Demos using a GFX mode please !

[Crumb]

@Darkcoder:
> First of all I don't understand why you (and also Elwood who started this post) want to force people do what you want.

No one is forcing you with a gun to add support, we are expressing our opinions. In my opinion the effort needed to add RTG support is so small that it is a pity that it's not included in most of demos. (that sounds better for you ummm? as english is not my native language I didn't want to make it sound like "everyone should code rtg-compatible stuff or be executed". I mean that it's a good idea because it requires very little effort)

>I am sure that you are all nice guys but
you sound a little bit arrogant.

well, now read again the first lines of your first post in this thread.

You say that demos are not made to impress. Well they are made for fun and to impress. Isn't impressive to see how much can be done with little resources? And one of many people all-time-favourites, State of the Art was designed to impress, not showing the machine limits but a great design. I think that SOTA only moves a little polys most of times and that a A500 can do that without many problems (World Of Commodore for example was made to impress with its code more than its design, for example the rotozoom of the horned demon head is quite impressive for an A500)

You say that you don't know where are the limits. One of the limits is the bandwitch to the graphic card. As Carl has said in his system it's slower than AGA in most of programs, well the Zorro2 bandwitch is a limit, isn't it? As the Zorro3 is (you won't get more speed of pci cards with mediator or prometheus because it goes through the zorro3 bus). But for example most of things (eg games) are faster using Zorro3 cards than AGA.

With 68k systems the main limit from my point of view is the raw cpu power. Of course, the bandwitch to fast ram and to gfx ram are big bottle necks. But now demos are mostly 3D and that needs raw cpu power. For example ppc games like quake run a lot faster even thought that they are using AGA. With AGA and a good c2p you can put 25fps at 320x200 without too much effort. The problem is the 3D stuff you want to show. Some demos run almost equally with AGA or gfx cards because the cpu is the biggest limit now.

>What you call "a simple copying of data into a screen" is crucial for the speed of the demo. And it
differs from one board to another. I don't think that you would obtain the same speed and the same visual apperence from a PicassoIV and a Radeon 7000. What RTG is missing, is *a clear limit*. Without a clear limit you cannot reach the limit.

well, the little tests I've done run at more or less the same frame rates in every graphic card. I've tested with my program a 060 my Picasso4, a Voodoo5 and a CV64. The fastest of the three was the CV64 because it uses Zorro3 to the limit. But it was only slighly faster. The clear limit for AGA and RTG stuff is (90% of times) the CPU. Well I haven't tried a CybervisionPPC, in theory it should be the fastest (but only slightly)

What I call simply copying is that: simple copying. Your graphics will look the same in a Ateo Pixel 64, in a CV3D, a CV64, a Picasso4, a Voodoo3 if you use a 8bit screen. With >8bit ones you will need to check the screenmode to see if its RGB BGR or whatever.

 I admit that with 16bits it is more complicated. But many AGA demos only use 8bit. And it's easy to support.

I repeat that no one is ordering you anything, just saying that adding RTG support is quite easy. But that not implies that RTG coding is done with functions (if you use functions it will be faster than AGA but not as fast as it can be)

don't get upset so easy

I have fun coding RTG stuff, the only reason I'm adding AGA supportis for erm tradition, compatibility and well, because it's easy and I can, and some people still don't have a gfx card and I found a bit arbitrary to stopping them from watching what I want to do. I mean that it's easy if you use a chunkybuffer and a c2p routine (like me) because sprites and bitplanes aren't used much these days. If you do demos that use bitplanes etc... well that's harder than a gfx card for most of effects.

DISCLAIMER: I've only expressed my opinion, people who don't agree MUST NOT be fussilated ;-D

[darkcoder]

@crumb

>No one is forcing you with a gun to add support, we are expressing our opinions. In my opinion the effort needed to add RTG
support is so small that it is a pity that it's not included in most of demos. (that sounds better for you ummm? as english is not

Yes, that sounds a lot better. Thank you.

>well, now read again the first lines of your first post in this thread.

