Frontier (Elite) source code and stuff.
Angus Manwaring
(to me!) Amiga related discussion on the newsgroup alt.fan.elite about the
soon to be released Frontier/Frontier: First Encounters source code.
There's some technical stuff, viability of grafting on a C2P routine on
the FFE C code for example, and some non-technical stuff, but it's all
pretty erm ......interesting .....if you like that sort of thing.
Anyway, maybe some of you would like to check it out and add your wise
words. Cheers.
P.S. Most of it is taking place in the thread:
"This source code thingy"
All the best,
Angus Manwaring. (for e-mail remove ANTISPEM)
I need your memories for the Amiga Games Database: A collection of Amiga
Game reviews by Amiga players http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/AGDB.html
Stuart Wilson
"Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I don't know if it's of interest but there's been some fairly
interesting
> (to me!) Amiga related discussion on the newsgroup alt.fan.elite
about the
> soon to be released Frontier/Frontier: First Encounters source code.
> There's some technical stuff, viability of grafting on a C2P routine
on
> the FFE C code for example, and some non-technical stuff, but it's all
> pretty erm ......interesting .....if you like that sort of thing.
>
> Anyway, maybe some of you would like to check it out and add your wise
> words. Cheers.
I've read most of what Timo Suoranta was going on about but I don't
think it's viable unless you have at least a very quick PPC
accelerator. Whether a 68060/66 or /75 could handle it is debateable,
but I would support any development that goes ahead once I find the
cash to upgrade my ageing A1200 and A600. The discussions wrt the
source code have also been discussed a little bit on the EBBS but
unfortunately this is predominantly PC driven. Surely there MUST be FE2
Amiga fans out there other than me :-)
Whether "grafting" highly optimized code or not onto the C code of FFE
would make it run at an acceptable speed for moderately expanded A1200
users remains to be seen, but as I said, I would support this. Having
played FFE on the PC I wasn't all that impressed with it to be honest,
though this is personal opinion (and enormous thanks to the patience of
John Jordan who did a Win9x executable) but any serious port should
wait until all the bugs have been ironed out of the PC version until an
Amiga port is considered IMO. And there are a helluva lot of bugs...
More than FE2.
Obviously if a release of FFE was made, that ran quickly on an A1200
with 68030 and 8MB Fast RAM (even if it had to be low detail) then that
would be brilliant. But I think the min specs are realistically going
to be a PPC card (603e?) plus decent graphics card if you want to get
the best out of it.
I don't know whether this waffle counts as a wise word, but it's my
sixpenn'oth.
Stuart
--
'We had no use for the policy of the Gospels: if someone slaps you,
just turn the other cheek. We had shown that anyone who slapped us on
our cheek would get his head kicked off.'
-Nikita Khrushchev (1894 -1971)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
da...@fastlane.com.br
Stuart Wilson <stu9...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> I've read most of what Timo Suoranta was going on about but I don't
> think it's viable unless you have at least a very quick PPC
> accelerator. Whether a 68060/66 or /75 could handle it is debateable,
> but I would support any development that goes ahead once I find the
> cash to upgrade my ageing A1200 and A600. The discussions wrt the
> source code have also been discussed a little bit on the EBBS but
> unfortunately this is predominantly PC driven. Surely there MUST be FE2
> Amiga fans out there other than me :-)
Yeah, there's me, and Angus, and some others, hopefully :-)
Having played FFE, I think that a 060 could run it, although at simple detail
level (texture-mapping turned off)
Of course the fast the Amiga, the better both for playing and for actually
porting the thing without bothering too much with extreme optmisation. So I
guess A1200 603e+gfx card will be good.
Regards,
Dante Mendes.
Robert Karlsen
Stuart Wilson <stu9...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8uu323$30q$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <869.353T1706T11925045angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk>,
> "Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > I don't know if it's of interest but there's been some fairly
> interesting
> > (to me!) Amiga related discussion on the newsgroup alt.fan.elite
> about the
> > soon to be released Frontier/Frontier: First Encounters source code.
> > There's some technical stuff, viability of grafting on a C2P routine
> on
> > the FFE C code for example, and some non-technical stuff, but it's all
> > pretty erm ......interesting .....if you like that sort of thing.
> >
> > Anyway, maybe some of you would like to check it out and add your wise
> > words. Cheers.
>
> think it's viable unless you have at least a very quick PPC
> accelerator. Whether a 68060/66 or /75 could handle it is debateable,
> but I would support any development that goes ahead once I find the
> cash to upgrade my ageing A1200 and A600. The discussions wrt the
> source code have also been discussed a little bit on the EBBS but
> unfortunately this is predominantly PC driven. Surely there MUST be FE2
> Amiga fans out there other than me :-)
>
> would make it run at an acceptable speed for moderately expanded A1200
> users remains to be seen, but as I said, I would support this. Having
> played FFE on the PC I wasn't all that impressed with it to be honest,
> though this is personal opinion (and enormous thanks to the patience of
> John Jordan who did a Win9x executable) but any serious port should
> wait until all the bugs have been ironed out of the PC version until an
> Amiga port is considered IMO. And there are a helluva lot of bugs...
