Daniel, aka Daytona675x, is the programmer chosen to port this game to AmigaOS4.x, MorphOS, and AROS. As he has stated that he intends to use his own routines and methods for rendering using a compositing engine of his own making, I am wondering if this will adversely affect the ports for MorphOS and AROS. Wouldn't a Warp3D or OpenGL/TinyGL version work better for the MorphOS port of this game? I am not familiar with the 3D abilities of AROS and Mesa, so I don't know how Daytona675x's decisions will affect the port to that platform.

Does anyone know if Daytona675x has done any programming work for MorphOS and AROS previously? I have read that he is a very accomplished programmer, and many people praise his abilities, so maybe my questions and concerns are unfounded.

Maybe a more experienced MorphOS programmer will volunteer to work with Daytona675x on this porting project, so we don't end up with a port that only works best on AmigaOS4.x and the compositing abilities of the currently unsupported RadeonHD video cards (not fully supported yet by MorphOS I mean).

Edit: I should not have written more experienced MorphOS programmer, what I meant was a programmer who specializes on MorphOS alone, as opposed to a programmer like Daytona675x who "might" prefer AmigaOS4.x as his primary target platform. I don't mean to disparage Daytona675x in any way shape or form. I am only voicing my concern because I want the port of this game to run as well as possible on MorphOS (and AROS), not to have the AmigaOS4.x version run better/faster, because of the rendering engine chosen by the programmer. Daytona675x, I am sure you are a great guy, and a fantastic programmer, as has been proved by your past and current work.

Edit2: One other question comes to mind. Will the changes to the game engine mean that the AmigaOS4.x, MorphOS, and AROS versions will not be able to play cooperatively online with the PC, Mac & Linux versions? I hope not.

[ Edited by amigadave 01.09.2015 - 18:45 ]

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I don't remember if I've seen that statement, but I'm pretty sure it means he'll use his custom engine on higher level (maybe not using SDL framework for 3D or so), but it's still using TinyGL, Warp3D, Mesa, or OS4 compositing on the lower level, depending of the platform.

For example his latest game, Wings Battlefield, uses TinyGL on MorphOS, Mesa on AROS, and Warp3D or compositing on OS4 depending the gfx card.


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Yes he has. We have MorphOS versions of several of his games, for example Ace Of Hearts, Voxel Bird, Voxelnoid, and the recent Wings Battlefield. He's been improving his engine all the time and he really is a skilled programmer, and I'm impressed how quick he is to code too :)

Only Voxelnoid was somehow unstable on MorphOS, but the rest work really fine. I had recently Wings Battlefield running as four player game for several hours on MorphOS and it worked just fine, and I've had a long sessions with the two first games too.


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I really don't see any need for that. I have full trust to him :) Maybe he started on OS4, but he has studied the other platforms well too and that's been proved with his earlier work. He's also been answering the questions on this forum and I can't see any sort of bias when communicating with him. I think he has equal interest to make his games to work as well as possible on all platforms.


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I'd guess not.. probably actual gameplay and network layer etc would stay the same, just the lower level rendering differs... just a guess though :)

@amigadave
@jPV

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Exactly. It is to be expected that the SDL dependencies can be removed very easily. And if possible I prefer to use on my own code My framework uses a special rendering abstraction system (among others for inpur and sound etc.) that allows to select the best "low-level" rendering API for the respective task. This is more important on AOS4 though, to select between Compositing and Warp3D (and to avoid MiniGL). And it of course allows me to have more control over the whole stuff when it comes to tweaking.

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Thanks! Yes, don't worry I am absolutely neutral regarding AmigaOS flavours. The MorphOS and AROS versions will be exactly the same as the AmigaOS4 version. Was the MOS version of Battle Squadron (or any other game I was involved) worse than the AOS4 version? I don't think so.

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The core mechanics of the game will remain original of course. It will be "compatible". And as long as no weird third party blackbox lib is chosen for networking (and I strongly doubt that Benitosub would do so) there is no reason why it should not work or not work between the systems. Wings Battlefield's networking works across all systems too btw.

