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I picked up a Voodoo 2 from a computer recycling place (it was tossed in a 'PCI Video Card' bin), but I think it might be toast. Games run smooth with it, they just have some display issues. 3dfx GTA for DOS, general graphics corruption  Quake2 under Win98, the levels look like a bad disco, but your weapon and any objects/enemies you can interact with are fine. Anything I should check?
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Sep 18, 2015 19:22
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Check first if you're not overclocking the card by accident, I've seen drivers on the internet floating around who do that by default. Else more information, what system did you put it in? What Mainboard? FSB speed etc.? It does look like bad RAM which is somehow very common with lots of cards from that era. What kind of Voodoo 2 is it? How much RAM? Framebuffer looks ok, the glitching seems to happen in the texture memory. Might also be one of the TMUs. There's not enough information to say anything else. Make a close visual inspection or high res pictures of the card, when it was tossed in some bin it might have been physically damaged or might have developed bad soldering joints. Resoldering of everything sometimes works wonders here. E: I found both a V3 and a V5 in my storage, both without fans or heatsinks, don't know if they even work, not sure where I got these from. The V3 love failing because of broken BGA balls, dunno about the V5. Maybe one will go into that K6, still didn't put it together. No time. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Sep 18, 2015 |
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Sep 18, 2015 23:21
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I received my copy of The Story of US Gold this morning. I haven't got far enough in yet to get to the actual software house, but it's still absolutely fascinating. Ever wanted to hear the founder of the UK's first trans-Atlantic software import company performing a hit single with Carl Palmer (of Emerson, Lake and Palmer) on drums? Now you can!
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Sep 19, 2015 00:28
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What's the best path to Amiga emulation these days? I know WinUAE, but I don't know if any of those more-or-less legal packages are still around that give you things like "a desktop" and "a configuration that lets you play games" without 6 hours of futzing with emulator settings and swapping Workbench disks.
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Sep 27, 2015 17:37
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Luigi Thirty posted:What's the best path to Amiga emulation these days? I know WinUAE, but I don't know if any of those more-or-less legal packages are still around that give you things like "a desktop" and "a configuration that lets you play games" without 6 hours of futzing with emulator settings and swapping Workbench disks. FS-UAE is great. It can pull your Workbench ROMs in from Amiga Forever if you have it, scan a folder full of totally-legit backups and download all the configuration info you need to run them from an online database (Not every game's on it, though, sadly). It even has a dumb little Big Picture Mode type thing. The Kins fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 17:45
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I recall trying to figure out WinUAE a while back and having rather little luck doing much more than getting into the OS. Although to be fair, I've never used an actual Amiga before. Was pretty much a DOS and Windows kid.
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Sep 28, 2015 19:22
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Amiga Forever needs quite a bit of loving. Their interface doesn't support DPI scaling so I can't use it anymore on any of my computers because the text is this big
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Sep 28, 2015 19:25
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Is there a noob-friendly explanation of WinUAE's setting somewhere? As someone whose Amiga knowledge was limited to switching floppies I'm a bit intimidated.
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Sep 28, 2015 19:34
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Police Automaton posted:Check first if you're not overclocking the card by accident, I've seen drivers on the internet floating around who do that by default. Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-586ATE/P, CPU is a Pentium 133 (non-MMX). The driver sees the card as a Voodoo2 1000 12MB, looking up the ID on the card comes up as an STB BlackMagic 3D. I'm using 3.02.02 reference drivers, no overclocking anywhere. I'll pull the card and take a look at it.
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Sep 28, 2015 22:18
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Pierzak posted:Is there a noob-friendly explanation of WinUAE's setting somewhere? As someone whose Amiga knowledge was limited to switching floppies I'm a bit intimidated. Point it to the ROMs in the "paths" bit and hit scan. Then stick to the Quickstart menu which lets you quickly choose the most common setups, otherwise you'll soon find yourself asking questions like "How Fat does my Agnus need to be?"
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Sep 28, 2015 23:09
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Prenton posted:Point it to the ROMs in the "paths" bit and hit scan. Then stick to the Quickstart menu which lets you quickly choose the most common setups, otherwise you'll soon find yourself asking questions like "How Fat does my Agnus need to be?" Too late, now I want to learn what all this stuff means. 
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Sep 28, 2015 23:29
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WinUAE is great. Amiga emulation is to a point now where an emulated Amiga is both faster and more compatible than a real Amiga ever will be. The biggest problem with the Amiga especially with games is that they were written very close to hardware spec and OS-unfriendly, so you fiddle with the hardware layout and lots of stuff stops working. A few pointers without going too much into specifics - there are three major chipset revisions on the Amiga. OCS, ECS and AGA. The biggest, most interesting difference between OCS and ECS is the compatibility to up to 2 MB of Chipram, depending on Agnus revision (see earlier posts of me in this thread regarding the Chip/Slow/FastRAM layout of Amiga machines and the importance of the Agnus chip, which is really the heart of the classic Amiga) the ECS Denise (Denise being, amongst other things, the graphics chip) also supports higher resolutions but that isn't really interesting from a gaming standpoint as it's not used by any game and is also only really interesting for word processing as there's a 4 color limit. (Many people say it was useless, I wouldn't say so, it was certainly a let-down upgrade-wise but it still was quite useful in it's time) There are already slight incompatibilities with a bit of software between OCS and ECS as ECS has a bunch of additional stuff old programs were not written with in mind (even if Commodore warned the programmers about this, so it's really mostly just dirty programming) so your safest bet is to emulate OCS everything to cover most of the ground regarding games. The OCS Agnus only had support for 512 kb of ChipRAM which was a pittance for serious work with tools like deluxe paint but as this was the default layout in the heyday of the Amiga, this is what most games will support. Some games do support 1 MB of ChipRAM (which was the most common upgrade people did by themselves on the most common Amigas) or are at least not bothered by it. But at that point, you need ECS with it's potential problems as the OCS Agnus can't address more than 512 kb ChipRAM. (Dunno if the Author of WinUAE did things there that aren't possible with the original Hardware) The most common upgrade for Amigas otherwise without upgrade was 512 kb of SlowRAM. Rev 4.1+ A2000s came like that in their stock configuration and most people had the 512 kb "Trapdoor" expansion in their A500. This upgrade/WinUAE setting is important for many old games, as they are hardwired to expect the SlowRAM at a specific memory adress and will go batshit if it isn't there. (again, this really was lovely programming, but there it is) SlowRAM is called SlowRAM as it basically has only disadvantages. It can't be used by the Amigas chipset but only by it's CPU, but still the CPU can only access it through the Chipset at a slow speed. Regarding the Kickstart-ROM 1.2 or 1.3 is the most compatible, as again some games are written in a dirty way and expect certain ROM-Functions to be at a hardwired address. These won't work with later Kickstarts. There are also certain other incompatibilities as in changes how things work so there's no point of selecting a later Kickstart if you only want to play games, unless games flat out demand a later Kickstart version. So in conclusion, OCS Amiga with 512kb Chip + 512kb SlowRAM + 1.3 Kickstart is the most compatible setting there is. For later games, you might wanna bump that up to 1/2 MB Chip+ECS Agnus, depending on the game. If you're already only emulating, AGA is only worth it for applications for it's 256 colors. Almost all AGA games exist as usually superior PC versions and there's little point playing the AGA versions usually. (AGA also has other advantages, but they're more important with real hardware) Contrary to games, most OS friendly apps worth using in 2015 are flexible regarding hardware layout, so you can go as best as possible. Regarding the CPU selections in WinUAE in such circumstances where you want to go as fast as possible, the 68020 is the most worthwhile. Motorola always played around with supported CPU instructions and addressing modes and as a result, the 68020 was the CPU with the most stuff in that regard. Later CPUs, while being faster because of higher clock speeds and internal layout (needing less time for the same instructions as earlier CPUs) generally have a reduced instruction set and are less universally compatible. This is unimportant in emulation so 68020 is the most comprehensive selection, there's no point in selecting for example the 68060 here as emulation-wise, it's basically the same with less features. That being said, I'm not aware of a single program that would run on an 020 but not on an 060 and I have no idea what WinUAE does in detail here, so the selection might be quite esoteric to begin with. The most relevant changes regarding this were between the 040 and 060 in a bit of FPU