> More than FE2.
>
> Obviously if a release of FFE was made, that ran quickly on an A1200
> with 68030 and 8MB Fast RAM (even if it had to be low detail) then that
> would be brilliant. But I think the min specs are realistically going
> to be a PPC card (603e?) plus decent graphics card if you want to get
> the best out of it.
>
> I don't know whether this waffle counts as a wise word, but it's my
> sixpenn'oth.
>
> Stuart
> --
I know, because i own Amiga, Kick-ass PC, CD32, Nintendo 64, PSX, SNES and
more, and i have tried most games on all these systems.
Elite 3 should run well on a 68030/040.
Elite 3 runs very fluid on a old slow Pentium 60-75.
Game did almost get it to work cool on a CD32 with only a 68020..
E3 have very low system requirements.
Rob
Angus Manwaring
>In article <869.353T1706T11925045angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk>,
> "Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I don't know if it's of interest but there's been some fairly
>interesting
>> (to me!) Amiga related discussion on the newsgroup alt.fan.elite
>about the
>> soon to be released Frontier/Frontier: First Encounters source code.
>I've read most of what Timo Suoranta was going on about but I don't
>think it's viable unless you have at least a very quick PPC
>accelerator. Whether a 68060/66 or /75 could handle it is debateable,
I don't think it is Stuart. I can have bucket loads of fun with Quake on
my 060/50 and I've seen the game running nicely on an 040, okay I didn't
think I was looking at a turbo-nutter-bastard PC processor but the level
that was being played looked fine, given that I thought Alien Breed 3D was
pretty cool on my 2 meg chip 1200 back in 1995. To my (albeit simplistic)
way of thinking, if FFE needs the same horsepower that Quake needs then it
needs someserious re-writing. I gather that the detail is user definable
and you don't even need to run with textures.
>Whether "grafting" highly optimized code or not onto the C code of FFE
>would make it run at an acceptable speed for moderately expanded A1200
>users remains to be seen, but as I said, I would support this. Having
>played FFE on the PC I wasn't all that impressed with it to be honest,
>though this is personal opinion (and enormous thanks to the patience of
>John Jordan who did a Win9x executable) but any serious port should
>wait until all the bugs have been ironed out of the PC version until an
>Amiga port is considered IMO. And there are a helluva lot of bugs...
>More than FE2.
I don't agree. There's nothing bugwise in FE2 that can't be bypassed, and
from what I've seen of FFE, it highly playable, if quite some way short of
perfect. I don't think we should be thinking in terms of "give it to us
when it's perfect" but rather we should experience the journey of
improvement. That to me, would be half the fun.
>Obviously if a release of FFE was made, that ran quickly on an A1200
>with 68030 and 8MB Fast RAM (even if it had to be low detail) then that
>would be brilliant. But I think the min specs are realistically going
>to be a PPC card (603e?) plus decent graphics card if you want to get
>the best out of it.
Only if the coding team was commissioned by Bill Gates.
>I don't know whether this waffle counts as a wise word, but it's my
>sixpenn'oth.
Regardless of our differing viewpoints, Stuart, it's valid stuff. :)
Stuart Wilson
"Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I don't think it is Stuart. I can have bucket loads of fun with Quake
on
> my 060/50 and I've seen the game running nicely on an 040, okay I
didn't
> think I was looking at a turbo-nutter-bastard PC processor but the
level
> that was being played looked fine, given that I thought Alien Breed
3D was
> pretty cool on my 2 meg chip 1200 back in 1995. To my (albeit
simplistic)
> way of thinking, if FFE needs the same horsepower that Quake needs
then it
> needs someserious re-writing. I gather that the detail is user
definable
> and you don't even need to run with textures.
Okay, I'll confess that although being an Amiga user (manic obsessive?)
for 7 years now I haven't used one with an accelerator, at the moment
all I have is a 2Meg A600 and a standard A1200. (If this can still be
classed as an Amiga fan or not here I don't know, but the prices of
accelerators, hard drives etc are kind of beyond me at the moment. I
did have a hard drive for my old A600 but it failed big-style -
keyboard, the HD, PSU, and because of that I had to drop out of the
Amiga scene for a few years, which coincided when Escom went bust :-(
and Gateway buying (and screwing up) Amiga :-(
Then I got an A1200 :-)
I have run Breathless on it and was darned impressed, I learned with
the 1MB expansion in the A600 that ANY expansion will result in a vast
improvement, but whether it'll run FFE acceptably without textures or
not is another matter. I run FE2 on extremely low detail on my A1200 ut
there is an awful lot of slow down jumping into Riedquat. I'd like to
turn textures off on the PC version of FFE, the textures look great for
the landscapes but are largely superfluous when it comes to space
stations and ships. I'd be happy if Amiga FFE had a more Amiga-FE2 feel
to it.
