Timeline for How much of a performance loss is there when using Amiga OS functions to make a game?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| yesterday | history | became hot network question | |||
| yesterday | answer | added | Polluks | timeline score: -3 | |
| yesterday | comment | added | Tommy | @UncleBod yes, my point was both that and also that I don't think licensing is necessarily the overriding concern given the amount that is physically present in every Amiga. I appreciate I failed to explain myself. | |
| yesterday | answer | added | Brian H | timeline score: 9 | |
| 2 days ago | history | edited | Sep Roland | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
corrected grammar and spelling
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| 2 days ago | comment | added | UncleBod | @Tommy which makes the 'killing the OS' even more confusing, since you only could totally kill kickstart on a A1000. IIRC, there are some differents ideas of where the border goes between an OS and a BIOS/BDOS etc. Is Kickstart a full OS, or is it only the BIOS/BDOS of the Amiga? But that is another question... | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | Tommy | But Workbench isn't really the OS, surely that's Kickstart? As of v1.0 it's 256kb of code, with a bunch of modules in it despite the name sort of implying it's just a boot loader — certainly the kernel and some quality of graphics and audio drivers are in there. | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | UncleBod | One thing to also consider speed wise is: Who was best at writing hardware accessing code? The people who wrote the OS, or the people who wrote the game? | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | UncleBod | Did they really kill the OS, or did they never load it? Per Tofro's comment this is a thing to consider, since having any WorkBench files in the distribution could incur licence fees. | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | tofro | @mnem That was, obviously, also a distribution problem: Game developers wanted a "insert disk, switch on, play" flow - With the OS, that would have introduced a licensing problem, a disk space problem, and would likely have collided with copy protection schemes that were common at that time | |
| Dec 29, 2025 at 5:37 | comment | added | mnem | There's probably some speed penalties of varying degrees using libs vs hitting the hardware directly but I don't think that's the primary reason devs avoided it. The main issue in those days was limited amounts of RAM, and especially CHIP RAM. Just having the OS loaded at all carries a pretty heavy penalty on how much free RAM you have available to run your game. | |
| Dec 29, 2025 at 4:55 | comment | added | Raffzahn | Anywhere between Zero and some. There can't be no answer without a concrete use case as it all depends on game, functions used and power needed. Making a text adventure or Monkey Island run is for sure a different class than porting Xenon 2 from an 8 MHz Atari where it already used every trick there is down to a more than 10% slower Amiga. Not to mention preferences of programmers back then who often simply used direct hardware access because they were used to do so, even if there was no need at all. | |
| Dec 29, 2025 at 3:33 | history | asked | Michael Stum | CC BY-SA 4.0 |