A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

I was curious: are any sceners following what's going on with OS4/AmigaOne and do any of you have the intention to actually buy it? I know some sceners have a Pegasos so i was wondering if any were going to take the OS4 route. Or are you staying on the classic 68k?

When I get enough money I will buy an AmigaOne and OS4.0 but I will keep my classic amiga...

I'm an OS4 betatester. At least Spot/UP Rough, and Fusko/Scenic have AmigaOnes.

Bonkers seemd quite interested when he saw my AmigaOne, but I don't think he has any immediate plans to get one.

Of course there is Crisot/Universe.

There are more... we'll see.

For a long time i have followed what's going on with OS4. Allthough i don't see it as an "Amiga" anymore (at least not hardware wise), i want to have a computer again that feels like an Amiga, just to do some things like listening to modules, watching pictures, writing little texts, listening to mp3's, watching movies... that sort of thing. I miss the amiga feeling when doing all this on my pc.

I do find the hardware lacking. The microA1 is too expensive for the minimal specs. And i wanted an expandable system anyway. Problem is that the XE's aren't for sale anymore and even then i would not buy it (because of it's buggy reputation). So i'm kind of holding of until something better/cheaper appears hardware wise.

With such hardware, nobody from outside the amiga scene will ever come back to the platform :(

Os4 seems to be coming along nicely though... Is there a dedicated module player on OS4 (something like delitracker)?

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i want to have a computer again that feels like an Amiga, just to do some things like listening to modules, watching pictures, writing little texts, listening to mp3's, watching movies... that sort of thing.
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OS4 already does all of this and feels exactly like using my A4000, only faster.

[quote]
I do find the hardware lacking. The microA1 is too expensive for the minimal specs. And i wanted an expandable system anyway. Problem is that the XE's aren't for sale anymore and even then i would not buy it (because of it's buggy reputation). So i'm kind of holding of until something better/cheaper appears hardware wise.
[/quote]

Wait and see. At the moment you can't drive sales of the platform via OS4, because OS4 is not finished. Once OS4.0 is completed, i'm sure you'll see a greater push to sell AmigaOnes, with more advertising etc.

Also, if Alans trips to China pay off and he starts getting more volume orders, the price will come down for the rest of us. Don't forget, he has been doing keynote speeches for IBM in one of the fastest growing markets in the world! Thats quite impressive...

Don't forget that ACK's "A1200 accelerator" is rumoured to work as stand alone as well as connected to an Amiga, so maybe that will be cheap enough.. we just don't know.

Also, who knows what the price point and specs of the XC will be?

missed this part:

"Os4 seems to be coming along nicely though... Is there a dedicated module player on OS4 (something like delitracker)?"

Yes, theres ProPlayer. It only plays protracker mods right now, but it does it quite accurately and sounds great. And theres a native "Sid4Amiga" which sounds nice for C64 tunes ;-)

Then the question remains: how far off are they (Hyperion) to a full release?

Apparently, there is Warp3D still to be done but what other things are still missing to achieve a full release?

I'm definetly intressted in what is happening with OS4 and try to keep track on what is happening. (can't wait to get back home and try it out again on xerons A1 to see what kind of progress has happend)

I've been kinda biased towards morphos due to a so so many dissapointments from Amiga Inc. but now it seems like something is actually happening, and to be fair Amiga Inc has nothing to do with OS4 it's a Hyperion product.

As far as scening goes, personaly (and something which goes for the rest of tulou aswell) we are dedicated to 68k AGA. For me it feels a lot more intressting to code for c64,gbc or 68000 OCS than coding for A1 or Peg. I just want a fast Amiga to use for my everyday needs as my a4k is getting old. Also talking about operating systems, last year I bought a mac and I must say that OSX is a very amigalike operating system.

@Bonkers:

I feel the same. To be honest, i kind of hope that the amiga demoscene stays on 68k AGA aswell.

