The Amiga & Games Developing
Endre Stray
The Amiga has breeded a lot of talent working these days in the gamesindustry.
IMHO There has never been a machine that enables it's users to be creative
(when it comes to multimedia & games programming) like the amiga.
Bold Statement: If it weren't for the Amiga many of the c00l games that you
see today would never have been made. Why? Because the Amiga has been
a 'training ground' and a talent developer for the games industry.
My main concern for the Amiga's future is this: The 'kids' go where the
games are. Some of these gameplaying 'kids' starts taking interest in
other things, like experimenting with a gfxprogram, start doing some
programming, and maybe some also join the demo-scene.
Now, there aren't that many amiga games beeing made these days. Hopefully
things will change a little bit. If AT can provide a new machine, and get
some good games developers behind it & push alot of these boxes, then the
future will look very good again for the amiga. The games industry is
changing and it will eventually recruite people from sources they usually
didn't approach before, but i still think that there is a BIG NEED for a
training-ground like the amiga. Both for developing on this machine &
others.
- jmp
(mail: end...@ifi.uio.no)
Paul Chan
>end...@ifi.uio.no (Endre Stray) wrote:
>> The Amiga has breeded a lot of talent working these days in the gamesindustry.
>> IMHO There has never been a machine that enables it's users to be creative
>> (when it comes to multimedia & games programming) like the amiga.
>>
>> Bold Statement: If it weren't for the Amiga many of the c00l games that you
>> see today would never have been made. Why? Because the Amiga has been
>> a 'training ground' and a talent developer for the games industry.
>>
>
>I agree with you 100%. What made the Amiga such a success, and what allowed
>it to survive long after it ceased to compete in hardware terms, was the
>dynamic Amiga development scene. This scene came about because it was so
>easy and cheap to start developing games on the Amiga. These low development
>costs are what keeps the few remaining developers going : they don't make as
>much money in the Amiga market as in the PC market (for example), but equally
>it doesn't cost them as much to develop for the Amiga.
Generally because they aren`t spending 10M US dollars filming sequences for
Wing Commander IV or writing various stuff for the myriad of gfx/sfx boards out
there.
>
>Now the bad news is that Microsoft have finally woken up to the importance
>of games, and have produced a Game Developers Kit (GDK) to make it easy and
>cheap to start writing games for Windows 95. In two or three months time
>there will be books in every highstreet with "all you need to write windows
>games" including the GDK on a CD in the back cover. Now I doesn't take a
>genius to see that this is going to make it much easier to write games for
>the PC.
I don`t see the GDK as being that important. OK, I don`t know much about it but
if it`s anything like many of the "construction kits" out there then I don`t
think we`ll have much of a problem. Properly coded games will always work
better then some cobbled together bits.
>
>The Amiga succeeded because it gave kids an easy way to start programming
>their own games. It beat the ST 'cause it was easier to develop for, and
>went on to become the home programmers machine of choice. But for the
I`d say the ST was better to program since it was just the cpu you had to do.
The custom chips in the Amiga needed a little more work to get optimised -
that`s why many Amiga games in the beginning of the Amiga/ST war were ST ports.
You had to add extra code to get the best out of the Amiga.
A similar thing is happening with the Saturn/Playstation. I think I read
soemwhere that the games appearing on the Playstation are pretty much the best
they can be since much of the code is OS calls. However, the Saturn games will
get better as programmers get to know the hardware and basically (IMHO) "hit
the metal". This might seem a little ominous for the Playstation, but in 3
years the PSX replacement will be launched, and the OS calls will be correctly
translated -ie PSX games may well be able to work on the next Sony superconsole
whereas the Saturn has to be completely replaced. This may be why Sega are
rumoured to be wanting a piece of the 3DO-M2 hardware as their next machine....
>wanna-be games programmers of today the platform to go for is now Windows
>95, and for old-fashioned hobby programmers Linux is probably the ideal.
>This is were Amiga Technologies have to step in, to make the Amiga once
>more the amatuer programmers platform of choice:
This bit I agree with.
