steelie@pro-charlotte.cts.com (Jim Howard) (12/15/88)
The recent discussions about piracy are centering around a few basic ideas: People want everything to multitask so they can re-dial BBS's People dont want copy protection.. Now I can sympathize with the second idea, mainly because *ALL* software written these days is cracked by someone within a day or two after it is released.. The developers spend time and money developing protections to stop pirates, but the only people they stop are the "legitimate" owners who want to make a backup copy.. The bottom line is, a pirate is going to get the software, and break the software, if he wants to.. Dongles and such dont work, because as you know all the amiga programs that use dongles have been de-dongled, and in some cases even by programs such as marauder II.. Seeing as how protection doesnt stop the pirates, the developers should focus on making the software more usable and friendly to the large number of people who will pay money for it. Now to the group of people who would rather have the ability to re-dial BBS's and while running a game like tracers, than to have the system taken over by Dungeon Master, the only thing that I can figure is that the majority of people who use the net are *POWER* users, and therefore have system environments, with shells, compilers, and various other utilities, and they usually have a hard disk and gobs of ram.. I can see why they would be annoyed at a program that takes over the machine. But the fact is the majority of Amiga users do not have 8 megs of ram and a 100 meg hard disk, and most of them don't mind losing the ability to use a text editor or re-dial a BBS in the background, as long as the game is great.. Not to be cutting Tracers down, but I noticed it recently got a bunch of awards from various magazines and groups for being "great amiga software".. I cant see anything so great about it, other than the fact that it uses so little CPU time that it multi-tasks nicely and exits cleanly. Maybe the fact that the people that write articles for these magazines fall into the category of "power" user, and they are just overjoyed to see something that wont crash their copy of Online! while they play it.. The only reason that some programs take over the machine, other than the fact that some need all the cpu time they can get, is very simple. It is easier to write a fast and dirty hack to do something, than it is to figure out the nice and "correct" way. I speak from experience, because sometimes some of my code is so boorish that I have to turn the power off, because I have destroyed practically everything from $0 to $7ec00 .. Thats why I would describe myself as a hacker, not a programmer.. But the fact remains that most games are written by hackers, and therfore they dont work very well with anything else in memory. If you look at the majority of programs written by people from here on the net, you will find that they are utilities of some kind. (except for Leo, of course :-) ) please direct all flames to e-mail, somehow I dont like getting humiliated in public. ;-) UUCP: ....!crash!pro-charlotte!steelie | Pro-Charlotte - (704) 567-0029 ARPA: crash!pro-charlotte!steelie@nosc.mil| 300/1200/2400 baud 24 hrs/day INET: steelie@pro-charlotte.cts.com | Log in as "register"
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (12/16/88)
In article <3632@crash.cts.com>, steelie@pro-charlotte.cts.com (Jim Howard) writes: > People want everything to multitask so they can re-dial BBS's Or *run* bbses, or do other long-term stuff that basically ties up their computer... or would if they had a "PC". But, they don't.... they have an Amiga. That means they don't have to wait for that ray-trace or that bozo to hang up off their BBS or that file to print or whatever. > The only thing that I can figure is that the majority of people who use > the net are *POWER* users, and therefore have system > environments, with shells, compilers, and various other utilities, > and they usually have a hard disk and gobs of ram.. I can see > why they would be annoyed at a program that takes over the machine. Back when Karl and I were doing Tracers, he had 4 Meg and 2 floppies. I had 512K and 2 floppies. I could still usefully multitask while compiling. > But the fact is the majority of Amiga users do not have 8 megs of > ram and a 100 meg hard disk, and most of them don't mind losing > the ability to use a text editor or re-dial a BBS in the background, > as long as the game is great.. No, they have 1 Meg of RAM and nearly 2 Meg of floppies. I'd like you to cast you mind back a few years. Imagine someone with his 48K Apple-II with a couple of big third-party floppies... say a few hundred K apiece... and proud of it. These were power users. It's not how much you have, it's what you do with it. [ Tracers ] > I cant see anything so great about it, other than the fact that it > uses so little CPU time that it multi-tasks nicely and exits cleanly. And it's mindlessly addictive, like peanuts. And that's what you pay for, isn't it? To have a good time. If you just want to be blown away by hot graphics, there's always the Newtek Demo. I run it more often than all my games except Marketroids :->. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today? Disclaimer: My typos are my own damn busines#!rne