yep - its definitely something that wasn't really advertised back in the day but id heard about it - since i have the hardware i decided to try it out myself :)
I remember seeing the tournament running Battle Chess at Vintage Computer Fest East last year! That was really fun to watch (and Peter's a real nice guy, to boot!)
This is the reason I bought an STE 6 years back, to make this video. Well no time and space to do it. Fortunatelly you did it and that is what counts :-D
First of all, why would someone thumb down this video? Someone who hates all tech? About ST, Amiga crossplay, I will try this soon, but what is pathetic is how much Sony and MS screw console buyers not even for the absence of crossplay, but the reduction in split screen and system linkable games. This means that 20 years from now, most multiplayer titles are simply dead on PS4 and Xbox one, while it is still possible on my Xbox 360 and OG Xbox...quite sad really...great video like usual.
Great throw back video. I never understood why cross platform wasn't continued beyond this period. I guess it was just the concole wars didn't allow it. Had many hours playing two player stunt car racer.
I hadn't even thought about cross platform play back in the late 80's/early 90's. This could have been the way to end the Amiga vs. Atari ST war :-J what a missed opportunity!
Back in the late 90s my friend's dad had a computer shop in the UK, I can't remember the console but I was amazed when he let me play my friend on one machine and my friend was on the other one, I think it was Unreal Tournament.
Awesome video! Another great null modem cable supporting game/simulation is "Falcon". I only did that once at a user's group meeting between 2 STs but it also worked with the Amiga and the PC. It would be great if Shaun and other former ST/Amiga developers could release the source code - officially or unofficially - so that these games can be updated for our hobby since there really isn't a commercial market anymore. "ST Ports" to the Amiga could be revised to use the Amiga chipset properly. And on the ST side, especially in terms of the STe and the Falcon030, their custom chips and the Enhanced Joystick Ports could be finally supported. There are "wrappers" being used to hack these features in on their own but getting access to the actual source code would be more ideal... The holy grails on the ST side are hard drive installation, GEM/TOS support of all of the OS variants, 680x0 compatibility for CPUs besides the stock 8Mhz 68000, full GEM support for multiple resolutions beyond 320x200, STe 4096 color palette and DMA Audio, Blitter support, Enhanced Joystick Port support [multiple fire buttons, analog & digital joysticks, paddles, JagPads, spinners, light guns, light pens, 4 to 8 controllers at once using 2 Jaguar Team Taps, etc], Internal Clock support, Falcon030 VGA graphics support and the Motorola 56K DSP, Motorola 68881/68882 FPU support, etc. Did I miss anything? :)
Very fun video to watch! I had some of these games but usually never even realized when the Amiga could hook up to itself. They don't usually make the feature stand out. I think Knights of the Sky is the only one off the top of my head that I remember could network. Not sure if that was just for the Amiga version or if it went to others. In the end it's sort of one of those "it's cool, but who's going to use it?" haha. I could easily do this with my Amiga and DOS machine, but I wonder how many games supported that. I suppose it would give me a reason to actually boot up DOS Battle Chess, something I never thought I'd w ant to do :D
Great vid! It's funny how cross platform gaming is such a foreign concept these days. Considering Xbox One and PS4 are even more similar than the Amiga and ST was, it's completely unacceptable that they don't allow them to communicate with each other.
+Todd's Nerd Cave It's not really about how similar the hardware is, and more to do with how different the operating system is, the backend network and corporate willingness. Sure it's possible, but how much will it cost, and what's in it for the corp.
The only thing that differs in a multi-system setup considering null-modem traffic is the endianness. To enable multiplatform would take only one instruction
A feature that should have been more often in use. I love such ideas! To give everyone the ability to play on their system of choice is just amazing. These days, there's barely a title that allows so other than some XBOX1 games, Rocket League and Minecraft, however, I still hope this concept to take off. Never again console wars! Never again the pain of choosing one system over another just to play a game with your friends! Back then it sure was more exciting as home computers are impressive to this day but sadly also rarely used.
I remember hooking up my PC and Amiga 600 back in the day to play Battle chess against each other. Just to see what would happened. The PC always won. I want a Vampire T-shirt like you've got though. I'm still waiting on the A1200 version. :)
Microsoft didn't allow cross-platform when it was 360 vs PS3, so why would Sony allow it w/ PS4 vs Xbox One when it's so much further ahead? Maybe if Microsoft weren't dicks about it then, Sony wouldn't be dicks about it now.
Lotus III actually was on a single double-sided disk on the ST, but had two disks on the Amiga. The Amiga version also had significantly longer load times.
I knew about the connecting of the Atari ST's and the Amiga's way back in 1992/1993. It just seemed logical that a games publisher for the time, with games that provided network connectivity with games that were on two or more platforms and identical, would work with each other just as two identical machines together would. I think I first learned about it by word of mouth from a friend at school. I had an Atari Mega ST first, followed by an Amiga 500 and then the A1200, but didn't ever connect them because each machine replaced the other subsequently.
Cross Platform gameplay works in the modern day between Windows and Linux. When I used to play Armegatron, alot of people on the track played using Windows, but I used my Linux PC :)
Ahahaha! !! Fantastic video!!! I will surely try it too! Keep that spirit alive. And thanks for this amazing video! .oO(hmm... where did he get the t-shirt?...)
You can cross play the Windows 95, Mac and DOS native versions of Command & Conquer though IPX or null modem, but null modem only allows for 1v1 IPX allows for 4 players simultaneously.
What a great game lotus 2 one of my fave games the amiga 1200 is such a good machine so many good games . My other fave machine is the master system so many good games . Good video
Cross network play between different platforms is possible aslong the game uses the uses the same minimum spec's of each hardware and the server must emulate signals back & forth to each different machine sothat they can understand eachother,so it can be very complicated.
awesome video, could you makd a video explaining how to hook up the AtariST to a vga monitor please, i would love a more insight of your atari ST collection
Back in the late 90's when Amiga 500's were cheap i owned a couple that i had linked up so me and my friends could play Lotus 2. I didnt know you could also link it to an ST. BTW do you know anyone that recaps Amiga's in Australia??
Too bad back in the days the tv sets were so heavy and blocky, otherwise we would had LAN-parties before it was a thing ... oh wait, back then we had no idea this was possible and NO ONE had a null modem cable - dang it.
I remember doing this with Stunt Car racer. There was also a flight simulator that was cross play but that didn't work, and it was my Christmas present and my mate's (I owned the Amiga and ST). We were so hacked off. *I can't remember the title of the game though. *EDIT: it was this one: ruclips.net/video/t-k15me2frM/видео.html
6:25 It's weird how the "PC" in that tourney was a way-too-modern PC (Windows XP) running DOS and Windows 3.1. 6:35 And the monochrome Mac seems to be the only portable there. Very interesting...
The cross platform thing between consoles or consoles and PC is B.S. It's not a hardware problem as everything is protocol based since the dawn of the internet. Your software will use tcp/ip or udp in any case for communication over internet or a local network. It doesn't matter if you're running it on a PC or console as long as the program is the same. I'd understand if there were frequent patches and some consoles didn't get the same ones or if the LAN/online multiplayer part was developed by different teams per console but that's almost never the case. The studio which is responsible for the multiplayer gameplay will compile the game for each relevant console. It's up to either the publishers or the console manufacturers to ban cross-play but we still wonder what the reason is. As an example, you could actually play a lot of Dreamcast games online with PC players ( Quake 3, 4x4 EVO, PSO ...)
Great ! I must try it! After watching the video I wonder ... how do you connect a st to a tft monitor? For the Amiga I have one indivision... but my ¨recently¨ STFM ... only CRT
Hello :) did you play Lotus 2 in NTSC mode or you find ntsc version of the game? I see it is in full screen, in ntsc mode it run ok but when playing 2 players on one amige it have massive slowdown...
Making cross platform network play between computers of different architecture isn't actually hard. It's standard communication over serial port. The hard part is to make ports that are the same over each platform. You can downgrade all version to the power of weakest machine, but it would heavily impact sales. No one would want to buy Atari ST like game for Amiga, when there were games with better graphics, music and framerate. There's a middle ground. You just need to make game logic the same on every platform. Today it's very easy. Back then it wasn't, since game logic back then was tied with frame rate. Alternatively you can just send the overall state of the game. Lotus was very simple game, sending car position was enough. Game could run independently on each computer and the only condition was the same car velocity, frame rate could differ. With turn based games it was even simpler. All other games, especially those that have many interactions between players with collision or simple physics, were impossible to make cross-platform without sacrifice in graphics. There was also very low demand for a network play back then. This feature won't sell games at that time. Multiplayer networking gained it's popularity on PCs, because it was very easy to setup in office, school and other places with networked computers. Today, the problem with no cross-platform gameplay on consoles is because it is bad for sales. Last gen, PS3 had cross-platform with PC in Portal 2. Microsoft wasn't interested at all. This generation Microsoft is ok with cross-platform and Sony isn't. The answer is simple. Snowball effect. When one console is more popular, you buy because your friends have it. Last gen X360 was selling better for the most part, this gen PS4 is winning by huge margin. Only Steam is against dividing players and fighting on exclusives.
