Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop From: sysop@tlvx.UUCP (SysOp) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Game vs Multitasking Summary: Game Message-ID: <326@tlvx.UUCP> Date: 30 May 90 13:01:07 GMT References: <7373@bula.se> Distribution: comp Organization: Temporal Vortex BBS of Jacksonville, Florida Lines: 125 In article , mt87692@tut.fi (Mikko Tsokkinen) writes: > In article <7373@bula.se> bjornk@bula.se (Bjorn Knutsson) writes: > > [...] > > >Okay, that's about that, now I had few other questions (or more specific I > > >would like to hear your opinions on following subjects): > > > > > >1. Should game be HD-installable? > > > > > Yes. If you have a harddisk, you don't want to fool around with .. > > of people who are prepared to BUY your program. You don't want to > > piss them off since they're your (potential) customers. Heh, this is true. > > OK! This seems you all want to have games in your HD. Only if the game will be interesing for many sittings. Otherwise, why waste the hard disk space? (Else, why buy the game at all? :-) In short, if it's worth playing often, then it's worth keeping at hand. > > > >2. Should game multitask? > > > there are few drawbacks: Copy-protection is alot harder to make and you > > > very easily run out of memory. Huh? I don't get it. You want to make sure someone can't run something and accidentally run out of memory? If they do, then they'll (hopefully) know it, and stop what they were trying to do. If your game allocates every thing up front, it shouldn't matter to your game anyway. If it needs dynamic memory, I'm not sure, but someone else can comment and give suggestions. > > > Again, I wouldn't buy a game that won't let me multitask. I don't even want .... > The reason I said copy protection is harder to make I mean this: > - game multitasks so one nice fellow starts Debugger and then the game > which for example asks the words from manual. As soon as the title screen > appears back to debugger and save the whole thing to disk and check the > tasks pc and search the starting point. GREAT words are gone! And if > it asks manual words all the time nobody plays it. > - The only conclusions seems to make parallel dongles. Do you think you can actually write a protection scheme that some determined pirate can't hack? I bet a lot of people would disbelieve. Besides, as someone mentioned in earlier messages, there's a cartridge of some sort that can freeze the machine and let you examine memory, so it sounds like disabling memory will not stop someone anymore, thus voiding your reason. Against normal people, I don't mind a look up manual or a key-disk, where it checks it the first time you load the program (so you don't need to KEEP it in the drive, just put it in once). (I know some don't like that, but I think that's more clean than a dongle.... or a daisy-chain of dongles.) > > And BTW my game contains fractal landscape and complex 3D objects, you > seriously think 68000 can run it and some other programs simultaneusly? > NO WAY MAN! Really? What about something like background printing? I'm sure there are some things that don't take up that much cpu time. If nothing was run in the background, your game should run full-speed. Right? Or does the OS or something steal away that many CPU cycles? > > > >3. Should game detect extra memory/diskdrives/processors? > > > notice the speed increase and add new things to game (BTW my program notices > > > but noone of my friends has 68020/68030 so I dunno how much it helps:-). > > > A program should, of course, use as little memory as possible if it's > > multitasking. Offer the user the ability to cache stuff that is needed ... > In my programs case the speed isn't actyally increasing but you can see > the objects much better. BTW do you really like that I don't use extra > speed and let other programs run is better than extra details? It shouldn't matter how fast the CPU goes. I guess you need to sync to some timer, the screen syncing to the vertical interrupt or something (OK, I'm a bit fuzzy here), but on a faster CPU, it should have a faster screen refresh, but without super-aliens that are double-speed (or whatever). In other words, the pace of the game should be the same, but the screen-refresh should be sped up. Some games do this nicely, some games don't. The ones that don't will not be fun at all on future machines and the ones that are nice will please owners of those machines, because they'll run even better! I remember when the AT's came out, and people would try playing some of the arcade games that they liked to play on the old 8088's.... yeah, right. In short, even on a 6MHz 286, these early games were UNPLAYABLE. I think the clone people have learned a lesson then. I hope we can learn from that too, before we go through more of it. > > > >4. Should game be exitable? > > Floppy users and low mem people will reset their machines anyway thanks to > fracmentation and viruses! But this can be easily provided! I know many commercial games reboot peoples machines, but why? I use just floppies, but I don't reboot after everything I do. Geesh. Also, I have a lot of mem. So, when you reboot to make things easy for "low mem people" you cause extra work for me. Is it that hard for "low mem people" to reboot their machine? I mean, really. And if it's memory fragmentation, once your program properly exits, it should return all memory and resources, so the only way it's fragmented would be if they were multitasking and ran other things (which you said you were going to prevent). > > > --- > > Bjorn Knutsson / USENET: bjornk@bula.se or sunic!sics!bula!bjornk > > Stangholmsbacken 44 / Phone : +46-8-710 7223 > > S-127 40 SKARHOLMEN / "Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the > > S W E D E N / blink again." -- Marvin The Paranoid Android > > MITT > > -- > Mikko "Assembler rules OK!" Tsokkinen > Internet mt87692@tut.fi : UUCP tut!mt87692 : Bitnet mt87692@fintut These are just some thoughts. Please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere! -- Gary Wolfe uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop