Most graphically Impressive 3D games on the Atari ST/Falcon?

[Matt_B]

14 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Gave up waiting for Epic (which despite what Retrogamer Magazine claimed, was not universally panned at Review, mixed reviews yes, but a Marmite title, not universally hated on), but from what i have seen, graphics wise it looked fantastic for the time and hardware.

Epic was a fine shooter and definitely didn't disappoint on the graphical front. Well, maybe the draw distance isn't brilliant, but they had to sacrifice something to keep the pace up.

 

I think the backlash it copped was from people expecting a more expansive game like Damocles or Frontier, rather than just a succession of missions where you fly in and blast the crap out of everything.

[Lostdragon]

9 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Epic was a fine shooter and definitely didn't disappoint on the graphical front. Well, maybe the draw distance isn't brilliant, but they had to sacrifice something to keep the pace up.

 

I think the backlash it copped was from people expecting a more expansive game like Damocles or Frontier, rather than just a succession of missions where you fly in and blast the crap out of everything.

Epic definitely seemed a victim of the UK Press playing the classic Tall Poppy Syndrome, they'd been nurturing the game in Previews, ever since it was annouced as Goldrunner 3D, teasing us with tantalizing screenshots and how the game included homages to BSG, Star Trek, Star Wars... 

 

 

Game arrived late and by that time some quarters of the press had knives at the ready it seems. 

 

 

Retrogamer Magazine Editor seems to have looked as far as the Amiga Power Review, 34% when saying the game was panned at Review, ignored the glowing ST reviews from the likes of The One (ST), Zero, Ace etc. 

 

 

[Lostdragon]

 

 

This one looks nice. 

 

 

Originally intended for the Jaguar? 

[Leeroy ST]

9 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

 

 

This one looks nice. 

 

 

Originally intended for the Jaguar? 

Is that a real release?

 

If so that's the smoothest running 3D st family game so far.

[oky2000]

I remember Flight Simulator 2 by Sublogic as an early game that really impressed me in the early days, good gauge of what an 8mhz 68000 with an awkward colour memory layout could do.

 

Virus is the one I played the most and that is a nice routine.

 

Does anybody know of any 3D solid polygon games that are coded nice AND run on mono monitors? I would be curious to see if the display is faster in 1 bit memory layout of mono vs 4 bit nybles of low/med resolution. I think Starglider II supported mono but it's been decades.

 

(I had a 520STM with no enhancements and a regular CRT TV to use it on)

[Chri O.]

Flight simulator 2, yes that was a good game.

Not sure if this was yet mention but I loved Armour-Geddon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbFnvshjx3Q

Armour-Geddon is a 3D video game developed and published in 1991 by Psygnosis for the Amiga, MS-DOS and Atari ST.

Especially that you could actually play it on two computers via network.

2 hours ago, oky2000 said:

Does anybody know of any 3D solid polygon games that are coded nice AND run on mono monitors?

Don't think this will run on monochrome monitor.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Chri O.

[oky2000]

I just saw a video of Starglider II in mono mode on YT and it looks about the same framerate. The dithering calculations for polygon faces must cancel out any cycles saved not messing about with 4 bits for the 16 colour low res pixels.

 

I remember on Flight Simulator II you could resize the output window for the view from a small box to full screen (removing the instrument panel). Great days

[calimero]

6 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Is that a real release?

 

If so that's the smoothest running 3D st family game so far.

What is “st family game”...?

Gravon is game for Falcon (in first 10 seconds on YT video you can read this...) and this video is recorded on emulator. It is much slower on real Falcon

 

 

Trivia:
 

Authors later made Operation: Flashpoint (ARMA). 
They also get some contracts with millitary...

https://www.bohemia.net/blog/bohemia-interactive-history_2

[Leeroy ST]

8 hours ago, calimero said:

What is “st family game”...?

Gravon is game for Falcon (in first 10 seconds on YT video you can read this...) and this video is recorded on emulator. It is much slower on real Falcon

 

 

Trivia:
 

Authors later made Operation: Flashpoint (ARMA). 
They also get some contracts with millitary...

https://www.bohemia.net/blog/bohemia-interactive-history_2

Falcon is part of the ST family of computers.

[oky2000]

I never really thought of the Falcon as part of the ST family, but then I don't consider the TT as part of the ST family either. Not sure what the official line is but they just seemed like partially ST compatible computers. I really don't know much about the Falcon, specifically technically how it is able to run some ST games etc to make a judgement though. If it does it the same way the AGA based Amigas run old A500 type Amiga games then I guess it is part of the ST family. 

 

 

[calimero]

I see Leeroy ST that you are reading my posts  but I am not sure if you see my question:

 

”Can I ask why did you open this thread (and other similar threads about 3D graphics)?”