Unfortunately for your argument, the fact is that for a long period of time editors did indeed make the same games for the ST and Amiga, something that is even mentioned explicitly in the video (look for "ST port"). Until it was clear that the Amiga actually outsold the ST, the editors had no problem whatsoever producing low quality games for the machine. Another issue with this argument is that it does not really matter how the games look on each machine as long as they can exchange information at predictable time intervals, something that both the ST and Amiga could do using timer based interruptions. In essence, link mode games were possible in the majority of scenarios and the only reason they were not always implemented simply comes to the short-sightedness of editors. Those who cared (Magnetic Fields, Geoff Grammond and others) implemented it, the rest didn't. :)
You are wrong in almost everything. Amiga hardware was very quickly adopted, because older hardware like C64, NES or arcade boards all had supporting chipsets with similar philosophy. Atari ST was rather different kind of machine, it relied heavily on CPU itself, like Atari 2600, or macintosh. When you are making Amiga game, you can do many things in hardware, like scrolling. On Atari ST you have to use CPU power to manually update every pixel, instead of just updating scroll offset. NES had many games working in 60 FPS, even if console don't have enough power or memory bandwidth to update whole screen at once with that frame rate. It had hardware scrolling feature, and code update only edges of screen. You can see that update in Mario 3 for example, since this game uses horizontal and vertical scrolling at the same time, and there's no buffer to hide that update, like there is with games that scroll only horizontal or vertical at one time. CPU on Atari ST had to do many memory operations to draw screen. Amiga had Blitter that could do that without wasting CPU cycles. That way there was way more processing power for game logic and allowed for games to run at 30 or 60 frames, which was impossible on Atari ST if there was full screen scrolling involved. This alone made crossplatform over Atari ST and Amiga near impossible. Many games had way more differences in gameplay. It was very specific for that era that every port was unique in some way. Some games shared only name and overall setting over different platforms. Graphics was different, gameplay was different, and even levels were different in some rare cases. At some point Atari ST were downgraded to low-end ports of Amstrad CPC or other 8-bit ports, because Amiga or DOS games couldn't fit on that computer anymore.
Well, you seem to have completely misunderstood what I said. You ought to make sure you have properly read something before you start replying to it. I perfectly know how the Amiga is structured thank you I coded for the machine in C and assembly language in the 80-90s using Commodore's developer docs (the RKM) and I never said anything about that in my comment. It is simply a fact that the ST, having beat the Amiga 500 to market (1985 instead of 1987 for the 500) was the lead platform for all games during most of the late 80s and that Amiga ports made by publishers were lazy conversion of the ST original which did not use the custom chips in any way. This is why the term "ST port"is derogatory in the Amiga community to this day. Because these ports only use the CPU and no hardware scrolling, no sprites, no blitter, no copper, no nothing. It is only around 1989 that some Amiga exclusives started to emerge and that it became clear to publishers that ST sales had fallen while Amiga ones were rising, only then did the machine become the lead platform. Yes, the Amiga is vastly superior, this should not even be subject to debate. But that was not my point.
hello! I was hopping you could tell me what dell screen you are using and how they are connected to the Amiga and ST? I just got my first 1200 and I am a bit stumped
From my understanding, the ST video out had some really weird timing (something to do with overscan) which is why the screen is shifted, and that it needs correcting to make it work correctly.
I am actually more concerned about the Amiga screen not being shown entirely as when is the case when running a PAL game on an NTSC machine without properly forcing the machine in PAL mode with Enhancer. This is particularly visible on the Stunt Car Racer segment where the bottom of the game display is not visible on screen.
Yeah I think it's horseshit you can't play between platforms, for some games the user base could be low enough per platform that pooling them together is the only recourse, especially those large investment MMOs. As far as getting an Atari ST port on Amiga, I think network gaming between them is a nice consolidation for the drawbacks of cross platform development IE. the ST being weaker.
Hey there. How did you manage to reach out to an original developer? I've been wanting to contact a developer from way back in the apple 2 days, but all I have is a name.
Hello Search for a long time a suitable monitor for mine A1200. Can you please write me the name, which can be seen in your video (DELL ....) Thank you
Haha I love ST fanboys. The only things they have to throw at the Amiga is irrelevant stuff like slightly longer loading times and drive clicking pmsl...really? What a drag that must have been for Amiga users. They probably put up with it for the fact that the Amiga is superior in every other way to the ST, so I wouldn't worry about it.
