The STE version is already available if you want to grab a copy.

retroracing.itch.io

Ha! I know what you mean, it's sometimes a bit too fast for my ageing reflexes. My "justification" for this is that racing games in the 80's were hard and fast, but our younger reflexes could cope with that. 😆

I think it's going to be okay - I've come a long way since those earlier efforts and coming to understand how to get performance out of the Amiga. Still got a couple of tricks up my sleeve but hoping it should be as fast as the STE version for the most part.

This short gameplay segment (I can only show about 30 seconds in Bluesky) is taken from quite a yellow time of day in the 24 hour cycle. That may account for it - there's no deliberate yellowness injected into the Amiga version.

Of course, it'll run at a solid 50FPS on the 1200. But then people will expect a load of additional bells and whistles. My interest here lies mainly in getting the most out of the base chipset.

Ah thank you!

Ha ha! I'm trying my very best not to, but the Copper just presents to many opportunities for eye candy! If it's any consolation, I have a strong suspicion that I won't be able to make the Amiga version run quite as smoothly as the STE version. 😆

Ah thank you! Just trying to avoid taking sides and just using the hardware in each machine to the best of my ability!

Still not 100% I'll be able to get the Amiga version running as smoothly as the STE version. 😉

Thanks! I've discovered that you can get away with a lot of visual imperfections when you hold a reasonably solid 50fps framerate. 😀

Absolutely. I now have tooling to create hardware sprite data from a GIF, so you can expect to see them everywhere I can cram them in. 😆

Also, the Copper on the Amiga allows for a variety of low-cost (in performance terms) "special effects" such as copper gradients.

My gut feeling is that the final Amiga version will drop a few more frames than the STE version but will also be a little nicer to look at. 😀

It's complicated. The STE feels a little faster in terms of raw brute processing and drawing speed. But to counter this, the Amiga allows for a variety of performance-enhancing optimisations such as switching off bitplanes on certain lines, using hardware sprites instead of bobs etc.

(continued...)

I thought for a moment you'd tried to build something that ambitious using the segmented real mode memory model. 😀

I used DJGPP back in the day to build a few 3D engines. Really liked it. But the Watcom compiler produced faster code!

Love it! The texture mapped road and the overall look is so authentic to the era! Is that an old version of Turbo/Borland C I see running at the start?

Real nice early 90s mode 13h vibes there!

Yeah, I've seen a few weird efforts in my time. I think the best overall road algorithm is that used by the Lotus series. Looks "correct" and seems reasonably efficient.

I'd live to take a look at any examples of road engines you've worked on if you have links.

Ah - you must be Lou of "Lou's Pseudo 3d Page" fame, right? 😀

I didn't consider any other approaches to be honest - I was just trying to come up with something that might plausibly allow for 50 frames per second on mid-late 80's hardware! I don't have it look different coming out of curves sadly.

Thanks! Yeah, I guess you might call it an additive curve. Basically, the mathematically cheapest and most efficient on CPU time algorithm I could come up with. 😆

Plenty of lookup tables and as little multiplication and division as I can possibly manage.