Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: iamaboringperson on May 31, 2003, 05:47:48 AM
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whats your most hated amiga software?
#1 on my list of the 'worst amiga software that ever existed' list is MS- AMIGABASIC!!! this is absolutley pathetic, and it doesnt even run on some computers from the 80's - just about anything other than a 1meg A500 with kickstart 1.3, and it wont work
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Hey, that's easy: iFusion.
It costed a lot, I paid in advance, it was delayed, and when it finally came, it didn't work at all. The dumbest purchase I have made, ever. In my defence, I thought I would get a product similar to Fusion, only with PPC support. I've always been very happy with Fusion.
Now THERE'S something worh starting a class action over.
Kay
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whats iFusion?
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"I thought I would get a product similar to Fusion, only with PPC support."
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Imagine that, after 16 YEARS, still holding onto the title of "Worst amiga application ever!"
Slow AND incompatable.
I said this before, I've enjoyed writing script files.
Basic is supposed to be FUN to use!
Was AmigaBasic FUN to use???
Hahahahahahaha!!!
Very NOT fun!
AmigaOne! I can't wait to see the GEMS people come up with writing PPC assembler!!!
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I wouldnt say AmigaBasic was that bad, yes by todays standards, but in 1990 thats all I had on My A500 to program with.
It was free it came with it. Abacus did some great books on it of which I bought 3.
My A-Level Computer Science project was coded in it...
Got me into University so i guess i have fond memories of using it... Disk swaping was a pain.
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The best thing about AmigaBasic was the manual. I've still got mine somewhere....
As for the worst Amiga applications ever, there are a couple of others that spring to mind:
Kindwords - ran dog slow on My A500, and text would periodically "disappear" when editing stuff
Thexder (yes I know it isn't strictly an application) - Four colour CGA PC game on an Amiga? Look no further.
Oh, and on a nostalgic note, I too used AmigaBasic to help me with my A Level in Computing - ten long years ago now!
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@iamaboringperson
Gotta agree with you. The editor was pants as well. I have a recollection of typing and typing and not only was the screen filling up with text REALLY SLOWLY but after a while it forgot what I was typing so I could speed type and lose half of it.
The functionality it promised was pretty special though, and it was good to play around with creating windows and drawing and stuff but execution was poor.
Seconded only by GFA basic.
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Oh, and on a nostalgic note, I too used AmigaBasic to help me with my A Level in Computing - ten long years ago now!
I used an Amiga Pascal compiler for mine. (HSPascal maybe?), I used that at home, and TurboPascal on a12Mhz 286 (and if I was lucky occasionally a 386sx16) at college. It taught me to make platform independant code at an early age, throught the use of platform checking in each function/procedure that was OS or hardware specific. I even coded a couple of BBS intro's that compiled unchanged on Amiga and PC. Oh the memories. I'm gonna have to get over to the borland museum and get the free tp5.5 and fire up dosemu methinks. :-)
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- Edit @PMC about Thexder: -
Wow, someone else saw this game?
Actually, it was originally released for the Tandy Color Computer 2 IIRC. It may have been ported to the PC in a glorious 4-color mode, but it was a whopping 8 color game on the CoCo. :-D It was actually quite playable as well. Ah, those were the days. I don't think the Amiga port ranks as the worst ever. ABC's Monday Night Football was far worse, IMHO.
As far as bad apps, I can't think of anything worse than iFusion. I can't believe someone didn't get sued over that. :-o
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TextCraft, GraphicCraft,DPaintV,iFusion,Commodore C and many more I forgot.
:-(:-((I have all bought, as stupid I am) :-( :-(
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Amiga Basic...
It had no open file requester, you had to type in the path and filename by hand and from your memory. A shame to the Amiga name...
Even the C64's Basic V2.0 was better.
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Back in '86-'89 I worked part time in an Amiga store owned by my business partner. The rest of the time I spent coding Amiga programs. One of the best parts of working in the store was getting to look at demos of new software. Some of the crap people sent us they were trying to sell was beyond words!
A lottery number picker in AmigaBasic. You know... I could have written something better in C in under an hour! Probably the first program the guy ever wrote.
I don't remember what this other program was called but the literature with it said it was the greatest thing ever created... once you tried it you'll never know how you lived without it.... blah blah blah.... and we loaded up the demo and never could figure out what it did!!!! LOL At least 6 people looked at it trying to figure out what it was supposed to do and not one had the slightest idea. We figured it was just a little too fantastic for mere mortals and didn't order any.
