Is there any real use for 128MB on classic Amiga?

[ChaosLord]

If you want to play every WHDload game at maximum speed then you need more than 4MB.

Amiga multitasks.  Of course you can use 128MB of RAM.
7zip can use more than 128MB all by itself.
Web browser can use more than 128MB all by itself.
Editing gfx can use more than 128MB all by itself.
Editing music can use more than 128MB.

Now try to do multiple things at once.

Total Chaos AGA takes 32MB.  But that is only because so many people starve their Amiga of memory.  So I had to make the game all cut down and squished into only 32MB.

If everyone had a proper 3GB of RAM.  Or maybe say 2GB Fastram + 256MB gfx card ram then game coders could make better games.

If ppl insist on keeping their Amigas in the 1980s with 1980s memory levels then Amiga gaming will get stuck.

In 1980s my A2000 had 1MB chipram and 8MB fastram.  That was ok because that was just an old game machine for compatibility reasons.  I consumed 4MB on lots of games in the 1980s.  I can't imagine trying to get by with only 4MB in 2012.

My dad was really penny pincher.  He only had an A500 with 4MB fastram and 1MB chipram + SCSI hard drive in 1980s.

I remember watching a lot of 3MB fastram + some chipram required demos in 1980s too.

In 1990 I went to 18MB and never looked back

Later on I went up higher and higher.  Always needing more than what was being offered.


Amiga: Sporting a 4096MB memory map since 1985.

[ChaosLord]

18 Mins of CD audio takes around 158MB.  And presumably you would want to have various sound samples in memory also.  So 256MB could be an ok number.

Amiga: Making Beautiful Music since 1985.

[ChaosLord]

If people insist on pushing for higher memory requirements for games, then fewer people will be able to play them :/

Artists need room to work.  Give them the room they need or they go work somewhere else.

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.

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.

[ChaosLord]

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[ChaosLord]

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

Eventually I just clicked New Posts and found the thread again and started over from scratch, then it worked.

[ChaosLord]

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:

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:

[ChaosLord]

@rai-clan
Dude, you are awesome!  Respect!  :cool:



Amiman99 has:

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:

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

you can forget more than two gigabytes (which isn't needed anyway).

Since you, and various other people in various threads are morally opposed to having 4GB of ram on the Amiga Megacomputer I have decided to stop harping on it.  I will stop talking about the 4GB limit if you do?

> OK

Ok.

[ChaosLord]

The 68020 can address a full 4GB, sure,

Actually Motorola 680x0 addresses 32GB.  There are 8 banks of 4GB in hardware since day one.*

What you meant is just that they can only directly address 4GB.  But they can indirectly address 32GB.


* The 32GB of RAM limitation is a secret known only to us hardcore asm c0derz and hardcore hardware deziners.  shhh don't tell anybody. :cool:

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.

In 1987, 4GB of ram would have been over $200,000 :eek: I think.  Surprisingly, most ppl could not afford that. :mickeymouse:

But if you mean "Why is Jens not putting more ram on his brand new accelerators" then I have no idea.

Iirc Natamis have 512MB on the motherboard + some more on the CPU card + some PCI slots so there are various ways to add more.

My brand new bgcpc came with 10GB of ram.  Now I want my Amiga to have 32GB.

[ChaosLord]

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?

The screenbuffers are only used for special fx.  These special fx were added in Total Chaos 7 I think.

The special fx can be any size at all, and sometimes cover the whole screen.  so their size can be anything from 32x32 to 544x448.   Maybe they could go all the way to 640x512 in the future.

I calculate up the gfx based on simple algos using small tiles and then draw them out into the buffer.  Then blit the smallest part of the screenbuffer that covers the whole fx onto the screen.

The animation is rigged to loop or pingpong according to the 8 frames.

The fx could be smoother and kewler if I could do, for example 60 frames.

I just noticed that if you are low on memory.  I mean "just low" not "out" then I disable these fx and don't allocate the memory for them.  This must be the secret to why the game runs on Magnus' 24MB Amiga.

Who says I don't cater to the low end Amigas?

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.

Nope.  That is why you buy a 68040 or 68060. :biglaugh:

68030 came out in 1987.  It was way kewl.  I loved my 030.  It rawked my world. :knuddel:

68040 came out in 1990 and I bought mine in 1992 in my A4000/040. My 25Mhz 040 was 3x the speed of my 25Mhz 030 A3000 at unlhaing. :knuddel::knuddel::knuddel:  I timed it many times.  But I still loved to write optimized asm routines for the tiny 256 byte caches in the 030 until 1994.  Then I just got sick of it.  Sorry.  68040 forever! :biglaugh:

I reward ppl who support the Amiga with purchases of 040 and 060 by giving them something that makes use of it.

