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

[motorollin]

Just goes to show what can be done with crusty old OCS in the hands of talented coders.  Its a shame we didnt see more from those guys.

Think what they could have done with AGA!

[Speelgoedmannetje]

I don't hate it in itself, and I think some AGA games look amazing (Ruff 'n' Tumble springs to mind as an example).

Ruff 'n Tumble runs awesome here on my OCS Amiga
As well as Lionheart, Elfmania, Jim Power and Fighting Spirit.
That's why AGA feels a bit like a let-down, the best looking Amiga games are all OCS original.
There's one very valid pro-aga point however, Doom needed a lot of megaherzes and megabytes, also on the pc (or a 3d accellerated chipset like on the Playstation and Atari Jaguar).
I remember that Doom didn't run smoothly on a friends' 486 66mhz with 4mb memory. Neither did it run smooth on my 486 33mhz with 8mb. It was all choppy and I have tweaked alot in my bios and config.sys/autoexec.bat to enable it to run that tiny bit faster (to a point that the whole system seriously crashed). I don't know whether it even ran at all on a 386.

[Karlos]

Wait one. This thread seems a misnomer. Who actually hates AGA?

Recognising that AGA is old and slow, acknowledging it's shortcomings or accepting that it was too little too late in terms of what else was being released around the same time is just being a realist.

You'd actually have to have some serious issues to hate it though.

[motorollin]

Ruff 'n Tumble runs awesome here on my OCS Amiga

Well I know that now How did they make games look so good with so few colours?!

As well as Lionheart, Elfmania, Jim Power and Fighting Spirit.
That's why AGA feels a bit like a let-down, the best looking Amiga games are all OCS original.

Is that more to do with lazy coders not using AGA to its full potential, or was AGA really not much of an improvement?

There's one very valid pro-aga point however, Doom needed a lot of megaherzes and megabytes, also on the pc (or a 3d accellerated chipset like on the Playstation and Atari Jaguar).
I remember that Doom didn't run smoothly on a friends' 486 66mhz with 4mb memory. Neither did it run smooth on my 486 33mhz with 8mb. It was all choppy and I have tweaked alot in my bios and config.sys/autoexec.bat to enable it to run that tiny bit faster (to a point that the whole system seriously crashed). I don't know whether it even ran at all on a 386.

But did AGA really help with Doom? My 040 A1200 didn't run it very well until I added a graphics card.

[motorollin]

Wait one. This thread seems a misnomer. Who actually hates AGA?

Recognising that AGA is old and slow, acknowledging it's shortcomings or accepting that it was too little too late in terms of what else was being released around the same time is just being a realist.

You'd actually have to have some serious issues to hate it though.

I suspect that hatred towards the chipset is most likely displaced hatred/disappointment towards Commodore

[bloodline]

I don't hate it in itself, and I think some AGA games look amazing (Ruff 'n' Tumble springs to mind as an example).

I think what a lot of people resent is that it was too little too late, and that AGA was so quickly overtaken by other platforms' graphics hardware with no hope of an update from Commodore

Too little, too late. After about a week owning an A1200 (from an A500), it became obvious the biggest step up was 512k -> 2MB chip... There was a few nice bits and bobs... But it did suck.

[motorollin]

As a "bad" example of AGA:

Zool AGA

Those backdrops are just ghastly!

Edit - fixed iPad autocorrect error

[Digiman]

Copperlist not backdrop

[yssing]

As a "bad" example of AGA:

Zool AGA

Those backdrops are just ghastly!

Edit - fixed iPad autocorrect error

Personally I did prefer James Pond over Zool, but thats an other topic I guess.

Bloodline >> Well there are other enhancements on AGA over OCS, like higher resolutions and more colors..

[Digiman]

Wait one. This thread seems a misnomer. Who actually hates AGA?

Recognising that AGA is old and slow, acknowledging it's shortcomings or accepting that it was too little too late in terms of what else was being released around the same time is just being a realist.

You'd actually have to have some serious issues to hate it though.

Unless AGA is a collective term for A1200/4000/CD32.

In which case I have 66.666666666% 'hate' for it :roflmao:

[Digiman]

Bloodline >> Well there are other enhancements on AGA over OCS, like higher resolutions and more colors..

Agreed. I think people forget just how big a deal 1280x512 in 256 or HAM8 was at the time, PCs couldn't really do much more than 1024x768 in 256 colours unless you bought a very expensive highly specialised graphics card in 1992 when A4000 was actually launched. Which is fine for the A4000 potential purchasers.

