From: jxp@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Joe Potter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer,comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Attn Commodore: You are making a Big Mistake (Hardware
Date: 14 Dec 92 21:37:17 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh


	Well, I've spent half an hour catching up on this (and associated)
threads, and all I can see is people saying the same old things again and
again.  I must admit it is a knotty problem, as I hope I'll illustrate, but I
am tending towards the OS side of things.

	The major point on the side of the OS people is that of compatibility. 
It is, right enough, a very important issue, perhaps the most serious one being
debated.  Truly, the Amiga cannot advance until there is a software base that
can run on the advanced machine.  This is obvious: we've already heard people
saying "who's going to buy an A1200?" and this is going to be a valid question
for some time now.
	So (we?) developers should be very concerned with making things work. 
fair enough.  This leads to problem number 1.

	I write Product X, a great ECS-compatible game, runs just great, even
on my A1500 w/33MHz 040 + ECS.  I must admit, at this point, this is a
speculative example.  Product X will sell well over the existing architecture,
i.e. 16bit ECS Chip architecture and whocares Fast architecture.  I'll make
money, but I must be concerned with the Amiga's future: the consoles are
catching up.
	Now comes the difficulty.  I've been good so far: I'm a clean coder and
all my program is modular, the graphics sections are easily isolated, and
recoded for OS compliance, and I can return the product to AmigaDOS compliance.
This is no problem, a matter of a few days work.  Great.  I have two versions
of Product X.  How do I market them?  Do I include both copies in the same
package?  Quite a loss, I should imagine.  Do I combine them, and have the
Product detect which machine is in use and select the appropriate executable? 
Still requires extra space - will it still fit on a (two?) disks, without
compromising depth of gameplay, or will it spill onto an extra disk?  Or should
I market two versions, with big labels declaring which system they are valid
for?  Would the resulting consumer confusion damage my sales?
	Remember, I can't use OS compliant software in the base machine case -
it would be too slow, because I can't guarantee the presence of WB2.1 or better.
I'd have to have *very* intricate code that figured out what calls were
floating around that I could still use, all-or-nothing library coding seems to
still be quite popular.  I suspect the answer to my quandary is the second
option above, but this does lengthen development time and cost, and can raise
production cost, especially in the manual ("If you're the proud owner of a
machine with the AGA graphics hardware, you can select >KAPOW< from the title
screen and run OS compliant! ...")

	I might also take this point to slap a few OS enthusiasts' wrists for
doggedly attacking the demo-coders whilst also saying that the demo scene
doesn't affect Amiga sales.  You can't have your cake and eat it!  If they
don't matter, why should they comply?

							Joe.

"How many times must the cannon balls fly?"
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA