGA pixels = 16x the memory and 16x the bandwidth.  So it would look 16x as beautiful but have the exact same gameplay from AGA 1992 days.

I hope ur Radeon has 16x the bandwidth of AGA chipram.


I accidentally found a video to keep u company until u get ur 060:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nr0WMnCXTE

Awesome video!  Really does look like 'Total Chaos'.  Name is very appropriate.  Well, with '32bit' color, you'd have an 8-bit alpha channel, and could add some transparency effects that could (not sure how) apply to the gameplay.  Then again I guess with sprites you don't really need that. I'm thinking the biggest benefit would be larger maps!

Oddly, I bet the Radeon (in itself) probably does have 16x bandwidth of the chip ram.  Sadly, the Amiga won't take advantage of it, as we've already established.  (I found a reference to the AGP Radeon that says it has 6.4GB/sec memory bandwidth).  

But i agree, graphics definitely don't make the game.  Only type of games where graphics really matter (in my opinion anyhow) would be simulators, since that's kind of the point of them, to simulate realism.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

In theory, your 32bit computer should be able to address 2^32 = 4Gb memory, not only 450Mb... As to what you can do with it, using real apps would quickly fill it... A real browser for example.

Yeah, I knew that.  And actually on the Amiga hardware book, it says the 4000D can have up to 3GB of memory (I think this is probably due to Alice in the same way that you can only use 2mb of chip instead of 8mb, though I could be completely wrong on that).

I would love to have a real browser.  Netsurf is getting there, but it requires at least truetype fonts, and I hadn't spent the time looking on a better way to get that without AfaOS (which ClassicWB doesn't like all that much).

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Someone needs to take a closer look at busboard(s). I was a little shocked to hear you can't play some games at very high resolution. If the busboard is capable of 66Mhz bus with a CPU card then I think it warrants a closer look. I do not own a busboard (not yet) but I will be taking a closer look at one soon.

The year is 2013 and from my point of view there's no excuse,none whatsoever as some of you have very good GFX card(s).

I will let you know how it goes with Genetic Species when I get the 68060.  As it is, you're right, the 33mhz speed isn't quite fast enough to play it at full settings and be smooth.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Yeah, I plan on doing more than just gaming.

Though I did run out of memory extracting Total Chaos's audio files!  I'm guessing (hoping) it was because of just having the one 64mb bank, and not wanting to utilize anything else?

I gave the game a play, it's pretty fun, but I was really tired last night.  Looks like what Archon 3 could / should have been!  (Loved Archon 1 and 2)

Ha, the 060/50 is still too slow to smoothly play Genetic Species in 640x480 though.  I'm guessing a faster 060 would help on this?

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

WTF?!?  Something is very wrong.
I have extracted the audio files on my 32MB Amiga many many times and never got an out of memory error.

So something in your system is/was using a huge giant hunk of ram... or.. your memory list was super super fragged out and there were no hunks large enuff to hold the audio file.  The very largest file is around 1.2MB I think.  So if ur memory got all fragged out and there was not a single 1.2MB hunk anywhere in memory then u could get an out of memory error.

Unless I have something jacked that at start up (I have just OS3.9  with BB3 with ClassicWB slapped on top, along with the mediator drivers  and the Cyberstorm drivers off of Aminet), then I shouldn't have had any fragmented memory.  Started the extraction off of a cold boot.

Maybe you have many hard drive partitions and giant AddBuffers for each partition?

I have three partitions, System is on FFS, and Work and Games are both on SFS.

The audio files decrunch into the RAM disk so maybe you are using some buggy hackpatched RamDisk.device?

This sounds most likely.  It's whatever BB3 is using.

The Game will suxx if half the audio files never unpacked!!!

You might miss the funny speech samples, or some kewl muzax, or the names of all the units.

Did it speak the name of the monster when u clicked on it?
(only during your Movement Phase)

Did it say something like "Select your spell" once you passed all the setupscreens and got the actual game started?

I think most of the sounds were there, and they were AWESOME!!  Music was seriously epic too!  

I'm giving it another play right now, hopefully my Amiga doesn't overheat again...

Exactly!!!!!!  Its 8-player MegaArchonOfDeathOnSteroidsEnhancedProfessional++

I coded in the Archonian PowerPoints option just for you.

I liked Archon on the C64, but I didn't like the Amiga version.  EA games were really primitive in 1985-1986.

I'd have to agree with this!  Though instead of the C64, I played the Atari 8-bit version.  Loved it.  Though I distinctly recall punching the crap out of my younger brother when he somehow managed to slay my dragon with a knight...  There are two of my favorite all time EA games from this time;  Racing Destruction Set and Mail Order Monsters.  I'd like them to remake them, but they'd just ruin them like they did Syndicate.  Though... if you have ideas for a Total Chaos 2... Mail Order Monsters was, to me, a direct descendant of Archon.  After all, it was Archon with upgradeable beasts.

Maybe... but it still has to copy all the gfx data over at 8MB/second. (or whatever speed u currently get using bustest.)

640x480x256 colors = 307200 bytes
8MB/307200 = 26  but the CPU can sit there copying 26fps, it also has to generate the frames in the first place so you couldn't realistically get more than 13fps if u were really REALLY lucky.

You need to play it in 320x256.

Or wait for a new superAmiga to come out, like the Replay or Tina or Natami or whatever...

Just because Total Chaos AGA runs in 640x512 doesn't mean u can just go round running everything at that resolution.  I had to use some really hardcore darque majique and break a few laws of physics to achieve that.

I did a bustest after getting the Cyberstorm in there.  It scored around 30MB/s!  I'll run it again after my current game of Total Chaos and post the exact numbers.

slaapliedje

Edit: Since when does using q between brackets and /q not work for quotes?

