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      /  Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
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agami 
Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 21-Jan-2022 10:45:53
#1 ]
Super Member
Joined: 30-Jun-2008
Posts: 1637
From: Melbourne, Australia

Just like Hollywood rebooting classic hits and franchises, I'd like to gauge what this community thinks about reimagining and modernizing classic Amiga games using contemporary game dev tech, for a new audience.

Yes, there have already been a few of these over the past couple of decades, and No I am not referring to remasters and other simple HD graphics treatments like those of Wings or Superfrog. I am referring to reimagined games like Shadow of the Beast for Playstation 4, and the isometric 2.5D Alien Breed trilogy on Steam.

How cool would it be to have a fear + action-based Alien Breed 3D Mark III (Dead Space meets Doom Eternal) using Unreal Engine 4 or even the new version 5? Or a Stunt Car Racer in the style of Forza Horizon or MotorStorm. Or an online multiplayer Esports version of Speedball with the mayhem of Rocket League?

The title at the tippy top of my list would have to be:
Wings: WWII - in the style of Crimson Skies (Xbox)

Of course I can go on, but I'm keen to hear what reimagined Amiga title(s) you would be keen to play on Windows PC, Xbox, Playstation, Switch, smartphone, or maybe even on Amiga NG.

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BigD 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 21-Jan-2022 12:21:23
#2 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@agami

I think you should look no further than the sort of treatment that Dotemu the French developer hsa given to Streets of Rage and now Windjammers. They have managed to preserve some of the magic of what made those games great while modernising, adding features and new moves/features and putting a new artistic spin on them. Speedball 2 and Sensible Soccer have already been attempted with limited success (although I like Sensible Soccer 2006 a lot on the PS2). Alien Breed Evolution, Impact etc were passable in the PS3 era but I prefer fan service attempts like Project Osiris which is basically what Alien Breed 3D would have been if everyone had 080 CPUs and the AAA chipset/RTG in 1995! Christian Whitehead is a genius Sonic fan who took his Sonic CD porting prowess to SEGA and was rewarded with the contract to make Sonic Mania; an absolute dream! Oh that an Amiga fan had that sort of skill to reinvent Speedball 2/Cannon Fodder or the Chaos Engine! I wish Dotemu took an interest in Speedball 2 as that would create an Esports phenomenon IMHO!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K38rdCqxfsI

Last edited by BigD on 21-Jan-2022 at 12:24 PM.

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amigang 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 21-Jan-2022 12:44:50
#3 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Jan-2005
Posts: 2018
From: Cheshire, England

@agami

To me the one game that would be amazing as a remake would be "Awesome" the Psygnosis game where you start off in large battle ship, then warp to the system, launch a small fighter to clear the sky, then land and storm the base, imagine it all in 3d with high end graphics, I know you can kind of do a mission like this in "elite dangerous: odyssey" which is amazing modem remake, but a more arcade feel like Awesome would be, well Awesome!!

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 21-Jan-2022 15:15:04
#4 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@agami

WipeOut and StarDust was updated for PS3 I remember.

If code is readable its possible make improvement, but without source code its not so easy. and its also in a gray zone legally. As don’t have right distribute original content.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 21-Jan-2022 at 03:16 PM.

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matthey 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 22-Jan-2022 1:09:11
#5 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

agami Quote:

Just like Hollywood rebooting classic hits and franchises, I'd like to gauge what this community thinks about reimagining and modernizing classic Amiga games using contemporary game dev tech, for a new audience.

...

Of course I can go on, but I'm keen to hear what reimagined Amiga title(s) you would be keen to play on Windows PC, Xbox, Playstation, Switch, smartphone, or maybe even on Amiga NG.


Amiga. The influence of a long lost age. All we have to talk about is reimagined Amiga games for other platforms?