Calm down guys. I promise(d) you that I'll port this thing for all OS flavours at best possible quality. Period

However: don't throw too detailed questions at me! I have no idea of the current source-code. I only know what Benitosub told me - which was detailed enough to be able to say: "I can do it for sure and it will run for sure on medium level NG Amiga systems".

But for example I cannot tell yet if it will be possible to run it on a A1200 PPC. And I cannot really tell you which rendering strategy I'll chose at the end of the day (maybe I'll stick with the respective 3D APIs, but maybe I'll also do "manual blitting" like in Battle Squadron). As soon as I got the more or less final PC code to work on I can tell you more.

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Clueless but curious as I am I have to ask: Why is it important to avoid MiniGL on OS4?

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Because it's slow as hell.

> Wouldn't a Warp3D or OpenGL/TinyGL version work better for the MorphOS port of this game?

A Warp3D-based version for MorphOS would be a bad idea as it wouldn't work above Radeon R200. And I'm not sure Wazp3D would be up to the task.

> I am not familiar with the 3D abilities of AROS and Mesa

If I'm not mistaken, AROS uses Mesa v7, which is an implementation of OpenGL 2.1.

Edit:
According to this article, there's a private AROS port of Mesa v11, which implements OpenGL 4.1.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 04.12.2015 - 00:17 ]

Thanks for the reply and assurance Daniel.

Not being a programmer (like you), I just find it confusing that the rendering would work the same on the three different Amiga inspired NG platforms, when one works best with Compositing, and the other two appear to work best with OpenGL/TinyGL, without needing to duplicate the work needed, so AmigaOS4.x uses Compositing, but the MorphOS and AROS versions would be written to use OpenGL/TinyGL to get the best performance for their platforms.

My knee jerk reaction was caused by your statement on AmigaWorld.net that you would be using Compositing to replace SDL, and that you wanted to stay away from OpenGL/TinyGL. To my limited knowledge, Compositing instead of using OpenGL/TinyGL 3D would not result in the best possible performance for MorphOS, and possibly AROS as well.

I have no doubt that MorphOS will soon have full 3D support for some of the RadeonHD video cards, and perhaps systems that are able to use such RadeonHD video cards will also have Compositing support equal to or surpassing that built into AmigaOS4.x video card drivers, but that will not help over 90% of the existing MorphOS users, who will still have AGP systems that use older Radeon R200, R300, & R400 based video cards.

I believe you when you say not to worry, and that all versions will run adequately, but if there is a way to explain in simple terms that even "I" will understand, and it won't take you more that 5 minutes to write out such an explanation, I would really like to understand how all of this works (in the simplest terms).

@amigadave
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I simply already wrote my own OpenGL-like library if you want to put it this way. It's a thin layer that on MOS compiles to TinyGL equivalent calls, on AROS to Mesa equivalent calls and on AOS4 to Warp3D-equivalent calls (so it more or less does the same as MiniGL there, only faster) or alternatively to Compositing calls (so it more or less does the same as WaZp then, only more dedicated to the respective task (my "engine" simply knows better what I want to do than WaZp would know)).
So in my app-code I use one single set of functions (my OpenGL-like lib) and the output on all platforms is the same (well, almost).

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You simply misread, I did not write that What I wrote was this:

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As you can see I did not write to stay away from TinyGL or OpenGL nor did I write to replace SDL by Compositing or whatever.

SDL is a lib containing abstraction layers for windows handling, input, audio, video, etc.
This is exactly what my framework does too, plus an additional OpenGL-like abstraction layer. It is simply less work for me to remove SDL and use my own stuff instead. And in contrast to SDL this framework was especially written with Amiganoid systems in mind from the ground up (I started writing it during the Battle Squadron port).
And it is my code. If something doesn't work as expected I have a much better chance to fix up things instead of having to dig into "foreign" SDL code.

Don't worry, I know what I'm doing

> over 90% of the existing MorphOS users [...] will still have [...] older Radeon R200, R300,
> & R400 based video cards.

