Amiga Coldfire project dead?

[Amiga_Nut]

As funny as that billboard is, it's horrible marketing.

All you see at any distance is a console and the word Sega in big letters.

Amiga and CD32 are in tiny little letters that aren't readable in the photo.

Also, I wonder how much it cost them in extra legal mumbo-jumbo to see if they would be sued for doing a stunt that nobody really cared about and didn't increase sales?

It's amazing Commodore survived into the 90's at all.

The real issue is that CD32 probably couldn't even manage Gauntlet IV from a Megadrive in even 128 colours despite being 13 years newer design! And then there is the issue of proper parallax scrollng on Sega and the still crap 16+16 colours on AGA for dual playfield. Also if you factor in the actual Mega-CD dedicated sprite scaling and rotating hardware a la Sega System 16 style techniques then forget it, a crippled 14mhz 020 (crippled as no way to add fast ram except £200 SX32 etc) can not compete. And AGA was a kludge of too little too late.

Check out Thunderhawk on Mega-CD vs Amiga AGA heli/flight sims and let me know which ones have textured ground? Only thing CD32 did better was FMV and total colours on screeen/palette. Everything else was inferior to Sega....the bits that are important for a console

[Tension]

The real issue is that CD32 probably couldn't even manage Gauntlet IV from a Megadrive in even 128 colours despite being 13 years newer design! And then there is the issue of proper parallax scrollng on Sega and the still crap 16+16 colours on AGA for dual playfield. Also if you factor in the actual Mega-CD dedicated sprite scaling and rotating hardware a la Sega System 16 style techniques then forget it, a crippled 14mhz 020 (crippled as no way to add fast ram except £200 SX32 etc) can not compete. And AGA was a kludge of too little too late.

Check out Thunderhawk on Mega-CD vs Amiga AGA heli/flight sims and let me know which ones have textured ground? Only thing CD32 did better was FMV and total colours on screeen/palette. Everything else was inferior to Sega....the bits that are important for a console

13 years?

Also, i doubt you could call AGA a kludge lol.

[Amiga_Nut]

13 years?

Also, i doubt you could call AGA a kludge lol.

AGA is a Kludge, same rubbish parallax with 8 extra colours wooo, same sound and a slow slow 256 colour mode. It was too little too late and only an idiot would argue otherwise. Even the 1987 Acorn Archimedes had faster 256 colour mode (and faster CPU than A4000/030 with 8 channel stereo sound actually). You read too much ass licking reviews in Amiga Format perhaps about how amazing AGA is

And yes the Sega Megadrive was out in 89/90 in Japan and CD32 1993.

And actually the CD32 is an even bigger kludge than A4000/1200, it should have had 1mb chip 1mb fast ram if they couldn't be bothered to put a SIMM socket on it for 50 pence as it cripples the CPU to 50% max speed!

[Tension]

AGA is a Kludge, same rubbish parallax with 8 extra colours wooo, same sound and a slow slow 256 colour mode. It was too little too late and only an idiot would argue otherwise. Even the 1987 Acorn Archimedes had faster 256 colour mode (and faster CPU than A4000/030 with 8 channel stereo sound actually). You read too much ass licking reviews in Amiga Format perhaps about how amazing AGA is

And yes the Sega Megadrive was out in 89/90 in Japan and CD32 1993.

And actually the CD32 is an even bigger kludge than A4000/1200, it should have had 1mb chip 1mb fast ram if they couldn't be bothered to put a SIMM socket on it for 50 pence as it cripples the CPU to 50% max speed!

And indeed only an idiot would calculate that 1993-1990=13  

[Tension]

AGA is a Kludge, same rubbish parallax with 8 extra colours wooo, same sound and a slow slow 256 colour mode. It was too little too late and only an idiot would argue otherwise. Even the 1987 Acorn Archimedes had faster 256 colour mode (and faster CPU than A4000/030 with 8 channel stereo sound actually). You read too much ass licking reviews in Amiga Format perhaps about how amazing AGA is

And yes the Sega Megadrive was out in 89/90 in Japan and CD32 1993.

And actually the CD32 is an even bigger kludge than A4000/1200, it should have had 1mb chip 1mb fast ram if they couldn't be bothered to put a SIMM socket on it for 50 pence as it cripples the CPU to 50% max speed!

On a more serious note, I always thought that AGA was a different architecture than OCS/ECS, and thus, I cant see how it could be called a Kludge.

Perhaps ECS was a kludge...

[Hattig]

The real issue is that CD32 probably couldn't even manage Gauntlet IV from a Megadrive in even 128 colours despite being 13 years newer design!

