19-Apr-2024 02:31 GMT.		 UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Anonymous, there are 38 items in your selection
[News] AIO Interviews The Bitmap BrothersANN.lu
Posted on 22-May-2002 09:58 GMT by Chris38 comments
View flat
View list
Amiga Information Online interviews The Bitmap Brothers. Creators of Speedball I & II, Choas Engine and many other classics. @ AIO Website - Click interviews link on left.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 1 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Budda on 22-May-2002 08:36 GMT
I wonder how how the new AmigaOne boards will provide a similar old Amiga style - "home computer with fixed hardware like a console" - which is what seems appealing to games developers.
It should be important to provide a fixed layer of easy to use APIs for games developers to get going with, when OS4 is released. Or maybe even before to give them a head start...
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 2 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by priest on 22-May-2002 09:02 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Budda):
>I wonder how how the new AmigaOne boards will provide a similar old Amiga
>style - "home computer with fixed hardware like a console" - which is what
>seems appealing to games developers.
IIRC, AmigaDE is planned to give those by making the HW virtual.
And AmigaOne partly does that because there is only one kind of motherboard, one kind of CPU and only a few kinds of GFX cards.
IMHO: The official minimum recommended configuration for AmigaOne games should be set somewhere around XBOX (except 3-5x more memory). That would mean 128-256M SDRAM, 64-128M DDR SDRAM, Radeon8500 GPU, DVD drive, etc... Game developer would be near to heaven... ;)
>It should be important to provide a fixed layer of easy to use APIs for games
>developers to get going with, when OS4 is released. Or maybe even before to
>give them a head start...
In a perfect world, YES!!!
Developers, what do you need / want?
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 3 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 09:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Budda):
Well, if you code for P96 and W3D it shouldn't be too much different than DirectX under Windows. Then the only difference between people's setups are the speed, not the API. Some might have a 200MHz 604 in an A4000, others a 200MHz 603 in a 1200, I'll have a 600MHz 750 in an A1. This means you'll have to decide what minimum requirements you're gonna set, then code for that. Anything above that should be considered a bonus, and used to provide better graphics or something. Freezing everyone at a 10MHz CPU to make it easier to code platform games won't actually help much for sales :)
It's only extremely hyped up consoles like the X-box, PS2 and N64 that can sell in millions even if they are just low-specced computers (ok, so not _that_ low specced, really :) ). And the reason for this is that they have a lot of financial backing. Financial backing means you can get the platform with a couple of great games out on the market at low cost, then make money from licensing games. I for one don't want any of that on my Amiga...
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 4 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by tinman on 22-May-2002 09:19 GMT
Nice interview, always good to hear from high quality ex-developers.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 5 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 09:21 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (tinman):
I would rather hear from high quality non-ex developers, though. You agree? :)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 6 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Daniel Allsopp on 22-May-2002 09:23 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (priest):
>Developers, what do you need / want?
A decent development environment (IDE) for a start, before I even care what hardware or API's I want :-)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 7 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 09:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Daniel Allsopp):
Emacs/make is good for you. Once you realize that, you can go on with your life ;)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 8 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by priest on 22-May-2002 09:57 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Daniel Allsopp):
btw. is H&P & StormC in "RIP" state when related to Amiga things?
IIRC, they were partners with Amiga Inc in y2001 or so ... ?
(not that I would ever consider buying from them again...)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 9 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Daniel Allsopp on 22-May-2002 10:16 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Ole-Egil Hvitmyren):
You've never used a decent development environment then I take it. Ever used VisualStudio? ;)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 10 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Gabriele Greco on 22-May-2002 10:35 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (Daniel Allsopp):
A decent IDE is the less important thing...
gcc+gdb on a command line if you know how to use it is more flexible and productive than Visual Studio for an EXPERT programmer. Obviously for a beginner is better the graphical debugger of the microsoft suite, but if you know how to use it gdb is better, as is more optimized the code produced by gcc. Actually I've switched to mingw (windows gcc) also for windows development.
