Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!linac!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!midway!gargoyle!igloo!miroc!caw From: caw@miroc.Chi.IL.US (Christopher A. Wichura) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Awesome! Now I am Pi**ed! Message-ID: Date: 27 Nov 90 23:36:06 GMT References: <21740@well.sf.ca.us> <9238@mirsa.inria.fr> <1990Nov27.140432.6036@cck.cov.ac.uk> Lines: 87 In article <1990Nov27.140432.6036@cck.cov.ac.uk> csg019@cck.cov.ac.uk (Z*A*P*H*O*D) writes: >In article caw@miroc.Chi.IL.US (Christopher A. Wichura) writes: >>If they followed the rules Commodore has published from DAY ONE, their games >> __WOULD__ work on a 3000. There is no excuse. They chuck >>the OS anyway so all they have to do is follow some basic primitives and >>they would be ok. But they can't even do that. I'm with Mike on this one. >> >Whoa! If you knew anything about the amiga's internals at all you would realise >that it is *NOT* possible to do any of the things we have come to expect, like >50 frames per second scrolling etc. Take a look at the scrolling and graphics But that's exactly my point. They chuck the OS so all they have to do is follow rules set for the hardware. This includes doing things like not using instructions that are piviliaged on anything > than a 68000 as well as not doing any software based timing. The fact that they can't even do this makes them all the worse. >in Sim City for an example... There is an execellent argument for not being >OS friendly. You either leave it slow and bad looking, or fast and good looking. SimCity is OS friendly, multitasks well, and looks/feels good too. I'm not sure I see your point here. >>So everyone out there that bought their Amiga for something other than >>games are the one's in the wrong? You sir, are the one who is in err. If >>all you wanted to do was play cames you'd have been better off buying a >>Genisis and TurboGraphics-16 for the same price (or, more likely, >>significantly less) you payed for your 500. >> >I have never found any need for speed up boards, buy my A1500 is used for >alot more that games playing. Have you ever thought about the vast majority >of people who own A1000's or A500's? I for one would not have bought an amiga >if all it had were OS friendly games still in the dark ages and still using >rastports and scroll_raster functions, all for the sake of being able to run >it on an A3000 with 4 gig's of RAM and a 100mz speed up board. First off, the original poster blatantly said several times that all he wanted to do was play games. In such a case my comment about buying the wrong machine is not out of line. Secondly, while I definately prefer OS friendly stuff, there is no reason why stuff that does chuck the OS shouldn't work on the 3000. See my comments above about poor programming practices. Also, it is possible for a game to be OS friendly in using a hard disk and being able to quit back to workbench/cli, yet when actually playing the game take over the machine. Thus, you can still have your neato nifty optimized graphics __AND__ be friendly to the system. >>You've obviously never seen a hard drive in action. Even with custom >>loaders, floppy hardware is limited to something around 30k/sec reads >>(someone give a more exact figure, please). Meanwhile, I get 800k/sec or >>better reads from my HD. I'd like to see your floppy read an ENTIRE disk >>in just ONE second. >I'd like to see the price of your hard disk! I've got two Quantum drives: the 40 meg that came with my 3000 and a 210 meg one which I got for $995. Sure, you can pick up a Seacrate for a lot cheaper and it will be slower, but I'll still probably break 200k/sec reads and that is considerably faster than a floppy. >I've never known anyone with a HD. It may be because the games that are >written in the UK are geared to the UK market, and most people in the UK >don't have hard drives and speed up boards. Unfortunately, that is the case. Its mostly the US games I've seen that are OS friendly. Take, for example, MicroProse. Their US development has produced games like Pirates!, Red Storm Rising, and M1 Tank Platoon. They are all excellent, and they are all OS friendly/hard drive installable/etc. (The US house is also doing Railroad Tycoon, which is a relief.) On the other hand, you have their UK house who has done things like F-19 Stealth Fighter, which trashes the OS, and only supports one floppy (thats another thing, why can't UK custom dos games recognize a second floppy?). It does, at least, run on an accelerated machine. -=> CAW /////////////////////////////////////|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Christopher A. Wichura |Real programmers don't play tennis, or caw@miroc.chi.il.us (my amiga) |any other sport that requires you to u12401@uicvm.uic.edu (school account)|change clothes. Mountain climbing is |OK, and real programmers wear their Please! Do not send mail to my school|climbing boots to work in case a account unless mail to miroc bounces.|mountain should suddenly spring up in I often do not check uicvm.uic.edu |the middle of the machine room. for periods in excess of a week. | --Unix Fortune \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\|//////////////////////////////////////