pouët.net

The Amiga version SuperFrog size


The PC version Superfrog size: and there is some slowdown without all the original animation!

So now the serious talk: why is there so few good 2D games on the PC?

1/ Why more generally PCs produces slowdowns?
2/ Why technically: be precise please.
3/ What in the hardware design is reponsible for that?
4/ Is there no VBL interrupt?
5/ Is there no fixed cycles interlacing like on Amiga / ST / Console (CPU have its cycle, Customs chips others and everything is well arbitred)?

6/ Why SuperStardust 96 is the best game on the PC in its category and is nearly perfect using DosBox so?

it's just because Amiga rulezzzz :)

LOL PC SUXXXXXX!!! A*M*I*G*A NUMBER ONE

1) becoz peecee's have m$ OPERATING SYSTEM, THATS WHY I USE
A*M*I*G*A
2) becoz bill gates is fucking ass
3) dunno
4) dunno PEECEE SUXXX
5) no coz peecee suxxx
6) SUPER STARDUST SUXXX!!! IT WAS MADE BY ATARI SCENERS :(((

nothing like a proper atari vs. amiga war to wake up to... :)

learn to code and then come back with your stupid questions. or do your really think that a mid-high end pc doesn't have enough power to run a 2d sprite based game ? bah. die and leave an empty slot for another child, hopefully with a clue :)

ATARI SUXXX!

ATARI SUXX00R!!11

MULTIMEDIA FUSIONS SAVES THE SCENE!!!!!11111 4GHZ ISNT ENOUGH FOR 2D GAMEWSSS

adok er.. ep: for some good comPARISsion you tried the way too fast DOS version or the amiga version in a win32 emu?

dont feed the troll!!!!!!! dont feed the troll!!!!! dont reply to this topic anymore.

(btw. if somebody claims that there is superfrog pc version and it runs fast, its m$ propaganda. it doesnt exist!)

keep em busy! http://www.mobygames.com/game/superfrog/release-info

heh thats not superfrog.

that's superfrog:

Gargaj is right!

Well, the topic is :

Why PC isn't able to make something smooth in 2D?

And I didn't get any good answers: like usual, seems nobody is able to answer.

Here is a challenge: make a simple 32*32 scrolltexts smooth whatever happened on the PC. Do what you want, allocate PC bandwith, block the system (like jsr _LVOForbid(excecbase) on amiga + disable interupts), but make it perfectly smooth whatever the screen is (CRT / LCD), whatever the PC power is (from Pentium 100 to nowadays PC), from whatever videocards (directx 7 and up, you can use opengl). The scrolltext must be perfectly synced with the screen without any glitches even if I move the mouse, hit the keyboard, do tons of download in the background, receive emails or whatever. It must be XX hertz all the time for at least 5 minutes. And it must be real time and with a changeable scroll step from 1 to 8 pixels.

I'm sure nobody is able to release this on PC!

I've read on an old super stardust 96 (the best game ever) doc that managing the keyboard on a 486 take 15% of the CPU power! Who did the hardware of the PC? Certainly not somebody aware of video games and its requirements. Why it takes so much time? Why the PC is so slow at common tasks? Please don't answer if you can't: M$ suxx and such answers aren't valid, only well argumented, technical answers are good.

Bye!

couldnt you ask this like.. 10 years ago?

god i hate dignifying trolls with a response.

"Who did the hardware of the PC? Certainly not somebody aware of video games and its requirements" - congratulations, genius. you're right, the pc was never designed for video games in the first place, it just got bastardised into it over time.

OF COURSE you can do smooth scrolling on a pc. however, these days democoders are busy making things like this run smoothly to bother about making 32x32 scrolltexts.
you need to realise that times have moved on from 1991. and thank fuck for that.

That's why I still prefer to code demos in a static hardware.

The question is interesting to me. A while ago, I was really curious about the answer while I was watching jerky scrollers in several demos, and one of the reasons I wanted to move on to windows programming was so that I can figure it out myself. Well I recently moved but actually forgot the whole matter since I've only coded modern 2d effects where sometimes jerkiness isn't noticable even at 20fps. That's what I noticed with some of my effects, but not all. Perhaps I will try a scroller test one day just out of curiosity..

