Misc programming discussion (from pms).

[StingRay]

You can't. Vinyls are no longer sold, and existing ones are old (quality is only better the very first time you play it).

Totally not true. Many industrial/electro/dark wave bands still release vinyls so saying that vinyls are no longer sold is simply wrong. Sorry for interrupting your discussion. ;D

[TCD]

You forgot Drum & Bass, Hip-Hop, EBM and so many more genres I think they mean 'main-stream' music which isn't sold on vinyl anymore. Nothing is as cool as a white labeled dubplate

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

You forgot Drum & Bass, Hip-Hop, EBM and so many more genres

As I hate D'n'B and especially Hip-Hop, I didn't mention it. And EBM is included in my "Electro" genre above, after all, "electronic body music" is electronic, isn't it?

I think they mean 'main-stream' music which isn't sold on vinyl anymore.

Maybe but he didn't write "mainstream music is not sold on vinyls anymore". ;D He generalised and wrote that vinyls are not sold anymore which is wrong.

[TCD]

@StingRay
So Techno is also Electro right? Okay, I just wanted to make clear that still a lot of music is released on vinyl and I totally agree that the generalisation was the initial problem

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

@StingRay
So Techno is also Electro right?

Yes it is. It just depends on your point of view of what electro music is.
I could discuss this in lengthy detail but it's not the topic of this very thread.

Back to listening to Nitzer Ebb now \o/

[Thorham]

Hi meynaf,

Check your pm.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by StingRay

Totally not true. Many industrial/electro/dark wave bands still release vinyls so saying that vinyls are no longer sold is simply wrong. Sorry for interrupting your discussion. ;D

What ? You dare to interrupt us

Well, ok. Perhaps a few vinyls are still sold. But you can admit they're not exactly something easy to find nowadays (at least for ppl like me who didn't even know some might still be sold).

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Wow. Now we just need the number of images to be increased too...

Yes, I'll ask. Most threads aren't picture intensive anyway, so RCK might do it.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If there are, then I've never seen one. Peecee monitors just give a somewhat colorless image, and don't tell me about those flat screens. Yukk !

Colorless? Not mine, and most modern monitors have very good image quality. Don't know which monitors you've seen, but the 1084, although being a decent 15khz monitor, can't mach up to the current standards.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I remember that 17 inch monitor I once had at work. Every time it switched resolution it made such a noise that it gave the impression to be imploding. Not to mention the several-seconds black out.

Yup, back draw of those monitors. On the peecee, you don't often change resolution anyway, happens on Amiga, though.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You can't. Vinyls are no longer sold, and existing ones are old (quality is only better the very first time you play it).

Still, digital storage media are superior to vinyl for general purpose, and audio quality simply relies on the quality of the source sound and the digitization process.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Must be very heavy then. Don't get in trouble with your neighbors :-)

Quite. In fact, some house music probably has bass so low you can't hear it, you've got to feel it

Originally Posted by meynaf

But wav isn't that low because of lots of disk accesses, and those can make the machine very choppy. Not to mention Dopus probably eats some cycles too.

Yes, but still, disk access is probably less than 200kbyte per sec, and this doesn't make my system run choppy at all.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I assume you'll have done it when reading this. So now ?

I've played around for a bit with the settings, and I must say that to me, it's not worth the trouble of setting it up properly. I'm going to stick to wavs, much easier, better quality in stereo, and much less cpu usage

Originally Posted by meynaf

Who needs ? This whole lot of people who don't have anything but a peecee (the poor mites).
And the other poor mites who used to have a miggy but no longer have.

Poor mites, indeed Can't imagine not having a miggy.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Dunno what you've found now, but if needed then maybe I can give you a small proggy that will just refuse to work if not calibrated and tell you what's missing.

Yes, that might be helpful, because play16 refuses to use calibration. With HippoPlayer, the quality is quite a bit better than what play16 plays, hippo reads the calibration file from a user defined place, so it always works. Then with Ahi 14 bit Hifi Calibrated, the quality goes up even more. So, yes, there's quite a bit of difference between calibrated and non calibrated.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Partition is called "xxx:". Now try to guess again.

Hehe, I've thrown away all my pr0n. If I want any, I'll just pop online

Originally Posted by meynaf

That's what I do... until I'm out of disk space.

Buy a larger hd

Originally Posted by meynaf

Holy shit.
I'm glad you stopped that now.

It still happens, some times. Maybe once or twice a month, on Fridays or Saturdays. Used to do it whenever I had money. Now, it's easy to control, and it's a lot more fun too this way.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Not exactly what I need...

Then, what do you need?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Winamp skins are made for winamp and nothing else. They don't provide all the stuff I need. Do winamp support subsongs, prev/next patt, play speed ? I doubt. Moreover, it's too colorful (and probably too big) for WB interface.

See below.

Originally Posted by meynaf

In fact I'm just looking for 6 different icons (all the rest - knobs and tapedeck - is done) :
1. show players (say, data types, or codecs) window
2. show genies/engines/whatever other type of plugin window
3. show config window
4. show play list window
5. show module information window
6. show scopes window
(all of them in standard wb colors, of course)

Those shouldn't be to hard. If you're going to make it look like a standard wb program, then winamp skins are useless. Could you show me the buttons you already have?

Originally Posted by meynaf

On-line stuff is useless for me. It's not for WB but for peecees. Too big, too many colors.

Useless anyway, if you want to make the software look like wb software.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Rpg on consoles ? Doh ! I can't imagine playing an rpg without a mouse.

Hey! There are different kinds of rpg:

.Diablo 2 and clones: No mouse is no game.
.Final Fantasy: Mouse sucks, console controller or even the keyboard rocks.
.Strategic rpgs like FireEmblem: Mouse, keyboard and controller are all just fine.
.Dungeon Master: No mouse is totally unplayable.

Trust me, mice aren't always needed, or can even stand in the way, such as in Final Fantasy games. The best controlling method depends on the type of rpg completely.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Main world is 800x800 tiles (as far as I remember), not counting the dungeons and cities, so that's something to explore. My fave RPG btw.

That's not what I meant with planet: Take the earths size and combine that with a tile which represents, say, two square meters. Now we're talkin' big The idea is to have the map randomly generated on the fly, while all the used seeds are determined when you start a new game. It's probably overkill, though

Originally Posted by meynaf

Thanks but no thanks. I don't like this type of challenge. This just turns the rpg into an arcade game.

How does playing solo do that?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Then the few months are over, eh ? You'll have to find something else.

Yeah, you're right. Getting that DM itch again

Originally Posted by meynaf

Could have been better though. If I were able to change things, I'd have some ideas !

So do I. Easiest one: Allow all addressing modes to be combined with all addressing modes when relevant, like in add.l (a0)+,(a1)+. Another is the obvious: At least double the amount of registers. Man, that would've been ace.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Because my program shouldn't even know about Workbench !
(btw it's not WB in itself but locale.library)
My lib is designed to be all the program needs, so I need some neat API for that.

Then I guess you may as well write your own locale system. Shouldn't really be too hard.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Then it's very theoretical, because :
1. a read word is a byte and due to the file format it cannot be anything else, which severely limits the amount of data you can pre-read (thus the time gain may be null)
2. bits change signification depending of the meaning of the previous code (may be a completely different huff table, or even direct bits to be read), so there'll be lots of particular cases to slow you down

Yes, you're right. The whole difficulty of doing this right is one of the things that has kept me from writing inflate in the first place.

Originally Posted by meynaf

But we were talking about OSes, not command-line utils.

That's true. Writing an os in IA32 assembler is going to suck hard though. Even in 68k it's no fun

Originally Posted by meynaf

I probably won't correct you.
But you might have to give me some examples !

Well, I only have a couple of simple utilities I've written, and those compile out of the box on both Amiga and peecee. I'll upload them if you want, but there's little to see. Basically c is portable for generic high level work, such as those utilities, and for this sort of thing c isn't so bad (mostly because those programs aren't ever big)

Originally Posted by meynaf

So you can run all those nice viruses that lie out there. Doh, I can't.

Only time I had a virus is because of downloading a bad program. You on the other hand, are stuck with severely out dated browsers. I know what I prefer

Originally Posted by meynaf

Some ProTracker aren't played correctly (yeah). And I wouldn't even bother trying a MED or a TFMX.

Yes, perhaps it's time to switch. I have the program installed anyway

Originally Posted by meynaf

Now if you want a nice player, then grab EaglePlayer 2.x from Aminet, and activate the Empy Gui. This had me totally stumped.

I know! I just dislike Eagly Player. I've always preferred Hippos simplicity. Anyway, if you're interested in doing something like empy, then Winamp 5's skins can most certainly be adopted to wb. I use Winamp 5 (bloatware), I'm almost certain it's not a problem.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Are you talking about Digibooster or Digibooster Pro ?
Anyway I had no trouble with DT2.34 (apart that damn DBpro still uses that damn AHI).

Both, actually.

Originally Posted by meynaf

A few remarks :
. who knows what horror lurks in s:user-startup (not me, I have none)
. aren't fblit/ftext already handled by mcp ?
. what is "mountenv" ? your env assigns don't seem standard, may be the cause of 14bit file not found
. running PAL monitor isn't needed (if you don't have any other monitor)
. "Run <NIL: >NIL: c:NewIcons" could have been "Run <>NIL: c:NewIcons" (but that's just to be shorter)

User-startup is empty.

.The file is there when needed by an installer script.
.I don't know, really. I'll have to check.
.MountEnv handles the env: directory in ram: Instead of copying env-archive to ram:env, it loads a file from env-archive when needed by a program which reads from env:. If this is the cause of play16 not finding the calibration file, then play16 is history I'm afraid. I'm not going to make booting slower just to use play16, while Hippo already plays back calibrated
.It's handy for screen mode settings in programs like Adpro. Without. Adpro uses it's default setting, and that sucks

Thanks for the tip .

Originally Posted by meynaf

That's what YOU think.

Pics, or it didn't happen

Originally Posted by meynaf

The source code is what you read, so that's important anyway.

In asm, you hardly have to write a routine just to access a structure. Read or write its fields, and that's all. And remember to use the RS directive :-)

Not in my frame, though. All the functions in the list handling system only access list and entry structures, while the file handling system only accesses the file structure, and calls list handling routines for using lists. Yes, it makes the code a little slower, but much easier to read and maintain while the speed 'penalty' doesn't apply because there are no tight loops.

About rs, I've found that one recently, and the current version of my frame uses it. Let me know if you want to take a look at it.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Seems to be on the slower side this time...

Indeed! But you can't expect developments to always be fast.

Originally Posted by meynaf

A lot about it can probably be read on the net, but maybe this won't interest you.

It's interesting, and should make for a cool read.

Originally Posted by meynaf

And how will you shield something against radiations that can potentially traverse the whole Earth ?
How can you protect yourself against radiations that come from the shield itself (such as ambiant radioactivity) ?

Remember : a SINGLE particle disintegration will be enough to change the status of one bit, hence some random data losses, so you need more than a shield.

Good point. I guess I'll stick to coding.

Originally Posted by meynaf

And only works in ONE case : chunky 8-bit. No good for IFFs, that is. Of couse we could apply a p2c before, but low-bpp images will simply look ugly when rendered in ham.

Yes, the 8bbp case. But the other cases have to be different anyway:

;
; 4 bits per pixel indexed color to 24 bit color 2x2 down sampling.
;
; a0=even scan lines of 8bpp bmp file.
; a1=odd scan lines of 8bpp bmp file.
; a2=24 bpp output buffer for c2p.
; a3=color table in 00rrrrrr00gggggg00bbbbbb00000000 format
;    and must be repeated 16 times.
; d0=scan line length in pixels.

	moveq	#0,d3
.loop
	move.b	(a0)+,d3
	move.l	(a3,d3.w*4),d2

	lsr.b	#4,d3
	add.l	(a3,d3.w*4),d2

	move.b	(a0)+,d3
	add.l	(a3,d3.w*4),d2

	lsr.b	#4,d3
	add.l	(a3,d3.w*4),d2

	move.l	d2,(a2)
	addq.l	#3,a2

	dbra	d0,.loop

I prefer to have different loops for different case, because it saves cpu time. As for iff, the fastest way to resample planar data, is to first do a p2c, and then the resampling.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Perhaps you can try this in your bmp viewer and see what it gives for 16-color images.

Alright, I may give it a go. The assumption that it will be fine, comes from the peecee, where 16 color pics are always show in 24 bit mode. Scaling to 24 bit is always fine. I'll see how it looks in ham, which I can do with my ham emulator in free basic.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, I'll ask. Most threads aren't picture intensive anyway, so RCK might do it.

Of course a better way can be to consider that standard board smilies aren't to be counted as images...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Colorless? Not mine, and most modern monitors have very good image quality. Don't know which monitors you've seen, but the 1084, although being a decent 15khz monitor, can't mach up to the current standards.

Colorless, yes (in french "terne", no easy translation).
If you could put a 1083 and a pc screen side-by-side, displaying the very same image, you'd see what I mean.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yup, back draw of those monitors. On the peecee, you don't often change resolution anyway, happens on Amiga, though.

On the peecee, directx full-screen games do this when they start. Probably no good when you program one and test often...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Still, digital storage media are superior to vinyl for general purpose, and audio quality simply relies on the quality of the source sound and the digitization process.

Ok, but the digitization process is lossy in itself, whatever bit resolution and frequency are used.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Quite. In fact, some house music probably has bass so low you can't hear it, you've got to feel it

Oh, yeah, feel it. But that's no longer what I can call music. It's... earthquake

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, but still, disk access is probably less than 200kbyte per sec, and this doesn't make my system run choppy at all.

I guess this all depends on the buffer size.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I've played around for a bit with the settings, and I must say that to me, it's not worth the trouble of setting it up properly. I'm going to stick to wavs, much easier, better quality in stereo, and much less cpu usage

Ok then. Do it your way.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Poor mites, indeed Can't imagine not having a miggy.

