new os3.x software ?

[DavidF215]

@fishy_fiz (initial post)

Great things can come from boredom thinking. Good question. I was actually porting some of my game code into AmigaForever when I came across the bridge of wanting to be cross platform friendly. Long story short I ended up landing on SDL/OpenGL, and now working my way in that direction. Amiga has SDL but, by what I've read in this thread, it's not very good, and I'm not sure if the OpenGL calls in Amiga-SDL work with Warp3D (anyone know?). I also discovered that the Amiga compiler I was using didn't like BOOL types; weird. I use AmiDevCPP now. My games are 2D (except one) but I want OpenGL since 2D can be rendered faster on 3D objects (rects) with 3D hardware. My [Windows] games can be found at whitesaber.com.

As far as what to make, I would say 2D games and a web browser. I don't use AmigaForever much because it doesn't have a web browser that doesn't crash a lot. I was using it when I was attempting to program in a classic Amiga environment. On the other hand, I might use it more if it had more modern games or the ability to code cross platform friendly code in OS3.x.

I would think that the user base for UAE is pretty decent. AmigaForever continues to have new releases, so it must be making adequate sales to justify updates and newer versions.

[DavidF215]

@DavidF215
I'm pretty sure bernd_afa's SDL uses Warp3D. It works well but it's still slow because SDL can only work in a few graphics formats. Many SDL programs also use ixemul which is also slow. These are usually coded with GCC which doesn't optimize well. Get the picture?

The picture being that Amiga dev tools are old and in need of updating? Got that pict; plus maybe skipping Amiga SDL. Is it the SDL framework/library that uses ixemul or the actual programs coded using SDL? Anyone know if Hyperion plans to update Amiga-GCC?

[DavidF215]

@DavidF215 & fishy_fiz
GCC for PPC code generation is not nearly as bad as 68k. The newest 4.x versions of GCC still does not generate optimized code for 68k. Some of the newer versions are worse.

What type of impact does this lack of optimization cause? I've read a little about it, but haven't read its impact. Impacting graphics performance, I/O performance, data processing performance, etc? For example, a game--what is significantlly impacted such as blitting, game logic, sound, network and at what processor level is it seen? What processor level, if any, would no longer notice the performance hit?

GCC 2.9.5 may generate the best 68k code. VBCC and SAS/C generate better code in most cases. VBCC is still being updated with Amiga support which includes an awesome optimizing assembler. Frank Wille has some other developing tools he is supporting as well. Thomas Richter is actively supporting his Mu (mmu) tools.

I have SAS/C, I think. I was using StormC3 for a while instead.

I am making a much improved version of the ADis disassembler that is already very useful. We have some of the low level tools but some of the high level tools are very sophisticated and require a lot of time and skill to perfect.

I stopped at C/C++. Tried to learn assembly but decided it was too much work.

Making a cross platform C compiler which supports most CPU's is a huge project much like these multi platform web browsers that we don't have.

Yes, I've experienced the cross platfom development can be a pain, especially deciding what dev tools to use.

I think we are gaining some momentum and users back. If we could get a fpga solution like Natami or MiniMig+ with AGA and 020+, we might have something.

This is what I'm watching, too. If a MiniMig+ with AGA (RTG maybe?) hits I might buy one to replace my aging A1200.

I've been wondering if developing for 68k would be adequate enough for most Amiga systems. It's emulated on faster machines and native on 68k hardware, so it seems a decent fit for all. Graphics seem to the the sticking point.

[DavidF215]

Do you mean in regads to the level of support "compiler x" has ?  The code generated by a heavily optimised compiler  vs. a more generically compiled compiler can be pretty big actually. Depending on the software it's probably not impossible to achieve something around %50 faster (and more in certain cases) on a heavily optimised compiler. As for using compiler optimisations vs none using the same compiler, there's probably not a massive differerence, unless there's supporting code for "cpu x".  At the end of the day though, worse case scenario for a binary generated can be a lot worse than best case scenario depending on compilers and optimisations used.
Hope this answers what you was asking ?

Well, let's take the old game "Payback" as an example. On a 68020, would game play responsiveness and performance be noticably slower if the code was compiled with GCC (not optimized compiler) as opposed to SAS/C (optimized compiler)?

[DavidF215]

@SamuraiCrow
@fishy_fiz
@matthey

So you're saying (and by what I've read) (1) that there was (is) no well optimized C++ compiler for Amiga68k but GCC 2.9.5 and SAS/C are the better options, and (2) that it doesn't really matter if one uses GCC 2.9.5 or SAS/C for 68k because none are optimized enough to make a noticable difference?

[DavidF215]

@DavidF215 & AppleHammer
I would recommend using C and VBCC for any new Amiga projects. It's the easiest to install, generates pretty good code and getting better, and it's supported on all flavors of the Amiga. Have a problem or bug then drop Frank Wille an e-mail. If you need C++ then probably your best option is GCC for now but realize it's going to be very slow and eat a lot of memory.

vbcc web site: http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/
Amiga coding help can be found here...
http://utilitybase.com/
http://eab.abime.net/forumdisplay.php?f=37

But my code is already in C++.

Okay, so I've read through the Amiga Developer Docs (http://amigadev.elowar.com/), but I couldn't find functions to load an image (i.e. a PNG or a BMP) from a file. I've also read through the old ACM and Cmanuals, but nothing there either.  ??

What would be the AmigaOS3.x native equivalent of the SDL function:
 SDL_Surface *Image=SDL_LoadBMP("image.bmp");    
...to load a BMP image as, I presume, an Amiga bitmap?

[DavidF215]

You should be looking at the documentation for Datatypes.library.  It loads files of many types.  Picture.datatype is the mainly used datatype.  You don't have to care if the filetype is IFF, GIF, PNG, or BMP as long as the user has the appropriate datatypes to load them.

Thanks. Guess I'll just buy the Dev CD if I can find one.

I've been re-reading the Amiga C Encyclopedia and Amiga was ahead of its time. It was DirectX before DirectX was even thought about. Nicely integrated Library system. It gives evidence that a good product can fail with poor marketing.