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Running Games and Apps.

Quake

Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
27 Mar 2016 20:23


I'm hopeful, we'll be able to run Quake on the Vampire sooner rather than later. :-)
 
  @BigGun what do you see as a useful implementation of the FPU in relation to what ppl will be using the Vampire for.
  (I think we can agree that raytracing/rendering is still a bad idea compared to pretty much any other platform..)
  Games like Quake however (and all the mods and variants of it), is probably going to be something a lot of users will want to run. So, what compatibility are you aiming for? And what parts can be bypassed by clever use of libs? Could it be that some specific libs that use specific Apollo instructions can "replace some of the trapped (unsupported) instructions?
  What challenges lie ahead of implementing a compatible enough FPU?
  I guess, if you rely on new libs, some software development lies ahead.
 
  Thanx for your time


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
28 Mar 2016 04:09


Remember, the A1200 version will (if things work out) probably have more RAM and most likely have an option of the current FPGA, and if you want to spend more, a FASTER FPGA that will also probably have more gates on it too.

I think that Quake (some versions) will run on those, if only even at 15 FPS. WOO HOOOOO!!!!

Only AMIGA makes it POSSIBLE!


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
28 Mar 2016 09:55


The original System requiremnt of Quake is a Pentium 75Mhz.
 
  - Apollo is faster than the Pentium in Integer Performance.
 
  - Apollo is faster than the Pentium in Memory Performance.
 
  - If the FPU is enabled, Apollo is faster than the Pentium in Floatingpoint Performance.
 
  - Apollo has better bandwidth to its SAGA GFX chip than the PC has

So in all aspects the Vampire will be faster than the requierements


Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
28 Mar 2016 11:41


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

The original System requiremnt of Quake is a Pentium 75Mhz.
 
  - Apollo is faster than the Pentium in Integer Performance.
 
  - Apollo is faster than the Pentium in Memory Performance.
 
  - If the FPU is enabled, Apollo is faster than the Pentium in Floatingpoint Performance.
 
  - Apollo has better bandwidth to its SAGA GFX chip than the PC has
 
 
  So in all aspects the Vampire will be faster than the requierements

Sorry Gunnar, I think I was a bit unclear in my first post.

I know Integer performance of Apollo-core is good enough (After all, Quake runs "ok" on overclocked 060 with AGA) . Clearly the memory is faster too.

But with Quake and all the spin-offs based on it, its very black or white. Either you have an FPU and it will run or you dont have FPU in which case it wont run at all.

So my question is not about overall performance, but FPU compatibility.
Meaning... is the goal to have an FPU that is an exact re-creation of say, the 060 FPU.. or is it a new design, and in that case, what is your compatibility target? Is the philospohy the same as with the CPU? (i.e. to be the most compatible 68k CPU) Or in this case to be the most compatible FPU of all 68k versions?




Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
28 Mar 2016 12:01


I heard that there is a 68060.library file and that not all of the FPU instructions are in the 68060.

My question is; can ALL of the 68060 FPU instructions fit inside the FPGA, as when the original 68060 was created, there simply weren't enough gates possible to be squeezed into there and the external library was thus made necessary. It would be pretty cool to bypass loading eternal op-codes(?) and slowing our CPU down because of it.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
28 Mar 2016 12:35


Daniel Sevo wrote:

So my question is not about overall performance, but FPU compatibility.
  Meaning... is the goal to have an FPU that is an exact re-creation of say, the 060 FPU..

Apollo has a real 68k FPU which supports all operations 68040 and 68060 did also support like e.g:
 
FADD, FSUB, FABS, FNEG, FMUL, FDIV, FSQURT, etc etc etc

Apollo FPU is more advanced than 68060 FPU and is fully pipelined.
This means it can execute a new instruction every clock cycle.



Johannes Schäfer

Posts 47
28 Mar 2016 18:42


With the new Mmx like instructions, the perfomance maybe will be enough for quake2 and BaldursGate 1+2. But are 128Mb enough? Time will tell...


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
28 Mar 2016 19:10


Johannes Schäfer wrote:

  With the new Mmx like instructions, the perfomance maybe will be enough for quake2 and BaldursGate 1+2. But are 128Mb enough? Time will tell...
 

 
 
  Quake 1 had a memory requirment of 8 MB
 
  Quake 2 had a memory requirment of 32 MB
 
  Baldurs Gate had a memory requirment of 16 MB / 32 recommended
 
 


John William

Posts 563
28 Mar 2016 20:19


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

 
Johannes Schäfer wrote:

    With the new Mmx like instructions, the perfomance maybe will be enough for quake2 and BaldursGate 1+2. But are 128Mb enough? Time will tell...
   

   
   
    Quake 1 had a memory requirment of 8 MB
   
    Quake 2 had a memory requirment of 32 MB
   
    Baldurs Gate had a memory requirment of 16 MB / 32 recommended
   
   
 

 
  Well we be able to play games like baldur's gate and icewind dale on Amiga vampire?

