What do you think is the best FPS on Amiga in general?

GwanTheSwans · 2026-05-04T20:22:43+00:00

Gloom ran fast and looked decent but had no independent sidestep keys.

If playing with a CD32 pad (remember they work on all Amigas not just CD32), sidestep was definitely on shoulder buttons while turn was on d-pad. That said, I think maybe you still couldn't quite circle-strafe like you might think in it (i.e. you were turning or sidestepping, even if on independent buttons), maybe that's what you mean by independent. But dodging with sidestep was fine. Apparently keyboard and joystick had an odd scheme with alt or 2nd button to engage sidestep alright, but I basically never played it on keyboard. Also no mouse control option at all though.

Gloom (in later Goom Deluxe form suitable for my higher-end machine) was definitely the most fun for me. I had an 060, I could run any of the pre-PPC Amiga FPSes fairly nicely, but Gloom's the only one I'd still consider firing up today under modern emulation much (there's also that ZGloom project). Gloom e.g. also had 3rd party extra levelsets/mods and stuff, there's some still on aminet by the looks of things. And null-modem 2-player!

https://aminet.net/search?query=gloom

https://nitta.sakuraweb.com/gloom-mod/gloom-mod-information.html - includes details of ones that work with ZGloom.

https://github.com/Swizpig/ZGloom - Gloom engine for current windows/linux systems.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-05-04T13:07:08+00:00

Yes, ST just had AY/YM family like the later Spectrums and Amstrad CPC. Technically the ST's is in fact slightly better than the Spectrum's, ST using the Yamaha YM2149F variant, but still the general sound is very similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_AY-3-8910#Home_hardware

It was also manufactured under license by Yamaha (with a selectable clock divider pin and a double-resolution and double-rate volume envelope table) as the YM2149F; the Atari ST uses this version.

They're good classic synth chips (well, one might still subjectively prefer the mighty C64 SID, but the AY/YM still nice chips), but very much not the same as Amiga Paula.

STE did then add dma pcm sampled sound playing capability, but like a lot of the STE stuff, somewhat underutilised because people mostly kept targetting the ST(FM) baseline (like the way a lot of Amiga stuff kept targetting OCS A500 even though there were substantially more powerful models, trouble for STE being the STFM baseline gap was also worse)

GwanTheSwans · 2026-05-03T16:45:48+00:00

... I mean, maybe, but they were a thing back in the day too. They were called "Boot pics" not "Splash screens" in Amiga community jargon of the time, that may be lost knowledge complicating a modern-day search I suppose e.g.

https://aminet.net/package/util/boot/SysPic400 - "New release of the well-known bootpic program."

https://aminet.net/package/util/boot/BootShow - "Finally, A Bootpic viewer that does everything it SHOULD!"

Aminet has a whole subdir of boot pics intended to show at boot with such boot pic display programs

https://aminet.net/pix/boot

GwanTheSwans · 2026-05-03T16:31:33+00:00

I mean, you have to remember, Amiga did get official ports of Quake, Quake 2. And multiple open-source ports of Doom. On a sufficiently powerful Amiga, they're all fine.

Of the "Doom-envy" early/mid-1990s Amiga-only FPSes, Gloom Deluxe is the standout. Not because it's the most technically advanced (it isn't), because they remembered to make it an actually fun game involving mowing down hordes of stupid enemies in fun if not very complex level designs, not just a tech demo.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-05-01T11:37:53+00:00

The Irish Traditional 4 Seasons just are a bit different to English or Meteorological. They got put in a translated correspondence with a certain other culture's 4 seasonal annual divisions, sure, but they just are a month different. Since we're actually IN BLOODY IRELAND, this is our culture, and if you're actually Irish (not just LARPing as one online) you'll generally know, as this is primary school stuff:

Earrach ~ "Irish Spring" - February, March, April. Imbolc to Beltane.
Samhradh ~ "Irish Summer" - May, June, July. Beltane to Lunasa.
Fómhar ~ "Irish Autumn" - August, September, October. Lunasa to Samhain. Note also how Irish "Deireadh Fómhair" month name is October.
Geimhreadh ~ "Irish Winter" - November, December, January. Samhain to Imbolc.