I've got Quake on my PC, and I've tried running "turbo-nutter-bastard"
(sans OpenGL fix) on my piss-poor AMD K6-266 and it can't really handle
it at an acceptable frame rate. So I mostly play it at 320x200 full-
screen which I'm guessing is probably your setup; at 640x480 full
screen it is bloody awful. So okay, if there is going to be THAT much
difference between the two, with an optmised Miggy processor being able
to handle a basic FFE setup, it could be viable.
John Jordan doesn't seem to think so though, and I would've thought
that Miggy users might have wanted PC games ported to the Amiga. The
problem is finding a good one actually worthy of the port.
> I don't agree. There's nothing bugwise in FE2 that can't be bypassed,
and
> from what I've seen of FFE, it highly playable, if quite some way
short of
> perfect. I don't think we should be thinking in terms of "give it to
us
> when it's perfect" but rather we should experience the journey of
> improvement. That to me, would be half the fun.
Well, okay, FFE is playable, but the bugs are annoying. In FE2 to make
map scrolling faster I have grid, stalks, trade routes etc turned off.
Do this in FFE and the stars jump about wildly, it's difficult to get a
fix on one. I don't know why this happens.
I didn't quite mean leaving some poor group of programmers to battle
away in a dark, dingy, scruffy mouldy room desperately trying to iron
out any possible problems the program might have (unless they are from
Microsoft) but rather that, after playing the PC version for about 7
months now, it would actually be detrimenatal IMO to people's enjoyment
of the game - bugwise that is, I know this almost contradicts what I
said earlier.
Let me just point out that if someone DOES want to do a port - I'll
fully support it. As best I can with two very standard Amigas anyway.
Also, my Miggy isn't hooked up to the web so I can't download anything
(well, I could use my PC then CrossDOS but it's obviously limited to
720kb. Stupid PC's).
> Only if the coding team was commissioned by Bill Gates.
Sounds a bit cynical :D
> Regardless of our differing viewpoints, Stuart, it's valid stuff. :)
I think what we differ on is not whether there should be a port, but
what it will require to run and how it should be done. If someone wants
to give me a 64MB 68060/66 + FPU + MMU absolutely free then please
don't hesitate to mail me. ;-)
I think what I would prefer as a priority is simply the CD32 version of
FE2 re-released (and slightly corrected to run properly on A1200's), as
IMO it is better than FFE.
Stuart
--
'We had no use for the policy of the Gospels: if someone slaps you,
just turn the other cheek. We had shown that anyone who slapped us on
our cheek would get his head kicked off.'
-Nikita Khrushchev (1894 -1971)
Stuart Wilson
"Robert Karlsen" <rob...@online.no> wrote:
> FE2 is still the best game ever no matter computer and consoles.
> I know, because i own Amiga, Kick-ass PC, CD32, Nintendo 64, PSX,
SNES and
> more, and i have tried most games on all these systems.
How does the PC and Amiga version compare in your opinion, which is
better?
Stuart Wilson
da...@fastlane.com.br wrote:
> Yeah, there's me, and Angus, and some others, hopefully :-)
>
> Having played FFE, I think that a 060 could run it, although at
simple detail
> level (texture-mapping turned off)
>
> Of course the fast the Amiga, the better both for playing and for
actually
> porting the thing without bothering too much with extreme
optmisation. So I
> guess A1200 603e+gfx card will be good.
Ouch. The words "Second mortgage" spring to mind.
Robert Karlsen
> In article <YyAQ5.6369$cr6.1...@news1.oke.nextra.no>,
> "Robert Karlsen" <rob...@online.no> wrote:
> > FE2 is still the best game ever no matter computer and consoles.
> > I know, because i own Amiga, Kick-ass PC, CD32, Nintendo 64, PSX,
> SNES and
> > more, and i have tried most games on all these systems.
>
> How does the PC and Amiga version compare in your opinion, which is
> better?
>
> Stuart
> --
bugs and it's the only version that exist which have the "Navigation Aid".
With this function you will gett all stations and planets listed in each
system, so you don't need to zoom into tons of planets to find a hidden
station. It also automatically turns on auto Pilot.
PC version contains lots of bugs and the graphics doesen't look as good as
the Amiga version.
Rob
Joachim Froholt
> Let me just point out that if someone DOES want to do a port - I'll
> fully support it. As best I can with two very standard Amigas anyway.
> Also, my Miggy isn't hooked up to the web so I can't download anything
> (well, I could use my PC then CrossDOS but it's obviously limited to
> 720kb. Stupid PC's).
