Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

datagubbe.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 122 posts

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#61

Post by 77pt77 »

samastur wrote: post #20
louthy wrote: post #8

A lot of words there. But the word ‘console’ is there exactly once. Games consoles killed the Amiga, just like they did all other home computers that were primarily used for games. I don’t know anyone that used the Amiga for anything other than games. PCs survived because they were genuinely used for business, not just games.

I did (but also for games). That wasn't the problem. The problem was computers built on closed architecture didn't have a future even if company didn't went to shit like Commodore did.

> The problem was computers built on closed architecture didn't have a future

Like Apple/Mac?

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#62

Post by blakespot »

runjake wrote: post #5

In 1992, I went from Amiga to a PC solely because of Wolfenstein 3D. I already felt like I was clinging to the Amiga platform. Most of my other friends in the Amiga world had moved on to other platforms. Doom came out about a year later, near Christmas 1993, IIRC. The author bought their Amiga 500 in early 1992! It was already a "classic" by then.

Indeed, I got my first Amiga in October 1985 - I believe it was the first Amiga sold in Virginia (U.S.) and one of the first ever sold - period.

https://bytecellar.com/2020/10/27/looking-back-on-35-years-a...

I remember those extremely early days, which were filled with slow releases, I must say - but it was a singular experience, playing with that hardware. I left and came back with an Amiga 2000 in 1988 and that was a great time - a peak time to be an Amigoid.

1992 does seem late for a first Amiga - and a 500; I had an A1200 in '92.

I still have two Amigas that I use often (1000, 2000 '020) and a PowerPC "Amiga," that I rarely power on.

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#63

Post by blakespot »

louthy wrote: post #8

A lot of words there. But the word ‘console’ is there exactly once. Games consoles killed the Amiga, just like they did all other home computers that were primarily used for games. I don’t know anyone that used the Amiga for anything other than games. PCs survived because they were genuinely used for business, not just games.

Most of my friends were gaming on consoles at the time. I very much preferred the Amiga (I also had Atari STs during this time) to consoles perhaps mainly due to the ability to use RGB monitors with a proper RGB signal. It was at best composite back then on the consoles of the era - in the states anyway (we didn't have SCART as an option). I know I'm odd here, but that was a major factor -- but also the fact that I used the Amiga for much more than gaming. I BBSed heavily, generated hundreds of images with paint programs, programmed on it, and then there was enjoying scenedemos as a huge part of my use.

Most people in the user group I was in back then (ALFA - Amigoid Life Form Association) were NASA engineers who used them as cheap and capable alternatives to the UNIX workstations they worked with at NASA (which was local, Hampton, VA). Many of these guys were older and didn't game at all.

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#64

Post by jl6 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #56
runjake wrote: post #5

In 1992, I went from Amiga to a PC solely because of Wolfenstein 3D. I already felt like I was clinging to the Amiga platform. Most of my other friends in the Amiga world had moved on to other platforms. Doom came out about a year later, near Christmas 1993, IIRC. The author bought their Amiga 500 in early 1992! It was already a "classic" by then.

Ya, the author's timeline doesnt mesh with mine. In my memory the amiga was dead long before 1995. Wing commander was 91/92, which blew away anything on amiga. The great microprose simulations also started in 91/92 when the best Amiga could barely run the original civilization.

Wing Commander was released for the Amiga! It just ran absurdly slowly.

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#65

Post by Someone »

fulafel wrote: post #39
Someone wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combination with “There's no abstracted API for doing the fancy graphics (at least not one used by games, etc)” only works as long as you have a solid unique benefit, and that, Amiga lost fairly rapidly due to Moore’s law.

It lasted pretty long, especially considering the rate of evolution in those days. It debuted already in 1985, and there were some incremental improvements along the way (first the A3000 and then AGA A4000/A1200 in 1992). After the biggest lead in graphics started to shrink you still had a big user and software user base, multitasking desktop that was far ahead at least until W95, great CLI environment compared to PC…

> and there were some incremental improvements along the way (first the A3000 and then AGA A4000/A1200 in 1992)

About the A3000 Wikipedia says “The machine is reported to have sold 14,380 units in Germany (including Amiga 3000T sales)”, and about the A4000 “The machine is reported to have sold 11,300 units in Germany”. Both were on sale for about 2 years.

