Curse of the SDL

[utri007]

Hi

68k software developement is totally halted, or all new software for 68k amigas is useless SDL ports.

I don't know single usefull SDL port to 68k amigas, dozenz of useless crap.

Seems that nobody isn't trying to do native ports anymore.

Sad part of this is that many of use "real amiga" users has quite much cpu power compared to what it used to be ten years ago.

Some how developers just made tens of 3d and few RTS games with support for 040/060.

There is really few games/apps that really take advantage for 040/060, but plenty of games and apps for 000/020 and all new sofware developent is only for UEA users (SDL).

So what kind of apps and games could theoritically run 040/060? Quite much any PC game that that has requiremt something like 486

[Khephren]

Your quite right, I'm afraid most of our native coders have moved on or don't have the time any more

And in reality the 040 is more like a 486, and the 060 is like a low end pentium.

[bloodline]

Your quite right, I'm afraid most of our native coders have moved on or don't have the time any more

And in reality the 040 is more like a 486, and the 060 is like a low end pentium.

Both of which are outperformed by most Mobile Phones you get now... The last mobile phone I had that didn't even have a 3D graphics chip was nearly 5 years ago!

[Linde]

On the bright side, there's a whole bunch of apps and games for the Amiga that you have never tried.

[utri007]

I just wish that somebody could do native Netsurf port to 68k amigas, after that I could use my amiga quite much more.

Nice thing would be nice car game, like carmageddon 1 and settlers type city buildin game, maybe some sport game??

Yes I know that any mobile phone is more powerfull than my current amiga, but Amiga is hobby and there is lot of unused resources.

http://michael.santovec.us/games/carma2.jpg

There is also freesyndicate, wich should run 040/060, SDL port of it would be useless... but native should run just fine. That for higer resolutions, more colors etc. Freecraft would be nice also... what else? Quite many possible ports...

[Crumb]

@utri007

It's not just a problem of having a decent SDL library port, SDL games seem to be pretty unoptimized too.

A proper Scumm port without using SDL nor ixemul would be a nice thing to have. Perhaps graphics could be converted on first run to planar and stored in a "cache" directory to avoid using chunky graphics too. And using paula sound instead of AHI would be also a nice addition.

And rewritting some parts may be required to get decent performance too: at first look Scumm seems to lack functions to load a big bitmap in gfxram and scrolling the viewport simply exchanging a pointer (something like ScrollVPort() ). Instead it uses the usual peecee bruteforce approach copying the entire screen to the gfx buffer each frame.

Scumm also seems unable to keep gfx in gfx ram and draw them on screen using some kind of blitter. For modern games the dirtybox approach it uses it's probably better (for fast cpus without gfx acceleration) but for old games like Monkey Island 1 or 2 you don't move hundreds of objects simultaneusly and using our dear blitter to draw the graphics seems more interesting, specially taking in account that you won't be throwing 50 different frames per second but you could keep in chipram most used images cached.

PS: please note I have not studied much Scumm sources but these are my first impressions when looking at the sources. You could claim Scumm is multiplatform but if it had been designed from scratch thinking in something else than a 64KB VGA framebuffer it would have been way faster with decent hardware (like our miggies). It's funny that you need a fast cpu to play games like Monkey Island that looked, sounded and played perfectly on unaccelerated classics

[yakumo9275]

you know you can write your own backends for scummvm that dont require sdl... there is even wiki pages for devs for scummvm here. I was a scummvm dev for a while, and making scummvm so portable requires different kinds of tradeoffs.

[Pentad]

I just wish that somebody could do native Netsurf port to 68k amigas, after that I could use my amiga quite much more.

Well, why don't you do it?  I do not mean to sound harsh or offend you but instead of complaining about it, why don't you try to do it yourself?

There are a plethora of free Amiga books you can download to teach yourself programming, you have a pool of people to post questions to on the Amiga forums, I'm sure the Netsurf forums would think this is neat and help you when you get stuck, and since Netsurf is OS you can view the working code as your port!  Frankly, you have it better than people starting out 25 years ago!