You mean this? http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/gauntlet-iv/screenshots/gameShotId,314532/

An 8MHz 68000 versus a 14MHz 68020 - easy win for the CD32 in terms of performance.

Graphics - 64 colours on the Megadrive (16 colours per 8x8 tile), so easy to replicate, and 64 colours on AGA was quick enough. The CD32 could do overscan too, no fixed 320x240 resolutions here.

I think 2MB RAM beats 64KB too ... it was a while before Megadrive games were coming on 16 mbit cartridges.

Dedicated graphics hardware on the Megadrive did help a lot - mostly with the tiled graphics modes and sprites...

[bloodline]

On a more serious note, I always thought that AGA was a different architecture than OCS/ECS, and thus, I cant see how it could be called a Kludge.

Perhaps ECS was a kludge...

AGA was a kludge... A few extra fetch modes and a few extra biplanes and a few extra DMA channels... Nothing really exciting at all

-edit- to be fair to the commodore engineers, they did the best they could given the lack of resources

[Amiga_Nut]

And indeed only an idiot would calculate that 1993-1990=13  

Haha yes 3 (or 4) depending on if you are talking A1200/4000 or CD32.

[Amiga_Nut]

You mean this? http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/gauntlet-iv/screenshots/gameShotId,314532/

An 8MHz 68000 versus a 14MHz 68020 - easy win for the CD32 in terms of performance.

Graphics - 64 colours on the Megadrive (16 colours per 8x8 tile), so easy to replicate, and 64 colours on AGA was quick enough. The CD32 could do overscan too, no fixed 320x240 resolutions here.

I think 2MB RAM beats 64KB too ... it was a while before Megadrive games were coming on 16 mbit cartridges.

Dedicated graphics hardware on the Megadrive did help a lot - mostly with the tiled graphics modes and sprites...

Play the game don't look at rubbish screenshots

Firstly the Megadrive has a Z80 co-processor at something like 4mhz. Also the 020 @ 14mhz in CD32 is stuck at 50% max speed due to there being no fast ram only chip ram on the board. So CPU wise C= already screwed up, like I said either stick a damned £1 SIMM socket on the board or make it 1mb chip/1mb fast.

Secondly the Megadrive has far superior sprite hardware, hardware more superior than what OCS/ECS manages with the blitter in 320x200x32 colour mode which is faster than 128 colour mode in AGA (because it is the same blitter not a 32bit blitter as some magazines said).

Lastly the Megadrive has 10 channel audio, AGA still had the same 4 channels as the A1000.

Like bloodline and Piru have said the AGA is slow in 256 colour mode (probably slower than OCS in 64 colour mode actually from experience) and this explains why games like Fightin' Spirit are not actually 256 colours even when sold as AGA versions.

Proof is in the pudding, the Megadrive had superior 2D games graphically speaking except for available colour palette. The sound is an acquired taste perhaps.

[Amiga_Nut]

AGA was a kludge... A few extra fetch modes and a few extra biplanes and a few extra DMA channels... Nothing really exciting at all

-edit- to be fair to the commodore engineers, they did the best they could given the lack of resources

Kludge as in it is a 256 colour chipset that retains excellent backward compatibility, which is fair enough for A1200, but in CD32 the performance loss due to compatible design is wasted as it is a CD console. But if they really were going to do a games console they should have learned from the mistakes they made with the C64 games console...you can't compete with dedicated consoles if you don't come up with real improvements that match the competing console hardware specs

Throwing away 50% CPU power to make sure CD32 and A1200 could use identical games code was a silly mistake though. Even 1.5mb chip/512kb Fast ram would have been good enough.

[Tension]

like I said either stick a damned £1 SIMM socket on the board or make it 1mb chip/1mb fast.

Is it really that simple or would extra chips be needed to interface the RAM to the CD32?

If so, why the hell didn't they do it?  Even the N64 had upgradable memory!

I do like the CD32 though...  What a bloody shame they couldn't get them into America near the end over some stupid royalties issue.  It really could have given Commodore a last chance at stardom  

[fishy_fiz]

Actually there's a side of 2d that AGA completely blitzed the megadrive/mega cd and that's bitmap handling. For pure arcade style gaming the megadrive is easier to get good results with, but that doesnt mean the amiga isnt capable of it too as was occasionally demonstrated (albiet too infrequently). You cant compare based soley on paper type specs, anyone who knows the amiga hardware knows that what it's capable of isnt reflected on paper. In the case of the cd32 I do agree though. An additional meg fast ram wouldve been a much better idea than akiko. The extra speed added via fast ram wouldve done just as good a job in reagrds to 3d, but it could also be used elsewhere as well and benefitted the system.