I know that my very first answer to Elwood was a very bad one, and I already
apologised in the end of the same posting (the first one). It was my very first
reaction to his post which sounded like an order, and in the beginning that was
the only thing I wanted to say. Then after 2 minutes, I changed my mind and I
thought that it was better discussing so I started the longest reply.
nevertheless I decided to keep also the very first answer because if someone
shouts at you, you first have to show that you too are able to shout, and then
you can start discussing.


>You say that demos are not made to impress. Well they are made for fun and to impress. Isn't impressive to see how much can
>be done with little resources? And one of many people all-time-favourites, State of the Art was designed to impress, not showing
>the machine limits but a great design. I think that SOTA only moves a little polys most of times and that a A500 can do that

While am coding an effect, my only concern is enjoy myself doing something
difficult and proving to myself that I can solve the problems. I don't think to
people's reaction when they see my demos. Sometimes the graphicians or the
designers come to me and suggest me to change something to increase
spectacularity, and if I find the thing interesting, I do.
SOTA is basically 2D morphing poligons. But there is great design work.
Maybe I have not explained what I mean when I say that when I don't do demos to
impress people. When I say that, I don't mean that I don't care about design or
gfx or nice music. I am always VERY happy when I can work with some good
graphician or designer (sometime I have to do design by myself, but I am not
good in that). What I mean is that I want to to a demo wich is fun and also
look good TO ME and my co-workers and the friends that are interested in my
work. I don't care about people using PC with emulators or A1s. If someone want
to watch my demos, I am happy. But if someone FREELY DECIDES not to watch my
demos, for me it's no problem. As I said, if I wanted my work to be seen by as
many people as possible, I would use a PC. I think that people who did SOTA
were thinking to do something looking great to themselves, not to have people
saying "ahhh unbelivable", like they were looking Michelle Pfeiffer.


>well, the little tests I've done run at more or less the same frame rates in every graphic card. I've tested with my program a 060
my Picasso4, a Voodoo5 and a CV64. The fastest of the three was the CV64 because it uses Zorro3 to the limit. But it was only

that "more or less"is not satisfactory to me. The "simple copying" of data is
often done using the gfx card blitter, wich is not accessible to the coder.
Different cards have different blitters. We are not only speaking about Zorro3
cards. A1 and Peggies and PC with emulators have PCI and AGP cards. I guess in
some months we will see programs (maybe demos) requiring DE FACTO AGP cards.
This is good for Amiga in general, but not for demo scene.
Moreover, the limit is not only speed. Is also screen resolution and video
refresh rate. With AGA I can decide wich resolution and which refresh rate I
want to use. Gfx board allows each different resolution and rates, hence I
cannot reach their limit.
Moreover, I heard (but maybe I am wrong) that there are 2 different RTG standrd,
the Picasso96 and the CyberGfx. So one should even support 2 different
standards?

But it is time to introduce another argument: in my last post I concentrate so
much in discussing the theoretical reason why I don't support RTG, that I forgot
there is a practical one!
Several posters wrote that "nowadays demos are only 3D stuff done by the CPU".
It is true that many coders do only stuff like that, but not me! GFX boards
usually have just 1 sprite and most of all, they don't have anything similar to
the Copper! To me, using sprites and Copper is much fun! You can change screen
resolution and depth in the middle of the screen (or in any other position of
cource). With sprites, you have a 4 colors 512 pixel wide or 16 colors 256 pixel
wide extra window which you can move around with 5-8 asm instructions! And there
is more. With Amiga chipset you can control how display DMA, audio DMA and CPU
compete to access the chip RAM. Hence (especially using copper) you have many
possibility of optimizing stuff. For example, in certain positions of the screen
you can lower screen depth, or make display window shorter to gain CPU speed
without a viewer noticing it. You have much more possibilities to obtain 100%
(maybe 99.9999%, since youcan never tell you reached 100%) optimization.
And this is very fun, to me.
So with AGA I can do BOTH CPU-only chunky effects AND chipset supported funny
tricks. And you can join these techniques together. (BTW, how many of these "new
generation coders" are able to proper initialize audio state machine to begin
audio output?) With RTG, instead I can only do one sort of effects. I think the
real progress is not the contraposition of old and new, but rather a ynthesis of
old (in this case coding techinques) and new.

