Hi guys,
@amigadave
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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
Absolutely!
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I'm sure it is still going to be a fantastic game to have on all of the AmigaNG platforms.
Absolutely II
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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?
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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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.
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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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.
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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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
Yes, I already thought of that too.
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I suppose that this takes as much work as providing online multi-player via the Internet
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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Thanks for the hardwork of bringing an ... lets say AAA (HQ) title to Amigas of today.
That was the idea
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Your layer exponation (which is terrific job for all future ports - think of lincensing it to other Amiga developers)
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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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,
That's correct.
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and even you share code progress I suppose your signlehanded quality porting will take additional time to public release of game.
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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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?
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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It seems that Vamparization will quickly be a growing Amiga mareket.
Yes, it'll certainly become a very interesting Amiga-flavour.
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Currently it has FPU to be added
Another show-stopper at the momement (although this would be one on which I could probably work-around).
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Will G4 ~1Ghz + Altivec + Radeon 9200 be enough to have it playable under MOS
Yes, that will be enough.
Cheers,
Daniel
