Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!well!farren From: farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Awesome! Now I am Pi**ed! Message-ID: <21893@well.sf.ca.us> Date: 1 Dec 90 09:46:06 GMT References: <21740@well.sf.ca.us> <9238@mirsa.inria.fr> <1990Nov27.140432.6036@cck.cov.ac.uk> Lines: 64 csg019@cck.cov.ac.uk (Z*A*P*H*O*D) writes: >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. Sorry, guy. I know the internals better than you do, I'd bet (my oldest copy of the hardware docs predates Commodore's acquisition of Amiga), and know damn well that it's quite possible to do *EVERYTHING* you have come to expect without needing to trash the system, in all but the most strenuous of cases. And none of the games I've seen, NONE of them, comes close to needing that level of access. You can cooperate quite well with AmigaDOS, and still get the total control of the system you need to do any damn thing you'd like. Then, when you're done, you can give control back. The only thing you'd break would be multitasking - and you can even allow that, by letting your game be pausable. An example: suppose you have a game which requires constant and continuous access to the blitter and copper, and which needs to be sure that there are no extraneous interrupts. When you start up, you allocate all of the memory space you need from AmigaDOS, to make sure that the system knows that you are going to be using that memory. You then shut down AmigaDOS (which you can do quite completely, if you need to), and start up your game. While you're running, you've got complete control of the system, and can do any damn thing you want to. But at the same time, AmigaDOS is still there, in the background, not doing anything. Stop your game, let AmigaDOS come back in control, and you've allowed multitasking, you've avoided requiring a reboot, and everything works just fine. >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. So you don't use ScrollRaster (don't even know the right name of the function, do you?) if you need more performance than that. I've used it when I felt like it, and have avoided it when I wanted more performance. No big deal. And neither option requires trashing the OS. >I have NEVER *EVER* had any problems with games not running, thats probable >because most of the best games (including blood money, menace, populous and >elite) are written by UK programmers. And may "suffer(?)" the conversion to >NTSC and 50hz. More suffer the conversion from whatever system the developers used to a wider variety of amigas. Try Populous on a 68030. Go ahead. Or try Shadow of the Beast on a number of different machines, and watch it crash on most of them - as I did, when I tried to demonstrate "this wonderful game" to them. Worked fine on my plain vanilla A2000, wouldn't work AT ALL on any of their 1000s, souped up 500s, or 68030 machines. Sorry - UK programmers aren't any better (or worse) than any others. >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. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist, does it? Why do you have it in for those of us who DO have hard drives, simply because you don't know anyone who does? And why would anyone with any sense write a game that was guaranteed not to sell to a number (however small) of Amiga owners if they could have just as easily written one that could sell to ALL of them? If they don't use their brains any better than that, why should I believe that their code is going to be any more sensible? -- Mike Farren farren@well.sf.ca.us