phg@cl.cam.ac.uk (Philip Gladwin) (02/18/91)
Has anyone any experience of this thing? Is it a toy, or can you really prototype professional applications in it? I have two things I want to develop, and I am looking around for the suitable tools. One is a kind of complex Hypermedia project, incorporating some limited IKBS techniques and having a massive database of road maps; the other is more of a traditional Dungeon/Maze type game. (I suppose I want to know if it would be possible to _prototype_, say, a version of Autoroute that had a hypertext facility, and Dungeonmaster, in AMOS.) So... Am I right in thinking that it is a massive Basic Toolchest? ie is it all Basic syntax? How good _is_ Basic these days anyway? How fast is it? Can you get proper sprite animation and movement, or are you always painfully aware of the machine thinking? I assume it has an Arexx port? Has it its own database facility? If not, are there Netland recommended products? There are reports of AMOS being unstable - are they well-founded? And does the new release (2.1) cause more bugs than it fixes? And what about the AMOS 3D release? What wonders does it include? Is it worth it? Is it compulsory? What is the size of the runtime environment? Are we talking two-disk applications here? I'll post a summary to the net if there are any takers. Thanks, Philip Gladwin phg@uk.ac.cam.cl phg@cl.cam.ac.uk
DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu (02/20/91)
In article <1991Feb18.141013.9228@cl.cam.ac.uk>, phg@cl.cam.ac.uk (Philip Gladwin) says: >Has anyone any experience of this thing? Is it a toy, or AMOS is great. >Am I right in thinking that it is a massive Basic Toolchest? ie Yes. >How fast is it? Can you get proper sprite animation and movement, >or are you always painfully aware of the machine thinking? Speed is typical of a BASIC interpreter, I guess. The actual animation is of course done by high level commands so there isn't much to interpret. >I assume it has an Arexx port? No. >Has it its own database facility? If not, are there Netland >recommended products? Database? Since when has a BASIC interpreter included a database? :-) >There are reports of AMOS being unstable - are they well-founded? I've had no problems. Not a single crash. (But I don't use it every day...) >And what about the AMOS 3D release? What wonders does it include? >Is it worth it? Is it compulsory? Has it been released? (I don't know; I assume not). >What is the size of the runtime environment? Are we talking two-disk >applications here? The run time thing is 80K. 80K is quite a bit less than 1760K. -- Dan Babcock
pochron@rt12.cs.wisc.edu (David Pochron) (02/21/91)
In article <1991Feb18.141013.9228@cl.cam.ac.uk> phg@cl.cam.ac.uk (Philip Gladwin) writes: > >Has anyone any experience of this thing? Is it a toy, or >can you really prototype professional applications in it? It is definately not a toy, I have it and makes game programming many times easier. As for applications, you could do some very good stuff, but it would be mostly stand-alone. (Ie, don't expect to be able to integrate all your OS utilities into such an application. It is very OS independent and very hardware dependent. >for the suitable tools. One is a kind of complex Hypermedia >project, incorporating some limited IKBS techniques and {....} >of a traditional Dungeon/Maze type game. You could do the game very easily, the Hypermedia project is possible to. (Mandarin claims lots of productivity stuff has been written in AMOS in Europe but I have yet to see anything arrive here.) The main reason *I* bought AMOS was to write games (starting with porting Rescue Raiders!) and its graphics and animation capabilities make game programming extremely easy. And any language you intend to write games in had better not be a toy, because all you will get are crappy games. One of the nice things about AMOS is its ability to store all the data the program needs (sprites, sounds, machine code, compressed screens(!)), as part of the interpreted code. This means you could create an application that has only one file - the program itself! (And note I am not talking about DATA statements - there are things called "memory banks" where you can store in binary format all this stuff. It doesn't show up in program listings, but is there all the same.) >is it all Basic syntax? How good _is_ Basic these days anyway? It is a VERY comprehensive BASIC language...Just about every command you could ever want is in there...Line numbers are not needed (but allowed), and has all the optional "structured" BASIC stuff. It has integers as well as floating point (single precision) Machine code is easy to make part of a BASIC program. No structured data types (ala "C") are present. :-( It also comes with lots of utilities for creating sprites, Bobs, keymaps, etc. >How fast is it? Can you get proper sprite animation and movement, >or are you always painfully aware of the machine thinking? *Very* fast. I don't know what they did to get the virtual sprites and Bobs moving so smoothly, but it works! (They don't use Gels-it's all direct hardware stuff.) There is fine scrolling, font support, and copper list commands. One thing it DOESN'T have (argh!) is interlace mode! Don't know why it wasn't included, maybe no one uses interlace in Europe? Also, it isn't all that NTSC-friendly...You can configure it for NTSC but there are problems with "garbage" at the top of the screen when it does its "wipe effects" - obviousbly, they set the hardware DIWSTOP register for PAL and not for NTSC! >I assume it has an Arexx port? Are you kidding? AMOS only uses the OS for I/O...everything except Exec & DOS gets punted when you run it. (See why it only has limited application value) Interestingly, it DOES multitask - CLI, Workbench, and other programs still run in the background. AMOS just takes over the screen completely, and you press L-Amiga-A to get back to the "OS-created" screens. (AMOS programs can also be running when you are using the Workbench, etc.) Since it punts Intuition, it has its own window and gadget routines, which are not as good as Commodore's. It also has its own pull-down menu code, something the author went overboard with - it has different styles of menus (pull down, pop-up,etc.) and you can do weird things like attatch Bob animation sequences to menu items... You can make system library calls directly, so you can open Intuition screens and windows, but since they are incompatible with all of AMOS' animation commands, it isn't all that useful. You could add an AREXX port if you really wanted to by using this facility. >Has it its own database facility? If not, are there Netland >recommended products? Nope. This is BASIC, and not AmigaVision. :-) >There are reports of AMOS being unstable - are they well-founded? >And does the new release (2.1) cause more bugs than it fixes? I have version 1.2 (Know there is a 1.21, never heard of a 2.1...) and it seems fine to me. The only thing I know for sure is it doesn't seem to work with the A3000 - probably uses the CIAB timer for something - I have a A2630 installed in my A2000 and have no problems with it. The author actually did a decent job of being "polite" to the OS considering how it takes over the screen display - something more game manufacturers should do. >And what about the AMOS 3D release? What wonders does it include? >Is it worth it? Is it compulsory? I don't think it is out yet...Wish it was, though. I'm also waiting for the compiler to come out. >What is the size of the runtime environment? Are we talking two-disk >applications here? This is another one of its niceties - it comes with a runtime module called RAMOS and it only takes up 24K (I think). It is freely redistributable. >Philip Gladwin >phg@uk.ac.cam.cl >phg@cl.cam.ac.uk -- -- David M. Pochron | "Life's a blit, | and then you VBI." pochron@garfield.cs.wisc.edu |
cs301c26@pc.usl.edu (Warren Brian R) (02/21/91)
I had a few questions about AMOS as well. Namely, is it one of those sorts of
languages where you have to have artistic ability to really be able to do
anything (with sprites, bobs, backgrounds, etc.)? I saw a review in the Feb.
.info, which said it had more features than could readily be listed; my big
question is, though, how well can a user like me (with next-to-0 artistic
talent) can make use of the language?
Thanks,
Brianpds@bksmel.oz.au (Paul Sagor) (04/23/91)
Hi There, I've been using AMOS (The Creator) for a few little programs in past months and have decided to undertake a large project (game) using it. The brunt of the game consists of fast double buffered 3D graphics and I thought AMOS would be ideal since it supports double buffering quite easily and has the facility to do lines and polygons. Obviously, I would have to supply the 3D routines (calculations, object ordering, clipping etc) so I whipped up a few simple procedures to do the required stuff. After testing a few small programs I came to the conclusion that it's not fast enough all written in AMOS BASIC. What I'm after is anyone who has written 3D stuff using AMOS (I mean FAST 3D if it's possible) or, Assembly/C code 3D routines in AMOS banks callable from AMOS or, whether there is a package available to do this sort of thing that simple patches into AMOS BASIC (Is AMOS 3D available? Will it ever be available???) Any info would be muchly appreciated! Thanx to all ... Paul P.S. This message should really have been posted on a graphics board so I've also posted it on 'comp.graphics'.