psteffn@CATICSUF.CSUFRESNO.EDU (Paul Steffn) (06/26/91)
I sent this as a private reply but I decided I might as well send it off
to usenet as I didn't feel like typing most of the same again.
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>From psteffn Tue Jun 25 12:15:39 1991
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Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 12:15:33 PDT
From: psteffn (Paul Steffn)
Message-Id: <9106251915.AA26980@caticsuf.cati.CSUFresno.EDU>
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To: mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
Subject: Re: ..macho-ism in assembly programming??..
Cc: psteffn@caticsuf.csufresno.edu
Status: R
To be completely honest, I wouldn't mind of my Amiga was capable of
some of those Sega arcade consoles. We argue of the usefullness of
a demo yet the Amiga was designed originally as a video game system.
A friend of mine owns a Amiga 2000 with 33MHz '30 and Video Toaster/
DCTV using 9megs of RAM. He runs his business off of it. I know
that Amigas are more than games machines and so does he but we are
both the biggest demo fanatics in a 20 mile radius.
Please explain to me what is so bad about resembling an arcade
console?! I know that the most technically-ignorant people might
think that a machine that is capable of brilliant graphics must not
be able to do serious stuff. This is very very very very very untrue.
Some arcade game consoles are based on 68030/882 [even some contain
multiple processors], several megs of memory [although, usually ROM],
and extremely high-speed video co-processors. The latter can always
be disabled, you know. It's a sad fact but it takes many times more
computer power to do a good game than it does to do a good spreadsheet.
I like Eric Schwartz animations very much. They, however, can always
be converted into Autodesk Animator files!!! A nice fast interface
is subjective. I would consider GEM on an ST running Turbo ST or
a '386 using an ansi based window environment to be extremely fast
[ever see Lucid 3D?!] as well. You won't take an average PC user
who knows hardware and show him an Eric Schwartz animation and have
him go 'Gee, I wish IBM's could do that.' Schwartz only uses
320x200x5bit images. Something well behind the capability of VGA.
Even the player program could use some major touching up in speed!
I see ALOT of jumpy movement that I know could be improved with
a bit of creative programming.
I still don't think you have seen very many demos. The demos that
I'm talking about are not even programmed in a standard way.
In fact, some of these demos can't even be programmed in one swoop
in assembler. The most obvious example of this is a depacker routine
such as Power Packer or Imploder. This is mainly a small routine that
appends itself at the beginning of a compressed file. When it loads,
it copies itself and the data to a higher portion of memory, then it
depacks the data back to the load address. It's this odd way of
approaching programming that makes the best demos. Using MOVEM.L is
only supposed to be for saving multiple registers to a location but
demo coders use it because it is easier and faster to use.. Going
into supervisor mode without telling the operating system is also
another example [why spend all the time to tell the OS when you can
just change a bit?!]
Demo programmers even occasionally use self-modifying code because
there are some instances where you can go much faster if you don't
use keep a single routine with a changing offset [maybe just have
hundreds of identical routines that address memory absolutely].
Even a blitter can be used to modify the 68000 machine code...
The copper/plasma effects are always done with the blitter making
updates to the actual copper list. These are all 'illegal' ways
to do programming but without them, you could never stretch the
Amiga beyond it's limits. And doing all this in C would be
the equivalent of trying to eat pea soup with a fork...
There's nothing wrong with what they are doing. It's their
computer and they should be able to program it any way they
feel like. Even if it doesn't run on a 68010+ or on NTSC.
If you follow the rules, you could never even come close to
Mental Hangover or Substance. In fact, just the disk loading
routine that they use would break every rule... But the OS
supported disk read/write routines are not very good if you
want heavy animation going at the same time..
I enjoy any program for the Amiga but I think that demo programmers
should get alot of respect for what they are able to do. After all,
just think that they are kids now, what will they be able to do in
the future!