What do you need really is a powerful & flexible APIs, hopefully compatible with the standards like OpenGL.
Warp3d + Picasso96 is not enough. It's not a clean solution like OpenGL and it doesn't handle every feature modern cards have (you need OpenGL 2.0 or Direct X 8.1 to cover them).
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 11 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 10:51 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (Daniel Allsopp):
I'm trying to help a couple of cute girls here to get their program to work, and they are using visual studio. I'm not impressed. I've worked with Visual studio, Rational Rose, and emacs/make. One of these does not impress me. Guess.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 12 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 10:53 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Gabriele Greco):
Ah, but you shouldn't expect the "standard API" to cater for every little new function in a new graphics card. Expect the standard API to cater for what's common today, and if you want to take serious advantage of newer things in not-yet-released cards, expect to put in some overtime :)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 13 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 10:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Ole-Egil Hvitmyren):
Oh, and you've tried a professional environment like Rational Rose? You see, I'm spoiled to a point where only the BEST works for me. And Visual studio isn't part of what I like :)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 14 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by [JC] on 22-May-2002 12:43 GMT
These days fixed hardware isn't really an important thing. Sure, it makes your QA testing harder because you have to check a variety of configurations but all in all it's not difficult thanks to API's like DirectX. Sure, it's probably a bit slower than bashing on the hardware direct but thats outweighed by the fact that the hardware is so damned fast coupled with the ease of development.
As for developer tools, a good IDE is NECCESARY if you're to focus on your product and not messing about with your tools, especially when you're talking about games. Makefiles become tedious when you have to open them, add a line for your new source file, add dependancies, compiler settings, yadda yadda. It's much simpler just to do "Add file to project" and have all that worked out for you by the IDE.
At e.p.i.c, the typical developer tools we use are Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 Pro (includes compiler, debugger, IDE, and lots of other things) on the PC, and on the Mac it's usually either MetroWerks Codewarrior or Apple Project Builder (I think the latter gets used more lately).
For the Amiga we used to use StormC 4, but that's become cumbersome as it can sometimes produce buggy code or complain about C++ code that other compilers compile fine, and takes a lot of memory to compile stuff that the Amiga, with it not having virtual memory, just doesn't have. Future Amiga compilations may be done with a cross-compiled GCC setup on the PC, if we can work out some issues with doing that.
Love them or hate them, Microsoft have really got it right with Visual Studio. That's probably why nearly all game developers on the PC use it - there are others available, but VS wins out fair and square. Any future Amiga developer tools would do wise to take a good look at Visual Studio and learn from it.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 15 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Gabriele Greco on 22-May-2002 12:57 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 ([JC]):
If you want you can build a makefile that autogenerate dependencies, and does a lot of other stuff.
Actually at work I'm building a cross platform mpeg based videobox application on my linux box and I can modify project settings far quicker than with the VisualC++ project manager. The makefile builds both Win32 and linux version without hassle and can be launched with a simple gvim shortcut.
I tried to move the windows version to visual studio but I found that it was far more productive to have a single build method.
I miss VisualC++ only for the possibility to view and go to classes/structs/defines with a click of the RMB and for the function args autocompletion :)
Anyway if you are USED to a vi like editor like gvim the visualstudio one or also Ultraedit are way too limitated.
BTW for my amiga projects I obviously use gcc + cygnused :)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 16 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Budda the milkman on 22-May-2002 15:31 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Ole-Egil Hvitmyren):
Isn't the user version of the A1 board now comming with a G4@700Mhz as standard?
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 17 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 16:09 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (Budda the milkman):
And you got that info from where?
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 18 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Blom on 22-May-2002 17:14 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 ([JC]):
Bah.
