Author: Anthony Green (proxy34-ext.nt.tas.gov.au)
Date: 08-24-1999 03:34
Elliot,
I am afraid I completely disagree with you on the rationale why not to support GEM.
From my personal point of view I have a Falcon and Hades 060 and the only games I play on my machines are ones using the machines capability. My Mega STE is only used once in a blue moon and that is only for maintenance tasks. The people who most appreciate new products (from my experience as a retailer of TOS systems in Australia) are those who keep abreast of the available hardware systems also.
Coding under GEM in its most basic for DOES result in poor performance and that purely comes down to what you sort of system you have. You DO NOT need oodles of hardware to get a fast game under GEM, there a many GEM apps that very fast now, GEM Demo being the classic, but Escape Paint on the Falcon is also very impressive and runs under MagiC with GEM.
While I can respect your notion that performance on a basic ST would be poor. An increasing number Atari owners still using there systems as their primary machines have powerful systems, be it MagiC Mac, Hades, Milan, TT's or souped up Falcons.
The problem with ST developers in the past and an increasingly diminishing extent now is that they do not code with the big picture in mind. That is why I really respect game coders like RDT and Nature who are both coding for Falcon's, but also are porting their games to systems they do not necessarily own. Nature are soon to release three Falcon games, all of which will ALSO run on the Hades 060 taking full advantage of the extra processing power. They won't use GEM but they see the big picture.
By all means Stompy can avoid GEM, but should use the VDI so that it works with NOVA VDI or other VDI's.
That is not to say that fast GEM games cannot be written. SIM City was good for its time, remember it would be about **10** years old now and it is only the last five years or so that we have seen GEM applications mature to the point where they are fast, attractive and functional. The use of utilities such as NVDI and MagiC makes GEM programs vastly superior and NVDI in particular is part of almost every committed Atari owners kit.
As for many downsides and limited upsides, I personally believed the only downside is the reduction in speed, but on the up GEM is pretty easy to program, flexible in customisation, capable of using many different hardware and software configurations and much easily to get to function on ANY TOS system. Making the game available to ALL TOS computer owners is the biggest perceivable advantage in using GEM.
Compatibility is the key. The game will get better with better systems sure, but why set the bar so low that virtually nobody will appreciate the effort?
Cheers,
Anthony
Elliot Swanton wrote:
-------------------------------
The best game I ever saw in GEM was Sim City and that did not do much really graphically. I am with Stompy on this one, don't get me wrong it is a good idea but as soon as you start using GEM you make life so hard, the Blitter chip takes a lot of f&%king around, and the mouse routines are so slow, you will start getting problems with timing (due to CPU usage), memory sizes will vary dramatically (the last two are if other apps are running), and I defiantly would not want to be around to test all of the possibilities (its boring enough with the different TOS versions), plus you also start to take out a lot of the fun with things like border removal and rasters.
Its is not that it is unfeasible just a nasty job that has limited bonuses and a great number of downsides, what do people want? a game that is graphically good, smooth play, lively sound or do you want to be able to play it on a MAC?
Stick to low level, its quick and if people can not be bothered to reset their machin....
|
