Vampire discourse, keep it civil (was: Vampire 1200 V2 waiting times)

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

You both fall into the same trap in slightly differnet ways. That trap is failing to recognize that in this debate you support one side and are thus biased.

I actually really don't care about one side or the other as I think a lot of these different projects are great! And I'm seriously considering having a look at the PiStorm soon.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Now, there is nothing wrong with that in itself, but dismissing the arguments of the other side as "butthurt" or painting people as unreasonable in less explicit manner ("they should start looking...") is precisely the ideological/religious kind of stance you decry.

Because many of the comments (not all) that have been made in this thread have been guided by emotion, particularly over some perceived bad behavior or mistreatment they have experienced from those of the Apollo Team.

[Vamplover]

Very very very sorrys if I offends anyone in this forums. My Vampire love is eternal and knows no bounds. I really believes it’s the next chapters in Amiga evolution. The AAA chipset is finally hears and it has blood on it.

[Vamplover]

I wish everyone’s life, love, health and happiness and wish you good will on your Vampire purchase soon. It will brings your Amiga back to lifes from the graves!

[dreadnought]

:d

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by klx300r

Originally Posted by Vamplover

Very very very sorrys if I offends anyone in this forums. My Vampire love is eternal and knows no bounds. I really believes it’s the next chapters in Amiga evolution. The AAA chipset is finally hears and it has blood on it.

No apologies necessary, I can fully believe it now, the Maggie.library will deliver even better 3d graphics than an S3 Virge even! But nothing that runs on the same card will run on the Maggie, and I am thrilled at this. Because the S3 Virge is not good and Maggie is vary gud! All hail a vampire and anything that is against a vampire is a van helsing, which is a vary BAD MAN! And we don't like a BAD MAN!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

At 50MHz it's cooler than the V2 FPGA (I haven't used a V4 so I can't comment there).

What does '50MHz" mean?

The Quikpak A4000T shipped with an '060. While the '060 was only released around the time Commodore went under, the Amiga survived a while longer as a commercial product.

Ah yes, I had forgotten about that. They came out in 1996, 2 years after Commodore's demise, and were described as "100% Amiga compatible". AFAIK they were not available in New Zealand.

To my mind any 'Amiga' produced after Commodore's demise and/or not made by them is a clone. That includes the AT1200 with it's cheap plastic case and incorrectly jumped floppy drive - even if the motherboards were NOS.

Just like the '040. And, as with the '040, they're well known, well documented and catered for by CPU libraries and WHDLoad.

All of which is completely different from those awful non-Amiga compatible Vampires, right? I bet they aren't catered for by CPU libraries and WHDLoad!

[OlafSch]

I really do not understand the whole almost "religious" discussions. There will be never anything that makes everyone happy. We all should be happy to have the "choice" in opposition to other platforms. And there will be never agreement what amiga is or will be. For Example Deadwood from aros team is currently fixing Scalos and willl port it to linux (together with other software/components). If all goes well you will be able to have amiga look&feel based on Linux using a amiga desktop and mixing linux and amiga software. I am looking forward to it because it will offer new opportunities. Is is amiga? For me yes because it will offer the look & feel of amiga. Will it be for everyone? No. The same is true on 68k. You have different choices with different advantages and disadvantages. Nothing will be for everyone. No need for bashing each other.

And even if there is "exclusive" software that only runs on Vampire. Every developer can decide on its own what to do. I cannot blame members of apollo team do develop software for vampire. And the ports always run on other platforms too.

[Vamplover]

Dr Apollo disagrees, exclusive softwares for Vamp is staying on Vampire onlees. The software Invaders will keep makes more and more excluse games until all Amiga lovers become Vampire lovers. Thens Amiga Vampire sales will increase more than the Commodores and Specky times. Amiga times was limited and small. Vampire times will be big and eternal. Old TV show villains to Vampires can keep their steaks, they won’t need ‘em. Empty the wallets of $$$ and joins new thriving communities. Leave the Vultures and the Bens behind. I Freden double dares you. Don’t be a Hans. The Timberwolf already died long ago bf Vampire times.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Vamplover can I ask you a question ?
How many years has Vampire been in existence ?
Can you list all the software you know that is native to Vampire?

[Promilus]

A lot of misconceptions here.
1st - it is obvious to anyone with at least working knowledge about how "enhanced features" of Apollo cards work it's absolutely possible for exclusive titles to be released solely for Apollo cards. Most of the demos of SAGA and Maggie are already that kind of software. It isn't bad business-wise to get as many of those as possible. It would most likely bump up sales of Apollo products significantly should there be any noteworthy exclusives. But that's good for Apollo business. It's not necessarily the best for Amiga community as a whole. Neither would be PiStorm or UAE exclusive with 060@500MHz JIT performance and requirement of Gpix/s fillrate (which V4 just can't hope to match), right? Right. But it would surely bump up interest in either of them.

