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Author Topic: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?  (Read 9803 times)

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Offline Thorham

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #14 on: November 26, 2012, 11:47:06 PM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;716476
Our latest artist made his first monster animation.  It had like, 1200 frames of animation.  So that is 1200 x 1152 bytes on AGA.  Multiply by 16 for gfx card, lets say 20MB.  That is 1 little monster. 1.  There are thousands of monster anims in the game.

And how exactly does that make a game good? Does a good game need 1200 frames of animation for a single monster, or does it need a good game engine with good AI and good controls? Also, quantity isn't the same as quality. Those 1200 frames won't do you any good if they don't look good.
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #15 on: November 27, 2012, 12:16:32 AM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;716476
The artists in Team Chaos are perfectly capable of creating giant amounts of animations... like a 4.7GB Aminet archive type of deal.  Artists don't like being told "ur art has too many colors", "ur art takes too much ram", "ur art takes too much hard drive space".  Artists just want to create.  If you annoy them enough they quit.
Well, for starters, the better game artists actually understand the constraints of digital art and are willing to work within them. (Take a look at Adrian Carmack's magnificent models for DOOM sometime, and compare them with the little sprites that were the end result. Sure, the models are nicer, but the DOOM team did an amazing job of capturing the details in images only a hundred-plus pixels tall.) If, on the other hand, you're stuck with prima donnas like the ones you're describing, you can always have someone else do the job of adapting it to the target platform, for the sake of team harmony.

But seriously, the more you crank up the requirements, the smaller your potential target audience gets. Sure, I have a 50MHz 030 and 32MB RAM, but how many people don't? Very few people who've just pulled their old Amiga out of the attic to play with are going to be able to run a game that requires 32MB RAM, and are they willing to hunt down a couple hundred bucks' worth of accelerator just for that?

And as Thorham says, package size has very little to do with the quality of a game. Super Mario Bros. 3 is still a beloved classic to this day, and it's all of 384KB.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2012, 12:19:20 AM by commodorejohn »
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Offline Ral-Clan

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #16 on: November 27, 2012, 12:27:59 AM »
Quote from: cgutjahr;716474
It can, yes. But who's editing "CD quality stereo audio tracks" on an A1200 these days?

Up until 2008 I was editing music I had recorded in my home project studio using my A2000 and samplitude.  I had a 32MB machine, while a three minute song in stereo is about 45MB so I had to use virtual RAM.  While it was bearable, it was slow.  I certainly would have LOVED 128MB.

I designed the artwork for the VIC-20 mega-cart that year too using PageStream and ImageFX on the Amiga.  I was using large 300dpi images and multiple layers. I really pushed the 32MB ceiling on my machine - more RAM would have been good.

This year I did all the layout for the artwork of several children's books I wrote/illustrated.  This was done using ImageFX under WinUAE (as my A2000 has departed).  I was dealing with 8.5" x 11" images at 600dpi and I had to at times up the "emulated" RAM to 256MB.  But good ol' ImageFX handled it!

So, yes, if I was still using a hardware classic Amiga - 128MB of RAM would definitely get used.  For classic gaming, I don't think it's meaningful, but for productivity/creative work, it definitely comes in handy.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2012, 12:31:28 AM by ral-clan »
Music I've made using Amigas and other retro-instruments: http://theovoids.bandcamp.com
 

Offline Thorham

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #17 on: November 27, 2012, 12:33:34 AM »
Quote from: commodorejohn;716481
Well, for starters, the better game artists actually understand the constraints of digital art and are willing to work within them.

Indeed. Anyone and their cat can create thousands of crappy looking hires frames of animation, but it takes tremendous skill to produce something good looking in lowres and only five frames.
 

Offline amiman99

Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #18 on: November 27, 2012, 12:40:03 AM »
How about MAC emulation running Photoshop?

That should be enough.
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A1000 KS 1.3, 8MB RAM
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A2000 KS 2.1, 68030 25MHz, 6MB RAM
A3000 KS 3.1, 68030 25MHz, 16MB RAM
A4000 KS 3.0, 68040 25MHz, 16MB RAM
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CD32
(AROS BOX) Dead :(
 

Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #19 on: November 27, 2012, 01:25:01 AM »
Quote from: cgutjahr;716474
But as the original poster is probably referring to the new accelerators from Individual Computers, we're talking OS3 here. With a 68030 CPU.


That is a very big assumption.

Maybe they are trying to decide if they should build us a run of accelerator cards that have 2GB RAM installed on them. :kitty:


Quote

Certainly not on a classic Amiga, unless you plan on unpacking 7zip'ed movies from the net on your Amiga before you move them to the PC for watching... And there's no web browser that runs on a classic Amiga and requires anything close to 128 MB.

Today, right this second, I have 44 tabs open in my browser.
At 1920x1080 (which is not the Amiga's maximum resolution) each tab consumes  8MB of ram just for the rendered gfx + whatever else.  So that is at least 364MB.

In the past I had 70 tabs open.

My brother keeps over 100 tabs open at all times.

Quote

It can, yes. But who's editing "CD quality stereo audio tracks" on an A1200 these days?

Everyone who wants to.  Some of them post on this forum.  Some on other forums.  + zillions of ppl who do not post on any forum.

Quote

Somebody mentioned 4 MB for a WHDLoad machine. That should be mostly okay, though having 8 MB wouldn't hurt for preloading the bigger games. If you have a 68020 CPU, there are no games that run at a decent speed on your setup and would require more than 8 MB (maybe 16, what's the game with the most disks?).

Back in the 1990s when ppl used floppy disks there were a few commercial games published that used 18-20 disks.  If you don't believe me I can go look them up.

Quote

If you have a better CPU and would like to run some newer RTG games or the occasional application, you might manage to fill up 32 or 64 MB occasionally. But I can't imagine filling up 128 MB - unless you actually try to.

Its really easy to fill it up.  AmigaOS has RAM:  (ramdisk.device)

A lot of ppl like to play their games from RAM: the first time they try them to decide if they are any good.  Other ppl do it the other way around and only put a game in their RAM: if they do like it, to make it load faster.  These are things random ppl tell me.


Quote

Huh? For what? It seems to be a nice game, but it's still AGA - how do you fill up 32 MB using bitmapped graphics intended for a lores display? That's a serious question, I don't understand how a turn based strategy game for an AGA machine could need that much memory.


For starters it isn't using a lores display.  It uses HIRES | LACED which is 4x the memory of 99% of all WHDLoad games.  And instead of using 4 bitplanes like 80% of all WHDLoad games use, Total Chaos AGA uses 8 bitplanes so that is 2x more for a total of 8x the memory requirements.

Most WHDLoad games have monster anims of 3 frames.  Yes I looked at them and counted them. :)  You are really lucky to get 4-8 frames.  A typical monster anim in Total Chaos AGA might have 8-24 frames but some have 40, 64, 120 or whatever.  Its an Amiga.  It does gfx.  Why limit it?  I love my Amiga :knuddel: and I let her do what she is good at because she is so lovely and has never let me down. :angel:
Number of anim frames multiplies the MB requirements again.


Note to Karlos: When I went to get the cuddly smiley something happened and it destroyed half a paragraph of my text.  I donno if this was caused by the Amiga.org forum software or by Chrome or by windoze XP SP3 or what.

Oh crap. It was the fault of Amiga.org.  See my next msg.



There are also things like variables, AI, Scripting Language, the game records itself while playing,   etc.

It takes 100K just to save the game
Then another 100K (I guess) to run LHA and archive it down to a small cuddly 6k.
0.2 MB gone just for that.

There are 8 screenbuffers of the size of the screen for calculating special fx.  That is a big chunk of RAM all by itself.   I would like to use a lot more but then I break the 32MB barrier. :/

Also, technically u can shoehorn the game to just barely run on a 24MB Amiga.  We have a guy who does that.  But then you cannot multitask in any meaningful way and he will never be able to Netplay like that.  He has his drivebuffers dialed way down to free up ram.   So I advertise 32MB because I cannot do tech support for ppl with only 24MB.  Ppl expect to be able to multitask basic things while they are playing a strategy game.  Like CED or YAM or a calendar or whatever.  A random person with 32MB ram might be using 3.5MB of that for his drive buffers + 0.5 for kickstart + random stuff.  Memory disappears fast.