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Tornado 3D ; ho humanbeing has ever rendered a full screen without it crashing.
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TextCraft, GraphicCraft
As we refered to them.... TextCrap, GraphicCrap
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voyager web browser the most unstable browser on an amiga crashes more than ie5 .
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Kindwords 3 was rubbish. Thank feck for Wordworth 6 which was fantasmagorical.
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Hoya!
@Markus
Why do you think DPaintV was crap? It is supposed to be one of the greatest and legendary paint proggies, isn't it?
As for a crappy proggy... Does anyone remember Lombard Rally? :-D
And Brattacas by Psynosys (YES!!! PSYNOSYS!!!) was utterly lame! Looked like a Spectrum 4 colour game!!! ROTFL
Be funky
M A D
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Talking of games, Kangfo must be one of the most worst games I have ever played. It's also the game with most longest featurelist :-)
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Just let me get into my pyro suit first...
Right, IMNHO: AMOS :-D
Time to stoically face down the pro AMOS molatovs...
Seriously, I know it got a lot of people into coding on the amiga, and for that I salute it. I just wish it wasn't so system unfriendly and as for that god awful "you can tell it's an AMOS program" look-and-feel...
PS: I never tried Microsoft's BASIC on the amiga, no doubt it was much worse ;-)
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TextCraft, GraphicCraft,DPaintV,iFusion,Commodore C and many more I forgot.
Well, I certainly agree on all those except DPaintV. I thought it was a pretty good paint program. It was in the twilight of DPaint, and they hadn't kept up to the advances PhotoShop was making (I think they were on version 3 or 4 by then) but it was still a sound graphics package, and finally supported RTG. I can't knock it for what it was.
As for the list, I'd add.....
CanDO - Rhymes well with Guru, which was what it seemed most adept at doing - Plus, things made with it needed the cando.library, which was always at the wrong version, as there were several incompatible ones, if I remember correctly.
Pro Calc (Gold Disk) - I have a big frown face drawn on the disk. I'm not sure I ever got this to work, at all.
VideoScape 3d - It's like a 3d modler/renderer... only crappy.
There were a few god-awful BBS packages, too.... But looking through my collection, I don't remember which they were. (All I remember is I liked the CNet and Excelsior ones. I forget which ones out of the other 15 or so that I hated...)
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yep i vote for AMOS at #2
virtually all AMOS programs did have that AMOS look and feel
except for one game: 'breed 96' that was good ####!!!!!!!
if you find breed 96, you probably wont believe it was done in AMOS
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iamaboringperson wrote:
if you find breed 96, you probably wont believe it was done in AMOS
Well, the fact that it won't run on my hardware unless I drop to 020 / chipram only might be a give away ;-)
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@hoya
Why do you think DPaintV was crap? It is supposed to be one of the greatest and legendary paint proggies, isn't it?
I have two A2000 from the same batch of production and on both it doesn't work as supposed. The color-choser requester does not show any color to choose. (The demo version works !)
EA confirmed the bug, but never fixed it.
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Sorry for posting twice. crappy IE 5.0 :-(
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"VideoScape 3d - It's like a 3d modler/renderer... only crappy."
I think we can forgive VideoScape though seeing as it was refined into LightWave 3D...
The only piece of Amiga software I bought that I got no use out of at all was Real 3D - Christ! You needed a physics degree just to get it to run! It was the first 3D package on the market with dynamics, particles, simulation and a whole load of other neat things HOWEVER - you had to learn RPL (Real Programming Language *spit*) to use any of the good stuff... And boy, was it ever slow... Still smarts thinking about it (slaps himself) Didn't get any further than a chrome ball on a checkerboard :-D Could've done that with Turbo Silver (and gotten a free bag o' marbles...)
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@PMC
Wait a minute!!. are you talking about the game Thexder
where you were a transformer that could change into
a plane?. I loved that game!. I stayed up all night when
I was in high school and played it all the way to the end.
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os4 as it dosent exist yet....sorry hyperion.... Iove you guys and you might force me to buy an AmigaOne...because OS4 might rock.... but I'll believe it when I see it..... God bless you guys...but until its Done I dont trust ya... because your in agreement with A.inc ... lemme know when your done I'll evalutate your product at a show
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@spihunter
Yeah, that game was great. It doesn't belong on this list IMHO.