AC68080 and SAGA were developed in one ideological target and one business target. Ideological target was to create platform which would be faster than classic, still nice to write software in 68k asm without relying on different architectures (not as nice to write in asm like ARM, x86 or PPC) and also fitting nicely as "natural upgrade" to AGA. Business target is to get money for continuous development (and more). And in both aspects it did splendid.

But - there's a reason 30 years ago RTG subsystem was created. SAGA supports it too. And most developers given choice will try to accommodate bigger userbase (so RTG rather than SAGA specific features). What Amiga lacks nowadays ain't only CPU speed or 3d graphics. It's software. New and fresh. One might say "yay, those 68k asm loving developers just got pretty decent platform to work on" but it's not all that easy. Dread is one POC game which is made using rather modern hardware and IDE (PC and VSCode with plugin) and targets stock Amigas. So it is not like PC and WinUAE doesn't contribute to Amiga software development (as such claim was presented here). It certainly does. But there's not all that much developers left. And while jumping to deep water like VSCode might be too much Apollo "coding school" area is nice touch and indeed might just let some ppl learn a thing or two and release some new small games for fun. What is kind of scary though is that most of those new developers will inherently be SAGA&AMMX-oriented.

[Tigerskunk]

While I think the capabilities of SAGA are nice, I am not sure releasing a new "oldschool" standard these days is a good idea.
It's a bit what the Mega65 or Commander X16 does. In the end these things are "retro fantasy platforms".

Doing things in an oldschool way for which there have been better and easier solutions decades ago.

I code on OCS and AGA because they were invented back in the day and are kind of "legit", and what most games used in the times I fondly remember when the Amiga was king.

I really like my V1200, but I see it more like a nice accelerator with RTG and a few I/O things tacked on.

Not much interest in the Vamp as a coding platform here.
I might target AGA060 in the future, to have a common base, but I don't see myself using SAGA.

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by Promilus

It's not necessarily the best for Amiga community as a whole.

Why? If a person simply isn't interested in Apollo products then they're certainly not going to feel like they're missing out on any exclusives for it. They're just not going to care.
And developers are free to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to develop exclusively for Apollo products. And if they want to, they can develop non-Apollo versions.
Don't see why there should be any problem.

[Cego]

Originally Posted by Promilus

A lot of misconceptions here.

Don't think so...

1st - it is obvious to anyone with at least working knowledge about how "enhanced features" of Apollo cards work it's absolutely possible for exclusive titles to be released solely for Apollo cards.

Thats the case with almost anything on the Amiga. I have already made a detailed explanation, but you seem to overlook it on purpose, but feel free to reply if you can

But that's good for Apollo business. It's not necessarily the best for Amiga community as a whole. Neither would be PiStorm or UAE exclusive with 060@500MHz JIT performance and requirement of Gpix/s fillrate (which V4 just can't hope to match), right? Right. But it would surely bump up interest in either of them.

So whats your solution? You want no further Amiga development which pushes the boundaries? Stick with overclocked 68060 and old RTG cards?
New and faster hardware is a must, if you want to have games like Diablo or NeoGeo emulators or better software (like uptodate webbrowser, email client etc). So basically you want the Amiga development to halt and stay performance wise where we have been 6-7 years ago before Apollo was released? Thats what you're actually telling here...

AC68080 and SAGA were developed in one ideological target and one business target. Ideological target was to create platform which would be faster than classic, still nice to write software in 68k asm without relying on different architectures (not as nice to write in asm like ARM, x86 or PPC) and also fitting nicely as "natural upgrade" to AGA. Business target is to get money for continuous development (and more). And in both aspects it did splendid.

i see no problem here. People should and must earn money somehow to live.
Those projects are huge and need a lot of resources.

But - there's a reason 30 years ago RTG subsystem was created. SAGA supports it too. And most developers given choice will try to accommodate bigger userbase (so RTG rather than SAGA specific features). What Amiga lacks nowadays ain't only CPU speed or 3d graphics.

The reason was to keep the Amiga uptodate with high resolution screenmodes and chunky graphics.
Today there's no other way than building better graphics chips and CPUs if you want to stay compatible and have more power at the same time. The only alternative today would be switching to another ISA and use AROS on x86 f.e. or MorphOS on a G5.

It's software. New and fresh.

You're criticizing that new hardware brings incompatibilities but at the same time demand new software, which would require faster machines. How's that possible?
How do you wanna have new software like PSX emulator running on an 060 with RTG? How's Quake3 or Diablo possible on the old established standard you're talking about? You're also talking about 3D, but there are just a handful of gfx cards that can handle 3D and all of them are 20+ years old.
How do you wnat to have new softwrae for those cards if they're too slow?
It makes no sense to write new software, if you're CPU and GFX card cant handle it.

One might say "yay, those 68k asm loving developers just got pretty decent platform to work on" but it's not all that easy. Dread is one POC game which is made using rather modern hardware and IDE (PC and VSCode with plugin) and targets stock Amigas. So it is not like PC and WinUAE doesn't contribute to Amiga software development (as such claim was presented here).

Thats a totally different topic. Using AMMX/SAGA also benefits from modern IDEs. The only way to run highend apps on RTG/060 is on WinUAE. But as a i said, emulators should not be a yardstick and requirement for amiga software to run in 2022. Most Amiga users want to use their real machines and with the power they offer.

It certainly does. But there's not all that much developers left. And while jumping to deep water like VSCode might be too much Apollo "coding school" area is nice touch and indeed might just let some ppl learn a thing or two and release some new small games for fun. What is kind of scary though is that most of those new developers will inherently be SAGA&AMMX-oriented.

Why is it scary? Did you also think the same, when 060/FPU was introduced to the Amiga? Did you think the same when Amiga made the transition to PPC?


Repeating your illogical arguments over and over won't make them more truthful.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

What does '50MHz" mean?

But, just in case, hertz (symbolised as Hz) is the SI unit of frequency, equal to cycles per second. As an SI unit, the M prefix indicates mega, or millions of the given unit. So, MHz denotes millions of cycles per second, so 50MHz means fifty million cycles per second. I'm surprised someone with your rich history of all things computer related has managed to be confused by this. Technically, for SI units that aren't expressed in degrees, there should be a space between the number and the unit designator, so my apologies if that oversight confused you.

In this context, just in case that has also escaped your wide knowledge, 50MHz is the stock frequency of the Rev. 6 68060, which is the CPU under discussion.

To my mind any 'Amiga' produced after Commodore's demise and/or not made by them is a clone. That includes the AT1200 with it's cheap plastic case and incorrectly jumped floppy drive - even if the motherboards were NOS.

Just as well you're not the arbiter of all things Amiga.

All of which is completely different from those awful non-Amiga compatible Vampires, right? I bet they aren't catered for by CPU libraries and WHDLoad!

Ah, so Setpatch now recognises the "68080" now, and loads 68080.library? I take it there's a place for any customer to download the 68080.library file that the Vampire team developed and released? Does it still need to patch Kickstart to enable the onboard fast RAM, or have they finally decided to use the long-established Autoconfig system?

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Cego

So whats your solution? You want no further Amiga development which pushes the boundaries? Stick with overclocked 68060 and old RTG cards?
New and faster hardware is a must, if you want to have games like Diablo or NeoGeo emulators or better software (like uptodate webbrowser, email client etc). So basically you want the Amiga development to halt and stay performance wise where we have been 6-7 years ago before Apollo was released? Thats what you're actually telling here...

News flash: Amiga is dead and it has been dead for the last ~30 years. We are all playing with old stuff, so yes, we can keep using old stuff and the world won't end

I would honestly stick with what was available back then with a modern twist to replace old, now-too-expensive hardware. A cheap emulated 060 + RTG for 150€? Why, yes, thank you! This is what made me excited for the very first Vampire back then.

I understand the fun in porting a very demanding engine and/or game to under-powered (or not native) hardware. It's a challenge that pushes the programmer to pull every trick in the book to make the impossible possible.

But when you throw brute force at the problem (with the 68080 and/or a PiStorm), then you can just "lazily" port stuff and the challenge is gone.

That's why programmers in 2022 keep targeting old platforms for their ports and new developments. To do something now that would've been possible back in 19xx if we had access to the knowledge base that is available now. Still, it's something that you would have been technically able to pull back then and the satisfaction in being able to do something like that is immense, even if 20-something years later.

Meanwhile... Doing stuff possible in 2022 with powerful hardware made in 2022? Where is the fun in that?

Just my two cents, peace and good luck to the Apollo Team in bringing their vision to completion.

[Promilus]

@Cego

Thats the case with almost anything on the Amiga. I have already made a detailed explanation

No it is not. App made for RTG and fast CPU will work with PiStorm, most likely will work on MOS and AOS4 as well with 68k emulator embedded in the system. App developed in asm and with directly talking to SAGA registers won't work on any other platform whatsoever. And writing directly to the hardware (new hardware) is also goal of Apollo Team. At the time PS1 was released there wasn't a real need for hardware sprites anyway. And you can have ~4000 sprites on PS1 at the same time. The last console using hardware sprites was probably Sega Saturn.

You want no further Amiga development which pushes the boundaries?

