From: bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R. Block)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: Attn Commodore: You are making a Big Mistake (Hardware Manual)
Date: 23 Nov 1992 05:04:11 GMT
Organization: Electrical Engineering Dept. University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.2.33

In article <1992Nov22.152520.7304@imada.ou.dk> breese@monet.imada.ou.dk (Bjoern Reese) writes:
>Hail almighty Commodore! (Do you support dictatorship too?)
>Just remember that Commodore is absolutely NOTHING without the public.

"The Public" and "Demo-coders" are two different things.

>So the first (and completely incomprehensive) version of the hardware
>reference guide was you way of supporting "our way" ? Thanks for nothing.
>Well, pick up an issue of this book, which was the only material from C=
>that we had back then, and you'll find that C= also is guilty of this
>problem.

C= matured.  They came out with later reference manuals, and then the
2.0 version of the Hardware Reference Manual with ECS.

The democoders didn't.

>Most people I know bought their Amiga because a) the games, b) the
>demos, and c) the possibility of learning how to create one (game/demo)  
>themselves. It is my strong belief that Amiga only survived the initial
>sale problems (I remember that sales were low i US, and that only the
>sales in Europe - especially in Germany - rescued the Amiga) because
>of kids buying a programmable game machine. If you wanted applications
>back then, you bought a PC or a MAC. Now, has that "little or nothing"
>to do with the sales?

A) the games, will still exist.  There are companies now that have
pledged support for AGA.  I do believe Psygnosis was one of them.

Just so you know, using the OS does NOT mean you have to use
intuition.  Graphics.library can do lots of fast things.

>BTW, do you actually KNOW any demo coders personally?

Yes.  And boy, are they pissed.  But they're getting over it.  They're
not USED to using the OS for very much, and it's a big change.

>How much MONEY do you pay for demos? If it's anything above the prize of
>a disk, you've been fooled.

Does democoding breed poor coding habits?  You tell me.  It's
something C= has to consider.

>Most applications are written in C, or another highlevel language, not
>in assembly language, like almost all demos. I doubt that the problems
>above erupt from the demo scene the way you want us to believe. I think
>many people have their first programming experiences on the Amiga, and
>beginners _do_ make mistakes, whether they do demos or applications.
>Just don't blame demo coders for _all_ the mistakes done by application
>programmers.

Obviously not.  But good demo coding does not good application coding
make.  Unfortunately, very often, they're two totally different
things.  Good demo coding makes good hardware-banging games.  But
there's no reason that you can't make games using the OS.  Nobody has
said they'd be as fast--they won't.  There is something in there.  But
it's NOT as slow as some would claim.

>Which leads me to another question. What is worst: a demo coder with
>docs on how to bang the hardware properly, or a demo coder without
>these docs?

A demo coder without, of course, because he'll try to hack, slash, and
bootleg his way into the chipset.

You don't seem to understand.  C= is making a hell of a statement by
not releasing a HRM.  They're not saying "you're on your own", they're
saying "Don't do it any more."

Big difference, dontcha think?

Greg

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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer