Amiga, Commodore and creativity

[WDeranged]

All I remember of test drive on the amiga is dying within ten seconds, every fucking time

 

[Burning Bridges]

Seeing that Indianapolis 500 screenshot reminded me of the 5 minutes I spent playing that game. I found it to be utterly dull.

Well, to each its own. But I think Indianapolis 500 was years ahead of its time. It was the first game that did not use pixelated bitmaps but real 3d graphics (well ok there others like Revs but this one was better), and it did make a difference. Also it was the first to use real physics. I can still remember how surprised I was when I found that getting around the track fast was not a question of quick reaction (as in all games before), but of understanding physics and applying precise control. Of course it was a big problem that the Amiga had a digital joystick, and this game absolutely required analog control .. that's why it played so much better on the PC with e.g. a CH joystick.

An absolute classic imo. If you're into racing sims that is.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I just remembered that I could never actually play Leisure Suit Larry, it was one of the forbidden disks that I was too young to play, I was so young I actually thought the "age protection" was like a test with questions only adults could answer...

http://www.lemonamiga.com/?mainurl=http ... 3Fid%3D987

LOL !!

I thought exactly the same thing only difference, mostly I did get the answer right

edit: wait.. it was an age check..

 

[RaXz]

It says something that I couldn't get enough with turning around and causing massive crashes in Indianapolis 500. Personnaly I liked Formula 1 from Microprose better, that game sucked too with digital control. I even had mods for that game, I could color cars and such. It ran like a dream on the A1200. Good ol' Microsprose..

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yes I loved that one too but Formula 1 came much later:

Indianapolis 500 (1989 PC, 1990 Amiga)
Microprose Formula One Grand Prix (1992)

and I didn't play it for long because of Indycar Racing (1993)

That was the sim I got my first steering wheel for! My friends thought it was crazy, but couldn't get enough of it. Needless to say they ruined it with their lack of motoric skills ..

It looked more or less like this, I actually had an earlier model than this, with pedals that were even more retro.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

That reminds me, I spent 10 minutes once playing a bad racing game named Car & Driver, named and licensed after the magazines. Basically, you just picked a fancy car and had a drive. I quit playing after I spotted a cow at the roadside and decided I'd try to slaughter one with a block of steel going 300+kph right at it.

Needless to say, the cow was unscratched, but the car was a mangled, burning wreck some 100 feet away from the cow.

 

[Luzur]

 

[Haba]

Needless to say, the cow was unscratched, but the car was a mangled, burning wreck some 100 feet away from the cow.

Moral of the story is? Don't mess with cows.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

On a whim, I looked up the Car & Driver game on the net to learn more.

It was developed by Looking Glass Studios.

Easily their worst game.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Now that was funny. I had this issue when I set up my old Amiga again. I have since recopied my old collection back onto disk from my PC using ADF files.

Anyone have any theories on why Amiga disks seem to corrupt so easily, while every single one of my C64 games is working perfectly?

 

[laffer35]

I'll probably soon experience that again... I just found out today that I'm getting an Amiga 2000 for free, pretty cool :shock:

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Excellent. Lets hope it all works fine. Do you know if it is a revision A or revision B?

Don't forget to check the battery inside! Unless it has been changed, it might have leaked. I am fairly certain the 2000 has it in the guts of the machine. The A500 has it on the RAM expansion, and I had to change mine over, clean up the board a little and put a new battery in (you don't need a battery, and it is probably better to just not worry about the clock which it powers. You just need to know which parts to solder).

After that, http://www.amigaforever.com/ae/ is your friend. You just need a copy of Workbench (it would be a 1.3 for your 2000), a number of floppy disks and you are off and racing.

 

[laffer35]

Sadly I don't know much about it yet... he only told me he was giving me an A2000 as he doesn't have room for all of that stuff anymore.

However, I know it's in perfect working condition.

I'll write a more detailed post once I actually get the thing

 

[Luzur]

heh, i also got a free boxed A2000 to pickup, as soon as i get the time.

 

[laffer35]

Well, the guy is letting me have his A4000 instead... not sure what he'll do about the A2000, but maybe I'll get both.

I'll know for sure next week, will be awesome.

 

[WDeranged]

I lusted after the A4000 as I was into raytracing, the A1200 was ok but I still had to wait overnight for renders, and then my mum would turn it off while I'm asleep...

"oh I thought you had forgotten to turn it off"

*gah*

 

[laffer35]

I've never even seen a real A4000 before, just pictures.

All I ever had was an A500 and later an A1200.

Will be cool to get this machine (or maybe both, I can always hope :p).

 

[Luzur]

 

[Hory]

...

WHAT HAPPENED?

