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Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024)

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

#81

Post by wowtip »

blakespot wrote: post #77
jl6 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yep, one of the first games that really needed a chunky pixel video memory layout (which the Amiga lacked). Amiga's planar arrangement was perfect for platformers, which was the target of the Amiga gfx hardware design.

It was not like lot's of very talented Amiga devs didn't try their very best to create a Wolfenstein/Doom clone for their platform, but iirc the bitplane setup used by Amiga gfx, which enabled lot's of other cool features did not perform well with the opereations needed for "3D" games.

Then with Quake, the 3rd party 3D graphics cards market took off, and even if there were cards for the Amigas too, market economics made them unviable.

And even though I usually appreciate Datagubbe's writings, this time I think his take is incorrect. At least in my circles Wolfenstein / Doom and ultimately Quake was the final nails in the Amiga's coffin.

Sure, the picture is bigger - PC market drove down prices and very soon the price/performance difference was very unfavorable for Amiga - but at least initially the issue was kids wanted to play Wolfenstein, Doom, or at least something similar, and that was not possible if you stayed on the Amiga.

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

#82

Post by gapan »

77pt77 wrote: post #61
samastur wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Like Apple/Mac?

One could argue that apple is the only exception to the rule. And let's not forget that apple almost went bankrupt in 1997, only to be rescued by Microsoft.

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

#83

Post by sillywalk »

TheAmazingRace wrote: post #71
blakespot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

I heard NASA used their Amiga systems clear up to 2006, which is a rather unusually long lifespan for the application they intended them for. But I suppose commodity PC hardware and the software they needed just wasn't really there at a price point that made sense, plus, I guess as the old adage goes... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

> I heard NASA used their Amiga systems

Yes. "Amigas take in all the telemetry data from the spacecraft, scale it by applying coefficients of up to fifth order polynomials and convert the data back to engineering units for display to the engineers working the launch."[1]

[0] https://hackaday.com/2021/08/16/retrotechtacular-amiga-pips-...

[1] http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/amiganasa_en.p...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAPD9HA8Unw&t=1s

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

#84

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

evaneykelen wrote: post #47
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 don’t know anyone that used the Amiga for anything other than games. The Amiga was used worldwide by TV stations for CGI and titling effects, for digital signage eg arrivals/departures at airports, and video walls, besides being a tool for countless digital artists. I know because I wrote digital signage software for the Amiga and sold it to customers in 21 countries.

The Video Toaster was the first successful competitor to the horribly expensive Avid system ($100k+) for non-linear video editing, titling, SMTPE code syncing, etc. and ran on an Amiga 2000 as a double card. I think it was $3k.

It was used to make the first 3 seasons of Babylon 5 and all of the sub graphics for Sealquest DSV.

As an aside, Dana Carveys brother was one of the lead designers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster

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

#85

Post by kmeisthax »

actionfromafar wrote: post #27
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the advantage of the TRAP approach is more amenable to supervisor/user mode switch and memory protection and the like? Separate topic from graphics and device independence though

Memory protection was basically impossible or at least "Research Level Hard" on the Amiga, because of how the OS was designed with linked lists and message passing of pointers. This was what made it so fast, but at a cost. (They would have needed something like Rust to balance that.) Everything could have been fixed with the March of Moore. The OS could have gotten a hypervisor and been running each program in its ow…

[dead]

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

#87

Post by cmrdporcupine »

TheAmazingRace wrote: post #76
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Later iterations of OS extensions on the ST got memory protection support, albeit a bit inconistently and with likely backwards compat problems. FreeMiNT I think supports MMU + protection on 030 machines. Achilles heel for classic MacOS, too. Sins of our fathers.

Pretty sure MultiTOS (which was derived from MiNT IIRC) fully supported preemptive multitasking back in 1992 or so when it came out. This, plus the fancier graphics support, a proper 68030 instead of the rather cut down 68EC020, and addition of a Motorola 56K DSP, meant the Atari Falcon was superior to the Amiga A1200, at least on paper. I certainly adored mine when I owned it not that long ago as a part of my small…

Yeah I have two Falcons here. Not that I ever use them, but they're amazing machines for the time.

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

#88

Post by firesteelrain »

Retric wrote: post #72
firesteelrain wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In 1985? That didn’t take off where I was until PS1 days.

Oh yea, 1985-1987 is when a lot of the VHS places started stocking video games.

It’s the only way I was able to play. My best friend across the street had the console and I didn’t (I had Atari 2600). So I would rent and we would play together. I eventually got my own in maybe 1987-1988.

PS1 kicked off in 1995 and we had rentals for a long time by that point. I never owned a PS1 but same friend did. I ended up going from NES, SNES, N64 before switching mostly to PC games and eventually went to college where video games took a back seat for a number of years

Mostly play Xbox now (short while I had PSP)

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

#90

Post by Retric »

firesteelrain wrote: post #88
Retric wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1985? That didn’t take off where I was until PS1 days.

Oh yea, 1985-1987 is when a lot of the VHS places started stocking video games. It’s the only way I was able to play. My best friend across the street had the console and I didn’t (I had Atari 2600). So I would rent and we would play together. I eventually got my own in maybe 1987-1988. PS1 kicked off in 1995 and we had rentals for a long time by that point. I never owned a PS1 but same friend did. I ended up going f…

Interesting, of the 3 rental places near me only one started carrying video games in 1994 with the others soon following.
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