#Amiga Game Support?
7 messages in this thread
> Moreover, you say it's easy to port things to the Amiga from the PC
> given AGA. Well, we DID port games to the Amiga from MS-DOS, and got
> slapped in the face repeatedly with cries of, "This is an MS-DOS game
> that's been PORTED, this isn't an AMIGA game. We want AMIGA games."
The "abuse" had more to do with the quality of the ports. When you
have the equivalent of a SoundBlaster card built in, PC-speaker-style
beeps are more than a little annoying. Some companies never bothered
to use the hardware graphics support to make the graphics as
responsive as possible. It was "lazy" ports that annoyed people. I'm
also sure that most of the initial Amiga->IBM ports were this way,
simply because most people on the IBM didn't have decent sound
capability and the developers doing the ports didn't see the need to
make the additional effort.
> So for all the pains we took to support the Amiga when nobody else was,
> we got a lot of abuse.
Think about this: You _knew_ people were using your products. Now, the
way they _should_ have handled their complaints about your games
would have been to take them up with the company first. Maybe people
flamed first and asked questions later — which is not uncommon,
h**l, I've done it too. There may also have been initial support
problems, support people saying "what's an Amiga?" was, and is, a
guaranteed method to turn off customers.
> What's the incentive for us to support this customer base?
Many of us are rather deeply into computers, some of what we crave in
out games (Like graceful multitasking — I like to play games while
my computer downloads files, posts messages, etc.) are things that
IBM users will DEMAND soon.
PC-DOS-based games are slamming into the 640K barrier (as if anyone
has anything near this much available). Your programmers may need to
gain experience in adhering to an OS's expectations. The Amiga OS can
be a good introduction to the style of programming needed to deal
with OS/2, Windows NT (Now THIS would be a small game market!), and
MS's so-called "next generation" DOS — Chicago. AmigaDOS, Windows,
NT, Chicago, and OS/2 all are graphically based, event driven
environments. The ones here that aren't "Multithreading" are Windows
and the Amiga OS, but in AmigaDOS's case, that can be "faked" by
spawning parallel processes.
The only "unique" feature of the Amiga OS is the concept of a
"screen" where an application can display data in whatever resolution
and color depth it pleases without mangling other programs' displays.
I've seen how OS/2 handles VGA graphics put up by DOS programs, and
it happily lets programs render the palette of the master screen
unreadable. Not pretty, and something I'd rather not "think about"
when I'm working with my computer.
What I'm trying to say is that if a programmer can work well in the
Amiga environment, he will be better prepared to deal with what IBM
and Microsoft will deal out as operating systems in the future.
I think you're probably right about the quality of (a couple) of
initial Amiga releases, from most companies that were firmly rooted
in MS-DOS-style programming. The quality was not what Amiga users
expected from true Amiga developers. And I can see where that —
what you've called "lazy ports" — would be a source of resentment.
For what it's worth, we DID learn — after a painful lesson or two —
to use the blitter and to make much better use of the Amiga's native
abilities. (Even so, feeling constrained to have to support an
unadorned A500 sans hard drive was a source of great complication and
forced compromise.)
But the issue was really always one of saleability, not one of attitude
(internally or externally). The quality of the software didn't seem to be a
determinant of sales, neither for us nor for our competitors. Some of that's
my own bitterness again…I see a lot of INCREDIBLE games, truly groundbreaking
and captivating games, that never reach anywhere near their potential…and I
see a lot of mediocrity that sells big. Why should software be any different
from music, movies, books and television?
–Josh
> (internally or externally). The quality of the software didn't seem to
> be a determinant of sales, neither for us nor for our competitors.
This is often the case, where the quality of the _advertising_ determines
sales, for a while. Sometimes for quite a while. Just to add insult to
injury, sometimes "Lowest Common Denominator" programs sell very well
while the "groundbreaking and captivating" programs languish — often
because they can't easily be categorized.
// Brian — Cruising on AutoPilot…..
\X/
Brian,
Quality of the advertising…yes, that's no doubt a great deal of why some
"lowest common denominator" software flourishes while the software that
stretches the envelope languishes. I think there are other factors, too —
such as a proliferation of "me-too" software that tends to crowd out the good
stuff; if you have fifteen ho-hum platform games, it just makes it that much
harder for the one brilliant new platform game to separate itself from the
crowd.
–Josh
> "lowest common denominator" software <
You mean like Windoze? 😉