Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!unido!pcsbst!jkh From: jkh@bambam.pcs.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games Subject: Re: Which games really use the amiga's unique abilities? Message-ID: Date: 20 Nov 90 05:35:03 GMT References: <1990Nov14.050933.27731@lavaca.uh.edu> Sender: news@pcsbst.pcs.com Organization: PCS Computer Systems, GmbH Lines: 71 In-reply-to: jet@karazm.math.uh.edu's message of 14 Nov 90 05:09:33 GMT >Get a faster machine. TFH does *realtime texture mapping*, ok? This >is not something for a 68000-based machine to do. I played it on Do you know what you are talking about? "Realtime texture mapping?" Get real! The thing does polygon fills, blits and 2D matrix scaling and rotation here and there. I've seen no graphics so far that suggest that any sort of texture mapping is being done, at least according to the standard Sutherland/Van Dam definition of the term; perhaps you're using your own private definition of "texture mapping" ? As far as "get a faster machine" is concerned, I have to say that this is simply a lame excuse for lazy programming. Say I write a mega-whizzy Common Lisp package, which I sell for big bucks, but don't implement garbage collection because it's too difficult for me or poses special problems in my implementation. I don't tell my customers this. Later, when the inevitable complaints roll in, I tell everyone "There's no problem, you just need to run this on an Alliant with 64MB of memory and fast VM to handle the paging! Sure I sold it to you knowing you had a lowly Sparcstation. I didn't actually intend for you to *use* it there! C'mon!" Ok, maybe I'm being a bit testy with this reply (I *did* have too much coffee this morning :-) and I do now look forward to playing this machine on the A3000 that I *am* going to buy, but I am still going to give this game a BAD review. If the game was too slow/complex to work properly on unaccelerated A500 and A2000's, the company should have bitten the bullet and *said so*. Sure, they would have lost sales, but it also would have been the Honest thing to do, which would have been a refreshing change! Fact is, this game is *too* slow. I'll review it more completely tonite or tomorrow, but the synopsis is: Nice, detailed, begs to be liked, but too damn slow to play. Who cares if it has hundreds of different mission options (with or without fancy flight camera footage) if trying to do the actual flying frustrates you to tears? I'm sorry, but if you have a 500 or 2000 with a lowly :-) 7Mhz 68000, leave this game on the shelf. A number of German game magazines (Powerplay, Kickstart) share this opinion, so I'm not alone in feeling this way. Also, for the record, I think it should be noted that a number of games do VERY nicely on fast, detailed, animation with only a 68000 to rely on. Lucasfilm's mistake was most probably trying to "Sierra port" TFH from a PC development environment with a minimum of work. Blitter? Use the Amiga's abilities? But that would take time. And cost money. Nawww. Release it now. >So just chill. Better yet, find me any PClone-based flight sim that >texture maps plane features (camoflage, insignia), or that keeps track >of *EVERY MOVING OBJECT* (including individual bullets!) via a Again, I seriously doubt that this is "texture mapping" as opposed to scaling and rotation of bitmap objects, but as far as its flight sim abilities vs other PC sims is concerned, I dunno; I don't play with PC's. I have an Amiga. I bought this game for my Amiga. If someone sells me something for a SPECIFIC MACHINE, I don't really need to know or care how well it runs on other machines, do I? If it runs poorly on my machine, it does me no good to know that it runs better elsewhere; this is merely adding insult to injury. If I had somehow hacked a PC binary to run on a stock Amiga (admittedly impossible, but..) and gotten poor performance, I would deserve whatever I got for using the product on a platform for which it was not intended. When the manufacturer does much the same thing, however, it's inexcusable. >engine noise seems to come only from one speaker. Solution: run >the Amiga sound through $5k worth of reverb, delay and equalizing >equipment and play it over 100W of good amp and speakers. :-) I'll keep that in mind. It'll go well with the other $6000 worth of hardware I need to run TFH. Jordan Hubbard