Do a web search for Splitz + Joinz (or WSplitz + WJoinz), and you'll find a
nice utility which will let you split larger files on the pc (a mac version
is included in the archive, also), and join them on the Amiga. It should be
downloadable from the WHDLoad site, I think. Angus was the one who
introduced me to these programs, and I am really happy he did! :-)
(btw, it would be very sensible to at least get some extra ram in your
miggy. With my 16 mb fast, I can download a large file (say, 5 mb), split
it on the pc, join it in my Amiga's ram, and usually even unpack it into
the ram disk - no problems with disk swapping and so on)
Joachim
Angus Manwaring
>In article <2876.354T1777T12724952angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk>,
> "Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Okay, I'll confess that although being an Amiga user (manic obsessive?)
>for 7 years now I haven't used one with an accelerator, at the moment
>all I have is a 2Meg A600 and a standard A1200. (If this can still be
>classed as an Amiga fan or not here I don't know, but the prices of
>accelerators, hard drives etc are kind of beyond me at the moment.
Don't worry Stuart, you won't get any elitist (no pun intended) crap from
me. I would recommend looking at secondhand stuff on Amibench though, I've
had some good bargains from there.
>Then I got an A1200 :-)
>I have run Breathless on it and was darned impressed,
>I've got Quake on my PC, and I've tried running "turbo-nutter-bastard"
>(sans OpenGL fix) on my piss-poor AMD K6-266 and it can't really handle
>it at an acceptable frame rate. So I mostly play it at 320x200 full-
>screen which I'm guessing is probably your setup; at 640x480 full
>screen it is bloody awful. So okay, if there is going to be THAT much
>difference between the two, with an optmised Miggy processor being able
>to handle a basic FFE setup, it could be viable.
If you think Breathless is playable on a vanilla 1200, I'm quite sure
you'd find FFE playable on an 030. I'm obviously guessing, here but I
don't think the game is doing nearly as much processor work as Quake
demands.
>John Jordan doesn't seem to think so though, and I would've thought
>that Miggy users might have wanted PC games ported to the Amiga. The
>problem is finding a good one actually worthy of the port.
Is this the John Jordan that said:
"There's no point doing anything for the Amiga" ?
He is of course entitled to his opinions, but please don't expect me to be
interested in them.
>Well, okay, FFE is playable, but the bugs are annoying. In FE2 to make
>map scrolling faster I have grid, stalks, trade routes etc turned off.
>Do this in FFE and the stars jump about wildly, it's difficult to get a
>fix on one. I don't know why this happens.
Nor me. What you were saying about things crawling in just one system.....
sometimes in Frontier, you get a system that fills up with loads of ships,
and that causes things to slow right down. Check the map and see if that's
what's happening.
>> Only if the coding team was commissioned by Bill Gates.
>Sounds a bit cynical :D
You're familiar with Windows? :)
>> Regardless of our differing viewpoints, Stuart, it's valid stuff. :)
>I think what we differ on is not whether there should be a port, but
>what it will require to run and how it should be done. If someone wants
>to give me a 64MB 68060/66 + FPU + MMU absolutely free then please
>don't hesitate to mail me. ;-)
>I think what I would prefer as a priority is simply the CD32 version of
>FE2 re-released (and slightly corrected to run properly on A1200's), as
>IMO it is better than FFE.
My only problem with that is that it's still basically Frontier, where
most of us have been before, and I want to go someplace new (to me).
But hey, we're all different. :)
Stuart Wilson
"Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Don't worry Stuart, you won't get any elitist (no pun intended) crap
from
> me. I would recommend looking at secondhand stuff on Amibench though,
I've
> had some good bargains from there.
It is something I am seriously thinking about though. I don't use an
Amiga for its OS, because I think it may run better or have certain
advantages etc. I think all people use whatever computer they have for
the following reasons:
a) They can
b) They want to
c) They have a [insert generic type of computer] to use.
This applies to anything more or less. I think that if both the Amiga
scene and PC fans had adopted this during the PC vs Amiga arguments
years ago it would have actually been beneficial. But I digress. I was
thinking about a tower option (funds permitting) but I can't really see
that much advantage - may as well just get a full blown second hand
A4000.
> If you think Breathless is playable on a vanilla 1200, I'm quite sure
> you'd find FFE playable on an 030. I'm obviously guessing, here but I
> don't think the game is doing nearly as much processor work as Quake
> demands.
I was running it in low detail on a pretty small screen but the frame
rate was faster than I was expecting.
One game comparison that could be made for the FFE port is the
difference between Zeewolf and Zeewolf 2 on the Miggy. With a bit of
work and code tweaking it would run very quick.
> Is this the John Jordan that said:
>
> "There's no point doing anything for the Amiga" ?