In comparison, the A2000 sold 124,500 units in Germany, again according to Wikipedia, in the about 4 years of its commercial availability.

So, about a 80% decline in sales per month, in what I think/guess was an expanding market for personal computers.

⇒ I don’t think those improvements made much of a difference.

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#66

Post by giantrobot »

zozbot234 wrote: post #10
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #2

Yeah if your secret sauce is a chip, with very particular timing and memory behaviour... you've just built in obsolescence. There's no abstracted API for doing the fancy graphics (at least not one used by games, etc), and the whole system is built around sharing the memory bus between CPU and VDP (not going to fly once memory & bus speeds became a fraction of the CPU speed and once cache was a serious thing)... it's…

> the whole system is built around sharing the memory bus between CPU and VDP Isn't this what "Unified Memory" does in more modern systems? There's nothing wrong with sharing memory between CPU and hardware graphics.

Unified memory is more about taking advantage of zero copy access for the GPU. Since everything the GPU wants is already right there there's no need to send it on a trip over a bus into separate GPU memory. Memory bandwidth is of course still important for both the GPU and CPU so that unified memory can be a bottleneck if it's slow or has too few channels.

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#67

Post by firesteelrain »

Retric wrote: post #57
louthy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a printer without ink doesn’t print. Yet we all continue to fall for this initial low price bait.

In 1985 the NES launched in the US at $179.99 and didn’t include a game. So while I’m sure somebody came home with a useless object, in general people where forced to but at least one. In 1996 the first hit became free.

Video rental was huge. It's the only way I could afford to play games.

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#68

Post by nsxwolf »

louthy wrote: post #8

A lot of words there. But the word ‘console’ is there exactly once. Games consoles killed the Amiga, just like they did all other home computers that were primarily used for games. I don’t know anyone that used the Amiga for anything other than games. PCs survived because they were genuinely used for business, not just games.

I had consoles and a PC and so did all of my friends. They offered very different experiences in the 90s.

Amiga could offer the PC experiences too, and did, until it ran into hardware limitations. Then it was suddenly competing with the Genesis and Super Nintendo, but with inferior European side scrolling games, with their single button controls, “sound or music not both”, etc.

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#69

Post by rasz »

louthy wrote: post #15
zozbot234 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amiga platform was originally built on game-console hardware. Incidentally, so was the Raspberry Pi, which is why the first Raspberry Pi models were comparatively very cheap.

The platform is irrelevant. They were more expensive than games consoles. So they lost, just like all other true personal computer manufacturers. They had too many components and couldn’t compete.

Piracy made Amiga cheaper. SNES and two cartridges/Genesis with three was more expensive than Amiga 500.

Re: Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

#70

Post by TheAmazingRace »

blakespot wrote: post #62
runjake wrote: post #5

In 1992, I went from Amiga to a PC solely because of Wolfenstein 3D. I already felt like I was clinging to the Amiga platform. Most of my other friends in the Amiga world had moved on to other platforms. Doom came out about a year later, near Christmas 1993, IIRC. The author bought their Amiga 500 in early 1992! It was already a "classic" by then.

Indeed, I got my first Amiga in October 1985 - I believe it was the first Amiga sold in Virginia (U.S.) and one of the first ever sold - period. https://bytecellar.com/2020/10/27/looking-back-on-35-years-a... I remember those extremely early days, which were filled with slow releases, I must say - but it was a singular experience, playing with that hardware. I left and came back with an Amiga 2000 in 1988 and that wa…

Blake, I have to say you had to have had a VERY cool childhood growing up with your mom helping you get some then cutting edge tech like that in the mid 80s. I have to wonder what a typical 80s kid's exposure to computers was like back then and the discoverability of it all, because computers of any kind in the states were generally very niche in family homes back then, let alone Amiga computers.
Post reply on HN