Demos using a GFX mode please !

[darkcoder]

@psyko

>>rm..what do you mean with read16 aand write16?

>just the reading of 16 bytes from fastram.

So you suggest that on 4060 cache preloading is not useful? I have a CSMk3 and my routine works better with cache preloading.

> guess that it will at least be on loonies.dk and in some mag.. Actually I feel like writing it

we all wait for it!!
I'll check on the website!

[Crumb]

Last time I checked (ok, it's a long time ago) BltBitMapMaskRastPort was not accelerated.

I haven't tried much... you are probably right (but it's a pity that it's not accelerated). With 16bit screens I guess that it will be done by the cpu, with 8 bits it may be different.

Thanks for the tips about using WaitBOVP() instead of WaitTOF() ;-)

[lempkee]

@darkcoder and carls: i wasnt and still aint trying to attack any of you , just so thats said.
And as i wrote about how to do some good productions and the typical winners and stuff that is easy to remember, and thats why the amiga and c64 have been so
much more interesting that the pc contributions, as if you take a look into the pc scene for the last 8 years i can more or less gurantee you that its basically ALL over again the same stuff,
with better textures and maybe a better engine or a worser one (depending on the contributions) , and since i am like...anti pc doesnt help it either but when i am at parties (or was) then i always watched the demos/productions without knowing what format it was
and put my votes there, and only 1 demo from the pc area won my vote in all of theese parties and that was STATE OF MIND by bomb, but there is like 100 PC WILD DEMOS that i have liked and about 15-20 amiga ones so i am not saying the actual pc people sucks just that
its so damn easy to spot wheter its about to show of 3d or GOOD design and a allround good product.

@psycho , glad to see you around here and as i have said before , your (LOONIeS) mekka 2001 demo is still one of my fav demos, many ask me why but (and i know that not many share the same opnion (tbl shouldnt have won) but i guess its just that i like the style and
the final design and its more or less aimed at oldschool .. love it
(the 64kb intro (the castle) is nice also ofcourse but in another way

a final note is to them who said, instead of saying the scene is dead then you should sit down and do something yourself... obviously there is some people here who doesnt know who i(or team) am, lol :=)
anyway since i have put the scene behind me means in general that what we released the 3 last years was more or less funding based stuff for our future game dev and some unfinnished stuff that we finnished and released,
but i know we will release 1 new prod this year, but it will be "FUN" based, but then again thats only if there is a party to release it on (if no party then noone will check it out anyway and not be spread (like someone posted here earlier)

check our website for our old demos and intros and eventually when i have some more time (or any of us in the team) then there will be some news regarding the 2(3?) games we are working on.

PPS: the game dev is regarding AMIGA classic (+a1/ppc)/gba/ps2

http://www.push-ent.webhop.net

[lempkee]

@carls: ermm i forgot to say one thing to you , quake people (or gamers) at parties..well as you said it doesnt mean that the scene is dead just because of that.

my comment to you is then: What makes a good party? , have you ever been to a GOOD party? , many have asked me why i travel (light?) without computer (mostly) to party's, i always say the same "BECAUSE I like to talk and have a nice time with all the people, and not travel 600000 km just to sit infront of my monitor dooing the same stuff i would have done at home ,
and yes i admit that i have bringed my computer to party's like TG,TP,mekka and ASm but thats in general because i have unnfinished stuff to finnish and release or that i absolutely fear that i will bore myself to death (like at Tp2001,tg2001).

Real parties like mekka 98,99,2000,2001 is parties that i didnt need my computer there to have fun, but thats me anyway...

also a party trip is (always?) for me a vacation...

gamers at parties, well there is some horrible examples , they travel to another country just to hook up their pc (or amiga or whatever) just to play in network and play and play and play and in the end they didnt even notice that there actually was like 4000 people around em, and a good example from tp and TG is that in general the gamers get pissed over the bigscreen and the soundsystem and
in general hates beeing there and have no understanding of what and why such a party has such things.

but yes i know 1 thing, without gamers the scene would have been even smaller (atleast after 95->) as they are the basic funding for the actual partys (like TG,TP and asm), without them no such party would be alive.

so you can go all haywire on me just because i tell you this or you can face the fact , 30-40 sceners was present at Tp2001 , tg 2001 had MAYBE 5 (and max 40 people who sat at the place when the compo's was active) , on mekka there is like TOTAL silence when there was a compo (ie a real scene party (the only one?).
Tp2002 had actually less sceners than in 2001, and even worser contrbutions ....

anyway the gamers compo's have bigger prices also so my next compo will be in quake or something lol...naaah
(but the prices are enourmous....)

anyway i am not the money guy really, but many in our team is due to young age and no work.......

if there is a scene then i will return, without mekka i dont see myself going to any party's again.

pps: regarding the actual topic of the discussion, we made an engine that supported RTG , so when we do a production its always AGA but works also in rtg , for the ppc stuff there is not AGA (atleast not for the games...)

have fun

[MagicSN]

Hi!

