Amiga OCS Demo Won at Assembly 2010 Demoparty

[Karlos]

As good as the demo is, the competition rules are pretty skewed if 486 machines can enter and an 040 and/or AGA based amiga can't, IMHO.

[stefcep2]

As good as the demo is, the competition rules are pretty skewed if 486 machines can enter and an 040 and/or AGA based amiga can't, IMHO.

No I think they have got it abour right...

[Karlos]

No I think they have got it abour right...

What, 1992 era technology not oldskool enough? It's 2010. If my A1200 were a person, it would be old enough to vote (at least in the UK) by now

[pVC]

What, 1992 era technology not oldskool enough? It's 2010. If my A1200 were a person, it would be old enough to vote (at least in the UK) by now

But if the hw was too ahead of its time? Starstruck won the main compo few years ago.. with A1200/060/AGA against the beefy mainstream PCs

But yes, as the AGA has been the main platform for Amiga demos long time there should be a proper compo to fit it. It just isn't fair to keep it in same category with modern HW... even though it might not be fair for 8-bit computers to have it on same compo with them Maybe it would be time for midschool compos too.

[Jope]

As good as the demo is, the competition rules are pretty skewed if 486 machines can enter and an 040 and/or AGA based amiga can't, IMHO.

It's a problematic compo. It sucks also because a Sinclair Spectrum competes in the same compo against the 486.

The end of 1991 rule was set in the early 2000s, when the AGA/060 was still sort of able to fight modern PC demos in the realtime compo.

What can you do? It's not like we're flooded with oldskool entries at Assembly, hence it's not possible to split the compo into more categories.

Basically this is the best we can do at the moment, the rules have been tampered with way too much already and the competitors try and bend them more all the time.

IMO, I'd much rather kick that 486 out and downgrade the Amiga to an A500 with 1MB chip than allow A4000/060 in.. But that wouldn't bring any more entries to my compo, Assembly is a gamer party in the eyes of the C-64 and Amiga crowds.

Hence no-one will make productions for Asm, the quality releases are always saved for parties with a higher percentage of sceners attending.

Nevertheless, the scene compos will be there at Assembly Summer for as long as possible. Just keep those quality entries coming, preferably for the Oldskool/Extreme compos so I have something to show on the screen. :-)

[Karlos]

I dunno, I mean it's totally out of order that the speccy is expected to compete with 32-bit machines, IMO

The "midskool" idea is probably fairest, I reckon. Perhaps:

386 - 586 (< 100MHz), up to VGA
030 - 060 (< 100MHz), up to AGA

"oldskool" could then be something like this:

086 - 286 (< 20MHz), up to VGA
000 - 020 (< 20MHz), up to AGA

"proper oldskool" would then be everything sub 16-bit era

[Jope]

That is the general consensus for the definition of oldskool and midskool, but as I said, we don't get enough entries to warrant splitting them.

If anything, Amiga AGA + 486 should be bumped to real wild to compete with handheld consoles etc and oldskool should be pushed back to 8-bitters only.

However your radical opinions have already occurred to others, this same discussion with the same conclusion has been had at length on pouet and the assembly mailing lists. If we change something, one vocal group will be satisfied and another group will became vocal with their dissatisfaction. :-)

There is no golden solution to this for the time being due to lack of entries, and time has actually shown that the most technically impressive demo has often prevailed at the compo instead of the most powerful platform automatically winning.

[pVC]

It's clear that you don't get 060/AGA and other midskool entries with these rules at least. But who knows if you could get enough if you'd have own compo for them. I think it could even be possible to retrieve that part of the scene at Assembly in the future as there isn't many parties left for them at all... Breakpoint was the only good party fot them, but what happens now.. remaining amiga scene might be looking a new place to go and why not more competition from other midskool platforms too Assembly is big, has history and is stable, so there might be a chance.

In any case, the most of the amiga sceners aren't even thinking to release demo at the Assembly because of the compo categories. I'd be interested to make demo there too, but with current categories I'll rather release it elsewhere.

[buzz]

I dunno, I mean it's totally out of order that the speccy is expected to compete with 32-bit machines, IMO

Yeh i agree. those 32bit machines don't have a chance! :-)

[buzz]

This thread needs more spectrum!

[youtube]x1o_Tr8jq3I[/youtube]

[LoadWB]

This thread needs more spectrum!

Pretty neat stuff, that Sinclair.

[Britelite]

This thread needs more spectrum!

Although, on the real hardware that speccydemo is a flickering mess

[halvliter'n]

Although, on the real hardware that speccydemo is a flickering mess

Fully agree. You have done a lot for the Amiga. Amiga Rules!!!!!  Cheers Britelite, you are the king now. KONGE!!!

[warpdesign]

I wasn't impressed by the demo... And still the same 2x (160x120, doubled) pixels in most scenes we have seen for years... This is ugly...

[Karlos]

I wasn't impressed by the demo... And still the same 2x (160x120, doubled) pixels in most scenes we have seen for years... This is ugly...

Meh. What do you want from a 25MHz 030 ECS machine? Regular lo-res would quadruple the number of pixels to calculate in what looked like a fundamentally 3D demo.

[Britelite]

Meh. What do you want from a 25MHz 030 ECS machine? Regular lo-res would quadruple the number of pixels to calculate in what looked like a fundamentally 3D demo.

To be honest, some parts could probably have used a better resolution. But as I didn't have a A3000 to test it on myself (only an AGA-machine with faster memory and 030/50MHz), I didn't want to take the risk of the framerate dropping too much. The 4bpl c2p-routines could probably be made faster, so maybe next time I'll try to do something in a higher resolution