But can you imagine not having a peecee ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, that might be helpful, because play16 refuses to use calibration. With HippoPlayer, the quality is quite a bit better than what play16 plays, hippo reads the calibration file from a user defined place, so it always works. Then with Ahi 14 bit Hifi Calibrated, the quality goes up even more. So, yes, there's quite a bit of difference between calibrated and non calibrated.

Calibration file must be at env:cybersound/sounddrivers/14bit_calibration and nowhere else.

If you have a raw 44.1 khz sound file (raw, not wave), then I can give you a test program. Or you can simply use my old "p" program to play a wave (preferably a flac, if you have one), and it will tell you (if you play a 16-bit sound).

Originally Posted by Thorham

Hehe, I've thrown away all my pr0n. If I want any, I'll just pop online

That's another way. But most of the online stuff is bullshit. My way was to mass download with teleport pro, then sort. I got bored and didn't finish sorting ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

Buy a larger hd

No thanks. I've got enough partitions already.

Originally Posted by Thorham

It still happens, some times. Maybe once or twice a month, on Fridays or Saturdays. Used to do it whenever I had money. Now, it's easy to control, and it's a lot more fun too this way.

I can't tell. I don't like beer anyway.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Then, what do you need?

Something new if possible... Of course some of the stuff you gave might be useful, but it certainly won't be complete.

Originally Posted by Thorham

See below.

Same.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Those shouldn't be to hard. If you're going to make it look like a standard wb program, then winamp skins are useless. Could you show me the buttons you already have?

You can have a look at DT or EP interfaces. My buttons are very similar, just a little bit smaller.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Useless anyway, if you want to make the software look like wb software.

It needs to BE wb software, so...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Hey! There are different kinds of rpg:

.Diablo 2 and clones: No mouse is no game.
.Final Fantasy: Mouse sucks, console controller or even the keyboard rocks.
.Strategic rpgs like FireEmblem: Mouse, keyboard and controller are all just fine.
.Dungeon Master: No mouse is totally unplayable.

Trust me, mice aren't always needed, or can even stand in the way, such as in Final Fantasy games. The best controlling method depends on the type of rpg completely.

Well, the type of rpg I like really need a mouse, but I use the keyboard too.

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's not what I meant with planet: Take the earths size and combine that with a tile which represents, say, two square meters. Now we're talkin' big
The idea is to have the map randomly generated on the fly, while all the used seeds are determined when you start a new game. It's probably overkill, though

If generated, it's just going to be very repetitive. I once saw such a program (can't remember the name) which produced a virtually infinite world (parts get generated as you travel). Boring, believe me.

On the other hand, if you like generated worlds, you can just play Captive.

Originally Posted by Thorham

How does playing solo do that?

You have to move a lot more while fighting (or you end up dead). This doesn't add any tactical thinking, just more and more dodging.

Anyway if you like solo there is no need for DM, you can just play Hired Guns.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yeah, you're right. Getting that DM itch again

So who killed you this time ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

So do I. Easiest one: Allow all addressing modes to be combined with all addressing modes when relevant, like in add.l (a0)+,(a1)+. Another is the obvious: At least double the amount of registers. Man, that would've been ace.

If you do so, you'll just run out of free opcodes and there won't be enough room anyway - or encoding will become very dirty.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Then I guess you may as well write your own locale system.
Shouldn't really be too hard.

Yes, but it has to be carefully thought. I feel too lazy for now.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, you're right. The whole difficulty of doing this right is one of the things that has kept me from writing inflate in the first place.

I did it in a (somewhat) standard way and speed is satisfying. Perhaps you wanted too much, too early

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's true. Writing an os in IA32 assembler is going to suck hard though. Even in 68k it's no fun

No fun I dunno, but I'd surely prefer 68k asm rather than C++ !

Originally Posted by Thorham

Well, I only have a couple of simple utilities I've written, and those compile out of the box on both Amiga and peecee. I'll upload them if you want, but there's little to see. Basically c is portable for generic high level work, such as those utilities, and for this sort of thing c isn't so bad (mostly because those programs aren't ever big)

That's just a few console i/o programs. As I already said, only those are really portable. Something as simple as a GUI program isn't portable.

Also, take care when you write C : it is rumoured that if programmers continue to write C at their current rate, the world will run out of curly braces by the year 2020

Originally Posted by Thorham

Only time I had a virus is because of downloading a bad program. You on the other hand, are stuck with severely out dated browsers. I know what I prefer

Generally I've found that sites which don't work properly with outdated browsers are "visual" sites without interesting contents. No loss for me.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, perhaps it's time to switch. I have the program installed anyway

Perhaps it needs some settings to suit your personal needs, but trust me, it's very easy to use.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I know! I just dislike Eagly Player. I've always preferred Hippos simplicity. Anyway, if you're interested in doing something like empy, then Winamp 5's skins can most certainly be adopted to wb. I use Winamp 5 (bloatware), I'm almost certain it's not a problem.

I dislike EP too, even though I have sources for EP 2.04 (they're now public). But what I want is to make a lightweight player, so empy-like gui is just an option (plug-in).

Originally Posted by Thorham

Both, actually.

Just try DT2 and see if they play correctly. If not, perhaps I can re-source the players and make some corrections (that wouldn't be the first time I do something like that !).

Originally Posted by Thorham

User-startup is empty.

.The file is there when needed by an installer script.
.I don't know, really. I'll have to check.
.MountEnv handles the env: directory in ram: Instead of copying env-archive to ram:env, it loads a file from env-archive when needed by a program which reads from env:. If this is the cause of play16 not finding the calibration file, then play16 is history I'm afraid. I'm not going to make booting slower just to use play16, while Hippo already plays back calibrated
.It's handy for screen mode settings in programs like Adpro. Without. Adpro uses it's default setting, and that sucks

Thanks for the tip .

Installer scripts ? Doh, I never run them.
For me doing Assign env: envarc: add was enough for all programs except IPrefs.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Pics, or it didn't happen

Sometimes it's just impossible to do what you want to do in a clean way, and you have to make dirty things.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Not in my frame, though. All the functions in the list handling system only access list and entry structures, while the file handling system only accesses the file structure, and calls list handling routines for using lists. Yes, it makes the code a little slower, but much easier to read and maintain while the speed 'penalty' doesn't apply because there are no tight loops.

About rs, I've found that one recently, and the current version of my frame uses it. Let me know if you want to take a look at it.

Yes, but your code not only manipulates the structure, it also performs os calls for actual i/o. This doesn't need to be separate.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Indeed! But you can't expect developments to always be fast.

That's true. I expect them to always be slow

Originally Posted by Thorham

It's interesting, and should make for a cool read.

Then... just read ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

Good point. I guess I'll stick to coding.

Coding is good for neurons, not beer ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, the 8bbp case. But the other cases have to be different anyway:

I prefer to have different loops for different case, because it saves cpu time. As for iff, the fastest way to resample planar data, is to first do a p2c, and then the resampling.

Good. If you can do them all, then I'll consider integrating the code into my viewer (see meynaf.free.fr/tmp/v.lzx for the latest version).

Originally Posted by Thorham

Alright, I may give it a go. The assumption that it will be fine, comes from the peecee, where 16 color pics are always show in 24 bit mode. Scaling to 24 bit is always fine. I'll see how it looks in ham, which I can do with my ham emulator in free basic.

Of course 16 color is always good in 24 bit mode, but ham may well perform very poor on highly contrasted images such as low bpp ones. On the other hand, I've never really checked this.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Of course a better way can be to consider that standard board smilies aren't to be counted as images...

I don't know if that's possible. Probably not, but I'll ask.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Colorless, yes (in french "terne", no easy translation).
If you could put a 1083 and a pc screen side-by-side, displaying the very same image, you'd see what I mean.

Pity I can't check

Originally Posted by meynaf

On the peecee, directx full-screen games do this when they start. Probably no good when you program one and test often...

Yes, that's a good point. When I use full screen mode in freebasic, I usually use the same resolution as my desktop to avoid those resolution switches. What I really want to know is if this is caused by the monitor, or the video card? Seems to be the monitor, but on the peecee, you never know.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Ok, but the digitization process is lossy in itself, whatever bit resolution and frequency are used.

So is analog storage. The recording process itself is lossy, too. Until technology is improved, sound quality will never be perfect.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Oh, yeah, feel it. But that's no longer what I can call music. It's... earthquake .

Earthquake indeed

Originally Posted by meynaf

I guess this all depends on the buffer size.

It probably does. Hippo player doesn't seem to read that much of the music, so there's no choppy behavior.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Ok then. Do it your way.

Yes, I'm probably going to stick to wavs. Uncompressed data of this kind is easier to handle on less fast cpus.

Originally Posted by meynaf

But can you imagine not having a peecee ?

Not anymore, no

Originally Posted by meynaf

Calibration file must be at env:cybersound/sounddrivers/14bit_calibration and nowhere else.

It is on my system. It may very well be that the env handler I'm using is incompatible with play16. I'll check it out.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you have a raw 44.1 khz sound file (raw, not wave), then I can give you a test program. Or you can simply use my old "p" program to play a wave (preferably a flac, if you have one), and it will tell you (if you play a 16-bit sound).

I'll check for incompatibility issues first.

Originally Posted by meynaf

That's another way. But most of the online stuff is bullshit. My way was to mass download with teleport pro, then sort. I got bored and didn't finish sorting ;-)

Hehe It can take a while to find good sites, yes. Anyway, what is teleport pro exactly? Also, you've got to be carefull with automatic downloading, you never know what sick shit you're getting

Originally Posted by meynaf

No thanks. I've got enough partitions already.

Yes, on Amigas it's all too easy to make far to many partitions, isn't it. Better limit the number you make.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I can't tell. I don't like beer anyway.

What? You don't like beer? Oh noes

Originally Posted by meynaf

Something new if possible... Of course some of the stuff you gave might be useful, but it certainly won't be complete.

It can be used for the map. The class pic examples also contain map anims, by the way. The large anims could be used for battle sequences. Just an idea.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You can have a look at DT or EP interfaces. My buttons are very similar, just a little bit smaller.

Right. Plain and simple no bs

Originally Posted by meynaf

It needs to BE wb software, so...

It's possible to use the new icons palette if you're using new icons. One can make really good looking interfaces with those colors, I reckon.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Well, the type of rpg I like really need a mouse, but I use the keyboard too.

Have you ever played some of those console rpgs? There is certainly life after Amiga rpgs.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If generated, it's just going to be very repetitive. I once saw such a program (can't remember the name) which produced a virtually infinite world (parts get generated as you travel). Boring, believe me.

They got it wrong, then Now, I'm not saying that I know how to do it better, but I do think it's possible to make it interesting.

Originally Posted by meynaf

On the other hand, if you like generated worlds, you can just play Captive.

Another one of those games I haven't gotten around to playing seriously, yet.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You have to move a lot more while fighting (or you end up dead). This doesn't add any tactical thinking, just more and more dodging.

In Dungeon Master I always play by brute force mostly, and never use a tactical approach, anyway. If I want to play a game of tactics, I'll play the Fire Emblem games. If you want a good idea of how they play, download Shining Force for the Game Gear and use a GameGear/Master System emulator for your Amiga. I think MasterGear is good (if my memory serves me well). On your config it should run very well, indeed.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Anyway if you like solo there is no need for DM, you can just play Hired Guns.

Going solo in rpgs in general is just a challenge.

Originally Posted by meynaf

So who killed you this time ?

Eh, I don't get it

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you do so, you'll just run out of free opcodes and there won't be enough room anyway - or encoding will become very dirty.

You're right. The opcodes can contain operands as well. My bad.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yes, but it has to be carefully thought. I feel too lazy for now.

That, it has. Actually everything one writes has to be carefully thought out, or it'll just turn into a pile of doodoo I've never really thought about this kind of thing. Could be interesting.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I did it in a (somewhat) standard way and speed is satisfying. Perhaps you wanted too much, too early.

No, not perhaps, but definitely

Originally Posted by meynaf

No fun I dunno, but I'd surely prefer 68k asm rather than C++ !

I don't always. Some things, like programs you don't use a lot, and don't have to be written till perfection, I'd rather do in C. Much faster to write, and reasonably fast results.

Originally Posted by meynaf

That's just a few console i/o programs. As I already said, only those are really portable. Something as simple as a GUI program isn't portable.

Why isn't a GUI portable? This sort of high-level code seems the perfect candidate for portability. Enlighten, please.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Also, take care when you write C : it is rumoured that if programmers continue to write C at their current rate, the world will run out of curly braces by the year 2020

Originally Posted by meynaf

Generally I've found that sites which don't work properly with outdated browsers are "visual" sites without interesting contents. No loss for me.

If you don't surf a lot, it's not a great loss, either.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Perhaps it needs some settings to suit your personal needs, but trust me, it's very easy to use.

Program icon is now on the desktop.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I dislike EP too, even though I have sources for EP 2.04 (they're now public). But what I want is to make a lightweight player, so empy-like gui is just an option (plug-in).

It would be cool to make an empy style gui that looks better then empy does. Good option to have.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Just try DT2 and see if they play correctly. If not, perhaps I can re-source the players and make some corrections (that wouldn't be the first time I do something like that !).

I'll try, but if they use Ahi, it'll probably suck big time.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Installer scripts ? Doh, I never run them.
For me doing Assign env: envarc: add was enough for all programs except Iprefs.

I usually use those scripts. You never know what you may forget. Assign env: envarc: isn't the Workbench way of doing it. env: should point to a directory in ram:

Originally Posted by meynaf

Sometimes it's just impossible to do what you want to do in a clean way, and you have to make dirty things.

In most cases you can do it clean, and you should always try to do so.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yes, but your code not only manipulates the structure, it also performs os calls for actual i/o. This doesn't need to be separate.