>
> 1. A freely distributable game development kit for the Amiga, with
> some standard game libraries to simplify chunky screen conversion
> keyboard input, and running an OS friendly programme with the
> least OS overhead. Should also have the Autodocs, the Includes
> and a ton of example code
IMHO, you might well flood the AMiga market with sub-standard games cobbled
together by wannabe programmers who will gravitate towards the Amiga because of
the free development kits. The result might be a very high crap game/good game
ratio. AT are trying to get some quality control in by asking developers to
prove that they can program, and probably program *legally* too.
>
> 2. Providing a *minimal* cost developer programme. Their current
> plan is too expensive (yes I think $100 is too much, it used to
> be $20 under CATS and people complained about that) and it is
> mad to insist that you have to demonstrate a previous PD release!
> How is someone meant to get started : chicken and the egg problem
Front up the cash if you`re serious. If not, then too bad.
>
> 3. Bundle a language with every new Amiga : preferably Blitz Basic
A more mainstream language might be more useful, Perl, AREXX (already there),
even Amiga E!
>
>Then we might have a chance against the PC hoards. As it is....
We`ll have to see.
Sam Taylor
> The Amiga has breeded a lot of talent working these days in the gamesindustry.
> IMHO There has never been a machine that enables it's users to be creative
> (when it comes to multimedia & games programming) like the amiga.
>
> Bold Statement: If it weren't for the Amiga many of the c00l games that you
> see today would never have been made. Why? Because the Amiga has been
> a 'training ground' and a talent developer for the games industry.
>
> ...deleted many other wise words...
I agree with you 100%. What made the Amiga such a success, and what allowed
it to survive long after it ceased to compete in hardware terms, was the
dynamic Amiga development scene. This scene came about because it was so
easy and cheap to start developing games on the Amiga. These low development
costs are what keeps the few remaining developers going : they don't make as
much money in the Amiga market as in the PC market (for example), but equally
it doesn't cost them as much to develop for the Amiga.
Now the bad news is that Microsoft have finally woken up to the importance
of games, and have produced a Game Developers Kit (GDK) to make it easy and
cheap to start writing games for Windows 95. In two or three months time
there will be books in every highstreet with "all you need to write windows
games" including the GDK on a CD in the back cover. Now I doesn't take a
genius to see that this is going to make it much easier to write games for
the PC.
The Amiga succeeded because it gave kids an easy way to start programming
their own games. It beat the ST 'cause it was easier to develop for, and
went on to become the home programmers machine of choice. But for the
wanna-be games programmers of today the platform to go for is now Windows
95, and for old-fashioned hobby programmers Linux is probably the ideal.
This is were Amiga Technologies have to step in, to make the Amiga once
more the amatuer programmers platform of choice:
1. A freely distributable game development kit for the Amiga, with
some standard game libraries to simplify chunky screen conversion
keyboard input, and running an OS friendly programme with the
least OS overhead. Should also have the Autodocs, the Includes
and a ton of example code
2. Providing a *minimal* cost developer programme. Their current
plan is too expensive (yes I think $100 is too much, it used to
be $20 under CATS and people complained about that) and it is
mad to insist that you have to demonstrate a previous PD release!
How is someone meant to get started : chicken and the egg problem
3. Bundle a language with every new Amiga : preferably Blitz Basic
Then we might have a chance against the PC hoards. As it is....
-SAM-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sam.T...@anu.edu.au
Distributed High Performance Computing Project
Australian National University
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alan L.M. Buxey
Sam Taylor
> I don`t see the GDK as being that important. OK, I don`t know much about it b ut
> if it`s anything like many of the "construction kits" out there then I don`t
> think we`ll have much of a problem. Properly coded games will always work
> better then some cobbled together bits.
The GDK is in no way similar to one of those crummy semi-automated game
construction tools. "ShootEm Up Construction Kit 95" it certainly is not!
Instead it is a set of extremely high performance routines which provide
an abstract low level interface to the display hardware, audio hardware,
user input devices, the network and such. In essence this provides the
same basic speed as banging the metal, but without having to write code
for a specific video/audio architecture. Banging the abstract metal!
One bit of code runs at or near optimal speed on all machine configurations
without being dependent on the underlying hardware in any way. This is no
crappy Microsoft standard : it was developed with and by the major games
developers as a way to avoid the massive overhead of the traditional Windows
API.