>are BIGGER. Then you have 603, 603e, 604, 604e, G3 >and G4 in many clock
>variations. maybe in the future even more CPUs...

The differences between various PPC CPUs are
much smaller than for 68k CPUs (as PPC is a "true CPU family"). Basically you have one line "faster on Floating Point" and one line "faster on Integer" - sure, you have various numbers of Floating Point units inside and such... but that won't change much the way you code. After all they are all damned fast CPUs, and limiting yourselves to the much faster 68k as the PPC would give you more options sounds
stupid to me

And I do not agree on the "90% optimization" line.
Sure there is a lot of more options for the hardware,
but most hardware just won't make as much of a
difference, if it is then this or that chip...

Only real differences might be

a) Altivec or non-Altivec
b) Certain Features of a 3D Chip (but as most
     demo coders won't use 3D Chips anyways,
     it is not much of an issue...)

I want again to outline my point:

a) Most people these days cannot use AGA anymore (monitors for 15 kHz are rare, and most people
prefer a cheaper 30+ kHz monitor - and I won't
move my Amiga to the TV-Room, having to climb
several Staircases with the Amiga, putting it
up there, also having to change my preferences
setting so I see anything when attaching it to the
TV Set, just to see an AGA Demo... So if a Demo
is AGA-only I will just ignore it. And most people
do the same. So it is in the interest of the demo
coders that they support RTG, or at least both
RTG and AGA. To be serious I do not know a single
person (asides from in this thread) who even
cares about AGA still

b) As to the speed - in most "realistic" tests
RTG is faster (but minor speed differences
are not the issue... the issue is being able
to watch the demo *at all* !!!). I am not
speaking of theoretical maximums, but
real tests. I once wrote such a test myselves
for testing how much speed difference there would be,
and RTG was ALWAYS faster (not on Zorro 2
Boards of course ) Also check out Heretic II
(AGA is VERY slow there, despite the PPC ASM
16 Bit c2p, well 16 Bit on AGA is just slow).
Also for Freespace we even did not release
an AGA version, as when we tested it under
AGA (in Pal Interlaced 640x512) it was just
too slow to be playable - while it runs fine
on GFX Boards in even Software-Rendering.

c) AGA-Demos won't run on the AmigaOne.
Demos without hardware-hacking will.

Steffen Haeuser

[darkcoder]

@MagicSN

>than for 68k CPUs (as PPC is a "true CPU family").

I don't agree with this. There are many diferences in PPC.
1)Some of them have Altivec and some not. (is it a small difference??)
2) clock speeds range from less than 300 Mhz (I don't remember exacly, I guess the first 603 where even les than 200Mhz) up to 1.4Ghz. And the 970 is coming..
3) the number of functional units=> the digreee of parallelism is different.

Basically you have one line "faster on Floating Point" and one line "faster on Integer" - sure,

"basically"? this is a simplification, i.e. 90%
(or 95%) optimization...

>of Floating Point units inside and such... but >that won't change much the way you code. After  

if you search for 100% optimization they change the way you code. have you read the rest of this thread??
We were discussing having 2 060 c2p: one optimized for Blizzard or Apollo 1260 and onother for 4060 like CSMK2 which behaves differently. That is what i mean, I even have interest in optimizing for a specific board, not just for a specific CPU!


>they are all damned fast CPUs, and limiting
apart from the fact that you sound really unpolite saying that other people are stupid, as I explained in previous messages,being limited by the hardware is EXACTLY what I am searching!

>difference, if it is then this or that chip...

you don't have to trust too much on benchmarks, but if they show 6Mb/sec difference between CV3D and Picasso IV.....THERE IS a  DIFFERENE.

your points were clear, I wonder whether you read what other people answer to you. I don't think so.
Anyway I repeat what I already said (last time):

a) There exists scandoublers. If someone has a real interest in demos, he will have a hardware to watch AGA demos, since there are so many. If not, I don't care. If nobody but me watch my demos, it's sad, but I will still have fun coding!

b) We all agree that RTG is faster than AGA. For me AGA is fast enough the do interesting stuff AND I can use COPPER + SPRITES + DMA control !
For me such things are much important than speed.

c) AmigaOne...ahaha!

