Any plans to increased the AmigaNG software?

[wawrzon]

I know we have a Blender port but I would love to see an updated version of Lightwave 3D for our miggies i.e something that we don't have to go crazy promoting screen modes etc.

lightwave3d hit the version 11, a copy costs 1500$. how exactly you want to convince a commercial entity to port its major application to a platform they likely dont even know about and that would gain them few sales, if any. nit speaking about that 3d modelling and rendering heavily depends on fast floating point parallel computing, said platfoem has no supüort for.

[wawrzon]

I'd love (and I rarely say love :roflmao:) to see a DPaint version too but I don't think similair will be the same unfortunately, it might be me but it needs to actually be DPaint I think, I could be wrong, I hope so :drink:

take grafx2. its dpaint inspired, but much improved utility, it it ideal for producing low color planar gfx such as amiga icons, and you have a good workflow and control over almost anything i can think of. i lately used it so i speak from experience. there is os4 version afaik and an amiga port, even though it has a single rather minor issue and may have not been released.

[wawrzon]

One of the essential things identified is porting back the changes on the AmigaOS 4 version to the AmigaOS 3 version. Paying developers is very expensive in terms of the number of potential sales in the Amiga market at this point of time. So maximising the user base is essential for these projects to be commercial sound and at least break-even.

so you are advocating porting os4 back to amiga (68k) in order to increase the potential developers pool? is there actually any agreement about that, because the politics were exactly the opposite all these years and genuine amiga has been treated as an abandoned obsolete platform worth no support. i am afraid, it might be too late for such an attitude change to have an actual effect.

[wawrzon]

Hi

AmigaKit is primarily Classic based really, not AmigaNG.  The vast majority of our customers are Classic users.

this goes without saying i guess.

There are a lot of talented MorphOS developers out there, whom were former Classic developers, so we are all aware of their talents. If a MorphOS developer came to us with a good idea and it made commercial sense, then we would consider it, of course.

interesting. a good commercial idea is something rather remote and ilusoric in the widest understood amiga community i suspect. im not even sure if digibooster, which being commercial apparently is an uniquity, makes any commercial sense in its classical understanding. how would you explain "making a commercial sense" would actually look like from your pov.

edit: correcting myself, digibooster isnt actually in mos market since there are versions for all amig-oid sytems except aros-x86 afaik. digibooster also is an uniquity as actually having a distributor.

[wawrzon]

Me too.

+1

[wawrzon]

updated browser +1

well then, maybe os4 netsurf frontend could be ported to amiga, but its a question whether this will make much practical difference.

what concerns odyssey, its anyway genuinly morphos software. it isnt clear if it would be useable on genuine amigas, but the first step to check that out would be updating the 68k mui up to the level of the version 4.

aros is already being updated to achieve just that and i expect that current version of odyssey will be available from contributions for aros68k,also for genuine amigas next to aros-owb some time soon.

[wawrzon]

Perhaps more realistic would be Thilo Köhler's HD-Rec; without a doubt the most comprehensive DAW ever made for the Amiga.

whats wrong with hd-rec as is? its axtually very good software, one of those that actuaöly provide better usability than any of free alternatives that are available for mainstream systems i know off.

hd-rec is also open now and can be improved by third party.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hd-rec/
it is though written in amiblitz, so it isnt portable, but as long as you can run 68k on your sytem via emulation you are safe.

unfortunatelly it isnt usable on aros68k, since amiblitz probably still hacks with some private gfx stuff, aros is not expecting being modified behind its back.

[wawrzon]

isn't NetSurf-m68k a modern browser for classics?
http://aminet.net/package/comm/www/NetSurf-m68k

Kamelito

it is, though its a different implementation (sdl framebuffer) to os4 reaction frontend and the os4 can probably be considered better integrated with the system. if it provides better functionality is yet to be proven, bundling effort here could be of advantage, but it doesnt seem to happen.

[wawrzon]

I do understand the nostalgia of what you are talking about..

there is roughly as many points of view as many people would post here their opinion. nothing wrong with yours. but dealing with the community as diverse as this you need to find common denominator. and the common denominator is genuine amiga, the 68k code, backward compatibility and clean system compatible programming practice.
software done with these values in mind is able to run on maximal number of devices their owners coinsider more or less "amiga" and therefore it has most positive impact on the scene in general while it costs least resources.

i can understand point of view of ng users as yours, to urge to concentrate on development of either aros, mos or os4, but still i cant see a practical possiblity to convince the widest user base to any of those solutions exclusively.

