Wolfenstein 3D IS technically possible on stock A500 shocker!

[Digiman]

Death Mask engine is just souped up Dungeon Master engine, look how turning left/right works

[Cammy]

I think Behind The Iron Gate is a pretty good FPS engine for 7Mhz Amigas. It's not fully texture mapped, but it does have some occasional textures and nice depth shading.

[YOUTUBE]Q_rFTtQ9Kuk[/YOUTUBE]

[Karlos]

I think Behind The Iron Gate is a pretty good FPS engine for 7Mhz Amigas. It's not fully texture mapped, but it does have some occasional textures and nice depth shading.

[YOUTUBE]Q_rFTtQ9Kuk[/YOUTUBE]

Reminds me of Corporation, only more FPS and less RPG

[shoggoth]

Wolfenstein 3D is technically possible on a 500:a, but it's not necessarily a smooth ride. There is a port to the Atari ST (don't confuse this port with the one for the 8-bitters), and it runs rather "well" on a stock machine (like 10fps).

However, the ST has one advantage in this case - bitplanes use a 16-bit interleave. For all other purposes, this is completely retarded and hopeless to work with, but in this case it does enable the use of a faster low-resolution C2P procedure using the movep instruction. This trick can't be used on the 500:a since the smallest copper interleave possible is 32-bit (ironically the trick was evented by Amiga sceners, I've been told).

But again - ofcourse it's possible. But who would invest the time to do it?

[whabang]

Planar graphics, we has them!

From a CPU perspective, it's a go; the 68000 will most likely perform just as well as an old 286. What else do we have? Memory? I don't know anything about the memory performance of OCS Amigas, or 286 PC's for that matter. I'm sure someone else here can enlighten us, but regardless, I think both platform have enough juice.
Both the Amiga and the 286 will be able to play sounds over DMA (assuming that piece of PC junk has a soundcard), no problem there.

The only difference is the video hardware. I'm no expert, but having to do several writes to fill each pixel, when the PC only needs to do it once seems like major disadvantage for the Miggy. Thus, we need to rely on c2p conversion to get things done at a reasonable speed.

The question is: Can one of you clever coders get blazing fast c2p conversion done on a 68000? Or can you do some miraculous planar 3d engine? If not, we will have to accept that our beloved little miggies were behind even contemporary PC's, at least in some aspects.

[shoggoth]

Planar graphics, we has them!

Yes - and the point is that planar graphics stinks if you want to use textured walls a'la Wolf3D.

From a CPU perspective, it's a go; the 68000 will most likely perform just as well as an old 286. What else do we have? Memory? I don't know anything about the memory performance of OCS Amigas, or 286 PC's for that matter. I'm sure someone else here can enlighten us, but regardless, I think both platform have enough juice.
Both the Amiga and the 286 will be able to play sounds over DMA (assuming that piece of PC junk has a soundcard), no problem there.

The 68k is better equipped for this stuff compared to the 286. Ironically.

The only difference is the video hardware. I'm no expert, but having to do several writes to fill each pixel, when the PC only needs to do it once seems like major disadvantage for the Miggy. Thus, we need to rely on c2p conversion to get things done at a reasonable speed.

C2P is the only realistic way to achieve this, since it somewhat reduces the number of reads & writes required to address individual pixels.

The question is: Can one of you clever coders get blazing fast c2p conversion done on a 68000? Or can you do some miraculous planar 3d engine? If not, we will have to accept that our beloved little miggies were behind even contemporary PC's, at least in some aspects.

Never say never, but I'm fairly sure this is well charted territory. There is a physical limit.

[Louis Dias]

Planar is good for certain things.  Fades to grey.  HAM.  For a planar chip to be efficient, it would need to be triple-cored...so that each core could handle one of the three primary colors.  That is the only way to get the speed out of it.

Amiga's bus is 3.57MHz.  Early Amigas only move 16 bits at a time.  I think the 3000 had a 32 bit bus.   The reasons accelerators make just a difference in procession is the memory is 32 bit and the memory bus is faster to the cpu.  It's not just the cpu that gets a bump in clockspeed, but the memory over the stock Amiga is greatly improved.

In the end, Amiga's pixel-pushing capabilities can be measured by it's memory bus.