Please, MagicSN, answer the following: what's so special with RTG? You can do the same things on a PC. So why use RTG instead of a PC?

[blubbe]

This is an interesting thread. About one of the key
areas which played a very big role in Amigas history.
First, I think Steffen is a bit arrogant/ignorant..
If you where talking about applications it would all make sense, but we arent. As has been said earlier,
democoding is about limits, reaching them, breaking them. Thee is no such thing on RTG systems. Furtehrmore, demos does NOT have the same goals
as applicaitons. They are captures of the present,
using present hardware. They are timeless. THats waht makes them special.  Do NOT diss the democoders for choosing specific hardware to play on, its about inspiration, inspiration you dont get from
codig on a PC with RTG. No isnpiration=no demos.
Now some coders may be a little unaware of new
technologies though. Darkcoder: The PPC is actually
mor fun to code directly than the 68k. You can still
easily beat compilers doing it . It is more "simple"
than the 68k, for example there is no subtract immediate instruction, you have to use add -x,
there compose them yourself using smaller and simpler
instructions (alot of optimisations can be made here)
And.. you can schedule the code by hand, although
rather different scheduling may have to be done on
different PPCs though..

So you suggest that on 4060 cache preloading is not useful? I have a CSMk3 and my routine works better with cache preloading.

ok.. to some results:
Measured in scanlines for a 320x200 screen with dma on. The pure writing speed on all 3 cards is about 166 lines.

CSMK2 060/50
small:             171 lines,  91 fps
640 byte prefetch: 191 lines,  81 fps
old cache:         171 lines,  91 fps
Azure060:          190 lines,  82 fps
nocache c2p:       167 lines,  93 fps

CSPPC 060/50
small:             171 lines,  91 fps
640 byte prefetch: 184 lines,  84 fps
old cache:         170 lines,  91 fps
Azure060:          185 lines,  84 fps
nocache c2p:       186 lines,  84 fps

CSMK3 060/66
small:             165 lines,  94 fps
640 byte prefetch: 178 lines,  87 fps
old cache:         164 lines,  95 fps
Azure060:          175 lines,  89 fps
nocache c2p:       165 lines,  94 fps

and for completeness: (one of the slower B1260's)

B1260/50
small:             256 lines,  61 fps
640 byte prefetch: 254 lines,  61 fps
old cache:         256 lines,  61 fps
Azure060:          257 lines,  60 fps
nocache c2p:       286 lines,  54 fps


"Small" and "640 byte prefetch" are the 2 beforementioned ones. "old cache" is basicly a fast 16read,16write, 16read, 16write I did a long time ago (and after that wondered why azure has gotten it wrong, but that was on a4k - the prefetch IS faster on  a1200s - usually more than in the one above).  Azure060 is the one from amycoders. "no cache" is a mmu-messing one I wrote based on our theory - wonder why it doesn't work on that CSPPC above.. (even if it's running at pure writing speed(!) I can't recommend it because of the missing standard for changing the mmu settings)

[Crumb]

I don't agree with this. There are many diferences in PPC.
1)Some of them have Altivec and some not. (is it a small difference??)
2) clock speeds range from less than 300 Mhz (I don't remember exacly, I guess the first 603 where even les than 200Mhz) up to 1.4Ghz. And the 970 is coming..
3) the number of functional units=> the digreee of parallelism is different.

Both families have their peculiarities, but I think that...
Some 680x0 don't have FPU and others don't have MMU. That's a big difference in my opinion. Some 680x0 have caches and other don't have at all. Some are superscalar (like the 060) and other not...
And first generations have instructions that doesn't work with next ones. For example some 68000 instructions or the change from 882 to the 040 or 060 FPU...

On the other hand afaik the instruction set hasn't changed in the ppc series and code written for the first series works without problems in the latests without doing changes or emulating missing instructions. Ok, Altivec is a BIG change, enough to make interesting the development of demos/intros only to get the most of that unit.

Speed. Well from 300Mhz to 1.4Ghz is a 460% increase in the frequency.
From a 7Mhz 68000 to a 50Mhz 68030 is a bigger change, we change from a 16bit bus to a 32bit one, and that is a 714% if we only look at the Mhz figures.
So there's more difference between different 680x0 generations than between different ppcs. PPCs are all superscalar while 680x0 not and you have to take care about this...
A ppc without Altivec and other with Altivec is as different as a 68030 without FPU and other with FPU. And it's more funny because Altivec instructions haven't changed and aren't emulated and 040 instructions are different from 882 etc...
So I think that there are more differences in the 680x0 family than in the ppc family. In the 680x0 family we even have the 68008 with a 8 bit data bus but I will not count it because it hasn't been used in Amigas.

