GL4ES Round 4.6: Pangea Software strikes back.

Date 2022/10/1 13:35:51 | Topic: Software News

... First words ...

Hello, everyone ! There are another unexpected releases for GL4ES which deserve your attention.
But before we go further, I need to make a few notes about:

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 NOTE1: Radeon RX users-BE SURE that you set Prefs: PowerManagment to HIGH! Automatic PowerManagment in Radeon RX drivers does not raise resources to
maximum when needed, and as a result, you will have low FPS in most games if your powermanagment is set on optimal, or low, or so values. So
you should set it to HIGH, save, reboot, and check that it is set to HIGH before trying to run games.

!!! Failure to do so will result in a significant drop in FPS !!!

Be also sure, that you did not run anything heavy in background (like Candy).

To test that everything is working correctly, you can always download the Irrlicht Engine from os4depot and test 02.Quake3Map example.
Results when you run an example and do nothing for a few seconds should be:

-- X1000 and some middle RadeonRX like 560 ~220FPS or so.
-- X5000 and some middle RadeonRX like 560 ~250FPS or so
-- SAM460 is pretty much slower (just 35-40 FPS) in terms of 3D due to a) disabled GART and b) broken cache coherency. So, you are on your own.



NOTE2: Minimum requerements for everything as always latest 2D/3D drivers and libraries:

-- Warp3DNova.library >= 54.16
-- ogles2.library >= v3.3
-- RadeonHD >= 3.7 or RadeonRX >= 2.11 (with Prefs:PowerManagment set to HIGH)

Everything is part of Enhancer 2.2. If you are on anything less, you will have all sorts of issues, bugs, crashes, and rendering glitches of all sorts. You are warned!


NOTE3: If you have an x5000, make sure you have not one, but two RAM modules!Or your memory read/write will be twice as slow, and you will lose FPS!
See the dedicated thread here
: x5000 benchmarks / speed up



... Intro ...

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Pangea Software was, and still is, a video game developer. The company began with Apple IIGS games in 1987, then moved to Macintosh
and later to iOS. Pangea found its primary success with a series of 3D games when 3D hardware accelerators first began to appear on
the Macintosh, beginning with Nanosaur in 1998 and extending into the early 2000s.

Lately, Pangea allowed Iliyas Jorio to resurrect and update their games to work on modern computers, and so, those ports were born for
many platforms, including AmigaOS4.

All ports are free of charge! And if you’d like to support the author of ports and further development of Pangea game ports, feel free to
visit him at https://jorio.itch.io and name your own price for any of the games there. The author will greatly appreciate it and will
continue to provide BIG-Endian fixes.


So, what was done for those game ports to make them happen on AmigaOS4 ?

-- used gcc 11.3.0, latest GL4ES, latest SDL2
-- stack cookie of 1mb to avoid possible crashes on running
-- fixed amiga paths , so we use PROGDIR: to save/get game's data
-- big endian fixes (done by author of the code Jorio)
-- small fixes in GL4ES and SDL2 which arise during porting of those games

And that is what we have for today:

... Releases ...

1). Cro-MagRally


The wildest racing game since man invented the wheel!

In Cro-Mag Rally you are a speed-hungry caveman named Brog who races through the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages in primitive vehicles such
as the Geode Cruiser, Bone Buggy, Logmobile, Trojan Horse, and many others. Brog has at his disposal an arsenal of primitive weaponry
ranging from Bone Bombs to Chinese Bottle Rockets and Heat Seeking Homing Pigeons.

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In addition to single-player racing where one player races against the computer, there are also several different multi-player modes
including Tag, Capture the Flag, and Survival. Up to four players can play on a single computer in split-screen mode.

Cro-Mag Rally was released in 2000 by Pangea Software as a Mac exclusive, and it was a pack-in game on Macs that came out around that time
and this is a port of the original OS 9 version of the game. It aims to provide the best way to experience CMR on today’s computers. It is
an “enhanced” version insofar as it fixes bugs that may hinder the experience, and it brings in a few new features in keeping with the spirit
of the original game.

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Some of the new features include:

-- Up to 4 players in split-screen multiplayer (up from 2 in the original).
-- The UI is subtly animated and has been tweaked to be pleasant to look at on modern widescreens.
-- Enable a timer in race modes to hone your racing skills, and keep track of your records in the all-new scoreboard!

Watch this out:

Original Image Youtube video of Cro-Mag Rally gameplay in action on AmigaOS4, 1920x1080 full HD

Grab it from os4depot while it hot !

2). OttoMatic

The year is 1957 and a fleet of flying saucers from Planet X have come to Earth. These saucers are under the control of the evil
Brain Aliens who are abducting helpless human beings to become slaves of The Giant Brain. You are Otto Matic, the robot who is
given the job of saving Earth from the clutches of The Giant Brain from Planet X. You must rescue as many humans as you can while
defeating the Brain Aliens and all of their evil followers. Your mission will take you to strange and fantastic alien worlds which
are often treacherous and will require Otto to perform amazing feats.

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Otto Matic was first released in 2001 as a "Carbon" app for Mac OS 9 and X. It came bundled with some Mac models of that era. The
game was eventually ported to 32-bit Intel Macs, but it stopped working when macOS 10.15 discontinued 32-bit support, and with it,
support for Carbon. Pangea Software allowed Jorio to update the original game to keep it running on today's major desktop platforms.
New version aims to be faithful to the original. Elements of the presentation and handling were slightly updated.


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See how it in action:

Original Image Youtube video of Otto Matic gameplay in action on AmigaOS4, 1920x1080 full HD

Get the game from os4depot.

3). BillyFrontier

Billy Frontier is an arcade style action game with a “cowboys in space” theme. You get to fight in duels, shootouts and stampedes.
It’s the kind of game you’ll want to pick up and play whenever you get that twitch to just shoot something and blow stuff up!


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Billy Frontier was released for PowerPC Macs in 2003 and this is a port of the game to modern operating systems.

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Check this out:

Original Image Youtube video of Billy Frontier gameplay in action on AmigaOS4, 1920x1080 full HD

You can get it from os4depot as always/

... Final words ...


If you like it, you can support the main author of those updated ports. Just go there : https://jorio.itch.io/
and name your own price for any of the games there. It would be much appreciated!

As usual, I want to give a big thank you to:

to Jorio who actualy did all the work and kindly made BIG-ENDIAN adaptations: https://github.com/jorio/
to ultri007 to point out on the sources: https://www.amigans.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8984
to ptitSeb for gl4es: https://github.com/ptitSeb/gl4es/
to Capehill for adding to SDL2 missing function: https://github.com/AmigaPorts/SDL https://github.com/capehill/glsnoop
to Daniel for OpenGL ES2 and all his help with everything: http://www.goldencode.de/
to Hans for Warp3DNova and all his help with everything: https://keasigmadelta.com/
to AEON/AmigaKit because of which we have OpenGL ES2 and Warp3DNova: http://www.a-eon.com/
to others for all the help and tests



This article comes from The Amigans website
https://www.amigans.net

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