Why Amigas never had a chunky mode ?

[woof]

At some points in the 90s engineers at Amiga inc had planned the future with AGA, Super-AGA...

But certainly some engineers said "we will need a chunky mode": it will be simpler to program, more efficient, etc...

And then at this point some director said "it will cost too much" "bitplanes are enough for a game engine" "they can buy a graphic card" and other oddities

What is the name of this stupid man ?

Alain Thellier

[kamelito]

At some points in the 90s engineers at Amiga inc had planned the future with AGA, Super-AGA...

But certainly some engineers said "we will need a chunky mode": it will be simpler to program, more efficient, etc...

And then at this point some director said "it will cost too much" "bitplanes are enough for a game engine" "they can buy a graphic card" and other oddities

What is the name of this stupid man ?

Alain Thellier

It was planned for AAA. (See Dave Haynie)
Kamelito

[Fransexy_]

What is the name of this stupid man ?

Alain Thellier

Medhi Ali?

Why Amigas never had a chunky mode ?

At least CD32 had Akiko chip and chunky modes was planned for next generation chipset but commodore were bankrup before that, you know

[Crom00]

Because every ceo and upper management needed the highest salary possible complete with golden parachutes as they left the company.

Insane that they had a 256 Color C=64 in the works by 1991 and didn't even release that.
256 colors should have been standard by the time the  A500/2000 came out at the earliest and by the  release of the CDTV / A3000 the very latest. ESC should have had 256 colors out of 4096 / 32000, 262000 or 24 bit palette.

Instead... they waited until...1992... forget about C2P.

[BozzerBigD]

Because every ceo and upper management needed the highest salary possible complete with golden parachutes as they left the company.

Insane that they had a 256 Color C=64 in the works by 1991 and didn't even release that.
256 colors should have been standard by the time the  A500/2000 came out at the earliest and by the  release of the CDTV / A3000 the very latest. ESC should have had 256 colors out of 4096 / 32000, 262000 or 24 bit palette.

Instead... they waited until...1992... forget about C2P.

Your right. The 256 colour CD32 AGA version of Wing Commander should have been the standard Amiga version in 1992 (already 2 years behind the PC) and the chunky screenmode enabled Amiga A1200/4000 released in Christmas 1992 it time for Doom in 1993/94.

[fishy_fiz]

Aren't the 1bit screen modes chunky?  

[Crom00]

and the CD32... I really liked it. BUT come on, a main selling point was the 32bits...they used a NINE year old 32 bit CPU. (the 020) came out in 84.

[smerf]

You know smerf, best jokes on this site are better if left unsaid. The Media police are watching, and I had a really good slam dunk for Haynie. Sorry Dave but this old Commode rep, just can't say it.

[guest11527]

At some points in the 90s engineers at Amiga inc had planned the future with AGA, Super-AGA...

But certainly some engineers said "we will need a chunky mode": it will be simpler to program, more efficient, etc...

Historical accident. At the time the Amiga chipset was designed, the available RAM bandwidth with technology available back then was not sufficient to allow a 256 chunky mode, and the planar mode had the nice property that you could the same blitter engine regardless of the number of colors in the screen. Hence, it allowed a bit-depth independent unified design.

At the time the bandwidth became available, CBM already left the road of sane management, was cutting costs and only made minimal investments to keep the platform alive. It was planned, but it required too many changed in the system - a new blitter would have been required, for example.

[grond]

Only if you have 256 colours, you don't waste precious RAM in a chunky mode. Planar never wastes even a single bit. The Amiga was designed when 256 or 512kb of RAM were very expensive. In addition the RAM wasn't fast enough to give you the required bandwidth for a chunky mode with reasonable resolution. So planar graphics was a perfectly logical choice in the mid-80s. When they eventually did AGA they probably realised that with now 256 colours they could have done a chunky mode without wasting RAM or bandwidth but they just considered it too much work and decided to do just a lazy patch job of ECS changing only the screen DMA engine. At that time they would not only have had to add chunky gfx but also 16 bit audio and a 32 bit blitter to have kept it competitive.

[bbond007]

and the CD32... I really liked it. BUT come on, a main selling point was the 32bits...they used a NINE year old 32 bit CPU. (the 020) came out in 84.

odd number 68K CPUs indicated a change to architecture more so than performance  and most of those improvements in architecture simply would not benefit a game console, so unless they were going to put an a 040, 020 CPU was the only one that made sense.

[guest11527]

Only if you have 256 colours, you don't waste precious RAM in a chunky mode.

You don't waste RAM, but you waste computing power and bandwidth when manipulating the display. Even with a blitter, modifying an eight-bitplane display requires (unless you are lucky) eight separate accesses to the RAM, once per bitplane. Chunky requires only one. Plus, you save all the computations to extract individual bits.

When they eventually did AGA they probably realised that with now 256 colours they could have done a chunky mode without wasting RAM or bandwidth but they just considered it too much work and decided to do just a lazy patch job of ECS changing only the screen DMA engine.

Well, I wouldn't generalize it by that, especially "they". As far as the engineering department was concerned, people there were well aware that a major revision of the hardware architecture was urgently necessary, but CBM was short of money and resources, and a management vision.

At that time they would not only have had to add chunky gfx but also 16 bit audio and a 32 bit blitter to have kept it competitive.

A couple of these ideas (and much more) was planned for AAA, but CBM went down under just before this was completed.

[psxphill]

Even with a blitter, modifying an eight-bitplane display requires (unless you are lucky) eight separate accesses to the RAM, once per bitplane.

Per pixel, but you can access 16 pixels at a time.

Well, I wouldn't generalize it by that, especially "they". As far as the engineering department was concerned, people there were well aware that a major revision of the hardware architecture was urgently necessary, but CBM was short of money and resources, and a management vision.

They relied on the A500 to prop up the company while the chip guys went off down the wrong road of AAA.

A couple of these ideas (and much more) was planned for AAA, but CBM went down under just before this was completed.

Chunky pixels were suggested for AA and would likely have made it into it's successor (generally referred to as AA+). They ran out of time for AA because they had started it too late and then put the project on hold. AA+ didn't happen due to lack of cash.

AAA was nowhere near ready when CBM went down. The Nyx motherboard wasn't production ready, the chips didn't work and there was no software. I wouldn't be surprised if it would have taken them another 12 months.

[trekiej]

Can the color registers be modified fast enough to emulate chunky mode?

[Thorham]

Per pixel, but you can access 16 pixels at a time.

Only if you have a 1 bit per pixel mode, obviously. There's also the problem that the Amiga blitter accesses memory at 16 bit boundaries, which means you need to blit 16 bits extra for positioning. A chunky blitter that accesses memory at 8 bit boundaries doesn't need the extra bits when blitting to an 8 bit screen.

Can the color registers be modified fast enough to emulate chunky mode?

Yes, but you can't do full screen 1x1 pixel mode that way.