That is what i mean, I even have interest in optimizing for a specific board, not just for a specific CPU!

There's nothing stopping you from optimizing for a specific AmigaOne with G4 and making optimized code for AmigaOne G3 if you want. Ok ;-) I know that you don't have interest in RTG, but if the problem was the cpu it may not be a problem, you may optimize for different cpu modules (and if different boards appear, for different boards)

I'm not going to talk again about different graphic cards, I know that my point is clear: for me the biggest bottleneck is the cpu. Anyway if you don't have problems supporting different cpu boards (that give around 50MB/s with fastram like yours and around 30MB/s like mine), you wouldn't have problems supporting a few gfx boards were the only difference is different bandwitch. You have that problem with AGA too if you are using a cbm 3640 in an A4000 and someone is using another board for example yours... yours will give nearly 7MB/s and the poor 3640 only 4MB/s... so the problem is not bandwitch, the most important thing I see is the use of specific aga features as the ones psyco and you have talked about (blitter, copper, perfect sync, sprites...)

You can optimize a lot but sometimes people who has a machine slower than the one you have decided that is going to be the target machine tries it and it will run unoptimized and slowly. And if a do a demo for my mk2 I'll find that it may be more optimized for mk3... so we have more control with AGA, but you can only optimize at 99% for a few machines. There are always small changes between the machines that make that all machines aren't used at 100%.

Why use RTG instead of a PC? well, you still have the cpu and the rest of the Amiga. I think that doing optimized altivec code could be quite interesting... I'm not talking about converting existing routines to work with altivec (that usually not gives so impressive results), but designing new routines from scratch to make the best use of the vector unit. It could be as fun as coding the DSP in a Falcon.

And talking about 3D libraries, afaik Warp3D works at a lower level than Direct3D and OpenGL, so you can optimize a lot your code. Just look at the Warp3D demos using a Virge and compare that to a Virge in a PC. You will see that Amiga Virge 3D stuff runs faster.

People with real interest in demos usually has scandoublers. For example I have two, both are 24bits. Don't use DCE/phase5 ones like the one included with the CV3D, it's not 24bit and you will notice it soon if you are used to the real colours of demos and see some gradients.

I agree somewhat with MagicSN, it's important to be able to watch the demo. for example, A3000 users may be quite happy watching a RTG production. I guess that A2k users would prefer watching something that nothing. But this is always a decision of the makers of the demo, if they had to care about anything exists (like making a demo that uses at 100% an A500, but if you have a 4000PPC/voodoo5 it uses warp3d and AHI... that would be ridiculous and very tedious, testing every hardware configuration)

[carls]

@lempkee

First of all, you were sounding depressed about the state of the scene so I tried to cheer you up :-) I guess it came out the wrong way...

I haven't been to very many parties (maybe nine or ten), but I'd have to say that the ones I've been to were very nice. I've only been to smaller ones (maybe 200 attendants at the biggest one so far) and I've never been to a party without a computer. Not that I get to use it very much because, like you say, in the latest years it has mostly been about socializing and having a good time.

Finishing a production at a party is never fun, except maybe for a surprise compo (but that is a totally different thing IMHO).

I always try to have my contributions ready before I go to a party!

A good party to me, well, it's hard to describe but it's got to have that certain feeling of friendship and community, that all the visitors belong together because they're a part of something bigger, in this case the whole scene "thing".

I couldn't say that I would feel at home at one of the parties with 2000+ attendants, at least I don't think so (but then again I've never tried it .

I'm going to a party in my home town in a couple of days, and this is a party I love. Just like you say about M&S there is total silence during all the compos. There are always a few gamers attending the party but this year they will be forced to turn their screens off during the compos ;-)

Just like you I've never understood how people can sit in front of their computers leeching, not talking to anyone - and paying for it - when they do the same thing at home all the time. I can appreciate the fun in playing Quake but I'd rather do it for free in a friend's livingroom during a weekend.

If I had to pick a favourite party I'd have choose one where I was one of the organizers :-)
It was held back in 1996, superb feeling.

[darkcoder]

@crumb & blubble

Indeed this a very interesting thread.

>First, I think Steffen is a bit arrogant/ignorant..

