The fall of amiga, just a thought :)

[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

[graffias79]

Kellisra wrote:
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.

I'm sure C= helped just a little bit...

[Ilwrath]

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

Of course, it's pretty hard to buy stuff that isn't being made.

People didn't buy stuff because it wasn't available.  Simple as that.  There's a market...  Otherwise, why would crappy 200/233 mhz PowerPC boards still be selling for hundreds of dollars??  How could someone have scammed over 10 people on this board trying to sell hardware that old if there wasn't demand???  

People wanted new Amiga stuff.  It's just that nothing worthwhile was available back when the Amiga had at least a mentionable market share.  That is what killed Amiga.  (That and Commodore's complete mismanagment of money -- how a company can go bankrupt when they can't build machines fast enough to meet demand is beyond comprehension.)

[pwest]

There's only so much you can do with what you have available. Hardware power or not, you're not going to get 60fps high resolution 24-bit texture mapped 3d lightsourced worlds with will millions of polygons an A1200 under AGA.

I agree with what you're saying though... there are always two way to approach something. Either you REACT to what is outside of you, ie the hardware, and blame a lack of progress on the way `things are` - which is what most of the people of the world act like .. .. or you ACT to subjectively change the way you see the world and how you force yourself to see the positive in things and make the most of it. That is a lot more difficult for the average human since we all tend to be so fate-focussed.

Most people require external circumstances to change in order for there to be an inner change. Others, and generally far fewer people, can change their inner experience of the external circumstances to choose how they experience it and what they do to see the higher truth or positivity in it. It's harder but it can be done ... and is more spiritual.

So yah, we killed the Amiga.

[MAD]

Hoya!

The BIG difference between then and now is that THEN, people were passionate. They did things for the hell of it, just to prove I can do THIS!

Now, with HW changing every 6 months, you have not read the manual that it is already outdated.

Moreover, for many people (if I daresay, the majority?), computer=pc=m$....

Back to the times, there was a REAL competition between 8bits on one side and 16/32bits on the other.

Nowadays, apart from buying a Mac if you hate peecees...

Life sucks.

Be funky

M A D

[saimo]

@pwest

You forget a third category, then (I'll be less "abstract" than you): those who are happy to make the most of what they currently have and who are eager to make the most of what is to come ;-)
Unluckily, being a subset of your second category, this is also the less numerous, but just by a trifle.

Note that nowadays "making the most of the hardware" translates differently from the good ol' days: HW banging must be left aside, and what remains is algoritmic optimization and smart design... which are sadly rare to find anyway (of course I am mostly thinking of "certain" platforms), because the "spirit" is different - or better, non-existent: the abundancy of resources has pulled out all of our human laziness (not to mention business reasons... but I won't dig further).

In all I'd say I agree with what you said - all but the last line: have those people from category 2 & 3 killed the Amiga? No: if there had been only people from category 1, the Amiga would not have been born at all ;-)

saimo

[saimo]

@MAD

The passionate spirit can (and should) remain even today, although I think that it's undeniable that the total control of the machine gave it a peculiar flavour and significance.

HW rapidly changing these days concerns only OS people, so the bitterness I read in your remark (correct me if I'm wrong) is a sort of non-issue.

Have you ever considered how lucky we have been in living just in the period when the HW was powerful enough to do funny things but not too powerful to allow those things in a non-funny way? So, we can always look back and enjoy what the new generations will never know (I wish they'll find other things just as interteresting, though).

saimo

[saimo]

[SNIP]

Doubled post, sorry :-P - I'm posting with a handheld and it's not as easy as with a normal keyboard.

saimo

[MAD]

Hoya!

I agree! I have been lucky enough to know computing's golden years...

Be funky

M A D

[Ilwrath]

I agree! I have been lucky enough to know computing's golden years...

I think yer all crazy!  What was so great about computers in the past?  They were slow, hacked up, required specific hardware, etc...  

It WAS the passion that was great about early computers.  But it wasn't the passion to do the best with the hardware...  It was the passion to do things the right way.  

The "right way" has changed since then, though.  

It used to be that you had to be small and lean.  To do things right, you had to wring out every ounce of performance.  

But that really isn't the case anymore.  There's lots of new and powerful hardware.  USE IT.  Build an abstraction layer or two.  The code is still mighty fast.  And now it's portable, too.  Build yourself a physics engine.  Who cares if it isn't perfectly optimised?  Hardware is large enough to take care of that.  Use the time you save to make it more REALISTIC.  Rather than worrying about making things work on specific hardware, worry about making things work exactly as you want them to.

