Curse of the SDL

[Crumb]

Oh, and in regards to ScummVM, latest 68k ports dont use sdl.

Chunky2planar isn't a great idea on AGA miggies for these kind of 2d games anyway.

It's a shame I lost the warpsdl sdk though. Its both much faster and works with aga.

warpsdl was quite smooth on my miggies, what a pity. Chaozer doesn't reply any email :-(

[NovaCoder]

My AGA/ECS ports seem to run well enough on real hw, check youtube

Back to the 68k SDL, yes it is a little slow on real HW (but runs surprisingly well on OS4/MorphOS).   Anyway my next RTG release won't use SDL though and should be quicker than my current version.

[utri007]

You are doing great job, your way to do is right way

I understand that somebody wants to get results fast or want to proof of concept, but anything SDL related cant be final solution for 68k amigas.

Is it so, that making SDL port, makes native port easier? After that it is alredy 68k and you just replace SDL code slowly to native code??? <- Question

My personal wish to get native would be Netsurf

[itix]

Is it so, that making SDL port, makes native port easier? After that it is alredy 68k and you just replace SDL code slowly to native code??? <- Question

Maintaining port is impossible. When there is new version you have to start from scratch again.

Some projects are modular allowing you to write your own backend... but for example Freeciv 2 is huge and replacing SDL GUI with MUI is lot of work...

My personal wish to get native would be Netsurf

It still does not change the fact that Netsurf is designed for RISC OS which does not have proper multitasking and not taking full advantage of Amiga.

[drHirudo]

68k SDL should be declared illegal
There is plenty of people who already are spending lots of time to making SDL ports to 68k amigas, that just....

If they instead making 5 SDL ports, could make 1 native port, that would be much better.

And this is not actually codin, this about "how sdl is useless for 68k amigas"

SDL proved to be quite useful for me for doing the reverse - porting my 68K native Amiga games to SDL then compiling them with ease on AmigaOS 4, MacOS X and Windows. If it wasn't for SDL then I probably would not go with the hassle to learn about MacOS and Windows coding, but now I still code on my Amiga and then recompile my games on other machines.

So, if I am going to write something serious for 68K Amigas, I will most probably do it in SDL to be able to easily port it on other machines, than having to rewrite it for SDL in later stages.

[commodorejohn]

So, if I am going to write something serious for 68K Amigas, I will most probably do it in SDL to be able to easily port it on other machines, than having to rewrite it for SDL in later stages.

I prefer the approach of having an abstract engine for the game designed around an Amiga backend, and just adapt the backend to SDL for off-platform ports...

[unusedunused]

>68k software developement is totally halted, or all new software for 68k amigas is >useless SDL ports.

I dont know wy you write this for 68k
do you see on other AOS or PPC AOS  more than SDL Ports ?

when we look on aminet you can see on 68k most native programs/ games  that are only on amiga 68k develop and run not on Linux.

>So what kind of apps and games could theoritically run 040/060? Quite much any PC >game that that has requiremt something like 486

because of the slow amiga GFX Bus only 320*240 games.

and thats the problem.SDL get popular in Linux when PC Hardware was able to do 640*480 Pixel games in true colors, so most games run only with 640*480 and only very few of the SDL developers make their games running on 320*240 Pixels.new written SDL games need lots more Power, many of them are not very fast to run on a OS4 or MOS system.
the reason is that today pixelshader fast CPU is very very cheap.Most users have them now.

And write programs for slow hardware cost lots more programing time.time is short, but if you have time maybe you can do new games that run on slow hardware.But i guess if you maybe learn to program you like to buy a cheap CP for 300 Eur and code on this the program.you save time to speed optimize or live with ugly graphic ;-)

that sdl does not slowdown, you can see when you look at the speed of netsurf.68k version is more than 3* faster with SDL.

tha only problem is the Amiga GFX bus access is too slow to transfer the data of a 640*480 screen.

when you want render 640*480 16 bit screen with 25 fps you must transfer 15 megabyte /sec.

But mediator with a Voodoo 3 transfer only 8 megabyte /sec.
The CPU is fast enough, only a faster GFX Bus is need.
hope that natami come some day, then can see that SDL games run lots faster due to faster GFX Bus.

[utri007]

Netsurf SDL problem for me is that it requires true type fonts.

Amiga chip / zorro bus is sure slow, but have you tried FBlit? Games like simcity 2000 and napalm get huge speed up to vertical/horzontal scrolling with it, if you promote them to fast mem with FBLit.

But ofcourse there is limitations with 68k amigas, programmers just neet to live with them.

[Thorham]

But ofcourse there is limitations with 68k amigas, programmers just neet to live with them.

Which only means that if you want to do certain things, you simply have to do them right

[utri007]

True

[utri007]

Talking about 68k apps and games, sound many time like it would be impossible to do anything to 68k amigas. Wich makes me wonder, how good they were, I mean those who made amaizing apps and games to amiga years ago?? Were they humans or some kind of super creatures with big brains and super natural skills??

[commodorejohn]

Talking about 68k apps and games, sound many time like it would be impossible to do anything to 68k amigas. Wich makes me wonder, how good they were, I mean those who made amaizing apps and games to amiga years ago?? Were they humans or some kind of super creatures with big brains and super natural skills??

Even a stock A500 is a pretty capable machine. The problem is that a lot of these projects are written for modern machines, and aren't really designed around the limits of the hardware, so even using native hardware/firmware access is only going to get you so far. Certainly there were Amiga coders back in the day who dazzled with raw skill, but a large part of why things seemed to work so well is that programmers were willing to tailor and compromise their designs in order to work well on the hardware. Which is why, as I said, my approach would be to design a game for the Amiga and port it to other systems afterward - it's a lot easier to take a program from a less-powerful system onto a more-powerful one than vice-versa.

[utri007]

Netsurf is designed to run 16mhz system, is it low-end enough

Would be smart to try to find and maybe do some co-operation from Risc OS / Atari scene, there is many projects on

[DavidF215]

Talking about 68k apps and games, sound many time like it would be impossible to do anything to 68k amigas. Wich makes me wonder, how good they were, I mean those who made amaizing apps and games to amiga years ago?? Were they humans or some kind of super creatures with big brains and super natural skills??

A large part of the difference is the file sizes of the graphics data. Graphic images today are much larger than images of yesteryear, so 68k Amigas did not have to process large image files. Had the Amiga graphics and bus speeds advanced, it would not be as much of a problem today. The bus speeds would be able to process the larger image files of today. An alternative would be to find more efficient means/format of storing image data.

[utri007]

One thing to you reconsider

There is at least two different new 68k systems to becoming. I believe that both of them could have great benefit from native Netsurf.

Modern web brovser is essential to any system and makes your system more the present day

Arthur has kindly released sources of Netsurf SDL to aminet and don't forget that Chris has also promised to help

*Chris has made OS4 port of Netsurf

To get rid of SDL is not just a speed it is also feel of native app. Reaction/Mui gui would give it the feel of the original amiga app

[Khephren]

Talking about 68k apps and games, sound many time like it would be impossible to do anything to 68k amigas. Wich makes me wonder, how good they were, I mean those who made amaizing apps and games to amiga years ago?? Were they humans or some kind of super creatures with big brains and super natural skills??

The problem is that SDL is generic, and written in C. To get the most out of the Amiga, you would use assembler, and the tricks the Amiga provides to speed things up.

For example, in a web browser you could have a 64x640 'screen' with it's own palette for your navigation buttons (and could even run it at a different resolution to the webpage viewport itself). You could then run the actual viewport in a sliced mode for more colours etc. Such things would be difficult to add to a ported project.