| [News] Amiga adds new content to website | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 03-Jun-2000 16:28 GMT by Christian Kemp | 40 comments
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Amiga's homepage now features an Executive Update dated 03-Jun-2000. amigatainment, as the name suggests, seems to be a new section oriented towards entertainment software. A press release on the Amiga Software Developers Kit (SDK) is now also available. Then, there's a (large, but badly formatted) list of companies selling the kit. On a related note, it seems like Ted Wallingford is once again responsible for the site maintenance.
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| Amiga adds new content to website : Comment 34 of 40 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Steffen Haeuser on 06-Jun-2000 22:00 GMT | In reply to Comment 31 (Kelly Samel):
Hi!
About the two comments about my comment:
1. It *is* a software problem. Tao Elate is HARDWARE INDEPENDENT, so you
cannot assume "Well, every CPU is a 680x0 CPU and has a 68851 or compatible
MMU, so I can access it like this". An MMU on a 68k works totally different
to an MMU on a PPC or an MMU on a x86 or an MMU on a MIPS or whatever.
So either you could support Swap Space only on ONE specific hardware
platform, or you have to include support into the OS. And as it is an
OS feature, it SHOULD be in the OS. You need it anyways...
2. What do you think a MMU does ? It checks all memory accesses, and if
a access to a certain memory area is accessed, this access is "forwarded"
to a harddrive area... if Amiga don't want MP and are consequent, they
cannot allow this...
3. VMM is not really Virtual Memory... it is Pageswapping...
4. Amiga wants to do a "new computing" and a "clean design". This is definitely
not the time to introduce more hacks and kludges... this time they have
to do things correct from the start.
5. Among Gaming Consoles... one reason is that they have MUCH lower resolutions,
most games actually run in Lowres - or the detail level gets reduced - this
reduces the amount of data a lot. But the future Amiga (whatever hardware
it will use) *has* the hardware needed, it has a harddrive, it has a MMU...
so why not using it ? Now I do not know the Dreamcast, but I know the
architecture of the PS2 (at least at a very basic level), and there you
also have LOTS of parallel-running bus-systems which operate at VERY
high data throughput (several 128 Bit Busses which can be accessed at
the same time, and some more slower Busses which also can operate at the
same time). On the PS2 - at least in theory - you can get a lot of data
"on demand" which you normally have to cache. On a "normal" system this
is not possible. And of course developing for PS2 is like having the
permission to print money... bit a different situation also from the
money+developement time you have available. But I fear even there some
titles might be VERY hard to do (luckily for those developers - at least
if the rumours I heard are true - the US and Europe versions of PS 2 will
have a harddrive and (!!!) Virtual Memory... Well, it is only a rumour
of course...)
And to confirm my claims about high memory usage by games: Just go to someone
having a PowerMac and try to run Unreal Tournament giving it in the
"Information" less than 100 MB RAM. It will not run. Or run Quake 3 on a
NT System of a PC friend and check the Mem Usage using the Task Manager
of NT.
And this is definitely not about bloated OSes... the game data takes the memory.
Well, when I had the first executable for THF (the multiplayer Addon for Heretic II I
was porting) ready it did not even run on my 96 MB equipped Amiga. It just said
"Out of memory". It was a LOT of work to reduce that down to 50-60 MB. And believe
me, such a reduction is not always possible.
3D Hardware gets better and better. This has the effect that game developers
use higher and higher screen resolutions, and bigger polygon counts, and more
textures - to make the games look much more realistic. First 3D Shooters (Wolfenstein
for example) just mapped textures to 2D-Sprites... this does not take much memory,
you just have to store some textures... modern games use for EVERY different
monster a different 3D-Model (complete with it's own 3D Data and it's own
textures). And you cannot always load those "on demand". You have to store a lot
of this stuff. This takes *memory*.
And of course, imagine you licensed a game for a port... usually you have a time
when you should be finished with the port... do you want to say "Well, I need
6 more months as I have to turn the whole engine upside down as my system does
not support Virtual Memory" ? And maybe at the end you don't manage to get the
memory usage down enough - there ARE limits for the trickery, and all tricks
you do will probably reduce the speed of the game also, for extra loading time -
and due to horrible RAM demands you limit the field of your possible Customers ?
And of course if you do a lot of hacks and stuff to reduce memory needs this
adds a lot to the developement time... you could already start on the next game
in this time...
For me it is no question - MP+Virtual Memory have to be added. Maybe it is a good
thing this came out "early".
Steffen |
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