>
> He is of course entitled to his opinions, but please don't expect me
to be
> interested in them.
:-)
Okay. I think maybe I took that a wee bit personally. I don't know why,
though.
If Softwood (Final Writer et al) and Digita (Wordsworth et al) were
resurrected along with whoever produced Lightwave and Brilliance I'd be
more than happy.
Whatever happened to Sensible Software? :-(
> You're familiar with Windows? :)
Only two well. I've gone through 3 versions of Win95: A, B, and C.
> My only problem with that is that it's still basically Frontier, where
> most of us have been before, and I want to go someplace new (to me).
> But hey, we're all different. :)
The hand coded missions are actually a very good idea becuase they add
a plot to the Universe without detracting from the freedom that FE2
had. Except the Earth in FFE is brown - the landscape generator
couldn't do Earth satisfactorily, so they gave it "pollution" to hide
the fact that the Earth didn't look too good.
Andy Bailey
Cool news, thanks Angus.
I wonder if some nice person will get all the "nice" sounds and music from the
Amiga version and replace the rather crappy sound in the PC version?
Just a thought.
Andy
Angus Manwaring wrote:
> I don't know if it's of interest but there's been some fairly interesting
> (to me!) Amiga related discussion on the newsgroup alt.fan.elite about the
> soon to be released Frontier/Frontier: First Encounters source code.
da...@fastlane.com.br
"Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> My only problem with that is that it's still basically Frontier, where
> most of us have been before, and I want to go someplace new (to me).
> But hey, we're all different. :)
To me, FE2 (CD32 version) is good and so on, but I want FFE because:
a) the "plot" thing running in the background, sounded interesting enough
b) new ships and new stuff etc.
c) the Landscapes: people have complained about the "pollution" in FFE's
Earth, but IMHO the landscapes of FFE are way better than FE2; in FE2 the
landscape is too "glitchy" with mountains disappearing or appearing in wrong
places (like directly over your landing pad) and the coastlines are always
"flickering" (appearing/disappearing), it does not detract gameplay, but it's
ugly, and FFE landscapes are far more stable and better looking (even with
textures OFF)
Regards,
Dante Mendes De Patta
Stuart Wilson
da...@fastlane.com.br wrote:
> and FFE landscapes are far more stable and better looking (even with
> textures OFF)
>
Nah. In FFE landing can be fatal: finding the pad about 135m below
where the ground is for example, makes for a very weird and slightly
psychedelic experience as you try to recalculate perspective from FFE's
very glitchy, bugged POV.
Stuart
--
'We had no use for the policy of the Gospels: if someone slaps you,
just turn the other cheek. We had shown that anyone who slapped us on
our cheek would get his head kicked off.'
-Nikita Khrushchev (1894 -1971)
da...@fastlane.com.br
Stuart Wilson <stu9...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <8v3lsi$n3d$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> da...@fastlane.com.br wrote:
> > and FFE landscapes are far more stable and better looking (even with
> > textures OFF)
> >
>
> Nah. In FFE landing can be fatal: finding the pad about 135m below
> where the ground is for example, makes for a very weird and slightly
> psychedelic experience as you try to recalculate perspective from FFE's
> very glitchy, bugged POV.
I know, but is not it related to the lack of Perspective Correction in the 3D
engine?
Perhaps Perspective Correction can be implemented in the Elite Club release
of FFE??
Anyway I will take a closer look again at FFE today, it's installed in a PC I
have in a office 15 miles away from my home - I can access it only after
expedient, in exactly 2 hours from now :)
Angus Manwaring
>One game comparison that could be made for the FFE port is the
>difference between Zeewolf and Zeewolf 2 on the Miggy. With a bit of
>work and code tweaking it would run very quick.
I didn't appreciate there was much of a difference, but it maybe more
obvious with a sub 030 system, and I've not played the games for a while,
although they are great games.
I'm not sure how valid the comparison is though, I don't think Z2 was
(polygon wise) doing much more than Z1, wheras FFE is doing a lot more
than Frontier.
>> Is this the John Jordan that said:
>>
>> "There's no point doing anything for the Amiga" ?
>>
>> He is of course entitled to his opinions, but please don't expect me
>to be
>> interested in them.
>:-)
>Okay. I think maybe I took that a wee bit personally. I don't know why,
>though.
Not aimed at you Stuart, but like you, as an Amiga enthusiast, I don't
really appreciate negative and meaningless, unquantifiable glib comments
aimed at the hardware that I love. ;)
I mean if he doesn't like the machine, fine - but why try to attack other
people's use of it?
>> My only problem with that is that it's still basically Frontier, where
>> most of us have been before, and I want to go someplace new (to me).
>> But hey, we're all different. :)
>The hand coded missions are actually a very good idea becuase they add
>a plot to the Universe without detracting from the freedom that FE2
>had.
