Ben Hermans - Hyperion Entertainment Interviewed

[Warface]

I've been fearing, that quality of OS4 would be on par with previous game ports by Hyperion, which, by experience, were proven VERY buggy...

On Hyperion's defence and to remain balanced, you can only make a perfect/stable/never crashing port if the original is perfect/stable/never crashing.

That's not always the case, and when the original is buggy too you can help little on that. I have no insider knowledge however what percentage of bugs are from the original or are the results from the porting process, just added a note.

[HyperionMP]

If you have problems with Shogo and Freespace crashing, you should not waste your time complaining about it on public fora but instead:

1. Register yourself on our site so you can download all the latest updates.

2. Subscribe yourself to the Hyperion dev list so you can ask for help.

If you ask me, your problem is more than likely due to the fact  that you are running some kind of hack (like Executive) or your hardware is causing issues.

It's a known fact that our games stretch the hardware to the limit and this will cause heat-related issues or will bring down the machine if the memory speed is set too low (60 ns).

[carls]

@Hammer
> I wonder IF Cloanto’s product will update their
> AmigaOS distribution with some AOS 4.0’s
> modules(after the release of AOS4).

I doubt it. AFAIK it doesn't contain 3.5 or 3.9 stuff either, just 1.0 up to to 3.1

[jacadcaps]

You're joking now, right? Fix bugs instead of blaming the hardware.

[HyperionMP]

If  you don't know that especially the BlizzardPPC is prone to overheating, you don't have a clue.

[Warface]

If you don't know that especially the BlizzardPPC is prone to overheating, you don't have a clue.

Not that it counts, but it depends on the BlizzPPC you use. My BVPPC 060 had no intentions for overheating at all.

Anyway, can we stay on topic please?

[jacadcaps]

Obviously you have no idea how to cool BlizzardPPC properly. It's been more than 2 years since my machine last crashed due to an overheat problem. On the other hand, perhaphs it's not your games that crash Blizzards, just buggy WarpOS

[mikeymike]

I wonder if Amiga-related companies liken PR to throwing bricks at a wasp's nest :-)

[redrumloa]

Wayne stated the news feedback here was NOT to be used for OT bashing, please stay on topic or get editted. You have a beef? Use the forums.

Admin fingers are starting to get itchy;-)

[mikeymike]

@ redrumloa

I think maybe you should've directed your comment at someone, rather than the alternative of lots of "who, me?" replies :-)

[Paul_Gadd]

I was watching a ep on tape of Murder She Wrote and noticed a Amiga in the background of a hotel room and the user was bashed over the head with a candle stick, Jessica did find out the murderer was an ex lover so the hero did save the day yet again but that is one less amigan  :-)

[ikir]

Nice Q&A :-)

[System]

Actually the "experts" that Hermans talks about never said anything of the sort.

What "they" said was basically you'd never get such an emulation concept working in the "2 months" Hermans publically specified for it.

18months to two years of hard work is about what "they" estimated, and lo and behold were proved right.

(We won't even mention the many times you changed your ABI for OS4.x in order to try and get it to work. I can dig up some "SystemV sucks!" arguments from Steffen... they will go well with the "gcc is evil" and "ELF is monster!!" stuff)

Nobody said a sandbox was the only solution either.

[zee4]

I wonder if Amiga-related companies liken PR to throwing bricks at a wasp's nest

That's the funniest thing I've read all day- Thanks!
(It's true too)

[HyperionMP]

@Neko:

Steffen may have harped about ELF prior to joining to Hyperion but this was never the official line.

Hyperion has consistently used GCC on various platforms (Amiga, Linux and even Mac OS X).

We never changed the OS 4 ABI.

Incidentally, the experts DID claim that what we are trying to do is impossible.

Here's a very recent quote from an American Genesi employee on a public IRC session, no prices for guessing who it was from:

"I don't consider Hyperion a bad company, but they do not have the experience nor manpower to do a proper job of a brand-new OS, which is what AOS4 is. they have the original source. is the common arguement, but what good is that source? BCPL?  68k asm?  hardware-optimized C code?  The actual usable code is less than 20% of the whole so they have a whole-scale OS to write, essentially from scratch and due to the architecture they chose for this OS, they have not a clue if it will ever run until late in the cycle".

Now that's somebody who doesn't have a clue.

[meerschaum]

whoever said video game porting companys wherent the best people for the job of making a new OS???....