From: entity@nsq.uucp (cybernetworx)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Future of the amiga ?
Date: 30 Aug 92 23:55:57 GMT
Organization: NSQ

In article <27945@sophia.inria.fr>, buffa@delos.inria.fr (Michel Buffa) writes:
> 
> I'm also afraid because I read in some recent French magazines the
> characteristics of the new amigas. Impressive, but the first price models, the
> ones that will show what kind of games we'll have in the future are the same
> as before. No better sprite engine, no better sound processor, no improvement
> for games. And the new high models, the 4000 and the 2200 are trying to

Hmm, well you are definitely wrong there.  From what I can see, there are no
more sound channels, but I believe the sound IS 16 bit now.  I don't think
sound was ever a big problem with Amiga games.. as a matter of fact, they
usually kill the console/PC equivalents anyhow.
 
Sprite support HAS been improved.  The new AA chipset supports both
scandoubled sprites as well as adjustable widths on the sprites.  I'm not sure
if they've improved the number of sprites or not.  Even if they haven't, the
addition of larger sprites makes a lot more games possible.  After all, that's
the only reason a console can even HOPE to compete with a machine like the
amiga.. it's incredible sprite support. (bitmap rotation and scaling are
important too, but are restricted to specific games)

Certainly better graphical capabilities on the new machines.  And I don't even
mean strictly in terms of 256 colors.  Who cares?  What I like is the fact
that you can now have HIRESHAM, and SUPERHAM and be able to throw on large
sprites over this.  I can see some very cool possibilities.  How about
SUPERDUALPLAYFIELDS?  No more stupid 8 color per playfield restriction!  In
addition, you can still do copper tricks to get a vast number of colors.  All
of a sudden games like street fighter II with it's parallaxing floor is easily
possible!

> some good arcade games because of it's dedicated hardware for sprites +
> scrolling. But this particular point has not been improved at all. Number of
> sprites, of parallax scrolling, bitmap rotation, zooming, quality of sound are
> what makes good arcade games. For the moment the amiga can not compete with
> the dedicated hardware of the Super Famicom.

Like I said before, I've yet to hear a console game that sounds BETTER than
the average amiga game.  Than again, I must admit I've only seen a limited
number of console games, and even that has been restricted to the
super-nintendo and TurboGraphix 16 machines.  But all the ones I've seen (eg.
street fighter II have pathetic sound/music)
 
You're right about sprites being important, but like I said they've definitely
improved the sprite engine and it remains to be seen if they have increased
the number of available hardware sprites as well.  If they have, you can
expect to see some INCREDIBLE console type games very quickly.  That's the
only thing that the consoles have over a standard amiga.. number of sprites. 
In every other respect starting from base processor up to copper definitely
kill the consoles.  (except maybe NEO-GEO :-)  Bitmap rotation and scaling
would have been nice in a new blitter, but I guess we will have to continue to
do it with the existing blitter ourselves. (AGGHH!)
 
Parallaxing doesn't need any improvement.  What are you talking about?  With
the new SUPERDUALPLAYFIELDS modes, you can easily hardware parallax a plane
(ie without using blitter, just DDFDELAY and BPL pointers) and still have a
foreground BOBs plane with lots of colors and independant of the background
parallaxing.

Anyways, just my thoughts.  TTYL!