If you have a reasonable large project, most IDEs just stink. At least
Visual Studio does (or did, I've not used it the last year). For example,
I used to work on an web application server some years ago. It had a
couple of front-ends (ISAPI, FastCGI, command line version, COM and CORBA,
IIRC). It had a shitload of modules, implemented as shared objects or
DLLs. And then there were a couple of support libraries that were part of
the workspace as well (like the FastCGI support library, OpenSSL, libjpeg,
libpng, freetype, database wrappers etc -- you get the idea).
And let me tell you, the IDE was in the way all the time. You want to add
or change a compiler switch? Open the settings dialog, select the tab,
select the right item in the list view, click the checkbox, click ok. Now
repeat 45 times! Oh, you forgot to change the "Release" version of the
projects? Too bad ...
In the environment used to build the Linux version of the server, I changed
one line in the top-level makefile and that was it.
Wanna add a new module? What you definately DON'T want to do is to add a
project from within Visual Studio, because there is just no way you're
going to remember what build settings it should have.
There is simply no substitute for a good makefile. And oh yes, a good
makefile regenerates dependencies on demand or automatically, automatically
finds and builds all source code files and code modules (even new ones),
generates reference documentation and builds RPMs or Debian packages with
the correct date, version and revision numbers etc. Want to build an
installer package from Visual studio? Good luck!
Yes, it can be a pain to write that makefile, but once done it's done and
you'll never have to bother again.
Don't get me wrong, there are stuff in Visual Studio that simply rocks,
like the debugger and the cross-referencing, to name two. But the project
management is worthless, in my not so humble opinion.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 19 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 17:30 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (Martin Blom):
Well put, brother.
If you need a GUI, Visual Studio will help you mock up something in Windows rather quickly, but please put the generated code into a project handled by something better than that p.m. And the editor isn't excactly very close to what we use on the amiga either, is it? I use emacs myself, but even memacs from wb1.3 beats v.s's editor... (which is basically notepad)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 20 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Justin Veggerby Kristensen on 22-May-2002 17:57 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (Budda the milkman):
Nopes, that is the future version of the A1 - the XE version.
The A1G3-SE is still using the G3, if you reread the article in Total Amiga you will realize that.
But the XE version will come with the G4 700 Mhz in a socket which can take cpu-upgrades.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 21 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by [JC] on 22-May-2002 18:16 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (Martin Blom):
> And let me tell you, the IDE was in the way all the time. You want to add
> or change a compiler switch? Open the settings dialog, select the tab,
> select the right item in the list view, click the checkbox, click ok.
> Now repeat 45 times!
Er, you do know you can shift-select multiple items there and change the settings together, right ?
> Oh, you forgot to change the "Release" version of the projects?
> Too bad ...
Hows that the IDE's fault that you rushed to change settings without checking what settings you were changing first ? Oh and if you want the same settings on both modes, just do "All Configurations". Not hard.
> Wanna add a new module? What you definately DON'T want to do is to add a
> project from within Visual Studio, because there is just no way you're
> going to remember what build settings it should have.
Sounds like youve not used VS5 or later. Projects and workspaces are now seperate, with each projects build settings being self contained. MSVC 4 used to get on my nerves with that, but it's no longer an issue.
> And oh yes, a good makefile regenerates dependencies on demand or
> automatically,
No, it doesn't do it automatically unless you have some tool setup to do that. I've never found a tool for doing that I like. Interestingly enough VS will generate dependancies in either a text format, or suitable for it's own Makefile format (mostly but not completely compatible with standard make, which i'll admit is a bit silly)
> automatically finds and builds all source code files and code modules (even
> new ones),
Visual Studio will do this.
> generates reference documentation
Visual Studio will do this - look at doxygen for example
> and builds RPMs or Debian packages with the correct date, version
> and revision numbers etc. Want to build an installer package from
> Visual studio? Good luck!
InstallShield allows this. You could also set it up with the "Post-Build" options.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 22 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by [JC] on 22-May-2002 18:23 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (Ole-Egil Hvitmyren):
> Well put, brother.