So with AGA:

 more and fixed speed limit + more possibilities to invent solutions = more fun!

This reminds me that MagicSN stated in his post that it would be easy to make a demo like "Arte" RTG
compatible. I don't think so, since many "Arte" effects for example the
"rectangular" textured tunnel are copper based. Only the 3rd part (the 3D) is
cpu-only.

>I have fun coding RTG stuff, the only reason I'm adding AGA supportis for erm tradition, compatibility and well, because it's
easy and I can, and some people still don't have a gfx card and I found a bit arbitrary to stopping them from watching what I want

I can fully understand you, you do what you enjoy and you freely decide to also
support AGA users, for good reasons. Now I see it was not your intention, but I
suspect it was other intention to blame AGA coders to force them to do something
different to what they freely decided.

>to do. I mean that it's easy if you use a chunkybuffer and a c2p routine (like me) because sprites and bitplanes aren't used much
these days. If you do demos that use bitplanes etc... well that's harder than a gfx card for most of effects.

yes, somtimes it's harder, copperlists+sprites+ direct floppy disk access, with
that damned chip ram bus letting the CPU access sooo slowly..but..
...no problems, no fun! ;-)

See Ya!
The Dark Coder

[darkcoder]

@mdwh2

You gave good points

>others, either in terms of speed or features. I'm not sure what you mean by it being useless to use coding. And demos were
>popular back in the days when the Amiga's CPU speed was not fixed/limited.

With Amiga you have a fixed architechture. You can have CPU of different speeds
which gives rice to number of variants, because the speed of the rest is the
same. And not too much variants, you can control all the possibilities. That you
cannot do with  gfx cards, because there are many different boards with many
different features.

I admit that I haven't kept too up to date with graphics card features in the last couple of years, but I don't think they do
everything for you. Generally, they'll do things like the rasterisation for you, but other things such as hidden surface removal,
particle engines, realistic physics still require coding. In your example of code, there is no magic ComputeVisibleSurfaces

usually gfxcards have z-buffer, so you don't need hidden surface removal. Ok,
of cource t's better if you filter objects completely outside the picture.
Particle engines or realistic phisics, that's another story. I'll come back in a
moment.

>Well some people do do that, they're called artists;) But some people prefer coding - and some of those prefer working with 3D
>hardware and exploring programming of areas other than low level things like rasterisation.

That is a very good point. An artist can use "Supreme" and produce a nice demos
without even writing a single instruction. I think one has to choose the best
instrument with respect to what he want to do.
For me demo coding is "to reach the limit", i.e. try to do 100% (or 99.9%)
optimization. Yesterday I spent 4 hours on a new line clipping routine.
(there are more than 36 cases, so it's a rather heavy work). The new routine
(when finished) will perform 1 or 2 divisions (depending on the case) less than
the previous one (which I coded years ago). Apart from the fact that many gfx
board do line clipping in hardware, with a PPC or P4 2 divisions less is almost
nothing. With a 060 is something. But with a 000 (yes the routine is meant to
work on a A500) it is a lot! These are the things I can do with Amiga. Speaking
about code optimization, you may know that PPC and P4 do instruction
re-ordering. This mean that it is nonsense to work on the code triyng to reach
100% optimization, because you have not the complete control of the instruction
flow. It can happen that you reach 100% optimization, but it's not merit,
the machine did it for you! Again, for me is no sense to do demos with PPC or
P4.
In fact, many of the new generation coders and most of the PC coders use C and
only write in asm the critical parts. And with instruction re-ordering its very
hard to produce bettern code than that of the compiler, so the tendence is to
not use asm at all. So, using C and gfx board which you cannot fully control
you are no more doing 100% optimization but only 90% of it (which can even turn
out to be 100% because the machine does this for you...and to me there is no fun
in this). But there are people who are happy with 90% optimization (more on that
later).
Here comes back particle systems and realistic rendering. These are very
interesting things to do. However there are very complex algorithms and to code
them with 100% optimized asm code would require much strength and time.
Unfortunately I have already no times for coding a "simple" 3D engine, it would
be impossible for me to code a radiosity algorithm in 100% opt asm. And I
suspect that most of the people who program such nice things don't do 100%
optimization but only 90% (which is a lot, but not "the limit"). SAying that I
don't mean to blame them. Maybe there is someone who code such complex things
in 100% optimized code, he has all my admiration, but I really suspect the most
part do 90% only.
So now it should be clear: I want to do 100% optimization. I can do that with
the Amiga, I cannot do that with RTG PPC "new Amigas", hence I use AGA.