Dungeon Master indy clone Legend of Grimrock:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_Grimrock#Development_and_release Quote:

In 2001 LoG began as Dungeon Master clone hobby project called Dungeon Master 2000 by a former Amiga demoscene coder. Later it was renamed Escape from Dragon Mountain and released in its final version in 2004. In early 2011 the developers decided to grow the project beyond being a simple clone and started aiming for commercial game quality. The developers used also other games as inspiration for the game, including Eye of the Beholder and Ultima Underworld. The developers established an indie video game company called "Almost Human" located at Matinkylä, Espoo in Finland. The four founding developers left the Finnish video game industry (Remedy Entertainment, Futuremark) and started working on the game full-time, now named Legend of Grimrock. A forum and development blog was set up and updated frequently.


Grimrock has likely sold over 1 million copies. The AmigaOne PPC user base is likely a few thousand and Grimrock on the AmigaOne might sell a few hundred copies. Grimrock requires something like a 1.5GHz i5 class of CPU and 2GiB of memory. It's the Amiga that needs reimagining if there are going to be any AmigaNG reimagined games. While other game devices benefited from the Covid stuck at home gamers, the Amiga has gone nowhere. For all the years that AmigaOne PPC hardware has been out, new higher performance 68k Amiga hardware has likely added more playable games.

Amiga: Testing heavy duty games on TF1260 (68060@100MHz)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGx3mwbvJsQ

0:02 Alien Breed 3D II
1:23 Al Unser, Jr. Arcade Racing
3:02 Alone in the Dark III
5:22 Bad Mojo
8:01 The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery
10:56 Blackthorne
12:31 Blood
14:28 Breathless
17:41 Caesar II
20:06 Chaos Control
22:24 Civilization II
24:21 Curse of Dragor
25:40 Cythera
26:10 Damage Incorporated
28:16 Dark Seed II
30:04 Deadlock: Planetary Conquest
32:32 Death from Above
33:53 Descent
36:50 The Dig
39:23 Discworld
41:08 Doom
42:32 Dust: A Tale of the Wired West
44:49 Earth 2140
48:21 Exile Trilogy
49:31 Exodus: The Last War
52:51 Foundation: Gold
54:40 Full Throttle
57:09 Genetic Species
1:00:07 Gloom Deluxe
1:02:10 Heart of Darkness
1:04:06 I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
1:05:59 The Incredible Machine 2
1:07:43 Links Pro CD
1:10:15 Lords of the Realm II
1:15:07 Marathon 2: Durandal
1:16:56 Master of Orion II
1:19:38 Might and Magic: World of Xeen
1:21:40 Mini Metal Slug
1:23:46 Monty Python & The Quest for the Holy Grail
1:25:22 Napalm: The Crimson Crisis
1:28:06 Nemac IV (RTG 320x256, not 640x480 mistakingly stated in the video)
1:30:09 OpenDune
1:31:52 OpenTyrian
1:33:19 Panzer General
1:35:30 PGA Tour Golf III
1:38:46 Pathways Into Darkness
1:39:38 Payback
1:41:06 Police Quest IV: Open Season
1:43:07 Power Pete
1:44:32 Prince of Destruction
1:45:39 Quake
AmiQuake and ClickBoom comparison https://youtu.be/Q7J79TkRPuI
MacQuake68k! https://youtu.be/-ZK-JCj1xI0
1:46:48 Return to Zork
1:50:22 Settlers 2
1:52:37 Sim City 2000
1:54:08 Skullcracker
1:55:06 Souls in the System
1:56:57 Star Trek: Judgment Rites
2:03:10 Star Wars: Dark Forces
2:04:36 Star Wars: Rebel Assault II
2:08:37 Star Wars: X-Wing
2:12:30 Strife
2:15:08 Super Wing Commander
2:18:19 Theme Park (Mac)
2:19:25 Tractor Beam
2:21:16 Trapped 2
2:23:35 Ultima VII (Exult)
2:25:46 Versailles 1685
2:28:43 Wolfenstein 3D
2:29:54 Wolfenstein 3D (Mac)
2:30:55 Wrath of the Gods

Most of the games in the list have not been experienced by 68k Amiga users do to the cost of Amiga hardware but this is already the first level of Amiga game enhancement ready to go. Some of these games support turning up the resolution which would have made them look better. More CPU performance could allow more game ports. 3D support would allow more modern game ports yet.

I would like to see more online Amiga games but it isn't going to happen without a larger base of affordable network capable Amiga hardware. Null modem games converted to work over the internet was a nice idea. Other games would need more work. A couple of ideas I would like to see.

M.U.L.E (1983 C64, Atari game and 1985 PC game)
Similar to the original games but instead of taking turns, everyone has their turn at the same time on their networked computer. Vehicles would be purchasable with different stats. Maintain overhead view but with higher resolution and better graphics.

Gauntlet (1985 with disappointing Amiga port)
Multiplayer coop through networked computers. Same overhead view but with larger levels, more random everything, higher resolution and better graphics.

Both of these projects would likely be achievable on higher end existing 68k Amiga hardware but networking use reduces the usable user base and at least the server Amiga would want to have very good performance or a host server service would be necessary. A joke of an Amiga user base kills concepts and reimagined game ideas which are exported to other devices like Grimrock. Just look at this Amigaworld.net with a handful of active users to see the problem. I don't know why they bother keeping it open.

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OneTimer1 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 22-Jan-2022 9:35:58
#6 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 3-Aug-2015
Posts: 962
From: Unknown

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote:
... reimagining and modernizing classic Amiga ....


Great idea, when do you start your work?

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OneTimer1 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 22-Jan-2022 9:37:41
#7 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 3-Aug-2015
Posts: 962
From: Unknown

@matthey

Quote:
Amiga: Testing heavy duty games on TF1260 (68060@100MHz)


Is there something similar testing a VampireV4 Stand Alone, I would really like to see this Amiga replacement product being tested.

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Senex 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 22-Jan-2022 9:47:54
#8 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 135
From: Unknown

@agami

A game really worth a remake is not an Amiga one, but from Sega: Herzog Zwei.

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 22-Jan-2022 10:42:14
#9 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@matthey

Quote:
the Amiga has gone nowhere.


Some of AAA games, was made by team of developers, recreating it also needs a team of developers. And as you say, there is no market.

Maybe why he brings this up now, is maybe becouse two of the games your list are being fixed/patched as we speak.
what looks like is that developer takes shortcuts to improve speed, so some RTG games are broken, also there is a few original bugs. That never fixed, as well issues with timing, and sound. All these issues can be fixed, if you disassemble the game, modify it, and compile it without breaking the game. The best developer for that job is probably 68K developers, not C programmers and sure most of 68K developers are OS3 users. I’m sure MorphOS and AmigaOS4 got mostly C programmer, MorphOS developers put more work getting broken games to run, while AmigaOS4.1 developers did give a fu*k, if the game is bad its bad. Speculation: So maybe there is a less incentive to fix bugs on MorphOS. Besides if they are going X86, then it be waste of there time, to update the games. if it wont run anywhy,

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Jan-2022 at 11:52 AM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Jan-2022 at 11:26 AM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Jan-2022 at 10:44 AM.

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BigD 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 22-Jan-2022 21:53:43
#10 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Thread

Windjammers 2 does not disappoint and is a perfect sequel/reimagining of the Neo-Geo/arcade original. Take heed Amiga developers!

I personally think we're doing great with all the Classic Amiga game development and would rather see new IP like Reshoot and Metro Siege than necessarily a new Speedball 2. However, a HD version would be nice for the Vamipre SAGA modes.

Last edited by BigD on 22-Jan-2022 at 09:55 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 22-Jan-2022 at 09:54 PM.