EXTERNAL LINK <--
 


Johannes Schäfer

Posts 47
29 Mar 2016 19:33


I have mentioned Baldurs Gate, because Bioware released GemRB as open source, like LucasArts released their ScummVM as open source.

Maybe this can be portet to Amiga68K?


Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
29 Mar 2016 23:14


Nova Coder ran Quake 2 (AmiQuake II based on Yamagi Quake v5.xx)
on an A1200 with overclocked 060 (I think it's 75MHz) and obviously no RTG.
EXTERNAL LINK  Framerate looked quite decent for that setup.


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
30 Mar 2016 02:11


According to the Quake specifications on CNET EXTERNAL LINK it will work on Vampire ][ ?!?!!


Samuel Crow

Posts 424
30 Mar 2016 17:28


Thierry Atheist wrote:

According to the Quake specifications on CNET EXTERNAL LINK it will work on Vampire ][ ?!?!!

It says accelerated graphics card for Quake 3.  We'll see how the Gold core stacks up CPU-wise but probably not for the graphics.  Quake 1 and 2 are a little less demanding though.


Daniel Sevo

Posts 299
30 Mar 2016 23:38


When Quake 3 came out I played it on nVidia Riva TNT2 + Pentium II @400Mhz.
And while we are talking 17 year old hardware, the TNT2 still had >2GB/s memory bandwidth, and managed about 250Mpixel/s and 250Mtexels/s fillrate. (This was of course before GeForce so no hardware transform and lightning on the GPU yet. And obviously, pretty optimized OpenGL drivers..)

So.. To expect the Apollo-Core to run Q3 is not realistic.. (Unless some serious other magic is happening behind the scenes...)
(Or maaaybe, if some crazy Wizard rewrites Wazp3d to use some of the more exotic Apollo-Core instructions.. :-)



John William

Posts 563
31 Mar 2016 02:36


Daniel Sevo wrote:

  When Quake 3 came out I played it on nVidia Riva TNT2 + Pentium II @400Mhz.
  And while we are talking 17 year old hardware, the TNT2 still had >2GB/s memory bandwidth, and managed about 250Mpixel/s and 250Mtexels/s fillrate. (This was of course before GeForce so no hardware transform and lightning on the GPU yet. And obviously, pretty optimized OpenGL drivers..)
 
  So.. To expect the Apollo-Core to run Q3 is not realistic.. (Unless some serious other magic is happening behind the scenes...)
  (Or maaaybe, if some crazy Wizard rewrites Wazp3d to use some of the more exotic Apollo-Core instructions.. :-)
 
 

 
  You have me seriously curious now. Can I play this on gold edition of Vampire: EXTERNAL LINK 1009,1026&table=PUBLISH&template=drill?


Thierry Atheist

Posts 644
31 Mar 2016 07:31


Samuel Crow wrote:

Thierry Atheist wrote:

According to the Quake specifications on CNET EXTERNAL LINK it will work on Vampire ][ ?!?!!

It says accelerated graphics card for Quake 3.  We'll see how the Gold core stacks up CPU-wise but probably not for the graphics.  Quake 1 and 2 are a little less demanding though.

Hi Samuel, Daniel,

Okay, let me "rearrange my thoughts" on this:

I saw the crazy wicked memory read/write speeds that the Apollo Core is capable of.

Gunnar says that some (many?) instructions have been reduced by 1 or more clock cycles....

AND the A1200 version, theoretically, will be offered with a faster FPGA as an option.

So, could I say that, an AMIGA specific (S-AGA*) video game of Quake ]I[ quality (not to be misunderstood, but a game similar to Quake 3) with 32 player on the internet capability in say 800*600 is possible, then?

That sounds plausible I think, and HOW COOL IS THAT?

* S-AGA obviously doesn't do the same graphics computations as nVidia and ATI graphics chips.

P.S. To be clear on this subject. I do not expect an Apollo Core now, or at any time in the future to emulate ATI or nVidia graphics cards. However, I am looking forward to games that look like what today's games look like being made on future AMIGA enhanced (and stand alone) Apollo Core'd computers. There's no guarantees about anything to happen at all here, but I know this will come about soon (1 to 3 years). And I know that it could only be done in say 800*600 with a reasonable frame-rate.


Greg Thomas

Posts 24
17 Dec 2018 17:30


How about Team Fortress games derived from the Quake engine?

A close personal friend of mine is the developer of a Team Fortress game called AGR (Attackers Go Red).
EXTERNAL LINK 
The requirements are that it has OpenGL, and a new experimental alternative is Vulkan.

Are there any moves on this front? I'd like to encourage him to port his game to Apollo 68080 Amiga. He's a Quake C programmer, not an assembly programmer.

He does have an Atari ST stored away somewhere. Perhaps he's be willing to get a Vampire for it when they become available.

posts 17