stuff where you can get a slowdown in worst-case scenarios, but it's more of a question of the 060 used to it's full extent as the 060 is still so much faster in every way compared to the 040. Again, for emulation, all of this doesn't matter, as the silicon isn't emulated. You want to activate JIT and only disable it if you need an emulated MMU for some reason, but if you do you usually already know why. The FPU setting between 68881 and 68882 doesn't really matter either, they're the same thing only the 68882 is faster at the same clock speeds, but again, silicon isn't emulated. Hope that helps. NinjaPablo posted:Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-586ATE/P, CPU is a Pentium 133 (non-MMX). The driver sees the card as a Voodoo2 1000 12MB, looking up the ID on the card comes up as an STB BlackMagic 3D. I'm using 3.02.02 reference drivers, no overclocking anywhere. I'll pull the card and take a look at it. The CPU is underpowered for a Voodoo 2 and won't really get the most out of it but I guess that does not really matter and is certainly not the problem here. I'd take a good look at the card, something very common which happens with such hardware and which people overlook is that the soldering joints of SMD caps and the like break and the caps fall off, and the people don't even notice it because they're such small parts. Sometimes the caps are still "caught" in their broken soldering joints but not really attached anymore, which you can notice when you move the PCB around and see if any caps are affected by gravity. I had one such partially broken off cap on the K6 Mainboard I mentioned earlier in this thread. Only noticed it by accident. This usually happens when the boards are mechanically stressed in some way, people slip with a screwdriver on accident or they're stored incorrectly. There could also be broken soldering joints on the memory chips themselves, especially since the Voodoo 2 with 12 MB has memory on both sides of the card. Such things are hard to see with the naked eye (and difficult to find with a multimeter) and it's usually quicker and easier to just resolder everything. If that all doesn't help and you can solder well you can remove the texture memory to find the faulty one, the chips are still relatively easy to get. (You can't remove the Framebuffer memory, I think the V2 needs all 4 MB to work correctly) I *think* the V2 can go down to 6 MB when you start removing texture memory until it stops working correctly, but you need to change some resistors around for that I don't remember which and where but shouldn't be too hard to figure out. I'd also take a close look at the electrolytic caps (if any) for leakage or just replace them blindly. Faults here are not that uncommon either and can cause just about anything. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 06:25
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Or if Amigas still give you emulation headaches and you don't want to hope some polish exe files with a win UAE shell cover your chosen game and PC ports just don't cut it for you STeem for Atari ST emulation is gobs easier to setup and is generally the same game with less colors. Though sometimes faster than the Amiga version.
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Sep 29, 2015 09:35
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Is there a something like a hard-drive mod for c64 emus? I tried playing Pool of Radiance the other day, but disk-swapping (didn't really work) made it a minor pita.
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Sep 29, 2015 10:05
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Captain Rufus posted:Or if Amigas still give you emulation headaches and you don't want to hope some polish exe files with a win UAE shell cover your chosen game and PC ports just don't cut it for you STeem for Atari ST emulation is gobs easier to setup and is generally the same game with less colors. Though sometimes faster than the Amiga version. I need to fix my old 520ST. It just goes diagonal black stripes when you turn it on. The drop trick used to fix that but then it didn't. I don't have any programs for it anyway. I do have a bunch of my dad's mid-80s keyboards that only have Atari and Amiga MIDI patch software. Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 18:18
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midnightclimax posted:Is there a something like a hard-drive mod for c64 emus? I tried playing Pool of Radiance the other day, but disk-swapping (didn't really work) made it a minor pita. SD2IEC http://www.sd2iec.co.uk/
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Oct 17, 2015 17:10
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I so need one of those things. And then a C64c or a 128 to rock it out with. But if I did that then I wouldn't slowly keep building a great Atari 8 bit collection: 
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Oct 27, 2015 01:58
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Captain Rufus posted:I so need one of those things. And then a C64c or a 128 to rock it out with. But if I did that then I wouldn't slowly keep building a great Atari 8 bit collection: The sd2iec is nice but not very compatible unless you stick to older games or ones not written around drive-specific loaders like Ultima 4/5. The ultimate is a much more comprehensive solution but pretty pricey.