Yes, I always felt this was the one weakness of Frontier. In the end, you
weren't really a Space hero (tm) you were one person among thousands, all
doing the same kind of stuff. I mean that may be fine for lots of people
but I kind of wanted to be be something special, which I think you can be
in FFE.
>Except the Earth in FFE is brown - the landscape generator
>couldn't do Earth satisfactorily, so they gave it "pollution" to hide
>the fact that the Earth didn't look too good.
Sounds like a quick fix to a late surfacing bug to me. :)
da...@fastlane.com.br
Ok, I had a few minutes of FFE play as I said, and yes, there's a little
Perspective Correction bug in the landscape but it was not enough to make me
crash while doing rough landings :)
I only wondered why the ship "bumps" when it touch the ground, even with
engines off...it touch the ground and instantly bounce a few dozen meters
high, over and over like rubber ball...
But anyway the landscape is cool, I just did a small trip to the Vesquex
system, and landed in the Vincent Rock planet, the starport was surrounded by
high mountains and a red sunset gives an interesting look despite the
pixelated textures.
Just a few minutes of play but enough to make me think that it's definitively
worth a port to Amiga, if possible :)
Regards,
Dante Mendes De Patta
Stuart Wilson
"Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I didn't appreciate there was much of a difference, but it maybe more
> obvious with a sub 030 system, and I've not played the games for a
while,
> although they are great games.
> I'm not sure how valid the comparison is though, I don't think Z2 was
> (polygon wise) doing much more than Z1, wheras FFE is doing a lot more
> than Frontier.
There's a massive difference on a standard A1200. Z1 is too slow, if
there's a lot going on it's almost unplayable, whereas Z2 only has a
small amount of slowdown with lots of enemies on the screen. The code
tweaking in Z2 certainly made a difference if you've only got a
standard A1200.
> Not aimed at you Stuart, but like you, as an Amiga enthusiast, I don't
> really appreciate negative and meaningless, unquantifiable glib
comments
> aimed at the hardware that I love. ;)
>
> I mean if he doesn't like the machine, fine - but why try to attack
other
> people's use of it?
Incidentally, why DO you use it?
> Sounds like a quick fix to a late surfacing bug to me. :)
Well, Gametek at the time wanted the release on a specific date, and
Braben failed to deliver. If they'd had a lot more time then maybe it
would've been good, but instead Gametek just threw an unfinished and
largely unplayable game onto the shelves, and Frontier Developments
were working their arses off producing patch updates for all the bugs.
Stuart
--
'We had no use for the policy of the Gospels: if someone slaps you,
just turn the other cheek. We had shown that anyone who slapped us on
our cheek would get his head kicked off.'
-Nikita Khrushchev (1894 -1971)
Stuart Wilson
Andy Bailey <and...@comp.leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Cool news, thanks Angus.
>
> I wonder if some nice person will get all the "nice" sounds and music
from the
> Amiga version and replace the rather crappy sound in the PC version?
I've got FE2 and FFE on the PC and can't get the sounds to work so I
don't know what they're like.
Angus Manwaring
>Hello,
>But anyway the landscape is cool, I just did a small trip to the Vesquex
>system, and landed in the Vincent Rock planet, the starport was surrounded by
>high mountains and a red sunset gives an interesting look despite the
>pixelated textures.
Ceratinly sounds pretty groovy. :)
I've been playing Descent for the first time on my miggy today, it's
great on my 060 with full detail. Has anyone else given it a go. I kind of
wanted to configure the mouse to work like in Doom, but I've not sussed
out how to get it working yet.
Dante, or anyone, in a general way isn't Descent giving the cpu more of a
work out than FFE, if we assume equally effective code?
Angus Manwaring
>In article <3A153E35...@comp.leeds.ac.uk>,
> Andy Bailey <and...@comp.leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Cool news, thanks Angus.
>>
>> I wonder if some nice person will get all the "nice" sounds and music
>from the
>> Amiga version and replace the rather crappy sound in the PC version?
>I've got FE2 and FFE on the PC and can't get the sounds to work so I
>don't know what they're like.
Why DO you use a PC?
No, don't answer that I'm kidding. :)
Stuart Wilson
"Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Why DO you use a PC?
>
> No, don't answer that I'm kidding. :)
Actually, for the same three reasons I use my Amiga:
a) I want to
b) I can
c) I have one to use
A lot of people argue that their machine is quicker, has a better OS,
has better software/hardware support, more wide-ranging abilities, but
these don't matter to me, they are largely superfluous arguments, and
let's be honest, boring ones too. So long as 'a', 'b' and 'c' are
satisfied then those are the only reasons anyone needs for using
anything.
da...@fastlane.com.br
"Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Ceratinly sounds pretty groovy. :)
> I've been playing Descent for the first time on my miggy today, it's
> great on my 060 with full detail. Has anyone else given it a go. I kind of
> wanted to configure the mouse to work like in Doom, but I've not sussed
> out how to get it working yet.
