Planet Potion on AmigaOS 4 - Amiga Events - News

Amiga Events : Planet Potion on AmigaOS 4

Posted by kas1e on 2026/6/13 10:04:32 (726 reads) News by the same author

When you no longer expect miracles and everything starts to look boring, sometimes there is thing which may surprise you:

For those who may not know, back in past, the Polish demo group Potion created one of the best Amiga intros ever made called "Planet Potion", which won the Mekka Symposium 2002 in the Amiga 64k Intro competition.

It was originally written for WarpOS (a 68k executable utilizing PPC through powerpc.library) and Warp3D (Warp3DPPC.library in this case) centered on B/CVision-based graphics cards (as some of us think before).

For a long time, the only way to run it was on a real Amiga 1200 or Amiga 4000 equipped with a PPC accelerator and a BVision or CVision graphics card. At least, back in the day, I was only able to run it on my A1200 with a BVision.

Now I have patched it so that any AmigaOS 4 user can run it just like any other demo. It simply works and bring some improvements.

See video in action on my X5000 with RadeonRX and NovaBridge:

To make the demo work you need:

1). https://os4depot.net/share/library/misc/rewarp.lha
Both libraries, powerpc.library 18.1 and Warp3DPPC.library 4.5, must be installed in LIBS:, otherwise the demo will crash.

2). A working Warp3D setup: Nova + NovaBridge for RadeonHD/RadeonRX, or the R200 Warp3D driver for older Radeon 9xxx cards.

Keep in mind this is NOT an official release from Potion.
It is the original version, disassembled and patched to run natively on AmigaOS 4, with several additional improvements and fixes.

## What was improved and fixed:

1. Hunk/BSS/Data relocation fix:
The original intro expected additional hunk data in a way that caused problems on OS4/WarpOS.
Making some additiona hunk copies into extended bss space with redirection pointers fixes major crash/memory layout issue.

2. r10 preservation fix:
Some scene wrappers relied on the incoming r10 register holding the scene pointer: calls made inside those wrappers could
clobber r10 on OS4/WarpOS, so few of them were fixed to save and restore r10 through stack.

3. Embedded native OS4 dbplayer.library

The original intro contained an embedded 68k version of dbplayer.library, which was unpacked and executed from RAM.
It has been replaced with a native OS4 version built specifically for this patch: instead using "blocking" low-level AHI
interfaces, it now uses a high-level device interface approach. The library is also used as a place for native OS4 code
implementing the additional features added to the demo, see below.

4. Compositing and window mode support.

noargs : original fullscreen 640x480 mode.
-win : centered 640x480 window
-comp : The intro detects the current Workbench screen size and opens a matching screen.
-win -comp: Open compositing resiazable window in center.

5. Native OS4 input handling

Added RMB and ESC support for exiting in fullscreen mode.
Added ESC and Close Gadget handling in window mode.
Iconify gadget when in window mode (be it original or compositing based ones)
Added F11 (and mirrored F10) for switching between fullscreen and window mode (works only when running in compositing mode).

6. Fog rendering fix

Fixed a fog-related issue that caused scenes 11 through 22 to render incorrectly.

7. Fixed W3D_DrawLineStrip diffrences between Bvision/Radeon200/NovaBridge

The original intro uses W3D_Lines.linewidth set to 0.0f in some scenes. R200 and BVision/CVision render such lines as if they
were 1.0f wide, while NovaBridge drops them completely and renders nothing. The patch changes the value to 1.0f. This causes no
issues on drivers where the original behaviour already worked, while fixing rendering differences on other drivers.

Tested on:

* Pegasos II + Radeon 9250 (FE Update 3) via original r200 driver
* Pegasos II + Radeon RX (via PCI-to-PCIe bridge, FE Update 3) via NovaBridge
* AmigaOne X1000 + Radeon HD Oland (FE Update 2) via NovaBridge
* AmigaOne X1000 + Radeon HD Verde (FE Update 2) via NovaBridge
* AmigaOne X5000 + RadeonRX Polaris 11 (FE Update 3) via NovaBridge
* Sam460 + Radeon560 (FE Update 2) via NovaBridge

Grab it from os4depot while it hot :

Have fun and never say never !

(c) kas1e, 12.06.2026

The comments are owned by the author. We aren't responsible for their content.

Author	Thread
mufa	Published: 2026/6/13 18:12 Updated: 2026/6/13 18:12
Not too shy to talk Joined: 11/27/2006 From: Poland Comments: 294	Re: Planet Potion on AmigaOS 4 God Job! Super!!! Is there a chance for other Potion group intros?

kas1e	Published: 2026/6/13 18:38 Updated: 2026/6/13 18:38
Home away from home Joined: 09/11/2007 From: Russia Comments: 9638	Potion @Mufa Why not, probably Future Vision is the one worth checking next, as it should be the same engine and same issues

Thematic	Published: 2026/6/21 20:11 Updated: 2026/6/21 20:17
Quite a regular Joined: 02/27/2007 From: Gravity well Comments: 771	Re: Planet Potion on AmigaOS 4 I was back then and there, but I didn't have Phase5 PPC ever, so it's not all that familiar. I looked at OS4Depot this week before but apparently I was not thorough. It mostly works with AmigaOneXE w/ Radeon 9200, similar to the Pegasos II example, but I think my AHI settings are wrong because the regular build does not make it to part two because of crash in AHI unit process (I tried twice). The build that I presume does it more like the original intro makes it to the end but seemingly hangs in the dbplayer section, according to the not persistent system requester. Maybe not blessed, but not cursed! :-)

kas1e	Published: 2026/6/22 1:10 Updated: 2026/6/22 17:26
Home away from home Joined: 09/11/2007 From: Russia Comments: 9638	lowahi @Thematic There 2 binaries, try the one with lowahi (it use direct ahi interface, so while blocking, doing less with system, and can have better luck). ps. and be sure WarpOS,etc is of correct version as stated, it may acts on older in all possible ways.

Thematic	Published: 2026/6/23 14:37 Updated: 2026/6/23 14:37
Quite a regular Joined: 02/27/2007 From: Gravity well Comments: 771	Re: lowahi Yes, lowahi does work better, which I outlined above. Not sure about the libraries, because the archive has Warp3DPPC.library 4.4, instead.