i0042603@WATER.FIT.QUT.EDU.AU (Kalinin Shane) (06/23/91)
I have been reading a lot of messages in this newsgoup about people wanting to start coding demos. I see a lot of users think that they should start with 'C'. I really don't recommend this. If you really want to interact with the 'low levels' of the Amiga you should code pure Assembly. 99% of all demos are coded in assembly. This is the best way to interact with Copper, Blitter etc. Umm, I also suggest pure hardware programming for demos. IF your really interested, get yourself a P.D assember (Seka is about the best) and buy the 'Hardware Reference Manual' from commodore and get down to some Coding. Its as easy as that. Program some of the examples out of the books just to get the basics and then work from there. OR if you are a bit of a lamer, you can try dis-assembling other people code, just to get the basics on how to do a routine, then code the routine yourself. Hope this helps someone. __ __ __ __ __/ /-/ /-/ / / (== "Info_Freako"
s892031@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Pumpkin Power) (06/24/91)
cpmwc@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Matthew W Crowd) writes: >In article <1991Jun24.055126.20856@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> s892031@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Pumpkin Head) writes: (Gee, he knows his argument is a load of garbage, so he's opted for a little abuse - lucky we're not all this childish). >Assembler graphics are at a maximum only 10% faster than C. I'm glad you rebutted with such precise arguments to prove your point. "graphics" is only a portion of what's involved with a demo, and it's a pretty broad description at that. What exactly do you mean - vectors? bobs? animation? And you're obviosuly not taking into account the added control you have from assembler. Most assembler programmers know a lot more about how the custom chips interact with each other and the processor, because of programming at such a low level, and can produce much more efficient code as a result. If I wanted to just use the library routines then I could see not much difference in C and assembler, but when using the hardware directly assembler has huge advantages (and NO, I would not be using the hardware directly on programs other than demos, etc which take over the system to start and return it later). >These Stupid hacker demos are a waste of time anyway, did you get your >cracked version of Lemming's from them ? >That's all they're good for......... Oh definitely. Take a look at the intro Defjam(?) used to put on Stellar 7. The vectors were sure a HELL of a lot faster than the crap I've seen in the game. As for being a waste of time, I think I've learnt a lot more about programming the Amiga (and programming in general) from what I've done in my spare time on my Amiga than what I've done in my Uni course. Of course you've probably never used any of these 'waste of time' programs like SoundTracker, ProTracker, Seka, and a lot of other utilities created by these people wasting there time... Pumpkin Power : s892031@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au
harlock@netcom.COM (Mike Harlock) (06/25/91)
> > > >>hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha > > These Stupid hacker demos are a waste of time anyway, did you get your > cracked version of Lemming's from them ? > > That's all they're good for......... > Wow. I see great maturity here. These "stupid hacker demos" are probably the best way to demonstrate the raw graphics capability of the Amiga. (and sound, usually.) If we could get the authors of these demos to write games instead of cracking games, they could put their talents to work in a positive way. For example, doing better game ports than micro-magic. Well, that's all. Please forward all complaints to /dev/null, or alt.sex.baseball bat. -- ____________________________________________________________________________ | harlock@netcom.com or netcom!harlock@apple.com or claris!netcom!harlock | |____________________________________________________________________________| | Spam makes the world go round. | If opposites didn't attract, | | You owe the oracle your virginity. | we'd all be homosexuals. | |____________________________________________|_______________________________|
s902113@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Luke Mewburn) (06/25/91)
jamie@sievax.enet.dec.com (Jamie Badman) writes: [... arguments for/against using assembler direct to hardware ...] >It's very obvious that you've never done much with your machine in terms >of trying to code up demos. As someone mentioned earlier, it's not just >the speed that you need to achieve with the code, it's a question of >counting CPU cycles in order to perform various effects and >synchronisations. I know this is an Amiga group but most of my coding >experience is on the Atari ST (I recently swapped for an Amiga for a >change). On the ST there is an effect called hardware or DMA scrolling. >This is VERY fast full screen scrolling that has only been used on the >machine in the last 18 months or so. To achieve this scrolling effect >you need to be spot on with your CPU cycles; you screw that up and your >scroll doesn't work. Full Stop. Try doing that in C and let us all have >a good belly laugh!!! The technique of counting cycles, etc, to speed up graphics and get wonderful effects has been used for years on machines like the C64, Spectrum, Amstrad, etc. _IT WORKS_, very well in fact. The reason why people use it is so they can push their hardware to the max. The disadvantages of this are known: ie, don't work on machines with different hardware or faster clocks (ie, A3000's, et al), or on machines which use the refresh rate as a counter, so the other screen display types (NTSC or PAL - depending on where you are) breaks. The poster who slagged off about using this technique might have had a point: in applications (or even games); but demos are there to show off mainly: - programmer's skill (look at the demos last year which tried to outdo each other in 3-d rotating graphics :-) - computer's ability in graphics/sound. (Most of the better music on the amiga comes from demos, not games or composed stuff...) > Jamie. Luke...