I love the Amiga.  (Obviously, or else I wouldn't be here)  It's an incredible machine, and deserves to be remembered as such.  But, honestly, I believe the best in computing is still yet to come.  Really, the hardware doesn't matter that much.  What matters is using the machine to do what you want.  This era is just starting...  

[darksun9210]

talking about small and lean,
ok so demo coders have got lazy with direct access to openGL / D3D API's, but have you seen what they can do with 64k demos these days! a mate of mine showed me some demos he had from 2001... 64k, 48k etc etc. these things ran for like 10 minutes! all textures, models, scenes, are mathamatical structures, and so easily compressed/decompressed with big hardware. the demo coders are still able to push the envelope, just they have much or leeway it what they can do. (still need the limiting factor of 64k tho ;-) )

was well impressed.

also speaking about the hardware situation, i was going to put bids in on an A1200 PPC card and GFX card on e-bay, but i ended up going to a computer fair and buying an Athlon 3200XP, Nforce2 Mainboard, and a gig of ram for under 300 pounds. you pays your money, you takes your choice.. would still like a PPC card tho.

but as for the passion... i hear yah there. if something happened to said PC, i wouldn't care. i don't really care about it now to be honest, but my A1200? knock at your own risk! :-D

[Waccoon]

I miss the funky effects that could only be done in software, like making fur grow on cubes, lightshows, home-grown antialiasing, realtime halftone filters, voxels, etc.  I also miss smoothness.  Just about every game these days boasts about getting 100+ frames per seconds, but they still keep VSync turned off to make their benchmarks look good, and studdering and tearing are the result.  I don't think anybody realizes that if you're getting framrates higher than your refresh rate, you're just wasting electricity and making your graphics look WORSE.  If you're going that fast, you might as well turn on VSync and kill the tripple buffer.  That's probably the only reason why I still think consoles can compete against PCs.  PCs are all about raw numbers and features, but consoles are all about smooth motion.  Ratchet and Clank for the PS2 still amazes the hell out of me, even though Need for Speed Underground and Far Cry on the PC have a million times as many special effects in their engines (plus, R&C is a lot more fun!)  ;-)

A few things I really wish you saw more in demos are realtime fractals, and textures generated on the fly.  64K demos are still pretty amazing for making do with pure math, but you don't see mandelbrots spinning and zooming all over the screen.  A pure, animated fractal demo would rock.  I have an animated fractal for my screensaver (JuliaFractal), and it really amazes me how fast you can generate these objects on modern hardware.

[bloodline]

saimo wrote:
@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

But if you think about what you are saying you realise I'm right :-)

Your library is using the Amgia Chipset as nothing mroe than a LowRes Frame buffer (and  lame one at that). You are moving more and more work on to the CPU, which in turn requires you to upgrade the CPU.
Your argument has the illusion of working because we are able to upgrade the CPU. but if you tried to do any complex modern effects with a Stock A1200, you would soon realise the hardware is a massive limitation.
And for the record, Lowres displays are not suitable for modern effects. I'm embarrased if I see anything less than 800*600 now.

Yes the Amigas hardware was great. But it was designed for the 2D era. Commodore never put money into the AAA chipset (which work started on once the A1K was released). If the AAA chipset had been released with it's 3D friendly design, the computing world as we know it would be very different now.

@minator

Flood is a reclusive music producer who has produced the majority of Albums in my music collection. I just happened to meet him in a club one night.

[saimo]

@bloodline

Sorry for this laaaaaate reply, but I'm way too busy and have no net connection at home (yet).

But if you think about what you are saying you realise I'm right :-)

I do think about what I say ;-)

Your library is using the Amgia Chipset as nothing mroe than a LowRes Frame buffer

[NITPICKING/KIDDING MODE]

I wonder which software that displays graphics on screen does not use part of the Amiga chipset as a frame buffer ;-)

[ENOUGH OF THAT MODE]

(and  lame one at that).

Do you say so because it's what the hints I gave suggest to you, because it's what you think in general of c2p engines or because you have seen the library in action and you did not like it (in that case, were you using HW that supported SHRES? A 15 kHz monitor or a suitable scandoubler? For example, the Picasso IV output is not good)?
I'm just asking - if that's criticism, it's very welcome.

You are moving more and more work on to the CPU, which in turn requires you to upgrade the CPU.

