Released yesterday, this video explains how the breakthrough sprite scaling hardware in Sega's 1986 arcade driving game OutRun was fully emulated on an Amiga in highly optimized assembly language running at 30 fps in 256 colors. The author released his finished OutRun arcade port a couple months ago for free download, along with commented source code. While there was an officially licensed Sega OutRun Amiga port back in the 80s, it was extremely disappointing compared to the arcade original. This homebrew port of the game is vastly superior and nearly identical to the arcade - which is quite the trick.
This is the third video in a series explaining how this remarkable performance optimization was achieved. Each video stands alone but the first two are also linked along with the game, source and info on how to run it via emulation if you don't have your Amiga handy. The videos are quite accessible to non-programmers and they also show how the original arcade hardware worked, which is interesting as it was the first in Sega's line of "Super Scaler" hardware which soon became legendary in top arcade titles of the late-80s and early 90s (https://sega.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Super_Scaler_games).
This is quite the achievement. If you have more time you always do a better job. It also helps to have a prototype to view the technique used previously and be able to take a better path.
Ports of games were often fixed price and a hard deadline to deliver. Missed deadlines often imposed penalties or non payment all together. Causing perfect to be the enemy of the good.
This is the third video in a series explaining how this remarkable performance optimization was achieved. Each video stands alone but the first two are also linked along with the game, source and info on how to run it via emulation if you don't have your Amiga handy. The videos are quite accessible to non-programmers and they also show how the original arcade hardware worked, which is interesting as it was the first in Sega's line of "Super Scaler" hardware which soon became legendary in top arcade titles of the late-80s and early 90s (https://sega.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Super_Scaler_games).
Ports of games were often fixed price and a hard deadline to deliver. Missed deadlines often imposed penalties or non payment all together. Causing perfect to be the enemy of the good.