Trouble is 320x256 rez is more than enough for games, even only a handful of Saturn games used a higher resolution like VF2. People weren't complaining about Ridge Racer only using 320x200 on the Playstation as a trade off to playing that amazing game at the time

And that is where Commodore went wrong, priority was the A1200 and so should have made AGA address the fantastic abilities of SNES/Megadrive games with higher colour parallax modes/better sprites/sprite scaling like Lynx chipset by Mical and Needle/more sound channels (even if it meant using TWO Paulas) and other neat tricks was what they should have done if they wanted to be solvent in 1995

OCS in A1000 = best gaming graphics/sound of ANY console/computer AND best business graphics/sound. Slam dunk for A1000.

AGA needed to do the same, but it didn't even come close, there were things the 1989 Megadrive did the A1200 could never do as well let alone the SNES. It's not a technical issue either, it's an issue of lack of R&D and bad project management at Commodore under the broken wing of Mehdi Ali (spit)

[bloodline]

Bloodline >> Well there are other enhancements on AGA over OCS, like higher resolutions and more colors..

As I said, it did have a few nice bit's and bobs. But the more colours and higher resolutions came at a high performance cost... Two features that I did like were 4bit dual playfields and larger sprites... But a faster blitter would have been better than those.

[Pentad]

I would like to throw in my 2 cents here...

I've read all the posts here and I feel the joy from the people that like AGA and the disappointment from folks like Bloodline.

For myself, I remember the joy of seeing some AGA demos and the shock of the slowness of Workbench in higher colors...a mixed bag at best.

I think objectively -which I'm not sure that I can do well- AGA was the only option that Commodore had.

It wasn't 1985 anymore and ECS was pretty long in the tooth.  Honestly, what other options did Commodore have?

Haynie talked about AA (or whatever) but the scant information provided pointed to incompatibilities with current software/OS (not a good thing).

AGA brought more colors, new resolution, and expanded Chip Memory which all were a good thing.

Revolutionary?  Well, that is what this site and others are for.  To have good people debating the merits long into the night...

In the end, I humbly believe that it was better than nothing and it extended the life of the Amiga for a short while.  We can all look back and wish they would have done something different but that is a luxury of hindsight.

Happy Holidays!
-P

[save2600]

You'd actually have to have some serious issues to hate it though.

I'm with Karlos here. Yes, AGA should have been incorporated by the time the A3000 was released, but I don't see what's to "hate". I'll admit though... owning an AGA capable machine (1200/4000/C32) is not on my high list of system ownership. My only real complaint video wise is that Commodore went "backwards" in thought by not including Amber in the last two computers. Once the A3000 had 31khz capability, that should have been the standard from there on out. IMO, that's one of the largest reasons many could never take the C= products seriously. Such a simple thing as a flickerless display and they totally overlooked that necessity, despite all the complaints and third party add-ons to correct their blunder.

One other thought about AGA is how it was implemented in the A1200. Looking back, you really can't help but see the major design flaw of utilizing a 14mhz 020 in that model. Completely stupid in hindsight. As others have pointed out, AGA was slow as anyone who's loaded a pretty picture on their wedged Miggy will attest. AGA was a great concept, but the hardware and architecture that supported it was severely underpowered, making 030+ ownership a must. Which is a ridiculous notion by the budget computer standard that Commodore themselves set. Hell, even Atari had the gee-whiz to pop an 030 in on their last wedge.

[commodorejohn]

Really?

According to the poll "Choose your main / most used Amiga" 50% of us use AGA based Amiga's as our most used Amiga's     :rtfm:

Yeah, and the rest of us (50% minus the UAE users, among them people like myself, who have neither the money for a 1200 plus all the necessary upgrades, let alone the obscene amounts of money a 4000 commands) get left in the lurch. That was, in fact, the very basis of my complaint :/

[AmigaNG]

I think most of us agree that AGA was not quite enough to put the Amiga back in the lead in graphics, but it kept Amigas in the race a lot longer than OCS or ECS could of done if the Amiga had stade at them.

Its a shame that AGA was under used in games but I think some people on here are forgetting that when it was used properly the gaphics blew away what could be on OCS/ECS.

Slam Tilt, Microcosm, Capital Punishment, super stardust, Theme Park, Myst, simon the sorcerer, sim city 2000, gloom, onEscape, napalm etc

Even to this day I still think the best pin ball game in feel, looks and stlye is Slam Tilt, its a MUST for any AGA owner out there!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXaAfLJuhrs (might have to load it up for a quick go!)