I ask so because I do believe that we can give you better answers if we know what is the goal...

 

[calimero]

And regarding “ST family”, I would say:

 

Atari computers can be divide in:

- 8bit series (Atari Inc)

- 16/32 series (Atari Corp. - ST family)

 

further, 16/32 series can be devide into:

- ST (ST, STf/m, Mega, STe, Stacy, ST book, Mega STe...)

- TT (considerbly different)

- Falcon (also quite different but it starts as add-on board on STe...)

 

Regarding 3D: Falcon is 3-4 times waster then ST, and with DSP it can be 30-40x faster...

 

EDIT:

I make more clear first type of division. 

Edited August 9, 2021 by calimero

[ParanoidLittleMan]

When it it is said "Atari ST family"  it stays for overall concept of compatible  OS. So, that SW (software) running well on early revisions of it, as well on later ones. And it is not only that Atari corp. (under Jack Tramiel since 1984) saw it as proper way for next gen. of home/small business computers  on middle 90-es,  but that was simply what practically all manufacturers, OS developers realized in those years.  8-bit concept what we saw with C64 and others was not way in future. Or in other words, SW is what became more relevant than HW.

This is something what Motorola understood years ago. Resulted in using vectors for OS function calls instead rigid subroutine calls.

This is really very complex issue, so I will stop here. Maybe worth of  some Wiki page 

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by ParanoidLittleMan

[oky2000]

50 minutes ago, calimero said:

Regarding 3D: Falcon is 3-4 times waster then ST, and with DSP it can be 30-40x faster...

4000-3000% increase over 520ST for filled 3D polygons in demos or games? Would be curious to see the cutting edge.

 

As to the "3D games" aspect, I personally would include things like Lotus II (but not Supercycle as the road is flat so technically it is 2D in exploring the simulated game world) and any kind of fractal rendering, like that demo within the Ballblazer game. On the subject of 3D, why isn't the wireframe rendering in Star Wars 25 fps? Is that bad coding or a limit of an 8mhz 68000?

 

The garish palette of most ST/Amiga filled polygon games really put me off, ugly, which is why I hacked my crack of Elite for the ST and put in 8 shades of grey and 4 shades of cyan and blue each for the palette used  Now if I could only replace all the hideous pixel art for the game interface and bitmap elements (peoples faces etc) we would be onto a winner. Elite should look bleak/stark IMO like 2001 not like some cheap tacky late 70s Sci-Fi B Movie like Starcrash with some "BBC Micro palette", YMMV

[Matt_B]

The DSP in the Falcon is indeed that much faster than the CPU in the ST when it comes to performing the calculations for 3D rendering. However, when the bottleneck for most games is the bus speed to the video memory - which is only twice as fast in the Falcon as the ST - 3-4 times is going to be the more realistic figure in most cases.

[Leeroy ST]

9 hours ago, calimero said:

I see Leeroy ST that you are reading my posts  but I am not sure if you see my question:

 

”Can I ask why did you open this thread (and other similar threads about 3D graphics)?”

I ask so because I do believe that we can give you better answers if we know what is the goal...

 

Its nothing being hidden, I was curious about the early 3D games on the home computer scene and how capable the machines were. Usually when people refer to early 3D they start in the mid 90's and disregard all computers but PC along with mid 90's consoles.

 

There's not enough talk of REAL early 3D, the performance, or how they functioned. This is mostly for education and to experience new 3D games I haven't played previously.

[Leeroy ST]

9 hours ago, oky2000 said:

I never really thought of the Falcon as part of the ST family, but then I don't consider the TT as part of the ST family either. Not sure what the official line is but they just seemed like partially ST compatible computers. I really don't know much about the Falcon, specifically technically how it is able to run some ST games etc to make a judgement though. If it does it the same way the AGA based Amigas run old A500 type Amiga games then I guess it is part of the ST family. 

 

 

Falcon is compared to the 1200 regularly due to similar compatibility, not the same of course.

 

[calimero]

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

Its nothing being hidden, I was curious about the early 3D games on the home computer scene and how capable the machines were. Usually when people refer to early 3D they start in the mid 90's and disregard all computers but PC along with mid 90's consoles.

 

There's not enough talk of REAL early 3D, the performance, or how they functioned. This is mostly for education and to experience new 3D games I haven't played previously.

I ask you because I myself open threads regarding 3D on Amiga. I was courious if there is any game that use blitter to speedup 3D...

[calimero]

9 hours ago, oky2000 said:

4000-3000% increase over 520ST for filled 3D polygons in demos or games? Would be curious to see the cutting edge.