It isn't. System calls which are relevant to the structure, are handled by the routines that operate on that structure. The file handling, for example, calls the memory handling functions to allocate memory, not the system itself, but it does call the AmigaDos file handling functions directly.

Originally Posted by meynaf

That's true. I expect them to always be slow.

When I look at developments made in the last 100 years, then I think that maybe it's about time some things were developed a little slower.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Coding is good for neurons, not beer ;-)

Indeed. I was once doing some coding in 68k while I was well on my way to becoming drunk. Took me one and a half hours to finish the code. Then I put it aside and checked the next morning. The code worked, but had I written it in a sober state, it would've only taken me 20 minutes, tops Coding like that is possible, but it's slow and it's hard to concentrate; huge waste of time.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Good. If you can do them all, then I'll consider integrating the code into my viewer (see meynaf.free.fr/tmp/v.lzx for the latest version).

Thank you Which ones do you want? Please specify bit depths and scaling factors.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Of course 16 color is always good in 24 bit mode, but ham may well perform very poor on highly contrasted images such as low bpp ones. On the other hand, I've never really checked this.

Could you send me some of those pictures so I can test for my self? I've ported your ham rendering routine to freebasic, so it's really easy to test. If you want a laugh, I could post this port, if you want.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

I don't know if that's possible. Probably not, but I'll ask.

That's what I thought too.
And please do it soon, I ran into that damn limitation again !

Originally Posted by Thorham

Pity I can't check

Oh, yeah ! Some years ago I plugged my miggy into a friend's TV (yes). It was just an old, ordinary tv.
His peecee was around the corner. I shown some images and transfered a few to the peecee (via a laplink cable). Then he displayed them and was stumped : the pics (some photographs !) were much better on the miggy. As a pityful excuse he said his gfx board was an old thing. Bah !

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, that's a good point. When I use full screen mode in freebasic, I usually use the same resolution as my desktop to avoid those resolution switches. What I really want to know is if this is caused by the monitor, or the video card? Seems to be the monitor, but on the peecee, you never know.

It's probably both

Originally Posted by Thorham

So is analog storage. The recording process itself is lossy, too. Until technology is improved, sound quality will never be perfect.

Yeah. You forgot to say that an amplifier is lossy, and loudspeakers are lossy too ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

Earthquake indeed

Frankly I prefer feminine voices...

Originally Posted by Thorham

It probably does. Hippo player doesn't seem to read that much of the music, so there's no choppy behavior.

Yes, but if too small, if your machine gets busy it'll fail to read in time !
What is your Hippo setting for that ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, I'm probably going to stick to wavs. Uncompressed data of this kind is easier to handle on less fast cpus.

Yes, if you don't have a huge collection of them.
But why don't you simply play your mp3 on your peecee ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Not anymore, no

You have a foot in the dark side. Be careful ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

It is on my system. It may very well be that the env handler I'm using is incompatible with play16. I'll check it out.

For me there is no need for an env handler at all.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I'll check for incompatibility issues first.

You can use snoopdos to see what's happening.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Hehe It can take a while to find good sites, yes. Anyway, what is teleport pro exactly? Also, you've got to be carefull with automatic downloading, you never know what sick shit you're getting

Teleport pro is an http leeching program for peecee. I ended up with 2GB of pics with that. With sick shit, of course

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, on Amigas it's all too easy to make far to many partitions, isn't it. Better limit the number you make.

If I limit the number I make, I'll also limit the available space !
Or can you make them larger than 2GB ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

What? You don't like beer? Oh noes

Yeah, and it's not particular for beer, it's alcohol in general. I don't like the taste of that burning, neurotoxic thing. Is that really any loss ? Doubtful, eh !

Originally Posted by Thorham

It can be used for the map. The class pic examples also contain map anims, by the way. The large anims could be used for battle sequences. Just an idea.

Maybe the game needs to be somewhat designed before grabbing some gfx.

For me it needs to be a mixture of rpg (lots of characteristics which evolve with experience, and lots of objects), adventure (a strong, large scenario) and strategy (allow construction of buildings, making up of armies).

Lots of things can be done before the gfx are needed ; we can draw/generate world maps, design the rpg (how skills and experience work), and think about how the game should look like (regarding its ergonomy).

If you feel like a game designer, any idea is welcome.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Right. Plain and simple no bs

Plain and simple, you said it !

Originally Posted by Thorham

It's possible to use the new icons palette if you're using new icons. One can make really good looking interfaces with those colors, I reckon.

Sure, but the player is meant to work on any wb, not only for ppl who are using newicons.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Have you ever played some of those console rpgs? There is certainly life after Amiga rpgs.

I don't play a lot, so there are enough Amiga rpgs to keep me busy.

Originally Posted by Thorham

They got it wrong, then Now, I'm not saying that I know how to do it better, but I do think it's possible to make it interesting.

I made a few tests with land generation some time ago. For me a good compromise can be to generate big lands, then edit them manually.

Say, generating a shape is relatively easy, but what contents to put inside ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Another one of those games I haven't gotten around to playing seriously, yet.

I've been up to mission 0004 (there are 11 dungeons per mission, not counting the numerous outside levels).
At first you don't even know that dungeons are generated, however after a while it becomes obvious.

Originally Posted by Thorham

In Dungeon Master I always play by brute force mostly, and never use a tactical approach, anyway. If I want to play a game of tactics, I'll play the Fire Emblem games. If you want a good idea of how they play, download Shining Force for the Game Gear and use a GameGear/Master System emulator for your Amiga. I think MasterGear is good (if my memory serves me well). On your config it should run very well, indeed.

Maybe I will, but what's so good about those games ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Going solo in rpgs in general is just a challenge.

If you like challenges you can try Knightmare or Black crypt.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Eh, I don't get it

Well, ok. I'll ask otherwise : how far did you get this time ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

You're right. The opcodes can contain operands as well. My bad.

The 68k codes are like huffman codes : more combinations are used for more frequent instructions.

For me, a few additions can be done without overloading the code because opcodes in fact already exist :
- allow byte ops on An regs (for move, not add/sub/cmp)
- allow An regs as operands for logical ops (such as and, or)
- allow pc-relative modes as destination
- allow movem to use (an)+ and -(an) without restriction
- add some of coldfire's insns, such as bitrev, byterev, mvs/mvz

More additions will be trickier to add. We may need an equivalent of x86's shld/shrd, test-and-clear (like tas, but clr instead of set), conditional bit set/clr (like s<cc> but operating on bits), register rotations with immediate count >8, memory rotations with size and count...

What types of new instructions can you think of ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

That, it has. Actually everything one writes has to be carefully thought out, or it'll just turn into a pile of doodoo I've never really thought about this kind of thing. Could be interesting.

I wanted it to be as transparent as possible for the programmer but didn't find an easy solution.

Originally Posted by Thorham

No, not perhaps, but definitely

Ok ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

I don't always. Some things, like programs you don't use a lot, and don't have to be written till perfection, I'd rather do in C. Much faster to write, and reasonably fast results.

For me C isn't faster to write than asm but I'm strange
And it's especially true now that I have my asm include framework.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Why isn't a GUI portable? This sort of high-level code seems the perfect candidate for portability. Enlighten, please.

What's the G of GUI ? Do you think graphics are portable ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

If you don't surf a lot, it's not a great loss, either.

Right. I don't surf a lot.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Program icon is now on the desktop.

We're progressing

Originally Posted by Thorham

It would be cool to make an empy style gui that looks better then empy does. Good option to have.

Then... just do it

Originally Posted by Thorham

I'll try, but if they use Ahi, it'll probably suck big time.

For Digibooster pro it does, not old Digibooster.
However it'll suck much less if you order it not to suck too much. I say, you have to configure it to use :
. Paula: fast 14 bit stereo calibrated as audio mode (push replay freq to the max)
. listen to your music : if you hear crap, reduce the "boost" value, as that stupid ahi doesn't clip samples.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I usually use those scripts. You never know what you may forget. Assign env: envarc: isn't the Workbench way of doing it. env: should point to a directory in ram:

Program that put their sh*t everywhere don't deserve to be kept on my disk.
Usually running snoopdos to see what's missing is enough.

About the WB way : true, but even in my special config, writing to env: goes in ram, where writing to envarc: goes to disk. However, when reading from env:, it first tries in ram then in envarc: so all that env: stuff no longer needs to be copied.
This is the case for e.g. my 14 bit calibration and even Play16 won't complain.
All of that is standard assign stuff, no need for strange env drivers !

Also, writes to L: and S: goes there, too, so those dirs will remain clean.

Originally Posted by Thorham

In most cases you can do it clean, and you should always try to do so.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. You didn't code a lot on the peecee...

Originally Posted by Thorham

It isn't. System calls which are relevant to the structure, are handled by the routines that operate on that structure. The file handling, for example, calls the memory handling functions to allocate memory, not the system itself, but it does call the AmigaDos file handling functions directly.

So there is no need for oo. Just routines that do their job and update the structure.

Originally Posted by Thorham

When I look at developments made in the last 100 years, then I think that maybe it's about time some things were developed a little slower.

How true !

Originally Posted by Thorham

Indeed. I was once doing some coding in 68k while I was well on my way to becoming drunk. Took me one and a half hours to finish the code. Then I put it aside and checked the next morning. The code worked, but had I written it in a sober state, it would've only taken me 20 minutes, tops Coding like that is possible, but it's slow and it's hard to concentrate; huge waste of time.

Same for drugs I guess, despite what some people might pretend...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Thank you Which ones do you want? Please specify bit depths and scaling factors.

It must work for any image the viewer can show, so bit depth are 1 to 8 and 24.
About scaling factors : as you need this feature much more than I, then it's better you decide, provided that all scaling factors are available for all bit depths.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Could you send me some of those pictures so I can test for my self? I've ported your ham rendering routine to freebasic, so it's really easy to test. If you want a laugh, I could post this port, if you want.

Just take any image and reduce its color depth. Or grab a game or demo screen with uae. This way you'll have as many images as you want.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

That's what I thought too.
And please do it soon, I ran into that damn limitation again !

I've made a thread in the Project EAB forum. Let's see what RCK thinks.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Oh, yeah ! Some years ago I plugged my miggy into a friend's TV (yes). It was just an old, ordinary tv.
His peecee was around the corner. I shown some images and transfered a few to the peecee (via a laplink cable). Then he displayed them and was stumped : the pics (some photographs !) were much better on the miggy. As a pityful excuse he said his gfx board was an old thing. Bah !

Then he's just using a bad monitor. The one I hve isn't the best, either, but it still produces good results. As for his video card excuse: That's got to be the most lame excuse I've ever heard

Originally Posted by meynaf

It's probably both.

I think it's actually just the monitor. Still quite lame, and I wonder why it's necessary.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yeah. You forgot to say that an amplifier is lossy, and loudspeakers are lossy too ;-)

Yep, everything is lossy Until consumer electronics have reached a level where the lossy-ness can't be detected by the human ear anymore, sound quality will never be 100%.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Frankly I prefer feminine voices...

No comment

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yes, but if too small, if your machine gets busy it'll fail to read in time !
What is your Hippo setting for that ?

Hippo uses double buffering, and I think, based on the chipmem usage, that it uses a fairly large buffer. Probably around 512 kb, but I can't say how large exactly. In the settings I've set the buffer to be 128 kb, with double buffering, so thats 256 kb, but the chipmem usage is more than that.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yes, if you don't have a huge collection of them.
But why don't you simply play your mp3 on your peecee ?

My peecee isn't always on when I use my Amiga.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You have a foot in the dark side. Be careful ;-)

Yes, I know

Originally Posted by meynaf

For me there is no need for an env handler at all.

I think they're cool. No need to copy envarc: to ram:env, while the env: system still works like it's supposed to (mostly).

Originally Posted by meynaf

You can use snoopdos to see what's happening.

Ok, I'm going to check it out this week. I was a little reluctant to do so, because I don't use play16, but I've become quite curious, and would like to know if other env handlers are more compatible than the one I'm using.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Teleport pro is an http leeching program for peecee. I ended up with 2GB of pics with that. With sick shit, of course.

Bah, I hate sick shit I love naked women, though

Originally Posted by meynaf

If I limit the number I make, I'll also limit the available space !
Or can you make them larger than 2GB ?

Yes, you can, but you'll have to use something like Smart File System with IDEFix. Well, actually, that's the setup I'm using, and it's the easiest way to get large drive support with large partitions I know of, because no patching of scsi.device is needed.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yeah, and it's not particular for beer, it's alcohol in general. I don't like the taste of that burning, neurotoxic thing. Is that really any loss ? Doubtful, eh !

If you don't like it, then it's most definitely not a loss at all

Originally Posted by meynaf

Maybe the game needs to be somewhat designed before grabbing some gfx.

Indeed. The gfx I've shown you, are just some examples, though. Also, this kind of stuff is quite easy to find, not a problem.

Originally Posted by meynaf

For me it needs to be a mixture of rpg (lots of characteristics which evolve with experience, and lots of objects), adventure (a strong, large scenario) and strategy (allow construction of buildings, making up of armies).

That sounds very interesting. As far as I know, there are no Amiga games which are like this.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Lots of things can be done before the gfx are needed ; we can draw/generate world maps, design the rpg (how skills and experience work), and think about how the game should look like (regarding its ergonomy).

Sounds cool. But I do want to steer away from old-school game mechanics, and design a modern game. There are plenty of very good old-school games for the Amiga already, and something new-school would make for a nice change. Graphics wise, this is not as important, of course.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you feel like a game designer, any idea is welcome.

I'll think about it.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Sure, but the player is meant to work on any wb, not only for ppl who are using newicons.

As you said, make it optional.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I don't play a lot, so there are enough Amiga rpgs to keep me busy.