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matthey 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 22-Jan-2022 23:48:44
#11 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

OneTimer1 Quote:

Is there something similar testing a VampireV4 Stand Alone, I would really like to see this Amiga replacement product being tested.


There is a VampireV4SA AGA games video but it is mostly AGA titles instead of high performance requiring games with the exception of ADoom.

Amiga Vampire 4 Standalone Over 60 AGA Games Working
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87bCG-6PKL8

ADoom at 1:29:38 in the video above (PAL mode so 320x256 while original was 320x200)
https://youtu.be/87bCG-6PKL8?t=5378

Vampire 4 Standalone Amiga Compatible Computer running Quake 2 on Gold Core 2.12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7hL_pn6bfg

The big advantages of the Vampire4SA over a high performance 68060 accelerator are allowing for AGA compatibility and getting rid of the Amiga chipset bottlenecks and limitations. It's too bad the above videos don't increase the resolutions which would make the games look so much better. I play GLQuake and ADoom at 512x384 on my CSMK3 68060@75MHz with Mediator Voodoo 4 which is more aesthetically appealing than blurry pixelation and it demonstrates the performance. Many Amiga games are based on video display timing which limits the max game speed but this is good if the game would be too fast.

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

Some of AAA games, was made by team of developers, recreating it also needs a team of developers. And as you say, there is no market.


The Amiga market is a chicken and egg problem. There are few Amiga games because there is no competitive hardware and user base and there is no competitive hardware because there are few new games. Before long the chicken is extinct which is where the Amiga is headed without hatching some new hardware eggs. No market means few games which allows only one man hobby projects.

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

Maybe why he brings this up now, is maybe because two of the games your list are being fixed/patched as we speak.
what looks like is that developer takes shortcuts to improve speed, so some RTG games are broken, also there is a few original bugs. That never fixed, as well issues with timing, and sound. All these issues can be fixed, if you disassemble the game, modify it, and compile it without breaking the game. The best developer for that job is probably 68K developers, not C programmers and sure most of 68K developers are OS3 users. I’m sure MorphOS and AmigaOS4 got mostly C programmer, MorphOS developers put more work getting broken games to run, while AmigaOS4.1 developers did give a fu*k, if the game is bad its bad. Speculation: So maybe there is a less incentive to fix bugs on MorphOS. Besides if they are going X86, then it be waste of there time, to update the games. if it wont run anywhy,


There are going to be a few glitches in games. Some will be fixed by "hardware" FPGA core upgrades and firmware updates. Some will be fixed by OS upgrades. Some are bugs in the games which need fixing. Programs with sources are easier to fix but the great thing about the 68k is that we have an experienced community and tools to reverse engineer and fix games. Contrast that to the PPC where hardly any developers can read PPC assembly and most of them don't like to. Even with C programs, readable 68k assembly code is a big advantage for debugging and optimizing code.

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BigD 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 22-Jan-2022 23:57:16
#12 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@matthey

If the Vampire FPGAs were ever to spark further Amiga game development it probably would have already happened. There is the Sonic on Amiga project and I think the OpenBOR project had the Vampire in mind but IMHO it works fine on a 68060 50Mhz RTG machine. I'm not sure what else is important to port, maybe OpenRA or does that already work?

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matthey 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 23-Jan-2022 4:22:44
#13 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

BigD Quote:

If the Vampire FPGAs were ever to spark further Amiga game development it probably would have already happened.


I have said the same thing about Amiga emulation. I agree with Amiga FPGA simulation too but it has 3 big advantages over emulation.

1. FPGA cores can be turned into hardware ASIC cores (this is how ASICs are created)
2. ISAs and ABIs for hardware ASIC cores are what compilers and other dev tools support
3. ASICs can increase performance and decrease production cost for hardware competitiveness

A FPGA can be very good for parallel workloads like simulating a chipset or simulating shader units in a GPU. CPU cores execute sequential code limiting the amount of parallelism possible. I believe emulation is more competitive for CPU cores than FPGA simulation while the FPGA simulation is more efficient for the chipset core. The winner of competing niche hardware will likely use CPU emulation with FPGA chipset simulation. It doesn't make much sense to create such a product when an ASIC would make the hybrid hardware obsolete.