Unfortunately I never played Amiga Descent in my miggy, so I can't help with
the mouse issue, but I saw it once in a users meeting, very very nice on 060
+ CV64 3D (Virge acceleration working and all!)
> Dante, or anyone, in a general way isn't Descent giving the cpu more of a
> work out than FFE, if we assume equally effective code?
Well, my PC in the office is a Pentium 233MHz, FFE runs so smooth on it that
seems that FFE isn't taking any CPU time, even at the max detail setting :)
IMHO Descent and Quake are 'heavier' in the CPU, and we play both happily on
our 060 Amigas, right? ;)
Regards,
Dante Mendes De Patta
tux...@libero.it
>Yeah, there's me, and Angus, and some others, hopefully :-)
>
>Having played FFE, I think that a 060 could run it, although at simple detail
>level (texture-mapping turned off)
>
>Of course the fast the Amiga, the better both for playing and for actually
>porting the thing without bothering too much with extreme optmisation. So I
>guess A1200 603e+gfx card will be good.
Sorry, but i have played with FFE on 486...very smooth, and my 040 is
better than 486 :-))
Isn't it ? :-))
e_ha...@my-deja.com
"Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I've been playing Descent for the first time on my miggy today, it's
> great on my 060 with full detail. Has anyone else given it a go.
Yep....
> I kind of
> wanted to configure the mouse to work like in Doom, but I've not sussed
> out how to get it working yet.
I'm not sure if you can...I remember having to use the keyboard for
forward/back. Takes a bit of getting used to, but then it's "real"
3D so you have another axis of movement to deal with compared to Doom.
> Dante, or anyone, in a general way isn't Descent giving the cpu more of a
> work out than FFE, if we assume equally effective code?
Seems like FFE would vary a lot...in space you would just have some
stars and a few ships...not much to compute. Doesn't it use fractal
landscapes for planets? It would slow down there, especially with
texture-mapping.
--Eric
Angus Manwaring
>In article <964.357T1534T11565253angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk>,
> "Angus Manwaring" <angus@angusm_ANTISPEM_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I kind of
>> wanted to configure the mouse to work like in Doom, but I've not sussed
>> out how to get it working yet.
>I'm not sure if you can...I remember having to use the keyboard for
>forward/back. Takes a bit of getting used to, but then it's "real"
>3D so you have another axis of movement to deal with compared to Doom.
I found with Descent by Christian Sauer that you need to disable the
"joystick" tooltype in order to use the mouse. This seems to suit me quite
well, though I hear what you say about the extra axis.
>> Dante, or anyone, in a general way isn't Descent giving the cpu more of a
>> work out than FFE, if we assume equally effective code?
>Seems like FFE would vary a lot...in space you would just have some
>stars and a few ships...not much to compute. Doesn't it use fractal
>landscapes for planets? It would slow down there, especially with
>texture-mapping.
Right, yes the landscapes are a lot better and more complex than in
Frontier, but in Descent you've got wrap-around texture-mapping all the
time, so presumably, generally the cpu workload in Frontier (atleast 3D
wise) is not going to exceed that in Descent, assuming equally efficient
coding. Does that sound reasonable?
Cristian Venturini
> I don't think it is Stuart. I can have bucket loads of fun with Quake on
> my 060/50 and I've seen the game running nicely on an 040, okay I didn't
> think I was looking at a turbo-nutter-bastard PC processor but the level
> that was being played looked fine, given that I thought Alien Breed 3D was
> pretty cool on my 2 meg chip 1200 back in 1995. To my (albeit simplistic)
> way of thinking, if FFE needs the same horsepower that Quake needs then it
> needs someserious re-writing. I gather that the detail is user definable
> and you don't even need to run with textures.
FFE on Pc only require a 386 based machine to run, and with a 486 it run
smootly with textures; so I think a 040 based Amiga can do the same.
Bye
Cristian.
Cristian Venturini
> Dante, or anyone, in a general way isn't Descent giving the cpu more of a
> work out than FFE, if we assume equally effective code?
Yes, Descent is more cpu intensive than FFE, so a good port of FFE will
go very smoothly on 060.
Bye
Cristian.
Mark Edward Reed
Splitz and Joinz were programs that shipped with Art Department
Professional. I was not aware that it was freely available now...
On 16-Nov-00, you wrote:
> Do a web search for Splitz + Joinz (or WSplitz + WJoinz), and you'll find
> a nice utility which will let you split larger files on the pc (a mac
> version is included in the archive, also), and join them on the Amiga. It
> should be downloadable from the WHDLoad site, I think. Angus was the one
> who introduced me to these programs, and I am really happy he did! :-)
> (btw, it would be very sensible to at least get some extra ram in your
> miggy. With my 16 mb fast, I can download a large file (say, 5 mb), split
> it on the pc, join it in my Amiga's ram, and usually even unpack it into
> the ram disk - no problems with disk swapping and so on)
> Joachim
Regards
--
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
'user-friendly'.... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover.
-- Bill Gates
____________________________________________________________________
| __ | |
| /// Mark Edward Reed (AKA Lord Alberonn I) | Vacuum Tube |
|__ /// Amiga Librarian, Amiga Sysop, & Webmaster | BBS |
|\\\/// Amiga-Commodore User's Group #0447 | +1-503- |
| \XX/ http://home.pacifier.com/~alberonn/acug.html | 325-2905 |
|______________________________________________________|_____________|
Joachim Froholt
Mark Edward Reed wrote:
> Hello Joachim
>
> Splitz and Joinz were programs that shipped with Art Department
> Professional. I was not aware that it was freely available now...
Hmm.. don't know. The fact that a lot of respectable sites carry these programs
should indicate that they are free to distribute, but I might be wrong. There's
no real readme file with the archive.
Joachim
kid...@remoov.qwest.net
>Joachim
I could swear, that even though ASDG included them w/ ADP, they declared
them FD.
Colin Paul Gloster
Bye
Cristian."
If my memory is very accurate right now the official minimum requirements were
386DX (386 with a co-processor) running at 33MHz with 4MB RAM (or 3.3MB RAM
without sound). I could get it to run (with serious slowdown in the order
of five or twelve times as long to play the intro as on a proper
configuration; manifesting itself as jerky discontinuity during the intro and
gameplay (but actually still usable)) on a 386SX (without
co-processor) running at 20MHz or 25MHz with 3MB RAM without sound.
kid...@remoov.qwest.net
>25Mil/sec with my P3 500Mhz and Geforce2 GTS go x86 man forget Motorola
>Amiga is Dead!!!! hahaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
Troll.
A 500MHz G4 has significantly more math power then you set up... Sorry.
Tarkan Kilic
25Mil/sec with my P3 500Mhz and Geforce2 GTS go x86 man forget Motorola
Amiga is Dead!!!! hahaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
"Colin Paul Gloster" <Colin_Pau...@ACM.org> schreef in bericht
news:slrn921vs8.1tn.C...@tolka.dcu.ie...
Keith Blakemore-Noble
> go x86 man forget Motorola
Uh-hu.
That would explain why even your mighty Intel are doing everything they
can to move away from the x86 architecture - and you want us to move TO
a dead-end architecture?
If you are going to troll, at least do a proper job of it!
Angus Manwaring
>>Yeah And Final Frontier (elite) the game spins the triangels out like
>>25Mil/sec with my P3 500Mhz and Geforce2 GTS go x86 man forget Motorola
>>Amiga is Dead!!!! hahaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
>Troll.
>A 500MHz G4 has significantly more math power then you set up... Sorry.
:)
Ahhhhh .......bless 'im. "Triangels". :)
Even his system would be overkill for Frontier: Elite 2 though.
Two Frontier type questions:
Does anybody know anything about the Frontier: First Encounter game that
Alive were planning to release, what became of it, who coded the
conversion etc?
and
The Pulse CD that Alive were supposedly going to sell include an
unofficial Frontier Data disk. I'd be interested to see if that is
recoverable, does anyone know anything of it's origins?
Stuart Wilson
"Tarkan Kilic" <Tar...@home.nl> wrote:
> Yeah And Final Frontier (elite) the game spins the triangels out like
> 25Mil/sec with my P3 500Mhz and Geforce2 GTS go x86 man forget
Motorola
> Amiga is Dead!!!! hahaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
If the Amiga was THAT dead, then there would be little point in having
Amiga-related NG's as no-one would either have an Amiga to begin with,
have heard of one, or have used one at all.
In fact, even if controversially the Amiga is still going to keep nerds
like yourself posting such tat, it STILL isn't dead. Either way, you're
wrong.
Stuart
--
'We had no use for the policy of the Gospels: if someone slaps you,
just turn the other cheek. We had shown that anyone who slapped us on
our cheek would get his head kicked off.'
-Nikita Khrushchev (1894 -1971)
Greg Tallent
> Yeah And Final Frontier (elite) the game spins the triangels out like
> 25Mil/sec with my P3 500Mhz and Geforce2 GTS go x86 man forget Motorola
> Amiga is Dead!!!! hahaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
You know, it's a shame that most trolls can't even spell "triangles" correctly
or even know how to thread their reply in properly.
<tsb>
Greg Tallent |Amiga2000 GVP 040/33mhz/3.5 72 megs,9 gig/BuddhaIDE|
gwt at gte.net |Zoom 56k, Syjet, Zip, Picasso II 2Meg, Plextor CD-R|
I tried to "get a life" once, but they were out of stock.