AT have to produce a similar developers kit for the Amiga unless they want
to repeat the whole painful "only runs on a stock 500" mess of a few years
ago. Essentially what it means is developing a minimal hardware abstraction
layer. Although the current OS provides most of this abstraction already,
it's all hidden in different libraries and devices, and some of it is
missing altogether. You can't read joystick input with the current OS
without banging the hardware. The audio system is basically the same.
Networked games are the next big thing, and yet there's no standard network
interface at all! Little wonder that many newbie programmers say "to hell
with it" and just hit the hardware instead. What we need is a single, clean
simple, low level API for games programs. This is what the Microsoft GDK
provides, and it's what the Amiga desperately needs.
> IMHO, you might well flood the AMiga market with sub-standard games cobbled
> together by wannabe programmers who will gravitate towards the Amiga because o f
> the free development kits. The result might be a very high crap game/good game
> ratio. AT are trying to get some quality control in by asking developers to
> prove that they can program, and probably program *legally* too.
Not at all. The entire point is to produce system legal games which can one
day run on the Power Amigas. It makes life easier for the games programmers
'cause they can concentrate on writing the *game* and forget the underlying
hardware. It makes life easier for users 'cause it means that when they
buy a new video card/accelerator/networking card all their old games will
continue to run.
This is the minimal investment that AT have to make if they are serious
about the Amiga as a games playing platform. The Amiga is dead if it can't
play games...
Steffen P. Haeuser
: AT have to produce a similar developers kit for the Amiga unless they want
: to repeat the whole painful "only runs on a stock 500" mess of a few years
: ago. Essentially what it means is developing a minimal hardware abstraction
: layer. Although the current OS provides most of this abstraction already,
: it's all hidden in different libraries and devices, and some of it is
: missing altogether. You can't read joystick input with the current OS
: without banging the hardware. The audio system is basically the same.
That simply is : WRONG !!!
Never heard of gameport.device and audio.device ?
: Not at all. The entire point is to produce system legal games which can one
: day run on the Power Amigas. It makes life easier for the games programmers
: 'cause they can concentrate on writing the *game* and forget the underlying
: hardware. It makes life easier for users 'cause it means that when they
: buy a new video card/accelerator/networking card all their old games will
: continue to run.
I see your point, but one of the problems is... all that great game
programmers from commercial firms... if you say OS... they say SLOW...
and bang the hardware... it is a shame... Nemac IV probably will be the
first professional game out since a long time that does not do so...
and... it did not find a publisher and the developpement team has
to bring it to the market itself... i can only say... Amiga Users
should buy this game... Oliver Groth invests a lot of money to
bring this game to the Amigans nevertheless not finding a publisher
for a real high end Amiga game... and we want him to make more
Amiga games, don't we ? (Okay, that missed the point of the
original mail a bit... but it was just a good point to say here...)
Personally i think the best option would be a CyberGraphX with some games
support libraries... audio support to use custom chips AND Sound Boards
with the same interface... finally double Buffering support, maybe even
3D functions... and some more game specific stuff...
:
: This is the minimal investment that AT have to make if they are serious
: about the Amiga as a games playing platform. The Amiga is dead if it can't
: play games...
:
: -SAM-
:
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Sam.T...@anu.edu.au
: Distributed High Performance Computing Project
: Australian National University
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
:
--
Steffen Haeuser - hae...@minnie.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de
WWW: http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/fachschaft/adressen/haeuser.html Keeper of the Amiga Texturemapping FAQ Irc:MagicSN (try telnet 194.55.101.20)
Rune Espeseth
<SNIP>
: Personally i think the best option would be a CyberGraphX with some games
: support libraries... audio support to use custom chips AND Sound Boards
: with the same interface... finally double Buffering support, maybe even
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Amiga OS supports double buffering.
--
Regards,
Rune Espeseth
_________________________________________________________________
| | |
| Rune Espeseth | Computer Information Science Student |
| A4000/060/50Mhz| An Amiga let you get the work done if YOU want.|
|________________|________________________________________________|
| email: Rune.E...@himolde.no or ru...@himolde.no |
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