...and R500, which is supported in 3D since MorphOS 3.8 :-)

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Thanks for the detailed (but simplified) explanation of what your "own framework" is like. It makes much more sense to me now, and as I had already written, my concerns have been satisfied, but were replaced by more of a curiosity, which you have also satisfied now.

As someone who really wants to learn more about programming for all Amiga inspired platforms, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.

Is this rendering engine or framework that you have created something that might be available for other Amiga, MorphOS, AmigaOS4.x & AROS programmers to use in their own projects? Could it be something you want to package and sell as a programming tool for all of us to take advantage of? Does it have a name?

Many people have mentioned the need for better documentation to aid new programmers for any of the Amiga inspired platforms, and I imagine that tools such as this framework that you have created would be another tool that might make it easier for new programmers to learn and use, instead of learning for example SDL, or OpenGL/TinyGL directly.

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No, I'm neither planning to sell it nor to make it open source or whatever.

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No
And it's just a huge collection of classes and functions with as less dependencies as possible.
It's not an "engine". It's more like my personal portable standard-lib (down to own container classes, string handling, etc.)

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Hm, documentation? There is none. And not too many comments neither. It's self-explaining - but only to me, I guess
IMHO SDL, OpenGL etc. is far better suited to learn programming than my framework would ever be. You have countless code examples for those, lots of books, forums, etc. Or, probably even better for a beginner: go for Hollywood.

An update, this time about the Amiga port.

> An update, this time about the Amiga port.

More info:

"The original plan of using Warp3D or Compositing or (Tiny)GL has been changed. I am now taking the pure "manual" route, all rendering is / will be done in software. The primary reason for this is that the current game's textures would not fit into the VRAM of many std. Amiganoid systems."
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1636874576338983.1073741827.100000493701258&l=acee1e2b46

Because especially one nice guy didn't stop asking about the status of the MorphOS version of Tower57 during last weekend's Alternative Computer Meeting in Wolfsburg (which was great fun btw.), here it is:
its status is exactly like the AmigaOS4 version, as is the current performance :)
The test machine here is probably one of the slowest MorphOS machines around: an old PowerMac G4 667 MHz, Radeon 9000, 384 MB.
As such its (current!) performance is pretty much identical to the sam440ep. And it also suffers from the same limits and needs to run the HiColor build to not run out of RAM :)
Youtube

Donations are welcome, as always ;)
http://www.goldencode.de (at the bottom)

Source
Facebook

Its pretty quick! Cant wait to run it on my MorphOS machine!!

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Any updates mentioning online play with owners of other systems? I think I have seen conflicting reports, one saying that there will be NO online play option for the Amiga ports, and other reports saying that it should not be any problem to implement.

Roschmyr was that "one nice guy" I was talking about btw.


@amigadave

there will be no networking in the Amiga-versions. Only two players on one machine.
The reason is that the game's network library has been changed some months ago.

First they were using a lib that came with source which I actually already made compile at least (didn't really test the functionality at this point but it at least connected). I had told people that there will be network support (which was an addition to the project btw.) if it works more or less out of the box, which seemed to be the case at this point.

Then however they removed that lib and are now using another commercial network gaming lib which unfortunately is a blackbox and not available for our systems, of course. Therefore there won't be networking now at all for us.

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Thanks for clearing that up Daniel. Well, that pretty much shoots the theory that the game author "Won't do anything in the main game, that would hurt the port to any of the Amiga NG platforms", which you had stated something like that previously. I know that Benito is a fan of the Amiga, so maybe he didn't at first realize that his decision to switch the in game networking lib, would remove all chances for any of the Amiga NG platforms to be able to play online with people using other platforms, or indeed, even with other Amiga NG owners.

Did you mention this to him? Not that it would probably make any difference in his decision, but who knows? Maybe the Amiga NG ports are more important to him than we know, and he would have reconsidered the choice to switch the in game networking lib? He did seem excited to announce that there would be a port for Amiga NG platforms, when he found you were willing and capable of doing the work for him.

