What Software does 68K Amiga need?

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by DrBong

+1 for Gimp - great little gfx app!

How does it compare to ArtEffect, Photogenics 5 or FXPaint?

[matthey]

Originally Posted by modrobert

I'm getting that amiga.org/amigans.net vibe at EAB, the topic here is "What Software does 68K Amiga need?", with emphasis on 68k (not NG).

You have to look at the current situation and the reasons, "Why don't we have or receive 68k Amiga software?" before, "What Software does 68K Amiga need?" or this thread is dreaming and should be moved to the Off Topic portion of the forum. Currently, the 68k Amiga is getting only a handful of new productivity software applications per year which are mostly ports and the quality is generally poor. There are a few more games per year for the 68k Amiga including a few originals with quality varying. This is the Amiga scene forum so maybe we need a poll. The Amiga scene is...

1) almost dead
2) next to dead
3) dead
4) pancakes

I bet pancakes wins because Amiga users don't want to address reality or face the problems. I may seem pessimistic but I am one of the people who has tried to improve the situation but few want to help a dead platform and from the outside the Amiga and 68k are perceived as being long dead.

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by Leandro Jardim

A new version of UAE and UAE4ALL for 68k. I vote also for a new version for NG too. Both ports with the main feaures of their main counterparts.

PPC emulator

[Ratteler]

I don't have experience with those apps, but I would suggest it's closest comparison is Photoshop.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

PPC emulator

Hehe. Great idea.

Originally Posted by matthey

You have to look at the current situation and the reasons, "Why don't we have or receive 68k Amiga software?" before, "What Software does 68K Amiga need?" or this thread is dreaming and should be moved to the Off Topic portion of the forum. Currently, the 68k Amiga is getting only a handful of new productivity software applications per year which are mostly ports and the quality is generally poor. There are a few more games per year for the 68k Amiga including a few originals with quality varying. This is the Amiga scene forum so maybe we need a poll. The Amiga scene is...

1) almost dead
2) next to dead
3) dead
4) pancakes

I bet pancakes wins because Amiga users don't want to address reality or face the problems. I may seem pessimistic but I am one of the people who has tried to improve the situation but few want to help a dead platform and from the outside the Amiga and 68k are perceived as being long dead.

I have a lot of fun with Amiga as a hobby and can't really relate to any of your problems. There are so many new projects and releases I tend to miss some great ones, like this game for example.

Perhaps it would be easier if you tell us what you want?

To me EAB is the place where Amiga people meet and make dreams come true by actually doing stuff, instead of just whining.

BTW: I'm in the process of looking at the OpenSSH sources and there seems to be an option to compile without OpenSSL, which is promising, still not decided if I should try and port it or not, but have an idea how to implement AES natively.

[idrougge]

Actually, what the Amiga needs is a working, up-to-date shared library for SSL/SSH so that we don't fill our hard drives with lots of applications that statically link to their own version of SSL, rendering multi-megabyte binaries.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Actually, what the Amiga needs is a working, up-to-date shared library for SSL/SSH so that we don't fill our hard drives with lots of applications that statically link to their own version of SSL, rendering multi-megabyte binaries.

Regarding "multi-megabyte binaries", OpenSSL for Amiga 68k on Aminet requires 8mb RAM, ixemul-48.0, WB 3.x, and relies on an additional random device handler.

There is also the AmiSSL library which have known vulnerabilities and is kind of slow, at least when using it with iBrowse. The source code (SAS/C) is available for the AmiSSL library I linked, so if someone feel like taking a look at that, go ahead. EDIT: Just noticed that Jens Maus has been active with recent commits to the AmiSSL repository so perhaps a new release is on the way.

Personally I think a lightweight 'ssh' port is more interesting to implement.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by matthey

You have to look at the current situation and the reasons, "Why don't we have or receive 68k Amiga software?" before, "What Software does 68K Amiga need?" or this thread is dreaming and should be moved to the Off Topic portion of the forum. Currently, the 68k Amiga is getting only a handful of new productivity software applications per year which are mostly ports and the quality is generally poor. There are a few more games per year for the 68k Amiga including a few originals with quality varying. This is the Amiga scene forum so maybe we need a poll. The Amiga scene is...