Let's assume an ASIC increases performance by 10 times and decreases the production cost to 1/10. This is simplified but I believe it to be true in some cases. A 100MHz CPU core in a FPGA can become a 1000MHz CPU core in an ASIC while the production cost drops from $40 to $4. Emulation of a CPU core gives roughly 1/3 at most of the performance of an ASIC so is best case equivalent to a 333MHz CPU.

$40 FPGA
100MHz CPU cores

$4 ASIC
1000MHz CPU cores

emulation using $4 ASIC
333MHz CPU cores

Emulation may not look too bad but it also has competitiveness issues, especially as the performance increases. If desiring the equivalent of 1000MHz CPU cores, an ASIC with 3000MHz is required significantly increasing the cost of the ASIC. The cost of ASIC CPUs increases exponentially with the performance. Emulation and FPGA simulation are adequate for low performance CPU cores but neither is competitive for high performance CPU cores.

BigD Quote:

There is the Sonic on Amiga project and I think the OpenBOR project had the Vampire in mind but IMHO it works fine on a 68060 50Mhz RTG machine. I'm not sure what else is important to port, maybe OpenRA or does that already work?


Modern Vintage Gamer ported OpenBOR and CannonBall which The Apollo team helped to optimize. I still don't know that they include any Vampire specific optimizations, even conditionally. I helped him test the CannonBall port and fix a problem with P96 colors but I'm not sure that version was even released as others on EAB have similar color problems. His interest in the Amiga seems to have waned which is understandable with the ever deteriorating Amiga situation. His last Amiga video on YouTube was 4 years ago.

Modern Vintage Gamer
https://www.youtube.com/c/ModernVintageGamer

While one Amiga video has 344k views which is not bad for a practically abandoned platform, some of his Playstation and Nintendo videos have low millions of views. Even his "Tomb Raider on the Nintendo Game Boy Advanced is incredible" video of OpenLara has 544k views.

Tomb Raider on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance is incredible | MVG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GVSLcqGP7g

The Game Boy Advanced is only a 16.8 MHz 32-bit ARM7TDMI CPU with less than 512kiB of memory. An optimized Amiga version may run on a 68020+AGA Amiga and should be easier to optimize. The GBA port would probably be a good one to look at when porting to the Amiga. The Modern Vintage Gamer mentions a potential port to the Amiga with 68060 (no mention of Vampire) in the video so maybe hasn't completely given up on the Amiga.

Last edited by matthey on 23-Jan-2022 at 04:23 AM.

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ppcamiga1 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 23-Jan-2022 9:31:20
#14 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 23-Aug-2015
Posts: 762
From: Unknown

@matthey

Almost all of these games are games for 68k mac.
They work on Amiga NG on Basilisk II.
Basilisk II on ppc even allow use original Apple translation from 68k to ppc in Mac ROM.


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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 23-Jan-2022 11:41:40
#15 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@ppcamiga1

You are missing the point, this is about making game that is just like the one on list for AmigaOS.

Quote:

Almost all of these games are games for 68k mac.
They work on Amiga NG on Basilisk II.


Yep because commodore went bankrupt, and got stuck on AGA.
The MacOS games on the list demonstrates what type games we might had if CDROM and 4MB of RAM was standard in Amiga1200, and not a addon.

Quote:

Basilisk II on ppc even allow use original Apple translation from 68k to ppc in Mac ROM.


Sadly not. That require good virtualization, so that will only work on MacOSX or Linux, we are not emulating PPC on Basilisk II/AmigaOS4.1 nor on MorphOS.
If Commodore had gone PPC in 1993, instead of making bad choices, we might have had StarCraft and few other nice games running on Amiga natively.

On Classic Amiga / WarpOS there was Fusion PPC, it was never really completed not as good as the 68K version, and not extremely fast, it kind suffered from having to boot of AmigaOS3.x. (disk access was so slow...)

But no point dreaming about what we might had if commodore was trying grab bizness like Microsoft aggressively did. I imagine Microsoft had war room. How are we doing on server? how are we doing desktop? how are we doing on office? Add actually hiring people work on these things.

Commodore had different idea, cut cost, this too expensive. they were not investing. So they went bankrupt.

And if commodore had paid Microsoft for there product, that might also made major difference, Apple was investing heavily in software companies.

Sadly Commodore had the wrong idea, they wonted to use windows and msdos, in there office pc’s. Amiga might been office computer as well gaming system, like Apple was. if where a bit smarter, did see they had any thing unique going.

Commodore was not a Amiga company, it was hardware company.
Imagine what Microsoft had done with AmigaOS if they owned it back in 1990’s

AmigaOS NT

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 23-Jan-2022 at 01:01 PM.
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amigang 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 23-Jan-2022 14:30:31
#16 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Jan-2005
Posts: 2018
From: Cheshire, England

@matthey

Firstly, we are getting a little off topic when this was about Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games, but what ever…

ASIC costs:
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7042/how-much-does-it-cost-to-have-a-custom-asic-made

So your right, on chip performance likely would be better than FPGA or emulation the point is who going to spend the £1 million you likely need to make this happen, I think that money would be better spent on new software / porting the os to arm / promoting the brand outside of our market etc.

I started feeling we don’t need more hardware solution, we have the vampire / Apollo boards, we have a1222 (hopefully) we have pistorm / pi systems, we have classic remade, what we need now is more newer software and brand awareness to expand the market.

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BigD 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 23-Jan-2022 19:26:00
#17 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:
You are missing the point, this is about making game that is just like the one on list for AmigaOS.


No, this thread is about reimagining old Amiga games as updated, HD or modern incarnations! Quite frankly if that means more of Team17, Psygnosis, Bitmap Brothers or Sensible Software remasters on modern consoles or the PC then so be it!

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 23-Jan-2022 19:40:42
#18 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@BigD

Yes, Modern graphics == AmigaOS4.1 / AmigaONE, so updating games to 2021 standards on AmigaOS is possible.

I also think that updating older 2d games to true color picasso96 standard is possible, on classic AmigaOS3.2 / 680x0, how there are so many accelerator cards that can do at least 100mhz++.

the main issue here is copyright and distribution rights, and lack of a market.
I think also getting old games to behave correct can be issue, more so if is recreation vs updating source code.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 23-Jan-2022 at 07:46 PM.
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matthey 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 23-Jan-2022 20:20:57
#19 ]
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Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

@ppcamiga1

You are missing the point, this is about making game that is just like the one on list for AmigaOS.


Today, many of the games on the list can be played better than they could when they came out.

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

Yep because commodore went bankrupt, and got stuck on AGA.
The MacOS games on the list demonstrates what type games we might had if CDROM and 4MB of RAM was standard in Amiga1200, and not a addon.


Some of the games on the list came out on the Mac before CBM went bankrupt. I believe the single biggest reason the Amiga did not receive game ports was lack of CPU performance (lack of standard hard drives, CD-ROM drives and memory were also important). The Mac had a larger base of 68040 computers which allowed games like this to be ported (the Mac wasn't even a good game platform). Without enough CPU performance, some games are out of the question and with it all kinds of new games are possible. Many of the Mac games on the list are not playable with the 68020+AGA standard which can be demonstrated by trying to run them under 68k Mac emulation on the Amiga. A 68040 is required in many cases as some of these games struggled the same as the 486 did for games on PC compatibles until the Pentium arrived with 68060 like performance. The 68k Mac did not get the 68060 which was an even bigger jump in performance than the move to the 68040 so newer Mac games started becoming PPC only. The quantity of Mac games seemed to decline at this time. PPC code was more difficult to optimize and debug and the poor performance of low end PPC Macs held the PPC Mac user base back for years like had happened with CBM not upgrading their CPU performance. The Pentium quickly received higher clock ratings and price drops which made low end PPC performance noncompetitive and outdated. Ironically, the 68060 had better integer performance than the Pentium and had a longer pipeline for clocking up but Apple had already made the mistake of abandoning the 68k so the 68060 lacked the economies of scale to compete with the Pentium.

