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Another World ported to FPGA

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Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#11

Post by retro_guy »

See as well:

- Infernal Runner for Amstrad CPC reverse-engineering and JavaScript port by cyxx [title from creator of Another World, both games utilizing virtual machine architecture]: https://github.com/cyxx/infernal_js

- The Virtual Machine Architecture of Infernal Runner presentation by Norbert Kehrer (in German with English slides): https://media.ccc.de/v/vcfb20_-_146_-_en_-_202010111400_-_th...

- The Story of Another World on the Amiga | MVG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iz9PJbs5rE

- Nintendo 64 port of Another World: https://github.com/jnmartin84/aw64

- Another World PlayStation 1 port: https://github.com/fgsfdsfgs/rawpsx

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#12

Post by crtasm »

29athrowaway wrote: post #7

The intro was fantastic. Even with a PC speaker / no sound card. Having to swim away as your first action, and then escape from some kind of lion is one of the most brutal game experiences ever. Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever.

and not just the intro but the entire game fit on a single floppy disk, blew my mind.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#13

Post by dragontamer »

burglins wrote: post #8
ashleyn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the heyday of assembly language, VMs were common in business software as well. It made porting to different types of systems easier in a time when standards-compliant C-language compilers targeting a variety of systems did not yet exist or were very expensive.

Oh, I know about the emulation layers of early computers! But I'd assume those programs rarely required frame-perfect input unlike video-games. Wouldn't that be too wasteful and needlessly limit the playerbase? Edit: after reading through wikipedia, I think maybe a VM wouldn't be that wasteful, since the game is very simple mechanically.

Consoles (and arcades) back then had far better graphical performance than computers. So good computer games didn't have frame perfect inputs at all ... Or at least, not good games (bad games like TMNT for PC / DOS did exist but we're horribly buggy and broken)

Computer games had explosive inputs available, like Civilization or needed the use of a mouse.

Not so much action / frame perfect stuff. Not until a bit later anyway. Eventually computers were fast enough for arcade ports but computer games just didn't really target that action niche.

------

The 'computers' with good graphics were like Amiga, not x86 based DOS with mode 13h graphics. So it was all the fallen / failed computers that had the decent action games IIRC.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#14

Post by derbOac »

Off topic, but I was excited to find out Another World is on Steam... but isn't available to play on macOS 10.15 Catalina or above.

The incompatibility with 32-bit makes me extremely frustrated; it seems as if in 2023, with quantum computing, DL models, and people porting games like this to FPGA, there should be a way to get 32-bit software to run on modern hardware. It's bizarre to me.

Steam specifically recommends not upgrading your mac OS to play these older games.

Is all this software going to become unusable because of this sort of thing?

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#16

Post by ChainOfFools »

29athrowaway wrote: post #7

The intro was fantastic. Even with a PC speaker / no sound card. Having to swim away as your first action, and then escape from some kind of lion is one of the most brutal game experiences ever. Even if you played that game for 1 minute you will remember that game forever.

I'll never forget the "dialogue" in the game either, right after you get rescued from that lion thing by your new friend.

konanaka beetzai! motsuubo! /wave

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#17

Post by bdhcuidbebe »

derbOac wrote: post #14

Off topic, but I was excited to find out Another World is on Steam... but isn't available to play on macOS 10.15 Catalina or above. The incompatibility with 32-bit makes me extremely frustrated; it seems as if in 2023, with quantum computing, DL models, and people porting games like this to FPGA, there should be a way to get 32-bit software to run on modern hardware. It's bizarre to me. Steam specifically recommends…

Only macOS dropped 32bit compat. Join linux my friend

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#18

Post by VHRanger »

bdhcuidbebe wrote: post #17
derbOac wrote: post #14

Off topic, but I was excited to find out Another World is on Steam... but isn't available to play on macOS 10.15 Catalina or above. The incompatibility with 32-bit makes me extremely frustrated; it seems as if in 2023, with quantum computing, DL models, and people porting games like this to FPGA, there should be a way to get 32-bit software to run on modern hardware. It's bizarre to me. Steam specifically recommends…

Only macOS dropped 32bit compat. Join linux my friend

Android is dropping 32bit support.

I can't play planescape: torment on my phone because of this.

Re: Another World ported to FPGA

#19

Post by bzzzt »

burglins wrote: post #2

I wonder how common were full game VMs in the 90s. For a game older than myself, wouldn't a VM layer incur a great performance penalty on PCs from that time?

Depends on what you consider 'full game VM'. Adventure games from Infocom ran all game code on a VM, and so did the graphical adventures from Sierra and LucasArts. The latter two used some native graphics primitives of course.
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