rj@amiga.UUCP (Robert J. Mical) (12/19/85)
I have been out of town for a while, and have come back to find a great uproar about the ST's attempt to copy the AMIGA Boing demo. This all seems a bit ridiculous to me, so I thought I would comment. In the first place, this ST program is not a "copy" of Boing. There's differences, like the fact that the shadow is faked with line drawing, while the AMIGA Boing has a drop shadow that follows the ball and changes the color of both the grid and the background. Also, have you heard the AMIGA's great booming sound, and compared it with the ST's more modest tinkling? But these sorts of comparisons are just superficial. What else can the ST do while it's bouncing a ball? Has anyone seen other ST demos that match the AMIGA? Has anyone seen a RoboCity (real-time honest-to-goodness animation) or a Fields (area-fill measured in hundreds of polygons per second, not seconds per polygon) on an ST? Genloc? Hold-and-Modify? Real-time frame grabbing? But these are just graphics. How about a good number crunching demo? More importantly, how about a good multi-tasking demo? The ST can do a rough copy of the AMIGA Boing demo. But the ST doesn't bounce balls and juggle other jobs at the same time, including running a text editor to write a note such as this one. I understand that the ST is running up against its stops to mimic the AMIGA Boing. The AMIGA, on the other hand, has a vast percentage of its processing power still available while it Boings that ball around the screen. So why such a fuss? I've seen Boing attempts on the Mac and the C64 too! So? I think it's a great compliment paid to we who created the Boing demo, that so many should try to duplicate it. It makes me proud. Our Boing *is* a pretty good demo, though I've seen much better on our machine. Wait'll you see some of the forthcoming software from places like EA, software guaranteed to not separate the men from the toys. Someday a machine will come along that can better the Boing demo. I hope that I'm on the design team for that machine too. Until then, I think we could do with a little less bother, and just enjoy what we've got. =Robert J. Mical= (DISCLAIMER: since I'm one of the Amiga originals, please disregard this entire message as simple hype :-) )
freed@aum.UUCP (Erik Freed) (12/20/85)
> I have been out of town for a while, and have come back to find a great > uproar about the ST's attempt to copy the AMIGA Boing demo. This all > seems a bit ridiculous to me, so I thought I would comment. > > In the first place, this ST program is not a "copy" of Boing. There's > differences, like the fact that the shadow is faked with line drawing, > while the AMIGA Boing has a drop shadow that follows the ball and changes > the color of both the grid and the background. Also, have you heard > the AMIGA's great booming sound, and compared it with the ST's > more modest tinkling? But these sorts of comparisons are just > superficial. What else can the ST do while it's bouncing a ball? etc etc etc Boy would you Amiga people get off the back of our ST. Are you guys that insecure about an inanimate object of silicon and metal. Just relax, its Christmas!! :-) We like our Volkswagen just fine. You can have your Fins. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik James Freed Aurora Systems San Francisco, CA {dual,ptsfa}!aum!freed