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

[commodorejohn]

On top of that, with 64MB or more ram you can easily load and edit CD quality stereo audio tracks without having to use any form of swap file or virtual memory, as the whole track will load into ram.

Well, that all depends on how long the track is

[commodorejohn]

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

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

[commodorejohn]

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.

[commodorejohn]

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.

[commodorejohn]

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.

[commodorejohn]

Nobody's opposed to having it - we just don't think that there's any particular reason to do so, outside of heavy-duty stuff like multimedia editing.

[commodorejohn]

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.

Mind elaborating on this? Because the '020 certainly doesn't have any address lines after A31 on the pinouts I've found, and I can't find a datasheet for the 68851 MMU to verify whether it has any such capability.

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

It's largely irrelevant anyway; how many people are going to buy a new accelerator just for the purpose of having more RAM, simply to run a single game, when they could simply buy an NG Amigoid system?

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

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

That's your call, but you must realize that you are impacting your potential audience with an attitude like that.

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

Oy, did they decide to use "unused" high-order bits for flags, too? It was bad enough when the Mac Team did that... :angry:

[commodorejohn]

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.

No it hasn't. I was talking about real DOOM, not Monsters Jumping Out Of Closets In Unlit Boiler Rooms 2004 Edition. The real DOOM is about 10MB, a tenth of TC-AGA's size and every inch a classic.

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.

I'm sure they don't - but people who want to play it on a real Amiga do.

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?

No, it's because nobody was talking about oversized games at all until you brought up TC-AGA.

[commodorejohn]

I don't think anyone cares about the filesize of the Original Doom in 1993.  It is 2012.  By my reckoning that makes it 19 years ago.

As Linde has pointed out, I brought up the DOOM comparison because A. it's a solid example of a game working within the constraints of a smallish filesize to deliver something amazing, and B. it's also fairly well within comparability to an AGA Amiga game, time-wise.

For those who are obsessed with archive sizes:
Why can't we compare the archive size that today's Doom sequel is?

Nobody said we can't - but if we're going to, then we're going to compare everything else. Your game is so far removed from Doom 3 in all aspects that a comparison is basically meaningless, but TC-AGA requires twice (or, taking the 24MB situation, 1.5x) the RAM and 1.2x the disk space of the original StarCraft. Does it stack up favorably against StarCraft?

I have a hard time with comming up with anything.  Can you give me a concrete example of a hypothetical game that would  need 256 megabytes of ram?

Total Chaos RTG :roflmao:

[commodorejohn]

Again, I'm not saying people shouldn't develop games for higher-end Amigas. I just don't care for this notion that developing for lower-end systems is "holding the Amiga back" or some such nonsense. Tons of bona fide classic games run on even a 1MB A500 - many were even developed for that spec. And it's still possible for quality games to be developed for that spec - and like it or not, they can potentially reach a wider audience than games that require an 040 and AGA, because any old schmoe who's just pulled his old A500 out of the attic can run it.

Amigans of all people should understand that a computer doesn't become less capable just because someone else introduces a newer computer with bigger numbers.