I'm not saying it will be easy but you will learn a lot, you will increase the 68k programming pool, and as you learn you can port/create other projects.

In the end, I get frustrated with people who whine about programming while not even trying to help.  If you want a port or a feature or an upgrade start working on it!  You'll get much better help if you are trying than complaining.

As a CS Professor I have a favorite quote from the Simpsons:  "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas!"  

In the end, I hope I have not offended you but motivated you!  Get out those books and start writing!  You have a HUGE amount of resources at your disposal!  Netsurf code is open source so you have a blueprint to work from.

Cheers!
-P

[Crumb]

you know you can write your own backends for scummvm that dont require sdl... there is even wiki pages for devs for scummvm here. I was a scummvm dev for a while, and making scummvm so portable requires different kinds of tradeoffs.

First of all thank you for contributing to Scumm, it's a nice piece of software. Nice to see there's somebody from Scumm team here :-)

But I have to add that IMHO some functions for scroll could have been written so platforms without hardware scrolling capabilities could have used a software backend and platforms with hardware scrolling could have used hardware scroll. With the current implementation it's always software mode.

I think the same about blitting objects located in gfx ram. Old games only move a few sprites or bobs so copying them every frame to gfx ram eats too much bandwitch. I doubt that making an AGA backend would help much regarding this. Using blitter would just involve blitter performing masking operations (as long as the animation frames fit in chipram).

Using planar would be useful too.

[commodorejohn]

I agree completely with the OP. Don't get me wrong, SDL is a great thing, but it's just plain not designed for hardware like 68k Amigas. (This is why when I do get moving on my game-dev projects for the Amiga, it's going to be all-native.)

[utri007]

68k SDL should be declared illegal
There is plenty of people who already are spending lots of time to making SDL ports to 68k amigas, that just....

If they instead making 5 SDL ports, could make 1 native port, that would be much better.

And this is not actually codin, this about "how sdl is useless for 68k amigas"

[fishy_fiz]

While I do agree that it's a shame that there's little entertainment software that takes advantage of more "powerful" 68k Amigas I do understand why SDL and other less native api ports have become the main source of software for amiga based systems.
 There's simply not enough coders left that know how to program specifically for the Amiga, not to mention it's more work to do so, and it's not easy to find good documentation to make amiga "native" software. SDL, Allegro, etc. however have a plethora of examples, tutorials and so on plastered all over the net. Things like gfx.lib, ahi, and so also often require more work due to the need to write a lot more own functions and whatnot vs. something like SDL (especially when it comes to games).

There's also the simple fact that more advanced games (stuff beyond stock a500/a600/a1200/etc) is a lot of work. If commercial companies from back in the day rarely made things that wouldnt today be called very retro, then its going to be hard for Joe Public to do it from his bedroom. On top of this it's *very* difficult to find people to work with that stick with things and maintain conviction. The sheer volume of work required to make a game to match the specs of a nicely upgraded amiga is either something beyond 1 person, or something that will take years.

All this said and done however, with the advent of things like minimig, natami, fpga arcade, and the fact that most people using 68k amigas have a higher base spec than yesteryear I still have hopes that maybe us 68k fans might still see a nice "amiga native" game or 2.  

[fishy_fiz]

Oh, and in regards to ScummVM, latest 68k ports dont use sdl.

It's a shame I lost the warpsdl sdk though. Its both much faster and works with aga.

[utri007]

Great I need to give a try to ScummVM

[Crumb]

Oh, and in regards to ScummVM, latest 68k ports dont use sdl.

Chunky2planar isn't a great idea on AGA miggies for these kind of 2d games anyway.

It's a shame I lost the warpsdl sdk though. Its both much faster and works with aga.

warpsdl was quite smooth on my miggies, what a pity. Chaozer doesn't reply any email :-(