What happened the Poseidon author?

[Hans_]

motorollin wrote:
I can understand Chris's frustration, but this is just pathetic. It seems like this PAB guy is provoking him or making personal attacks. But why retaliate by cutting off the whole community from the benefit of his skill as a developer, and likewise cut himself off from the support of the community (through registrations)?

I doubt that PAB could cause Chris to quit just by himself. Chris Hodges received some abuse due to the ELBox Spider disagreement, including IIRC, unfounded accusations that he included code to wipe hard-drives if you tried to use Poseidon with that card. He's probably received some flak for not making Poseidon open-source too (NOTE: unconfirmed). Added to that his development of a Bluetooth stack has been hampered by the $10000 USD product qualification costs (see this thread). I'd say that the argument with PAB got a bit personal and was one too many.

I really hope that he does continue development. In particular, I want that Bluetooth stack (for OS 4 in my case, but supporting all flavours would be great).

Hans

[Hans_]

@bernd_afa

What does Amiga OS 4.0 have to do with this, and who are these "OS4 trolls" you speak of? I only use OS4 (don't have MorphOS, or a classic Amiga), and I seem to have missed a lot of spit and venom. My impression is that it's "Amigans" all across the board doing the slagging off.

What does AFA have to do with Amiga OS4? I thought that it was meant for advancing the 68k Amiga.

For example a troll told me that hardware opengl is not need on OS4, because there are no programs that need it.
I should wirte amiblitz so it work with that what OS4 offer.

Whoever said that is wrong. In fact, a MESA (a.k.a. OpenGL) port is on the to-do list, and definitely wanted. Amiga OS 4.0 has hardware accelerated 3D (Warp3D), but MiniGL is a little limited. If it's missing features that AmiBlitz 3D needs, the MiniGL sources are available. I'd welcome any further development, and I know that many others would.

Only what make sense is that all the many 68k and MOS developers that make their software runbable on OS4 too say no OS4 support. Most OS4 developers code only OS4, so this is no miss for MOS 68k.

IIRC, WookieChat was developed for OS4, and has MorphOS variants and I'm pretty sure that the DvPlayer author took the time to make it work on MorphOS properly via OS4Emu (a MOSEmu for OS4 would be nice too). Amiga OS4 has some new functionality that's missing on the other OSes, so I can understand reluctance to write cross-platform stuff. However, it's not fair to brand the whole group based on the actions of a vocal few.

BTW, can you do some more extensive tests on OS4? I'd like to know what happens as memory fragmentation increases. From my understanding, the TLSF allocator is supposed to really make a difference when memory gets fragmented.

Finally, could you please have a look at using MiniGL for AmiBlitz 3D?

Hans

[Hans_]

bernd_afa wrote:
>What does Amiga OS 4.0 have to do with this, and who are >these "OS4 trolls" you speak of?

The thing happen between pab and Chris i am 99% sure is a battle in the red between blue war ;-)

I think that it's more than just PAB.

i have upload the membenches here.memperf.lha.source is in too www.david-mcminn.co.uk/bernd so a OS4 user can test.

I might have a look at that when I get time.

>Finally, could you please have a look at using MiniGL for >AmiBlitz 3D?

You can also see in screenshots_3d dir of the 3d System from amiblitz.

minigl is not good enough to do that features, also mingl is a link library that only c coders can use.

What features are missing that AmiBlitz 3D needs? MiniGL's source code is available so it could be turned into a library if it were worth it. Otherwise we'll just have to wait until MESA (+hw acceleration) is available). The problem is that there are so many other things that need work that 3D has a low priority at the moment. We just don't have enough developers right now.

Hans

[Hans_]

bernd_afa wrote:
>The problem is that there are so many other things that >need work that 3D has a low priority at the moment. We >just don't have enough developers right now.

Gorky17 if that ever is release need too 3d.

So does Quake I, II & III, and they work (the Quake III port is buggy though). I've seen 3D acceleration work on my machine.

But it is enough for amiblitz if warp3d work ok.
Maybe its only a simple Bug in warp3d, wy OS4 warp3d dont work with storm mesa.

StormMESA actually uses Warp3D? I didn't realize that.
 