Indeed, and there's some good ones.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I made a few tests with land generation some time ago. For me a good compromise can be to generate big lands, then edit them manually.

That's a good idea if the generator can produce anything good.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Say, generating a shape is relatively easy, but what contents to put inside ?

Good point. This kind of thing is certainly not the easiest to do, but may still be worth a shot, although I must admit that I have no clue of where to start

Originally Posted by meynaf

I've been up to mission 0004 (there are 11 dungeons per mission, not counting the numerous outside levels).
At first you don't even know that dungeons are generated, however after a while it becomes obvious.

What made you see they're generated?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Maybe I will, but what's so good about those games ?

They're turn based strategy rpgs, a genre I've come to like a lot. If you do try Shining Force, remember that it's a little simpler than Fire Emblem for Game Boy Advance, but it should still give you a fairly good idea of what it's about. One warning: It's possible that your progress in Shining Force will not be saved after level 2 or 3 because of emulator incompleteness. I really hated this when I wanted to play back when I didn't have a peecee, so be warned. May be possible to fix with save states.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you like challenges you can try Knightmare or Black crypt.

Sounds interesting.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Well, ok. I'll ask otherwise : how far did you get this time ?

Haven't played, yet However, if you have a more up to date version for me, I'll try again.

Originally Posted by meynaf

- allow byte ops on An regs (for move, not add/sub/cmp)
- allow An regs as operands for logical ops (such as and, or)
- allow pc-relative modes as destination
- allow movem to use (an)+ and -(an) without restriction
- add some of coldfire's insns, such as bitrev, byterev, mvs/mvz

Yeah, those sound like good additions. Didn't think of them myself.

Originally Posted by meynaf

More additions will be trickier to add. We may need an equivalent of x86's shld/shrd, test-and-clear (like tas, but clr instead of set), conditional bit set/clr (like s<cc> but operating on bits), register rotations with immediate count >8, memory rotations with size and count...

What do shld/shrd do?

Originally Posted by meynaf

What types of new instructions can you think of ?

Nothing interesting, just being able to use more addressing mode combinations with instructions like add, sub, etc. Although perhaps the distinction between address and data registers might be removed completely so we would simply have R0-R15. Seems like 'a bit' much, though.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I wanted it to be as transparent as possible for the programmer but didn't find an easy solution.

I haven't come up with anything good, either. Because such a system should be easy to make portable without screwing it up, and I can thus also use it on the peecee, I guess I can give it a serious go.

Originally Posted by meynaf

For me C isn't faster to write than asm but I'm strange.
And it's especially true now that I have my asm include framework.

It is for me sometimes. But you're right, 68k can be really convenient And you're not strange for thinking so

Originally Posted by meynaf

What's the G of GUI ? Do you think graphics are portable ?

No, but the graphics should be handled by a machine specific part of the software. The UI part of a GUI is just a lot of highlevel logic, and is most certainly portable.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Right. I don't surf a lot.

I don't surt a lot anymore, either, thank goodness.

Originally Posted by meynaf

We're progressing.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Then... just do it.

No point if your main program isn't finished.

Originally Posted by meynaf

For Digibooster pro it does, not old Digibooster.
However it'll suck much less if you order it not to suck too much. I say, you have to configure it to use :
. Paula: fast 14 bit stereo calibrated as audio mode (push replay freq to the max)
. listen to your music : if you hear crap, reduce the "boost" value, as that stupid ahi doesn't clip samples.

Yeah, I know, but it still sucks Of course, this sucking is caused by the fact that it's all probably just bleedin' bloatware.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Program that put their sh*t everywhere don't deserve to be kept on my disk.
Usually running snoopdos to see what's missing is enough.

I usually don't care too much about shit being installed. Can be removed later, and as long as my startup isn't cluttered up with crap, I'm happy.

Originally Posted by meynaf

About the WB way : true, but even in my special config, writing to env: goes in ram, where writing to envarc: goes to disk. However, when reading from env:, it first tries in ram then in envarc: so all that env: stuff no longer needs to be copied.
This is the case for e.g. my 14 bit calibration and even Play16 won't complain.
All of that is standard assign stuff, no need for strange env drivers !

I didn't know it was possible. When I bought my Amiga from a friend, he had a similar method, but it always read everything from disk. I'll definitely have to look into this. The less software is started in my startup-sequence the better.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Also, writes to L: and S: goes there, too, so those dirs will remain clean.

That sounds like it could have some problems.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Oh, sorry, I forgot. You didn't code a lot on the peecee...

Indeed. I've only programmed in Visual Basic Express Edition, which I've stopped using, because it's to slooooooow, and I'm now using FreeBasic exclusively, except for some generic c programs, that could also be written on the miggy. No DirectX for

Originally Posted by meynaf

So there is no need for oo. Just routines that do their job and update the structure.

My frame isn't oo, it's just organized as an oo program for clarity.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Same for drugs I guess, despite what some people might pretend...

Yes, but with weed the effects are much less dramatic than with alcohol. Alcohol slows down the whole brain, while weed just makes the mind wonder around more, nothing else. Still, programming is best done sober.

Originally Posted by meynaf

It must work for any image the viewer can show, so bit depth are 1 to 8 and 24.
About scaling factors : as you need this feature much more than I, then it's better you decide, provided that all scaling factors are available for all bit depths.

The scaling routines themselves are a cake walk, and I already have a bunch of 24 bit down scalers which are quite fast. Although I don't have any palette gfx down scalers, they're not difficult, either, as you've seen from the example code from a couple of posts ago.

However, I do still think downscaling to be an essential feature in a modern image viewer. Large images will fit on the screen, and consume much less chipmem. Example: 1280x1024x24 bit needs 1280 kb when rendered in ham without scaling. When scaled down to a screen size of 640x512, this drops to a measly 320 kb. Quite important!

Originally Posted by meynaf

Just take any image and reduce its color depth. Or grab a game or demo screen with uae. This way you'll have as many images as you want.

Ok, I just thought it would be nice to test with images that were made in low color modes.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

I've made a thread in the Project EAB forum. Let's see what RCK thinks.

Wait and see...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Then he's just using a bad monitor. The one I hve isn't the best, either, but it still produces good results. As for his video card excuse: That's got to be the most lame excuse I've ever heard

The monitor was standard issue.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I think it's actually just the monitor. Still quite lame, and I wonder why it's necessary.

The gfx board may well change the sync speed without it being necessary...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yep, everything is lossy Until consumer electronics have reached a level where the lossy-ness can't be detected by the human ear anymore, sound quality will never be 100%.

I'm no pro in acoustics, but I don't think it's really possible to listen to music at home as if you were in the studio...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Hippo uses double buffering, and I think, based on the chipmem usage, that it uses a fairly large buffer. Probably around 512 kb, but I can't say how large exactly. In the settings I've set the buffer to be 128 kb, with double buffering, so thats 256 kb, but the chipmem usage is more than that.

Yeah, plain recorded music require lots of chipmem. Tracked music needs much less.

Originally Posted by Thorham

My peecee isn't always on when I use my Amiga.

Turn it on then

Originally Posted by Thorham

I think they're cool. No need to copy envarc: to ram:env, while the env: system still works like it's supposed to (mostly).

Mostly ! When I copy envarc: it's only envarc:sys/ part, which is ~19 kb. Probably less than the env handler. Only IPrefs needs direct env: stuff.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Ok, I'm going to check it out this week. I was a little reluctant to do so, because I don't use play16, but I've become quite curious, and would like to know if other env handlers are more compatible than the one I'm using.

And I'm still saying env handlers are not needed

Originally Posted by Thorham

Bah, I hate sick shit I love naked women, though

Yeah, see when you can't touch and have nothing to entertain you at night but your callused right hand

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, you can, but you'll have to use something like Smart File System with IDEFix. Well, actually, that's the setup I'm using, and it's the easiest way to get large drive support with large partitions I know of, because no patching of scsi.device is needed.

But no program will allow partitions over 4GB, and after 2GB you may still have problems. I'm already using SFS in directscsi mode for partitions located after 4GB.

Originally Posted by Thorham

If you don't like it, then it's most definitely not a loss at all

Sure.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Indeed. The gfx I've shown you, are just some examples, though. Also, this kind of stuff is quite easy to find, not a problem.

But what sort of view will we have ? 2D tiles ? 3D dungeon view ? Both ? Something else ? How will recruited characters be displayed ? Will this be turn-based or realtime ? Or a mixture of both ? Aaarrgh... Just too many questions

Originally Posted by Thorham

That sounds very interesting. As far as I know, there are no Amiga games which are like this.

Are there games at all which are like this anyway ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Sounds cool. But I do want to steer away from old-school game mechanics, and design a modern game. There are plenty of very good old-school games for the Amiga already, and something new-school would make for a nice change. Graphics wise, this is not as important, of course.

What's a "modern" game then ? What differentiates it from old-school games ?
If you call actual games "modern" then it's definitely not the type of thing I want. I'm sick of all those first person shooter/platform games.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I'll think about it.

You can start by examining existing games and collect all "ingredients" that make you like them (or not !).

Originally Posted by Thorham

As you said, make it optional.

First I need to make the "classical" one functional. You can help if you want...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Indeed, and there's some good ones.

Yeah, sure. And I like adventure and strategy, too.

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's a good idea if the generator can produce anything good.

For a bare, desert land, pure random shape generation can give good results.
Maybe for a whole planet's land too but I didn't try.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Good point. This kind of thing is certainly not the easiest to do, but may still be worth a shot, although I must admit that I have no clue of where to start

Where to start might be yet another googling session, to find out what already exists in terms of land/dungeon generation. Just my suggestion ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

What made you see they're generated?

There are too many of them to fit on floppy, and they all look the same.
Anyway it's a known fact, and I've seen the code to confirm ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

They're turn based strategy rpgs, a genre I've come to like a lot. If you do try Shining Force, remember that it's a little simpler than Fire Emblem for Game Boy Advance, but it should still give you a fairly good idea of what it's about. One warning: It's possible that your progress in Shining Force will not be saved after level 2 or 3 because of emulator incompleteness. I really hated this when I wanted to play back when I didn't have a peecee, so be warned. May be possible to fix with save states.

Lots of games are turn based rpgs, so why these ones ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Sounds interesting.

If other people love challenges as well, then I may open a thread about my custom dungeon, to hunt for beta testers.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Haven't played, yet However, if you have a more up to date version for me, I'll try again.

As a matter of fact, I do have a more up to date version, but it's not going to be very useful, considering how far you've come (the area you have seen didn't really change). There's already a lot to be explored in the version you have, and it's difficult enough to reach an unfinished area.
However, if you really want it, I can give you the latest version, of course.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yeah, those sound like good additions. Didn't think of them myself.

Opcodes are already reserved for that, so...

Originally Posted by Thorham

What do shld/shrd do?

64-bit shifts with two registers.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Nothing interesting, just being able to use more addressing mode combinations with instructions like add, sub, etc. Although perhaps the distinction between address and data registers might be removed completely so we would simply have R0-R15. Seems like 'a bit' much, though.

The distinction between Dn and An regs probably comes from the fact that register number is stored with 3 bits in the opcode, not 4. Adding one more bit would totally defeat the 6-bit operands (3 bit addressing mode, 3 bit register).

Just consider the mere "move" instruction : it's already 3/16 of the codes in itself. The same can't be done with add and sub !
Add, sub, and, or, cmp are all 1/16 (roughly). That's 8/16, that is, half of the codes that are there. Branches take 1/16 too, same for rotations. Line-f opcodes ($fxxx) are reserved for co-processors (1/16 more). Line-a ($axxx) is
free but coldfire uses it.

Frankly, apart if you totally destroy existing code and make it larger (which would be wasteful IMO), you can't add a lot.

Also, the necessity to use a register for add-style ops never annoyed me much for now : the necessity to extend a byte when you use it as index annoyed me much more !

Originally Posted by Thorham

I haven't come up with anything good, either. Because such a system should be easy to make portable without screwing it up, and I can thus also use it on the peecee, I guess I can give it a serious go.

Please let me know if you come up with something...

Originally Posted by Thorham

It is for me sometimes. But you're right, 68k can be really convenient And you're not strange for thinking so

What ? I'm not strange. Doh, I need to change something, quick

Originally Posted by Thorham

No, but the graphics should be handled by a machine specific part of the software. The UI part of a GUI is just a lot of highlevel logic, and is most certainly portable.

And how can this highlevel logic handle different screen resolutions and number of colors ? How can it handle different OS' messaging systems ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

I don't surt a lot anymore, either, thank goodness.

Good news

Originally Posted by Thorham

No point if your main program isn't finished.

Can't it be made independently ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yeah, I know, but it still sucks Of course, this sucking is caused by the fact that it's all probably just bleedin' bloatware.

Yeah, it doesn't have good mixing code. But it is usable.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I usually don't care too much about shit being installed. Can be removed later, and as long as my startup isn't cluttered up with crap, I'm happy.

But you never know if everything has been removed. You never know if that damn installed program didn't "update" one of your .library with an older one...

Originally Posted by Thorham

I didn't know it was possible. When I bought my Amiga from a friend, he had a similar method, but it always read everything from disk. I'll definitely have to look into this. The less software is started in my startup-sequence the better.

You have a dir for envarc:, eh ?
Just do that in your startup-sequence :
. assign env: to ram:env and envarc: whereever you want it
. add this : assign env: envarc: add
. only copy envarc:sys to env:sys
and you're done.

Of course, anything you want to not be read from disk every time can be copied to ram: too. There aren't lots of stuff in envarc: anyway (at least in mine).

Originally Posted by Thorham

That sounds like it could have some problems.

No problems for now, and I don't see any possible one. All those config files, key files, and so on go in the same dir. Standard WB stuff stays in L/ and S/, of course.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Indeed. I've only programmed in Visual Basic Express Edition, which I've stopped using, because it's to slooooooow, and I'm now using FreeBasic exclusively, except for some generic c programs, that could also be written on the miggy. No DirectX for

If you think VB is slow, try java. You'll like it

Originally Posted by Thorham

My frame isn't oo, it's just organized as an oo program for clarity.