+thecouchtripper We were having respectful communication until you came along. You added nothing to the communication except your bile. If you would like to be included in the exchange, please let me know what it was that offended you so much and I will revise what was written.
Kokos Kokos Hey, don't be dissing the Atari ST. It was pretty powerful for the time; the only problem was the AY sound chip, which sounded pretty primitive.
Piotr Kochanek no, AMIGA and Atari ST/STE were equal, both had their advantages. The Atari STE and AMIGA had Blitter Chip, 4096 Colours, DAC. The Atari had MIDI and the AMIGA could display 16 Colours more on screen by requiring eating up a little bit more memory, in the end both platforms were equals in many ways.
haha . you can say everything but peoples knows AMIGA is better. in games, graphics, sound everything. show me one game on atari st what 's better than on AMIGA....(maybe you will find few but what it is....)
yes i also use the rgb 2 vga adapter i got when i bought my A1200 and commodore monitor. that monitor did die but the adapter i still use today. also to hook it up to my 42 inch LG television whitch has vga in. i presume the monitor i had was a 1942 if i am not mistaken. i have some 1084 's also but those wont die. haha
Fascinating! I had no idea you could link up an Amiga and ST like this. It's good that you could though.
And great video!
yep - its definitely something that wasn't really advertised back in the day but id heard about it - since i have the hardware i decided to try it out myself :)
i only thought amiga to amiga. (same systems) nice. did it with lotus and stuntcarracer.
I remember seeing the tournament running Battle Chess at Vintage Computer Fest East last year! That was really fun to watch (and Peter's a real nice guy, to boot!)
Played f16 at a friend's house in the 80s. My ST, he's Amiga and a home made null modem cable.
Way back when I had an ST and my friend had an Amiga, we used to play Stunt Car Racer via null modem link - was great fun head to head racing!
I know of an Atari ST girl who married an Amiga 500 guy. It's like a Romeo and Juliet null modem story.
Oh I bet they null modemed a lot.
@@akkudakkupl They null modemmed so much the ended up having a NullPointerException.
This is the reason I bought an STE 6 years back, to make this video. Well no time and space to do it. Fortunatelly you did it and that is what counts :-D
Vincent GR thanks Vince !
First of all, why would someone thumb down this video? Someone who hates all tech? About ST, Amiga crossplay, I will try this soon, but what is pathetic is how much Sony and MS screw console buyers not even for the absence of crossplay, but the reduction in split screen and system linkable games. This means that 20 years from now, most multiplayer titles are simply dead on PS4 and Xbox one, while it is still possible on my Xbox 360 and OG Xbox...quite sad really...great video like usual.
Great throw back video. I never understood why cross platform wasn't continued beyond this period. I guess it was just the concole wars didn't allow it. Had many hours playing two player stunt car racer.
These your videos just keep getting better and better m8 ! Kudos !!
really appreciate the feedback - thank you sir!
:) your welcome Sir
Pinnacle of my week. Cheers!
Lovely little experiment, I didn't remember this being a thing at the time
I hadn't even thought about cross platform play back in the late 80's/early 90's. This could have been the way to end the Amiga vs. Atari ST war :-J what a missed opportunity!
Cool Vampire's T-shirt 😎👍🏻. counting the minutes for the launch of the Vampire V4. Another great video, thanks 👏🏻👏🏻
I had no glue, you could link a Atari ST and a Amiga together. Great video!!! 💪🙂👍
glue *trollface*
Well it's a good thing you had no glue,glueing them together would not of worked.
Had both Amiga and st and never knew this existed...fantastic info thank you.
Back in the late 90s my friend's dad had a computer shop in the UK, I can't remember the console but I was amazed when he let me play my friend on one machine and my friend was on the other one, I think it was Unreal Tournament.