I never did finish it though. I always got creamed in the "big room".
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meerschaum wrote:
... lemme know when your done I'll evaluate your product,....
Don't worry, you'll KNOW when it comes out.
@ Karlos,
Assembler is most important. Without it, nothing is possible.
Then C
Then C++
These are for building OSs and applications, and games.
But, to me it seems, that the people behind them, chose to NOT make them easy to use.
Amos Pro and basics of other stripes (and compilers for them) are still needed, for the rest of us mere mortals. I can't defend Amos' incapability to run on certain HW combinations. I wish it wasn't the case, but I know how to use it. That means a lot to me, as well as others. We just can't understand C, or assembler, try as we might.
I didn't feel like posting this, as I have NO REASON to believe you could possibly be against MORE people trying to write computer software.
Just felt a bit depressed when I keep hearing people laugh at basics, because, that's as far as I could get, and I feel left out.
AmigaOne! THE computer the masses will understand!!! :-) :-) :-)
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I just knew I'd offend somebody with that...
Atheist wrote:
Amos Pro and basics of other stripes (and compilers for them) are still needed, for the rest of us mere mortals. I can't defend Amos' incapability to run on certain HW combinations. I wish it wasn't the case, but I know how to use it. That means a lot to me, as well as others. We just can't understand C, or assembler, try as we might.
I know and I sympathise. C can look quite daunting, certianly moreso than basic languages. With basic you are used to having a lot of nice commands that do something specific. With C you get about, what, 20 keywords, a bunch of syntax, everything else handled through functions (which unline basic don't differentiate between subroutines and procedures),
headaches with compilers and a bunch of other stuff to worry about. I won't even go into asm :-)
For me, the C thing started out as a single minded determination not to be defeated by it. Back then I felt as you do about it now. Years on and you appreciate that it is truly in a league of it's own (which is why so many languages borrowed the syntax).
I didn't feel like posting this, as I have NO REASON to believe you could possibly be against MORE people trying to write computer software.
Your'e right, I wanna see more and more people programming, especially on their amigas ;-)
Just felt a bit depressed when I keep hearing people laugh at basics, because, that's as far as I could get, and I feel left out.
Come on dude, don't take it personally. I didn't say "Basic", nor do I deride it. I might not like it but VisualBasic is used in industry a great deal, especially when fast turn around times are important. I know some people do snigger at Basic in general but my gripe is with AMOS in particular.
To reiterate, AMOS got a lot of people into programming and that's a good thing. As you know I'm a C/C++ (ant a bit of asm) man myself but I also worked a lot with Blitz back in the day, and AMOS itself prior to that (which is where the bad opinion developed).
My gripe with amos is that it was so system unfriendly that if a guy spends ages writing the perfect utility, it probably won't run on other configs and as such his effort is (to a degree) wasted.
You'd be more depressed if you wrote the next greatest thing in AMOS and nobody could use it, right?
Your'e probably marginally better off with Blitz - I was. Many blitz programs still work OK on my machine even now and there are plenty of libraries for it that give you RTG and what not. As for AMOS, even the IntOS stuff tends to fall over on my machine 8 times out of 10.
It's clear to me that there is a market for an easy to use basic-like OOP language (with full support for RTG etc) for amiga. I wonder how Python is coming along...
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My personal peeve I will admit is based on ignorance and lack of patience...
Scalos.
I just can't seem do get anywhere with it when I install it stand-alone. Works great with AIAB, but a fresh install is a pain in the butt!
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Dpaint V was incredibly slow. They tried to add many features, but load and update times for regular animations became incredibly long. I wiped it and reinstalled Dpaint IV.
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Actually AmigaBasic saved my day.... you see i had an a500 with no software to read pc disks, no null modem cable programs... But then i found this cool wartrans program, which basicly run a server on your pc then write this tiny piece of software in AmigaBasic... It was very slow but worked...I think it took a hour or so to transfer a adf file..
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I certainly am referring to "that" Thexder!
Granted, back in the day there wasn't much else to compare against, but I really didn't enjoy playing it one bit. It's quite obvious where the inspiration for Turrican came from, and IMHO it's a much better game.
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@karlos wrote:
To reiterate, AMOS got a lot of people into programming and that's a good thing. As you know I'm a C/C++ (ant a
You are a C/C++ ant? I always knew there was something fishy about you!
