The fall of amiga, just a thought :)

[Kellisra]

Just a thought:

Nowadays the demo-scene is all about design, rather than pushing the hardware to the extreme. The reason for this being that the graphic cards has become so good that its not difficult to make good-looking effect anylonger. The coders simply are getting lazy. This may be a good thing, cause instead of pushing the coders to do better work it pushes the manufacturers to make better and faster hardware instead.

Back in the old-days such hardware didnt exist. Therefore the coders instead dug into the code and tweaked it to the max to show those heavy duty effects. Just think of it, the 2004 silkcut demo is using the same hardware that existed back in 1993! Just awesome!!!

Conclusion? Well, instead of pushing commodore/escom/amiga inc for better hardware, the users has opted for staying with their existing hardware. They simply made the best out of what they had, instead of demanding something better. And since Amiga basically died because of the lack of development of new hardware, the fall of this great system can be blaimed on the users. Right?

Just a thought

[bloodline]

Not really.

Hardware is the biggest limiting factor at all times. The Amiga for example had no 16bit or 24/32bit graphic mode with instantly eliminates a whole class of effects.

The better the Hardware the harder it gets pushed.

[Crumb]

But it has ham8, and used with care it allows you to have low-res pseudo truecolor screens (just check some TBL demos)

[bloodline]

Crumb wrote:
But it has ham8, and used with care it allows you to have low-res pseudo truecolor screens (just check some TBL demos)

Don't get me started about HAM-8 :-D

It's a horrible horrible mode, it's only use is as a memory saving device.

I spent ages trying to get it to do something useful, but to no avail, The amount of CPU time required to workout each pixel is so large that there is no time left for anything else :-(

Anyway, with proper 16 and 24/32 bit modes you can do transparencies and other Alpha effects, not to mention the speed at which you can manipualate Chunky graphics ;-)

[JimS]

I have to disagree about HAM8. I always thought it was a rather clever extension to the old HAM6 modes... Of course, if your aim is to code clever demos... well that's another matter. :-)  But I was always more interested in animation playback. I had some ham-8 anims that looked pretty close to 24 bit.  When 8 megs of ram cost close to a 1000 bucks,  saving that memory was a big deal.

sounds like an old Python bit, I know. :-)

[bloodline]

8megs!!! you had 8megs!!!... in my day we had to make do with a bucket... ;-)

Yes, HAM was a great memory saver for Still images and Anims, but try to do any clever coding and you quickly run out of CPU cycles :-(

[saimo]

@bloodline

I'd say "it _may_ get pushed" ;-)
Unfortunately, there are several reasons (laziness, hurry, business, etc.) because of which it often isn't exploited decently.

Greets,
saimo

[takemehomegrandma]

bloodline wrote:
Not really.

Hardware is the biggest limiting factor at all times. The Amiga for example had no 16bit or 24/32bit graphic mode with instantly eliminates a whole class of effects.

The better the Hardware the harder it gets pushed.

I agree. I am not that kind of a coder myself, but I believe that a coder that has *not* found limitations in the hardware has not yet pushed the limits far enough! ;-)

[saimo]

@Crumb

Now this does get me started :-p
You see, for years I have been working hard on a freeware library that pushes AGA & M68k to the max (at least, the max I could) to create new and fast video modes to be used for demos and games for - guess what - classic Amigas.
After the release I got some feedback, yet I never heard of any production that makes use of it, which felt a bit sad... does anybody know anything about this? The piece of software in question is the tcs.library, which, among a lot of features, offers fast c2p (320x256 at 50+ FPS on an A1200+Bz1230) and things like dual playfield made of 2 separate and indipendent 8-bit screens blended with freely selectable degree of transparency (yes, that makes 65536 colors on screen)... listing all the features would be too long here, but this should be enough for identification.
I admit it: this is a piece of self-advertising :-p but anyway is an example (just one of the many) of how our beloved HW can be twisted, differently from what happens today with standard HW and libraries (please note that I'm not saying that they are bad - at most, I'm complaining about the programmers' attitude).

Well, I guess you all have enough of this, so I'd better sign off.
saimo

[KennyR]

To push the hardware to the max you have to know the hardware, and it has to be the same for everyone. It's that kind of hardware banging that led to the fall of the Amiga. Even if the tech improved, the software could not.

It's all about abstraction layers and compatibility these days, not knowing your hardware inside out. Hardware banging is dead.

[saimo]

@KennyR

You are almost 100% correct, in fact I was not advocating "modern HW banging".
Why "almost"? Because there are still platforms not powerful enough to bear the burden of complex layers (f. ex. the GameBoy, which - it's no coincidence - is blessed by countless jewels of tech beauty). Of course this will change... and I'll be glad to have lived and been part of an exciting era of computing.

saimo

[minator]

Hardware is the biggest limiting factor at all times. The Amiga for example had no 16bit or 24/32bit graphic mode with instantly eliminates a whole class of effects.

You can theoretically add chunky modes to an Amiga but it means changing the colour pallet at least every other every pixel, don't know if anyone has ever got it to work though...


BTW, Who/What is "The Flood"

[saimo]

@minator

What are you thinking of, exactly? Copper-chunky? Writing to the BPLxDAT registers directly with the CPU? Unfortunately, for bandwidth/clock limitations, it's impossible to get decent resolutions with these methods (well, with some further tricks it's possible to increase it, at the cost of losing flexibility and ease of use).
Yet, this never stopped Amiga coders to make the most of them to achieve impressive effects :-)

[EDIT]

The tcs.library I mentioned above actually offers a method to get "native" (i.e. without Copper/Blitter/CPU manipulation) c2p at the cost of a restriction on resolution: the one visible is LORES, but actually only 1pixel every 2 (horizontally speaking) can be modified by the CPU (the "untouchable" ones are a kind of average of the surrounding 2, giving a nice blur effect - all for free, of course ;-)). Then with some CPU (optionally with the aid of Blitter), also "full" LORES is possible - but this, of course, costs CPU cycles (as said, a 030 can handle a 320x256 8-bit screen at 50+ FPS; a 060 can reach 75 FPS).

[/EDIT]

saimo

[Kellisra]

You can't see it can you? Here you once again go on about that the existing amiga hardware is good enough.

Bla..bla... bla... Ham-8 is as good as 24-bit if you tweak it enough.

Wake up! Get some new hardware instead. Its all you fault. Its your fault the amiga died.

[saimo]

@Kellisra

Who ever in this thread said that the classic HW is enough even today? Some (including me) have just been discussing about the possibilities offered by the custom chipset (and the fun one can have with it), but I don't think there's anybody trying to sell the old chipsets as immortal pieces of HW that need no replacement.
Anyway, to stay on topic (sorry for my wandering off... I just can't help when it comes to coding fun :-P), it's rather simplistic affirming that the cause of the death of Amiga is the total exploitation of its limited resources; that may have played a role (but I'm not that sure about it), but there are many other and more important reasons that involve more than just programmers/users.
And, if you think about it for a minute, you'll see that, instead, Amiga managed to survive just because there has been people who squeezed everything out of it. And remember that if the Amiga name is so tied to the concept of excellence is just because of that spirit... if the spirit of using the available resources (which is different from HW banging) at their best were applied even in modern productions (on any platform), we would live in a better - and funnier - computing world.

saimo