If you had read (carefully) the posts I did in this thread or the documentation I distributed with the library, you would not have said so (I guess), because the primary goal of my library is exactly providing c2p for free (i.e. _no_ CPU calculations), and it succeeds in that. Thus, I'll assume that your comments came from the concept of c2p in general.
It's true, however, that for better visuals than the ones of no-CPU modes (because of intrinsic HW limitation) the CPU (+Blitter, optionally) must be used - but, again, that is _not_ strictly necessary.
Still, the aim is having a fast c2p just because of the slowness of M68ks, and so the library tries to relieve the CPU from the load as much as possible by using what the HW offers.
Note that if I had relied on CPU upgrades I would have had no reason to sweat so much on my c2p engine.

Your argument has the illusion of working because we are able to upgrade the CPU.

What? Absolutely not! :-o
Believe it or not, the library was entirely coded on a A1200+Bz1230... I could never afford a 060 card!
That is exactly what made me try so hard and produce that library: trying to squeeze everything I could out of my weak (but flexible) HW.

but if you tried to do any complex modern effects with a Stock A1200, you would soon realise the hardware is a massive limitation.
And for the record, Lowres displays are not suitable for modern effects. I'm embarrased if I see anything less than 800*600 now.

I never said that our old HW is good even for todays standards.
I just said that it's fun to program and it's so flexible that allows incredible things, as coders keep proving still today.

And, apart from all this, you can't judge the quality without taking into account the resources used. F.ex. I have recently discovered games for the C=64 that are really impressive (real high quality prods), unlike most of the crap published for today's powerful machines.


saimo

[bloodline]

[NITPICKING/KIDDING MODE]

I wonder which software that displays graphics on screen does not use part of the Amiga chipset as a frame buffer

[ENOUGH OF THAT MODE]

I mean not using any of the Chipset features :-D

Do you say so because it's what the hints I gave suggest to you, because it's what you think in general of c2p engines or because you have seen the library in action and you did not like it (in that case, were you using HW that supported SHRES? A 15 kHz monitor or a suitable scandoubler? For example, the Picasso IV output is not good)?
I'm just asking - if that's criticism, it's very welcome.

No, I was not talking about your software. I mean the Amiga chipset makes a very poor frame buffer. It has limited memory, limited resolution and useless bandwidth. Modern AGP cards make very good frame buffers :-)

If you had read (carefully) the posts I did in this thread or the documentation I distributed with the library, you would not have said so (I guess), because the primary goal of my library is exactly providing c2p for free (i.e. _no_ CPU calculations), and it succeeds in that. Thus, I'll assume that your comments came from the concept of c2p in general.
It's true, however, that for better visuals than the ones of no-CPU modes (because of intrinsic HW limitation) the CPU (+Blitter, optionally) must be used - but, again, that is _not_ strictly necessary.
Still, the aim is having a fast c2p just because of the slowness of M68ks, and so the library tries to relieve the CPU from the load as much as possible by using what the HW offers.
Note that if I had relied on CPU upgrades I would have had no reason to sweat so much on my c2p engine.

I'm sorry, I haven't looked at your code. I thought about c2p myself and the only why I could do it was using the CPU alone.
My idea was to take an 8bit chunky buffer and turn it into 8 1-bit buffers that correspond the the bitplanes of the AGA amiga hardware, then coppy them over in one go to the chipram. It was very CPU intensive.

What? Absolutely not!
Believe it or not, the library was entirely coded on a A1200+Bz1230... I could never afford a 060 card!
That is exactly what made me try so hard and produce that library: trying to squeeze everything I could out of my weak (but flexible) HW.

:-) That is fun. But you did upgrade your CPU :-D

[saimo]

@ bloodline

I mean not using any of the Chipset features :-D

Ah, now it makes sense.
Anyway, the point is exactly that my library exploits the HW features and not just the CPU - this is why I brought it in this discussion, as an example of how the chipset can be useful.

No, I was not talking about your software.

Phew, being bashed that way after spending years of works is not nice :-D
But I would have accepted the criticism anyway, really :-)

I mean the Amiga chipset makes a very poor frame buffer. It has limited memory, limited resolution and useless bandwidth. Modern AGP cards make very good frame buffers :-)

Yep, the low bandwidth and all the rest are big downsides, but at least they push us until we bleed because of coding ;-)

I'm sorry, I haven't looked at your code.

You don't even need to: the distribution includes massive documentation (maybe a bit hard to read) ;-)

I thought about c2p myself and the only why I could do it was using the CPU alone.
My idea was to take an 8bit chunky buffer and turn it into 8 1-bit buffers that correspond the the bitplanes of the AGA amiga hardware, then coppy them over in one go to the chipram. It was very CPU intensive.

Yes, that's incredibly expensive.
But other coders have come up with amazing c2p engines... regards to them!

BTW: out of curiosity: do you (or anybody else) have any benchmarks of the best c2p engines around? I'd be very curious to see how mine compares to them...



saimo