Any chance of seeing gfx and/or sound APIs in your frame one day ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, but with weed the effects are much less dramatic than with alcohol. Alcohol slows down the whole brain, while weed just makes the mind wonder around more, nothing else. Still, programming is best done sober.

Weed will actually kill a few neurons... probably more than alcohol.

Anyway, everything is best done sober IMO

Originally Posted by Thorham

The scaling routines themselves are a cake walk, and I already have a bunch of 24 bit down scalers which are quite fast. Although I don't have any palette gfx down scalers, they're not difficult, either, as you've seen from the example code from a couple of posts ago.

However, I do still think downscaling to be an essential feature in a modern image viewer. Large images will fit on the screen, and consume much less chipmem. Example: 1280x1024x24 bit needs 1280 kb when rendered in ham without scaling. When scaled down to a screen size of 640x512, this drops to a measly 320 kb. Quite important!

There may be a problem, though. Scanlines are received by the output routine in no particular order. Maybe top-to-bottom (usually), but also bottom-to-top (as in the case of bmp), or even one line out of n (if the image is of one of those interlaced formats). This will require more buffering than straight 1:1 display, and I actually don't handle that.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Ok, I just thought it would be nice to test with images that were made in low color modes.

Then grab some pics from games. They're the best sources for 16 or 32 colors images.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Wait and see...

Still no reply from RCK. Let's wait a while longer.

Originally Posted by meynaf

The monitor was standard issue.

It's quite odd that it would have such low picture quality. Probably just a cheap one

Originally Posted by meynaf

The gfx board may well change the sync speed without it being necessary...

Yes, I've come to that conclusion as well.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I'm no pro in acoustics, but I don't think it's really possible to listen to music at home as if you were in the studio...

You can with very good headphones and high-end equipment.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yeah, plain recorded music require lots of chipmem. Tracked music needs much less.

That's true. I'd like to see trackers on the Amiga evolve to the level of the Playstation 2 music formats, which are often tracked. WinAmp has a player for those.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Turn it on then.

That takes a minute... Not that long, but still, not comparable to my miggy

Originally Posted by meynaf

Mostly ! When I copy envarc: it's only envarc:sys/ part, which is ~19 kb. Probably less than the env handler. Only IPrefs needs direct env: stuff.

Still, copying is slower than running a small env-handler. I want maximum booting speed without resorting to things like FastBoot. If it's faster your way, I'll use it (haven't tried it yet).

Originally Posted by meynaf

And I'm still saying env handlers are not needed.

For me they are if it makes my machine boot faster

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yeah, see when you can't touch and have nothing to entertain you at night but your callused right hand.

You're a funny man, meynaf

Originally Posted by meynaf

But no program will allow partitions over 4GB, and after 2GB you may still have problems. I'm already using SFS in directscsi mode for partitions located after 4GB.

With SFS and IdeFix I can make partitions as large as I like. The back draw is that my copy of IdeFix still needs registering, and thus pops-up a nag requester. If you want big partitions, I suggest you try IdeFix instead of direct scsi.

Originally Posted by meynaf

But what sort of view will we have ? 2D tiles ? 3D dungeon view ? Both ? Something else ? How will recruited characters be displayed ? Will this be turn-based or realtime ? Or a mixture of both ? Aaarrgh... Just too many questions.

I'd like to do it completely 2D. Easier to make nice graphics, and turn based seems cool to me. What do you like?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Are there games at all which are like this anyway ?

The peecee has RTS games with RPG elements. Care to share any details about this theme?

Originally Posted by meynaf

What's a "modern" game then ? What differentiates it from old-school games ?

Old-school rpgs are usually less polished, and can have less possibilities to play with.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you call actual games "modern" then it's definitely not the type of thing I want. I'm sick of all those first person shooter/platform games.

Those aren't modern in and of themselves. FPSs are just like Alien Breed and the Chaos Engine, except they're in 3D. The real exceptions are modern tactical shooters, and I'm not really interested in those, either. As for platformers, again, old idea, spiced up with 3D and some extra features.

In terms of RPGs, the game world and the game mechanics can be enhanced compared to how it used to be.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You can start by examining existing games and collect all "ingredients" that make you like them (or not !).

That's not a bad idea

Originally Posted by meynaf

First I need to make the "classical" one functional. You can help if you want...

Hmm, I don't know about that... I might, but it really depends on what needs to be done. I'm certainly not promising anything

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yeah, sure. And I like adventure and strategy, too.

Those two elements can work fantastically when combined with a proper RPG basis.

Originally Posted by meynaf

For a bare, desert land, pure random shape generation can give good results.
Maybe for a whole planet's land too but I didn't try.

You're earlier point about making it interesting would still be hard with a whole planet.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Where to start might be yet another googling session, to find out what already exists in terms of land/dungeon generation. Just my suggestion ;-)

I'd rather try and think of something interesting myself first.

Originally Posted by meynaf

There are too many of them to fit on floppy, and they all look the same.
Anyway it's a known fact, and I've seen the code to confirm ;-)

Getting them to not look the same is the real challenge.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Lots of games are turn based rpgs, so why these ones ?

Because... Hmm, I apparently just like them a lot

Originally Posted by meynaf

If other people love challenges as well, then I may open a thread about my custom dungeon, to hunt for beta testers.

There are probably a good few people who do, so go right ahead.

Originally Posted by meynaf

As a matter of fact, I do have a more up to date version, but it's not going to be very useful, considering how far you've come (the area you have seen didn't really change). There's already a lot to be explored in the version you have, and it's difficult enough to reach an unfinished area.
However, if you really want it, I can give you the latest version, of course.

Why don't you post a link to your website in the above thread that you might make?

Originally Posted by meynaf

The distinction between Dn and An regs probably comes from the fact that register number is stored with 3 bits in the opcode, not 4. Adding one more bit would totally defeat the 6-bit operands (3 bit addressing mode, 3 bit register).

Damn, I didn't think of that. How obvious

Originally Posted by meynaf

Frankly, apart if you totally destroy existing code and make it larger (which would be wasteful IMO), you can't add a lot.

That would be suck big time. Perhaps 68k is good enough as it is anyway

Originally Posted by meynaf

Also, the necessity to use a register for add-style ops never annoyed me much for now : the necessity to extend a byte when you use it as index annoyed me much more !

How typical, this never bothered me at all.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Please let me know if you come up with something...

I will. It will probably turn out to be quite simple, as things like that often do. It's just the initial thinking of a good idea that's the hard part

Originally Posted by meynaf

What ? I'm not strange. Doh, I need to change something, quick.

Perhaps you're a little strange for not owning a peecee

Originally Posted by meynaf

And how can this highlevel logic handle different screen resolutions and number of colors ?

Those things are on a lower level than the gui handling logic. A platform dependent layer can handle those.

Originally Posted by meynaf

How can it handle different OS' messaging systems ?

Ok, but it's not a problem when porting an OS to another machine.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Good news.

Indeed. What a waste of time that was.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Can't it be made independently ?

Perhaps if the interface is made generically enough.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yeah, it doesn't have good mixing code. But it is usable.

Have you thought about doing your own version? Yes you have, haven't you

Originally Posted by meynaf

But you never know if everything has been removed. You never know if that damn installed program didn't "update" one of your .library with an older one...

Installers that use the Commodore install software ask you if you want to replace existing versions. I think it's built into the software.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You have a dir for envarc:, eh ?

Yes. It's HD0:Prefs/Env-Archive Standard Workbench issue.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Just do that in your startup-sequence :
. assign env: to ram:env and envarc: whereever you want it
. add this : assign env: envarc: add
. only copy envarc:sys to env:sys
and you're done.

Of course, anything you want to not be read from disk every time can be copied to ram: too. There aren't lots of stuff in envarc: anyway (at least in mine).

Ok, I'll try this. But if it makes my miggy boot less fast, then I'm not using it

Originally Posted by meynaf

No problems for now, and I don't see any possible one. All those config files, key files, and so on go in the same dir. Standard WB stuff stays in L/ and S/, of course.

I've thought of a potential problem. CygnusEd likes to store it's prefs in S: Needs checking, too.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you think VB is slow, try java. You'll like it.

Don't know about VB, but VB Express Edition (free to use) is fully managed and it uses the .net bloat framework. So yeah, it's slooooooow Is java also slow when compiled to native asm?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Any chance of seeing gfx and/or sound APIs in your frame one day ?

For now, only hit the hardware is planned. But perhaps if I need system gfx/snd I'll add those functions.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Weed will actually kill a few neurons... probably more than alcohol.

Really? Never considered that. Still, alcohol is far more dangerous than weed. Not that weed isn't crap...

Originally Posted by meynaf

Anyway, everything is best done sober IMO.

Originally Posted by meynaf

There may be a problem, though. Scanlines are received by the output routine in no particular order. Maybe top-to-bottom (usually), but also bottom-to-top (as in the case of bmp), or even one line out of n (if the image is of one of those interlaced formats). This will require more buffering than straight 1:1 display, and I actually don't handle that.

In the case of top to bottem/bottom to top renering, it's not a problem. I agree that interlace may be a problem, though

Originally Posted by meynaf

Then grab some pics from games. They're the best sources for 16 or 32 colors images.

I've tested it with my 64 color WinUae Workbench. I've scaled the grabed image down to 66%x66% with Adpro, saved it as a bmp, and rendered one version with V, and another with Adpro. Here are the results in HAM8 iff format (didn't include the original. You know how crisp WB is): ScaledDownPics.zip

The results are actually not bad! If you want to test this, just scale down some pics and save them as 24bit BMPs and use your viewer to render the results. I can't believe I didn't think of this before.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

It's quite odd that it would have such low picture quality. Probably just a cheap one

It wasn't "low quality". It was just, you know, less colorful. As all pc monitors I've seen yet. I find it strange you never saw this. But perhaps you just never saw a good CBM monitor.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes, I've come to that conclusion as well.

Or maybe the gfx board does this... because the software orders it. Who knows what can happen in those *ahem* beautiful machines.

Originally Posted by Thorham

You can with very good headphones and high-end equipment.

Headphones
And where does the bass go with such ridiculously small loudspeakers ???

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's true. I'd like to see trackers on the Amiga evolve to the level of the Playstation 2 music formats, which are often tracked. WinAmp has a player for those.

Actual Amiga trackers are certainly at level with others. DBPro is one, but OCSS also is.

Anyway if format specs can be found, then a player certainly can be written.
Do you have some info ? Maybe some example modules ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

That takes a minute... Not that long, but still, not comparable to my miggy

You made the choice to have a pc. Now assume

Originally Posted by Thorham

Still, copying is slower than running a small env-handler. I want maximum booting speed without resorting to things like FastBoot. If it's faster your way, I'll use it (haven't tried it yet).

Hey come on, stay real. Copying 20kb to ram: doesn't take a significant amount of time !

Originally Posted by Thorham

For me they are if it makes my machine boot faster

What's actual boot time ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

You're a funny man, meynaf

Hey that's not funny ! (well, perhaps a little bit...)

Originally Posted by Thorham

With SFS and IdeFix I can make partitions as large as I like. The back draw is that my copy of IdeFix still needs registering, and thus pops-up a nag requester. If you want big partitions, I suggest you try IdeFix instead of direct scsi.

But WB won't display available space correctly ! Besides, I hate nag shareware requesters.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I'd like to do it completely 2D. Easier to make nice graphics, and turn based seems cool to me. What do you like?

For exploration, I like DM-style, at least for dungeons or cities.
An automap is a necessary feature nowadays (can be a standard feature such as in Ambermoon - the shortcut system rules -, a magical object like in DM2, or a spell a la Evil's doom).

For fights, I prefer turn-based ones. Realtime makes those look like arcade games, as I already said.

Now, if we have a 2D tile view at the center of our screen, what will the rest of the display be ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

The peecee has RTS games with RPG elements. Care to share any details about this theme?

I know of mixtures of two kinds (amongst strategy, rpg, adventure), but not all three in the same game.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Old-school rpgs are usually less polished, and can have less possibilities to play with.

But now we can make an enormous game because we're no longer limited by making them work in 0.5M or 1M machines, out of 880kb floppies (if it's that you call oldschool).

Originally Posted by Thorham

Those aren't modern in and of themselves. FPSs are just like Alien Breed and the Chaos Engine, except they're in 3D. The real exceptions are modern tactical shooters, and I'm not really interested in those, either. As for platformers, again, old idea, spiced up with 3D and some extra features.

In terms of RPGs, the game world and the game mechanics can be enhanced compared to how it used to be.

What sorts of enhancements, then ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's not a bad idea

So what do you like ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Hmm, I don't know about that... I might, but it really depends on what needs to be done. I'm certainly not promising anything

Actual program (yes, there is one) can be found here :
meynaf.free.fr/tmp/player-intf.lzx

Originally Posted by Thorham

Those two elements can work fantastically when combined with a proper RPG basis.

This is exactly what I want to do. But where to start ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

You're earlier point about making it interesting would still be hard with a whole planet.

The bigger, the tougher...

Originally Posted by Thorham

I'd rather try and think of something interesting myself first.

If you have an idea, please post it.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Getting them to not look the same is the real challenge.

Alas I don't think a generated world can value a manually drawn one.
A few things are easily generated : hit-points and locations of monsters, contents of treasure chests, but the adventure story in itself can't be !

Originally Posted by Thorham

Because... Hmm, I apparently just like them a lot

Then make a port of them :-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

There are probably a good few people who do, so go right ahead.

So I did :
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=505342

Originally Posted by Thorham

Why don't you post a link to your website in the above thread that you might make?

A download link is mandatory, of course, but that's just a download link (I have no page for this).

