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      /  Did any games ever use HAM mode?
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Hans 
Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:08:08
#1 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 27-Dec-2003
Posts: 5066
From: New Zealand

The title says it all, did any games ever use HAM mode? I'm just curious as to whether any game was released that used it. I've been told that it's not feasible, but I think that it could be done. It would really chew through your memory, as you'd need an extra 5 bitplanes for all graphics (an extra 7 for HAM8 mode). HAM8 mode would probably be too slow, given that 8-bitplane graphics is slow in general; however HAM6 would still look good.

The idea would be to store a colour-mapped image in four extra bitplanes, and a HAM version in the main six. You'd have the usual mask for blitter objects, and one extra mask that marks the one pixel in each row to the right of the blitter object (we'll call that the background modification mask). You'd blit the HAM image as usual, and use the background modification mask to replace the background pixels with their colour-mapped counterparts at the right boundary of the blitter object. You'd still get a little colour distortion to the right of the boundary, but in interlace mode you could design the bitmaps to have opposite errors on alternative lines (kind of like the way that PAL reduces the visibility of colour shifts due to phase errors). This technique would take some work to write software to do the blitter operations outlined above (particularly if the job is split between the CPU, in fastmem, and the chipset), and software to create images in the appropriate format.

I know that this idea isn't new, so I'm wondering if it was ever used; and if not, why not? Are the memory bandwidth requirements too much? Assuming that people have fast-RAM and decent processors, part of the compositing process could be done by the CPU. Would it have happened if commodore hadn't gone bankrupt? Or, would technology (a.k.a. graphics cards) have made this irrelevant anyway?

It's a pity that I don't have the time, or an A1200, to try this out. This could be an interesting experiment.

Hans

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Seer 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:27:08
#2 ]
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Joined: 27-Jun-2003
Posts: 3725
From: The Netherlands

@Hans

There used to be a golf game that used it in game IIRC. No idea what it was called.

Other then that, I don't think HAM was used ingame, some games used it to display loading screens, but not many (Robocop2 IIRC).

Last edited by Seer on 17-Oct-2007 at 03:27 PM.

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Varthall 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:31:12
#3 ]
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Joined: 17-Feb-2004
Posts: 1559
From: Up Rough

@Seer

Quote:

Seer wrote:
@Hans

There used to be a golf game that used it in game IIRC. No idea what it was called.

Other then that, I don't think HAM was used ingame, some games used it to display loading screens, but not many (Robocop2 IIRC).


The golf game was called Links. I have heard that also Venus the Flytrap used HAM in-game (it's an arcade shooter).

Varthall

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hardwired 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:32:37
#4 ]
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Joined: 15-Mar-2007
Posts: 106
From: Portugal - Gaia

@Hans

Actually there were a lot of games that used the HAM and HAM8 mode...

But from what i recall they were all card games like strip poker or klondike or other puzzle like ones... Possibly a text adventure game or so...

Action games there were none AFAIK...

But actually I agree that the HAM screenmode was never properly exploited in the game area. There were problably a few titles that could benefit from it.
Since the sprites were not affected by the contingencies of the HAM mode work around you could do great adventure games (where there could be no scroll or only vertical scroll). Even limited action games.

A platform game like rainbown island or bubble bubble is possible with the premises and workarounds I mentioned.

In the speed department the HAM mode should be as fast as 64 colour mode (6 bitplane if i'm not mistaken) and HAM8 should be as fast as 256 colour mode (8 bitplane one)... More or less...

EDIT: Yes - there was LINKS (HD only - in that time was preetty straightforward), You're quite right! That's a game designed with the contingencies of the HAM mode in mind.
And it was quite good too - a bit more slow than the PC 256 colour version, if i recall...

I don't recall of venus the flytrap game though...

Last edited by hardwired on 17-Oct-2007 at 03:37 PM.
Last edited by hardwired on 17-Oct-2007 at 03:36 PM.

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AmigaHeretic 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:39:31
#5 ]
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Joined: 7-Mar-2003
Posts: 1697
From: Oregon

@Hans

Games that used HAM:

Pioneer Plague, Knights of the Crystallion, Links, and Labyrinth of Time for the CD³².


Used HAM mode for static screens:

Phantom Fighter, Robocop 2, Strip Poker 1 & 2, Covergirl Strip Poker.

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Seer 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:41:33
#6 ]
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Joined: 27-Jun-2003
Posts: 3725
From: The Netherlands

@hardwired

Welcome aboard

And indeed that game was links, and I remember Venus the flytrap but don't think it used HAM not even during loading screens IIRC. Been far to long tho..

I always thought that HAM modes would require to much chip ram and CPU speed to be of any use for fast paced games ?

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hardwired 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:50:33
#7 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 15-Mar-2007
Posts: 106
From: Portugal - Gaia

@Seer

Apreciated...

Actually I remeber a story that I read back in the 90's (ACE Magazine if i'm not mistaken) prior to the release of the adventure game inspired in HR Giger artwork (actually he partipated big time) and they showed him some work in 256 colour mode and HAM mode in the Amiga, but he prefered to go for the 16 colour mode High-res VGA modes (wich translated into the interlaced modes in the amiga version).

What was the name of the game?

Anyway, if it was in low-res the amiga version would probably be in HAM mode... (and without the flicker...)

Edit: Oh yes - i remember - DARK SEED!

Last edited by hardwired on 17-Oct-2007 at 03:52 PM.
Last edited by hardwired on 17-Oct-2007 at 03:51 PM.

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Crumb 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:53:37
#8 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Mar-2003
Posts: 2209
From: Zaragoza (Aragonian State)

@AmigaHeretic

¿Do you remember the game Universe? IIRC it used HAM5 to get 256colours on an A500.

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Benji 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:54:15
#9 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 1-Nov-2003
Posts: 573
From: Cheltenham or London, UK

@hardwired

I was thinking of that - its Dark Seed



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dreamlandfantasy 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 15:57:46
#10 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 17-Mar-2004
Posts: 418
From: Glasgow, UK

@Hans

There was a sit-up simulator (I forget the actual title) featuring actual video in HAM modes of Cindy Crawford doing sit-ups when you waggled your joystick.

If my memory serves it was also programmed in AMOS.

Kind regards,

Francis.

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Hans 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 16:08:39
#11 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 27-Dec-2003
Posts: 5066
From: New Zealand

@hardwired

I guess I should have said that I was interested in games like platformers, or others where there are a lot of oddly shaped blitter objects moving around, instead of games with predominantly static graphics.

@seer

If I'm right about this, a 64-colour game (ignoring copper tricks) would use 7 bitplanes (including the mask), whereas we'll need an extra 5. So you're going to require 12/7 = 1.71 times more bandwidth (16/9 = 1.78 times more for HAM8). However, assuming that most machines now have fastRAM, some of the composition could be offloaded to the CPU, particularly if the CPU is a 68030+. I think that it's feasible.

If anything, creating a platformer/action-game on 15+ year old hardware in full 12-bit colour would be impressive, IMHO. I'm guessing that HAM8 mode would be too slow, but with a fast processor doing most of the composition work, it might be ok.

Hans

Last edited by Hans on 17-Oct-2007 at 05:51 PM.
Last edited by Hans on 17-Oct-2007 at 04:11 PM.

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Hans 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 16:10:37
#12 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 27-Dec-2003
Posts: 5066
From: New Zealand

@Crumb

Quote:

Crumb wrote:
@AmigaHeretic

¿Do you remember the game Universe? IIRC it used HAM5 to get 256colours on an A500.


Slightly off-topic, but out of interest, did anyone ever use HAM7 (if HAM5 is ok, I assume that HAM7 would be too).

Hans

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Seer 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 16:13:42
#13 ]
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Joined: 27-Jun-2003
Posts: 3725
From: The Netherlands

@Hans

But it would still need to sit inside chip ram or be put there by the CPU right ? That should give a large performance hit ?

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Hans 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 16:22:23
#14 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 27-Dec-2003
Posts: 5066
From: New Zealand

@Seer

Quote:

Seer wrote:
@Hans

But it would still need to sit inside chip ram or be put there by the CPU right ? That should give a large performance hit ?



If you do the composition of the blitter objects sans background with the CPU, those bitmaps could be stored in fastRAM, providing higher bandwidth access. You then only need to copy 7 bitplanes (but full-screen, or at least a window, if you keep track of the bounding box) into chip RAM, which I've been told is pretty fast if you do it during the VBlanking interval, when the chipset isn't using it. The final composition would involve compositing the blitter objects on top of the background (or background layers). There may be a few other variations, but in the end, the total bandwidth will probably be within the limits of the machine. This is similar to some of the tricks I read about that chunky to planar algorithms used.

Hans

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hardwired 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 16:47:16
#15 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 15-Mar-2007
Posts: 106
From: Portugal - Gaia

@Hans

I could be wrong, but iI think that HAM7 and HAM5 only differ on the palette used (Ham5 used 4096 OCS and HAM 7 used the full 16 million color AGA palette)...

As i recall the HAM mode used 16 color palette to compose the possible 4096 color scheme, and the HAM8 used a 64 color palette to compose up to 262,000 color scheme.

I don't remember being possible to use a intermediate plane (32 color mode)... And I did some interesting tests with dpaintIV and blitz basic 2+... when my amiga A4000 was still alive!...

Last edited by hardwired on 17-Oct-2007 at 04:48 PM.

