Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mailrus!ames!elroy!gryphon!cadovax!keithd From: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: BADGE contest suggestions Message-ID: <2312@cadovax.UUCP> Date: 20 Nov 88 12:22:41 GMT References: <5299@louie.udel.EDU> <8653@gryphon.COM> <2983@sugar.uu.net> Reply-To: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) Organization: Contel Business Systems, Torrance, CA Lines: 137 In article <2983@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >But they have a LOT of impact on how useful the demo is to Amiga dealers and >owners. They basically amount to: > > "The program must run to completion and either exit cleanly or >provide an obvious method for exiting cleanly". > >This is so fundamental to Amiga programming that I find it hard to believe >people wouldn't bother with it, yet when I got my copy of the BKDC0 disks >about a year ago I was horrified to discover how much of the software didn't >do this. 1. I'm mainly talking about people who don't know *how* to do it, not those who wouldn't bother with it. 2. A lot of commercial games violate these rules, not always for copy protection, but many times because they want to use the hardware in such a way that AmigaDOS won't allow. I see no reason to prohibit this. For example, one of Jim Sach's 20,000 leagues demos boots up *instantly* from a boot disk which isn't even DOS format. Good thing he didn't enter something like that in the contest, eh? >> According to the BADGE official rules, it is clear that only the purest >> of hackers is qualified to produce a killer demo entry that adheres to >> all of the rules. > >No, any competant developer should be able to do it. If you are not a competant >developer, find a developer to help you and share the glory or use a driver >program and do all your work in Videoscape or Sculpt or something. In other words, instead of the "purest of hackers" we're saying "you must have access to a compentant developer who has time and interest to help you". Sounds pretty close to me. >Certainly the people responsible for the Sculpt and Videoscape driver programs >should have been competant to make them exit cleanly on demand. So do they? If they don't, then who in the contest is penalized when demos produced with them aren't obeying the rules? Who is penalized when the reason they don't meet one of the rules is due to an OS or compiler bug over which they have little control? >> So I'd like to see the contest a lot less restrictive. If there's >> a potential killer demo out there that takes over the system, requires >> 4 disks, and leaves with the workbench in a mess when it's done, I'd >> like to see it, I'll bet its a doozy. >But it shouldn't be shipped to hundreds of dealers and Amiga fanatics who >are going to spend more time apologising for them then showing them. If the instructions say "boot with disk A in drive DF0: and disk B in drive DF1:" and "reboot after running" that shouldn't be too hard for them to figure out. >It's more than "nice", it's necessary. The original purpose of the BKDC is >to produce these nice demo disks. If the demos don't let you get back to >the workbench or leave it in weird modes (such as interlace) they certainly >won't help sell Amigas. I'm embarrassed to show some of them... sigh... Perhaps that is because they were produced by non-programmers that would like to produce demos, but don't have your expertise, or programmers that didn't have time to beta test for "only a demo" that was hacked out at the last minute, or haven't had their Amiga as long as you, or .... BTW, again, if ShowANIM leaves the workbench in interlace when done, should a contestant who used VideoScape 3D be penalized because he didn't know that Hash Enterprises had a Display program that perhaps runs cleaner? And did it occur to you that if you run one program that goes into interlace, and while it's running you run another program that goes into interlace, if the first one exits and turns off interlace it may cause problems with the second program who just had it's interlace turned off, and this may be why ShowANIM leaves it on? Perhaps we should penalize Commodore for not releasing the Amiga until 1.4 is done providing an ORed on interlace instead of a system-wide interlace? >I'm a little touchy about this point, since several of the top entries broke >the rules. I know Workbench Lander wouldn't have beaten Marketroids (one of >the best of the "well behaved" demos), for instance, but it might have placed >higher if the Badge people had been as strict as they talked. Sure, it'd be nice if they all followed all the rules. But it takes an expert Amiga programmer and a beta test cycle to insure that with the current rule set. An Amiga owner writing his first program in Basic may not understand that the Assign command will use a little memory and he will have to un-assign any assign's he as done to make the numbers come out right. He may also not be aware that due to an Intuition bug, overlapping blit's will lose memory so he can't do that until some future version of the OS. He may be able to make his program work by accessing files as df1:foo, but not know how to set it up so it will work when the whole shebang is dragged onto your hard disk, hell he doesn't even have a hard disk. Clearly, in your book, this person should get help or look elsewhere for a contest that would consider his work. Ok, so your clubhouse has "no non-programmerz alowd" scrawled on the outside of it, gotcha. Perhaps this should be made a little clearer so they know you have the ball and they can go home without wasting any time and energy thinking they might have a snowballs chance. And then you won't have to worry about any non-programmers who are real whiz-bang with DPaint showing up your assembly language superhack with a slideshow. Gad, we can't have that now can we? Sure, let's perpetuate the myth that the Amiga is only for hackers, and is not user-friendly enough for everyone to use. Perhaps it's not a myth after all. The average Amiga owner doesn't even know how to edit his startup-sequence, perhaps they should have bought an ST or a Mac? Categories such as: 1. Best Graphics 2. Funniest 3. Best Programming 4. Best Sound 5. etc... Can leave room for everyone. And a demo that makes a good showing in mulitple categories *including* #3, *should* do better than one which only makes it in only one category. Right now it seems that category #3 is taking precidence. If it doesn't make a good showing in that category, it's implied it can be disqualified from the contest entirely, or at least isn't likely to get very far. Question. How many of the current entries in the contest do actually follow all the rules, and how many don't? Perhaps the answer to that might tell you 1. how difficult it really is to produce a demo that follows all the rules, or 2. how many "competent developers" vs others are actually entering the contest. Again, I'm not trying to flame the BADGE group, I'm sure putting on a contest is a difficult task and takes up a lot of time. I appreciate what they are trying to do, and just want to offer some suggestions for something a little less programmer-myopic or programmer-elitist in the future. I hope all this controversy doesn't cause you guys to decide to hang it up completely, I think the idea of a demo contest is a good one. Keith Doyle # {ucbvax,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd