Amiga.org

Amiga.org specific forums => New User Introductions => Topic started by: ArchM on July 26, 2006, 03:00:46 PM

Title: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: ArchM on July 26, 2006, 03:00:46 PM
Howdy everybody, my name is Michael and I am a 3D modelling student from Ohio.  I just discovered this whole Amiga business, and am looking to possibly get into it a little.  I will be making a post soon with some general questions, but now I am at work - and should probably go do some.  
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: Oliver on July 26, 2006, 03:14:45 PM
Hi Michael.  Welcome aboard.  

I think quite a few people have done 3D modelling with Amiga's here, and there's a lot of other Amiga expertese here too (not so much from me though).

Hope you find your answers here.

Oli
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: mgerics on July 26, 2006, 03:15:52 PM
Welcome! Lots of nice folks here who always help out. Thomas is very intelligent. No, I don't know him/work for him/owe him money/etc but his answers are always right on and not full of fluff. Me, I'm just a hack, but I do love my Amigas; I know just enough to screw things up.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: tonyvdb on July 26, 2006, 03:17:00 PM
Hi Michael, Welcome to AO.

Have you done any 3D work using Lightwave? if so, The Amiga was one of the first computers to be used in the movie and television industry for 3D rendering. Lightwave was introduced to the world on the Amiga in the early 90s and has been used in TV shows like Babalon5, Startrek, Sliders and many more.


Always remember that "a dumb question is a question not asked"
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: weirdami on July 26, 2006, 04:03:35 PM
many more = also Seaquest
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: Piru on July 26, 2006, 04:11:09 PM
@tonyvdb
Quote
Babalon5

To be honest, only for the pilot was rendered on Amigas. Anything else used PCs and DEC Alpha workstations.

Anyway, since it was mentioned, Babylon 5 returns (http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23963)

w00t w00t!
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: ArchM on July 26, 2006, 04:31:00 PM
LOL, no, no Lightwave.  My college teaches 3DMax exclusively, so that is all I have messed with.  They don't get into MaxScript either, (at least for my degree), so I really have only a dabbling of VisualBasic for my programming experience.  I think programmers are all insane personally.  

Truthfully, I am interested in the Amiga strictly for it's games.  There seem to be sooooo many amazing games for the older Amiga's, a lot of 80's and early 90's Cyberpunk too - which is my favorite genre ever.  I NEED to get access to these games - they are haunting my dreams now!  LOL!
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: Amiduffer on July 26, 2006, 05:30:31 PM
Welcome.

Imagine3D user here!  :egad:
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: mgerics on July 26, 2006, 07:35:39 PM
@ArchM '...all programmers are insane...'

What?? I'm a programmer! And I just want to say,um...
yeah, you're right.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: GreggBz on July 26, 2006, 08:31:59 PM
Hello,
Don't mean to hijack, but I'm looking for a 3d artist for my
game, Outerspace (http://www.outerspacecrew.net/)
which is a remake of a classic PC/Amiga/Atari Game.

See this thread:
Here (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=23418)

Also, the game's in VB.NET, and I'm pretty darn good at VB.NET so that might interest you.


Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: carls on July 26, 2006, 08:47:22 PM
Quote
Truthfully, I am interested in the Amiga strictly for it's games.


In that case I'd recommend you to get an emulator package, say Amiga Forever (http://www.amigaforever.com/ (http://www.amigaforever.com/)) which emulates basically anything from an A1000 or A500 up to an A4000. It will run fine on a modern PC and you avoid the hassle of getting an Amiga, finding space for it and findning floppies and transfer games onto them.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: Hyperspeed on July 27, 2006, 03:23:03 AM
Quote
by carls:
In that case I'd recommend you to get an emulator package, say Amiga Forever (http://www.amigaforever.com/) which emulates basically anything from an A1000 or A500 up to an A4000. It will run fine on a modern PC and you avoid the hassle of getting an Amiga, finding space for it and findning floppies and transfer games onto them.


Blasphemy! To the gallows with you, traitor!

:-D

Get a REAL Amiga for full compatibility and get the WHDLoad shareware package to install the floppies to hard disk.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: carls on July 27, 2006, 07:09:36 PM
@Hyperspeed

Hehe :)
I just saw another thread by ArchM and yeah, he definitely needs the real deal.

I myself own four Amigas, so no need to panic. Although nothing beats WinUAE/Amiga Forever for nostalgia in a cramped apartment.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: tonyvdb on July 27, 2006, 07:18:00 PM
The drawback with Amiga forever (That I do have by the way) is that not all games/programs run properly and sometimes need alot of fiddling of the settings to make work.

Get and Amiga 4000 or 1200 and you will be a happy camper :-D
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: magnetic on July 27, 2006, 07:26:08 PM
Carls

WTF? Don't you understand how COOL it is to have  a REAL Amiga and not a cheap x86 box running emu??

magnetic
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: carls on July 27, 2006, 07:53:23 PM
Quote

tonyvdb wrote:
The drawback with Amiga forever (That I do have by the way) is that not all games/programs run properly and sometimes need alot of fiddling of the settings to make work.

Get and Amiga 4000 or 1200 and you will be a happy camper :-D


I'm willing to bet you'll have a harder time getting the games to work on an A4000 than in UAE. But yeah, nothing beats the feeling of real hardwware.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: carls on July 27, 2006, 07:57:25 PM
Quote

magnetic wrote:
Carls

WTF? Don't you understand how COOL it is to have  a REAL Amiga and not a cheap x86 box running emu??


No, I own four Amigas because I hate them and want them to rot away in a dark corner of my basement. :)

But seriously, if you're just going to do some retro-gaming every now and again WinUAE is just a lot mor hassle-free.

It's kind of like how I have no problem with watching C64 demos in VICE, while at the same time, real C64 sceners try to code their demos so that they won't work in VICE :)
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: ArchM on July 27, 2006, 10:28:48 PM
I just love collecting too much to settle for an emulator.  I like the feel of looking at the system, or holding the controller/joystick and sitting on my couch.  

As of now, I am going to keep my eyes open for either an NTSC 1200, or an SX-1.  The CD32's seem to get sold often enough, and though I will one day want both the 1200 AND the CD32, I am going to wait to get the CD32 after I find the rarer SX-1.  
Whichever comes along first, the SX-1 or 1200, will dictate how I begin playing my first games on Amiga systems ever.  

Strangely, most of my favorite games were ports of Amiga games!  Out of this World is my favorite game OF ALL TIME, and low and behold - Amiga.  I tell you, I cannot WAIT to get into these games, there are just soooooo many.  
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: carls on July 27, 2006, 10:35:25 PM
Quote

ArchM wrote:
I just love collecting too much to settle for an emulator.  I like the feel of looking at the system, or holding the controller/joystick and sitting on my couch.  


I'd love to see some photos of your collection.

Also - and this might sound patronizing, but I assure you it isn't - how old are you? I'm just curious since you haven't heard about the Amiga.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: Hyperspeed on July 28, 2006, 04:11:35 AM
A few things I don't like are the cheap feeling of a PC keyboard, the different layout, the lack of A/A keys and no light in the caps lock key!

:-D ;-)

And there's the issue of Amiga hardware not being compatible with a PC... how do you use the software then?
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: ArchM on July 28, 2006, 02:25:52 PM
Quote

Also - and this might sound patronizing, but I assure you it isn't - how old are you? I'm just curious since you haven't heard about the Amiga.


I am 26 now.  Now, I have HEARD of Amiga, however I had no idea what it/they actually were/are.  I always assumed that there were some kind of Atari type system.  I was always into video games, but I only ever had access to what I saw on the TV, which was pretty much the standard consoles.  I had NO IDEA there was so much to offer from these machines.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: tonyvdb on July 28, 2006, 03:19:24 PM
I had NO IDEA there was so much to offer from these machines.