But now. Let's say I decide to do some 90% optimized code, for example to do a
radiosity algorithm. There I don't need a custom architecture, I could do that
with RTG. But I can do 90% opt code also with a PC. So way use RTG "new amiga"?
As magicSN wrote, you use the same basic techniques with Amiga RTG and PC.
Only that PCs are more powerful. So why use RTG amiga? I would certainly use a
PC for that! I like to choose the best tool according to the task I have to do.
I chose Amiga to do 100% optimization because it is the best tool do to that
stuff for the reason already explained (fixed architecture, funny custom chips).
You wrote that you do software rendering, I don't understand if you mean that
you code raytrace algotrithms or that you use software produced by others.
In either case I guess that I chose to do rendering with the Amiga because in
former times it was the best platform to do rendering. We all hope that it will
be the same again. But today, if you want to program 90% optimized code there is
no advantage in using a RTG "new amiga". So to me even doing 90% opt code is no
sense with amiga. But it is with a PC, so I can fully understand people that do
particle engines with PC, I will also do that when I had enough of doing 100%
opt code on AGA Amigas (but for the moment I have not enogh :-)

Anyway, the most importan thing is that everyone is free to do what he likes,
as long as Bill Gates and his italian friend Berlusconi don't suceed in ruling
the world.

See ya
The Dark Coder

PS. about monitors, I know the situation is not good. Multisync are difficult to
find, but not a used one. TV-monitors like 1084 are very common. Scandoublers
are not so expensive, I just seen 2 of them at 100euro on a website (ok, maybe
100 euro is not exactly cheap, but today almost everthing for Amiga is expensive
compared to the PC). But for me 15Khz output is worth the expence. First of all
for pixel's shape: pixel are not "squares" like on a VGA like card, but rather
round spot. This is very important for many demo effects, the appereance is
completely different.  Second, with 15Khz you can use so many games and demos...
:-)

[carls]

If it all just comes down to the 15kHz output I don't understand the big deal.

Almost everyone who owns a computer also owns a TV. Just hook your TV up to the Amiga output (you can use the Composite out and a normal RCA cable). If you don't have a TV, you can get a used 14" colour TV for almost no money at all.

You don't need an expensive multiscan monitor to watch demos!

I used an old 1084 with the composite out while having my 17" hooked up to the RGB out. Then I moved it to the RGB out when I got my CV64.

[mdwh2]

darkcoder wrote:
>In your example of code, there is no magic >ComputeVisibleSurfaces

usually gfxcards have z-buffer, so you don't need hidden surface removal. Ok,
of cource t's better if you filter objects completely outside the picture.

In general, it's a lot better. For simple scenes (like a few spinning cubes), using the Z Buffer only will work fine, but larger more complex scenes will generally benefit from using things like BSP trees to remove polygons that aren't visible. Whilst using OpenGL and 3D cards in some sense makes writing any given 3D demo (or indeed, a game) easier, that just means you can write something more complex, and spend time programming other areas that OpenGL doesn't take care of.

I can see your points that you make; I guess different programmers enjoy programming different things:)

But now. Let's say I decide to do some 90% optimized code, for example to do a
radiosity algorithm. There I don't need a custom architecture, I could do that
with RTG. But I can do 90% opt code also with a PC. So way use RTG "new amiga"?

I guess I'm not the best person to answer this in that most of the 3D programming I've done has been on Windows. But I have ported some of it to AmigaOS (albeit using WinUAE). Partly because I enjoy using and programming AmigaOS (and just because I want to use RTG doesn't mean I need or want to have the fastest CPU available); partly because there seems to be less in the way of 3D engines on the Amiga where as they seem to be plentiful on Windows, so there's possibly more chance of interest if I ever get round to releasing anything:) And partly for the fun of porting to a different OS.

You wrote that you do software rendering, I don't understand if you mean that
you code raytrace algotrithms or that you use software produced by others.

I mean in the sense of 3D "polygon based" engines, not raytracing, without using anything like OpenGL.

[darkcoder]

@mdwh2

 ok, now I understand what you do and it is also funny and interesting things,
 I would also like to to "hi-level" 3D engines. Unfortunately we all have a
 limited free time, so we have to choose between interesting things, and I
 prefer "low-level" rasterization & tricky effects. So I can understand your fun
 in doing such things.
 
 I think we can agree also on another point. As you demonstrate by porting your
 windows programs to RTG Amiga systems, from a programmer point of view there is
 no difference between Amiga RTG and PC. The basic techniques are exactly the
 same. So there is nothing special in Amiga RTG. Amiga OS of course IS different
 and better than Win, but (please correct me if I am wrong) for "hi-level"
 graphics as well as for low level coding, the OS does not make any difference.
 
 So there is no technical reason to prefer Amiga RTG to PC. Then you say that
 you do this because there is "more room" on the Amiga for a new 3D engine, and
 this is some sort of "market" reason, although strange since you have to
 consider that there is a very little user base in the Amiga, and that you have fun in doing portings,
 which are worth respecting reason. (you really have fun doing portings?!?)
 
 I usually choose what system to use for technical reason, and I think many
 coders do the same.
 

[Crumb]

While am coding an effect, my only concern is enjoy myself doing something
difficult and proving to myself that I can solve the problems. I don't think to
people's reaction when they see my demos.

Of course, I agree with you in this: I code for fun. If it wasn't funny I wouldn't do it, but what people thinks about a production is important (although not as important as the fun I have coding). For example in the last Euskal Party I may have been the second in the intro compo because only one intro was going to be presented. But I only had a rotozoom and some plasma with no music and I thought that althought I had fun doing the code, it had not the quality to be presented. The effects are quite optimized (although they are in C) but showing two effects with no music sounds pretty crap for me. My AGA support was crap (I used WritePixelArray) because I couldn't mix asm with my code then. Now I'm adding an asm c2p (but it's done by Azure). I hope someday I show something of quality. But now I'm learning and I still can't.

that "more or less"is not satisfactory to me. The "simple copying" of data is
often done using the gfx card blitter, wich is not accessible to the coder.

The simple copying of data is done by the cpu in 3D demos as people does when they copy their c2p buffer from fastram to chip memory.

When you copy data from the fastram (or you write it directly to the gfx ram) you do it at maximum speed if you have coded it correctly. If I write a 32bit word to gfx ram that is going to run at the maximum speed regardless of if it is running in Zorro3/PCI/AGP.
Ok I think there are some special transfermodes for AGPs but they are only used by the card to take textures from fastram when it has its memory full. That doesn't help if I'm writing pixels directly.

With AGA I can decide wich resolution and which refresh rate I
want to use. Gfx board allows each different resolution and rates, hence I
cannot reach their limit.

With a gfx card you can force it to run at one resolution, you may force it to only use one refresh rate, but it's better to read the frecuenzy of the screen and use that value for the maximum fps. That way you will achieve the limit.

You can use blitter functions for RTG if you want, but most of people don't use them because most of demos are 3D and don't use special custom chip magic ;-D

I respect a lot coders (like you) who still get the max of the chipset. I understand you when you say that you aren't going to support RTG because you use AGA to the max. That's very reasonable because making it work with RTG would be a lot of work.

But I think that you should agree with some of us when we say that with 3D demos it's very easy to add RTG support. When you do 3D stuff and you do a function that uses your cpu at 100% you will get little speedup using RTG. You will have reached the maximum speed because the bottleneck is the cpu.
And if the zorro2 bus has less bandwitch you will have reached the max speed still, because it will not be possible to get more speed.

A1 and Peggies and PC with emulators have PCI and AGP cards. I guess in
some months we will see programs (maybe demos) requiring DE FACTO AGP cards.
This is good for Amiga in general, but not for demo scene

That will not change my point in any way, because a 68k version of that demo still will use the bus to the maximum. You don't do different code for cards with different buses, you code them in a similar way pc users did in MS-DOS, you get the address of the screen and you have almost full control. You have the added bonus of being able to use RTG functions like they do with DirectX, so you have the good things of both worlds.