1) almost dead
2) next to dead
3) dead
4) pancakes

I bet pancakes wins because Amiga users don't want to address reality or face the problems. I may seem pessimistic but I am one of the people who has tried to improve the situation but few want to help a dead platform and from the outside the Amiga and 68k are perceived as being long dead.

it depends how you define "dead" here. In the sense of becoming a competitive platform on a similar level as the mainstream platforms it is totally dead and will never become live there again. That has to do with the fact that it died commercially 15-20 years ago and development outside has not stopped, that has to do with how software is created today with of course no support for Amiga now. That has to with the way f.e. games are created today. The chance to get any new software from commercial developers for a market with only thousands of potential buyers (already optimistic guess) is zero. Applications are even potential more risky, in the old times many of the applications were written by students but amiga today does not exist anymore, students today certainly are neither knowing of it nor interested to support it. The existing users are mainly retro people, that want to run the old software (expecially games) on the hardware, if possible faster of course. They want to use the old OS, perhaps updated hardware, but it is a retro community. Something I did not see (or better not wanted to see) myself and now understand. So it really depends what you expected of the future. I would not say dead, there will be some development, some home-brew software, some ports. If you think of a competitive platform in todays terms it is dead.

[ptyerman]

It will never be dead while someone still uses it.
Also, for a "dead" system there sure is a lot of new hardware coming out for it!

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

It will never be dead while someone still uses it.
Also, for a "dead" system there sure is a lot of new hardware coming out for it!

Matthew I think dreamed of a revived platform in sense of a commercial relevant platform in 2016 terms. In this sense it is dead. That does not mean that there are no new hardware or software, just on a low level (again in 2016 terms).

[ptyerman]

In the commercial sense it died in 1994 with Commodore, that's true.
It's not to us diehards though!

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

it depends how you define "dead" here. In the sense of becoming a competitive platform on a similar level as the mainstream platforms it is totally dead and will never become live there again. That has to do with the fact that it died commercially 15-20 years ago and development outside has not stopped, that has to do with how software is created today with of course no support for Amiga now. That has to with the way f.e. games are created today. The chance to get any new software from commercial developers for a market with only thousands of potential buyers (already optimistic guess) is zero. Applications are even potential more risky, in the old times many of the applications were written by students but amiga today does not exist anymore, students today certainly are neither knowing of it nor interested to support it. The existing users are mainly retro people, that want to run the old software (expecially games) on the hardware, if possible faster of course. They want to use the old OS, perhaps updated hardware, but it is a retro community. Something I did not see (or better not wanted to see) myself and now understand. So it really depends what you expected of the future. I would not say dead, there will be some development, some home-brew software, some ports. If you think of a competitive platform in todays terms it is dead.

I agree with your points regarding retro, mainstream and games, but would also like to add, some of us are not happy with the direction of modern software and hardware platforms. Bloated end user code written in high level languages which only works because there are X number of cores running over GHz speeds, and it still lags more often than not. The performance of many "modern apps" today would have been laughed at in the Amiga community back in the day, back to the drawing board, it's called "optimization", a crucial part of development (also the part which is most fun IMHO). My argument is even more apparent in the demo scene where Amiga still rules in many ways along with C64, and rightfully so.

One of the reasons I got back into Amiga and bought an A1200 again (sold my first one back in 199x) was because of the amazing software, some still being developed, many times better than any PC/Mac/Arm/whatever alternatives which is no small feat considering byte size and processing power. Sure, the classic games and great communities like this one made it even more interesting.

BTW: 68k is one of the few CPU architectures where assembler is truly beautiful, thank you CISC.

