@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: This reminds me of a comment by David Heinemeier Hansson which I like to quote "The liberating freedom of constraint".

Yes, and this is what made 80's home computer games so great. When PCs became more powerful and those restrictions were removed, the games got worse.

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Still though, I agree it would be nice to see the outcome of the alternative.

I don't. The only graphical improvement I would like to see is rendering close objects properly without seeing vertical lines (which I'm betting could be done on the A500 too with a bit of thought). Apart from that the limitations contribute to the character of the game. I wouldn't want that character to change on more powerful machines.

People crow about how FastDoom is great because it allows low-end retro PCs to play Doom at an acceptable frame rate. It's not. Doom was designed to look good with floor and ceiling textures. Take them away and it looks like shit. Scrunch it down to 16 color EGA and it looks worse. Remove the sky and far away objects and render in 'potato' mode (80x200 max) and it's just disgusting. Who cares what the frame rate is, when the graphics are so badly mangled that you can't play the game?

But Grind is a different story. It was designed from the start to look good in 160x100 in 16 colors with solid floors and ceilings, so it's looking the best it can in that mode. The low 3D resolution is compensated for by the beautifully designed and well-animated high resolution weapons. This literally changes the focus of the game. Instead of everything getting blurry up close, it's sharper. You can almost feel the crisp action of the well-oiled Gatling gun as it pumps out bullets, and you want to get 'up close and personal' with the enemy (whereas in Doom you avoid that because they look like pixelated cardboard cutouts close up).

If there was one thing they could improve in Grind it's the sound. The weapons are all very similar, and aren't satisfyingly loud like they should be. You should hear footsteps that change timbre depending on the location and ground surface, and distinctly different sounds for different objects that are picked up and used.

This is another area where the Amiga shines that could compensate for the lower resolution 3D. Realistic sound effects help to create the illusion of being 'in' the game, even if the images aren't that sharp. That might need more ChipRAM and/or a faster CPU to get the most effects, so maybe on the A500 you have to choose between atmospheric background music (or ambient soundtrack) and enhanced sound effects, whereas on the A1200 you can have it all.

Last edited by bhabbott on 11-Oct-2024 at 07:15 PM.
Last edited by bhabbott on 11-Oct-2024 at 07:14 PM.

@ppcamiga1

I'm a big Doom fan, but that... That looks crap, I'm sorry to say. It's around 2/3 screen size on a 320*200 display and the frame rate is appalling. It's the exact opposite of the intended experience: fullscreen and frantic. It's ok for exploring the empty beginning of the level but it's going to bite as soon as you actually get into a fight.

I used to play Doom and Doom 2 fullscreen on my 040 with DoomAttack, which was the minimum to do it justice, really.

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I just finished playing through Doom on the A1000 with PiStorm, using ADoom and EHB mode on OCS.

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@kolla

I remember having fun with DoomAttack at 640 x 400 on my A1200. That was running under Petunia on OS4 on the BlizzPPC with BVision. The screen wipe effect was laggy as hell due to the fact that reading back from the framebuffer was terrible but once you were in the level proper, it ran fine.

Alas, the only surviving footage was recorded years ago on a very poor quality phone camera, but you can get an impression from here (control was bad because one hand was holding the phone)

https://youtu.be/AQ1t5q3xmYk?si=kFe8jbS3EiC9aB1q

Last edited by Karlos on 12-Oct-2024 at 12:38 PM.

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@Karlos

what you wrote is pure bs and pi shit storm propaganda

DOOM on this video on amiga with 68020 FAST RAM akiko
run better than on affordable pc in 1994

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kDM3S7gQTk

you should accept reality
aga was too slow and should be replaced with something better
or at least commdore should add akiko to a1200

you should accept that commodore bankrupt because aga has not chunky pixels
and by that amiga 1200 has to slow graphics to run original DOOM

@ppcamiga1

I never mentioned PiStorm. Check your medication. What I actually said was that DoomAttack ran *very well* on my BlizzPPC under OS4.1 beta - under RTG 640*400 was playable and I attached documentary evidence. You should be jumping for joy, this was on a PPC with a chunky pixel graphics card.

Last edited by Karlos on 13-Oct-2024 at 09:49 AM.

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@ppcamiga1

Quote:

DOOM on this video on amiga with 68020 FAST RAM akiko run better than on affordable pc in 1994 you should accept reality aga was too slow and should be replaced with something better or at least commdore should add akiko to a1200 you should accept that commodore bankrupt because aga has not chunky pixels and by that amiga 1200 has to slow graphics to run original DOOM

Hum, no : the 1200 and the CD32 have a too slow CPU, the main problem...

Watch some videos with a PIStorm (I don't like this crap, they want to replace 68k with crappy ARM) and Quake running in HAM : you will understand...

Commodore did a lot of mistakes, they should sell the 1200/CD32 without CPU onboard and with a turbo 030 card with fastram... Game changer...

@CosmosUnivers

The PiStorm is to everyone's taste but it is at least for everyone. You can still go and get yourself a nice overclockable 68060 board if you can find a proper 68060 but this is increasingly difficult and costly.

If you can live 68040 in virtuo, the PiStorm offers amazing performance and compatibility. It's good to have options.

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@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote the usual brain farts:

ppcamiga1 fact 1 - Quote:

DOOM on this video on amiga with 68020 FAST RAM akiko run better than on affordable pc in 1994

Establishing that 68020+AGA+Akiko+Fast RAM is better than affordable PC in 1994.

I'm guessing he means in dollar for dollar, or rather zloty for zloty. Which in 1994 is likely a 386SX based system.

ppcamiga1 fact 2 - Quote:

aga was too slow and should be replaced with something better or at least commdore should add akiko to a1200

Reinforcing the validity of fact 1.

So, while AGA alone was too slow for Doom, it magically became not too slow when combined with Akiko, and of course some Fast RAM which he forgets to mention.

ppcamiga1 fact 3 - Quote:

commodore bankrupt because aga has not chunky pixels and by that amiga 1200 has to slow graphics to run original DOOM

If we look at facts 1 and 2, it sounds more like Commodore went bankrupt because they didn't have the CD32/Akiko chip (+ Fast RAM) available earlier than late 1993.

That is exactly what people have been saying in various threads for quite a while now: The systems would've offered a notably better value proposition if they included at least 2MB Fast RAM as standard.
I even went as far as postulating that ideally the CD32 should've been released in late 1992/early 1993, with the A1200 (CD) following a year later.

Before you were always saying how AGA was bad and too expensive, and how a PC with VGA in 1993 was better,
But now you've switched to the AGA+Akiko+Fast RAM is better than PC with SVGA in 1994.

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All the way, with 68k

@thread

All this Doom talk did remind me of the first 3D FPS game that piqued my interest: Quake.

This past weekend PAX Aus was in town, and feeling a bit nostalgic I took my Nintendo Switch with me and played the excellent Quake port on the tram rides in and out.

Good times.

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All the way, with 68k

@agami

Doom was aimed at 386 about as much as quake was aimed at 486. It works. Just.

Don't forget, Doom was created on a 68040 machine and at that time, your typical 486 was somewhat slower overall at the same clock speed than the 68040. I first played Doom in 1993 on a 25 MHz 486 and it was perfectly playable. Not super smooth, by any measure, but completely playable. Nothing like video posted by ppcamiga1, which is frankly a joke. Good luck getting through any level with a reasonable number of hitscanning enemies at those frame rates.

On my 25MHz 040 with AGA, with DoomAttack I was able to complete Doom and Doom II with a reasonably consistent framerate between 15-20, not too dissimilar to the first experience on thr 486. When I got the graphics card, it was even better, not just because there was no more C2P to worry about, but because the write bandwidth of the BVision was more than double that of AGA from the 040 and even faster again from the PPC. This is why the PPC managed to run the 68K version at 640*400 - four times the number of pixels rendered per frame.

Last edited by Karlos on 14-Oct-2024 at 10:03 AM.

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But enough about Doom. Grind runs at up to 50fps on 020+AGA+Fast. I'm sure there will be places where it slows down, but in theory, AGA can remove the burden of the scanline doubling which will free up the CPU further to allow more cycles for rendering.

50fps is what every classic Amiga game strove for in the 2D era. Kudos.

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@Karlos

grind is worth nothing.

This is how DOOM should run on Amiga 1200 in 1993:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kDM3S7gQTk

This is absolutely wonderful.
It is just CD32 with FAST RAM and AKIKO.
Amiga with 68020 FAST RAM and AKIKO is good enough
to run DOOM better than affordable pc in 1993.

with better graphics with chunky pixels or just AKIKO in a1200
Commodore will not bankrupt in 1994

they not add chunky pixel to aga and rest is history

no reason to change anything after 32 years

@ppcamiga1

Have you actually watched the bloody video you keep posting? It's utterly and irredemably terrible. There are regions or around 3-4 fps or lower, in an are with zero enemies, at a reduced screensize.

I'm not knocking the CD32, but it wasn't the machine for this. Doom 1 and 2 were not survival horror jumpscare corridor shooters, they were fast-paced ego-trips that are basically arcade shooters in 2.5D.

Nobody, except some odd masochists played Doom to completion with such a low screen size and frame rate. You wanted to play Doom properly? You bought the fastest 486 you could afford. Anything less was pointless (History repeated with Quake. If you wanted to play Quake properly, Pentium, or better still, Pentium Pro was the processor of choice).

On the Amiga side, Akiko itself was a failure. It can actually do the C2P very quickly indeed, but it's integrated in such a poor way that unless 020+Fast is your target platform, the advantage quickly evaporates and software C2P on 030 is faster overall. So if your game needs at minimum a fast 030 anyway, Akiko is only going to slow you down.

Grind understands the limitation of the machine and the importance - especially today - of maintaining a fast frame rate.

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@ppcamiga1

in your video if the person turns it is very stuttering and not soft. The problem of CD32 basically was the same as for the A1200, no fast ram and only 68020. With 2 MB Fast RAM additional and 68030 both A1200 and CD32 would have been much more competitive but also more expensive