You can find, in this thread, link to YT video that I posted about AnimaInCorpore 3D demo of Spaceship. 
In comments on YT for thar video, you can find Anima claim that DSP can speed up 3D calculation up to 20x times compared to 68030 in Falcon. 
In comments you will also find number of vertices and faces for that 3D spaceship model...

Edited August 10, 2021 by calimero

[Zogging Hell]

16 hours ago, oky2000 said:

The garish palette of most ST/Amiga filled polygon games really put me off, ugly, which is why I hacked my crack of Elite for the ST and put in 8 shades of grey and 4 shades of cyan and blue each for the palette used  Now if I could only replace all the hideous pixel art for the game interface and bitmap elements (peoples faces etc) we would be onto a winner. Elite should look bleak/stark IMO like 2001 not like some cheap tacky late 70s Sci-Fi B Movie like Starcrash with some "BBC Micro palette", YMMV

Dude, it was the 80s and early nineties... everything on the planet had a garish palette at that time! There has to be a reason why bermuda shorts were socially acceptable then

 

I suppose really though back then these colour palettes were novelties and the more colour you had, the more powerful system. Nowadays with millions of colours available less is more.

[+DarkLord]

Makes me think of the use of (or non-use of) color in the Playstation game, "Shadow of the Colossus".

 

The game world almost seemed devoid of color and stark...dreary even. But what a game! My daughter is

away at college now (19 yrs old) but when she was younger and that game came out we played it together.

 

She and I both still love it and have great memories from playing it together.

 

They did a remake for the PS/4 but it didn't quite feel the same (although still a great game).

 

If you've never played it, I highly recommend it.

 

PS Sorry, bit off topic there...

 

[Leeroy ST]

12 hours ago, calimero said:

I ask you because I myself open threads regarding 3D on Amiga. I was courious if there is any game that use blitter to speedup 3D...

In the other thread they say apparently the glitter is limited and would only help with a marginal increase, and that was the 1200 they were referring to iirc.

 

5 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

Dude, it was the 80s and early nineties... everything on the planet had a garish palette at that time! There has to be a reason why bermuda shorts were socially acceptable then

 

I suppose really though back then these colour palettes were novelties and the more colour you had, the more powerful system. Nowadays with millions of colours available less is more.

It was either garish or it was the white/black/grey/silver pallette seen in games like RC3 and several others.

 

I prefer the latter honestly.

[Zogging Hell]

8 hours ago, DarkLord said:

If you've never played it, I highly recommend it.

 

PS Sorry, bit off topic there...

 

That game does look just up my street and has been on my PS2 wishlist for a while I get similar vibes from it as I did from the Witcher 3's world, although the games are quite different.

 

I have a shed load of games on the PS2 but apart from the Silent Hill games and Okami, I must admit I've been struggling to find games that are 'my kind of thing'..

 

PS apologies, further down the off topic rabbit hole

[Matt_B]

I love Okami. It's not a game that would have even been pushing a PS2 unduly hard, but the visual style looks fantastic. While all the attempts at realism of the era now look pretty flat, it could easily pass for a new game bar the fact that it's not in HD. There are some ports to newer systems to fix up that last part.

 

I'd also think that the low poly flat shaded games of the ST era have typically fared better than the early textured ones that followed. It takes a certain level of artistry to make a shape out of twenty triangles that doesn't look like a door wedge.

[oky2000]

21 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Falcon is compared to the 1200 regularly due to similar compatibility, not the same of course.

 

I meant in how is it compatible technically, I know as a computer architecture the Falcon is completely different design ethos.

 

What is the hardware doing to remain compatible, no make that be more compatible, with Atari ST software, because correct me if I am wrong but I think the Falcon is more compatible than a TT030 at running ST games yes?.

 

On the A1200 it is the same way a PS2 is PS1 compatible. More A500 etc games fail due to Kickstart 1.x not being a direct map in design (which is like a huge complex BIOS not really an OS). If the 68020 was 100% 68000 compatible and Kickstart 3 was not so radically different to Kickstart 1.3 then almost every Amiga program would boot and run faultlessly 99% of the time due to the multiprocessor design being exactly the same timings as the first Amiga 1000 on the memory bus and the two new A1200 AGA specific custom chips align with the original chipset, logically speaking. 

 

All I remember about the Falcon hardware is that it has compromised memory somehow so it is not as fast as it could be on the code execution. I am assuming the odd screen colour palette assignment layout of the ST low/med resolution has been retained too and I assume it still has access to the original ST/STE sound features just as the A1200 has the same audio options as the A1000 onward.

 

So in essence I don't know how close a Falcon running a machine code commercial ST game is to when it runs on an STE vs running GEM apps on those plug in PC cards (Gemulator?) that had hardware assisted ST emulation available for the old Win 95(?) 90s PCs.