Originally Posted by Thorham

Damn, I didn't think of that. How obvious

I studied the question a lot, you know. Even tried to recode everything

Originally Posted by Thorham

That would be suck big time. Perhaps 68k is good enough as it is anyway

68k is sure good. I'd love to see a 68080 come in the market, but sadly it's only a dream.

Originally Posted by Thorham

How typical, this never bothered me at all.

Strange. Do you have a few examples where this mem-to-mem add/sub would have been a saviour ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

I will. It will probably turn out to be quite simple, as things like that often do. It's just the initial thinking of a good idea that's the hard part

Now I'm waiting. You know where to post ideas

Originally Posted by Thorham

Perhaps you're a little strange for not owning a peecee

That is not being strange. It is simply not being a sheep

But let's imagine. They told me : hey meynaf, why don't you buy a peecee ?
Ok. Assume I got a peecee. A few years later, though, it becomes totally obsolete.

What ? I can't run that win95 software with my 386 ?
Hey, wait, pal. Just wait a minute. I bought that damn thing to be able to use all of that peecee software and it no longer can ???

Should I buy a new one ? Perhaps. But a few years later, the problem will return : my P120 won't run WinXp. Ok, I'll get that 700Mhz brand new thing and... what ? It's already not enough ???

[scream mode on]STOP !!![scream mode off]

I don't want to waste money like this, nor do I want to fulfill my attic with all those old machines.

So, if I bought a pc, unless I accept to buy several of them in a few years, each one trashing the knowledge I got because the OS changed too much, the situation would be the same now : I have an old machine.

But, if it's having an old machine, I PREFER ONE WHICH WORKS WELL.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Those things are on a lower level than the gui handling logic. A platform dependent layer can handle those.

That would be adding one more layer. And when you place a button you have to give coordinates, don't you ? Maybe even giving colors ? That's very platform-dependent.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Ok, but it's not a problem when porting an OS to another machine.

Good point. Of course, if you're doing task-to-task data exchanges, memory paging can come in the way and the details will change with the cpu used, but this is another story.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Perhaps if the interface is made generically enough.

It's surely intended to be like that anyway.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Have you thought about doing your own version? Yes you have, haven't you

My own version of AHI ? Nope. But my own easy-to-use audio interface, yes, of course. This is what my sysaud.i include is all about.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Installers that use the Commodore install software ask you if you want to replace existing versions. I think it's built into the software.

Well, perhaps. But there is no Commodore "uninstall" tool.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes. It's HD0:Prefs/Env-Archive Standard Workbench issue.

As I have several WB configs (switched with mouse buttons upon booting), I couldn't be as standard as that...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Ok, I'll try this. But if it makes my miggy boot less fast, then I'm not using it

I doubt it can, because IPrefs stuff WILL be read from disk anyway, and that's all of what's needed.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I've thought of a potential problem. CygnusEd likes to store it's prefs in S: Needs checking, too.

If it does this, then it'll go in my standard prefs dir. No problem. And the dirty little bastard won't even notice its prefs file didn't go in DH0:S/ (which was never meant for that) but in DH0:Prefs/config/ !

Originally Posted by Thorham

Don't know about VB, but VB Express Edition (free to use) is fully managed and it uses the .net bloat framework. So yeah, it's slooooooow Is java also slow when compiled to native asm?

What I can say is that it's slower than fully managed VB code.

Originally Posted by Thorham

For now, only hit the hardware is planned. But perhaps if I need system gfx/snd I'll add those functions.

I suppose you know that you can't hit the hardware and use DOS I/O at the same time.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Really? Never considered that. Still, alcohol is far more dangerous than weed. Not that weed isn't crap...

Just say no (for both)...

Originally Posted by Thorham

In the case of top to bottem/bottom to top renering, it's not a problem. I agree that interlace may be a problem, though

My output code receives the line# (0 to y size -1) and a pointer on actual data. Can be any line on screen. If you can plug some working code on top of that, then it'll be perfect.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I've tested it with my 64 color WinUae Workbench. I've scaled the grabed image down to 66%x66% with Adpro, saved it as a bmp, and rendered one version with V, and another with Adpro. Here are the results in HAM8 iff format (didn't include the original. You know how crisp WB is): Attachment 20041

The results are actually not bad! If you want to test this, just scale down some pics and save them as 24bit BMPs and use your viewer to render the results. I can't believe I didn't think of this before.

Not so bad, yes. Well, ok. But it doesn't solve the interlace problem (gif and png do this ; not jpeg because they'll still be displayed in the normal order).
If this can be handled, I just hope the code size won't raise too much (25 kb to display iff,gif,jpeg,png,bmp,pbm,pcx isn't so bad !).

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

It wasn't "low quality". It was just, you know, less colorful. As all pc monitors I've seen yet. I find it strange you never saw this. But perhaps you just never saw a good CBM monitor.

Hmm, I've had three 1084s, but I know what you mean. One could say that the 1084s have their colors set too intense. In any case, being able to control the color intensity with software (setting in a viewer) would end all these subjective problems.

This would work beyond any doubt. My tv/video box I use on my peecee monitor allows adjusting the colors, and it let's you make them so intense the colors become ugly, just like on regular CRT tvs.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Or maybe the gfx board does this... because the software orders it. Who knows what can happen in those *ahem* beautiful machines.

Interesting question, indeed.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Headphones lol. And where does the bass go with such ridiculously small loudspeakers ???

I have cheap Phillips headphones (12 euros) that have great bass reproduction, so my guess is that some high-end headphones are simply da pimp in audio quality.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Actual Amiga trackers are certainly at level with others. DBPro is one, but OCSS also is.

Never heard of OCSS. The PS2 trackers from Final Fantasy 10/10-II/12 sound just like normal cd tracks. Can the current Amiga trackers match those?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Anyway if format specs can be found, then a player certainly can be written.
Do you have some info ? Maybe some example modules ?

Sadly, no. The WinAmp player simply emulates the PS2s audio hardware and cpu and runs ripped player code. This is actually open source, but to get it to work in a useful way on a '030 would require dynamic re-assembling of the PS2 player code. Not impossible, but will it be good enough?

I do have plenty of PS2 music that is in above ripped format, and getting the player source is as easy as going to Zophar's Domain and downloading the source. Still interested?

Originally Posted by meynaf

You made the choice to have a pc. Now assume lol.

I'll just boot up my miggy, thank you.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Hey come on, stay real. Copying 20kb to ram: doesn't take a significant amount of time !

True

Originally Posted by meynaf

What's actual boot time ?

Cold: 17 secs
Warm: 14 secs

Both times don't include the IdeFix nag requester delay, because IdeFix is executed at the start of the startup-sequence. Could be better, I know.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Hey that's not funny ! (well, perhaps a little bit...)

Just a little bit

Originally Posted by meynaf

But WB won't display available space correctly ! Besides, I hate nag shareware requesters.

True, WB doesn't show it, but Diro 4.16 does, and who cares about that anyway? The nag requester is something I just put-up with until I register IdeFix. Seems worth the money.

Originally Posted by meynaf

For exploration, I like DM-style, at least for dungeons or cities.

You got it, but I quite dislike the city in Ambermoon/star (don't remember which). Has to be solved. This is an example of bad old-schoolness (new word). Perhaps the cities could be done overhead?

Originally Posted by meynaf

An automap is a necessary feature nowadays (can be a standard feature such as in Ambermoon - the shortcut system rules -, a magical object like in DM2, or a spell a la Evil's doom).

It is, actually always has been. I'd prefer a simple system where the characters themselves take care of mapping areas, in other words, completely automatic.

Originally Posted by meynaf

For fights, I prefer turn-based ones. Realtime makes those look like arcade games, as I already said.

Yup, it ain't gonna be an action rpg (I love Diablo 2 LOD, though). And it's here where Fire Emblem truly shines.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Now, if we have a 2D tile view at the center of our screen, what will the rest of the display be ?

Ever thought of making the map full-screen, or almost full-screen? That way you don't have to think about adding all sorts of things that can't be accessed through the menu system easily. I'd try to keep the additional on-screen stuff to a minimum.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I know of mixtures of two kinds (amongst strategy, rpg, adventure), but not all three in the same game.

So do I, never played them, though. Should be interesting!

Originally Posted by meynaf

But now we can make an enormous game because we're no longer limited by making them work in 0.5M or 1M machines, out of 880kb floppies (if it's that you call oldschool).

No, that's not what I call old-school. Advance Wars (fantastic turn based strategy game for Gameboy Advance/Nintendo DS, that plays like an RTS) is a modern hand-held game that could easily fit onto two disks, one boot, and then one swap, done, all on a base A1200. Size doesn't always matter.

A good example would be Dune 2 versus Warcraft 2. Dune 2 could learn a lot from Warcraft 2's setup, and be made much more playable without changing the engine (except for controls).

Originally Posted by meynaf

What sorts of enhancements, then ?

Take DM. Throwing enhances the Ninja skills of a character, but if I throw around stuff all day long, I wouldn't get better at being a ninja, I'd just get stronger and fitter! For the two schools of magic and the Fighter class they got it right. Things like that are fun, but they shouldn't be part of a new game.

As for using magic in DM, this system is fantastic, but it seems to lack some logic and flexibility. These kind of things would have to be improved.

Originally Posted by meynaf

So what do you like ?

Tough question meynaf Hard to say of the top of my head.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Actual program (yes, there is one) can be found here :
meynaf.free.fr/tmp/player-intf.lzx

Interesting, downloaded

Originally Posted by meynaf

This is exactly what I want to do. But where to start ?

That's also a tough question The problem is getting building to make sense in an RPG adventure.

Originally Posted by meynaf

The bigger, the tougher...

Still a dream of mine. And then extend to other whole planets as well, and make it intergalactic...

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you have an idea, please post it.

I will. Land generation should be easy enough, but good dungeons are a lot harder

Originally Posted by meynaf

Alas I don't think a generated world can value a manually drawn one.

It might. The earths continent layout wasn't human made and it's cool, should be possible with a good algorithm. Maybe not that good but still, human made land maps may look human, which is a big no-no with land that should appear as if it formed naturally.

Originally Posted by meynaf

A few things are easily generated : hit-points and locations of monsters, contents of treasure chests, but the adventure story in itself can't be !

Yup, those are simple, but perhaps if you aren't good at coming-up with good story lines (I'm no good, I'm afraid), someone who is can help us?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Then make a port of them :-)

Already thought about it. It would be cool if Nintendo would support this, would make everything much less difficult, but I can't see that happening (haven't actually tried...).

Originally Posted by meynaf

So I did :
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=505342

Cool, man, and they all seem to get pawned by your dungeon, just like I have, hehehe

Originally Posted by meynaf

A download link is mandatory, of course, but that's just a download link (I have no page for this).

Then make pages for all your projects, and do it in English as well! And how about a total site overhaul? Would be cool, because your site doesn't reflect the quality of your projects

Originally Posted by meynaf

I studied the question a lot, you know. Even tried to recode everything

How did it fare?

Originally Posted by meynaf

68k is sure good. I'd love to see a 68080 come in the market, but sadly it's only a dream.

It sure is a dream! Hand coding in assembler made easy, pity it ain't like that anymore.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Strange. Do you have a few examples where this mem-to-mem add/sub would have been a saviour ?

It can be annoying for pre-loop setups, where you have a bunch of values that need muluing/adding/etc to other values which are also stored in memory. It's only really for those cases, really, not necessary at all.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Now I'm waiting. You know where to post ideas.

Almost there. Trust me, this is probably going to be a cake walk

Originally Posted by meynaf

That is not being strange. It is simply not being a sheep.

But let's imagine. They told me : hey meynaf, why don't you buy a peecee ?
Ok. Assume I got a peecee. A few years later, though, it becomes totally obsolete.

What ? I can't run that win95 software with my 386 ?
Hey, wait, pal. Just wait a minute. I bought that damn thing to be able to use all of that peecee software and it no longer can ???

Should I buy a new one ? Perhaps. But a few years later, the problem will return : my P120 won't run WinXp. Ok, I'll get that 700Mhz brand new thing and... what ? It's already not enough ???

[scream mode on]STOP !!![scream mode off]

I don't want to waste money like this, nor do I want to fulfill my attic with all those old machines.

So, if I bought a pc, unless I accept to buy several of them in a few years, each one trashing the knowledge I got because the OS changed too much, the situation would be the same now : I have an old machine.

But, if it's having an old machine, I PREFER ONE WHICH WORKS WELL.

All of the above doesn't apply anymore. I've got an old P III 550 mhz with 256 mb ram running WinXp and I can run all the software I need. And I can also watch movies properly as long as they aren't high-def. This peece was given to me about two or three years ago (the person saved it from the garbage), and it works quite well.

Same for my mom who hasn't got a lot of money. She got a similar peecee from where she works (was also going to get thrown away). It had a completely crapped up Win2000 install on it. I just canned that and installed Ubuntu 8.something and my mom is very happy with the computer.

If you buy a new computer, then it will be useful for at least a decade, and you may just try getting a reliable P III somewhere for almost nothing, or even for free.

Originally Posted by meynaf

That would be adding one more layer. And when you place a button you have to give coordinates, don't you ? Maybe even giving colors ? That's very platform-dependent.

Coordinates and colors aren't very platform dependant.

For coordinates you're only dependent on pixel locations. This works the same on most computers, like Amiga, peecee, probably Macs, too. You just have to make the gui retargetable to handle different screen sizes.

Same goes for colors. On Amigas and peecees, colors are simply RGB. Pre-AGA has four bits per gun color, AGA has eight, peecee has eight. Very easy to convert. Furthermore, both Amigas and peecees have palette modes that work exactly the same. On Amigas the number of colors can be chosen more flexibly, only difference.