[Amiga_Nut]

Actually there's a side of 2d that AGA completely blitzed the megadrive/mega cd and that's bitmap handling. For pure arcade style gaming the megadrive is easier to get good results with, but that doesnt mean the amiga isnt capable of it too as was occasionally demonstrated (albiet too infrequently). You cant compare based soley on paper type specs, anyone who knows the amiga hardware knows that what it's capable of isnt reflected on paper. In the case of the cd32 I do agree though. An additional meg fast ram wouldve been a much better idea than akiko. The extra speed added via fast ram wouldve done just as good a job in reagrds to 3d, but it could also be used elsewhere as well and benefitted the system.

I totally agree that in the right hands the Amiga was a powerful machine, look at Shadow of the Beast on every other format for a good example of when a game is designed for Amiga it is graphically at the top of the pile (and sonically too thanks to David Whittaker's tunes).

@Tension, they probably should have designed it from scratch with 0.5mb Fast and 1.5mb chip anyway really. Problem was if people were just going to dump A1200 game code + CD soundtrack out there then it is no advantage anyway with examples like Alien Breed 3D not using AKIKO at all and just using A1200 code.

The sad thing is there was a machine in development, similar in design/form factor to the A3000 series with a 28mhz 020, 2mb Chip+2mb fast, CD-Rom, Akiko, and in a price between A4000/030 and A1200 (didn't have zorro slots but who cares) and this machine not the CD32 is what they should have pushed for.

The console market takes no prisoners really, silly little mistakes are magnified for you a million fold by the big players, who know exactly what people want usually. CDTV and C64GS should have been warnings not to develop the CD32, it did some things well but some things terribly badly. Atari made the same mistake too, starving the Falcon dev team to get the badly designed Jaguar console out the door to 'save them' too .

The A1200 was being sold for what £299 or less for a basic package by CD32 time? Surely the thing to do was put a CD-ROM device packaged with an A1200 with 2mb fast ram after C= doing an exclusive deal and launch it for £450? The cheapest 16/25mhz 386 Multimedia system was around £800 with CD and sound card at the time wasn't it still?

It's a good thing there's nothing left to talk about Coldfire upgrades for classic Amigas really as the thread would be long since dead haha

edit: I should point out that personally I think the problem was more to do with how Ocean/US Gold fleeced us with badly programmed games and ST port-overs for years and years. In Japan lazy greedy little software house's are not in their culture and they do things as well as they can so the SNES and Megadrive had an instant advantage from a coding point of view as they actually bothered to do it.

[Hattig]

I agree that the CD32 should have had 1MB chip + 1MB fast, just to de-cripple the CPU, and for a console reducing chip ram for CPU speed is an good trade-off. The cost issue is always a factor, having 4MB RAM wasn't an option in 1993.

The A1200 should have had a SIMM slot for a 32-bit SIMM accessible via a separate trap-door, so people could add memory without buying a whole memory expansion for the trapdoor. However I think C= thought that people would buy PCMCIA memory expansions!

AGA clearly should have had a chunky graphics mode, nothing fancy - maybe just the hardware interpreting bitplane data differently - a 1280-wide 2-bitplane display could have been interpreted as a 320-wide chunky (but not quite linear) display. AB3D could have used a 1280-wide 1-bitplane display for a 160 pixel-wide linear chunky display...

Edit: Yes, the A1200 was £299 by that time, I remember buying mine for that price. I agree that a simple spec boost could have been done by C= to boost sales - a 4MB A1200 as a standard option for £399 would have been a good start in 1993. Then again I still think the A600 should have had a 14MHz 68000. Stupid C= cost cutters.

Edit: Mods - should the CD32/AGA stuff be split out into its own thread?

[Franko]

Uh oh, sounds like the Amigas in Scotland are slightly less shiny today!

Naw, the awe & wonder with moving pictures only lasted till about 8pm last night, then it was time for the Amiga to shine brightly once again here in this gloomy little corner of Scotland...

(I hear a rumour of something called "talkies" moving pictures with sound but, that's a wee bit too far fetched even for me...

[Karlos]

AGA is a Kludge, same rubbish parallax with 8 extra colours wooo, same sound and a slow slow 256 colour mode. It was too little too late and only an idiot would argue otherwise. Even the 1987 Acorn Archimedes had faster 256 colour mode (and faster CPU than A4000/030 with 8 channel stereo sound actually).

Actually, a friend had a first generation Acorn RiscPC. Was a nice system, no question, and the chunky based display a lot faster than AGA but the CPU performance was not that great, depending on the task. My first A1200 accelerator card (25MHz 040), for example, was considerably faster at decoding jpeg images than it was, for example.