Awesome video! Another great null modem cable supporting game/simulation is "Falcon". I only did that once at a user's group meeting between 2 STs but it also worked with the Amiga and the PC. It would be great if Shaun and other former ST/Amiga developers could release the source code - officially or unofficially - so that these games can be updated for our hobby since there really isn't a commercial market anymore. "ST Ports" to the Amiga could be revised to use the Amiga chipset properly. And on the ST side, especially in terms of the STe and the Falcon030, their custom chips and the Enhanced Joystick Ports could be finally supported. There are "wrappers" being used to hack these features in on their own but getting access to the actual source code would be more ideal... The holy grails on the ST side are hard drive installation, GEM/TOS support of all of the OS variants, 680x0 compatibility for CPUs besides the stock 8Mhz 68000, full GEM support for multiple resolutions beyond 320x200, STe 4096 color palette and DMA Audio, Blitter support, Enhanced Joystick Port support [multiple fire buttons, analog & digital joysticks, paddles, JagPads, spinners, light guns, light pens, 4 to 8 controllers at once using 2 Jaguar Team Taps, etc], Internal Clock support, Falcon030 VGA graphics support and the Motorola 56K DSP, Motorola 68881/68882 FPU support, etc. Did I miss anything? :)
Wow... just wow... and an excellent video!
Thanks for this video, I had no idea you could pit different PCs against each other. That's so cool.
Tell Shaun 'Thanks!' I loved the Lotus series!
Very fun video to watch! I had some of these games but usually never even realized when the Amiga could hook up to itself. They don't usually make the feature stand out. I think Knights of the Sky is the only one off the top of my head that I remember could network. Not sure if that was just for the Amiga version or if it went to others. In the end it's sort of one of those "it's cool, but who's going to use it?" haha. I could easily do this with my Amiga and DOS machine, but I wonder how many games supported that. I suppose it would give me a reason to actually boot up DOS Battle Chess, something I never thought I'd w ant to do :D
amazing video, awasome idea to battle between these two machines!
I had a go at connecting my ATARI 520TSfm and my A600 together for some 2 player madness. It worked really well, I was impressed..
Very interesting and fun to watch, thanks!!
Great vid! It's funny how cross platform gaming is such a foreign concept these days. Considering Xbox One and PS4 are even more similar than the Amiga and ST was, it's completely unacceptable that they don't allow them to communicate with each other.
no kidding. i heard rumors that they are finally going to be working together on cross play but i just cant see it happening ever
+Todd's Nerd Cave It's not really about how similar the hardware is, and more to do with how different the operating system is, the backend network and corporate willingness. Sure it's possible, but how much will it cost, and what's in it for the corp.
Rocket League and PS4 had crossplay with PC before the Minecraft thing happended.
The only thing that differs in a multi-system setup considering null-modem traffic is the endianness. To enable multiplatform would take only one instruction
A feature that should have been more often in use.
I love such ideas! To give everyone the ability to play on their system of choice is just amazing.
These days, there's barely a title that allows so other than some XBOX1 games, Rocket League and Minecraft, however, I still hope this concept to take off.
Never again console wars! Never again the pain of choosing one system over another just to play a game with your friends!
Back then it sure was more exciting as home computers are impressive to this day but sadly also rarely used.
I remember hooking up my PC and Amiga 600 back in the day to play Battle chess against each other. Just to see what would happened. The PC always won.
I want a Vampire T-shirt like you've got though. I'm still waiting on the A1200 version. :)
Lotus is so addictive. I love that game.
And btw - Microsoft are talking to Sony about cross platform interaction atm. =O
yep - ive heard about that but i put money on Sony refusing to do it . i hope im wrong
Microsoft didn't allow cross-platform when it was 360 vs PS3, so why would Sony allow it w/ PS4 vs Xbox One when it's so much further ahead? Maybe if Microsoft weren't dicks about it then, Sony wouldn't be dicks about it now.
Lotus III actually was on a single double-sided disk on the ST, but had two disks on the Amiga. The Amiga version also had significantly longer load times.
I knew about the connecting of the Atari ST's and the Amiga's way back in 1992/1993. It just seemed logical that a games publisher for the time, with games that provided network connectivity with games that were on two or more platforms and identical, would work with each other just as two identical machines together would. I think I first learned about it by word of mouth from a friend at school. I had an Atari Mega ST first, followed by an Amiga 500 and then the A1200, but didn't ever connect them because each machine replaced the other subsequently.
why did you get Atari Mega ST before Amiga 500 then Amiga 1200?
Cant belive it we allredy had Crossplatform Gaming in th 80's
Never knew about this, impressive.
Another one for tonight. Sleep can wait.
Cross Platform gameplay works in the modern day between Windows and Linux. When I used to play Armegatron, alot of people on the track played using Windows, but I used my Linux PC :)
BZFlag is another good multiplayer game.
Excellent video!
Does it also work with Lotus 1-2-3 on IBM?
Did this in the 90's with my mate on Lotus II and Stunt Car Racer.. the cable back then cost about £20 though.. and had to send off a cheque to get it
That's awesome.
Wow cross platform networked gaming!
Did this with Lotus & Lemmings back in the day.