Oh god, here we go...
> If you need a GUI, Visual Studio will help you mock up something in
> Windows rather quickly,
If you want that kind of RAD stuff, you use Borland C++ Builder, Delphi or such. Or even Visual Basic (*choke*) if that rings your bell.
> And the editor isn't excactly very close to what we use on the amiga
> either, is it?
Admittedly, TextPad (www.textpad.com) is better and reminds me a lot of CygnusED, which I used to use a lot on the Amiga. I actually find myself wondering if this what it is based on. But the editor is more than capable and matches most of what I've seen on the Amiga.
> but even memacs from wb1.3 beats v.s's editor... (which is basically
> notepad)
What on earth are you smoking ? Sounds like uninformed Amiga zealotism to me.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 23 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by |Lando| on 22-May-2002 18:35 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (priest):
>Developers, what do you need / want?
Well, for people to buy the A1, and in huge quantities, is the easiest answer.
But that's not going to happen. I have to be blunt here and say that, asides from the likes of Hyperion, there won't be any big-name games coming to Amiga.
I'm a coder at a large games developer in North-West England and, as with most developers, we only develop for the platforms that publishers ask us to. Until the publishers see Amiga as a money-making proposition, there simply isnt going to be any interest on their part.
Even the Dreamcast, which sold some millions of units, had a very hard time and eventually died prematurely because of this. The developers liked it, but publishers didnt.
Times have changed. When you're investing millions of pounds in a game project, if that game fails to sell, then it could be disastrous for the company involved.
Another thing - people need to be made aware that this new machine is on its way. I dont think any of the people I work with actually know that a new Amiga is on the horizon. There are a lot of ex-Amiga coders here who worked on some quite famous games (many ex-Ocean staff) but they still think of the Amiga as the A1200 they left behind in 1994.
There needs to be some publicity before the machine hits the streets to raise awareness.
I sincerely hope the A1 sells bucketloads.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 24 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 18:39 GMT
In reply to Comment 23 (|Lando|):
The a1ge with AOS4 was never meant to take the masses by storm. It is meant to give US, the _community_ a way forward. _WE_ must therefore use this opportunity to shape the future like we want it. IMHO, ofcourse :)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 25 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 22-May-2002 18:41 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 ([JC]):
You really don't freak out from using the built in editor of Visual Studio? You are a greater man than I am :)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 26 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by [JC] on 22-May-2002 18:42 GMT
In reply to Comment 25 (Ole-Egil Hvitmyren):
Nope. I do supplement it a bit with plugins like WndTabs though
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 27 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by [JC] on 22-May-2002 18:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 23 (|Lando|):
> Even the Dreamcast, which sold some millions of units, had a very hard
> time and eventually died prematurely because of this.
> The developers liked it, but publishers didnt.
And the reason the publishers didn't was because the protection system was naff (requiring no chips or anything to bypass) and piracy was rife.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 28 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Blom on 22-May-2002 19:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 21 ([JC]):
> Er, you do know you can shift-select multiple items there and change the
> settings together, right ?
Right, I stand corrected. As I said, this was a while ago. I wonder what it was
I was really thinking about ... Could have been dllimport/dllexport, where
each module must have a unique preprocessor symbol defined when built. Or are
you going to prove me wrong on this one too? :-)
> Hows that the IDE's fault that you rushed to change settings without checking
> what settings you were changing first ? Oh and if you want the same settings
> on both modes, just do "All Configurations". Not hard.
It's the IDE's fault that there is no inheritance.
> Sounds like youve not used VS5 or later. Projects and workspaces are now
> seperate, with each projects build settings being self contained. MSVC 4 used
> to get on my nerves with that, but it's no longer an issue.
But I don't want that! I want all my modules to share the same settings, and I
want to be able to override it in that special module that needs an extra
library, for example.
> No, it doesn't do it automatically unless you have some tool setup to do
> that. I've never found a tool for doing that I like. Interestingly enough VS
gcc is your friend.