I think the reasons are:
1) The OS. It might be harder to take control and sometimes when I run my SDL or TPTC examples, it's like the OS takes care and I notice speed breaks. Like the HD is loading for 1-2 seconds and then leaves the thread free ;P. I don't know what to do about such silly things and it might be more work to find out today. At the older days it was just a vsync and it was perfect even if there were interrupts enabled behind in DOS..

2) People don't care. Among with 1, it might be harder today or there are no docs or people screaming about it. I haven't seen anyone discuss about, I haven't seen a tutorial of how to take control of windows, vsync in windows, how to make smooth scrolling in windows, something I am missing (but not anymore in accelerated prods)..

3) Perhaps people are not scrolling per pixel but are using a timer to figure out how much pixels the scroller has moved at each run. So, possibly there are numbers as "move 2.657 pixels" and one pixel is lost/jumps after a few runs. I don't know how to do vsync for software demos, I haven't found something like that in SDL, well I prefer the timer for some effects and 3d movement, but lately I coded an upscroller with the timer and it sucks ass (but that's also because a gfxlib I had to use (for a freebasic compo where the rules told me that I had to use that lib)) is problematic, with speed jerk offs and if I enable some sync it's wrong and double buffering doesn't work (I will release the prod soon also as an SDL port, it will be better there)). But forget this, it's just the timer for a scroller instead of move one pixel and vsync.

6) My TFT monitor. It's like it leaves trails. I was feeling full scrolling in the old monitor but in this one ;P For example, old demos with white stars moving fast in black background (kills da scene), do you know? They appear not so bright but grey! Scrolling doesn't look so smooth even if it is. The TFT monitor doesn't update so straight as the old monitor. Diferrent technology. So I don't feel smooth scrolls much ;P

9) There must be ways cause some emulators for modern windows, still have vsync and ultra smooth like silkworm scroll. But who searches? I'd like to know if I can in SDL have the scroll. I will try oneday and kick it. I want smooth scroll!

Well, it's still strange to me that while we bother doing modern stuff to run smoothly, although we don't care about making plain simple scrolltexts run smooth ;P

for real reason why that game sucks ass because it is made with multimedia fusion. multimedia fusion is gamemaking engine for lamers. try real superfrog with dosbox.

and fuck optimus/stardust docs :D

ep: its easy to make a scroller on amiga when you can basically cut off everything else from the system.

Well, when I move a window everywhere on the screen, the cpu power is used a lot. Of course I use the latest drivers for my SO
GOOD FOR THE PRICE Geforce 5200 128 MB.

So yes Windows is the OS for the business men with Excel / Word and productivity stuff.
It's good for such things and not for the rest: in fact PC are aimed at too much things, it's not specialised and that suxx.

I would like to know much about the bandwitch management on PC though.
I saw that my bandwith is far reduced when playing a mp3, far more than the actual bandwith needed to send 44000*2*2 bytes per
sec, at least 10 or 20 times that! Why? What my I875P chipset does?

Smash: you don't master the bases of 2D and you want to make 3D!
3D is boring IMHO because it doesn't have the resolution and the human feeling as 2D has.
With the end of hand drawn gfx we get industrial designs everywhere.
Pixels are filtered here and there like an old granny disguise her wrinkles by applying make up!

That really sucks IMHO, but of course there is good games around for old timers like me and millions others :
7 millions people have visited http://www.theoldcomputer.com/ and 5 millions www.atari.st, ...
Good 2D PC games includes IMHO those by http://www.phelios.com/pc/ like kaijin and others like zuma deluxe.

2D graphics really need to be back in demos (for us old schoolers and for the human touch).
I'm sure we can fit together old 2D hand drawn GFX with 3D effects.
I remember well that the Amiga excelled at this mix of rendering technologies and that was part of the design.
I understand though that 2D pics in 1280x1024x32 aren't possible due to space and time to make requirements.
That's why some highly skilled graphician are required like Maali.
Yeah this guy is a fucking ashole but yes he has skills (and he is clever: he manages his image and so don't want to work with me
nor help me).
I never said new schoolers are lame or what, even if I wrote that a lot of demos suxxs.
It's just a matter of design and tastes.

But to be honest, if tons of people before loved old school stuff this was not only because they follow EP aesthetic views, this
was because they share them with me and they were not alone: gamers were also and on a lot of platforms.
There was synergy and deep understanding of the hardware before, and this high communication between hardware and software
developpers produces highly effective results: see virtual dreams demos available here at pouet or TLB / Carebears / Oxygen demos.
And please use a real amiga to do so.
Please also use some real atari st hardware to watch thalion games http://alexh. umcus.org/ games/games. html and
enjoy.
Of course they look washed out: there is only 16 colours but used to the max using special technics and hard work.
And we see big pixels as resolutions are lower than those we are used to work with today, but hey there is the texture, the
fingerprint of the graphist.
This is also featuring the "skin" of bitmap and the human feeling of the human hand drawn graphism.
This is art because it' s unique: each 2d graphs have the signature of its graphists in its pixels.

I think there was an emphasis on the graphist before as graphists were able to produce more and faster than the other in the group.
Nowadays everything is coder oriented and this is too mechnanic, too less human IMHO.
I love paintings, and I love engines who works well but I emphasis on the aim of things:
painting is a language and he transports a feeling
a good engine is useless if not surrounded by wheel and such stuff.
So good or excellent code is bared and "useless" in a multimedia oriented demo.
That's it: demos are no more multimedia but monomedia.
They are 100% code and everything is produced with code in them.
Music is produced by highly computerised filters too and there is less and less musician made samples.
Everything in the new school is too much standardised including the size of the demo like if everything was a question of size.
Produce 4 KB with hand drawn 16 colors gfx and they will rules for old schoolers too, do the same with 64KB and you'll coin a "new"
style.
And when you'll see that 4KB and 64KB is too little for GFX hand drawn gfx you'll understand that you don't use the nowadays
hardware of storage.
We don't need 70 MB demos of course, but 1MB for the intros is something good IMHO: we have broadband everywhere now.

Ha yeah, you can say me: "the rules, the rules ! Blasphemy!".
Ha I don't make a religion of the scene: who cares about saving a few bits here and there?
Smash you got to understand that since 1991, the disk size and speed access have been multiplied by hundred of thousands and that
nobody pack nothing else because it slow you down like hell. 30 seconds to load a 64KB, that's a real step backward.

But the scene is too much like a religion: a lot of sheeps everywhere.
As you are also working in real life and have surely links in technologies involving you demos skills,
I understand that economically speaking you can't turn to 2D hand-drawn pics oriented demos.
That's why to avoid loosing my time and yours I've decided to leave you:
we have too much differences and I love a world where I'm not borred.
I also emphasis on users and I know they suffer a lot from new too much complicated technologies.
I see however the benefit of them: faster access, smoother mouses movement, commnication improvment, ...

But I see also that we spend our time updating, patching, securising, moving and that suxx:
nothing is stable and nothing can be enjoyed as we are forced to run all the time.
Datas to transmit are more and more bigger and all in all we don't get any speed improvment as the ratio between available
speeds / transfer rates and the amount of datas to transfer is worse than before.

I've computed the bandwidth needed to transfer most used applications like Windows / Office and I see they are far slower to
install than previous disk based OS. Yes they have tons of possiblities but who need so much things all the time?
We are pushed in a system who push us to consume more and more to stay in the race and I don't love that.
More about that in a future article.
I've also watched the bandwidth needed for a gfx card and saw that AGP 8X isn't sufficient and that in fact according to present
needs our cards are slower than before hardware! But I can mistaken. However I see no good way to exit this problem and here also
I see we are pushed to consume to get more and more power and this has no end.
That's why I love oldskool hardware and stuff as it's fixed, stable and we can work to get something of it whereas now everything
became quickly obsolete and is obsolete the day you buy it.

World of consumption suxx but we are stuck in it!

okay, this is impressive. never has a post been so far off..

i do love amiga (but not atari! hah!) but i must say two posters in this thread have lost touch with reality.

let's face it: the reason that newer computers won't show you the stuff that's cool on amiga is because it's irrelevant when you can do much cooler stuff.

i'm sure any of the coders on pouet can prove you wrong by writing a scroller-program that has a higher priority than standard, but i doubt anyone is interested.

heck, i'm not even a coder and i know this is just propaganda. windows is and will always be what the user makes of it, the same goes for amigaos. i've seen installations of that crashing every 5 minutes...

and finally, ofcourse everybody should use what they are happy with, but this kind of bullshit belongs in the 1990's, not now. grow up.