Commodore Amiga looks buttery smooth while Atari ST struggles as hell xD
Great video mate!! Can you share some info on those DELL monitors? Model? Those Dells support native 15khz RGB?
Ahahaha! !! Fantastic video!!! I will surely try it too! Keep that spirit alive. And thanks for this amazing video! .oO(hmm... where did he get the t-shirt?...)
thanks Pedro..love the T-Shirt ..also maybe a sign of some new things from me soon ? ;)
Thats awesome !!!
wow cool that this was possible, but the Amiga clearly has smoother graphics in the Lotus Challenge game, so it wouldn't be a fair race.
And the ST clearly has a smoother frame rate in Stunt Car Racer
You can cross play the Windows 95, Mac and DOS native versions of Command & Conquer though IPX or null modem, but null modem only allows for 1v1 IPX allows for 4 players simultaneously.
What a great game lotus 2 one of my fave games the amiga 1200 is such a good machine so many good games . My other fave machine is the master system so many good games . Good video
Wow. I never knew that you do crossplay for two different platforms.
Cross network play between different platforms is possible aslong the game uses the uses the same minimum spec's of each hardware and the server must emulate signals back & forth to each different machine sothat they can understand eachother,so it can be very complicated.
I know back in the late PS2 and early 360 era there was an MMO that allowed cross play between PC, PS2 and Xbox 360.
Really interesting!
Dont forget the game Battle Duel which is PC/Amiga network play compatible
I clicked for the Lotus Turbo challenge porn
tt racer was 8 player with zx interface 1 networking!
Were those bad boys connected to DVI? Cool computers for sure..
awesome video, could you makd a video explaining how to hook up the AtariST to a vga monitor please, i would love a more insight of your atari ST collection
Back in the late 90's when Amiga 500's were cheap i owned a couple that i had linked up so me and my friends could play Lotus 2. I didnt know you could also link it to an ST. BTW do you know anyone that recaps Amiga's in Australia??
Played Stunt Car Racer and Lotus with my nephew with a cable going through the wall
Too bad back in the days the tv sets were so heavy and blocky, otherwise we would had LAN-parties before it was a thing ... oh wait, back then we had no idea this was possible and NO ONE had a null modem cable - dang it.
Falcon also had the cross platform link implemented
Nice video
I remember doing this with Stunt Car racer. There was also a flight simulator that was cross play but that didn't work, and it was my Christmas present and my mate's (I owned the Amiga and ST). We were so hacked off. *I can't remember the title of the game though. *EDIT: it was this one: ruclips.net/video/t-k15me2frM/видео.html
6:25 It's weird how the "PC" in that tourney was a way-too-modern PC (Windows XP) running DOS and Windows 3.1.
6:35 And the monochrome Mac seems to be the only portable there. Very interesting...
i noticed that too - i guess you could run DOSBox and Battlechess and use a USB -> Serial adapter to accomplish this on a modern PC
Aldo, did you have your Vampire shirt printed yourself or purchased it online?
The cross platform thing between consoles or consoles and PC is B.S. It's not a hardware problem as everything is protocol based since the dawn of the internet. Your software will use tcp/ip or udp in any case for communication over internet or a local network. It doesn't matter if you're running it on a PC or console as long as the program is the same. I'd understand if there were frequent patches and some consoles didn't get the same ones or if the LAN/online multiplayer part was developed by different teams per console but that's almost never the case. The studio which is responsible for the multiplayer gameplay will compile the game for each relevant console.
It's up to either the publishers or the console manufacturers to ban cross-play but we still wonder what the reason is.
As an example, you could actually play a lot of Dreamcast games online with PC players ( Quake 3, 4x4 EVO, PSO ...)
I linked 2 Amigas and played "FirePower" or "Red Baron" (If I know it right, it is a couple of Years ago).
Great ! I must try it!
After watching the video I wonder ... how do you connect a st to a tft monitor?
For the Amiga I have one indivision... but my ¨recently¨ STFM ... only CRT
Connect a PAL Atari STf or STe (not FM) and connect it to a 4/3 CRT TV with a SCART input with the RGB 'DIN->SCART' cable bundled with the computer.
Hello :) did you play Lotus 2 in NTSC mode or you find ntsc version of the game? I see it is in full screen, in ntsc mode it run ok but when playing 2 players on one amige it have massive slowdown...
sweet!
I had irl Battle Chess. My friend gets pissed off when he loses.
You selected "Amiga plays red" and "Modem plays red" on the Amiga. Is that right?
