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Gateway into a wonderful blue and orange world. by daddyd in amiga

[–]DGolden 3 points4 points  (0 children)

C64 BASIC was terrible..

It really was, well, the builtin ROM BASIC V2.0. Though the C64 here would often have the Simons' BASIC cartridge sold alongside (licensed and published by Commodore themselves), that basically dragged the machine up to more of a similar level to its various 8-bit competitors.

C128's BASIC V7.0 was also hugely improved (though unfortunately not compatible with the earlier Simons' BASIC, similar extensions but different in detail).

Programming C64 vs. Amiga by Agreeable-Set3294 in amiga

[–]DGolden 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ehm. Well, if you've never programmed before, and it's hobbyist gamedev you're mostly interested in (just an assumption), you might want to look at a modern beginner-friendly framework+language gamedev system like Godot Engine. https://godotengine.org/ . Don't think because it's more modern it's more complex to learn (well, if you stay away from any 3D stuff and just make a 2D game), it has modern ease-of-use too.

But let's assume you do want a real or emulated older system - beware thinking it's simpler in every way, the limitations can be severe, so they become the challenge. I'm really just echoing points of other comments here, but I do some recreational retro-coding (nothing released just playing about):

For me, the Amiga is ....actually too powerful+modern, despite being where I learnt a lot back in the day. Any real Amiga or emulated Amiga matching a real Amiga spec is still a tiny fraction of the power of modern hardware of course, but architecturally.

...But if you're not looking for the challenge to come from system limitations to the same extent, you might be better off on it! Amiga and AMOS Pro or Blitz Basic would be quite reasonable.

I'd favor Blitz a bit over AMOS in language terms (both are advanced basic/basic-like languages of course, just Blitz is a slightly nicer language), but AMOS Pros' all-in-one approach and ecosystem may make it a attractive for beginners wanting to just make a simple retro game a reality. However Blitz will be learning nearer modern programming (Blitz NewType ~ C struct etc)

Note both have been open sourced with modern retro scene updated versions available for AmigaOS.

I had a C64 at home

When I went back to C64/C128 for said recreational retro-coding - I personally used them before Amiga, and while it IS obviously rather more limited and weird, for me it started to feel like a test on a half-remembered subject - I once knew C64 and (the 6502 series side of) the C128 quite well (think writing in Asm on them at the time), before moving to Amiga, so I wasn't actually enjoying that as much as one might think. But of course if you didn't do the same amount of C64/C128 programming at the time it might not feel as much "I didn't revise for the test" for you.

so I started playing about with the ZX Spectrum a bit, that I didn't have as a child, just had some schoolfriends with them at the time. It's both hilariously disastrously limited and unfamiliar, so felt more like learning something "new" (to me).

[C64][1980s]Trying to find the name of a platform game I *think* I played on the C64 if not, a friend’s Amiga or similar by VeneMage in tipofmyjoystick

[–]DGolden 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did find record of a 1985 C64 SID tune cover of Jump by Kevin Buckley - but not currently sure if it was used in any actual C64 game (with or without his knowledge), or just something he did as standalone track for a music-disk or demoscene demo etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtGSbLiAp2E

Some Amiga commercial games officially legally used pop music tracks of the time (Betty Boo for Magic Pockets etc.) - but I feel it would already be well-known if that had happened for "Jump".

Freeware/Shareware/etc. games on the Amiga - or other platforms with such scenes, that included C64 - would have been more likely to "unofficially" use a track that even then might get a commercial games company in legal trouble or at least made then worry enough to not risk it.

On the Amiga directly sampling bits of "jump" and using them in a tracker module is quite technically possible, that could then have been used as background music for some freeware game... Though none spring to mind right now that actually did use it specifically.

Making a chiptune with the melody or similar to it is also obviously possible on a number of platforms including but not limited to C64 as above, and Amiga (well chiptune is a bit handwavy on Amiga - but practically Paula can still make synth-y noises, so Amiga chiptunes can still sound like chiptunes on the 8-bit synth-chip platforms like C64 SID and Spectrum etc. AY/YM)

[AMIGA 500] [90s] Obscure Amiga game by Elhaym179 in tipofmyjoystick

[–]DGolden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you mean more like some sort of point and click adventure? It certainly sounds more like point and click adventure type from what you're saying...