Moreover, I heard (but maybe I am wrong) that there are 2 different RTG standrd,
the Picasso96 and the CyberGfx. So one should even support 2 different
standards?

no, you don't have to add support for both if you don't want. Picasso96 is CyberGraphX compatible, so you can get the address of the screen with CGX only if you want. I have support for both but I don't see any speedup so supporting CGX will be more than enough.

So with AGA I can do BOTH CPU-only chunky effects AND chipset supported funny
tricks. And you can join these techniques together.

Ok, as I have said I agree with you in not supporting RTG if you use special AGA features like the copper etc... but most of demos are 3D only these days.

(BTW, how many of these "new
generation coders" are able to proper initialize audio state machine to begin
audio output?)

I don't know but "new generation demos" work a lot better in every machine that "old generation demos". I don't have any problem with audio initialization with 99% of modern demos. That can not be said of old demos.

I have an A4000 and some people didn't support us in the old times, so it's funny to read that. The "new generation coders" support everything. That's fine for me.

With RTG, instead I can only do one sort of effects. I think the
real progress is not the contraposition of old and new, but rather a synthesis of
old (in this case coding techinques) and new.

You can do every kind of effects but you will have to use the cpu and gfx card blitter instead of AGA. You loose the copper, that's right. :-/

Sometimes you have to use different techniques with AGA and RTG, RTG effects sometimes are more difficult (for example with a selected palette it's easier to simulate transparency with AGA using bitplanes, but you will have to work hard to make it moove smoothly with RTG) It's fun because you are also limited. :-)

When I see a 3D only demo I only think: Umm they may have done it RTG compatible, that would have made it run smoother. For example Loonies did a great job with "The Castle" supporting both AGA and RTG.

Talk to coders that do stuff for both AGA and RTG and you will see that if your demo is 3D only, they way the code looks is similar and you reach the maximum speed of the machine.

Anyway, keep on milking the power of AGA :-)
I love to see AGA prods that use AGA to the max.

Best Regards ;-)

[Crumb]

umm just some words more, when I talk about 3D demos I'm not talking about 3D hardware accelerated demos that use Warp3D/OpenGl, I was talking about software engines...

[lempkee]

This tread makes me sick!!! (sorry)

but last i checked , well i am not impressed, sure there is like 1 or 2 productions a year that is good (on ANY format)
but i cant say that doing em RTG only would do any real changes in where the scene is atm.

I have been to like 80 scene party's since 1989 and now they all are dead , atleast like how i remebered em to be .

Mekka is dead , TG,TP and ASM are dead (only gamers party's now (the last 3-4 years)

The small parties still have some spirit but they doesnt represent anything really, atleast if you look into the contributions.

Anyway why people use AGA (or used to...) is mainly because then the coder/group ALWAYS had fullcontroll unlike now where we get pc people who suddenly wants em to
run in WINUAE , sure i see this as a problem when we have os4 and has to use uae anyway BUT! the main thing here is "thats why i am keeping my classic".

Also i have seen comments about how all make em rtg now because of the 3d stuff, bleeeeh LOL guys , did you ever consider that its done ONLY because its actually coded
for both systems in 1 go?? , ie leaving out all HWbashing and implementing a 2 way system (ie first for AGA then do it for rtg also...)

We changed to RTG 1.5 years ago but we still do it all for AGA anyway and the engine supports RTG.

anyway my opinion is still "the scene is dead" , and now that mekka also is dead...well it couldnt die more...or ?

Sure i dont want it to die, the scene is really why i am still on amiga (well until 99), but since 1998 i have followed PC,AMIGA,C64 scene and
the last 3 years i havent been really impressed not on a single format (the really worst one is the PC scene).