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

Sadly not. That require good virtualization, so that will only work on MacOSX or Linux, we are not emulating PPC on Basilisk II/AmigaOS4.1 nor on MorphOS.
If Commodore had gone PPC in 1993, instead of making bad choices, we might have had StarCraft and few other nice games running on Amiga natively.


If Apple had stayed with the 68k and used the 68060, the Amiga would have more games. I believe most of the PPC games would have been playable on the 68060. Diablo was a little too CPU intensive for a 68040 so was PPC only for the Mac.

Amiga 1200 Warp 1260 Diablo 1 LIVE Stream gameplay (68060@105MHz)
https://youtu.be/B2e5LcBxJeo?t=292

Amiga A1200. Diablo. Devilution X port. Vampire v1200
https://youtu.be/KC9UHAmPCto?t=64

CPU performance is still the limiting factor for Amiga games. FPGA CPU performance only gets us 1/10 of the performance of an ASIC and emulation 1/3 of the performance of an ASIC which kills value.

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

Commodore had different idea, cut cost, this too expensive. they were not investing. So they went bankrupt.


CBM had a superior chipset which allowed to reduce the performance of the CPU with a significant savings. This advantage disappeared when they did not invest in upgrading it. Cutting costs wouldn't have been so bad if they had upgraded it faster as they would have ended up with a cheaper chipset more suited for a console, hobby and embedded use. This is kind of like the Raspberry Pi today except the Raspberry Pi is not game oriented or retro. Some CPU performance increase was still necessary too.

NutsAboutAmiga Quote:

...

Commodore was not a Amiga company, it was hardware company.
Imagine what Microsoft had done with AmigaOS if they owned it back in 1990’s

AmigaOS NT


Maybe we would have an Amiga 68k64 XBox running NT AmigaOS or maybe MS would have disappeared killed off by the x86 steamroller.

amigang Quote:

Firstly, we are getting a little off topic when this was about Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games, but what ever…


Most of these modernized Amiga games discussed have come about from increased CPU performance. More would be possible with more CPU performance. Do we want to be limited to 1/10 the CPU performance using FPGA CPU cores or 1/3 the CPU performance using emulation? Do we want to lower the cost to mass produce a standard hardware base creating a platform large enough to attract development and affordable by the masses?

amigang Quote:

ASIC costs:
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7042/how-much-does-it-cost-to-have-a-custom-asic-made

So your right, on chip performance likely would be better than FPGA or emulation the point is who going to spend the £1 million you likely need to make this happen, I think that money would be better spent on new software / porting the os to arm / promoting the brand outside of our market etc.


An ASIC can likely be created for half that but I don't want the cheapest possible low quality FPGA to ASIC conversion using the cheapest possible chip process. It would be better to invest in a professionally developed platform that is more competitive which would likely cost millions to develop and produce.



A million isn't that much anymore, even for a small business. The question is whether to take the risk to survive in the mass produced competitive big leagues or die slowly. Competitive and affordable Amiga hardware will attract developers that can't be bribed to port software to the Amiga currently. The increased performance would further open up more modern higher performance games.

amigang Quote:

I started feeling we don’t need more hardware solution, we have the vampire / Apollo boards, we have a1222 (hopefully) we have pistorm / pi systems, we have classic remade, what we need now is more newer software and brand awareness to expand the market.


The Amiga doesn't need more different noncompetitive hardware solutions. Competitive hardware to replace all these "hardware solutions" and unify into a standard platform again is what is needed. The Amiga brand needs to be restored and revitalized with quality hardware for the masses and the software will follow.

While some of the new Amiga hardware is nice, has shown the way and allowed new games to be ported, it is still only Pentium era mid '90s performance. There is the TF1260, Warp 1260, FPGA Arcade 68060 board and ACA1260 in development which allow a 100MHz 68060 with a Rev 6 68060 but there aren't enough Rev 6 68060s for demand. This only moves the Amiga platform forward a couple of years. The best 68k FPGA CPU cores barely push past the 68060 performance and don't even get us to the Pentium III era in the late '90s. Such Amiga hardware costs over $500 U.S. and often goes in tired old and bottle necked hardware. The Raspberry Pi started about Pentium III performance and the Pi 4 is perhaps 2005 era in desktop performance for roughly 1/10 of the cost. ARM SoCs cost a few dollars where just a rev 6 68060 often sells for hundreds of dollars today. The 68k Amiga demand makes the PPC AmigaOne demand look anemic with such a high price and low performance and still there is demand but it is noncompetitive hardware for the classes instead of the masses. Hardware which revitalizes the Amiga needs to be 10 times the performance and a fraction of the cost selling to hundreds of thousands of customers instead of hundreds of customers.

Last edited by matthey on 24-Jan-2022 at 12:26 AM.
Last edited by matthey on 23-Jan-2022 at 11:14 PM.
Last edited by matthey on 23-Jan-2022 at 08:22 PM.

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agami 
Re: Reimagining and Modernizing Classic Amiga Games
Posted on 24-Jan-2022 2:49:35
#20 ]
Super Member
Joined: 30-Jun-2008
Posts: 1637
From: Melbourne, Australia

@thread

I'll give everyone a bit of insight as to the method behind my unique brand of madness.

Naturally, if I or a group of investors had millions of $ to throw at a new computing platform based around revitalizing the 68k and leveraging a decent 68k retro market of which the Amiga segment is the largest, then the plan to get there would be much simpler and take less time.

Alas, this is not the case.
Like many of you have mentioned/commented, we have a decent amount of 68k options at 060/75+ levels of performance, both physical and virtual. The next area of focus should be software. Whilst there are ongoing efforts being made by existing 68k Amiga developers to improve OS and apps, and even some games, they represent a bottleneck, and unless we get some new developers on the platform, things will continue to move very slowly. Momentum is critical.

In order to sign up a new cadre of 68k (Amiga) developers, I need data to show the economies of the platform. I'm not going to get into the stats regarding the chances of making money from games/apps on Android/iOS as there are already many online articles covering this. It's a signal to noise ratio problem. Or to put it more colloquially, it's better to be a big fish in a small pond, if you can't be a big fish in the big pond.

Here are the steps in very broad strokes:
1. Collect data about the potential market (fishing expedition) - Current activity

2. Create new data points through new/ported game sales (sponsor the development of games on 080+SAGA) - Beginning activity

3. Use data to create evangelist cast of new developers (sponsor first wave of new 68k dev teams through supply of dev hardware and training stipend, + 100% game/app sales profit) - Working primarily with developing economies

4. Market new game dev team(s) and their wares (measure market growth)

5. Go back to hardware to evaluate development of ASIC for next-level 68k retro/hobby board

6. Start a fund for projects that leverage new 68k board + AROS 68k to solve unique problems

7. Work with dev evangelists to create sub-teams (evangelists get 20% of profits generated by sub-teams, sub-teams get 70%, the 68k Renaissance Foundation gets 10%)

8. More marketing (more data)

9. Investment in next phase of hardware/software growth

10. Rinse and repeat (steps 8 and 9)

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