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ZeroG 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 16:49:48
#16 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 16-Jul-2004
Posts: 544
From: Germany

@Hans

There was a platformer: KangFu

Taken from the manual:
Quote:

Features of Kang Fu:



** About 1000 (!) colors on-screen
* Dual playfield with HAM (!!) (In some places, even triple playfield!)
* Hires, [non interlaced] as never seen on ANY game(console)!
* 50 Frame per second update, fullframe scroll and objects
* Digitized HAM Backgrounds in second playfield & digitized objects in foreground
* Over 35 'cartoon-like' enemy's
* Huge digitized end-of-level enemy's (the biggest ever seen)
* More than 750 animation frames
* 22 Original CD soundtracks
* More than 150 high quality, funny samples
* Full screen
* Unique combination of digitized back & foregrounds with cartoon objects
* 24 Bit colors & copperlists
** Playable!
* Random level selection
* 10 Levels + 10 sublevels; over 600 screens large
* Passwords !
* Highscore save
** Detects and uses 1-Button Joystick or CD32 Gamepad automatically
* Nice HAM8 artwork between sections
* Uses 100% 68020+ code
** Works on ALL AGA Amigas with ANY CDROM
* Works with Fastram,MMU,030,040 processor
* No need for 3.1 ROMS Boots easily from workbench from ANY Screenmode
* Uses optional Fastmem for enhanced graphics and sounds
* Manual also included in game
* Special SX32 version available !

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Hans 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 17:44:10
#17 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 27-Dec-2003
Posts: 5066
From: New Zealand

@ZeroG

Ah yes. I remember seeing that game. Those guys seemed to have an obsession with statues of naked people. Only the background is HAM though, not all the graphics. As a result, the foreground objects look quite odd, due to the high quality background.

@hardwired

HAM5 just set the 6th bit to 0, so you could only hold-and-modify one colour channel (blue, IIRC). HAM7 would be HAM8's version of this concept. I thought that mode would be so useless that no-one would ever use it.

Hans

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Hans 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 17:50:56
#18 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 27-Dec-2003
Posts: 5066
From: New Zealand

@all

I just realized that the scheme could be changed to remove one more bitplane. The mask used to denote the shape of a blitter object, could also be shifted to the right by one pixel to obtain the mask to modify the layer below to correct the HAM values. For the chipset blitter, this shouldn't take any extra calculations at all; for the CPU it would add some overhead, that may mean that it's not worth it. That would reduce the extra bandwidth required to 11/7=1.57 times for HAM6, and 15/8=1.67 for HAM8).

Hans


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scala47 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 18:17:54
#19 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 20-Mar-2004
Posts: 238
From: USA

@Hans

Labyrinth OF Time for the CDTV and CD32 used HAM6.

All other games that claimed to use HAM looked like crap caca.

DONT use HAM6 that looks really bad. Use HAM8.

HAM8 would be slow if your using a Standard 2mb CHip Machine, but believe me, a very good game can be done in HAM8 if you have 6MB ram and 2 CHip (well AGA obviously). and it would work fine. just got to do tricks to avoid HAM Fringing.

I have Full Overscan 30fps 368 x 240 Video animations running beautifully in HAM8.

IT CAN BE DONE! But it has to be rendered or created in a higher end system with much higher resolutions, and then scaled down for it to look any good.

Ever saw the Game Body Blows for Amiga? the reason it didnt look as good as Street Fighter, was because it was completely ceated on Deluxe Paint (this was a mistake) it would have been ok if it was scaled down and retouched with Deluxe Paint.......but not completely drawn by it.

Ever thought about a DCTV game intead of HAM8? it would be far better and faster!

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Hans 
Re: Did any games ever use HAM mode?
Posted on 17-Oct-2007 18:43:40
#20 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 27-Dec-2003
Posts: 5066
From: New Zealand

@scala47

The labyrinth of time is still not a platform/shooter style game. It looks like a point-and-click adventure.

I'm not actually going to make a game for the classic, as I just don't have the time (or a machine). I also don't really know what a DCTV is, and what it's capabilities are. If I were to write something that doesn't use the AGA chipset, I would use Cybergraphics/Picasso96 modes.

This is more to satisfy my curiosity. Interesting that you suggest HAM6 looks bad. Static HAM6 graphics looks good; would the problem be the 16-colour base palette being too little when you're dealing with correcting background pixels to the right of blitter objects?

If I did have the time (and access to my A1200), here's what I would do:
- write a library and tool that reads in the truecolour graphics (using datatypes) and generates HAM6/8 format imagery and the additional bitplanes as outlined in my previous posts
- write CPU/blitter routines for manipulating and compositing this dynamic HAM6/8 content.
- create the graphics in 24-bit truecolour
- create a game

Hans

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