Btw I tell everyone who plays with WinUAE to set fastram to 64MB or more.

I hope all of this answered your question. :)
Wanna try a wonderfull strategy game with lots of handdrawn anims,
Magic Spells and Monsters, Incredible playability and lastability,
English speech, etc. Total Chaos AGA
 

Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #20 on: November 27, 2012, 01:37:16 AM »
Dear Karlos:

Pursuant to my previous post where the forum software went bonkers:

I tried to preview my post and first it made me log back in as it often does.  It only keeps me logged in for a very short time.  No big deal.  It always works.  But not today.

I got this error message:
Code: [Select]

Your submission could not be processed because you have logged in since the previous page was loaded.

Please push the back button and reload the previous window.

Of course pushing the back button and reloading did nothing but generate the same message.

Going back twice and reloading also did not work.

Triple going back and then pressing Preview or Submit
generated this error:
Code: [Select]

The following errors occurred with your submission:
The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 1 characters.

But the message edit box was full with my giant message.

I must have broke the 255 byte barrier.  I told Tedd Gal he should not try to run Amiga.org on a C64 :D

Eventually I just clicked New Posts and found the thread again and started over from scratch, then it worked.
Wanna try a wonderfull strategy game with lots of handdrawn anims,
Magic Spells and Monsters, Incredible playability and lastability,
English speech, etc. Total Chaos AGA
 

Offline danbeaver

Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #21 on: November 27, 2012, 01:45:18 AM »
Quote from: Faerytale;716458
Whdload machines seems to be ok with 2-4 MB of ram.


Simple answer, Yes.
 

Offline Thorham

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #22 on: November 27, 2012, 01:47:27 AM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;716487
Its an Amiga.  It does gfx.  Why limit it?
Because it reduces requirements, and well made lowres, low frame graphics will still look good if made by a skilled artist.

Quote from: ChaosLord;716487
There are also things like variables, AI, Scripting Language, the game records itself while playing,   etc.
Sure, but that doesn't need many megabytes.

Quote from: ChaosLord;716487
There are 8 screenbuffers of the size of the screen for calculating special fx.  That is a big chunk of RAM all by itself.   I would like to use a lot more but then I break the 32MB barrier. :/
Perhaps you should try to write highly optimized routines in assembly language so that you wouldn't need eight screen buffers. Show me a video of where this is really required.

Quote from: ChaosLord;716487
Also, technically u can shoehorn the game to just barely run on a 24MB Amiga.
Technically, you can do an equivalent game without excess graphical weight with around four megabytes of fastmem. It's not about the graphics, it's about the game. Games like this don't need highres graphics with dozens of frames. Graphics like that should be an option.
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #23 on: November 27, 2012, 01:56:08 AM »
Yeah, I'm a little curious about the eight framebuffers thing, myself. In any event, though: whether or not your game needs the space it takes is pretty much irrelevant. Some people just plain don't meet those requirements and aren't going to, certainly not for a game; upgrading Amigas ain't cheap. Given that, your choices are to A. exclude them from being able to run your game, or B. do what developers back in the day did, and adjust the scope and approach of your project to fit the target instead of complaining that the target isn't moving to match where you're aiming.
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Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #24 on: November 27, 2012, 02:10:50 AM »
Quote from: Thorham;716473

Not really. The 68000 has a 24 bit address bus, and can therefore only address 16 megabytes. Same for the 680ec20 in the A1200.

Nobody cares. :quickdraw:

Sure the economy 68000 could only make use of 16MB out of the memory map.

Even though the M68000 is a 32-bit processor, it is a cheapo cutdown version that has 8 of its address pins removed.  But the 32-bit address are all there inside the cpu.  All 8 of the Amiga's address registers have all 32-bits of their addressing

The Amiga was fully compatible in every way with the full 4096MB memory map if you just add a little accelerator card to your miggy that has all 32 of its address pins soldered on and connected.

68020 accelerators appeared in 1986 which could use the entire Amiga memory map.

In 1987 I started selling them.  And a lot of ppl bought them.