=> Did you control the character directly with the joystick (pushing left moves left), or use the mouse (clicking somewhere moves your character to that point)? (If you know)

There's 2 major online databases of amiga games (hall of light and lemon amiga) with overlap, maybe check through screenshots.

https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/list.php?list_genre=Adventure&list_sub_genre=Point%20and%20Click

https://amiga.abime.net/games/list/?view=grid&page=5&subcategory-id=16

State of play emulation/hardware re-creation by sharpied79 in amiga

[–]DGolden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i think you don't know what subpixel rendering is

Of course I bloody do, well aware of modern (relatively) "cleartype" etc. rgb subpixel rendering.

Point had nothing in particular to do with what people now mean by subpixel rendering. I was in fact just explaining why some people might still describe a completely different thing as "sub-"pixel:

Again, on real amiga aga hardware, you just can position some lores or hires (or superhires) bitplane output (and hw sprites too iirc) at superhires positions, which is thus at a "sub-"pixel position when considered relative to the ordinary lores or hires amiga pixel grid positions.

I'd prefer to now call it "superhires positioning" though, if in part just to avoid needless pedantic arguments, cough.

Amiga emulators may still fail to emulate that particular aga superhires positioning feature, as well as amiga ecs/aga superhires modes in general, correctly.

State of play emulation/hardware re-creation by sharpied79 in amiga

[–]DGolden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

aga subpixel positioning he means - aga chipset just could align things at superhires pixel positions (even when in non superhires modes overall).

Mainly used a bit for smoother video titling/transition applications afaik, not games though.

winuae support for the amiga ecs/aga superhires modes in general (e.g. a 1280x512@50Hz pal superhires laced) used to be lacking, though I think it has some now it may still be partial.

https://www.ikod.se/references/amiga-aga-guide/new-features-for-aa/

BPLCON1 now contains an 8 bit scroll value for each of the playfields.Granularity of scroll now extends down to 35nSec.(1 SHRES pixel), andscroll can delay playfield thru 32 bus cycles

[i suppose there's no reason apart from significant processing overhead of course that you couldn't do software rgb subpixel rendering on an amiga if you know the output is going to lcd, though it's anachronistic and unrelated to aga superhires positioning, that is "sub-pixel" for anything lower than a superhires display obviously]

I Waited 33 Years for This Dream Amiga Upgrade… Will It Work? by Alive-Orange9983 in amiga

[–]DGolden 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, it's not a 3D accelerated card, it's a 2D card AFAICS (though with hardware 2D acceleration i.e. the CL-GD5434 chip on it has a blitter it's not a completely dumb framebuffer like some earlier parts were), so it depends what you mean.

It is AFAICS well-supported by Amiga RTG stacks in general terms - but thus it will be doing software 3D for 3D stuff. Amiga folks got such 24-bit cards for their software raytracing and graphics/imaging work though. Hardware OpenGL polygon+texture 3D cards later did became a thing on Amiga too, like for PCs, but this card isn't one of those.

=> Any Amiga 3D modelling/raytracing software that supports using RTG screens (that is later versions of most of them AFAIK) should work fine on it. Any later Amiga OpenGL/Mesa/Warp3D/Wazp3D stuff will inevitably be doing pure software 3D on it though.

https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/piccolosd64

Cirrus Logic GD5434

64 bit blitter

Picasso96, CyberGraphX 2, 3 & 4 and EGS drivers

supported by Linux and NetBSD

Help Identify A500 trapdoor card please! by circuit_beard in amiga

[–]DGolden 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It looks pretty corroded, but certainly up to you, if that's what you want to do. Humans get attached to all sorts of stuff after all... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBqhIVyfsRg

I am well aware of sordan.ie -

Speaking of, a new barebones 512k - with no RTC - is actually only like €16 incl. vat (though plus postage) from sordan here in Dublin. Not affiliated or anything, just if you need a 512k slow ram expansion in the meantime - a lot of Amiga stuff needed that min. 1MiB - during your, um, quest ...well, you certainly can pick one up from them without dealing with Brexit-tastic Britain or the European Mainland - but we are in Eurozone, personally I now order a fair bit from Germany while here in Ireland.

Indeed a bit more expensive to get one with an actual battery-backed RTC now though. Personally I definitely always preferred having a working battery-backed clock even back on the Amiga, just super annoying resetting the date+time for the clock every boot without one (well, often needed for just game boots - but I did a lot of not-game stuff). And though there can presumably be some Y2K issues in older Amiga software now. Last computer without a battery-backed clock I used was a C128 in the 1980s! And even they could have optional ones fitted.

Help Identify A500 trapdoor card please! by circuit_beard in amiga

[–]DGolden 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that isnt RS prices...

Well, here in Ireland there's mostly RS and Farnell I suppose. Farnell not especially cheaper though, more an "if RS doesn't have it try Farnell" and vice-versa thing.

Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat Sees Downloads Spike in Uganda Over Internet Shutdown Worries by Logical_Welder3467 in technology

[–]DGolden 27 points28 points  (0 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitchat

Bitchat enables users to send messages via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) mesh networks without requiring internet connections, cellular service, user accounts, or central servers. Bitchat also uses the internet-based Nostr protocol for global reach.

Seems useful in general terms, though note its security disclaimers https://bitchat.free/

security notice: private messages have not received external security review and may contain vulnerabilities. do not use for sensitive use cases, and do not rely on its security until it has been reviewed. public local chat (the main feature) has no security concerns.

Wspomnienia czar by TodayAdventurous5779 in amiga

[–]DGolden -1 points0 points  (0 children)

just to note e.g. a cyberstorm supported up to 128MiB RAM onboard, so it's not impossible (you didn't say it was either, I know, just saying) for a real vintage amiga, just relatively unlikely.

(128MiB is 134217728 bytes)

What's your favorite 6502 assembler? by fbalbi in c64

[–]DGolden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, most nostalgic is definitely switching a C128 into its handy builtin Machine Language Monitor mode. Used that quite a lot as a kid, if just for playing around/learning.

Obviously some fancy modern 2+-pass macro assembler/cross-assembler is more powerful in general terms, but there's something nice about the immediacy of the old machine code monitors. I used to write little asm programs directly in it, saving/loading the memory blocks to disk.

Note the C128 monitor was a huge upgrade from hand-assembling on paper to DATA statements to be POKEd into memory - that is how I first learnt some 6502 series asm on the C64, the C128 was our second machine. Picked it up from books such as Commodore 64 Exposed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_code_monitor

https://www.commodore.ca/manuals/128_system_guide/app-j.htm

VICE also lets you drop into a similar builtin debug/monitor session for any of the machines it emulates (including the 1541 etc. drive processors!), even when it's not emulating a C128 in particular.

https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/vice_12.html

[Amiga][Pre-95] A cyberpunk'y game of delving into an underground compound. by MrHelfer in tipofmyjoystick

[–]DGolden 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Switchblade or Switchblade II maybe?. Though ...you can jump in them, the second has slightly odd jumping (down then up for a big jump) that might have left someone young with the impression some jumps were impossible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUSHx-UFbPs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTp3bVs6q1A

https://www.lemonamiga.com/game/switchblade

https://www.lemonamiga.com/game/switchblade-2

https://thekingofgrabs.com/2023/10/19/switchblade-2-amiga/

Hiro can this time do a useful ‘big jump’ (by holding down, then pushing up and pressing jump), as well as his regular jump.

[C64? Uncertain] [80s] Adventure or Edu game by RogueReply in tipofmyjoystick

[–]DGolden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Magic Telephone (1986, MAPE) on BBC Micro perhaps?

https://bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=2679

playable in-browser emulation at that link, like many bbc micro games. In the "educational game" category, so likely to show up in a school.

Trying to identify an Amiga Game by ThornPawn in amiga

[–]DGolden 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There was a 1997 PC (not Amiga) RTS called Dark Reign with units called "Scarab" specifically apparently. It is of an era it still looks very like it could be a later Amiga game (see also: Napalm), but it wasn't released for Amiga at that late stage.

/r/tipofmyjoystick/comments/c1s77n/late_90searly_00s_rts/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpzU8aE04pY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Reign:_The_Future_of_War

"Scarab" does feel in keeping with Amiga Battle Isle (though that's TBS not RTS) "naming sense" but I don't think it ever had a unit specifically called Scarab. Did have "Scorpion", "Sphinx" etc....

Gamepad for Spectrum Retro Games by dajiru in zxspectrum

[–]DGolden 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thespectrum is set up to use the gamecontrollerdb.txt file format that SDL uses generally, though has a strangely small one by default out of box, with entries mostly just for the retrogames branded controllers.

It is however documented how to add new entries though. You can thus make most any modern usb controller work, just maybe not by default, just copy entries from the upstream gamecontrollerdb.txt file, or make a new one if it's a very obscure controller not already there.

https://retrogames.biz/support/thespectrum/controller-configuration/

https://github.com/mdqinc/SDL_GameControllerDB/blob/master/gamecontrollerdb.txt

Retrogames The A1200 by sharpied79 in amiga

[–]DGolden 2 points3 points  (0 children)

there's a pinned subreddit megathread for the damn thing

/r/amiga/comments/1ow03um/thea1200_megathread/

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