I think the days of garage code is over ;(

anyway for scene stuff , well its damn hard to find all because 1. SCENE.org delete's AMIGA files  ,2. scene.org have CORRUPTED files , 3. Aminet seems to be a place where only WINNERS end up.
but there is still many ways to get the stuff , my advise to you all is to go to #Amigascne (yes written correctly) or #scene on efnet/ircnet (one of them networks...i always mix them)

and a final message here must go to all the great scene groups which still are alive and kicking: PROVE US WRONG and show us that the scene is not dead (if it aint, then i might come back aswell )

pps: i dont have a PC , and i dont like PC

[lempkee]

@kronos : wow great post dood, that is really the whole idea and i like ALL of the people in this post to READ kronos 's POST AGAIN! and AGAIN! as he has really UNDERSTOOD it,
Fixed plattforms/systems is the whole idea and thats why i am so booooored over the PC demos and such.

Anyway making a demo for a 800mzh system and to IMPRESS some one, how is that possible??
by good textures??? , who will set the standard??? , its been 8 years on pc now and i am not impressed.

kronos: glad you pointed that out and thats why i think scene demo's have become boring.

anyway to all who still thinks that an 800mzh demo can impress yo, well OK check all ppc demos at the amiga today, and please tell me which of theese that is impossible to do on a 68k system,
on top of all i have only seen 2 really fast ppc demos on amiga , the whole point why so few went ppc with their demos is basically because of this,
the p5 ppc's are really crap and infact only (MAX) 3 times faster than a 68k system, but i would also agree with you on that some of the ppc demos are really goodlooking and such, but thats
why i asked earlier...WHAT makes a good demo...GOOD code or good textures or high RES ?.

dooing demos on a system like A1 or pegasos still makes me like... WHAT?? , why did the scene start really.. , do any of you know?
custom chipsets is always fun to explore except for Playstation 2 and Gamecube (which is like driving a ferrari in norway)...

anyway coders on the new computers and consoles hasnt evolved if you ask me, it seems like its in general that the GFX artists (in 99% of the time this is the CODER)
are the one who shows off (with good textures).

anyway i am sick of 3d.... i want the 2d back

[carls]

Maybe one should see it like this:
The Amiga scene is splitting into two parts.
The "oldschool" or "retro" part which still uses AGA and 68k and the "newschool" part which codes for CGX and PPC.

The CGX and PPC people would probably be happy to move on to the A1 or the Pegasos but these demos still wouldn't work on WinUAE because they require a PPC.

The "retro" sceners will probably stick to their old Amiga for scene activities much like you see Atari or C64 people doing today. They bring their old computer to the demo parties but they also use an up-to-date PC for surfing the web etc.

The "retro" demos will also run on any good emulator if you have a fast CPU and you can also view them as DivXs or whatever.

Here's a good starting point for everyone with an emulator who won't run your favourite demo:
http://omr.planet-d.net/amidemos/ - they have LOTS of demo DivXs and MPEGs.

Viewing tip: Cybercinematastic by Loonies

[darkcoder]

@carls

>he "retro" sceners will probably stick to their old Amiga for scene activities much like you see Atari or C64 people doing today. They bring their old computer to the demo

this is probably what will happen. Anyway I am not saying that A1 or Peggy are not good machines!
I will stick with my Amiga for coding demos but that does not mean I will not use A1.

back in the old days, Amiga was the best because it had
1) best hardware perfect for games/gfx applications and demos (and still perfect NOW for demos)
2) the wonderful OS that we all know

the "new Amigas" have only the latter, the OS.
But as far as demos are concerned, the OS is not important so which are the reasons to do demos with RTG amiga? If you are interested in 3D only demos, do them on a PC! Much more people will look at them! There is no technical reason to do demos on the ERTG Amiga, while there are to do demos on AGA Amigas (copper, sprites and more).

And, please, be open minded and don't look only to 3D stuff. With AGA you can do BOTH 3D and special stuff.

[darkcoder]

@lempkee

 Hey, I am writing hundreds of text lines in this post to defend fixed platform against crappy RTG standards, and you don't say anything! :-)
 Kronos just wrote 1 post!! :-))

 please credit also me!! :-)))

the scene will continue in our hearts, at least!

BTW why don't you like PS2? I think it's great hardware, it's only very complex to master because it's different from anything else! But I think one could do great things with Emotion Engine!

