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From: mt87692@tut.fi (Mikko Tsokkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Game vs Multitasking
Message-ID: <MT87692.90May29030535@uikku.tut.fi>
Date: 29 May 90 00:05:35 GMT
Sender: News@tut.fi
Distribution: comp
Organization: Tampere Univ. of Technology, Finland.
Lines: 72


 Hi,

 A few days ago I asked about the low memory of Amiga. Well I later noticed
that i(pc) and i(a0) are as fast addressing modes as $short, so I think
a can use i(pc) and put the variables in the same hunk as code. i(a0) isn't
too good because it eats one address register and almost all working in my
program are in registers for speed.

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?
   - IMHO I think this is quite useless because many HD drivers eat chip-memory
     and you will run out of it especially on 512k chip-ram machines. And you
     can make Disk-based routines lot more faster and more data in one disk 
     which helps people without HD.

2. Should game multitask?
   - IMHO I at least don't want to play those shit games with multitasking on.
     But if we are talking about for example following "Multitasking": Game
     disables interrupts while playing but for example if you pause it it will
     turn interrupts back on. I would like to make my game work like this. But
     there are few drawbacks: Copy-protection is alot harder to make and you
     very easily run out of memory.

3. Should game detect extra memory/diskdrives/processors?
   - IMHO memory is must because it makes the game lot more playable and HD-people
     don't argue about the loading speed. Extra drives eat memory which causes
     serious trouble in 512k machines. Processors are useless in simple scroll
     games because they at least should be using the blitter in nasty-mode so 
     processors don't speed it up too much. Nowadays the games also must run on
     all motorola 680x0 family thanks to A3000. But by detecting I mean really 
     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:-). 

4. Should game be exitable?
   - IMHO exitable games are harder to protect and you can't destroy anything in memory
     and you will end up again without enough memory:-(     

 And I would like also to know how many of you people really play games while doing
something else? If you do, do you really like those every now and then updating
games with poor graphics (thanks to memory shortage).

 I provide some examples what I think of games just for fun:  

  - Datastorm   	-fast'craze action but too easy
  - Xenon		-too much button hitting and quite hard 
			(took almost week to complete)
  - Xenon II		-great but easy
  - Blood Money 	-stupid hit wall and die game
  - Interceptor 	-great but too easy to complete
  - Falcon		-too much buttons
  - Dungeon Master	-great puzzles and good graphics and nice gameplay
  - Simcity		-boring just let it run 20+ hours and buy everything
  - Elite		-great but how to get missions? Gets boring without 'em.
  - Test Drive I&II	-slow and unplayable
  - Stunt Car Racer	-good gameplay with two computers bit boring alone
  - Populous		-computer has too much advantage
  - Hybris		-good but easy
  - Battle aquadron	-good but easy
 
It's 0300 am I think I go now. Bye! 

 MITT




--
Mikko "Assembler rules OK!" Tsokkinen
Internet mt87692@tut.fi : UUCP tut!mt87692 : Bitnet mt87692@fintut