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From: ccastcr@prism.gatech.EDU (Russo, Chris A.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Risk
Keywords: color, graphics, sound, harsh
Message-ID: <17578@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 26 Nov 90 23:01:21 GMT
References: <15722@reed.UUCP>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 52

orpheus@reed.UUCP (Aaron Semplers) writes:

>     I am quite certain that the Mac is capable of the graphics that
>you describe. I am not familiar with the Amiga, but I do have some
>degree of experience programming the Macintosh. We have the technology.

  I hate to be negative about a machine I love so much, but this just 
isn't the case.  The Mac doesn't have a little thing called a graphics
coprocessor.  The Amiga does.(not to mention a sound coprocessor. well,
I guess I just did, but anyway)  I recall this one game for the amiga
called 'Airborne Ranger', I think.  I didn't watch too much of it, but
what I did see looked more like a movie than a game.  The sounds were
rich, smooth and stereo.  And the graphics!  In one part of this game,
your character is practically the height of the screen.  While he's
running, the _entire_ screen show's a campground that scrolls by.

> {1} Most of the tweaks that write really good games are using classic
>Macs, at school, with no practical color or stereo capabilities anyway.
>It makes it easy, pretty fast, and lowers the common denominator.

   That's not true either.  I've tried to do some serious animation on
my color mac.  I know what I'm doing, and I've gotten my bit copying
algorithms down to a minimum(more or less).  And yet, these algorithms
just aren't enough to manipulate large objects.  On one game I wrote,
only 4 objects are animated at a time(4 pixels a jump).  This looks
smooth enough, but when I play a sound, everything slows down a slight
bit.
>     I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm over the hump with graphics, going 
>into sound once I get the docs for the new Sound Manager, but anybody 
>else would be starting from scratch.
   
   BTW, I hate the sound manager routines.  I haven't seen if they've
fixed the bugs in it since 6.02, but I do know that my game NeXTman
crashes like a big dog because of apple's screwing around.

  I know, some of you are saying "If this guy loves the Amiga so much,
why doesn't he just sell his II, buy an amiga, and (u)nsubscribe to
this newsgroup?"
  But, as I said before, I love this machine.  I feel that its overall
advantages are better than any machine out today.  NeXT's are cool,
but they have no user nor software base.  Same also applies to the Suns.
IBM? Hahahaha, I crack myself up, really.
  I just think that it's a shame that a graphics based machine has gone
so long without a graphics coprocessor.  Kind of like submarine based
missiles without a submarine.  Powerful, but not all of it's capabilities
are being utilized.

-- 
Russo, Chris A.
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
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