[darkcoder]

You behaved right at Euskal party!
At Spoletium 4 I won the 4K compo. But I was the only one to compete! :-((
My intro was not bad, but I would have preferred to be 3rd out of 5 than 1st out of 1!
Anyway, coding the intro was fun, that's important!

>When you copy data from the fastram (or you write it directly to the gfx ram) you do it at maximum speed if you have coded it correctly. If I write a 32bit word to gfx ram
                                   that is going to run at the maximum speed regardless of if it is running in Zorro3/PCI/AGP.
                                   Ok I think there are some special transfermodes for AGPs but they are only used by the card to take textures from fastram when it has its memory full. That doesn't help if
                                   I'm writing pixels directly.

That sound a bit strange to me. The cards are connected with the system by means of the Zorro/PCI or AGP bus. Hence the speed at which you can write to them is that of the bus. But Zorro, PCI and AGP have diffrent speed. And also the card's memory are different both in size AND speed! So haw can you write always at the same speed? and which is the speed?

maybe there is something I don't understand...

Then as you said, coding RTG is like coding on a PC. Which is the advantage of using RTG instead of a PC?
Other point: please, don't do only 3D stuff! Today most demos are 3D only, but most of them are boring, as lempkey said! You can do beter things if you MIX 3D stuff with old 2D-copper stuff!
(and it's not only copper, there's sprites, hardware scrolling, etc.)
"new generation demos" have no problems with sound  because they use AHI or P61, which is a good replay routine. But the "new generation coders" don't know anything about DMA and hardware stuff. many of them know very little of asm and use C!
That's 90% optimization!

[pVC]

All Amiga demoscene releases from last year etc: http://jpv.wmhost.com/releases/
(click the "more" on bottom too)

It's shame that only small part of the stuff will end up to Aminet... and usually very late. And the quality and amount of the releases have dropped a lot since 2000/2001... until then it was going down slowly, but now it seems quite depressing.

[Crumb]

@lempkee

i cant say that doing em RTG only would do any real changes in where the scene is atm.

no one has talked about making these productions RTG only. The only suggestion is that you can add RTG support to your production easily.

Also i have seen comments about how all make em rtg now because of the 3d stuff, bleeeeh LOL guys , did you ever consider that its done ONLY because its actually coded
for both systems in 1 go?? , ie leaving out all HWbashing and implementing a 2 way system (ie first for AGA then do it for rtg also...)

nahhhhh ROTFL guys should read what I write, I talk about adding RTG support without dropping AGA because you can do this easily and release a dual demo...

I'm always reading that "scene is dead", but I don't care. I was reading that when there were lots of spanish groups alive and kicking and many people said that scene was dead.

Scene will be alive for me if people still tries to optimize and always try to improve their coding/gfx/music skills.

I like 3D stuff in slow machines because goals difficult to achieve are exciting. For example watching the c64 version of second reality was quite funny, other demos show gouraud shaded cubes with only 0.98 Mhz... well, that's amazing.

I am still waiting for a RTG production that makes me say, wow! I didn't think my 060 with gfx card could do that.

I don't care about pc emulators. PC sceners don't make demos for 8086 to run them in pc-task ;P why should we care about that? they should improve their emulators and that's all.

Even using AGA, the Amiga is not really fixed hardware now, with 030/50,040/33,040/40,060/50, 060/66, 060LC/75. You are almost coding for your machine only. The nice effect you are coding may run in one frame in a 060/60 but not in a 060/50. Your excelent and super optimized 882 FPU code may run very well with a 882 but may be dead slow with a 040...

Anyway making a demo for a 800mzh system and to IMPRESS some one, how is that possible??

making stuff that would require a much more powerful machine.

WHAT makes a good demo...GOOD code or good textures or high RES ?.

All that mixed together ;-D
and don't forget the music! :-)

for me the fun is in coding with a limited resources, optimizing so much, that what people thought that was impossible to do, becomes possible. trying to break the limits set by someone...

anyway i am sick of 3d.... i want the 2d back

yes, I liked 2D, but many things have been already invented and it's difficult to find a original 2D new effect. I'd like a mix of that, mixing 2D and 3D, new and old techniques like Darkcoder said.