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From: tenney@well.UUCP (Glenn S. Tenney)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Electronic Arts Copy Protection
Message-ID: <695@well.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Feb-86 16:32:32 EST
Article-I.D.: well.695
Posted: Sun Feb 23 16:32:32 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 06:11:42 EST
References: <1323@caip.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: tenney@well.UUCP (Glenn S. Tenney)
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
Lines: 57

In article <1323@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> cthulhu@athena.MIT.EDU@caip.RUTGERS.EDU writes:
>...
>However... there is no excuse for not making applications runnable under
>the workbench.  None.  On the Mac, it might be necessary to actually
>write to the screen memory, to take co ntrol of all the sound channels (all
>one of them) or to make unmovable windows, but intuition takes this problem
>into account.  That's why the Amiga has screens.  That's why the Amiga has
>exec.  I don't know about you, but it detracts a lot from the usefulness of
>a game that I can't multitask it with something else (OK, Textcraft, you go
>print my document, and I'll play a game... BUT NOT ARCHON OR ANY OTHER EA
>GAME, SINCE THEY DON'T MULTITASK)  The only real reason I could think of is
>that of copy protection ("archon minidos?")  I wouldn't mind an occasional
>pause for another programs I/O during a game.  Please, please set an example
>and put evil copy protections like this to rest before they become common
> practice!
>						- Jim Reich
>						  cthulhu@athena.mit.edu

I've gotten a couple of responses similar to the above. I'd like to
respond personally.  These are my own opinions and do not necessarily
reflect those of EA (I am not an employee of EA btw).

Since I've been writing for the Amiga for almost a year now, believe me
that it has been difficult.  For me, C-A couldn't provide enough info
to even use Intuition until almost V1.0, so months of work had to be done with
NO planned Intuition support.  As to resources, Forbid and OwnBlit are
a step in the right direction, but it takes tons of code to stomp on
Intuition (and its tasks like Input.Device) and get it out of the way.
As to RAW:, well obviously you haven't done much work on the Amiga: it
isn't raw enough in a way usable quickly enough (i.e. getting a stream
of IDCMP-like characters just to see a key up/down is too slow for a fast
moving game).

A major point is that games often need to get to the nitty gritty and
Intuition et. al. is often simply in your way.  If you even get around
all of the hurdles put in your way, Intuition, Workbench, their screens
and windows and Dos take up a lot of ram.  Then there is the question
of performance!  By doing things through rom calls, it is sometimes
MUCH slower than you can do it yourself.  Remember the rom must support
everyone and you know the one way you want to do it, so you can
optimize it.  To my knowledge, not using Intuition etc. has nothing to
do with copy protection!

Don't misinterpret any of this, I think Amiga has done a fantastic job
with the software, but it can't be all things to all people both in
capabilities and performance.

Please note that my personal views here always mentioned games.  I think
"productivity" software is a completely different situation.

(I am an Amiga developer and co-host of the Amiga conference on the Well)

-- Glenn Tenney 
UUCP: {hplabs,glacier,lll-crg,ihnp4!ptsfa}!well!tenney
ARPA: well!tenney@LLL-CRG.ARPA                       Delphi: TENNEY
As Alphonso Bodoya would say... (tnx boulton)
Disclaimers? DISCLAIMERS!? I don' gotta show you no stinking DISCLAIMERS!