>What features are missing that AmiBlitz 3D needs?

Looking at that list I can't say immediately what's missing. Display lists, maybe. I'd have to look it up to be sure.

Hans

[Hans_]

bernd_afa wrote:
But it is enough for amiblitz if warp3d work ok.
Maybe its only a simple Bug in warp3d, wy OS4 warp3d dont work with storm mesa.

...

Stormmesa PPC version in software render work, when use warp3d then the warp3d init fail.

Ok, I've had a look at StormMESA's source, and the source-code of some other Warp3D programs, and Amiga OS 4.0's Warp3D library returns an "out of memory error" when W3D_CC_INDIRECT, TRUE is passed as tags to W3D_CreateContextTags(). Unfortunately, StormMESA's makefiles use SAS/C which I don't have.

I've tested this by modifying a different Warp3D's program, and can confirm that this one tag causes creating a context to fail with an out of memory error.

@all

If there's anyone here with SAS/C, could you please download StormMESA_archive.lha, StormMESA_src.lha, apply the following fix:
Comment out line 5003 in src/AMIGA/src/ADisp_HW.c the tag I listed above. Then send me the resulting binaries (or upload them to a server so that I can get them). That would be greatly appreciated. If it's that one line stopping it from working, it's a really easy fix. I just don't have the right compiler.

Hans

[Hans_]

bernd_afa wrote:
 >Gorky17 if that ever is release need too 3d.

Yes gorky17 can run in software mode.
But from a modern OS i and as far the market show others want Hardware3d.

Quake I, II & III are running under hardware acceleration on OS 4.0. Hardware acceleration does work. However, the OS4 devs have decided that Warp3D is a dead end, and a proper MESA port should be done (along with an integrated 2D/3D graphics system for performance). I agree with them. Unfortunately, this approach takes more time.

>If there's anyone here with SAS/C, could you please >download StormMESA_archive.lha, StormMESA_src.lha, apply >the following fix:
>Comment out line 5003 in src/AMIGA/src/ADisp_HW.c the tag >I listed above. Then send me the resulting binaries (or >upload them to a server so that I can get them). That >would be greatly appreciated. If it's that one line >stopping it from working, it's a really easy fix. I just >don't have the right compiler.

thanks, that you take a closer look on it, but fix stormmesa is the wrong way.

Wy not just tell the OS4 developers that they should ignore the Tag.They can easy do and i guess more warp3d programs run on OS4.

I'm planning to inform the OS4 developers that there's a problem with that tag. They should fix this. However, in the interim, a faster way would be to patch StormMESA. The source-code for that is publically available. If I had SAS/C, we might already have it working.

In a good OS a OS API Component should all defined parameters execute correct or ignore them so it work.

Correct. But like I said, a small patch (comment out one line) in the meantime could get it working right now.

I have not compile stormmesa and no sasc, but is that not possible in stormc3 ?

It should be possible, but you'd have to create completely new makefiles as StormC doesn't use SAS/C's makefiles. Also, there's always the chance of StormC specific problems. Ideally someone would change it to use GCC, but it's a big task. SAS/C was popular enough that someone should have it, and a recompile would be trivial).

@all

Just repeating from above, if there's anyone here with SAS/C, could you please download StormMESA_archive.lha, StormMESA_src.lha, apply the following fix:
Comment out line 5003 in src/AMIGA/src/ADisp_HW.c which is:

W3D_CC_INDIRECT, TRUE

Then send me the resulting binaries (or upload them to a server so that I can get them). That would be greatly appreciated. This may be the one line that prevents StormMESA from running on Amiga OS 4.0.

Hans

[Hans_]

@bernd_afa


Ok, I just got a reply from Rogue, and the situation is more complicated. Indirect rendering is no longer supported (it decreased performance instead of improving it) which is why the context creation fails. Unfortunately StormMESA relies on the indirect rendering and doesn't bother doing the locking that's required (indirect mode does that directly. So, getting StormMESA running would take much more work. His advice is, as expected, to use MiniGL. It might be possible to create fake StormMESA library that maps on to MiniGL, but MiniGL would probably be missing a few features.

Hans