Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!tadtec!bk From: bk@tadtec.uucp (Brian Kelly) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Awesome! Now I am Pi**ed! (getting longer) Message-ID: Date: 3 Dec 90 09:33:06 GMT Sender: bk@tadtec.uucp (Brian Kelly) Distribution: comp Organization: Tadpole Technology plc Lines: 117 In article michael@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (michael gersten) writes: >bk@tadtec.uucp (Brian Kelly) writes: > >>I'm joining this thread quite late, however I have a few points to make: > >>This game, before copy protection, would run on any Amiga I could find, >>This included 4Mb 68020 A2000's, it even used give smart remarks if it found >>any strange combinations. As soon as the copy protection, which I didn't write, >>was installed, it would only run on machines with vanilla 68000's in them. > >First, let me congratulate you for the game. Now let me flame you for the >distribution company you chose. You *DO* have a choice of who distributes >your game; insist on one that will do it right. Firstly thank you. As to the choice of distribution, alas in this case we had no choice. Treasure Trap was mostly written while I worked at another company. The Zoo (Electronic Zoo, the distributers) became interested in this game some 14 months ago. The decision makers in our company signed with them for the distribution rights. The company I worked for subsequently folded around Jan of this year in quite an unpleasant fashion. The Zoo enabled four of us to finish this and another project by funding us for a further six months. Okay, they didn't do this out of pure altruism, but without them it would never have seen the light of day. I hope you will agree that in this case I could not choose the distributer. >>The reason why copy protection is such a big thing on this side of the Atlantic >>is because as soon as a game is released, it appears almost immediately on >>pirated disks. Of course just about no copy protection scheme is going to >>stop these people, but ya gotta try something. We even had a game appear on a >>pirate disk *before* we had sent the final master to the publishers, that is a >>pre-release version had been spirited away from them and appeared as a cracked >>game on one of these compilation disks. > >Ok, I have just a few questions: >1. Who did you give copies of that version to, >2. How well do you know those people? In answer to 1, they were Fedex'd to the company. In answer to 2, the company is one of, if not the, biggest game distributers in the UK. I mean who do ya trust. We weren't too enraged, coz we were on a fixed fee for the job. >>rippling/fading out reflections. The copperlist for this is quite large, and >>needs constant tending to. I honestly cannot see any way of making that sort >>of thing work with exec still running. Apart from the space problem on > >Now for my nitpicking. > >EXEC knows NOTHING about the copperlist. It doesn't care. Don't bother it. > >INTUITION (and graphics.library) is what knows about the copper list. That >is what needs to be taken care of. > >I don't care what you do with the screen while you are running. Just as long >as I can get to another screen when I pause your game. mwm@raven.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) also wrote: ]Yup, you didn't try very hard. Remember, the AmigaOS is designed so ]you _can_ pretty much take over the machine, and give it back in a ]friendly fashion. Doing so should survive OS upgrades. Maybe I'm wrong but don't ya gotta setup your copperlist on the user copper list pointer of a view structure and then do a MrgCop() (sp?) and then a MakeView(). This takes a lotta time (relatively speaking) and there's already quite a bit happening. BTW, this copperlist effect was also used during the game and not just the intro. As to surviving OS upgrades, Treasure Trap ran, even with the copy-protection, on 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. As I pointed out, there is a legal way to take things over totally, even if it does incense some people. Also neither of you replied directly to my comment on getting MrgCop() (sp?) to work with a wait that's not in explicit mode. What I mean by this is a wait instruction that uses the mask bits to wait, say, every fourth line, Or a skip instruction likewise. Could someone "in the know" please address this for me. I'm sorry about not looking these things up myself, but I left the Amiga World (apart from this umbilical feed) in May :-( and can't look it up myself. >*** AND NEVER *** shall a game destroy my dnet'd remote connections nor >my serial connections (which only depend on exec, not intuaition) just >because it wants a fancy **INTRODUCTION SCREEN*** (Not even the game, can >you say pathetic excuse for a takeover). > >. I used to think that it would be better if publishers would indicate >the author of the games on the packages. But if they did, I'd never buy you >programs. This is fair enough, you decide not to buy it because it does not fulfill certain criteria. However I hope you would see beyond the author's name before passing judgement on any piece of software. If that's the sort of criterion everyone used then boy would this industry stagnate quickly. As a brief example I'll use Matthew Smith, a UK programmer from the early 80's. His first game was called styx (I think), and it was a dawg. His next two offerings were Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. Both these games were way ahead of the pack when they were released and provided years (honestly) of entertainment to all and sundry. A motorcycle analogy is when Yamaha first entered the flat track scene in the US. They came last, I think, and the TV commentator of the time said "We'll I guess that's the last we'll see of them" :-). The point I'm trying to make, in a roundabout fashion, is that people, attitudes and programming practices change. They (should) learn from experience and critical comment amongst other things. If you are going to judge everything someone is going to produce on your first encounter with their work, then I'm afraid it's your loss. I would hope that you decide whether or not to buy a piece of software, indeed anything, on the merit's of it's performance, not on aquired prejudices, otherwise are *you* going to lose out or what. Brian Kelly Disclaimer: The above drivel is all my own work. "Amiga? Isn't that angular velocity???" :- My Boss