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Oct 27, 2015 02:03
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Captain Rufus posted:I so need one of those things. And then a C64c or a 128 to rock it out with. But if I did that then I wouldn't slowly keep building a great Atari 8 bit collection: Got it, want it, got it, got it I felt like Beach-Head and Beach-Head II were the forgotten path that party games could have gone down; grimdark party games. Well maybe the knife-throwing battle in II was pretty ridiculous, but it was still fun and intense.
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Oct 27, 2015 02:06
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When I had my C64, I just stuck with good old "having hundreds of blank floppies at hand and putting disk images onto em, plus fastload"
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Oct 27, 2015 02:20
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So here's something I came across that I never knew existed http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/01/uk1541-latest-c64c128-product-but-is-it.html Looks like it's still being figured out hardware wise and the guy is selling in extremely small batches - he just sold 5 on amibay last week. At that price it would be the best solution because the Ultimate1541 is way too overpriced for what it is. Edit: oooh even better I'll just wait for udrive http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52438&sid=4dacf1129dd027224857d25a0661c7a3 flyboi fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Oct 27, 2015 |
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Oct 27, 2015 04:36
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Nintendo Kid posted:When I had my C64, I just stuck with good old "having hundreds of blank floppies at hand and putting disk images onto em, plus fastload" This was easy with the Apple II because 68K Macs could write ProDOS 800KB floppies. I had boxes and boxes of unopened Mac floppies I could reformat. But I don't have a 3.5" C64 drive.
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Oct 27, 2015 06:27
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I'm pretty happy with the Ultimate II, it pretty much has everything you'd ever possibly need on a C64, (besides acceleration) but lots of the additional features aren't really explained for people not familiar with the system and also have kind of a niche usage, for example the REU emulation which amongst other things, makes GEOS far more usable. ..but yes, it's kind of expensive I guess.  What's very nice and also pretty much always useful is the Ultimate's capability to open disk images and dump PRGs directly into the RAM, which for most things cuts the time between inserting the disk and actually playing at least in half as the dumping is basically instantaneous for human sensibilities. The first Ultimate could run standalone which made it usable also for things like the C16, that's the only think that kinda sucks about the II. (Still have a C16 around that I need to repair, sadly the CPU there is so hard to come by that even I don't have any in stock)
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Oct 27, 2015 18:55
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I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the last few posts but it looks cool. No, I understand that it is like a bridge between your PC and your C64, at least I assume? Pretty sweet. Not to be high maintenance, but can someone please make one for the Atari XE thanks That is the best custom avatar text ever.
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Oct 28, 2015 16:42
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You know what would be sweet as hell? Being able to convert an Atari 8-bit cassette file to an ATR (or, basically, anything I could potentially use with an SIO2SD). As it stands, there are fragments of my family's old library that remain impenetrable outside of complete emulation (e.g. All-Star Baseball) due to versions only existing in cassette form and no other.
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Oct 28, 2015 16:45
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Here's something that's tangentially retrocomputer related: an unreleased, completed Dizzy game for the NES was dug up and released for free.
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Oct 28, 2015 16:51
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Wise Fwom Yo Gwave posted:You know what would be sweet as hell? Being able to convert an Atari 8-bit cassette file to an ATR (or, basically, anything I could potentially use with an SIO2SD). As it stands, there are fragments of my family's old library that remain impenetrable outside of complete emulation (e.g. All-Star Baseball) due to versions only existing in cassette form and no other. I'm pretty sure there are ways to do it, but it requires familiarity with the coding and patience out the rear end.
