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[News] Frontier Developments says no to Tao / AmigaANN.lu
Posted on 16-Aug-2000 20:49 GMT by Colin Wilson6 comments
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Everyone remembers "Elite", and one of the original authors David Braben, who is still making games for Windows / Linux platforms. I decided to mail them to ask if they had considered Tao / Amiga, but they said "it is not currently a viable option."

Their website is www.frontier.co.uk

Below is my original mail and their reply (shown first) (hey, I tried my best to sell the idea to them !

Dear Colin

No we are not currently looking at developing for the Amiga/Tao OS. It is not currently a viable option.

Jenny

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Wilson
To: enquiries@frontier.co.uk
Date: 16 August 2000 09:26
Subject: release platforms query


I`m curious if you have considered developing a version of Elite 4 (or indeed any of your games) for the forthcoming Amiga / Tao OS.

With any luck, conversion of most games would be relatively simple, as C source can be converted into VP code easily using their standard tools.

If you don`t know anything about it, Tao (the core of the OS) uses a virtual processor model, and operates rather like the transmeta chipset but in software, it can run on it`s own as a seperate standalone OS or hosted under windows / linux, and the same program written in VP code (virtual processor code) will run on any processor family that has a version of the OS - that includes x86, MIPS, PPC, and about 12 more of the more common processor families... Tao is scaleable from a mobile phone to server class, and self-configures any programs to use the resources available to it (see below) so the same game could run on anything from a mobile phone to a desktop, self-configure, and run without changing a single byte of code.

A program written in VP will run on any of the above types of processor without ever needing to be recompiled (write once, run on anydamnthing)...

It has an implementation of Java that is apparently faster than any other available on the market (and fully authorised by Sun), and the VP code is supposed to be very swift - more compact than a compiled binary, but converted at load-time to byte code (despite this sounding slow, it`s apparently often faster for it to do this than load a pre-compiled binary)

For more information, check out www.tao-group.com or www.amiga.com
Frontier Developments says no to Tao / Amiga : Comment 1 of 6ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 15-Aug-2000 22:00 GMT
Hmm, their answer wasn't as so diplomatic one...
Frontier Developments says no to Tao / Amiga : Comment 2 of 6ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 16-Aug-2000 22:00 GMT
Doesn't bother me. The boy Braben never did learn to code anything other than
the BBC. The further away his buggy, ego-driven code is from me, the happier
I'll be.
If you want a good modern "Elite" type game, check out "X - Beyond The Frontier"
Frontier Developments says no to Tao / Amiga : Comment 3 of 6ANN.lu
Posted by Teemu I. Yliselä on 16-Aug-2000 22:00 GMT
Quite obviously it's not a viable option for a game developer when the SDK doesn't even support 3D acceleration and sound yet.
Frontier Developments says no to Tao / Amiga : Comment 4 of 6ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 16-Aug-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Teemu I. Yliselä):
That's why there are companies such as Hyperion Entertainment.
Many companies don't even consider the Mac market "viable", let alone Amiga.
Frontier Developments says no to Tao / Amiga : Comment 5 of 6ANN.lu
Posted by amorel on 17-Aug-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Anonymous):
"That's why there are companies such as Hyperion Entertainment"
Hehe to make recompiles of other people`s games :-D
Anyways Frontier would be fools to develop for toa/amiga there isn`t much
to be gained from that, more likely much to be lost.
Frontier Developments says no to Tao / Amiga : Comment 6 of 6ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 18-Aug-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (amorel):
> Hehe to make recompiles of other people`s games :-D
Then I would wonder why it takes 3-6 months... (It needs a bit of work to adapt code written to DirectX, Glide, OpenGL, for CGFX, Warp3D...)
> Anyways Frontier would be fools to develop for toa/amiga there isn`t
> much to be gained from that, more likely much to be lost
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