Really, those things shouldn't be any problem at all.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Good point. Of course, if you're doing task-to-task data exchanges, memory paging can come in the way and the details will change with the cpu used, but this is another story.

That would have to be handled in a machine specific way anyway. It's just that on a higher level, these things have to work the same, and all that high-level code (or most of it) should be portable.

Originally Posted by meynaf

It's surely intended to be like that anyway.

Hmm, then perhaps I've got an idea...

Originally Posted by meynaf

My own version of AHI ? Nope. But my own easy-to-use audio interface, yes, of course. This is what my sysaud.i include is all about.

Nowing you, sysaud.i is probably a million times faster than AHI anyway

Originally Posted by meynaf

Well, perhaps. But there is no Commodore "uninstall" tool.

That's true! Why did they forget that?

Originally Posted by meynaf

As I have several WB configs (switched with mouse buttons upon booting), I couldn't be as standard as that...

Hehe, I've only got one

Originally Posted by meynaf

I doubt it can, because IPrefs stuff WILL be read from disk anyway, and that's all of what's needed.

We'll see.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If it does this, then it'll go in my standard prefs dir. No problem. And the dirty little bastard won't even notice its prefs file didn't go in DH0:S/ (which was never meant for that) but in DH0:Prefs/config/ !

True, it's quite messy, not a bad idea to change that.

Originally Posted by meynaf

What I can say is that it's slower than fully managed VB code.

What? Compiled to native slower than managed VB code? That's not ridiculous, no, it's obscene

Originally Posted by meynaf

I suppose you know that you can't hit the hardware and use DOS I/O at the same time.

No, meynaf, I didn't know that

Originally Posted by meynaf

Just say no (for both)...

Yeah, I'm in the process of quiting, and when I do, smoking is next. Very bad habit, smoking

Originally Posted by meynaf

My output code receives the line# (0 to y size -1) and a pointer on actual data. Can be any line on screen. If you can plug some working code on top of that, then it'll be perfect.

That seems doable. I'll try. But for some raw datatypes, like bmp, you're decoding method isn't really optimum. BMP codec copies bytes, not longwords (handle by cloning the ham renderer) and the scaling routines can be fitted right in there. For other cases, as I've said, I'll try and see if I can make anything out of it.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Not so bad, yes. Well, ok. But it doesn't solve the interlace problem (gif and png do this ; not jpeg because they'll still be displayed in the normal order).
If this can be handled, I just hope the code size won't raise too much (25 kb to display iff,gif,jpeg,png,bmp,pbm,pcx isn't so bad !).

The quality is as good as it's going to get with ham (difference between Adpro and V being so small says it all). The 25 kb thing, well for interlace this may be a problem, and it might be unavoidable to increase the amount by a lot.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Hmm, I've had three 1084s, but I know what you mean. One could say that the 1084s have their colors set too intense. In any case, being able to control the color intensity with software (setting in a viewer) would end all these subjective problems.

This would work beyond any doubt. My tv/video box I use on my peecee monitor allows adjusting the colors, and it let's you make them so intense the colors become ugly, just like on regular CRT tvs.

I don't think it is too intense, because images are better this way.
Too bad I can't see those too-intense-pc-colors... Makes me curious.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I have cheap Phillips headphones (12 euros) that have great bass reproduction, so my guess is that some high-end headphones are simply da pimp in audio quality.

I have tried not-so-cheap headphones and they're no match against 50cm high loudspeakers plugged in a good stereo system. Frankly it's a different world.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Never heard of OCSS. The PS2 trackers from Final Fantasy 10/10-II/12 sound just like normal cd tracks. Can the current Amiga trackers match those?

If they sound like normal cd tracks, then they probably ARE cd tracks (encoded in some special way). PS1's best musics were nothing but that.

You never heard of Octamed Sound Studio ? Boy, that's bad. Incredible lack of Amiga culture ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

Sadly, no. The WinAmp player simply emulates the PS2s audio hardware and cpu and runs ripped player code. This is actually open source, but to get it to work in a useful way on a '030 would require dynamic re-assembling of the PS2 player code. Not impossible, but will it be good enough?

I do have plenty of PS2 music that is in above ripped format, and getting the player source is as easy as going to Zophar's Domain and downloading the source. Still interested?

No thanks. If it had been tracked music in a similar was as PTK, then ok.
Other platform trackers can easily be played, such as FastTracker2 (PC) or TCB Tracker (Atari ST), but soundchip emulation is a completely different thing.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I'll just boot up my miggy, thank you.

Just hope you won't run out of disk space because of so many huge wave files ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

Cold: 17 secs
Warm: 14 secs

Both times don't include the IdeFix nag requester delay, because IdeFix is executed at the start of the startup-sequence. Could be better, I know.

Could be better, no doubt. My warm reboot time is 5 secs (cold is much more because of my unplugged DF0).

Originally Posted by Thorham

Just a little bit

Ok. But no more

Originally Posted by Thorham

True, WB doesn't show it, but Diro 4.16 does, and who cares about that anyway? The nag requester is something I just put-up with until I register IdeFix. Seems worth the money.

Who cares ? I do. Available space is important for those who have lots of data like me. And Dopus is just too heavy for my taste. Perhaps it's an important factor of your slow boot time ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

You got it, but I quite dislike the city in Ambermoon/star (don't remember which). Has to be solved. This is an example of bad old-schoolness (new word). Perhaps the cities could be done overhead?

Then it's Amberstar. Ambermoon explores cities with a doom-like 3D view. Not old school at all.

Originally Posted by Thorham

It is, actually always has been. I'd prefer a simple system where the characters themselves take care of mapping areas, in other words, completely automatic.

Ambermoon does that, then. But it's quite irrealistic IMHO if there's no known magical stuff behind (or maybe some mapmaking special ability on characters).

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yup, it ain't gonna be an action rpg (I love Diablo 2 LOD, though). And it's here where Fire Emblem truly shines.

I can say I don't like the Diablo series, mainly because you only have one single character.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Ever thought of making the map full-screen, or almost full-screen? That way you don't have to think about adding all sorts of things that can't be accessed through the menu system easily. I'd try to keep the additional on-screen stuff to a minimum.

But how to have access to characters' inventories ? How to cast magical spells ? How to use objects such as potions ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

So do I, never played them, though. Should be interesting!

It appears you have lots of games waiting to be played ;-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

No, that's not what I call old-school. Advance Wars (fantastic turn based strategy game for Gameboy Advance/Nintendo DS, that plays like an RTS) is a modern hand-held game that could easily fit onto two disks, one boot, and then one swap, done, all on a base A1200. Size doesn't always matter.

A good example would be Dune 2 versus Warcraft 2. Dune 2 could learn a lot from Warcraft 2's setup, and be made much more playable without changing the engine (except for controls).

I can't see what exactly you call old school...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Take DM. Throwing enhances the Ninja skills of a character, but if I throw around stuff all day long, I wouldn't get better at being a ninja, I'd just get stronger and fitter! For the two schools of magic and the Fighter class they got it right. Things like that are fun, but they shouldn't be part of a new game.

As for using magic in DM, this system is fantastic, but it seems to lack some logic and flexibility. These kind of things would have to be improved.

But the main problem of DM is that leveling system which nearly forces you to train, even though it takes into account the fact you're actually fighting a monster or not.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Tough question meynaf Hard to say of the top of my head.

You can't say what do you like ? You'd better stop smoking quickly then

Originally Posted by Thorham

Interesting, downloaded

Remember it's only a GUI, no stuff behind

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's also a tough question
The problem is getting building to make sense in an RPG adventure.

Quite a problem, yes. For an example (not pushed far, but example anyway), then you can download the game Legion from Aminet. Buggy Amos game, but nice and original game system.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Still a dream of mine. And then extend to other whole planets as well, and make it intergalactic...

If you can do it for ONE planet, then you can do it for several. Making it intergalactic is some dream of mine too. But let's start with one for now.

Originally Posted by Thorham

I will. Land generation should be easy enough, but good dungeons are a lot harder

Then start with land generation and tell me.

Originally Posted by Thorham

It might. The earths continent layout wasn't human made and it's cool, should be possible with a good algorithm. Maybe not that good but still, human made land maps may look human, which is a big no-no with land that should appear as if it formed naturally.

The earths continent, yes. But the cities built on them were certainly human made, so the human has to edit the generated land to put contents on top of it.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yup, those are simple, but perhaps if you aren't good at coming-up with good story lines (I'm no good, I'm afraid), someone who is can help us?

Story lines aren't the main problem for me. However we still need a world to put it in, and the bigger the world, the bigger the story should be !

Moreover, I think making the game engine work is more important than the story, which can come up much later.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Already thought about it. It would be cool if Nintendo would support this, would make everything much less difficult, but I can't see that happening (haven't actually tried...).

As Nintendo didn't even open their SDK to everyone, it's certainly not going to happen !

Originally Posted by Thorham

Cool, man, and they all seem to get pawned by your dungeon, just like I have, hehehe

It sure is interesting feedback nevertheless.
And remember : it is a challenge. It's not meant to be easy.

By the way you told me that you'd return in here if a I gave out a new version and you didn't. Chickening out ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Then make pages for all your projects, and do it in English as well! And how about a total site overhaul? Would be cool, because your site doesn't reflect the quality of your projects

I'm no web designer. If someone can help me with good html pages, then maybe.

Originally Posted by Thorham

How did it fare?

I ended up with something which looked coherent. I even made a small virtual machine which is the most complicated hello world ever made :-)

Originally Posted by Thorham

It sure is a dream! Hand coding in assembler made easy, pity it ain't like that anymore.

Originally Posted by Thorham

It can be annoying for pre-loop setups, where you have a bunch of values that need muluing/adding/etc to other values which are also stored in memory. It's only really for those cases, really, not necessary at all.

Could I see a concrete example please ? (with actual code, that is)

Originally Posted by Thorham

Almost there. Trust me, this is probably going to be a cake walk

So how's the cake walk going right now ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

All of the above doesn't apply anymore. I've got an old P III 550 mhz with 256 mb ram running WinXp and I can run all the software I need.

For now, yes, you can. But in a few years you no longer will. And this, as soon as WinXp gets abandoned (will be as soon as they can).

Originally Posted by Thorham

And I can also watch movies properly as long as they aren't high-def. This peece was given to me about two or three years ago (the person saved it from the garbage), and it works quite well.

Same for my mom who hasn't got a lot of money. She got a similar peecee from where she works (was also going to get thrown away). It had a completely crapped up Win2000 install on it. I just canned that and installed Ubuntu 8.something and my mom is very happy with the computer.

If you buy a new computer, then it will be useful for at least a decade, and you may just try getting a reliable P III somewhere for almost nothing, or even for free.
Coordinates and colors aren't very platform dependant.

A decade, eh ? My miggy is older than that and your PIII won't last this long. They were never meant to last. And your mom doesn't program. Nor does she know anything else exists. My own mom has an old 386 you know.

Originally Posted by Thorham

For coordinates you're only dependent on pixel locations. This works the same on most computers, like Amiga, peecee, probably Macs, too. You just have to make the gui retargetable to handle different screen sizes.

But how will you handle those different screen sizes ? You can't just rescale, or your fonts will become unreadable (try Apdf on your miggy if you don't see what I mean).

Originally Posted by Thorham

Same goes for colors. On Amigas and peecees, colors are simply RGB. Pre-AGA has four bits per gun color, AGA has eight, peecee has eight. Very easy to convert. Furthermore, both Amigas and peecees have palette modes that work exactly the same. On Amigas the number of colors can be chosen more flexibly, only difference.

So you will easily convert the required colors, and then find that, after converting the 17th different color needed, that you're running on a 16-color screen.
Or you will have a 256-color one, which will certainly not satisfy people who are accustomed with true color displays.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Really, those things shouldn't be any problem at all.

Certainly, especially for people who never actually tried to do them

Originally Posted by Thorham

That would have to be handled in a machine specific way anyway. It's just that on a higher level, these things have to work the same, and all that high-level code (or most of it) should be portable.

On a higher level you'll have nothing left to do...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Hmm, then perhaps I've got an idea...

What idea ? (if I can ask)

Originally Posted by Thorham

Nowing you, sysaud.i is probably a million times faster than AHI anyway

Certainly a lot faster, but it's easy because it won't go above 4 channels (planned but not done).

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's true! Why did they forget that?

It doesn't miss me anyway. It's one software per directory and if you want to trash the software, trash its directory and you're done.

Originally Posted by Thorham

True, it's quite messy, not a bad idea to change that.

S is for scripts, L for handlers. Definitely not for configs and keyfiles.

Originally Posted by Thorham

What? Compiled to native slower than managed VB code? That's not ridiculous, no, it's obscene

Hey, don't you know that managed VB code is also compiled to native ?!

Originally Posted by Thorham

No, meynaf, I didn't know that

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yeah, I'm in the process of quiting, and when I do, smoking is next. Very bad habit, smoking

You smoke ? Damn ! Don't wait for the first metastasis to come before you stop !

Originally Posted by Thorham

That seems doable. I'll try. But for some raw datatypes, like bmp, you're decoding method isn't really optimum. BMP codec copies bytes, not longwords (handle by cloning the ham renderer) and the scaling routines can be fitted right in there. For other cases, as I've said, I'll try and see if I can make anything out of it.

Plugging on the codec isn't what I was saying. It's plugging at start of the common output code.

Btw BMP codec can't copy longwords because it's BGR, not RGB, so bytes have to be swapped.

Originally Posted by Thorham

The quality is as good as it's going to get with ham (difference between Adpro and V being so small says it all). The 25 kb thing, well for interlace this may be a problem, and it might be unavoidable to increase the amount by a lot.

Dunno if it's work doing, then, but still correct for me if it doesn't go above 30k.

[Thorham]

Meynaf, I've come up with a simple little optimization in your bmp copy loop, and wanted to post it before replying to your post.