But i would like to have a new 'amiga alike' system to have some fun again. In fact, i have never owned a graphics card so my amiga's never went further than the "high res 640*256" workbench resolution with few colors. I didn't want to stuff my amiga's because i feel that a standard A1200 with 68060, AGA and some fast memory is still the best machine to run demos on. And demos have been my main interest for the last 10 years or so.

I'm seriously considering buying a microA1.

@z5:

If you're really looking for that Amiga feeling, I promise you, you will not be disappointed with the uA1 and OS4. I have an A1200/060/AGA, an A4000/PPC/Voodoo/etc. and an A1XE-G4 in the same room, and they all have the same amiga feeling when I use them... they feel like members of the same family, except that each is faster than the other.

Even though I had to buy a SII controller, and a USB hub, I still don't regret spending all that money on my XE. And with the uA1, you won't have any of those troubles!

I use my A1 daily. The software I use includes (* means native): Personal Paint, Photogenics, TVPaint, Moovid*, MPlayer*, AmIRC, SimpleMail*, IBrowse, AWeb*, PicShow*, AMPlifier (with native mpega.library), Proplayer*, FPSE*, VICE*, WarpSNES*, KoboDeluxe*, JanoEditor, Quake*, Quake 2*, Duke Nukem 3D*, SimpleFTP, E-UAE*, and tons of little utils that make life a little nicer.

Warp3D and JIT are in betatesting and should be ready very soon.

OS4 has lots of small improvements which are really nice. If you use the standard shell (although I personally still use KingCON), you now get tab-completion, but clever tab-completion, that can complete filenames where the beginning or the middle is missing, not just the end. This is available even if you hold down both mousebuttons, and select "Boot without startup-sequence"... very handy.

The Copy command has new options for things like asking before overwriting, or only overwriting older files.

There are all sorts of usability improvements all through the new AmigaOS which just makes it that much nicer to use, without losing any of the Amiga way of doing things.

z5:
I don't realy care what platform people use, some groups tend to need more powerful machines to show their full potential. Just look at Mawi, even if their AGA/060 where quite alright it was first when they moved to PPC and later to Pegasos the full potential of the group came out, or Potion for that matter.

I don't realy care what platform people use, some groups tend to need more powerful machines to show their full potential. Just look at Mawi, even if their AGA/060 where quite alright it was first when they moved to PPC and later to Pegasos the full potential of the group came out, or Potion for that matter.

Me neither. I'm interested in productions of all scenes. But i do enjoy demos the most on amiga's, and preferably AGA. There is something about it that attracts me. I don't like a lot of pc demos because they put layer upon layer of effects and so many colors. In the end, you have seen everything but don't remember anything. Yes, there can be too much of something as well. That's what i like about AGA systems. Strange maybe, but that's the way it is. That said, i enjoy ppc productions aswell ofcourse.

And you are right. Some teams felt that they couldn't reach more and improved on PPC (but after watching Gift again i habe the feeling that Potion could have churned out even more corckers on aga).

My point:

>Allthough i don't see it as an "Amiga" anymore (at least not hardware wise),

In the early 90's, everyone knew that amiga has the best hardware. this was due to jay miner. and we simply quick the OS out. But amiga was at the same time the best OS, defined by carl sassenrath.

If amiga is still here, it is not due to the hardware specifications, but to the software specifications, its capability to expand in a simple but powerful way. ( full RTG was simply 2 functions added, tcpip was just a library,...) OS3.1 was not developed furthermore after 1994, but was still a lot better than windows 'til 2000 to my mind.

I will buy a microA1 in the coming months just for AOS4. Pegasos has a better hardware, I have already one, but I hate morphos, partly because of the french morphos community, I don't like their behaviours, but mainly on the question of the way to get memory protection.

Then the question remains: how far off are they (Hyperion) to a full release? Apparently, there is Warp3D still to be done but what other things are still missing to achieve a full release?

To that date (feb.2005), only a warpos emulation AND a 3D api are missing. Everything is PPC native now.

To be honest, i kind of hope that the amiga demoscene stays on 68k AGA aswell.

well, when I see the last TBL's demo i'm very disapointed, because they use AGA just with a 256 color chunkytoplanar, and their stuff only work on AGA, no CGX support. If they would just support CGX we could run their demo ON BOTH AGA and CGX. now more than half of the amiga users do have cgx or picasso modes.

such demo could even work in the same time on a 68060 AGA and os4.

In fact, the TBL coders don't have CGX hardware, that's the real cause.
But the shame now is that most of the people that looks the AGA demos are PC users who use AVI dirty animations !!! So, as an audience is reached, why should TBL bother with amiga CGX users ?
So you got a situation where most amiga users (I mean me with my a1200+CGX) can't just watch TBL demos ! arrrgh !

So you got a situation where most amiga users (I mean me with my a1200+CGX) can't just watch TBL demos ! arrrgh !

That's the reason why i never upgraded my Amiga to graphics card. But the demoscene is the only thing i still do with my Amiga so that has never been a problem really.

In any case, i have decided not to buy a microA1, however tempting it is. I've got the money, i want to use OS4 but i want an expandable machine. And i certainly don't want a Radeon 7000 or onboard sound (i would never use onboard sound and graphics on a pc). Even the Hyperion coders are saying the Radeon 3D performances are very poor.

Whenever there appears an expandable amiga (XC?), i'm in.

If amiga is still here, it is not due to the hardware specifications, but to the software specifications, its capability to expand in a simple but powerful way. ( full RTG was simply 2 functions added, tcpip was just a library,...) OS3.1 was not developed furthermore after 1994, but was still a lot better than windows 'til 2000 to my mind.

That is an interesting topic. I'm not a technical supergenious but it has me wondering. Everyone is talking about OS4 being so fast and great. But this raises a question to me. I'm not fond of Microsoft, but i can't imagine/believe that a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft (how many programmers are working there?) isn't able to do something that is better/faster/... than OS4.

Which leads me to the conclusion: couldn't it be that OS4 is so fast because it lacks many features that other modern OS have?

That is an interesting topic.

yes ;-)

I'm not a technical supergenious but it has me wondering. Everyone is talking about OS4 being so fast and great.

Not to that point, everything is late, but they 're going on the right direction.

But this raises a question to me. I'm not fond of Microsoft, but i can't imagine/believe that a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft (how many programmers are working there?) isn't able to do something that is better/faster/... than OS4.

It's completely out of the topic, but: Actually, the "best system" is macos, because: they fired the 2D aspect to put 3D shader/accelerations everywhere down to the system API. (the bench is completely 3D, and 3D gpu are faster than all CPU now) Microsoft will align this year with a new system.

Beside that, microsoft:
- IS a multi-billion dollar company
- has only 2000 EMPLOYEE IN ALL THE WORLD.
- they contract-out EVERYTHING: they only "define" things, that's all.

Which leads me to the conclusion: couldn't it be that OS4 is so fast because it lacks many features that other modern OS have?

A cause of debate between pro-morphos and pro-AOS4 is: is it the case ?
Morphos users just want an OS3.x PowerPC, something faster than a a1200+PPC, but that's all, they don't give

...a shit about the system evolution: they claim that the "QBox" environment will have protected memory and stuffs, this environment will be completely something else than an amiga environment. beside that, the mos SDK ignore completely this aspect; and the do-list before evolution is actually increasing. Everything is done to keep a os3.x-like environment.

according to hyperion, OS4 's current executables and SDK will be the same once the memory protection will be enabled. (and then nice MMU stuffs like auto-stack management, ...) The fact is, those evolution was planned for long since the 80's !!!

So now to talk concrete: the message system is done like this: the task sending a message alloc a short structure, fill it, then pass the a pointer to that struct to exec/putMsg(). (it is very rare to use putmsg in fact)

with a 68000 and no cache, it is fast, there is no copy of the struct, just a pointer is passed.

For the same thing, windows will do outstandingly complicated stuffs, including copies of the message, but it is not why windows is so slow. windows share no ressource, it re-open things again and again, and then stock all that in virtual memory (disk access.), that's why it sucks: it is the american thought: not enough memory ??? double it ! double it again !
no matter ! double everything ! the amiga way is: ressource sharing management, better algorithms.

now what hyperion/OS4 says is: it is possible to continue using the same amiga-message system with memory protection. Morphos team claim it is impossible (it is their interest to think so.). To my mind it is: an answer is using shared address in read only mode (write is impossible for some tasks). Some stuffs in autodocs make me think about it. For the rest, with a processor with 32kb of cache and L2 cache , reactivity problem can't be thought as it was with an A500.

anyway... talking about it leads nowhere. Doing demo is better.

Krabob, very intressting read I must say. I didn't know that you owned a Pegasos, I must say that I've been a bit biased towards Pegasos mostly because I like the attitude of the company. They seem to be more intressted at making a computer for hackers/sceners like us while Amiga Inc. seems to be intressted in making a new buisness computer where the biggest priority is to port a office package. I guess the reason I think like this might be that I've been disapointed over and over again buy amiga while Genesis actually seem to do what they promise. But I guess all this have changed now when Genesis have droped MorphOS. Anyone know what is happening with the development of the OS? I would so love to run it on MACs and not be dependent on small companies.

Krabob: do you see yourself starting to make demos for OS4?

Krabob: do you see yourself starting to make demos for OS4?

I want to. it should happen. it must happen. it deserves it.

the reason why i didn't code native morphos stuff is: it runs emulated the same in a warpos context, and then a demo can run both on classic os and mos (and os4 when warpos will be emulated). I fixed some of my warpos work from 2000, and it work fine under mos now.

by the way, I hate warp3d, i want a GL1.2+ environment. kiero did a tinygl for mos, some gl is planned for os4, but after a w3d port.

by the way, I hate warp3d, i want a GL1.2+ environment. kiero did a tinygl for mos, some gl is planned for os4, but after a w3d port.

What's the story with warp3d? I saw Kiero saying in some forum "warp3d must die". Obviously he doesn't like it either. Is it that bad? And why? (just out of interest)

To my mind this is not of question of optimisation or algorythm "behind" the API. this is a question of the shape of the api. with w3d, you just have functions like: "draw a triangle".

defining an API is * all *. no matter what's behind. you code for a given API. then "what's behind" can be optimised or changed whenever after without application recompilation.

don't make mystakes, OpenGL is not a "high level 3d API", it is a "very low level 3D api", which mean it is close to a 3D driver interface ! OpenGL knows stuffs like vertex list compilation, which relies on hardware features (vertex cache). also, OpenGL is a server, in fact a server to a remote hardware (like the GPU in the machine) From this point of view, OpenGL-like apis should in no case be based upon another shitty useless APIs.

The way warp3d is done, most things had to be done in software, for the end of times.

Now if I code an OpenGL stuffs that just deal with a sort of opengl.library,
I will be happy, because i know even if this relies on w3d in a first time,
it can then be redirected a finest way in the future.

Are there any teams or people/coders who are, at this moment of writing, preparing something for the OS4 platform, demoscene wise? Or do any teams intend to start working on it when (if ever) it is released?

If not, why doesn't this platform appeal to you as a scener/coder? Too early, no challenge, no good 3D api,...

(me just curious)

I will not write code specific for os4. What I want from my amiga I already have. I wouldn't go for this new semi-fast platform, the limits is what makes coding fun... but it's not cool to work with something that is really fast, but not quite as fast as the fastest (read pc). For me it makes more sence to write demos for a500 or unexpandend a1200.

What I would really want from a new amiga is a mega-fast blitter and custom chips that could work from fastmem. That will never happen though =(

but as long as people do mostly chunky effects it would probably be nice to the amiga OS4 people to make your demos compatible with it. If you remove all references to custom chips and use everything through the system and let AHI do the audio then it should work on OS4 I think. If we can code a decent enough adpcm player for our next demo we (atleast I would like to) will release it for everybody to use. Then you can say goodbye to modules and get a wide range of music/musicians to choose from when making prods again.

It would be nice if tbl would share their player though. hint hint

@Load and Dalton:
thanks for your input. The question is: how many demos still use blitter, copper, paula,...? Isn't that the fun part for most of the coders still around on Amiga: torturing the custom chipset and getting the most of it?

Loonies promised an OS4, Morphos, 68k compatible version of Multiverse so it must be possible. This probably means that Loonies doesn't hit the Amiga hardware anymore.

Loaderror, how much of the Ephidrena demos nowadays is still hardware hitting? Would it be much work to make them OS4 compatible? And how the hell do you manage to make such cool demos without hitting the Amiga hardware? Wasn't that the strongest asset of the Amiga and the reason that such stunning demos where possible. I'm puzzled here for a moment...

On the other hand, them OS4 owners would probably say: hey, that doesn't make full use of my OS4 hardware...

What is an adpcm player?

@z5_

Since the 060 came out (and to a lesser extent, since 040), it has become faster to use C2P and do *everything* with the CPU. The custom chipset is simply too old and too slow, so most modern demos simply set the custom chipset into a state that just shows a 256 colour screen, and then never talk to them again.

You can still use the copper alongside chunky effects if you like, to change palette, scroll registers, modulos etc. at specific scanlines, but almost no demos do that anymore.

Of course, writing demos for unexpanded A1200 and A500 is an excersize in custom chipset programming, since the CPU is then too slow to do everything itself.

@z5_

Of course, its still fun to use the hardware... "You Are Completely Anonymous" is mostly chunky, but we still used the custom chipset a little bit... the "hires 3d engine" appear is a classic copper effect, where you set the bitplane modulo to show the same line over and over, and change the line where it happens every frame. The CPU only has to change a couple of entries in the copperlist every frame.. on the ST you'd have to manually draw the effect.

The final effect is entirely planar. The scrolling is achieved by moving bitplane pointers every frame for 16 frames, while the CPU prepares another screen with all the graphics 16 pixels higher, 1/16th of a screen per frame. The "shadow" on the fonts is caused by using the same bitplane pointer with a slight offset for another plane, and using the scroll register to shift it two pixels to the right. The reflection is a simple setting of the bitplane modulo to go up two lines instead of down one, with a different palette. The parallax scrolling is quite simply just using another plane for the backdrop that moves half the speed, and as the pattern is only 8 pixels tall and repeats, you just skip over the same 8 positions all the time. The "water" is just using the scroll registers.

Pacman, the space invader ship, and the bullets are all sprites.

If that endscroller was going to be used on an unexpanded A1200, I would have also used the blitter to draw the font and explosions, but since YACA is an 060 demo, it was much faster to use the CPU.

@xeron:
So, basically, "You Are Completely Anonymous" could have been done without any custom chipset stuff, at the same speed, looking entirely the same?

I'm surprised to hear how few the custom chipset is used. I always thought that it was the custom chipset who was the heart of the Amiga, even with an 060 onboard. Isn't it the custom chipset that makes scrollers on Amiga so smooth? (see scrollers on pc who tend to be quite jerky).

And if so few things still are custom chipset, wouldn't it be worth investigating on what exactly is needed to make the demos at least OS4 compatible. Maybe start a thread here on A.D.A and help eachother out...?

I dont push much hardware as the hardware doesnt really do much when it comes to creating these new fancy effects.

I think we need a compatibility thread too.. There is always something.. f.example the lowlevel.library doesn't work on morphOS even if it is a handy system library.. There might be other things too.

A mod player is a problem. We need a simple one that acts just like P61 in my opinion :) (same interface, but OS friendly implementation).

ADPCM is a special lossy WAV format that compresses streams to 4-bits per sample and uses some prediction to guess a close result to the original music stream. I believe Loonies use it, and tbl use a similar format originally developed for Playstation music playback (I think)..

We're currently using Microsoft ADPCM Wav, but are there any better alternatives? So far I reckon that the tbl format sounds a lot better.