Lots of sources for comercial and arcade games 1980-2002

https://github.com/videogamepreservation

Many of thesee seems to be coded C+++

There are games like;

Actual Socccer 1996
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPv_-OhXBTE
Carnivores 1998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hht0Abiw8j4
Mechcommander 2002
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdrSunJVCRA

This one has most of games coded with asm

https://github.com/historicalsource?tab=repositories

@utri007

Even though most of these games were written in C/C++, many of them depend on libraries that don't exist for the Amiga or are poorly supported under OS4, if at all. Just for kicks, I decided to see how difficult it would be to compile the sources using Visual Studio under Windows for Carnivores 2 and Postal. Postal was a breeze to compile since its only dependency is SDL2. Postal has already been ported to OS4, which isn't surprising because SDL2 was ported to OS4 years ago. The Postal debug binary ran perfectly after compilation. Carnivores 2 was a different story. I was able to get it to compile a D3D binary on Windows with only some minor edits to the code, but upon running the binary I get a dialog box that says "Can't find procedure Audio_UploadGeometry". Compiling a version that supports software video rendering (a requirement for OS4 since there is no D3D compatibility layer) threw over 200 errors. At that point I didn't even attempt to track down the cause because even if I was able to get the source to compile under Visual Studio, there's no way it will ever compile for OS4 until someone smarter than me writes OS4-specific code to handle the video output as well as Amiga-specific keyboard and joystick controls. The current software rendering is also Windows-specific. You need to get the idea out of your head that just because a game or app was written in C/C++ that it's easy to port it between different platforms. It isn't, especially for platforms that have been dead for years and where any real development ceased 2+ decades ago.

@ferrels

I have no idee that something is "easy" to port. Just shared this, as I don't remember seen this before.

This could be more doable, as there is already port of eduke for OS4.

https://github.com/nukeykt/NBlood

@utri007

Yes, several of the games have already been ported to both OS3 and OS4. Thanks for the link to the archives BTW. Looking at the source code for many of these games was quite an enjoyable trip down memory lane, at least for Windows/DOS programmers. Unfortunately, both classic and NG Amigas have a lot of catching up to do in regard to graphics libraries, cross-platform toolkits and build tools. Programming for classic and NG Amigas is like taking a time machine back to the year 1998.

Another problem is simply a lack of raw CPU and GPU horsepower on classic and NG Amigas. In some cases, libraries such as QT have been ported to OS4, but the CPU/GPU overhead is so high that the performance suffers. Many developers already know this so they won't even attempt to port some games knowing that they will run so slowly that there's no point in even trying. SDL based games run poorly on all Amigas due to a lack of CPU/GPU horsepower.

My opinion, FWIW, is that NG Amigas will have to make the leap to modern processors and OS4 will have to undergo a complete re-write to survive, but that's not likely to happen as long as Ben Hermans is still breathing. The MOS team figured this out years ago as did Apple, but for some reason, the average Amiga users out there have put their heads into the sand and think the way forward is to pay higher and higher prices for slower and slower hardware and almost no OS development.

A OS4 re-write is needed to enable multi-processor support at a minimum. Again, that won't happen as long as Ben is breathing. AROS x86 SMP is promising though.

@ferrels

We have the GPU power, what we do not have is multi core support, if a game need multi core support to run it will be to slow, but anyway most games from 2005 or older, should be portable and should be able to run, given that it does not need unreal engine, or some other engine we do not have, yet.

The work of doing the graphic / input io, it will depend on the game.

AROS (and MorphOS) runs on X64 so if you think you need x86 CPU to run the games, you can use AROS, DOOM3 was running on AROS, (NVidia binary blob hack), on some wherry specific hardware setups.

Now DOOM3 is being ported over to AmigaOS4.1, it shows you far we have come, regarding 3D graphics, yes graphic is bit dated now days, but it’s huge upgrade from the Quake3 in graphics.

Quote:

That’s propaganda, ExecSG team is responsible for AmigaOS4.x kernel, Trever is now the owner of ExecSG, and is responsible for development of SMP, not Ben.

I agree SMP should be on highest of priorities. But hey we just got hardware video decoding, if you do not have a too old graphic card.

AmigaONE X5020 and X5040, X1000 should be all ok hardware.
Sam460 will struggle with CPU heavy games, Sam440 is the absolute minimum for running Amigaos4.

AmigaONE XE/SE G4, G3 had too many problems to be efficient.

Can’t really comment on “AmigaONE X1222”, but it might finely be out, not too far in future, I guess it will fit some where between X1000 and the Sam460 range. If people have the money, they should buy the AmigaONE X5040, AmigaONE X1222 was always targeted at low end of the market.