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

On Christmas 1990 I was still toying around with my Amstrad - 8bit ought to be enough for anybody, so I believed. I had never seen anything much more advanced than that. Then I walked into a friend's room. He got a gift for Christmas. His very first computer. Up to that point games looked and sounded like this for me. This was like high-tech. Actually more like Next-Gen. Uber-Gen. And everything you ever dreamed of.

Anyway, I stepped into my friend's room, and my eyes and ears were greeted by this. Forget the talks about jaws dropping, there are no words to describe what I felt. That was 1990, and looking back it's even more amazing how this machine had already been out and sitting in boy's rooms for five years. There's no contest, there has never been a home computer this ahead of its time since.

Now that was funny. I had this issue when I set up my old Amiga again. I have since recopied my old collection back onto disk from my PC using ADF files.

Anyone have any theories on why Amiga disks seem to corrupt so easily, while every single one of my C64 games is working perfectly?

The funny thing about GURU MEDITATION™ is that we used to believe this was some sort of hacker trying to find its way into a friend's Amiga at that time. You must remember this was the dawn of the 90s, when War Games was still quite fresh, and hackers were some kind of mythological figures we couldn't really give a face. Plus we were like ten years old.


Also, Sensible Soccer online. Still trying to get that to work, for some reason their WinUAE setup is running real sloppy on my machine, damnit. They're even holding World Cups, after all!

In comparison with the A500 I was somewhat dissappointed by Wing Commander and Red Baron.

I still played the heck out of Wing Commander on my A500, but in retrospect, it was a crappy port. The colour palette is all off, as if it was more like 16 colours, not quite as off as some ports of Sierra games though. But come on! It's an insult compared to how vibrant and colourful games could look even on early Amiga models.

Good port from 256 to 32 colours, bad port from 256 to what-don't-even-seem-to-be 32 colours.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Anyway, I stepped into my friend's room, and my eyes and ears were greeted by this. Forget the talks about jaws dropping, there are no words to describe what I felt. That was 1990, and looking back it's even more amazing how this machine had already been out and sitting in boy's rooms for five years. There's no contest, there has never been a home computer this ahead of its time since.

The same. I had heard of the Amiga, but since I had never actually used one or seen one in action with my own eyes, I thought perhaps that it was just a touch better than the C64. Needless to say when I saw it, heard it, and played it I had a very similar moment to you.

When you look at the difference in power between the two, the C64 could still do an incredibly respectable job. 64kb vs 512kb (or more usually 1024kb), there was never really a contest, yet still the C64 did more with what it had.

Also, the thought of 1 megabyte was...incredible in those days. So much memory and power....

 

[DraQ]

Also, the thought of 1 megabyte was...incredible in those days. So much memory and power....

Imagine what people with approach to coding from that days would do on modern machines.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Also, the thought of 1 megabyte was...incredible in those days. So much memory and power....

Imagine what people with approach to coding from that days would do on modern machines.

Many of them are hard at work putting those exact same skills to use...making games for platforms like the iPhone and such.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Also, the thought of 1 megabyte was...incredible in those days. So much memory and power....

Imagine what people with approach to coding from that days would do on modern machines.

That is why I get so annoyed by new games that should be able to run comfortably on a 5+ year old machine. The specs they need is so ridiculous...words fail me. Programmers here and elsewhere have told me that it is due to the sloppy way of programming these days.

I guess it is like a blank cheque; why bother being efficient and save money when you can name your own price? Programmers, at least games programmers, are total rubbish these days next to those that programmed for the old 16 bit, and even more skilled for the 8 bit machines.

Oh, I lied before. The C64 would actually have 30 something kb of RAM available because Commodore dos 2.0 took almost half the memory, while the Amiga kickstart rom took up 200+ kb. Even less power to play with. And as I said, the results are quite respectable.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

A lot of old stuff was being done straight in Assembler - that'd be a nightmare given the complexity of today's games, but also a nightmare to optimize. Regardless, optimizing code is still being done on any closed system there is on the market right now. Like, gaming consoles. You can always spot the leaps made between early launch titles and games coming in at the rear end the system's life cycle easily. Sure, nobody is going to pull off some kind of magic trick that's going to squeeze a commercially viable 2009 game into a 16k file or something, but for experimental stuff there's the garage guys. Back then the commercial guys and the garage guys were one and the same or thereabouts.

Commodore computers and home computers in general were pretty much closed systems too. You could upgrade them to a certain degree, and there were different models of a series of computers, but at their core, all models of a series were pretty much from the same stock. Programmers were forced to take what they were given, there was no upgrade possible that'd turn a bicycle into a Ferrari or anything.