Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!CATICSUF.CSUFRESNO.EDU!psteffn From: psteffn@CATICSUF.CSUFRESNO.EDU (Paul Steffn) Newsgroups: alt.sources.amiga Subject: .... Message-ID: <9106252001.AA04505@caticsuf.cati.CSUFresno.EDU> Date: 25 Jun 91 20:01:37 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 87 I sent this as a private reply but I decided I might as well send it off to usenet as I didn't feel like typing most of the same again. ------------------------------------------------------------------- >From psteffn Tue Jun 25 12:15:39 1991 Return-Path: Received: by caticsuf.cati.CSUFresno.EDU (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA26980; Tue, 25 Jun 91 12:15:33 PDT Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 12:15:33 PDT From: psteffn (Paul Steffn) Message-Id: <9106251915.AA26980@caticsuf.cati.CSUFresno.EDU> X-Mailer: idsmail 4.0 To: mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de Subject: Re: ..macho-ism in assembly programming??.. Cc: psteffn@caticsuf.csufresno.edu Status: R To be completely honest, I wouldn't mind of my Amiga was capable of some of those Sega arcade consoles. We argue of the usefullness of a demo yet the Amiga was designed originally as a video game system. A friend of mine owns a Amiga 2000 with 33MHz '30 and Video Toaster/ DCTV using 9megs of RAM. He runs his business off of it. I know that Amigas are more than games machines and so does he but we are both the biggest demo fanatics in a 20 mile radius. Please explain to me what is so bad about resembling an arcade console?! I know that the most technically-ignorant people might think that a machine that is capable of brilliant graphics must not be able to do serious stuff. This is very very very very very untrue. Some arcade game consoles are based on 68030/882 [even some contain multiple processors], several megs of memory [although, usually ROM], and extremely high-speed video co-processors. The latter can always be disabled, you know. It's a sad fact but it takes many times more computer power to do a good game than it does to do a good spreadsheet. I like Eric Schwartz animations very much. They, however, can always be converted into Autodesk Animator files!!! A nice fast interface is subjective. I would consider GEM on an ST running Turbo ST or a '386 using an ansi based window environment to be extremely fast [ever see Lucid 3D?!] as well. You won't take an average PC user who knows hardware and show him an Eric Schwartz animation and have him go 'Gee, I wish IBM's could do that.' Schwartz only uses 320x200x5bit images. Something well behind the capability of VGA. Even the player program could use some major touching up in speed! I see ALOT of jumpy movement that I know could be improved with a bit of creative programming. I still don't think you have seen very many demos. The demos that I'm talking about are not even programmed in a standard way. In fact, some of these demos can't even be programmed in one swoop in assembler. The most obvious example of this is a depacker routine such as Power Packer or Imploder. This is mainly a small routine that appends itself at the beginning of a compressed file. When it loads, it copies itself and the data to a higher portion of memory, then it depacks the data back to the load address. It's this odd way of approaching programming that makes the best demos. Using MOVEM.L is only supposed to be for saving multiple registers to a location but demo coders use it because it is easier and faster to use.. Going into supervisor mode without telling the operating system is also another example [why spend all the time to tell the OS when you can just change a bit?!] Demo programmers even occasionally use self-modifying code because there are some instances where you can go much faster if you don't use keep a single routine with a changing offset [maybe just have hundreds of identical routines that address memory absolutely]. Even a blitter can be used to modify the 68000 machine code... The copper/plasma effects are always done with the blitter making updates to the actual copper list. These are all 'illegal' ways to do programming but without them, you could never stretch the Amiga beyond it's limits. And doing all this in C would be the equivalent of trying to eat pea soup with a fork... There's nothing wrong with what they are doing. It's their computer and they should be able to program it any way they feel like. Even if it doesn't run on a 68010+ or on NTSC. If you follow the rules, you could never even come close to Mental Hangover or Substance. In fact, just the disk loading routine that they use would break every rule... But the OS supported disk read/write routines are not very good if you want heavy animation going at the same time.. I enjoy any program for the Amiga but I think that demo programmers should get alot of respect for what they are able to do. After all, just think that they are kids now, what will they be able to do in the future!