> > automatically finds and builds all source code files and code modules (even
> > new ones),
> Visual Studio will do this.
Visual Studio automatically finds out that I've added a new directory called "Math" in the "modules" directory and builds "Math.dll" from all C++ files in "modules/Math" for me? That's great! Does it gets added to the installer as well? How does it know what compiler settings to use?
I didn't even know you could set up Visual Studio to automatically add new files to an existing project. How??
> > generates reference documentation
> Visual Studio will do this - look at doxygen for example
I know. :-) Visual Studio is not all bad. I was just pointing out that a good makefile does all the work for me. All I have to care about is 'make', 'make install', 'make doc' and 'make bindist'. And the actual coding, of course.
> InstallShield allows this.
We were using Wise, which wouldn't even let us specify version and revision number from the command line, which meant that each time we made a new release, you had to be careful to bump the revision number in a header file, in the resource file and in the installer GUI. Then you had to rename the installer so it included the full version number.
> You could also set it up with the "Post-Build" options.
Post-Build is annoying, since it will only be executed if the linking stage is performed. You're probably better of defining a new custom project for this task.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 29 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by [JC] on 23-May-2002 00:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (Martin Blom):
> Could have been dllimport/dllexport, where each module must have a
> unique preprocessor symbol defined when built
Not as far as I know - you just add declspec(dllexport) to whatever function prototype you want to export. You can even do this in an .exe file and the symbol gets exported - i've found that handy for debugging in some cases. It's been a while since I've had to use this however.
> It's the IDE's fault that there is no inheritance.
Admittedly it would be better if it did inherit settings, and if it let me specify a "profile" so that I could start a project with my own settings from a template instead of it's defaults, which I usually change right from day one.
> But I don't want that!
I can't see why. What's wrong with defining your modules as static link libraries in seperate projects and then linking them all together via dependancies ? Or am I not understanding what you're trying to do ?
> gcc is your friend.
GCC for me seems to do nothing but piss and moan about warnings and errors in code that compiles perfectly fine under both MSVC and MetroWerks Codewarrior. It's error messages are also often less helpful than MSVC's, leaving me pawing around at code for a while. The only advantage with GCC is the sheer number of setups it supports.
> Visual Studio automatically finds out that I've added a new directory
> called "Math" in the "modules" directory and builds "Math.dll" from all
> C++ files in "modules/Math" for me? That's great! Does it gets added to
> the installer as well? How does it know what compiler settings to use?
Oh, I see what you mean. But then Make doesnt really know that either, it just knows there's files with a C++ extension and it compiles them. That seems a bit runaway for my liking.
> I didn't even know you could set up Visual Studio to automatically add
> new files to an existing project. How??
Well if you create the new files with VS then as long as you start a new C++ Source or C++ Header etc it will add them in the right place.
> I know. :-) Visual Studio is not all bad. I was just pointing out that
> a good makefile does all the work for me. All I have to care about
> is 'make', 'make install', 'make doc' and 'make bindist'. And the
> actual coding, of course.
I like to think make is more handy when the project is complete and is being distributed about, either to other developers, or into the opensource world. Some people may not want to edit it and just build/install for themselves. But for day to day development, I find it cumbersome.
> We were using Wise....
Wise TBH has always struck me as rather naff. Things are getting better now, especially as Microsoft have effectively made InstallShield (under the MSI moniker) part of the operating system. Although I'll admit to finding InstallShield/MSI cumbersome, and favour Nullsoft NSIS, which is admittedly not as powerful, but powerful enough for what I require.
Oh btw, thanks for AHI... it has taken the nightmare out of Amiga audio support in our Amiga titles, especially when you need 16 channels and the user only has Paula :)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 30 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Blom on 23-May-2002 08:34 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 ([JC]):
> Not as far as I know - you just add declspec(dllexport) to whatever
> function prototype you want to export. You can even do this in an .exe
> file and the symbol gets exported - i've found that handy for debugging
> in some cases.
The thing is that you need dllexport in the header file when building the module, and dllimport when you're using the header file from the rest of the application. (That's not the fault of the IDE, of course, but more the Win32 platform itself. And it's most often not really an isse.)
> I can't see why. What's wrong with defining your modules as static link
> libraries in seperate projects and then linking them all together via
> dependancies ? Or am I not understanding what you're trying to do ?
Static or dynamic linking doesn't matter. Each module still has it's own settings. If I wan't to add a preprocessor symbol, for example, I still have to add this symbol to each module project (but not the other projects I have in my workspace). It's easy to forget one of them, if you have many.
> GCC for me seems to do nothing but piss and moan about warnings and
> errors in code that compiles perfectly fine under both MSVC and
> MetroWerks Codewarrior. It's error messages are also often less helpful
> than MSVC's, leaving me pawing around at code for a while. The only
Heh ... How about "Symbol std::fskdjl:fdsfdfsd.:fdsjh483889fds.:fsdhj...... truncated to 255 characters"? :-)
> advantage with GCC is the sheer number of setups it supports.
Well, at least it handles "for( int i0 ... )" and static class variables in dynamic libraries correctly. :-) (operator new in one module and delete it in another? Return a std::list from a method in a dll? Nope sorry. Man, did *those* random memory trashing errors take time to find!)
And don't get me started on <Windows.h>. Have you ever tried to name a method "GetMessage"? ;-) (It's not the fault of VC++, of course.)
> Oh btw, thanks for AHI... it has taken the nightmare out of Amiga audio
> support in our Amiga titles, especially when you need 16 channels and the
> user only has Paula :)
Yeah, well ... Thanks. It's a shame, though. It could have been great if I had put some effort into it during the last four or five years. :-/
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 31 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Gabriele Greco on 23-May-2002 08:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 30 (Martin Blom):
The thread was about the IDE, not the compiler, obviously if VC has some advantages over GCC, and it has, but also some drawback (like the very complex project editor/project settings access if working on a workspace with a few projects in it), it LOSTS if you compare the generated code and the conformance to the standards (C99, STL...).
BTW I'm talking about GCC 3.x against VC 6 with the latest patch, I don't dare to install Visual Studio .net :) (and I have it since we are also microsoft registered developers :) )
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 32 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Budda on 23-May-2002 14:50 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Justin Veggerby Kristensen):
I don't subscribe to Total Amiga so cannot re-read the article of which you speak. I heard the info from somewhere else - another person who hasn't read the article either but has known (and kept secret) about this hardware change for a while now.
But maybe it is a state of confusion anyway. Who knows.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 33 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Jon on 23-May-2002 18:15 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 ([JC]):
JC, thanks for supporting rare Amiga gamers.. I believe I have 3 or so Amiga titles from E.P.I.C..
Do you still have intentions to make some Amiga ports, as mr. Burkey posted earlier at c.s.a.g something about possible new game ports? (or are you PB?-)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 34 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Jon on 23-May-2002 18:16 GMT
In reply to Comment 30 (Martin Blom):
Martin, thanks for your efforts.. Hope to hear about you and AHI in the future, too =)
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 35 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by shoecake on 23-May-2002 20:20 GMT
In reply to Comment 33 (Jon):
>JC, thanks for supporting rare Amiga gamers.. I believe
>I have 3 or so Amiga titles from E.P.I.C..
>
>Do you still have intentions to make some Amiga ports, as
>mr. Burkey posted earlier at c.s.a.g something about
>possible new game ports? (or are you PB?-)
I'm sure JC can give you his own view on that question as he clearly enjoys lashing out his own opinions on ann.lu ;) BTW, he most certainly is NOT me [the real PB]; The mix up has happened before so best put an end to that unfortunate mistake :)
We will continue to develop Amiga titles whenever possible but development resources are mostly tied up in MacOS development for the next few months. There are still some great games lined up that could be ideal for AmigaOS but as we're expecting new hardware and software solutions to appear "Any Time Now(tm)" it's not a good time to predict future development.
