From: raist@rmece02.upr.clu.edu (Ricardo Hernandez)
Subject: Re: **** A1200 Info **** (200+ lines)
Organization: UPR-Mayaguez--ASEL Lab
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 02:01:12 GMT

In article <1992Nov7.174103.20817@news.th-darmstadt.de>, wallmann@backus.pu.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Natuerlich!) writes:
|> As to the questions I am not going to answer: There was a diatribe
|> portraying in length how just very useful HAM is. Dudes for the last time:
|> as useful as it may be (for you) you cannot say HAM is just as useable as 
|> a RAP mode. (Else you would have only HAM modes on computers.)
|> So when comparing screenmodes to establish some 'bogus' superiority of the 
|> AA chipset, using HAM colors is bullshit. A better metric is Mbytes/s on 
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   Ok, the feeling toward your comments is the same ^ 2.

   Food for thought:

   For normal applications, word processors, spreadsheets, databases, etc.
 you will rarely wanna work with more than 256 colors.
  The case were you want to use the "Falcon True Color", or in the case 
 of the Amiga - "HAM 8" is when you are doing:

    * Imageprocessing   * Animation/multimedia/videos
    * Painting/art

   Being this the case, HAM 8 has a lot of advantages:

     * almost no "fringing" - which is the normal HAM problem.  A friend
    of mine bought the A4000 and with ASDG Pro converted some 24 bit files
    to the HAM8 moes and foudn out that the images were practically 
    24 bits. (pseudo-24-bit - of course).  This will look better than a
    Falcon.

     * memory usage - 1 byte per pixel.  This is excellent for doing
    anims as it takes less memory and can palyback faster

   Problems with the "Falcon True Color" modes for normal applications:

   * slows down the machine    * a lot of memory to move around
   * high resolutions are interlaced

    I am not saying that HAM 8 would not have these problems, but I am
  saying why you most likely will use the "Falcon true-color" for what
  the Ham 8 is good for, as I stated above.


   And now, what I would call my "check mate" argument:

   THE FALCON HAS A 18-BIT PALETTE (VGA PALETTE), AGA HAS 24 - bit Pallete

   Consider that the Amiga (as the old ATARI 8-bit computer) can easily
 manipulate palette changes on the fly for every horizontal line.

   This means that considering that you have 256 colors, if you change
 the registers (say, a few, like 32/16 or 24 colors) in a game, you 
 virtually can have *tons* of colors on the screen at the same time.
  This takes almost no memory can is excellent for "skies" in the 
 background, etc.

   Now add to this that you can do the same with the sprites, etc.  Since
 the Falcon has a smaller palette, it wouldn't look as good (even in 
 "true color") as the Amiga with AGA.

   For a game, this would make better games.  And yes, remember that
 Amiga sprites can be re-used on different vertical lines.  Falcon has
 no sprites at all!  Too bad.

   I can even Imagine a game with 8 sprites on the foreground and using
 as background a HAM 8 image!
   
|> the graphic hardware. How many RAM bytes are converted by the graphics 
|> hardware each second. My original remarks on the cheesiness
|> of HAM stems from someone comparing A1200 screenmodes to the Falcon030.
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
   Read my comments above... and now that we talk about "cheesiness"
consider that the Falcon has no modes on "true-color" on hi-res that
are NON-INTERLACED!  Was it non-interlaced even on 256 colors?  Don't
remember, but then, your criticisms about the Amiga (interlace) apply
to you even more.

[ham mode disc. deleted]

|> 
|> As to the point, "it's clear that you haven't used an Amiga before".
|> Not TRUE!! I played on an Amiga with friends (KICK-OFF) for an estimated
|> 48 hours total. (har)
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   Have you worked with Dpaint IV?  Digipaint 3?  An AMIGA 4000?

|> 
|> Nat!

   BLAT!

|> 
|> P.S. Obvious improv. like hash-tables left out.
|> -- 
|>  -----   Email: wallmann@backus.pu.informatik.th-darmstadt.de  -----
|>                "Bang that bit that doesn't bang"   
|> Album of the month: "The plague that.." Infectious Grooves (an oldie)
|> 

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------
  Raist   // Amiga 500, 38Mhz Special MegaMidget Racer
        \X/  Avid user of AmigaVision, sending mail from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico 
---------
           "If the PC or Mac continues to be the standard,
            the SkyNet will never be built." - OUCH! were not my words!