Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop From: sysop@tlvx.UUCP (SysOp) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Game vs Multitasking Summary: More on games and multitasking Message-ID: <328@tlvx.UUCP> Date: 1 Jun 90 02:50:59 GMT References: Distribution: comp Organization: Temporal Vortex BBS of Jacksonville, Florida Lines: 110 In article , csuwk@cu.warwick.ac.uk (Ade Lovett) writes: > In article <3871@darkstar.ucsc.edu> davids@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Dave Schreiber) writes: ... > > Of course a 68000 can run it and other programs. It's not like the > > chip is going to explode or something if you try it :-). Your game will > > just run more slowly that it otherwise would (depending on how many tasks ... > > no idea just what my system is. > .... > First, if your game doesn't need to be speedy then, fine, there's no > reason why it shouldn't multitask. However, your average Joe Punter If it is speedy, why can't it multitask? You're assuming that anything running in the background is sucking away all the CPU time. Assumptions can be wrong. > who goes into his local store and decides to buy a game which describes > itself as blinding fast with stunning 3d graphics is going to be a little > annoyed when he finds that because it's multitasking, it actually runs But wait, who's FORCING you to multitask? If you put the disk in and type "Loadgame" when nothing else is running on your machine, why won't it go "blinding fast"? What's slowing it down? The overhead to the OS can't be that great (although, I haven't timed this.. You get your assumption, I have mine. :-). > about as fast as downloading 4Mb of news at 1200 baud. It's all very nice > for people to say "but on my A328732 Turbo-nutter with fuel injection it > won't be a problem", but you have to cater for the majority of machines when > it comes to games -- i.e. the bog-standard A500, 1/2Meg RAM, 7.14Mhz 68k. I'm going to go off-topic for a second, but I have a pet-peeve of my own that I'd like to express. What happens 5 years from now when everyone's got an '020, because they're dirt-cheap (or whatever)? As it is, I have a some old games which won't work with AmigaDOS 1.3. I'd say that enough machines are running 1.3 that you wouldn't want to ignore that market. Yet, to owners of machines with 1.3 in ROM (which includes Amiga 500 owners, as of many months ago), these games are junk, worthless. Sure, at one time they worked on A1000's. Remember when a lot of games wouldn't work with memory expansions? We had to run nofastmem, and that STILL didn't fix most of the games? (GRR! Thank goodness for fixhunk!) (Anyone want to buy Ferrari Formula One, or tell me how to get it to work with the newer stuff?) After all that, WE'RE GONNA DO IT AGAIN! We're going to go through another upgrade of technology, while junking games that really could have worked fine. It really gets tiresome. So, no, I don't think software should cater to one hardware standard, even if for the moment it seems to be the most popular. I think software should support the "standard" first, but support as much as possible, since in the future, there's sure to be another "standard." Today we have games which, as has been posted on USENET, don't work on the upgraded CPU's because of copy protection! Stop the madness now! ;-) Populous may not need the power of an '020, but why won't it work on one?! It won't work on an '010, and that's not a whole lot faster than the base 68000. (I think that even if game developers don't have an '020, they could spend the $10 to $20 and put in an '010 just to stop them from doing things based on funny CPU timing idiosyncracies.) While suspending multitasking may not affect future machines, copy protection and just general "only support the lowest-common-denominator" are bad concepts, if the future is not taken into account. I realize this isn't the topic posted, but is something that I have thought about before, and this topic reminded me of this (almost related) issue. > Consider a game where you've got a 4-bitplane screen which is updated > 10 times a second. Just displaying the screen means you're going to be .... > downloaded on to the HD" ... you want the blit, like, now (man :=) Like another poster said, have it bootable off of floppy. It can be easy to load and won't load any other tasks, for people who can't figure out how to not run other tasks. :-) > > I'm just getting a little p*ssed off about the arrogance of some people. What arrogance? That we want software that doesn't force you to limit the usefulness of your machine/OS to use it? Yeah, I'll be arrogant then! Geeesh! I've been timid that I haven't complained about this in the past. Maybe I should be arrogant in writing to companies... hmmm.... I guess I assume they'll figure out the Right Thing. (There I go, being optomistic again.) Seriously, I don't think it's being arrogant to ask for features. :-) > Sure, you may have a super-fast Amy, but you're the exception not the Acutally, I don't, I just have a 7MHz '010, but I sorta like the idea of having multitasking as an option. If nothing else, I'd like to play something while I wait for my autodialer to log me into a BBS. (The modem is doing most of the work, in that case.) I will also admit that most of the time, I can run a game, and don't need to multitask. I just don't see what forcing it off gets you. You get virtually nothing, and you remove a major selling-point (feature even!) of the machine. > rule, and if you don't cater for the rule, you're not going to get any .... > RAM and an HD and a 68020, and an A500 for testing and playing games). If I wanted to spend the extra $500 ($500? Maybe $550) I could find something more constructive to spend it on. (Like a hard drive? Wait, why bother, I can't put anything on it. ;-) > > aDe .... Disclaimer: oh boy, lots of opinions here! -- Gary "Yet Another Ramble" Wolfe ..uflorida!unf7!tlvx!sysop