[slaapliedje]

That was a quick game.  The enemy summoned a wraith, though I'm pretty sure he said rape, because that's what just happened to me!  

Ill get the hang of this eventually...

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Cyberstorm's memory is;
readw     32.0 * 10^6 bytes/s
readl       38.4
readm      38.8
writew     25.5
writel      25.5
writem    25.5

Interesting, the showconfig command shows that the Zorram and the 16mb on the motherboard are using the same memory addresses.

16.0 meg is addressed at $7000000-$7FFFFFF and the 128 meg is addressed at $7000000-$77FFFFF.  

Isn't this a terribly bad thing?  Though bustest does show that block of memory at 14.7, 16.0, 15.8, 9.4, 9.4, 9.4.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Rather than attempting to quote the big mess, I'll just try to answer them all;

When I had first set up my Amiga with larger partitions, PFS3 was in  talks about being open sourced and so I was waiting for it, but haven't ever gotten around since then to convert it over (namely because it took me a long time to give into the idea that I needed to recap my system to fix all the random crashes, finally did that and now it's rock solid).  I'm going to have to figure out where the 'frags' command is, since it says 'Unknown command'.  I know I've used it before... a few decades ago.

If I recall (it's been a LONG time since I played Mail Order Monsters) you had several game modes, one was against "The Horde" where the both of you were on a map and tried to prevent the computer controlled creatures from getting to the bottom, then once you encountered one, it'd zoom in like Archon did, and you'd roam around the map trying to defeat the creature.

I have played the majority of those!  I love Temple of Apshai (and the precursor, Gateway to Apshai)  I still fire it up occasionally.  In fact recently my brother and I were playing Jumpman on my Atari 130XE connected to my 55" LED TV..  It was AWESOME!  M.U.L.E. is one of the awesome games I never got around to playing, and I think some of those didn't come out for the Atari, since I don't recognize them.

More creatures you killed, the more money you got, the more you could improve your creature.  It was awesome, I'd recommend firing up the C64 or Atari 8-bit emulator and give it a play!  Add some elements to Total Chaos 8!

Sorry, I figured it was Total Chaos revision 7, not a full blown sequel of a sequel of a sequel... etc.    

Radeon memory is running at 3.0, 6.0, 6.0, 4.9, 9.8, 9.8.  That's some crappy read.  Still not sure why that's showing up as 115 meg with 128 in the RadeonMem file.  I'll have to play around with that a bit.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

I wrote TotalChaosAGA to be super efficient and almost always use move.l instead of moving words or bytes.  That way I scam a bunch of extra bandwidth for free.

Free is always good!

That is scary  :huh:
Yeah, I figured "Okay, it's addressing over what the other memory address is, I'll move it down in the slot, and hope the mediator can do it's work and change the addressing for me.  So here's the weird part;  It didn't change the memory address, but it did seem to fix my overheating issues, the Zorram card was in the highest slot on the motherboard, and after adding in the Cyberstorm card, it seemed the mediator was getting really hot, but after moving that card to the lowest (the furthest away from the cyberstorm's memory module I could get) to seems to be running much cooler now.

Sounds plausible.
Either u wrote the number wrong or something is terribly screwed up.  That only works out to 8MB of RAM.  The other 120MB just vanished. :confused:

Definitely DID write it down wrong.  Just ran showconfig again and it shows;

Node type $A, Attributes $505 (FAST), at $8000000-$BFFFFFF (64.0 meg)
Node type $A, Attributes $505 (FAST), at $7000000-$7FFFFFF (16.0 meg)
Node type $A, Attributes $405 (FAST), at $70000000-$77FFFFFF (128.0 meg)
Node type $A, Attributes $2005 (FAST), at $40C00000-$47EFFFFF (115.0 meg)[/code]

I feel like a retard now

Those speeds would be quite excellent for a Zorram or a Radeon plugged into a Mediator PCI slot.

But what I am thinking is that those speeds are really measuring your onboard 16MB of RAM speed.[/QUOTE]

Zorram numbers are 10.0, 10.5, 10.4, 6.3, 6.3, 6.2

slaapliedje  (the one who missed an extra 0.)

[slaapliedje]

If u r ever in my area we need to have a Jumpman party and/or a M.U.L.E.  party!  2 of the best games of all time! (Along with Total Chaos of  course )

Agreed!  Hmm, a Jumpman remake with a nice scrolling background and more detailed graphics would be awesome!  

Mail Order Monsters was one of the greatest games ever for the C64.  Pretty much everything by EA (Deathlord, Legacy of the Ancients, Wasteland, etc. etc., at that time) was, and it's a huge loss that they were never ported to the Amiga.  Skipping all the technical details in the above posts, are you guys saying that Total Chaos is anything like M.O.M.?  If so....  aaaargh!  I might have to somehow make room on my coffee table for an AGA system!  ;-)

I've thought many times that someone needed to make an updated version of it.  From what I've played of Total Chaos, It's similar to Archon 2, but with a crap ton more options and absolutely amazing sounds / music.  

A new verison of M.O.M. would be epic as well.  I think ChaosLord needs to give that one a try and put some of the ideas into Total ChaosAGA/RTG 8!

slaapliedje

Edit;  Oh, I have attempted to switch my partitions over to PFS3, so I have 4GB for System: 31GB for Work: and 41GB for Games:, but damned if I can get the last partition to STAY.  Whenever I reboot, it says it's uninitialized!  Any ideas/suggestions?

[slaapliedje]

I did find another post with people talking about the same issue.  I ended up just wiping it, and creating one large partition after System (So now I just have System: and Work: instead of System:, Work:, and Games:.  Good thing I can create whatever Assigns I want

slaapliedje