I've never posted to ann.lu before, but getting mixed up with JC was the last straw! ;)
Cheers,
Paul
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 36 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by [JC] on 23-May-2002 21:32 GMT
In reply to Comment 30 (Martin Blom):
> The thing is that you need dllexport in the header file when building
> the module, and dllimport when you're using the header file from the
> rest of the application. (That's not the fault of the IDE, of
> course, but more the Win32 platform itself. And it's most often not
> really an isse.)
In all honesty, dllimport is a bad idea. The correct method for importing a symbol from a .dll is to use the matching .lib file with a header containing prototypes for the functions. I suspect that's what you mean by "not really an issue" since as you'd rarely use a DLL you don't have the libs or headers for.
> Static or dynamic linking doesn't matter. Each module still has it's
> own settings. If I wan't to add a preprocessor symbol, for example,
> I still have to add this symbol to each module project (but not the
> other projects I have in my workspace). It's easy to forget one of
> them, if you have many.
Oh, I see.. I don't often use the define symbols bit for this, but usually a header file containing settings, like a config.h file or so.
> Heh ... How about "Symbol std::fskdjl:fdsfdfsd.:fdsjh483889fds.
> :fsdhj...... truncated to 255 characters"? :-)
Aye, that one's a pain, but more to do with limits in the COFF object format I think. Anyway, it can be suppressed with a pragma.
I had an example of GCC's pathetic error reporting today. I'd missed a semicolon from a typedef, and it was moaning about errors 20 lines down into a header file, where there was nothing wrong. A small error, in my haste I kept overlooking it, but when I ran it in MSVC, it reported the error in the right place.
> Well, at least it handles "for( int i0 ... )"
Is still a problem although maybe not in VC.NET. I haven't yet tested this. It's also easily worked around.
> and static class variables in dynamic libraries correctly. :-)
> (operator new in one module and delete it in another?
That's nothing to do with VC, that's to do with address space mapping between the DLL and your code. If you read the Platform SDK, you will see there are special circumstances for this.
> Return a std::list from a method in a dll? Nope sorry. Man, did
> *those* random memory trashing errors take time to find!)
See above.
> And don't get me started on <Windows.h>.
It's too large aye. I usually always define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN, and often use it in a precompiled header to avoid slowdown.
> Have you ever tried to name a method "GetMessage"? ;-)
I've never had a problem with that, if you mean clashing between the windows header files and your own function methods. Of course, if you want to call Win32 GetMessage in a class containing a GetMessage function, you have to use ::GetMessage and so on.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 37 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Blom on 24-May-2002 06:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 36 ([JC]):
> That's nothing to do with VC, that's to do with address space mapping
> between the DLL and your code. If you read the Platform SDK, you will see
> there are special circumstances for this.
Yeah, the lack of weak symbols in the object file format. IIRC, the SDK docs said "Resolution: The is by design." or something like that. :-/
> I've never had a problem with that, if you mean clashing between the
> windows header files and your own function methods. Of course, if you
> want to call Win32 GetMessage in a class containing a GetMessage
> function, you have to use ::GetMessage and so on.
Uhm, no, that will invoke a method called GetMessageA(). In all fairness, gcc with inlines on the Amiga has the same problem. Over-using the preprocessor is never a good idea.
AIO Interviews The Bitmap Brothers : Comment 38 of 38ANN.lu
Posted by Jon on 24-May-2002 10:01 GMT
In reply to Comment 35 (shoecake):
Sorry about the last straw, (you are only person I know from EPIC :)
Thanks for the information. Now, why don't you write a line or two now and then since you are reading ANN anyway =))))
Anonymous, there are 38 items in your selection
Back to Top