This code:

	move.b	(a0)+,d5
	move.b	(a0)+,d6
	move.b	(a0)+,(a1)+
	move.b	d6,(a1)+
	move.b	d5,(a1)+

Becomes this:

	move.w	(a0)+,d5
	move.b	(a0)+,(a1)+
	ror.w	#8,d5
	move.w	d5,(a1)+

Tested with my speed testing program. On 1.000.000 loop iterations, about seven frames are saved, yay And as a small bonus, a register is saved, yippy

[meynaf]

Good
This is the style of opt you can come up any time !
Btw you forgot to say it also saves two bytes

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Good
This is the style of opt you can come up any time !
Btw you forgot to say it also saves two bytes.

Oops, forgot that that Glad you like it

Anyway, I've also found two small optimizations for your ham renderer (read the comments I've added):

.loop

 ifne round
	moveq #2,d1
	moveq #2,d2
	moveq #2,d3
	add.b (a0)+,d1
	subx.b d4,d4			; 00 si ok, FF si ça dépasse
	or.b d4,d1			; inchangé si ok, FF si ça dépasse
	add.b (a0)+,d2
	subx.b d4,d4
	or.b d4,d2
	add.b (a0)+,d3
	subx.b d4,d4
	or.b d4,d3
 else					; round=0 pas d'arrondi, on coupe juste
	move.b (a0)+,d1
	move.b (a0)+,d2
	move.b (a0)+,d3
 endc
;
; Do this in parts later.
;
; moveq #-4,d4			; fc
; and.b d4,d1
; and.b d4,d2
; and.b d4,d3
;
 move.l d1,d4			; rrrr....
 lsl.l #4,d4			; rrrr....0000
 move.b d2,d4			; rrrrvvvv....
 lsl.l #4,d4			; rrrrvvvv....0000
 move.b d3,d4			; rrrrvvvvbbbb....
 lsr.l #4,d4			; rrrrvvvvbbbb
 move.l (a5,d4.l*4),a6
;
; Register swap and dec instead of
; inc (modify table gen a little)
;
 move.l d3,d6
 sub.b -(a6),d6
 bcc.s .n0
 neg.b d6

.n0
 move.l d2,d5
 sub.b -(a6),d5
 bcc.s .n1
 neg.b d5

.n1
 move.l d1,d0
 sub.b (a6),d0
 bcc.s .n2
 neg.b d0

.n2
 add.l d5,d0			; r+v
 add.l d0,d0			; (r+v)*2 = 2r+2v
 add.l d5,d0			; 2r+3v
 add.l d6,d0			; 2r+3v+1b

 move.l d1,d4
 sub.l a2,d4
 bpl.s .n3
 neg.l d4
 add.l d4,d4			; r *2

.n3
 move.l d2,d5
 sub.l a3,d5
 bpl.s .n4
 neg.l d5

.n4
 move.l d5,d6
 add.l d5,d5
 add.l d6,d5			; v *3
 move.l d3,d6
 sub.l a4,d6
 bpl.s .n5
 neg.l d6
.n5						; b *1

 add.l d4,d5			; d4=r d5=r+v d6=b
 add.l d6,d4			; r+b r+v b
 add.l d6,d6			; r+b r+v 2b
 add.l d5,d6			; r+b r+v 2b+r+v
 beq.s .vbrb			; all together = 0 -> gbrb
 sub.l d4,d6			; r+b r+v v+b

; d6=r d5=b d4=v d0=f
 cmp.l d4,d6
 bls.s .br
 cmp.l d4,d5
 bls.s .bx
 cmp.l d4,d0
 bls.s .fi

.ve
 moveq #-4,d4		;Moved (see above)
 and.b d4,d2

 move.l d2,a3
 addq.b #3,d2
 move.b d2,(a1)+
 dbf d7,.loop
 rts

.br
 cmp.l d6,d5
 bls.s .bx
 cmp.l d6,d0
 bls.s .fi

.ro
 moveq #-4,d4		;Moved
 and.b d4,d1

 move.l d1,a2
 addq.b #2,d1
 move.b d1,(a1)+
 dbf d7,.loop
 rts

.bx
 cmp.l d5,d0
 bls.s .fi

.bl
 moveq #-4,d4		;Moved
 and.b d4,d3

 move.l d3,a4
 addq.b #1,d3
 move.b d3,(a1)+
 dbf d7,.loop
 rts

.fi
 move.b (a6)+,d3	;Changed from dec to inc.
 move.b (a6)+,d2	;This is why the palette table
 move.b (a6)+,d1	;has to be altered a little.

 move.b (a6),(a1)+	;Moved for pipeline.

 move.l d1,a2
 move.l d2,a3
 move.l d3,a4
 dbf d7,.loop
 rts

.vbrb
 btst #0,d7				; 0,2 -> b
 beq.s .bl
 btst #1,d7				; 1 -> r
 beq.s .ro
 bra.s .ve				; 3 -> v	(3210->vbrb)

This will save four cycles in in the three r/g/b cases, and about twelve (I think) in the palette case. I never thought I'd think of a way to optimize this baby further

Originally Posted by meynaf

I don't think it is too intense, because images are better this way.
Too bad I can't see those too-intense-pc-colors... Makes me curious.

Yup, just like on a tv with colors set to max, but without the color bleeding.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I have tried not-so-cheap headphones and they're no match against 50cm high loudspeakers plugged in a good stereo system. Frankly it's a different world.

In terms of bass reproduction it is. I find while watching movies with headphones, I can hear more sounds clearly. There's a difference that goes both ways.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If they sound like normal cd tracks, then they probably ARE cd tracks (encoded in some special way). PS1's best musics were nothing but that.

The Final Fantasy games all use a tracked format, but they sound just like cd tracks, especially the PS2 games.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You never heard of Octamed Sound Studio ? Boy, that's bad. Incredible lack of Amiga culture ;-)

Yes, I have, but I'm just unfamiliar with the abbreviation you used.

Originally Posted by meynaf

No thanks. If it had been tracked music in a similar was as PTK, then ok.
Other platform trackers can easily be played, such as FastTracker2 (PC) or TCB Tracker (Atari ST), but soundchip emulation is a completely different thing.

Would've been cool though...

Originally Posted by meynaf

Just hope you won't run out of disk space because of so many huge wave files ;-)

That's not likely to happen, because I don't have that much music.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Could be better, no doubt. My warm reboot time is 5 secs (cold is much more because of my unplugged DF0).

Only five? Hmm, that is fast... Could you post your startup-sequence please?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Who cares ? I do. Available space is important for those who have lots of data like me. And Dopus is just too heavy for my taste. Perhaps it's an important factor of your slow boot time ;-)

Dopus heavy? Wait, you mean Dopus 5+, the Dopus that can be used as a Workbench replacement. I don't use that, I use Dopus 4.16, the open source version: Directory Opus 4 Research Project. This does not replace Workbench, but is a stand alone program.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Then it's Amberstar. Ambermoon explores cities with a doom-like 3D view. Not old school at all.

3D view can be old-school, just look at Wolfstein 3D, that's as old-school as it can get.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Ambermoon does that, then. But it's quite irrealistic IMHO if there's no known magical stuff behind (or maybe some mapmaking special ability on characters).

Magical maps or character skills are the best.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I can say I don't like the Diablo series, mainly because you only have one single character.

What? You don't like Diablo 2? Sacrilege

Originally Posted by meynaf

But how to have access to characters' inventories ? How to cast magical spells ? How to use objects such as potions ?

Make menus appear over the map screen, or even replace it. If this proves to be a pain, it can be changed.

Originally Posted by meynaf

It appears you have lots of games waiting to be played ;-)

Yes, I do.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I can't see what exactly you call old school...

Pang is an example of an old-school game (and a very good one at that, they just don't make them like that anymore ). A game like Hired Guns is more modern than Pang (hate the inventory screen, though).

Originally Posted by meynaf

But the main problem of DM is that leveling system which nearly forces you to train, even though it takes into account the fact you're actually fighting a monster or not.

I never train much, and I always go solo with Halk. I just gain a few Ninja levels, and gain a few magic class levels (when the first wand and bottles are found). The rest of the game is often played just with that basis. You don't really need to train a lot.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You can't say what do you like ? You'd better stop smoking quickly then.

Perhaps One thing I like is the Hired Guns splitscreen view, and a full 3D environment. This 3D environment can be implemented like in Hired Guns. The game's internals are based around a basic 3D system, while the graphics are hand drawn/pre-rendered. It's a start

Originally Posted by meynaf

Remember it's only a GUI, no stuff behind/

That's fine, mate.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Quite a problem, yes. For an example (not pushed far, but example anyway), then you can download the game Legion from Aminet. Buggy Amos game, but nice and original game system.

Ah, yes, I'll have a go at that one.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you can do it for ONE planet, then you can do it for several. Making it intergalactic is some dream of mine too. But let's start with one for now.

Yes, that's a good idea.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Then start with land generation and tell me.

Ok, I'll see what I can do.

Originally Posted by meynaf

The earths continent, yes. But the cities built on them were certainly human made, so the human has to edit the generated land to put contents on top of it.

Exactly. The layout isn't human made, but what's on top is. Should work for a game.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Moreover, I think making the game engine work is more important than the story, which can come up much later.

Yes, the game engine is the most important. I think I have some good ideas about that. They have to be worked out a bit, but I can post them later.

Originally Posted by meynaf

As Nintendo didn't even open their SDK to everyone, it's certainly not going to happen !

In true big company style

Originally Posted by meynaf

It sure is interesting feedback nevertheless.
And remember : it is a challenge. It's not meant to be easy.

See my posts in that thread for some comments

Originally Posted by meynaf

By the way you told me that you'd return in here if a I gave out a new version and you didn't. Chickening out ?

Hey, now, I have returned, check my comments

Originally Posted by meynaf

I'm no web designer. If someone can help me with good html pages, then maybe.

Can you show an example of what you like?

Originally Posted by meynaf

I ended up with something which looked coherent. I even made a small virtual machine which is the most complicated hello world ever made :-)

Cool So, how fast is it?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Could I see a concrete example please ? (with actual code, that is)

You want me to dig this up? Oh boy, that's going to take some serious code reading... It's just like I described, and it doesn't happen often at all. When it does, it's just a little annoying, nothing more. It's the only gripe I have with 68k, and that says it all, I guess.

Originally Posted by meynaf

So how's the cake walk going right now ?

I think I have something useful, I can post it next time when the code is ready.

Originally Posted by meynaf

For now, yes, you can. But in a few years you no longer will. And this, as soon as WinXp gets abandoned (will be as soon as they can).

People are still using Win98 in this day and age, so I don't think it's going to be a problem any time soon.

Originally Posted by meynaf

A decade, eh ? My miggy is older than that and your PIII won't last this long. They were never meant to last.

But what is meant to last? They haven't been making stuff like they used to for a long time now. And I don't see my peecee dieing any time soon. There's nothing wrong with it.

Originally Posted by meynaf

And your mom doesn't program. Nor does she know anything else exists. My own mom has an old 386 you know.

My mom does know what else exists, because she uses computers at her job. The point is that just because things are a little slow, it doesn't mean she doesn't get great usability, and it's because she does get good use from the machine, she's happy with it. As said, she doesn't have a lot of money, and if having a little patience saves her a ton of money, that's fine with her.

Originally Posted by meynaf

But how will you handle those different screen sizes ? You can't just rescale, or your fonts will become unreadable (try Apdf on your miggy if you don't see what I mean).

WinXp handles different screen sizes and allows the user to set a global font size. Works very well. And I'm not trying that horrible program, it sucks badly

Originally Posted by meynaf

So you will easily convert the required colors, and then find that, after converting the 17th different color needed, that you're running on a 16-color screen.
Or you will have a 256-color one, which will certainly not satisfy people who are accustomed with true color displays.

You can have different sets of base colors. Again, Windows handles different color modes (true color and indexed) with ease. Not a problem.

Originally Posted by meynaf

On a higher level you'll have nothing left to do...

Hmm, I want to see that. I just don't think it's a very good idea to do everything in asm.

Originally Posted by meynaf

What idea ? (if I can ask)

An idea for a modern looking gui option. The gui can simply use the NewIcons palette and use a NewIcons style color remapping routine. Now the gui can look like those WinAmp skins. With a generic interface this should be implementable.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Certainly a lot faster, but it's easy because it won't go above 4 channels (planned but not done).

Ok, but hand coded channel mixing should be a lot faster than Ahi's routines (or so it seems).

Originally Posted by meynaf

It doesn't miss me anyway. It's one software per directory and if you want to trash the software, trash its directory and you're done.

That way is the best. Shared components can go in the system directories, and the rest, including prefs, goes into the software's own directory.

Originally Posted by meynaf

S is for scripts, L for handlers. Definitely not for configs and keyfiles.

Very true.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Hey, don't you know that managed VB code is also compiled to native ?!

Well, yes, but seeing how slow it is makes me wonder sometimes.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You smoke ? Damn ! Don't wait for the first metastasis to come before you stop !

Yup, I drink and I smoke. Baaaaaaad habits, I know

Originally Posted by meynaf

Plugging on the codec isn't what I was saying. It's plugging at start of the common output code.

I know. It's just that the unencoded codecs (bmp,ppm) can be made faster if they do scaling and not just copying. Same for jpeg actually. Say you want to scale to 50%x50% and the jpeg's cbcr component is already half the size of the Y component, then only the Y component needs scaling. After that, the components are combined. Much faster. Now I'm not saying it should be done this way, but it may be something to think about.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Btw BMP codec can't copy longwords because it's BGR, not RGB, so bytes have to be swapped.

Use two ham rendering loops. They're less than 256 bytes.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Dunno if it's work doing, then, but still correct for me if it doesn't go above 30k.

Oh, you meant code size. I thought you were talking about the work space Staying under 30k should be easy enough. My whole bmp viewer is less than seven kb.