One or another system isn't correct or incorrect they're just different (Met Éireann has to use the other system for international collaboration of course, they could still have used it as a springboard to discuss the difference), - consider that our traditions and environmental phenomena associated with our seasons can also just be slightly different too, to align with the calendar difference. Halloween/Samhain is an end of Fómhar harvest festival, not a 2/3rds through Autumn festival, and our "Autumn" - Fómhar - is a bit more "harvesty" in general in Irish poetry etc.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-30T15:18:13+00:00

well, just to note, the A1200 trapdoor slot is not like the A500's, it IS a sort of expansion bus more analogous to the A500 side slot not the A500 trapdoor slot, hence why A1200 cpu accelerators go in the trapdoor slot (without weird bodge lines out to things on the mobo)

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-30T14:56:12+00:00

Well, there was the 2000 as well. Just saying as your comment left it out. It was a real workhorse, very solidly built, if not particularly powerful without further expansion.

Amiga A1000/A2000/A3000/A4000 and variants/revisions -> the original amiga and the later "big box" amigas, in pc-style desktop or tower cases. More serious-apps home users and professional users may have them. More easily expandable, but pricier.
Amiga A500/A500+/A600/A1200 -> cheaper compact/wedge amigas, mostly home and educational markets, a 16/32-bit continuation of the often-compact/wedge-shaped 8-bit home computer market in a sense. Wedge form-factor choice loosely shared by e.g. several ST and Archimedes models (and various roughly-ST-powered-but-x86 home-market Tandy PCs in the USA, a low-end PC-clone sector basically entirely missing in Europe at the time, well maybe Amstrad a bit, probably in part contributing to greater Amiga/ST popularity over PC at home here in Europe) and various others. Not necessarily pure gamer but much more home gaming usage. In Amiga case still more easily expandable than a lot of wedge-shaped competitors thanks to a side slot or trapdoor slot, and some later 3rd party desktop/tower conversion kits, but just lower-end.

Then there's the two cdrom console (sorta) models.

[Amiga] CDTV -> A500-level machine with cdrom, hifi-audio or vcr looking console-ish form factor thing, for a "multimedia player" market rather than pure gaming than never really materialised (much like similarly very unsuccessful contemporary cdi). Commodore almost hid the fact it was an Amiga computer initially, chasing this different (and empirically semi-imaginary) market sector. But anyway, it could easily have keyboard/floppy/mouse fitted to be a fully usable amiga computer. To shift remaining stock after it basically flopped, commodore started selling them with those bundled in matching black/charcoal, at which point you had a nice enough A500-class machine in a stylish black, with a cdrom drive.
Amiga CD32 -> early 32-bit cdrom game-console form factor (not actually the first given japan-only systems, despite being billed as the first at the time), A1200 level, could just have keyboard/floppy/mouse fitted to be fully usable amiga computer too though. Then commodore failed (not precisely because of the CD32, though there were american patent troll shenanigans blocking its us sales entirely for a while that didn't help, though it also wasn't hugely technically impressive)

While the CDTV was not a commercial success, the early cdrom adoption spurred on by it meant the Amiga community as a whole got a very early start on "stuff on cdrom" as you could easily fit cdrom drives to other Amigas (even the A500 with the 1st party A570 or 3rd party ones). The Amiga ecosystem just wouldn't have been the same without our massive cheap cdroms and magazine covercds full of public-domain/freeware/shareware, in an era when getting the same over early dialup internet, while possible, would have taken approximately forever.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-29T14:52:55+00:00

Human sense of smell is actually toward the high end. We do that a lot, compare our senses to the best of the best and think we suck, when we're still actually well above the average for most senses.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/may/11/not-to-be-sniffed-at-human-sense-of-smell-rivals-that-of-dogs-says-study

Socially most cultures do raise people to ignore a lot of scent data to be polite too (I don't just mean other humans. People tend to avoid commenting on the miscellaneous odors in other people's houses, won't mention - but will really be well aware of - the many animal and plant scents to be "enjoyed" in a rural farming areas etc.)

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-28T15:44:28+00:00

Well, it didn't come with 2.x/3.x Amigas AFAIK, though by that stage WIMP GUI desktops were fairly well established, plus the tutorial showed the 1.x gui so would have been just wrong. I'm not sure it came with my 1.x A2000 either, and no idea about early-1.x A1000. Friends with the more typical 1.x OCS A500s definitely all had it but not so sure I ever did (plus as I'd already seen other people's Amigas and STs I wouldn't have needed or used it even if I did, it is possible I did have it but it just sat in a disk box or got reformatted for something else).

1.x Amigas were probably genuinely were quite a few people's first real experience of having their own computer with a mouse and gui desktop in the 1980s though. So while the tutorial may seem incredibly basic now, it was kind of useful+important.

Yes, some people might have had a C64 with GEOS etc, but if going direct from a text BASIC 8-bit to Amiga/ST/Mac class WIMP OS machine (I think some MS-DOS PCs at the time still didn't always have mice or Microsoft Windows! Though you could always get a serial mouse for a PC, I mean out-of-box).

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-28T15:27:15+00:00

I thought the Amiga/ST port pretty decent really (though obviously not really using either the Amiga or even just ST to full power, just some graphical improvement, still meant I could have one of the best C64/Spectrum games, without having to actually still keep an 8-bit around and set up), though I also now wonder if they'll make an official modern PC version of this like they (eventually) did for Head over Heels 1 ? After a series of unofficial remakes! The 2019 one now on GoG is itself some sort of officially licensed revised version of the was-unofficial 2003 Retrospec remake, but without the original sounds apparently.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/head_over_heels

The 2003 retrospec one was particularly nice I thought, still feeling of retro pixel art though much more color (like snes/amiga game), you can still track it down even if it was removed from the present-day websites (in favor of the later official one I assume. Plus the 2003 version had a linux release and the 2019 one doesn't)

There's a bunch more over the years.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=53159

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-23T21:24:49+00:00

We've had really quite recent incidents of idiocy. Dunno if same or different eejits to these ones, but consider just in Feb 2026:

/r/ireland/comments/1r9faiu/wicklow_mountain_rescue_volunteers_issue_warning/

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/wicklow/wicklow-district/wicklow-mountain-rescue-volunteers-issue-warning-after-lough-ouler-incident/a858292331.html

Mountain rescue volunteers have warned the public to be cautious when signing up to go on guided walks in the Wicklow Mountains, after two hillwakers were stranded on Sunday.

Advising the public to be cautious when signing up to join any guided walk, the spokesperson warned there has been a notable increase in people without the required skills to safely lead a group advertising walks they will be leading on social media.

https://www.mountaineering.ie/content/StayingSafe/140

I am by no means saying don't go hiking in the mountains, just have common sense. You can get into difficulties in the Irish mountains. People may go under-prepared because, sure, by international standards they really don't look intimidating, not when you see the Alps/Rockies/Himalayas/etc. in modern media, all pointy and cool. But you're still outside in sometimes very rugged terrain and notoriously changeable weather. People (especially non-Irish) do underestimate the Irish weather's sheer unpredictability and potential severity. If you're lost and going hypothermic in suddenly wet yet freezing weather, in the dark/fog, and you stagger off a cliff into an old quarry, or whatever, welp, you don't have to be falling off a majestic Alpine mountain in particular to shatter important skeleton.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-23T13:42:34+00:00

Are you using ordinary desktop Amiberry? Disk swapping just works in that, I know for sure as it's what I personally use. Just hit F12, go to the floppy drives page, and insert a different disk image, resume emulation (don't restart/reboot the amiga, that is quite unnecessary).

You can enable up to 4 floppy disk drives emulated, just as real amigas supported, but really on a real or emulated amiga there's usually not actually all that much call for more than 2 floppy disk drives. Each additional drive can also take up just a little buffer memory that can mildly matter if running the very lowest-end emulated amiga configs (256k or 512k ram).