Is there some list of compatible games? I was aware of most mentioned already.
you can clearly see while watching lotus how much better the amiga was
Damn, Atari and Commodore were more open to cross platform gaming than sony
Making cross platform network play between computers of different architecture isn't actually hard. It's standard communication over serial port.
The hard part is to make ports that are the same over each platform. You can downgrade all version to the power of weakest machine, but it would heavily impact sales. No one would want to buy Atari ST like game for Amiga, when there were games with better graphics, music and framerate.
There's a middle ground. You just need to make game logic the same on every platform. Today it's very easy. Back then it wasn't, since game logic back then was tied with frame rate. Alternatively you can just send the overall state of the game.
Lotus was very simple game, sending car position was enough. Game could run independently on each computer and the only condition was the same car velocity, frame rate could differ. With turn based games it was even simpler.
All other games, especially those that have many interactions between players with collision or simple physics, were impossible to make cross-platform without sacrifice in graphics.
There was also very low demand for a network play back then. This feature won't sell games at that time. Multiplayer networking gained it's popularity on PCs, because it was very easy to setup in office, school and other places with networked computers.
Today, the problem with no cross-platform gameplay on consoles is because it is bad for sales. Last gen, PS3 had cross-platform with PC in Portal 2. Microsoft wasn't interested at all. This generation Microsoft is ok with cross-platform and Sony isn't.
The answer is simple. Snowball effect. When one console is more popular, you buy because your friends have it. Last gen X360 was selling better for the most part, this gen PS4 is winning by huge margin.
Only Steam is against dividing players and fighting on exclusives.
Unfortunately for your argument, the fact is that for a long period of time editors did indeed make the same games for the ST and Amiga, something that is even mentioned explicitly in the video (look for "ST port"). Until it was clear that the Amiga actually outsold the ST, the editors had no problem whatsoever producing low quality games for the machine.
Another issue with this argument is that it does not really matter how the games look on each machine as long as they can exchange information at predictable time intervals, something that both the ST and Amiga could do using timer based interruptions. In essence, link mode games were possible in the majority of scenarios and the only reason they were not always implemented simply comes to the short-sightedness of editors.
Those who cared (Magnetic Fields, Geoff Grammond and others) implemented it, the rest didn't. :)
You are wrong in almost everything. Amiga hardware was very quickly adopted, because older hardware like C64, NES or arcade boards all had supporting chipsets with similar philosophy. Atari ST was rather different kind of machine, it relied heavily on CPU itself, like Atari 2600, or macintosh. When you are making Amiga game, you can do many things in hardware, like scrolling. On Atari ST you have to use CPU power to manually update every pixel, instead of just updating scroll offset.
NES had many games working in 60 FPS, even if console don't have enough power or memory bandwidth to update whole screen at once with that frame rate. It had hardware scrolling feature, and code update only edges of screen. You can see that update in Mario 3 for example, since this game uses horizontal and vertical scrolling at the same time, and there's no buffer to hide that update, like there is with games that scroll only horizontal or vertical at one time.
CPU on Atari ST had to do many memory operations to draw screen. Amiga had Blitter that could do that without wasting CPU cycles. That way there was way more processing power for game logic and allowed for games to run at 30 or 60 frames, which was impossible on Atari ST if there was full screen scrolling involved. This alone made crossplatform over Atari ST and Amiga near impossible.
Many games had way more differences in gameplay. It was very specific for that era that every port was unique in some way. Some games shared only name and overall setting over different platforms. Graphics was different, gameplay was different, and even levels were different in some rare cases. At some point Atari ST were downgraded to low-end ports of Amstrad CPC or other 8-bit ports, because Amiga or DOS games couldn't fit on that computer anymore.
Well, you seem to have completely misunderstood what I said. You ought to make sure you have properly read something before you start replying to it.
I perfectly know how the Amiga is structured thank you I coded for the machine in C and assembly language in the 80-90s using Commodore's developer docs (the RKM) and I never said anything about that in my comment.
It is simply a fact that the ST, having beat the Amiga 500 to market (1985 instead of 1987 for the 500) was the lead platform for all games during most of the late 80s and that Amiga ports made by publishers were lazy conversion of the ST original which did not use the custom chips in any way.
This is why the term "ST port"is derogatory in the Amiga community to this day. Because these ports only use the CPU and no hardware scrolling, no sprites, no blitter, no copper, no nothing.
It is only around 1989 that some Amiga exclusives started to emerge and that it became clear to publishers that ST sales had fallen while Amiga ones were rising, only then did the machine become the lead platform.
Yes, the Amiga is vastly superior, this should not even be subject to debate.
But that was not my point.
hello! I was hopping you could tell me what dell screen you are using and how they are connected to the Amiga and ST?
I just got my first 1200 and I am a bit stumped
how did you connected those machines (Amiga and ST) to those LCD monitors?
How did you get each system to work with those Dell monitors?
Was the black border on the st side just the monitor not displaying full screen?
yes - the ST has this side effect on LCD displays, at least for me
Couldn't you adjust the screen with the menu to stretch it out? What model are those monitors?
From my understanding, the ST video out had some really weird timing (something to do with overscan) which is why the screen is shifted, and that it needs correcting to make it work correctly.
I am actually more concerned about the Amiga screen not being shown entirely as when is the case when running a PAL game on an NTSC machine without properly forcing the machine in PAL mode with Enhancer.
This is particularly visible on the Stunt Car Racer segment where the bottom of the game display is not visible on screen.
Yeah I think it's horseshit you can't play between platforms, for some games the user base could be low enough per platform that pooling them together is the only recourse, especially those large investment MMOs.
As far as getting an Atari ST port on Amiga, I think network gaming between them is a nice consolidation for the drawbacks of cross platform development IE. the ST being weaker.
Hey there. How did you manage to reach out to an original developer? I've been wanting to contact a developer from way back in the apple 2 days, but all I have is a name.
He may probably be too old to know what an email is.. lol
Hello
Search for a long time a suitable monitor for mine
A1200.
Can you please write me the name, which can be seen in your video (DELL ....)
Thank you
lotus was far smoother on the amiga!
What is the model of this monitor?
we do have cross for final fantasy xiv, sony killed cross on any other game
You say blitter on amiga but I've got a blitter on my atari
Yeah but you would have to wait for the Amiga's longer load times zzzz
Let's not forget the annoying drive click unless you ran a program to turn it off :-)
Yeah, fancier sounds and graphics take longer to load, go figure.
JohnnyReb1976 - Along with slower frame rates yeah ?
As is easily observable in this very video, with Lotus 2 running side by side, yeah?
Haha I love ST fanboys. The only things they have to throw at the Amiga is irrelevant stuff like slightly longer loading times and drive clicking pmsl...really? What a drag that must have been for Amiga users. They probably put up with it for the fact that the Amiga is superior in every other way to the ST, so I wouldn't worry about it.
It Amitari lol!
*parallel ports 😊
AMIGA FOR THE WIN, ATARI ST IN THE BIN!
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat....
Amiga + Atari (meh) = blasphemy!
I disagree, it's just yet another way to show that the Amiga was better :-)
+Manoj Kumar You mean the ST had excellent MIDI software playing through MIDI hardware, because the ST audio was not good.
+thecouchtripper We were having respectful communication until you came along. You added nothing to the communication except your bile. If you would like to be included in the exchange, please let me know what it was that offended you so much and I will revise what was written.
Manoj Kumar check out Amiga Vs Atari Frontier intro comparison. Atari music rocks.. xD
Kokos
Kokos Hey, don't be dissing the Atari ST. It was pretty powerful for the time; the only problem was the AY sound chip, which sounded pretty primitive.
This video it’s fake! Amiga 1200 loose with Atari ST ?! It’s not posible! 😜🤦🏻♂️🤣
One thing I learned about these systems because I still own both is that the Amiga is dog sh!t.
SACRILEGE!
AMIGA is thousand times better than atari st.
Piotr Kochanek no, AMIGA and Atari ST/STE were equal, both had their advantages. The Atari STE and AMIGA had Blitter Chip, 4096 Colours, DAC. The Atari had MIDI and the AMIGA could display 16 Colours more on screen by requiring eating up a little bit more memory, in the end both platforms were equals in many ways.
haha . you can say everything but peoples knows AMIGA is better. in games, graphics, sound everything. show me one game on atari st what 's better than on AMIGA....(maybe you will find few but what it is....)
Wings of Death, Captain Blood and so on...
How did you connect the 1200 to that modern monitor, I've still got my 1200 but not used it since about 1995, has it been modded in some way
Some modern LCD's sync to 15KHz so they work out the box, just need a RGB to VGA adaptor.
yes i also use the rgb 2 vga adapter i got when i bought my A1200 and commodore monitor. that monitor did die but the adapter i still use today. also to hook it up to my 42 inch LG television whitch has vga in. i presume the monitor i had was a 1942 if i am not mistaken. i have some 1084 's also but those wont die. haha