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Oct 28, 2015 17:00
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Quarex posted:I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the last few posts but it looks cool. In C64-land there's a few methods of how SD interfaces work. First an overview of file formats most common: D64 is an image of a floppy PRG is a program file G64 is a raw image of a floppy Difference between D64 vs G64 is kind of like an ISO vs an Alcohol 120% image. While the ISO has the data ripped it is not 1:1 to the source data and the G64 has the complete raw track from the floppy. This is important because the 1541 floppy drive has its own cpu and ram which can be interfaced with for both improving performance as well as copy protection. So first SD interface being IEC emulation which only communicates with the IEC bus i.e sd2iec. What this does is basically works over the Commodore's serial port and any communication over the IEC bus is supported via .d64/prg images. While this does work with a lot of games it will flat out not work with any program that has a special 1541 loader unless the sd2iec has built-in support for it. The most recent alpha just added support for Manic Mansion which is a pretty huge win but overall if you go into strange game land or the demo scene you will find a lot of them will refuse to work. I.e Turricans, Ultima remastered 4/5, etc. Next up is the Ultimate 1541-I/II. This is a complete replacement for the 1541 drive and not only supports the IEC bus but actually emulates the chips within a 1541. This allows for complete emulation and the support of G64 rips. G64 are necessary because some games like Defender of the Crown use the 1541 to expect certain drive errors at certain points as copy protection among other things that a D64 rip will not have. This is also the "purest" way to play an image of a C64 game since you're playing a raw rip of a floppy. The Ultimate has a ton of other features too but if you're looking mainly for demos and games this is the most important part of the hardware. It also emulates fast loaders however they're a dime a dozen so whatever. It also supports tape emulation but zzzzzzzzzz. There's other contenders being made that I linked UK1541 and μDrive which have the similar capability of the Ultimate however stops at 1541 emulation. There's no built-in SID player with expanded functionality, no tape support, no fast loader, etc. For someone who just wants to dick around with games and demos these are both looking to be very good devices should they reach manufacturing and at a fraction of the cost. An U1541-II costs north of $150+ and these two devices are aiming to be in the $50-60 range.
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Oct 28, 2015 17:03
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Quarex posted:I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the last few posts but it looks cool. To add to what flyboi said, the thing with the classic floppy drives for these systems is that they're not a "dumb" device like floppy drives you'd find for example in PCs and Amigas, but a complete computer in themselves. They even have a very similar (I wrote the same here before but edited it out, but really for most purposes it basically is) CPU as the C64, their own memory, (2 kb for the VC-1541) even their own OS. It's basically because you just couldn't put that additional work on the C64 and friends and keep it that cheap. (I say "and friends" as there are other computers in Commodore's lineup that are directly compatible with the floppy drives) So it makes a lot of sense to imagine something like the 1541 not like a peripheral in the modern sense, but rather as a computer in itself that communicates with the C64 via serial and has all the fancy mechanical parts that makes reading disks possible. (I think I had a fractal program somewhere that even used connected floppies to speed up calculations) It's been a bit forgotten that floppies weren't your default hardware you just always had when you just got your brand new C64, but rather an expensive luxury akin to I dunno... maybe a big, fancy SSD nowadays. They also were pretty expensive to have and keep (disks were quite expensive, at least here). People often just had tape drives, although anybody more serious about the whole "computer" thing on the C64 ended up getting a floppy drive as soon as he could afford it. Emulation of a floppy drive for the C64 isn't so straightforward as one should imagine and kinda complicated, although easy enough to reach with current technology when you put enough work in it. Loaders pulling fancy tricks on the CPU of the floppy drive, using undocumented instructions etc.. you do need a few more parts to emulate all that and sometimes, it just has to be absolutely cycle perfect to be 100% compatible. I don't know how good the UK1541 is in that regard as I never had one, but I know the Ultimate II does it pretty drat good, even better than the crazy expensive and to-death-engineered Chameleon 64. As being said, the Ultimate does a lot more than Floppy emulation but a lot of these features are really not that interesting if you just play games and don't do anything else. (besides the dumping of the .PRG and allowing to override the kernal of the C64 with a ROM file, which are features I'd consider useful even for the casual user) I don't know much more about the project than the link that has been posted, but it's too bad it seems to be dependant on the Userport and can't run stand-alone even though it has a screen. If it could run standalone without being connected via userport, you could use it with the C16 and such which would make it very interesting. What's justifies the price of the Ultimate somewhat is that if you're somewhat of a power user (addmitely, not many of those around for the C64 in 2015) it really covers all the bases and is literally the last expansion you'll ever need. If people are interested, I can hook my C64+Ultimate II to my TV-Card and walk around in GEOS somewhat, I have a bit more time now. Also speed loaders are vastly overrated and have most of their function in the initial loading of the .PRG, most games either replace these routines anyways or are incompatible to the ones of the various speedloaders. Quarex posted:That is the best custom avatar text ever. Over in the gaming development thread somebody wanted to make a text adventure with one of the common interpreters and I wondered out loud about compatibility with the old systems and their limitations. Some people thought I was attacking him somehow and one got apparently mad enough to buy me this custom title. New games on the old platforms are always pretty welcome.
Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Oct 28, 2015 |
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Oct 28, 2015 20:48
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The Kins posted:Here's something that's tangentially retrocomputer related: an unreleased, completed Dizzy game for the NES was dug up and released for free. The opening section seems to be a remix of Magicland Dizzy. Then I stopped playing, because Dizzy is crap.
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Oct 29, 2015 01:03
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Guess what I found for $3 at Savers?  OUTSTANDING HIGH-RESOLUTION 3-D GRAPHICS! Sign me up!
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Oct 31, 2015 16:37
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Shlomo Palestein posted:Guess what I found for $3 at Savers? I loving hate you as I have wanted that game since it came out. 
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Oct 31, 2015 20:10
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I picked up a shrink wrapped copy of an ooooooold program called Spooky Monster Maker from like 1988 at Goodwill recently.
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Oct 31, 2015 20:45
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Luigi Thirty posted:I picked up a shrink wrapped copy of an ooooooold program called Spooky Monster Maker from like 1988 at Goodwill recently.   Really though today is the day when you should fire it up and post the results also I call him The Horrolive
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Oct 31, 2015 20:53
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Captain Rufus posted:I loving hate you as I have wanted that game since it came out. I don't even have a way of really playing it, though I think I might actually have a Mac copy around here someplace that would work on the old G4; it's probably just Fate of Atlantis, though, come to think of it. I guess I can legally download a copy to use with SCUMMVM now or something. I miss being able to go to Egghead Software and look at boxes like this. I know GoG offers virtual stuff, and I appreciate it, but I like feeling the feelies, and I like reading the "what it's compatible with" sticker, since that was a ritual when I was a kid (never finding more than a game or two that said "Apple II Compatible" for our Laser 128ex, though I did LOVE the port of the Robocop arcade game we stumbled upon, which was bizarrely accurate for a port of an arcade game on the Apple II, just running at like 1/4 speed). This is the second "No loving poo poo" Goodwill find for me involving old PC stuff. The other was finding a boxed copy of XCom in ~2006 or so, just before it went on Steam. Also $3. I still have it around here someplace. My lucky modern find involved a PS2 slim with two controllers and all the hookups for $20 just a few months ago. I was just trying to find a decent CRT TV at the time, and discovered that most (probably all) goodwills have simply stopped accepting old giant TV's.
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Oct 31, 2015 21:39
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Shlomo Palestein posted:I don't even have a way of really playing it, though I think I might actually have a Mac copy around here someplace that would work on the old G4; it's probably just Fate of Atlantis, though, come to think of it. I guess I can legally download a copy to use with SCUMMVM now or something. https://youtu.be/CqLv8d-W-9c this might solve your issues. There are a couple drive emulators out there but this is more an archival device. Hell, someone is making a Bluetooth to SIO port Atari drive. But not as many actual drive thingies so it's worth a look, especially if you want to Kevin Savitz stuff and fill Archive.org with all the historical things. Though PC retro is starting to creep up as the scene gets bigger and the whales get bored of ruining console games. The reduced popularity is balanced by the vastly smaller print runs. Like some Infocom games had sub 20k ones! Oh well. Gog, DotEmu, and Steam have many classics up and sometimes more playable than our legit copies. Someone tell EA to get their Amiga stuff on Gog. I want to mess around with Adventure Construction Set dammit.