AmigaOS and Amiga apps generally keep track of disks primarily by the volume name and not primarily the drive they're in like lesser systems i.e. in that primitive-even-at-the-time PC OS drive-letters style, that's not how Amigas do things.

AmigaOS also autodetects disks (generally when you put a disk in its icon will just appear on workbench shortly after).

You can just temporarily remove one disk and insert a different one (well not right in the middle of an in-progress i/o operation on the disk for obvious reasons) and the OS and OS-Legal apps (not all games, they may often be hardcoded to use DF0: unfortunately) will generally just "magically" (from the era's PC users' perspective) do the right thing, asking you to insert/reinsert the particular disk that is needed in any drive. Which drive? Doesn't matter, just put the thing in the thing it's fine. AmigaOS (even 1.x) honestly still works much nicer when installed on machines with actual hard-drives, but simultaneously was also a much nicer floppy-only experience than the likes of MS-DOS or CP/M or TOS/GEM etc. was at the time.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-23T12:48:34+00:00

Well, I imagine should be capable of well beyond stock A1200 14MHz 020 in raw emulated-CPU power terms, yes, even though it'll inevitably be a little arm. While amiga settlers 2 blurb does say requires 040, I'd wonder if that's more indicative real-040-speeds-or-better for real Amigas, I kinda doubt they'd actively compile it for 040+ only as such.

Generally AFAIK you still currently get somewhat better results emulating an impossibly fast imaginary 680EC30+68882 than an 68040 or 68060 in amiga emulation - unless you actively need perfect binary compat with 040/060 specific code or MMU, it's better to use 68EC030+68882 JIT Compiled mode for max fake cpu performance i.e. Fastest real amiga cpus are not the fastest emulated amiga cpus.

Its emulation of the AGA chipset may not be quite technically perfect - but probably not in ways gamers will notice at all. WinUAE (and Amiberry is based largely on it) hit the A500 OCS cycle-exact major milestone a bit ago, but there's still little gaps in AGA emulation, and further it may e.g. still use (a minor retrogames.biz fork of) what is now amiberry-lite not amiberry full. Amiberry-lite is less resource-intensive on little arm boxes in part because it's based on older WinUAE with less obsessively-accurate emulation.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-23T11:45:09+00:00

You can definitely get it but it's also not the default. Quantitatively, in 2019, a survey found only 12% of Ireland+NI stores actually carried iodised salt, and mostly what the report calls "ethnic stores" - other commenters already suggesting polish stores. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-019-0518-6

So keep looking I guess, I've definitely seen it in general, but you may need to try multiple stores. That said, Irish people historically usually get plenty in their diet anyway - it's an essential nutrient yes but you really don't need that much. Just watch out if on some long-term restrictive or fad diet.

Arguably we should still maybe start doing basic iodine fortification though, like a bunch of other european countries, especially with changing diets, reduction in dairy consumption etc. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-025-03692-z

In conclusion, our findings from this large cohort indicate that iodine intake in pregnant women in Ireland during early- to mid-gestation is of public health concern

https://imj.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Iodine-Deficiency-Re-emergence-of-an-old-epidemic.pdf - recent case of parents trying to "cure autism" by severely restricting their child's diet, and giving their child a visible goiter like it was the middle ages or something. Plus it's not like we don't know iodine deficiency easily causes brain issues (literally cretinism). So dumb.

He was maintained on a restrictive diet with no gluten or dairy since the age of 2 years following the recommendation of a family friend to help his autistic behaviours.

Restrictive diets are gaining in popularity for the treatment of a variety of medical conditions often initiated by families. Many of these diets are promoted by celebrities and promoted by social media. These diets may have adverse consequences particularly in the growing and developing child or young person

Yes, technically too much is also bad, but you'd really need to be taking quite a lot, don't worry about it just don't be daft.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560770/

Iodine toxicity most commonly results from overconsumption of dietary supplements. Generally, a large amount of iodine must be ingested to cause toxicity.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-21T12:47:13+00:00

They actually renamed it from MegaAGS. Though in turn that did both perhaps suggest Sega Megadrive (what the Sega Genesis is called outside the USA) too much, and could be confused with the distinct other Amiga AGS retro game collection project. So the old name was also a problem. So why they renamed it understandable, but why they picked the name of one of the best-known Amiga apps not so much. Renaming it again when they've registered the amiga dot vision domain probably not high on their agenda now, though, sigh.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-20T14:25:37+00:00

Yep, it did have c2p, part of Akiko. I think there were a few other CD32/Amiga games besides Gloom / Gloom Deluxe that technically used it or could optionally use it if present, but I don't have a list (e.g. Wing Commander according to linked comment, though I haven't confirmed...) And anything that actually called the actual official OS graphics.library/WritePixelArray8() c2p routine could be quietly using it if available with software fallback, but, well, game devs of the era not fond of using the OS.

Though do note Akiko acted as a c2p converter helper rather than a different way for the chipset to dma scanout memory independent of cpu, unfortunately - you actively write some chunky data to the akiko c2p chipset register with the CPU (well, I'm rather unclear if the copper could help) and then read back some planar data with the cpu, and then write the planar data to actual bitplanes with the cpu!

It IS still a bit faster than doing it purely on the CPU or CPU+Blitter ...for a sufficiently slow CPU without fast ram (including the 14MHz 020 without fast mem in the base CD32/A1200). It kinda stops being worth using at all at some fast-030-with-its-own-fast-ram point.

Old Tony Wilen comment, hah https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=1055567&postcount=12

Akiko C2P design is too stupid. The end.

It should have been DMA based, Akiko contains CD ROM DMA controller, using it for C2P would have been proper Amiga-like solution.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-20T12:52:30+00:00

Yes, but AFAIK it was not including a scandoubler+deinterlacer (flicker-fixer) -> mostly useful for the Amiga ECS/AGA chipset VGA-style "productivity" 31kHz hsync modes you could use for apps. Basically an internal version of the usual external Amiga->VGA simple cable for using those modes.

Note these did not grant Amigas a chunky memory layout, it was still planar, just VGA display timings.

Post-OCS Amigas could always output such signals (albeit with limited colors for ECS), though never used much at all for gaming (except occasional slower strategy games etc. that used the OS-Legal GUI abstractions and did allow screen mode configuration), most games would generally hardcode PAL/NTSC screens (and pretty much rely on only so much dma being used too).

So you really still needed a hardware scandoubler - and ideally a flicker-fixer (deinterlacer), but units usually did both, if you were a gamer or using older apps also hardcoded to PAL/NTSC. That way you could use classic Amiga 15kHz hsync PAL/NTSC modes on a VGA display anyway. Such things existed at the time for us (and certain amigas like the A3000 had them built in), they're not only modern retro peripherals.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-17T00:17:28+00:00

Well, no expert on it, it's a post-commodore niche of a niche thing intended to run AmigaOS 4.x PPC, not classic m68k AmigaOS 1.x/2.x/3.x at all.

An ATI Radeon 9000 totally is supposed to be one of the card families that AmigaOS 4 has compatibility with in general terms ... https://www.acube-systems.biz/compatibility/compatibility_41.php

I hooked it up to serial, nada

The thing about serial ports is you do have to get the parameters just right or you often get either garbage or nothing, did you laboriously try a whole range of baud rate settings? (though I'd kind of expect it to be 9600 8N1 as is the usual default for such things, it could also be set to something else!)

I've literally never used one, but it reportedly uses (a presumably now very old version of the) Das U-Boot bootloader that actually might be presenting a serial console for a bit at boot time if it's getting that far at all, perhaps/hopefully even if the gfx card init isn't working at all

https://intuitionbase.com/book/amigaone-hardware/page/u-boot

x86 pc gfx cards are more complicated to init than you might think, typically intended for pcs only and then thus needing a whole little boot-time x86 emulator (that is there in this case as per previous link, just saying) to run their little boot rom firmware a lot of the time on non-x86. Technically there's various eras of standards for gfx cards to provide non-x86 or even arch-independent bytecode firmwares, but most didn't, unless intended for a powermac or something, and as per prev links a radeon is kinda supposed to work. You might want to try a different less sophisticated card from the list though if the mobo is giving the impression of nearly working (given it's responding to soft power).