[wawrzon]

It's not that there is anything wrong with it - I already made the point that it's miles better than any other attempt at a DAW on the Amiga.

the last few weeks i have been underway and looked to record multiple tracks with my bass guitar via na old radio as an amp to the suface pro, the only computer i had with me. i didnt have any multitrack recording software with me except samplitude i consider unsatisfactory and looked at some options. i must say the only reason why i didnt pick up hd-rec under uae again, being annoyed with everything else, was that uae doesnt work well with touchscreen. maybe its just me, but imho hd-rec is great, simple and intuitive tool to make raw recording and cut/edit them on the fly without having to fight with countless input settings that only make your recording sound dull instead of crisp.

[wawrzon]

This has always been the problem, I think.

where there is a problem one needs to seek solution, where there is not, you will not even notice. so what?

Even back in 1992 Commodore will have found it hard to make people use the new OS 3.0 API - but of course now we take it for granted. Developing for OS 2.04 or even OS 1.3 is unheard of.

first of all they broke the backwards compatibility, which was a bad move and splitted the user base. you have had to user kickstart switches, and therefore people stuck to 1.3 and were hesistant about especially 2.x, where there is almost no software for and also 3.x which was introduced almost simultanously with aga machines. it was by any means wrong politics towards the users, and it didnt help the platform for sure. yet even at that point it didnt kill it definitely, because it was still alive. this kind of approach today is simply suicidal.

There comes a point when the people still using the obsolete APIs like OS 3.x have to move on to stay current - it's always been that way, and always will be. Of course the problem now is what do they move on to. To some it's OS 4, to others it's MorphOS, to others it's AROS.... but only ever supporting an ancient platform like OS 3 - even though it's the lowest common denominator, is such a low power platform that catering to that as a primary platform will hold back all the newer platforms.

it will hold them back from splitting any further, which under the given circumstances is a good thing, definitely. except one of them had so much own dynamics, that it was actually able to take off for the future on its own. alas there is no such option, lets not fool ourselves.

We need to push forward, otherwise we'll be forever stuck with apps that are made to run on a processor from nearly 25 years ago, and that's no way to stay current.

in fact this is the bigest and most used pool of software you have acces to, whatever amigalike system you are sworn to. if you desperately need to push forward at the cost of losing it, be my guest, just make your choice and dont complain later of no company.

It's a very difficult one to call, though, and I completely empathise with what you're saying - the "Classic" is the common factor with all of us - and it shouldn't be ignored... but I think it should be treated more as a legacy platform rather than the current target platform. If something runs well on low-spec hardware, make it for OS 3 - but don't hold back progress on our multi-GHz NG machines for the sake of a 20 year-old machine.

are you implying, we are holding you back? how? none of us has any say on which way to develop os4 software, its entirely up to os4 companies and fans. i refuse to be blamed about that.

There's no simple solution (as usual for the Amiga world....)

if there was, this wasnt be a problem to discuss. im sorry, but a simple demand to thrash  your amiga into a bin and follow any of ng alternatives wont work any better as it did up till now. want a solution, then face it.

[wawrzon]

The ideal solution to me would be an Amiga NG 100% compatible with the Classic. (no I don't want an *UAE*)
If I launch ASM-ONE it will work and if I poke to HW registers it will perform like the classic does. So a collaboration between A-EON and Mike from FPGAArcade to build an add-on card using Mike technology to make that possible

Kamelito

ever thought about the combination of gunnars accelerator boards with aros68k? no, neither is 100% finished but its closest to what you are demanding for, it seems.

[wawrzon]

@itix
there is 68k build of ffmpeg and ffplay from amistuff heavily asm optimized with the help of matthey especially for 060. it is already few years old, im not sure it has been updated. the result using it was mostly a slideshow, but it was a cool experience to mes with it.

what concerns your cgx replacement for alphablending functions, is this c or (68k?) asm, for chunky or planar graphics? would you consider to contribute it to aros(68k) if it was of advantage for them? i would happily establish a contact to krzysztof or neil.

[wawrzon]

It's not just you; I agree with all of that.

Nonetheless, and retunring to my original point, I often need to record 3 or 4 inputs simultaneously. Even if I just want to record an acoustic guitar I'll almost always have two microphones on it. There is nothing on the Amiga that can do this.

If HD-Rec/OS4 could be modernised to accommodate multiple, simultaneous inputs (again, as one example), it would be a considerable improvement.

im not sure ahi allows this. im not sure too if it could have or ever been done with any sound card on amiga using any alternative driver system. i suppose if this was doable wanderer would have implemented that.

[wawrzon]

@itix
i see. i think this is satisfactory implemented so far. im mostly concerned about improving  planar gfx in this and every other respect if even possible. but thx for the answer.