What I find irritating is that it seems he doesn't read what other people write. He simple ties to impose it's ideas (who come from a different contex, that of games/application development) like they're God's words.
What makes threads intersting like this is instead reading and thinking about other ideas.
And in fact I thought about what both of you wrote about PPC cpus and I agree that you are right and I was wrong. I also did superficial and inexact calculation about CPU speeds.
Ok, I apologize, now I have no preclusions in doing PPC coding. The only thing I don't like is this fact of instruciotn reordering. Of course you can schedule inst, but at least from what I read about the G4 the CPU reorders them internally. I red these informations on the ArsTechnica web site. There in non-PPC specific articles they say that this technique, together with the increased number of registers of "Post-RISC" CPU (they mean P4, K6, G4, SPaRC, K7 etc) helps a lot compilers so that it is nearly impossiblre to improve on them. But this was not a PPC specific issue, so if you have direct expirience I trust you.
So if it will be true that PS3 will use a PPC, I would really like to code demos on it.
Of cource I still am in favor of "fixed architecture" and also what blubble wote about it is important: a fixed hardware is more fascinating and inspiring to me (but there are also those technical reason I explained in previous post).

[lempkee]

@carls: Hackersnight,remedy,iceing?? hmm ihave forgot the other swede'ish partys, but i can share with u that i have visited them aswell

anyway yes its depressing to see the scene disolve like it has the last 4+ years, and thats why in general i left it back in 99, but i came back and helped some
and i kinda liked mekka2001 alot, but after that there has been nothing and since i know mostly all of the mekka people means that i also know why and what about the mekka,
i hope that a good party for SCENERS will come again but a good party aint much if it doesnt have the true sceners feeling + contributions that represent the scene,
back in the early days of mekka there wasnt exactly much groundbreaking demos at that party, and the reason for that is that the bigger parties (TP,TG etc) had better prices and was more known
to the people, that turned around and now (the last 5 years) mekka was the king, now its dead and no one else have stated anything about any scene ONLY party which can drag people from their livingroom to the
party place (except for smaller parties like Kindergarten and trasc but in general they are too small to get well known and get people froom all over the world? to join up.



also i must add that it seems there is like too many people here who doesnt like the amiga as much as me (ie they use pc,mac,linux etc... and say that aga sucks....its kinda opposite on what i think but i sheer the opinion about moving on to PPC and the a1 , but for that we need an OS and thats os4, my XE800 is due soon and os4
will change my life and dreams i hope

[darkcoder]

@psycho

so thank you very much for this veery interesting numbers. So with 4060 cache preloading is not faster. I hope I will obtain similar results by myself.
How do you use the mmu to improve speed? You detect which part of the buffer have been modified and you only c2p the modified parts?

(oh if you don't have time to answer to all these questions no problem- I still thank you for all the interesting hint!)

[darkcoder]

@lempkee

I love th Amiga (classic) for both its hardware and OS.
I really hope and think that OS4 will be a great development of a still great OS. But the A1, from a hardware perspective, to be honest it doesn't seem so wonderful. It's not bad, if it was out 3 years ago it would have been great but today has no great performances and costs a lot. (BTW just today Apple announced a big cut of their prices..)
From the hardware perspective I also prefer Pegasos to A1.
So I think in the future I will use OS4 for "serious" stuff and a different system (XBox? PS3?GBA?) for coding.
(yeah Amiga is by far my favorite computer, but it's not the only one I use)

[MagicSN]

>From the hardware perspective I also prefer Pegasos >to A1.

What exactly do you prefer there ? The better propaganda ? The two systems are (nearly) the same !!! (Though no OS4 for Pegasos as it seems)

>So I think in the future I will use OS4 for "serious" stuff >and a different system (XBox? PS3?GBA?) for coding.

BTW: That the PS3 will use PPC is in the meanwhile confirmed.

As to your other mail: I don't see anything I said which would be arrogant... as to "imposing my own ideas" - well, I tried several times to make you aware
that not all people CAN use AGA. And that Systems like the AmigaOne CANNOT run AGA Demos also (while RTG Demos could still be compatible). And you come with the same stuff up again and again. Some of the things in your earlier mails (like that one would need to "optimize for different graphics chipsets) were also just bad-researched. And when stating the obvious again and again one CAN get a bit annoyed over time Also I still am waiting on a response concerning the slow speed of AGA on 16 Bit c2p and Highres Displays (Anyways, as I said before - minor speed differences - which depending on situation happen in both directions - don't really matter... what matters is that every Amiga User with a decent Amiga can use the demos, I'd say...

I hope you did not take offense.

Feel free to followup on private email if you want.

Steffen

[Karlos]

If I was any cop at ppc assembly programming, I'd write a kick arse 2D true-colour effects RTG demo using the benefits of a ppc/graphics card...

Still, I'm not so I'll just shut the hell up now ;-)