Hey all,

Was just wondering something. Can you play Amiga CD 32 games on an Amiga 4000?

Ed

Last edited by edponpon on 08-Mar-2015 at 09:52 AM.

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@edponpon

Of course you can assuming the A4000 is blessed with a CDrom drive.
You will need a copy of IDEfix 97 or 99.

Install this on yurt hard drive and you will also notice it has also installed a programme called CD32 Emulator.

From the CD32 emulator you will want to create a floppy boot disk which will set up the running of the majority but not all CD32 titles.... I would recommend creating a boot disk over running the emulator direct off your hard disk as it is more reliable in use.

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@outrun1978

Except that many CD32 games make use of the multiple buttons on the CD32 controllers. Are those somehow mapped to the A4000 keyboard or does one avoid such games altogether?

@orb85750

Or buy a CD32 pad! :)

Anyway most CD32 games that make use of the buttons are in lieu of having a mouse or keyboard
present; which shouldn't be an issue on an A4000.

Any games that use the Akiko chip will, I guess, not work. As far as I know there's only Microcosm.

@edponpon

The Amiga4000 is not a real CD32 because does not have Akiki chip.

so you should not be calling your Amiga4000 a CD32

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 11-Mar-2015 at 12:40 AM.

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@Pleng

Quote:

Any games that use the Akiko chip will, I guess, not work. As far as I know there's only Microcosm.

Every single CD32 game uses Akiko, as it's used to access the CD drive

As for Microcosm, I doubt it would use Akiko. I mean, it could but what would be the point?

(I mean, what would it be needed for, except of course streaming the background video from the disc )

There's a legend that Alien Breed 3D uses it for blitting graphics (but works also without) - in any case if it is used, the speed increase is so minimal, it runs about the same as I remember it running on an unexpanded A1200 (many years in-between, but I find it hard to believe it would have been even slower)

But Akiko or not, Microcosm is one of the more "problematic" games, I remember having problems also with Simon the Sorcerer.

Last edited by Jupp3 on 09-Mar-2015 at 05:58 PM.

@edponpon,

I seem to recall that AsimCDFS has a CD32 mode.

Chris

I am able to run most CD32 games with no issue on my A1200 set up using the boot disk created from idefix.... with some games it is a case of disabling the cache if it doesn't load or in some cases disabling workbench or any extra ram..... even CDs which have a menu like The Grandslam Gamer Gold collection work fine and they require you to hold down one of the relevant joypad keys upon boot.

From experience the only one that really causes problems for some reason is SimCity CDTV.... I can get it to load by running from command line but sadly no cdda tracks play....


However trying to get CD32 games to run under RuninUae under OS4 is a better topic for conversation 😉

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

The Amiga4000 is not a real CD32 because does not have Akiki chip. so you should not be calling your Amiga4000 a CD32

What are you talking about?
I don't have an A4000, and I've never referred to one as a CD32

@Pleng

Quote:

Any games that use the Akiko chip will, I guess, not work. As far as I know there's only Microcosm.

IIRC, Wings. But it depends if they bang the hardware or use the OS. There is an OS function to do the conversion. And there is a pointer to the hardware address available.

The MMU could be programmed to watch the Akikko address and do the conversion in softqare.

Last edited by Hypex on 11-Mar-2015 at 02:00 PM.

Also regarding CD32 games, there are WHDload installers for many. Although if the game has CD audio tracks, you might lose that in progress...

in the past i played some CD32 games with my A1200 with external Telmex Atapi CD-ROM

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@All

Does a list of games using the Akiko chip exist?

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@Massi

Quote:

Massi wrote: @All Does a list of games using the Akiko chip exist?

Sure, it goes something like this:
Quote:


Seriously though, as mentioned before, every single CD32 game uses it (on CD32) for CD access, that's what became the main point of the chip.

But as for what CD32 games use it for blitting graphics, that's something with a lot of "I think that..." but a little actual knowledge.

Using common sense, we can first rule out all "ported from floppy" games. They usually ran just fine on unexpanded A1200, so they also run fine on an unexpanded CD32, so no point to optimize. Also most games with clear visual 2D "layers" (like most platformers). Also games that stream video from disc shouldn't have much use for Akiko (f.ex. Microcosm). What we are left with is mostly just 3D games.

And as said before, judging from the framerate, I don't think AB3D uses it.

