phil@rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (08/06/88)
Greetings! I just recently got a little bit of extra money and I am looking into purchasing some more software for miAmiga (still haven't found a good name for her). So here are some random "production software" questions. I would greatly appreciate anyone answering them (via mail is sufficient). I remember someone mentioning recently an Amiga version of the old DECUS empire game. I know that EA has a game called "empire", but I'm pretty sure that this was different. Could someone refresh my memory? Big question: does it still let me do other things (or does it take ove the whole machine)? And what about the EA version of empire? Is it any good? Since EA puts it out it probably requires me to reboot to run it (taking over the whole machine). Am I right? I have not yet purchased any sort of paint program. Is DeluxePaint really worth getting? It probably takes over the machine, right? Am I right in my belief that Digi-Paint is more for editing/modifying pictures than it is for creating one from scratch? With 3 meg in my 2000, I give myself 100 disk buffers for the builtin cache. With that setup, and the imminent release of the fast file system for the floppies (doesn't that sound like an oxymron), is FACC still worth buying? Finally, a few comments about programs that take over the whole machine: Electronic Arts is well-known for this atrocity. I looked at Deluxe Music Construction Set at one point. I was really interested in purchasing it. It didn't have everything I wanted, but it would have been sufficient. Then I tried to pull the screen down. No dice. If it won't let me get back to my Workbench, then I don't want it. I feel the same way about my games---especially games that don't require a timed reaction (such as empire and solitare Shanghai). I don't want them. I do things in parallel, and I would primarily get such a game to keep me occupied while some other process churs away in the background (such as a TeX job or a download). Games like that won't let me. What a waste. But (sigh) I did have to make two exceptions: Marble Madness! and Earl Weaver Baseball. Why do commercial developers do that? It's throwing away one of the most useful things about the machine: the user's ability to do many things at once. My never-ending thanks to the people who wrote "Amoeba Invaders". Ya' did it right!!! William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>
thad@cup.portal.com (08/07/88)
SHANGHAI multi-tasks very well on the Amiga. I keep it around to while away the hours during file transfers, long compiles, etc.
eric@hector.UUCP (Eric Lavitsky) (08/09/88)
In article <1748@kalliope.rice.edu> phil@rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: >Greetings! >Finally, a few comments about programs that take over the whole machine: >Electronic Arts is well-known for this atrocity. I looked at Deluxe Music >Construction Set at one point. I was really interested in purchasing it. >It didn't have everything I wanted, but it would have been sufficient. >Then I tried to pull the screen down. No dice. If it won't let me get >back to my Workbench, then I don't want it. I feel the same way about my This is not a fair statement. Deluxe Music multitasks just fine (to the extent of how many cycles are left over in the machine when it's running). The artifact of the WorkBench disspaearing is not that they take over the machine, but rather that they do a CloseWorkBench(), which is an Intuition supported call. Now, it would have been nice if they would have put in a menu toggle to turn it back on (I believe they did this in DPaint II), but there is a (I believe documented) way around this. Simply run something else on the WorkBench screen beforehand (like the clock) and the CloseWorkBench() will fail. >Why do commercial developers do that? It's throwing away one of the most >useful things about the machine: the user's ability to do many things at Simple - they do a CloseWorkBench() to try and free up as much memory as possible for their application. The logic here is that the user should be forced to do some extra action if he doesn't want to have the WorkBench closed to make the maximum possible amount of memory available to his/her application. One thing that some developers may want to think about doing is to do an AvailMem() first and only do a CloseWorkBench() if they really think there isn't enough memory around. And, always put in a menu toggle to turn the WorkBench on and off if your application is that intensive. >once. My never-ending thanks to the people who wrote "Amoeba Invaders". >Ya' did it right!!! > > William LeFebvre > Department of Computer Science > Rice University > <phil@Rice.edu> Yea - haven't those guys (Late Night Developments) done something new? Maybe somthing commercial??? Eric ARPA: eric@topaz.rutgers.edu or eric@ulysses.att.com UUCP: {wherever!}ulysses!eric or {wherever!}rutgers!topaz!eric SNAIL: 34 Maplehurst Ln, Piscataway, NJ 08854 "To err is human; To really f*ck up requires the root password."
koster@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Herbert West) (08/09/88)
(The gist of the article was why do people write programs that take over the machine) Simple: You get more power out of the Amiga that way. There is a definite overhead in writing a nice program that fits into the multi-tasking environment. Things are slower. If you want to do fast animation, double-buffered, you MUST take over the display with LoadView(). This means no pulling down of screens, etc. What annoys me is a program that REALLY takes over the whole machine, like Arkanoid, Wizball, Marble Madness, etc,etc,etc. and you have to reboot to exit. There is no excuse for that. It is one thing to hog the machine's resources for a while and another to take them permanently.