There's no boundaries to push any further. It's either what was 30 years ago (ECS, AGA) and a made-up architecture you can define yourself. Is it FPGA RTG and AGA-inspired logic or part of the ARM SoC with RTG driver. Pick your poison. One might consider implementing AMMX as pushing the boundaries. Other might think that since it requires s/w rewrite in the first place you might as well introduce coprocessor made of different architecture (and much more powerful, less expensive too). What's wrong with that?

i see no problem here

I see no problem with that either. As long as it is not falsely advertised as one true NG, one true amiga legacy etc.

The reason was to keep the Amiga uptodate with high resolution screenmodes and chunky graphics

And it was obtained in 99% by getting chips known from PC SVGA cards. RTG is a way to get those features to Amiga. It also means most chips from PC world (or at least compatible with leading standards like OpenGL) might work with RTG subsystem on amiga if proper driver was provided. We don't really have to design our own chips. It's sometimes (ekhm, usually) easier to do so (than interfacing pcie solution and writing driver). It doesn't really mean that's the top of the amiga world. Should R200 family be supported fully (with 3d capabilities... which I somewhere heard were being worked on) the only real advantage of SAGA would be interface speed between CPU and graphics. Radeon will still be limited to those mere dozens MB/s which is just fraction of PCI itself.

You're criticizing that new hardware brings incompatibilities but at the same time demand new software, which would require faster machines. How's that possible

Where in that phrase did you find any demand? I just pointed out all h/w solutions are waste of resources should there be no new software for it. ZZ9000 is a troubled product. It does allow one to use secondary ARM core but I find no 3rd party applications on it regardless of release of SDK and documentation. That's an area which needs most of the improvement. You disagree?

How do you wnat to have new softwrae for those cards if they're too slow?

New software doesn't necessarily means Vulkan RT ... I'd be pretty happy with OCS version of cRPG like Planescape Torment. Or improved version of Dune 2 (like PC mod Dune Legacy). On the other hand I see no reason why amiga should forever be bound by what 68k and chipset can and cannot do. Newer chipsets were designed to work with any given CPU architecture and be compatible by software only (so through system libraries and API). Depending on what we want to accomplish there is usually more than 1 way to achieve that goal.

Did you also think the same, when 060/FPU was introduced to the Amiga

As I have already explained 060 was produced by several manufacturers (and even nowadays there are at least 2) when there's only one source of AC68080 with SAGA.
Also 060 was real motorola processor, anyone could buy it and use with in his solution. That's how Warp1260 was created. AC68080 isn't motorola solution. While you might to negotiate licensing the core... it seems there aren't all that many eager hw developers to adopt that. So we still end up at square one with AT monopoly. With community fragmented already as it is I find no reason to be overjoyed by the prospect on fragmenting it even further on classic w/ v4 and w/o v4. As long as you have capable hardware it should run certain apps. So as long as your CPU is fast enough, should it be emulated 68k or AC68080 - it should work. Should it be Voodoo2, or Radeon, or Permedia, or SAGA - if it meets the requirements it should work. What illogical is in that?

[Vamplover]

The ATI Radators or nVideodia numbered cards used in seX5000 are made by man’s and woman’s. The SAGA and Arnie in Vampire are bestowed on the earth by the God Apollo and he hand baked a Team! Like Mosses picked for the boat before flood. Not all are worthy! Who do you trust, mice and men or Gods? Evens the AROS cat gets lost without the mighty god ApolloOS giving hers directions. AMXXX very very important too. It stop the crafty emulators from getting SAGA or Arnie or Maggie working on thems. Just helping sales so more Vamp sold to Amiga old skool boys. So u will never sees Vampire advanced custom logic chips running in countries of UAE or MAME so Apollo made in the shade. Very goods for sales. AAA Custom chips all the way and fess up 700 Euro if you expect the pleasure in privacy of own home. Never forget the VAT.

[grond]

I wonder how many of those concerned about any further fractioning of the Amiga software landscape own an 060 accelerator. If you have one of those, an 080 isn't going to offer that much as to the rest of us who only have 020/030 class systems. And then your precious valuable best-available 060 suddenly loses its edge. For some reason hardly anyone ever complained about 060/AGA-dedicated software not targetting 030/882.

It's not like PiStorm/UAE couldn't possibly support SAGA and AMMX, so far the devs don't want to (which I understand and which is their right). Good software that can at least run so-so on 060/RTG can have two code-paths for the critical stuff like Diablo does. What's there to not like about it?

[Pyromania]

MorphOS and OS 4.1 have exclusives too. So I guess it’s a race to see who gets the best exclusive games and applications.

[OlafSch]

I do not understand why people are so nervous about it. Software sells hardware, nothing new. I remember people asking why buying vampire when there is no software that uses the extended hardware. Now the apollo team is doing the right thing and people are anxious about further splitting the community. I see it as a logical decision. It is also logical to use the pure processing power of PiStorm to create games and applications that are impossible on Vampire. We need more competition not less. I think that as progress...