Memory-wise, the 68020+ had all 32 of their address pins and were 100% compatible to the Amiga way of doing things.  Any programs you had that worked in the bottom 16MB of memory (below the 24-bit barrier) all just plain worked when ran from addresses above the 24-bit barrier.  That is because the Amiga is and always will be a 32-bit machine, no matter how many pins you hack off of it. :hammer:


Quote
Further more, AmigaOS may have issues with anything above 2 gigabytes :(

AmigaOS has had many problems which have all been patched.

The 2GB limit is even easier to fix than other typical random problems.

As I already explained in the other thread:

NewAllocMem()
The old AllocMem() suxxored.  This NewAllocMem() r0xx0rz.  Use it to allocate all the ram you want in the upper 2GB of the Amiga's memory map. KTHANXL8RBYE :banana:
Wanna try a wonderfull strategy game with lots of handdrawn anims,
Magic Spells and Monsters, Incredible playability and lastability,
English speech, etc. Total Chaos AGA
 

Offline Thorham

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #25 on: November 27, 2012, 02:22:16 AM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;716496
As I already explained in the other thread:

NewAllocMem()
The old AllocMem() suxxored.  This NewAllocMem() r0xx0rz.  Use it to allocate all the ram you want in the upper 2GB of the Amiga's memory map. KTHANXL8RBYE :banana:
And which OS version is NewAllocMem part of? 3.9? I don't have 3.9 and don't want it. Software should work on KS2+, unless it needs AGA.

Also, most software uses AllocMem or AllocVec, and unless those are patched, you can forget more than two gigabytes (which isn't needed anyway).
« Last Edit: November 27, 2012, 02:24:22 AM by Thorham »
 

Offline cgutjahr

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #26 on: November 27, 2012, 02:26:40 AM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;716487

Today, right this second, I have 44 tabs open in my browser.
At 1920x1080 (which is not the Amiga's maximum resolution) each tab consumes  8MB of ram just for the rendered gfx + whatever else.  So that is at least 364MB.

What browser would that be? And on what operating system? If you manage to do that with AWeb or IBrowse, you'll have my eternal respect.

Quote

For starters it isn't using a lores display.  It uses HIRES | LACED

My fault, that one was misleading - I wasn't referring to the Amiga screen mode. I was using "lores" as short form of "extremely low resolution",  Hires Laced is an extremely low resolution by today's standards.

Quote

There are 8 screenbuffers

eight? Why eight? how big are the animations, 40x40 or something like that, and only one displayed at any given time with no scrolling taking place?

Quote

Its an Amiga.  It does gfx.  Why limit it?

The Total Chaos distribution is bigger than 90 MB and takes 10 minutes to self-extract on a 68030 CPU. That's why you limit yourself.
 

Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #27 on: November 27, 2012, 02:26:58 AM »
@rai-clan
Dude, you are awesome!  Respect!  :cool:



Amiman99 has:
Quote

A600 KS 3.1, 2MB Chip, ACA630 32MB RAM

Your little bitty itsy bitsy teeny weeny A600 has 32MB RAM?
You rawk hard!  That's the spirit! :banana:
Wanna try a wonderfull strategy game with lots of handdrawn anims,
Magic Spells and Monsters, Incredible playability and lastability,
English speech, etc. Total Chaos AGA
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #28 on: November 27, 2012, 02:33:06 AM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;716496
68020 accelerators appeared in 1986 which could use the entire Amiga memory map.
The 68020 can address a full 4GB, sure, but how many accelerators even support that much RAM, let alone in a form that's economical to max out? The most I can recall seeing on a non-PPC accelerator is 256MB, and the average is much more in the 16-32MB range than anything higher.
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Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?
« Reply #29 from previous page: November 27, 2012, 02:40:01 AM »
Quote from: Thorham;716499

Also, most software uses AllocMem or AllocVec, and unless those are patched, you can forget more than two gigabytes (which isn't needed anyway).


NewAllocVec()
This function is used to allocate memory from above the 2GB barrier using the TLSFmem algorithm.

AllocMem() and AllocVec() cannot be patched to fix the problem.  Sorry but those routines were designed terribly badly :(

Only new software which wants to make use of the extra memory can use NewAllocMem() NewAllocVec() etc.

New software is released onto Aminet all the time.
Wanna try a wonderfull strategy game with lots of handdrawn anims,
Magic Spells and Monsters, Incredible playability and lastability,
English speech, etc. Total Chaos AGA