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Nov 1, 2015 12:35
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Captain Rufus posted:Someone tell EA to get their Amiga stuff on Gog. I want to mess around with Adventure Construction Set dammit. Even though I love that drat "EOA" so much that I have seriously considered getting a tattoo of it. Except if I were to ever get another tattoo it would obviously have to be Wasteland-related. But regardless, I agree; it would be awesome to have access to those 1980s games For Real again, without having to dig out my Atari XE. Even though the IBM versions are probably always worse.
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Nov 1, 2015 18:37
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I love DeluxePain
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Nov 1, 2015 22:10
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Police Automaton posted:I love DeluxePain Hey, one of the PC versions is compatible with Bards Tale Construction Set. Sadly my art skills were never cultivated as a child so I am unable to make pretty pictures for the Warhammer 40k Eldar game idea I had in the late 90s. Also yeah Quarex in many cases the PC versions of games were kind of bad depending on your tolerance for EGA/Tandy Graphics and Adlib/Soundblaster audio. However hard disks basically being a given by 91 if not 89 and mouse inputs have a bonus... From 85-90 though the Atari ST and Amiga were usually the best ports of stuff. And their cousin the Sega Genesis which in a lot of cases was even better especially when lovely UK devs were at the wheel. ( Who mock US folks for not liking abusively hard games yet who even on the ST and Amiga seemed to take up half the loving screen with an interface menu and still had poo poo frame rates. Blame short dev times and Ocean and US Gold for being the Acclaims of the UK? Games like Agony prove those machines had lots of power that wasn't utilized most of the time.) But yes I love construction sets. Ones that don't require coding to do stuff.
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Nov 2, 2015 22:37
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 21:20 |
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I think I only know Deluxe Paint 2 for the PC. Actually and without checking, I think that was also the only version for PC. It was cool on the PC because with an VGA card you got your full 256 colors and a good speed out of the program, even with cards like Tridents offerings. I have Deluxe Paint in the original here somewhere for the Amiga, don't remember which version. Bought it back then for very little money. It was a huge letdown for DPaint 5 to not have graphics card support for the Amiga, as especially the OCS/ECS Machines were limited to a regular 32-color Palette. (ignoring 64 color HalfBrite, HAM and all that jazz which had usability disadvantages) Commodore kept and kept promising OS improvements on the front of non-chipset graphics support right up until the last minute and then they just went bankrupt without ever solving it. I think around that time EA just ended up losing interest in Deluxe Paint altogether. With a bit of hackery, you can get your 256 color graphics card support with DPaint 5 on the Amiga, but it's very wonky and slow. Works a lot better with AGA. There's also the Amiga-only Brilliance I think I've mentioned several times, great program for pixel art and IMHO a lot better than Deluxe Paint, even though it's chipset banging too and has no love for graphics cards. There's also Personal Paint which is basically an Amiga-only Deluxe Paint remake which has all the bells and whistles. (graphics card support, the ability to offload Amiga blitter operations to the CPU which is of advantage with Accelerator cards as they're often faster than the Blitter) I also have the Personal Paint Manual and Disks for some reason even though I simply cannot remember how I got them or ever using them. They're still selling Personal Paint with Amiga Forever I think. I dunno how useful any of these programs are for modern Pixel Art or what the indie devs that make all those pixel art games use, but I think they could still be useful tools to make these kinds of graphics. I've played Hotline Miami the other day and although it's a very infuriating game, I'm kinda happy to see that this graphics style kind of managed to get a foothold on it's own and transcended a bit past just copying old games. I think it has it's own artistic merit in compressing visual information down like that and let the mind fill in the gaps and could live on beyond nostalgia.
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Nov 3, 2015 03:29
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