Since all the forums are either discussing hardware that is probably over half a year away from coming out at least or a bug fix to a 25 year old build of AmigaOS I thought I'd start a new thread.

How did the Amiga port of Wipeout 2097 come about? I know that Psygnosis were big Amiga developers and probably urged Sony to grant the license but surely it cost a lot of money and no one really had Amiga PPC boards at that time. Was it just a labour of love that could never recoup the investment?

I have just bought Wipeout HD and Wipeout HD Fury (Complete Game Pack) PS3 Version for £2.99 on the PSN as it's on sale! It reminded me what a great game series it is and how it made video games and the PlayStation in particular cool (especially in Europe) with its pumping dance music soundtracks. Shame 2097 couldn't shift more Amiga PPC boards as it was kinda the definitive version with better draw distance and higher resolution screen modes than even the PC as I recall

Last edited by BigD on 23-Oct-2018 at 12:37 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 23-Oct-2018 at 12:35 PM.

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@BigD

Wipeout 2097 Remastered for AmigaOS4 / Warp3D Nova would be great..

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@SinanG

+1

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@BigD

Around that time there were a few ports of reasonably big PC games a few years after their original release. Presumably the market was still big enough at that stage, and the licencing fees were low enough that it was worthwhile, or at least possible to break even. With people desperate to buy something to take advantage of their high-end setups, they could be pretty sure of selling to the majority of PPC users, even those who had no real interest in racing games.

I don't think it was a case of it being Psygnosis particularly, more a case that various developers were looking for games that were already being ported to other platforms (thus easy to obtain licences for), and that could run reasonably on an Amiga. Most of these developers would also port to other platforms (e.g. Linux, Mac) to supplement their income from the ports. Around the same time, we also had ports like Quake, Descent: Freespace, Shogo: MAD, Heretic II and Earth 2140, all PC ports needing a high end machine to run, none of them originally from studios with a particular Amiga affiliation like Psygnosis.

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I guess most of the money came from Mac ports and Amiga version was just a gift seeing how little PPC boards were produced.

Also, Amiga version of Wipeout 2097 didn't include the original (licenced) soundtrack iirc

Last edited by Leo on 23-Oct-2018 at 06:04 PM.

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@Leo

Original tracks were there in Audio CD format. Tracks were read during game as on the PSX.

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@Daedalus

I wonder who has the source of Amiga port ?

Stuart Walker (Digital Images) ?

http://obligement.free.fr/articles/itwwalker.php

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@K-L

The Amiga version had music by Cold Storage just like the PC version. The console versions had Prodigy, Photek, FSOL etc.

@Rob

I am sure like most people who had the PS1 version, I just swapped the disk and played the audio tracks from the PS1 version.

You could also have burned your own copy of the game disk replacing the audio tracks with those from the PS1 disk - it would just mean that the in-game descriptions of what was playing didn't match up.

Personally I preferred the music from Wipeout on the PS1 - and while not a huge fan of the prodigy, Firestarter was a blinding track for that style of game.

Even though playing the game on the Amiga resulted in a slower experience than an equivalent PC (or indeed the PS1 originals), it was a good experience and was pretty playable. Having spent years beforehand playing the PS1 versions (except for Wip3out as I never bought that), it was nice to get a version on the Amiga.

Having a better graphics card would possibly have made all the difference as I only had a Permedia 2 CVPPC - and by all accounts the Mediator / GRex owners using Voodoo 3/4/5 cards reportedly achieved better framerates from the game.

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@Rob

Ah yes, indeed

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@_Steve_

With some details off and drawing distance lowered it ran fine on the Pemedia card. One of the few games I play it on my Morphos Mac mini quite some times. Runs fine,

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@_Steve_

Quote:

Having a better graphics card would possibly have made all the difference as I only had a Permedia 2 CVPPC - and by all accounts the Mediator / GRex owners using Voodoo 3/4/5 cards reportedly achieved better framerates from the game.

I had a 210Mhz BPPC, Mediator and Voodoo 3 and it was quite playable on that although I did boot into the early MorphOS to play it because it was noticeably smoother although I never measured the frame rates.

On the XE G4 the port really came into it's with smooth gameplay at much higher resolutions.

IMHO it's one of the best racers ever made.

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@Leo

Quote:

Leo wrote: Also, Amiga version of Wipeout 2097 didn't include the original (licenced) soundtrack iirc

It was essentially the same soundtrack as all other versions except the PS1 version - PC, Mac, Saturn and Amiga all had the in-house soundtrack instead. Think of the PS1 version as a Sony-exclusive soundtrack.

Quote:

Rob wrote: On the XE G4 the port really came into it's with smooth gameplay at much higher resolutions.

Indeed, it actually runs too fast with the frame limiter off and has to be limited to 60FPS to be playable. My only problem with it on NG systems is the lack of support for analogue control or standard controllers - it appears to be hard-coded for CD32 pads (as opposed to using lowlevel.library) and PS1 pads via a parallel port adaptor, so modern USB controllers can't be used.

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@_Steve_

Quote:

Having a better graphics card would possibly have made all the difference as I only had a Permedia 2 CVPPC - and by all accounts the Mediator / GRex owners using Voodoo 3/4/5 cards reportedly achieved better framerates from the game.

At least double fps with Voodoo3/Prometheus/CSPPC233.

Last edited by zipper on 24-Oct-2018 at 11:14 AM.

@zipper

Please dust of your Sony PS3s and try Wipeout HD & Fury if you can. £2.99 is a steal until 14th November 2018. Though the music volume needs to be cranked to 100% and the sound effects dropped to 40-60% IMHO

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

I'm of the opinion that the PS3 is the last custom games console designed to be a game console / entertainment centre / media streamer from the ground up. This is the last consumer product with the ideals of the Amiga. The CPU was helped by SPE kinda like the Amiga co-processors and the GPU and CPU/SPEs had to all work in unison to create the best games kinda like the Amiga custom chips and CPU on the Amiga otherwise it was a slightly slower Atari ST if games were unoptimised.

All future consoles will be PeeCees (PS4 and XBox One derivatives) or hand held hybrids / kiddi-gimmicks (here's looking at you Nintendo ).

Heck, the PS4 can't even play PS1 game discs or audio CDs

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

Mason & Princess Superstar - Perfect (Exceeder)

Or just DJ Mason - Exceeder OST as the instrumental is in the game!

Awesome 'go faster' track!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

A shout out should be given for the PS2 version of Wipeout Pulse. Wipeout Fusion was a bit of a disappointment on the PS2 other than the way it did career progression which was cool. However, although 30 fps Wipeout Pulse really was great!

To see such a professional game released so late in the PS2's lifespan. Ghostbusters on the PS2 was by comparison an absolute unfinished mess with bugs and crashes all over the place! Shame on you Atari! I guess with a brand like Atari they are always gonna come a cropper in the end Sony Liverpool / Psygnosis were the 'dog's knackers' though

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

https://rpcs3.net/
PS3 emulator...

Speaking of SPE's of the Cell chip, did you know that the Amiga Blitter is one of the earliest examples of a stream processor?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_processing
Quote:

The Blitter in the Commodore Amiga is an early (circa 1985) graphics processor capable of combining three source streams of 16 component bit vectors in 256 ways to produce an output stream consisting of 16 component bit vectors. Total input stream bandwidth is up to 42 million bits per second. Output stream bandwidth is up to 28 million bits per second.

Yeah, some morons on the Apollo forums don't seem to grasp the concept of what the Amiga "custom" chips are...

At least the Commodore Engineers were smart enough to put it in a separate chip rather than add it to a custom CPU - aka the CELL chip.

Last edited by Lou on 25-Oct-2018 at 02:18 PM.