[OlafSch]

@modrobert

I not doubt that most Software is bloated. You develop in a IDE and then compile for your target (like in Hollywood) and lots of stuff is added, some certainly not necessary but nobody cares today. When I compile something in Delphi f.e. the whole class library is added so you get a 25-30 MB exe that just opens a empty window. You could optimise it partly but I have never looked at because it is not relevant. In the time Amiga was a mainstream platform RAM was very very expensive and expecially amiga lacked it a lot (next to processor power) and even worse A500 with disc drives was standard for gaming so developers had to invest a lot of time to shrink it down to discs and optimize it for the slow amiga hardware, that made porting expensive, adding low sales it was one of the reasons why amiga died finally because nobody was willing to invest lots of time in a shrinking platform. I know that people left in community prefer "non-bloated for amiga optimized" software but that is hardly attracting commercial developers from outside (unfortunately).

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by modrobert

I agree with your points regarding retro, mainstream and games, but would also like to add, some of us are not happy with the direction of modern software and hardware platforms.

Count me in the "some of us", for sure

Originally Posted by modrobert

BTW: 68k is one of the few CPU architectures where assembler is truly beautiful, thank you CISC.

One of the few ? I'd rather say the one and only...

Originally Posted by OlafSch

I know that people left in community prefer "non-bloated for amiga optimized" software but that is hardly attracting commercial developers from outside (unfortunately).

Sorry for replying to a post that wasn't directed to me, but i have to say that commercial developers are only attracted by high number of sales.
Whether the software avoids bloat or not, is irrelevant in comparison.

[ptyerman]

It is really sad how much the software world has changed in 20 years. I mean, you had games like Frontier on the Amiga that included a WHOLE galaxy and fitted on a single 880k floppy disk, and now you have stuff like Elite 4 (which is sh*t in my opinion) that is multiples of Gigabytes in size and half the gameplay. It stinks the way that computers and software have changed.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

@modrobert
I know that people left in community prefer "non-bloated for amiga optimized" software but that is hardly attracting commercial developers from outside (unfortunately).

I think commercial sounds boring, if the heart is not in it what's the point?

OK, to be fair, I have to do shit to make money as well, but it's not something that burns my midnight oil smiling while watching a shining CRT screen.

Imagine what you could achieve driven by challenging limits and friends who really appreciate your effort in a community where people share everything.

Originally Posted by meynaf

One of the few ? I'd rather say the one and only...

Hehe. I was thinking of 6510, perhaps a bit biased, C64 was my first computer tinkering with assembler after all.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

It is really sad how much the software world has changed in 20 years. I mean, you had games like Frontier on the Amiga that included a WHOLE galaxy and fitted on a single 880k floppy disk, and now you have stuff like Elite 4 (which is sh*t in my opinion) that is multiples of Gigabytes in size and half the gameplay. It stinks the way that computers and software have changed.

I admire developers like David Braben who developed games that worked sufficient on 64kb 8-bit computers, the tricks of demo developers were astonishing and s on. But times have changed. At that time a lot of efforts were made to let it fit on disks and run on limited hardware but not voluntary in all cases... I can remember reading of one developer that moaned that he has to invest more time in optimizations than in game play. Commercial developers then solved it their way... they dropped support

[ptyerman]

Yeah, and then most of them died a sudden death or were swallowed up by the likes of Electronic Farts. The grass isn't always greener on the other side.
Pretty mute now though, it was all 20 year ago.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by modrobert

I think commercial sounds boring, if the heart is not in it what's the point?

OK, to be fair, I have to do shit to make money as well, but it's not something that burns my midnight oil smiling while watching a shining CRT screen.

Imagine what you could achieve driven by challenging limits and friends who really appreciate your effort in a community where people share everything.

do you speak of amiga community? :-)

one of the problem is that developers often get no reward (be it donations or simply feedback) and then give up. I do not want to talk down others who are happy I only explain why Matthew (propably) made his comment. We should see the situation how it is. I am personally at the moment have different personal trouble (real life) and I have enough to do and to learn in normal world running boring development environments on boring bloated OS and am not unhappy with it. I have not much time at the moment but that might change somewhen. My Aros distribution is on hold at the moment, I understand that people prefer the old original Amiga OS with lots of patches to it and I am fine with that. I just lack (next to time) motivation to do something with it.

[ptyerman]

Aros 68k will come into its own once Vampire is readily available I think. I will most certainly be installing it on at least one of my Amiga's, probably the A2000 once it has a vampire.