Sorry for (continuesly) making fun of you. You just seem like a guy who can take it for what it is - and I just thought it a funny typo :)
Sincerely,
-Kenneth Straarup.
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@elendil
:lol:
I am king of the typo. You name it, I can mistype it :-)
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@Karlos
:lol: Welcome to the "Typo Club!" We have been waiting on another charter member :-D :lol:
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@Aegis-
I think we can forgive VideoScape though seeing as it was refined into LightWave 3D...
Really? How could I have been a LightWave fan for this long and not have known that?? And, a better question, is how in the world was that grown into Lightwave??? I mean, as I remember VS, the interface wasn't too bad, but it didn't really lead to much... I was pretty impressed with the program the first time I used it. But by the second time I booted it, I had pretty much seen everything it had to offer. A bit disappointing, to say the least. And not very good render image quality. :-( But, true, it was a very early program. Let's face it, it was all sort of new ground back then, I suppose. I'll forgive it. My bad.
I stand by my other assesments, though. ;-)
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Kindwords
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Definitely Kindwords. It's been well over five years since I've seen it, but I definitely remember it crashing loads and meeting the Guru. IIRC it was so terrible that my brother (who owned the A500) stuck on a custom startup sequence with horror-style organ music and stuff.
:madashell:
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Oh come on people, how about the amigados command you only ever used once...
diskdoctor
Volume 'Lazarus' anyone?
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"Volume 'Lazerus' anyone"
Hahaha!
:-D
I saw a hacked script for diskdoctor on a utils disk once.
"Insert disk in DF0: and I'll @@@ it up real bad..."
:-D :-D :-D
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Oh, c'mon people! Surely you remember MindGuard! (http://zapatopi.net/mindguard.html)
(http://zapatopi.net/mindguard/mglogonew.gif)
Surely that deserves a mention, as I'm quite sure it's not working... because I can still hear the voices
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Ilwrath: As I recall VideoScape 3D didn't orginally have a modelling program - I think you had to create ascii text files 'describing' your object. It was published by a company called Aegis (no relation :-D at some point the author, Allen Hastings met up with Stuart Ferguson who'd written a geometry modelling app called simply 'Modeler' which could output VideoScape object files - Aegis marketed them both for a while but eventually went under whereupon the two programmers found themselves at NewTek at around the same time a chap called Tim Jenison was telling people his company was working on a "new kind of toaster". The rest as they say is history. (Oh, and Stuart's geometry modelling app is still called 'Modeler' :-)
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T_Bone wrote:
Oh, c'mon people! Surely you remember MindGuard! (http://zapatopi.net/mindguard.html)
(http://zapatopi.net/mindguard/mglogonew.gif)
Surely that deserves a mention, as I'm quite sure it's not working... because I can still hear the voices
i think i remember that! used alot of clock cycles! that was the only bad thing about it IMHO
that was a great program!!! i should be using it now
is there anything like that on other platforms?
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#1 on my list of the 'worst amiga software that ever existed' list is MS- AMIGABASIC!!! this is absolutley pathetic, and it doesnt even run on some computers from the 80's - just about anything other than a 1meg A500 with kickstart 1.3, and it wont work
Note that one can run AmigaBasic on Amiga 500 with 512kb RAM.
Amiga Basic** was nice (~10 years ago) since it was compatible (for the most part) with X86’s Qbasic** (use at school). **Both are Microsoft Basic. Qbasic runs on either 286 or 386 DOS boxes.
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T_Bone wrote:
Oh, c'mon people! Surely you remember MindGuard! (http://zapatopi.net/mindguard.html)
Surely that deserves a mention, as I'm quite sure it's not working... because I can still hear the voices
I remember that as quite charming but I can see from the website I haven't kept up. I must try the Linux version.
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alx wrote:
Definitely Kindwords. It's been well over five years since I've seen it, but I definitely remember it crashing loads and meeting the Guru. IIRC it was so terrible that my brother (who owned the A500) stuck on a custom startup sequence with horror-style organ music and stuff.
:madashell:
Kindwords 3.0 (a.k.a. Wordworth 1.0) was acceptable. Kindwords 3.0 practically gave me some indications for upgrading to WordWorth 2.0 and beyond. I was using New Horizon’s ProWrite (If I recall correctly) during the Kindword 2.0 era.