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Well, to be fair: the networking feature was added after we negotiated the Amiga versions, so it would have been a bonus anyway. That this is an absolute goner now could probably have been better comunicated through the normal Kickstarter messages (maybe it even was, I don't follow those), but well.

Unfortunately, in contrast to the other technical issues that popped up (like no hw-rendering possible, performance in general, memory consumption issues, etc.) I have no chance to work around that issue here.
And even if: the amount of work would be much too high, no way. The whole project is / was much more work already than anticipated beforehand due to the abovementioned issues.

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Of course I did.

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Rest asured, Benito certainly did not make that decision / change just like that because it certainly was no fun for him to change everything to use the new lib.

*Pure speculation* following as I don't know much about what's happening behind the scenes there (and even if I'd not be allowed to post such information), but the following would be typical reasons for such a lib-switch:

the previous networking lib came with source but was not "for free". So one reason was probably that the new lib has a better licencing scheme. Or maybe it's simply better suited (e.g. faster, less bugs, better suited for game consoles, better encryption, whatever). Or maybe the server-side is better (e.g. lib-company providing better server services / capabilitites).

You see, there may be tons of good reasons why he made (or had to make) that switch. And if the only downside was to give up networking support for a niche platform for which that feature was not on the table in the first place anyway back then, then well...

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He certainly was and is excited. But shit happens. Who knows, (another *pure speculation* follows) maybe he even was commanded by the distributor to make that change (e.g. because they already made good experience with the new lib in other projects or have nice bulk-lib-contracts, whatever).

It is as it is, no networking for the Amiga ports.

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Yeah, I agree with all of your reasoning, but having a new multi-player online game for any Amiga platform would have been nice (seeing as how rare they are available).

I'm sure it is still going to be a fantastic game to have on all of the AmigaNG platforms. I'm guessing that because of the difficulties you have had with limited RAM and/or VRAM, a version for AmigaOS3.x is not possible, running on the fastest 68060 with a RTG video card, or emulation (either FPGA, like the Vampire accelerators, or software, like WinUAE/EUAE/FSUAE?

If the amount of work becomes too much for this project, compared to the amount of compensation you are getting from Benito, let us know, instead of beginning to hate the project and working for minimum wages. We can raise more money, or maybe Benito will allow extra money from sales of only the Amiga versions to be diverted directly to you, instead of Benito or the distribution company.

Edit: Even just having multi-player mode available via a local area network, and not the Internet, so that 2 to 4 AmigaNG owners could play together cooperatively in the same room, or same house together, would be fun. I suppose that this takes as much work as providing online multi-player via the Internet, so it would also not be possible, and as you said, the project is already taking more of your time than you had planned for.

[ Edited by amigadave 22.05.2017 - 18:03 ]

Dear Daytona,

Thanks for the hardwork of bringing an ... lets say AAA (HQ) title to Amigas of today.
You cured the remedy that is easy to Kickstart money for stretch goal, it was a valid
question who will try and how to pull it up.

Your layer exponation (which is terrific job for all future ports - think of
lincensing it to other Amiga developers) and frequent video and picture posts
have "made all clouds dissapear".

There is just one concern - game itself seems to be in beta tests,
so my lucky guess is that even Windows version is not finalized,
and even you share code progress I suppose your signlehanded quality porting
will take additional time to public release of game.

Really looking forward to buy it like no AmigaOS title in long time.

Now, I will abuse this board for a bit of topic.

After all that long journey is done - of AROS, MorphOS on OS4 quality ports,
would you remotely be interested to do a Vampire version (080 90Mhz, currently RTG, has its own AMMX instructions) provided it gets MESA SAGA, Warp3D SAGA driver or some similar solution for 3D working?

It seems that Vamparization will quickly be a growing Amiga mareket. Currently it has FPU to be added,
standalone board to be built - even real ASIC chips could be produced - quite a lot of potential, a lot of WIP or to be done, but basically all the ground work is behind.

Most reliable info http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm http://www.apollo-accelerators.com/

Note that even I was a bit unpleasent with "we need Libre Office" comments on facebook, it is so.
Even with quality games, a productivity software is even a bigger must and I dislike the policy
of it being drag on since announcement of what ... 2012? and instead we are milked by eyecandies.

Its nothing to do with your work and great opportunity, but with the way companies handle
matters (and users).

Now, back to MorphOS issues: Will G4 ~1Ghz + Altivec + Radeon 9200 be enough to have it playable under MOS or you are thinking of higher mid range specs?

[ Edited by vox 25.05.2017 - 04:07 ]

Hi guys,

@amigadave

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Absolutely!

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Absolutely II

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Right now I'm at a point where I'm confident to make it run fast enough (which means >= 30 fps always) on sam440ep class hardware when I ultimately squeezed the rest out of the code.
68k in whatever form is unfortunately not even remotely in sight right now, the game is simply too demanding regarding CPU and RAM and it would be an incredible miracle if it is not too demanding anymore when I'm fully done with it (if the sam440ep version runs with >= 60 fps at the end of the journey, then I'd probably reconsider Vampire ).
There's one sort-of exception thought and that is WinUAE: I actually prepared a version that doesn't use Compositing for the final display stretch-blit so that it worked on AOS4 in UAE. And I was told that it was playable.

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Thanks But don't be worried: I don't and won't hate the project. And after all it's now more or less "only" waiting for the final version and another bigger optimization weekend or two (at least I hope so )

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Thanks, but don't worry. I got my donation-button on my webpage and I'm pretty sure some people will click it when they like the final game, that should be it. And after all: it's not as if I had expected to earn money with that

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Yes, I already thought of that too.

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It is actually significantly less work to code for local-area-networking only. Not just because you don't need a server but mostly because you can skip most of the more complicated things in game-network-coding, like e.g. lag compensation.
However this would have to be my proprietary addition to the game, which can quickly become complicated, also depending on how the game's current network code is being used.
And then again: it's about a two player mode after all, so while I see online-gaming as a great feature because it allows you to play with a friend in a distance, LAN would allow you to play with one friend sitting pretty much next to you. So IMHO a pure LAN system isn't worth the trouble.



@vox

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That was the idea

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In this case here the game's "Amiga-layer" is very very specialized for this game, e.g. the blitters are optimized for exactly the drawing modes and situations in T57. There actually is not much purely Amiga-related stuff inside besides very thin window, input, audio handling layers, but nothing you could easily wrap up and use for other games in a convenient way.

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That's correct.

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Yes, but not much. I will continue to work on it once I'm told "the PC version is done". From then add, let's say, "two more weeks TM" No, really, once the original source is done I will have to do some days of heavy optimizations and removal of the unused network-lib-blackbox, then it should be done.

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In contrast to the PC version the Amiga-port doesn't use 3D RTG features (and while the decision to go the software-rendering route was born out of necessity, it turned out that it's most likely faster than doing 3D rendering the way the PC version does ). But whatever, if I saw the possibility to port it to Vampire I would consider it. Unfortunately that's not the case right now. At the moment it's simply too slow and doesn't provide enough RAM. I'm a Vampire-fan myself (and if I'm lucky then a package containing mine will arrive here soon, despite the fact that unfortunately it was sent using a wrong / incomplete address ), if I saw a chance to make it run on that thing I'd take it.

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Yes, it'll certainly become a very interesting Amiga-flavour.

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Another show-stopper at the momement (although this would be one on which I could probably work-around).

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Yes, that will be enough.


Cheers,
Daniel

The #Amiga version of #Tower57 is ready!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/514621648/tower-57/posts/1338932

Get it on @itchio: https://benitosub.itch.io/tower-57

Great new, i buy my copy

[ Edité par beworld 13.03.2018 - 13:09 ]

> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/514621648/tower-57/posts/1338932

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/514621648/tower-57/posts/2135370 :-)

Yes, I am curious when I will get my downlaod link.