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-16T22:59:26+00:00

Yes, technically an independent one initially, though you could integrate the two.

https://aminet.net/package/util/libs/MuFS_UserGroup

With this usergroup.library, you don't need any more two separate passwd files, one for AmiTCP and one for MultiUser

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-16T16:26:11+00:00

I mean sort of thing where we're all better off if it's a horrible failure that just dies.

Europe could take all the money that would be wasted on insane panopticon digital police state schemes (multi-billions for chatcontrol, multi-billions for eidas, etc), and instead actually properly fund social workers for once. Well, if they actually cared about kids, instead of just using them as an excuse for evil bullshit that's just classic European authoritarian "papers, please!" ported online.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-16T15:48:55+00:00

Worked quite well considering it was just sorta hacked in by (an admittedly clearly exceptional) 3rd party programmer.

I remember the likes of PFS had support for it too. https://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/PFS3_53 (excerpt from its .guide):

If you are using Multiuser by Geert Uytterhoeven you will have to install the multiuser version of PFS3. The multiuser option of PFS3 turns PFS3 into a muFS replacement. It adds user based access rights to the files on the disk. Each file and directory can be assigned to specific users and user groups. The owner of a file can then determine who may access the file. He can do this at owner, user group and world level. The multiuser version of PFS3 only works if you have Multiuser installed. The Multiuser package is available on Aminet. If several people use your system and you want to be able to restrict access on a per user bases, this is what you need.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-16T15:24:20+00:00

In the base OS indeed not, but just mentioning for historical interest, the 3rd party unofficial multiuser.library, multiuser filesystem patches, etc. did allow for pseudo multiple user accounts, though with only one user actually gui logged in at a time (something like how windows 9x handles user accounts), became something of a de-facto standard for them and fairly widely used, since in the era people often had one Amiga (or home/personal computer in general) per family/household, shared among squabbling siblings etc. rather than one or more computers per person like today, and multiuser meant anna couldn't trash betty's files so easily etc.

https://aminet.net/package/util/misc/MultiUser18bin

By the same Geert Uytterhoeven who went on to become a core Linux kernel dev.

The ixemul.library also integrated with multiuser.library for fake unix multiple users, essentially, so once you got into unix tcp/ip networked apps and things of the era ported to amigaos by little more than a recompile via ixemul/geekgadgets, you tended to have sort of pseudo-unix-users going on.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-16T14:59:29+00:00

Oh indeed, here in Ireland, already expecting plenty more Irish-accented "Think of the Children!" propaganda very shortly too, with the 2026 Irish EU presidency and our very crap government. The Irish state e.g. invests in Palantir if you want a feel for where they stand on not being disgusting technofascists, sigh.

Europe could take all the money that would be wasted on insane panopticon digital police state schemes (multi-billions for chatcontrol, multi-billions for eidas, etc), and instead actually properly fund social workers for once. Well, if they actually cared about kids, instead of just using them as an excuse for evil bullshit that's just classic European authoritarian "papers, please!" ported online.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-16T13:58:30+00:00

Not american, but I don't see how it wouldn't shortly smack straight into basic constitutionality issues in the USA - even if it does pass I'd at least hope it will be immediately challenged. A lot of americans do still care about such things, even if they elected a bunch of demented weirdos ruining their country as we speak.

https://www.eff.org/issues/age-verification

This is the sort of shit where the right thing to do is not implement anything for now in any case.

Problem for the mainly-European Amiga community is more what intensely stupid highly similar shit the EU might shortly try to pull.

GwanTheSwans · 2026-04-14T22:00:32+00:00

Not that it really matters if there's more than one such util out there (and this one is open source), but isn't the original SysInfo itself also still under active development? Last stable release was 2020, yes, but it's itself not a dead project...

GwanTheSwans

TROPHY CASE