The Commodore Amiga Thread

Thread: The Commodore Amiga Thread


The Amiga is a family of personal computers sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. Based on the Motorola 68000 family of microprocessors, the machine has a custom chipset with graphics and sound capabilities that were unprecedented for the price, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS. Although early Commodore advertisements attempt to cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially when outfitted with the Amiga Sidecar PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, with a wide range of games and creative software.
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Dragon's Lair, originally released for arcades in 1983 by Cinematronics. It uses laserdisc technology, offering greatly superior graphics compared to other video games at the time. The game was ported to several other platforms, but as no home system technology of that era could accommodate the graphical quality of LaserDisc. But there was one port of the game that stood above the rest and was a faithful recreation of the laserdisc original. That version was the Commodore Amiga release from 1983. In this episode we deep dive and take a look at how Dragon's Lair on the Amiga came to be.
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If you owned an Amiga back in the day, chances are you know the name Cinemaware, the company behind titles like Defender Of The Crown, S.D.I. and Lords of the Rising Sun. Its games were deliberately cinematic in nature, showcasing gorgeous visuals and sound.

Another Cinemaware classic was It Came from the Desert, which was inspired by '50s B-movies and boasted a unique mix of puzzle-solving and action – all accompanied by some incredible visuals.

Sadly, the company went bankrupt in 1991, only to undergo something of a revival in 2000 when it was rebooted as Cinemaware Inc. by Lars Fuhrken-Batista. Even that 'resurrected' version of the company now appears to be dead, so we never got a proper successor to the original It Came From the Desert.

That's changing this year, as developer Tim Rachor has announced a spiritual follow-up called It Returned To The Desert, which hits Steam on February 15th.

It's billed as a turn-based tactical adventure set in the fictional town of Glint Rock. The player assumes the role of geologist Dr Mill as he attempts to discover why the settlement is being overtaken by giant ants. You'll need to recruit a team to fight the massive insects, equipping each member with a range of weapons and gear. Permadeath is also part of the experience, so if you lose a party member, they're gone for good.

"A large variety of characters and non-linear progression allow for great replayability," says the game's Steam page. "And a few mini-games and surprises mix up the experience every time. The game features a charming retro pixel art style and an atmospheric soundtrack, free saving and multiple difficulties. Even though the game looks like it's straight from the 90s, it boasts modern game design principles and no dead ends or overly high difficulty".



https://www.timeextension.com/news/...m-the-desert-is-getting-a-spiritual-successor
 
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Piracy was rife on the Amiga, with almost every game getting cracked by various scene groups. Developers weren't fans of this and they often left messages and rants for them in the code -- sometimes angry, but usually hilarious. Enjoy these gems!
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Cherry brown keyboard in the old A1200. Stick with black keycaps or go white/other colours?

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I like it - stick with it tbh, as Stifler notes there's a touch of breadbin C64 about it, which can only be a positive. Also lucky sod having an A1200 - I lusted after that as a kid, even an Atari-owning one (though I did pick up an A600 when my Atari 520STFM died). I had great times with that little A600 getting to see just how much better as a games machine it was than the ST - if only I'd known.
 
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Thank you, Gents!

Yep, I will stick with it as is. The only other "mod" I might make is to change the indicator LEDs to a programmable one. I do have a spare Commodore one, but I would like a purple and blue light there. Beyond the 68060 ;) and the indivision, will keep it as is.

My next project will be a Amiga 500 build. It will be a longer term project since I want to use a new motherboard pcb (a few spare custom chips laying about). I have a new case to go with it:

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@HariSeldon , honestly, I have been wanting to explore the Atari ST - if only to explore TOS. But they seem to be just too rare in Australia. There was a local PC repairer who has one, but I purchased a c64 from him instead. The following week, the ST was was sold. Still kicking myself about that. Have you ever gotten your hands on a Falcon?
 
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Aarbron said:
@HariSeldon , honestly, I have been wanting to explore the Atari ST - if only to explore TOS. But they seem to be just too rare in Australia. There was a local PC repairer who has one, but I purchased a c64 from him instead. The following week, the ST was was sold. Still kicking myself about that. Have you ever gotten your hands on a Falcon?
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Yeah TOS is pretty nice - I'd say the Atari ST is more suited to productivity than the Amiga is in part because its desktop, as hideously green as it is, is a bit more usable in terms of its widgets, colour scheme, etc for those sorts of things, which is why the ST saw me programming games where I think on the Amiga I'd have been less inclined at 10 years old.

The Falcon is a bit of an odd duck. Honestly at the time it was a remarkable machine, a tonne of power and some impressive graphics modes, but it had virtually no support from Atari or anyone else - just a fairly small number of programs built specifically for it and a few enhanced, but given most of the ST's software library has compatibility issues with the machine I'd say it's perhaps one to emulate rather than own. It's less compatible with ST software than the 1200 is with 16-bit Amiga software for instance.
 
This is little WIP game is causing a bit of a stir in Amiga circles - mainly for its use of the HAM-6 (hold and modify) mode and being able to pull it off on a stock Amiga500 or 1000. Haven't had a chance to download it yet.



Thread over at English Amiga Board:

Tech demo of my game - English Amiga Board

Tech demo of my game Coders. Asm / Hardware
eab.abime.net

Some of the technical elements (from eab):

- Detects PAL and NTSC, so it should work on both systems
- Runs at full frame rate (50Hz or 60Hz), scrolling in 8 directions
- Uses lowres HAM 6-bitplane mode
- Dynamic sprite management system: it groups sprites by pair, and recycles sprites across the screen vertically: the system can display a maximum of 104 sprites.
- On an example screen like the one in the screenshot, there is about 80 visible moving sprites, some are animating
- Sprites are being recolored by the copper: 12 colors per scanline to be precise. This means a theoretical limit of 2880 colors could be displayed just for the sprites. With the current sprite sheet I used, the sprites are using 265 colors.
- The background tiles are in HAM, which means up to the full palette of 4096 colors, and arranged in such a way show fringeless horizontally scrolling
- The tiles are shaded at runtime according to light sources (i.e., torches) with a scanline-dithering technique to allow approximately 30 level of darkening
- There is a single bitmap buffer (i.e.: no double buffering), so everything is rendered with carefully timed 'racing-the-beam' blits.
- The copper list is also a single list, so all real-time modification of the copper list is done with careful timing
 
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Hey all! I'm back with another announcement from Retro Games Ltd. about their new project and successor to The A500 Mini! This time we read an interview by German games publication Amigafan.de with Retro Games Ltd. in which they discuss their future plans, including an announcement that a lot of people have been waiting for... of sorts! Watch the video to find out more.
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Legendary 90's computer magazine Amiga Power gave out some pretty low scores in their time -- they rated 38 games at 10% or less! This is a look at ALL of their worst reviewed games, ranging from well-known turkeys like Rise of the Robots and Dangerous Streets to some shockingly obscure titles. That and a certain Kick Off '96.
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Bullet Club said:


Commodore's ineptitude killed the Amiga, not Wolf3D or Doom.
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If you were not living behind the moon, you could easily feel that around 1990/91 winds were blowing from a different direction suddenly, when the Amiga wasn't the undisputed darling of publishers and computer gaming magazines anymore.

From 1990 on PCs got the better versions of strategy, role playing and simulation games, and after 1991 consoles started to eat away the action games.
The Amiga got some lame ports that looked bad in 16 colors compared to VGA's 256 colors half of a year later if lucky, and that was it.
 
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True. In 91 when Commodore were wasting there time with the CDTV and releasing minor updates like the 500+, you could tell they were falling behind.
 
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