Here is my setup and it is no where neer what some have done to there Amigas. The first picture is of my full video editing system. The Amiga runs hardware and software called the Video Toaster Flyer.
Look Here (http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1243)

The second is after I put my Amiga 4000 into a Tower case and added a Cyberstorm PPC 68060/50Mhz CPU with128 mb of ram and a 9gig SCSI hard drive (plenty of space as the Amiga OS only uses about 100mb of drive space).
Click Here (http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1377)
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: monty on July 28, 2006, 07:49:27 PM
@Tonyvdb:

How much for that setup???

I want it badly !!!!!!!!! It rocks !!!
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: tonyvdb on July 28, 2006, 08:53:06 PM
LOL, No price at this time I wouldent sell it :-D
Seriously over the past 12 years that I have owned it I have probably invested about $6000 in it and another $1000 on VTRs.   In 1994 when I bought the Amiga 4000 with the Toaster and Flyer with hard drives from a friend that used it in a recording studio that I helped out in and got it all for $5000 (at the time it was cutting edge and that was a steal of a deal) before that I had an Amiga 3000 tower with the Video Toaster (no Flyer) I wanted the A4000 so badly.
Now with the convenience of capturing my final video clips to the PC I can burn DVDs of my finnished video the quality is just fantastic.
Today I doupt I would get out of it nearly as much if I sold it so I still use it regularly for wedding videos and even the odd promotional or trainning video, its so much fun to use. Even though the PC has the Video Toaster that is better its not worth the money to buy seeing as I have this system already.
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: carls on July 29, 2006, 02:26:54 AM
Quote

ArchM wrote:
I am 26 now.  Now, I have HEARD of Amiga, however I had no idea what it/they actually were/are.  I always assumed that there were some kind of Atari type system.  I was always into video games, but I only ever had access to what I saw on the TV, which was pretty much the standard consoles.  I had NO IDEA there was so much to offer from these machines.


Well, I'm probably going to get bashed for saying this, but the Amiga and Atari are pretty much alike on many aspects. One of the key differences though, is the operating system. Atari's TOS simply cannot compare to AmigaOS.

Amiga was always one step ahead of Atari regarding sound and graphics performance until Atari released the Falcon 030, but that didn't matter much since they went bankrupt shortly after that.

Funny that you've never had more contact with Amigas though, we're the same age and Amigas were all the rage when I was a kid. People wanted them instead of consoles because the games were "free"  :roll:
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: amigakit on July 29, 2006, 02:43:20 AM
Tony,

Looking at your pics of your Amiga project, you could do with an Amiga engraved tower plate (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=554) to finish it off ;-)


@ArchM

Welcome to Amiga.org!
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: Hyperspeed on July 29, 2006, 04:27:15 AM
What would be cool (and the dimensions would be just right) is the complete embossed Amiga logo with the H.DISK, F.DISK & POWER LEDs for fitting into a 5.25" bay!

I've always longed for a drive bay cover with a SCSI-ID selector, clock and CPU temperature stats like those on PC too...

Make it so AmigaKit! Engage!
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: ArchM on July 31, 2006, 03:51:00 PM
For some reason, possibly geographically, all anybody my age was interested was Nintendo or Sega.  That was about it, and since I didn't get a computer until I was around 13-14ish, I missed out on a lot of integral steps.

When I look at Atari, and I look at their games, it doesn't even seem to be in the same league.  The styles even seem different.  I mean, I have never heard of a point and click adventure game on an Atari, or even a good old fashioned dungeon crawl RPG.  Maybe, like this whole Amiga scene I seem to have stumbled into, they are out there - I just haven't found out about them yet.  
Title: Re: New guy with lots of questions
Post by: Hyperspeed on August 01, 2006, 12:15:45 AM
Pretending we are alone in the cosmos is a dangerous thing... there are hidden civilisations of Atari Jaguar coders, Acorn and Atari groups, C=64 web servers etc.

Other interesting cults would be those programming Amiga emulators for Sony PSP, Dreamcast and GameCube!

I consider myself lucky I had a ZX Spectrum 128k +2 as well as a Sega Master System. The quantity of games and their variety was probably a key to me seeking out more from a home machine.

I spent as much time meddling with Workbench as I did playing Sonic!