I think the only change in the memory bus over the years was making it 32bit instead of 16bit...which moves twice as much data though at the same speed.

DRACO is considered an Amiga-compatible machine and it features a memory bus that can move 30MB/s.  An A500 moves 3.57MB/s.  See the difference?  This is why RTG works good on Draco...a fast memory bus.  Natami's bus will be capable of 3200MB/s using DDR2-400 memory, fyi.  Minimig used SDRAM, fpgaarcade uses DDR1.

To get back on topic...
An A500 can probably run a World of Warcraft client.  But at some point you got to ask yourself what you consider 'acceptable'.  Saying you can run Wolfenstein 3D on a C64 is nice but when you think about the 1 color 32x32 resolution, you really have to ask yourself if it's worth it.  'Ports' are only worth it if the difference in the end result between platforms is 'small'.

Good ports will allow the small sacrifices to happen but also improve areas where the new platform can excell.  So for instance an Atari ST game might feature gread sound and good graphics but on the Amiga it would have great graphics and good sound.  See the difference?  Accept the differences.  Know when to draw the line.

[shoggoth]

Planar is good for certain things.  Fades to grey.  HAM.  For a planar chip to be efficient, it would need to be triple-cored...so that each core could handle one of the three primary colors.  That is the only way to get the speed out of it.

I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. HAM would be a lot easier to address had it been chunky/packed pixel. Fades to gray is a matter och changing the palette, not shuffling bitplanes. In 4, 8bpp or higher, I can't see any particular application which benefits from planar format, except maybe for some low fi transparency effects.

In the end, Amiga's pixel-pushing capabilities can be measured by it's memory bus.

That's true on a faster machine (i.e. 040/060) with fastmem, because the C2P conversion can be done at copyspeed anyway (i.e. you get the C2P-conversion for "free"). However, on a lower spec machine, the planar format is definitely a severe limitation.

[matthey]

The only difference is the video hardware. I'm no expert, but having to do several writes to fill each pixel, when the PC only needs to do it once seems like major disadvantage for the Miggy. Thus, we need to rely on c2p conversion to get things done at a reasonable speed.

The "PC" was not ahead in the beginning. Look at the original spec of VGA and you will find planar gfx also. The Amiga gfx were ahead of the original VGA spec. The difference was the amazing advance of PC gfx from VGA to super VGA to 3D accelerated Voodoo gfx before the Amiga could even get AGA or chunky modes that left the Amiga in the dust.

The question is: Can one of you clever coders get blazing fast c2p conversion done on a 68000? Or can you do some miraculous planar 3d engine? If not, we will have to accept that our beloved little miggies were behind even contemporary PC's, at least in some aspects.

I would rather look at a little higher spec than that. How about 68020+ with RTG gfx. This should be possible on the higher end Amiga classics as well as the upcoming fpga Amigas and UAE/AROS emulated machines in descent quality. There has already been some work to this end with Wazp3D and my optimization of an unofficial Warp3D. I can run QuakeGL in 640x400 at 20-25 fps on a 68060 classic Amiga with Voodoo 4. The overall optimization level is still quite poor. I think 800x600 would be possible at 30 fps. The Natami should be capable of significantly more. Software 3D rendering can be up to 1/2 the speed of hardware rendering if perfect rendering is not required and lower resolutions are chosen. Progress is unfortunately quite slow and what kills the Amiga.

[runequester]

I think Behind The Iron Gate is a pretty good FPS engine for 7Mhz Amigas. It's not fully texture mapped, but it does have some occasional textures and nice depth shading.

[YOUTUBE]Q_rFTtQ9Kuk[/YOUTUBE]

Wasn't this game called something else as well ? Maybe an east european title or something.

I distinctly remember playing this back in the day, but it didn't have an English title

[B00tDisk]

But its almost 10% Wolfenstein 3D

http://hol.abime.net/5410

Trick Or Treat was the first 3d FPS deathmatch game I ever played

[KThunder]

Planar graphics, we has them!

From a CPU perspective, it's a go; the 68000 will most likely perform just as well as an old 286. What else do we have? Memory? I don't know anything about the memory performance of OCS Amigas, or 286 PC's for that matter. I'm sure someone else here can enlighten us, but regardless, I think both platform have enough juice.
Both the Amiga and the 286 will be able to play sounds over DMA (assuming that piece of PC junk has a soundcard), no problem there.

The only difference is the video hardware. I'm no expert, but having to do several writes to fill each pixel, when the PC only needs to do it once seems like major disadvantage for the Miggy. Thus, we need to rely on c2p conversion to get things done at a reasonable speed.

The question is: Can one of you clever coders get blazing fast c2p conversion done on a 68000? Or can you do some miraculous planar 3d engine? If not, we will have to accept that our beloved little miggies were behind even contemporary PC's, at least in some aspects.

There is one way around writing multiple writes for a single pixel, but it isn't very good: 2 color graphics. You can use sprites to color things up, and a copper list to provide some "shading" top to bottom but thats about it.

Unfortunately C2P on a 68000 can't go fast enough. 4 color might be close but that is 4 writes per pixel, in addition to the half dozen instructions needed to calculate the pixel in the first place.

[KThunder]

The "PC" was not ahead in the beginning. Look at the original spec of VGA and you will find planar gfx also. The Amiga gfx were ahead of the original VGA spec. The difference was the amazing advance of PC gfx from VGA to super VGA to 3D accelerated Voodoo gfx before the Amiga could even get AGA or chunky modes that left the Amiga in the dust....

The mode most used in Vga that is called planar is mode x, and it works a bit differently (better) than the amigas planar mode. here is a quick description of it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X

notice two lines in that article:

Planar memory arrangement splits the pixels horizontally into groups of four. For any given byte in the PC video memory aperture, you can access four pixels on screen, by selecting the plane(s) you require.

Planar mode allows up to 4 adjoining pixels to be modified in one byte write operation, which is ideal for solid filling of objects such as polygons, rectangles, lines, etc.


Mode x was tricky to handle but could actually be faster than chunky graphics. On the Amiga Planar graphics are always slower for this type of operation. The way the Amigas graphics hardware was setup made mode x impossible or not any faster

here is a really in depth programming article on mode x:
http://www.gameprogrammer.com/3-tweak.html

[commodorejohn]

Eh, mode X isn't planar so much as a strange hack to use the planar memory mapping hardware in chunky mode (the advantage being that it gives you access to all the video RAM, which you don't get from the BIOS-supplied linear-framebuffer chunky mode.) Actual VGA planar modes are the 16-color high-res modes and the EGA-compatibility modes.

[KThunder]

Eh, mode X isn't planar so much as a strange hack to use the planar memory mapping hardware in chunky mode (the advantage being that it gives you access to all the video RAM, which you don't get from the BIOS-supplied linear-framebuffer chunky mode.) Actual VGA planar modes are the 16-color high-res modes and the EGA-compatibility modes.

The documentation I provided that showed exactly what mode x was and why it was so fast. It is a planar mode, it is much faster, and it was present in even the earliest vga systems. You could call it a hack, but it was used so extensively in games, and programming books; it was a very well known, well documented, well used hack.

The big thing I guess is that IBM provided both planar, and chunky modes in hardware and in the bios, and with a "hack" you could access 4 pixels simultaniously. The Amiga only had pure planar modes and was pretty much the opposite, instead of 4 pixels at a time, it took 4 writes per pixel, in 16 color mode.

If all Amigas had the CD32's Akikko chip they would have a similar mechanism.

here is a link for that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akiko_(Amiga)

[nicholas]

Ooh that brings back some fond memories of the 90's for me.

I never tire of reading this book:

http://www.drdobbs.com/high-performance-computing/184404919;jsessionid=14VZ5MDXC5NHRQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN

The mode most used in Vga that is called planar is mode x, and it works a bit differently (better) than the amigas planar mode. here is a quick description of it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X

notice two lines in that article:

Planar memory arrangement splits the pixels horizontally into groups of four. For any given byte in the PC video memory aperture, you can access four pixels on screen, by selecting the plane(s) you require.

Planar mode allows up to 4 adjoining pixels to be modified in one byte write operation, which is ideal for solid filling of objects such as polygons, rectangles, lines, etc.


Mode x was tricky to handle but could actually be faster than chunky graphics. On the Amiga Planar graphics are always slower for this type of operation. The way the Amigas graphics hardware was setup made mode x impossible or not any faster

here is a really in depth programming article on mode x:
http://www.gameprogrammer.com/3-tweak.html