[ChaosLord]

I'm not morally opposed to filling up the address space completely. It would be cool for the novelty factor alone,

Ok, glad to hear it

A lot of times you sound really really negative.

 but if the OS, by default, only supports half of that, then there's no point in having it... which actually sucks massive turds

There is absolutely no way in hell to patch the old AllocMem() etc. to support memory above 2GB without breaking everything.  Whoever wrote that routine made a terrible mistake.

Which leads me back to NewAllocMem and NewAllocVec: Which OS revision are they part of, and can they work with KS2/3?

They can work with any kickstart v1.0 or higher.

They are basically just like the old Allocmem() without wasting the sign bit the way Allocmem does.

I guess what you are saying is you have some favorite old program that (like a sound or video editor) that uses tons of ram and you want it to use the memory above 2GB.  I can understand that.

Here are ways to make old nonupdated software work with ram above 2GB:
1. We can patch the RAM: drive to prefer to use the memory above 2GB.  There u go u now have an awesome huge RAM: that doesn't steal ANY memory away from all your old progs!  Many ppl have patched RAM: before so I am 100% certain that they can patch the AllocMem() calls too!  You can see them when u disassemble the code. :hammer:

2. Or another way would be to use one of those virtual memory programs with your favoriite old proggy.  But instead of redirecting RAM accessess to a hard drive it can redirect the ram accesses to ... moar ram! Yeah! :idea:

And if we combine these ideas with the different BANKS of 4GB that we have then we can totally make use of 32GB.  AmigaClassicRule can watch his HAM8 Family Guy episodes straight from memory in uncompressed format.  etc. etc.

32GB Amiga FTW! :banana:

[ChaosLord]

I can't believe this thread! Sounds like you all only use your Amigas for playing games. No one works with graphics any more?

Hey Motrucker,
There are guys in Team Chaos and other guys in Natami Team who use their Amigas for hardcore gfx work in ImageFX, Photogenics and others.  They need as much ram as they can get.  They can always work in higher resolutions, add more layers, make more animation frames, etc. etc.

So you are not alone.

[ChaosLord]

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.

According to TPB the small version of Doom 3 for PC is 1400 MB

The BFG version of Doom 3 for the PS3 game console is 3440 MB

You criticize Total Chaos AGA for having a 100MB archive when PS3 version is the size of 34 Total Chaos archives.

Your argument has failed. :roflmao:

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?

I know at least one person who bought an Amiga specifically to play Total Chaos.

And a ton of ppl who don't know what an Amiga is were forced to install WinUAE so they could play the game.  Even Atari ST users. :eek:

This forced them to confront the fact that AmigaOS is awesome. (many of them use AmikitOS as their very first experience of Amiga)

Ppl who have a 3Ghz PC with 1TB of free hd space (and the ability to buy as many more TB of HD space as they like) simply don't care about the package size.

They download a 145MB basic version of AmikitOS without complaining (with amikit addons its 345MB), just to play a tiny little 100MB game.  Mac basic version of Amikit is 380MB.  

And as Thorham says, package size has very little to do with the quality of a game.

If you really believe that then why all the criticism about Total Chaos package size?  It isn't even the biggest game on Aminet.  And it is sooooooooooooooo tiny compared to PS3, Xbox 360 and PC games of 1995 to 2012.

I don't remember you criticizing any of the Aminet games that are bigger than Total Chaos.  Is it because they deserve the 100MB and we don't?

[ChaosLord]

@AmigaClassicRule
If you find any bugs in Total Chaos then please tell me about it.

But if your Amiga crashes while playing TotalChaos and running Ibrowse or WookieChat or Amirc then I don't actually want to know about it  When I run those softwares for 3 days straight on a clean Amiga (no TC) I always crash.  Unless I run TLSFmem then I can make it for 5 days.

What I am saying is if your Amiga crashes and you really think it was the fault of Total Chaos then I really need to know because I take bugs seriously.  Die bugs die! :flame:

There is only 1 bug in the game right now that I know of and it only happens if you use SFS.  It allegedly does not affect PFS3 or FFS.  We have a patch that fixes the problem and I will send it to you.  Do you use SFS?

I hope you enjoy the game and don't worry about how small it is or how big it is