Well, as a start we mostly will benefit a lot from the existing games that have been ported to AmigaOS4 already, but we might see some new additions, too.
Hmmm, the last past 3 games? One has to be Quake 3, no doubt. Don't know about the other 2...
Soon to own a powerful AmigaOne X1000 with latest AmigaOS 4.1 incarnation ;) Dual Core PPC!
Helgis wrote: Hmmm, the last past 3 games? One has to be Quake 3, no doubt. Don't know about the other 2...
How long ago was Quake3? Os4depot dates it as July 2006. Doesn't anyone else wonder why we don't have something more than this list?
Surely the SAM and XE/MicroA1 could handle somewhat more than what's come out in the past few years.
I'd really love to see more and bigger fancier games. Hopefully those who can will find some time for it someday, it seems our top programmers are very overloaded with other projects. I really look forward to seeing more happen, but I think it will take more than a new performance motherboard to get us there.
That's correct, but early this year Quake 3 has been optimized for SAM under OS4.1.1.
Which still leaves the list at one game. I find this frustrating. I'd love to see HalfLife series. I'd love to see lots of things. They aren't here, and it bugs me. So I very much consider OS4 to not be a game platform right now, because there aren't any worth talking about today. I want very much for this to change. Please, someone, give us high-end games that aren't everyone else's antiques...
If you are going to play a game and enjoy it, the settings used must be from middle to high end. E.g. Take two games: Alpha Prime (2006-7) and Shellshock 2 Blood Trails (2009). The latter utilizes more modern and advanced models/graphics/physics engine but my GF9600GT 512MB on my core 2 duo P8000 @ 2.40GHz couldn't display smooth fps over 1024x768@32bit with AA 4x etc on my 22 inch. widescreen while, on the other hand, I could max out the settings on Alpha Prime (1680x1050 etc). Alpha Prime was far more enjoyable than a new/modern game which had graphical glitches and slowdowns all the time. This can happen to an RTS or a TB Strategy (e.g CiV 4 was crawling on my Athlon 1Ghz GF3Ti200 and was taking for the cpu turn too much time, game almost unplayable).
So, if any game is about to show up on X1000 shouldn't be very very new (we have to think also that drivers won't be polished or fully supported) and the original game itself should be lightweight. For example Quake4 is not. I have seen it trashing many pc machines of 2006, so Q4 is not a good candidate. It was also a bit of mistake, imho, for Hyperion trying to port SoF. The game was utterly heavy on the pc when it came out! And the PCs of the time were far more advanced and had more horse power than any amiga of the time. Very good move was to port Shogo. Monolith has a good history in producing quality games which have lightweight gaming engines. Perhaps Aliens vs Predator 2 (from Monolith) could be a good candidate for porting or F.E.A.R. Alpha Prime is very good too.
IMO, there are gaming houses (smaller) or indie developers which might be interested on the X1000. I hope TrevorD donates a machine to the developers of Soldern X - that would be a KILLER for the amigans on the upcoming X1000- (the unofficial continuation of Project X) or to FrozenByte that awesome little finnish software house.
1)The software infrastructure: as mentioned we might get a Gallium+Mesa combo, but Hans is also interested in writing a low level 3D driver himself if we get mesa. Anyway both ways our long standing problem of dealing with Warp3D would be solved (and Mesa would give us access to the full OpenGL 2.1 instruction set, including the very tasty GLSL).
2)Who make the games? What games? To answer this question we could say that once the above work is done, we could at least get top of the line versions of games that are present on linux (like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and so on), and as someone mentioned already, Quake 4 is now old and following ID trend, about to be open sourced.
My hope is that given the tools (we also have a port of DarkGDK coming) some brave soul will start some new games on Amiga (like Boh! but given the new possibilities, something technically more spectacular).
@samo79 I wouldn't say that OS4's 3D capabilities are "poor". I think we are really lucky to have hardware 3D rendering, and even basic support for OpenGL!
The hardware 3D capabilities aren't as optimised as they could be though, so it seems they are (roughly!) half the maximum speed that could be obtained.
I understand that there are plans to give AmigaOS4 a brand new graphic subsystem and advanced 3D-features, to mention some of the future plans for future versions of AmigaOS 4..
Soon to own a powerful AmigaOne X1000 with latest AmigaOS 4.1 incarnation ;) Dual Core PPC!
2)Who make the games? What games? To answer this question we could say that once the above work is done
so, what the sense to put a R700 radeon series on X1000?
R700 series isn't only a series of RV700 cards, but also a R700 card (two RV770 in one pcb).
So, to look this hardware, i think to games machine, but if not a game machine, it would been better to use an integrated graphic card like HD3200.
Maybe when you buy X1000, you will find an R700 card (or RV700 card) and you pay for an hardware that you don't use. so is better no vga card or integrated card for a reduced price.