@ferrels

"Can't find procedure Audio_UploadGeometry".
The first thing to do figure out how many of these functions are missing, google the function names, see if you find library it needs.

Create dummy function, and declare missing structs and classes, if you can’t find any, put printf in functions, so when it called, you know.

Do not try to attempt replacing large chunks of code before you know what it does.

That’s my only advice.

Also if the game has configure script, disable everything, get it compiling first, enable things one thing at the time.

I guess if anyone is interested in porting games, have look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ts8coMP645hZw9JSD3pqQ

SetenityOS is new OS that in some ways are less mature then AmigaOS, but this youtube channel show what to do, and how to work whit cross compiler, how to fix small mistakes, etc. so It’s wherry insightful to watch.

@LiveForIt

"The first thing to do figure out how many of these functions are missing, google the function names, see if you find library it needs."

Yes, I did that already. The D3D source code for Carnivores 2 DOES compile without errors and it runs too. The error message that is presented after running the D3D binary is presented in a dialog box and it is being thrown at run time when the binary tries to initialize 3D audio output.

The point I tried to make about the archives at github is that in many cases the game(s) source code there isn't the final release code and is in most cases the sources are bug riddled and incomplete. Carnivores 2 is a prime example with it's D3D audio. Also, when trying to generate a binary that uses software rendering for audio and video, the sources for Carnivores 2 software video rendering engine is incomplete. Whoever uploaded the sources didn't upload the latest nor complete code base, so until that happens it'll never get ported to OS4 unless someone wants to write OS4 specific software video rendering for this game from scratch.

And yes, OS4 has 3D hardware accelerated graphics, sort of. OpenGL/OpenGL ES support is spotty and incomplete and is a work-in-progress, not to mention that even the best GPU cards for OS4 were produced about 8 years ago. And don't even get me started on how far behind NG Amigas are in terms of raw CPU horsepower. Even the best NG Amiga CPU performs on par with x86 processors from around 2004.....that's a 17 year gap in performance.

@ferrels

Lucky us, those games are nineties. :) I don't think that anyone imagines, that Amiga is "every day computer". Amiga and Amiga OS is hobby, so those limits are part of it.

@utri007

LOL! Yes, I can't think of single person who feels like an Amiga is their "go to" system for gaming. Most computers users these days don't even know what an Amiga is. Funny story is that my ex-wife assumed that I had a Spanish girlfriend because I used to spend so much time over at Amiga.org and other Amiga web sites. Even after I showed her that they were computer sites and not online dating sites, she didn't believe me....hence the reason she's my EX-wife!

@ferrels

There really just 2 option convert the code to use OpenGL or use a wrapper.

Googled a bit around there is a few DirectX wrappers

DXGL, https://dxgl.org/

I have read some positive comments about it, it is being updated, it is a visual studio project, so the build system will need to be replaced, and we will need to build it as a libXXX.a file, so it can be linked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocFqYQELYD8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAKFkSUu10

Not everything will work perfect (Version 0.5.5)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4sP5u07SDY

latest is version 0.5.17.

@LiveForIt

A working DirectX to OpenGL wrapper would open up a lot of new games for OS4.

The one found here works on several platforms including ReactOS, MacOS and SGI and supports up to DirectX version 8.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxglwrap/

I'd probably attempt a port of this wrapper to OS4 but I no longer own my PegII. I sold it back 2010 and I develop almost exclusively for Windows these days because that pays the bills.

@ferrels

It’s the same I believe, the one on sf.net was last updated 2003, so that’s really early version of it.

@LiveForIt

No, they're not the same. The wrapper you linked is for Windows based machines only. It isn't cross-platform. At a minimum the wrapper you linked requires a Windows XP based machine and a SSE2-capable processor. The one I linked over at sourceforge, though quite old (2003), is cross-platform and written specifically for non-Windows platforms and it builds on MacOS, BEOS, SGI and Linux.

"DirectX OpenGL Wrapper emulates API calls thru OpenGL commands and other platform specific commands in order to run DirectX 8 applications running on other platforms than Windows"

@ferrels

Quote:

Yes it pretty common to use SIMD instructions when you have it, it will make sense to use Altivec on X1000, and write some kind of work around for CPU’s that do not have it. I found actually using lookup tables can sometimes replace SIMD instructions. But anyway you can max get 64bit, while Altivec is 128bit, and can do parallel operations, so yes maybe not optimal, not too bad. What your looking at is 4 x 4bit, 2 x 8bit operations, or 1 x 16bit operations (16bit in, 64bit out.)