I think at least some Doom, descent etc. ports also support it, and while not game, Shapeshifter can use it too. There are also Akiko blitter routines for Gloom Deluxe, but I'm not sure if that game was released for CD32, and I think those were released later separately anyway.

Quote:

Massi wrote: Does a list of games using the Akiko chip exist?

Lot's of hearsay here but I have some more. The old CD32 FAQ mentions Wing Commander as using the Akiko. I don't know if this means directly by banging the hardware or even if it is true. It is my understanding that the CD32 patches some gfx library functions to use the Akiko. If true, this is a good way to allow a speedup while maintaining compatibility with non-Akiko Amigas. The Akiko speedup is modest at best. A 68030 with fast memory, and probably even in some cases a 68020 with fast memory, would outperform it. Adding the Akiko c2p logic to a custom chip probably was cheaper than adding fast memory to the CD32 even though a few MBs of fast would have allowed for considerably more advanced games.

The CD32 uses a 1MB ROM which has lowlevel.library, nonvolatile.library, a bootable CD filesystem and a few other system modules which need to be available somehow when booting from a CD. Besides a CD32 controller, there isn't much else needed. Some CD32 games are not very forgiving of other hardware like fast memory or faster processors though.

Last edited by matthey on 10-Mar-2015 at 11:46 PM.

@Jupp3

Quote:

Seriously though, as mentioned before, every single CD32 game uses it (on CD32) for CD access, that's what became the main point of the chip.

Absolutely true
I was actually meaning a specific use for 3D graphics (the so called c2p, chunky to planar conversion).

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@matthey

Quote:

The Akiko speedup is modest at best.

I agree.
In my opinion not being a DMA chip was the main restriction for 3D graphics (c2p = write chunky data to its registers and read planar back, still data need to be written to chip memory).

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@Massi

Quote:

I was actually meaning a specific use for 3D graphics (the so called c2p, chunky to planar conversion).

As such, it doesn't have anything to do with 3D. It just converts graphics data from chunky (all bits of a single pixel next to each other) to planar (all bits of a pixel in their own "1bit images") format.

Sure, that's very often used with 3D graphics, but talking about "3D" at all seems to make some people think it's some kind of "3D chip"

I've even seen people who think Microcosm would be some kind of Aadvanced 3D game" only enabled by Akiko, and, well, generally anything more than "just background animation streamed from CD with normal 2D sprites pasted on top"

I guess someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I think I read somewhere long ago that one problem with Akiko chip is that the amount of "setup" that has to be done for conversion is quite large compared to the amount of converted data it provides. Still a bit faster than 14MHz 020 without fast ram

@Jupp3

Allright, "c2p" is basically data conversion not necessarily related to 3D.
Part of the 3D of that time (mainly games using texture mapping) has this step in the rendering pipeline though.

I guess Akiko was also used when streaming animations (chunky format) from CD (not MPEG, nor CDXL ... just guessing), yes Microcosm probably.

Last edited by Massi on 11-Mar-2015 at 01:41 PM.
Last edited by Massi on 11-Mar-2015 at 01:25 PM.

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@Massi

Quote:

I guess Akiko was also used when streaming animations (chunky format) from CD (not MPEG, nor CDXL ... just guessing), yes Microcosm probably.

Yes. As I (and others) said before, handling CD drive is one of the tasks of Akiko. The main task, if you ask me.

As for the data conversion while doing that (if you were hinting towards that), what would be the point?

Sure, Akiko can convert chunky pixels from animation (or from anywhere else) faster than 020 can but what's the point in that?

I mean, if you are going to stream video on Amiga, what would be the point of having the data in "wrong" format to begin with? Just store it in planar format, and copy direcly from files in CD to gfx ram. It's always slower to "do conversion fast" than "not do any conversion at all"

If it's a multiplatform game (like Microcosm is), it should be rather trivial to write a converter, that will convert the videos to correct format. And besides, Microcosm is very different on different platforms, take a look at the Sega CD version for example. Very different. Seems that it has enemies in video stream, no idea how they're erased. I guess they figured out during development that CD32 can't do this, and created something quite a bit different with sprites instead. The MS-DOS version seems to use sprites too, but it otherwise quite different. Also, I don't think any other version has this "must pass each point on the edge of the map" concept that the CD32 version has.