Author: shalroth (cpc10-seac22-2-0-cust612.7-2.cable.virginm.net)
Date: 05-18-2014 16:21
I was a bit bitchy wasn't I?
I've seen the BadMooD engine demo on mememetube and it really does look amazing. It's hard to believe that kind of frame rate is coming from a 16MHz 68030 on a 16-bit data bus; the DSP must cry when it sees what's being asked of it.
I don't know too much about DSP programming, but I imagine the transform matrix only works effectively on data sets in RAM, hence the high memory requirement - it would be no good swapping chunks of the WAD file in and out of RAM to raycast because the swapping itself is very expensive. That's a perfectly valid argument for the RAM need - because the compromise that would be needed on a 4MB system would make the entire project pointless. So having given the matter some thought, I can understand the memory constraints given the nature of the binary.
It's not easy being an Atari enthusiast these days, let alone being a Falcon fan! Being a F030 owner straight away puts me in a very exclusive club. It's frustrating to be further excluded within this already small user base due to memory footprint. I don't want to accelerate or overclock my Falcon, but I'm starting to accept having 14MB is pretty much a necessity, not just desirable.But like i say, it's hard being a Falcon enthusiast in 2014 - so being told I need a rare and expensive RAM expansion to run software that doesn't even need the FPU, makes me feel a tiny bit like my loyalty to the TOS 4 platform has been misplaced. That's just me though, it's none's fault. I cry every time when I watch "Serenity," and every time I watch David Tennant or Matt Smith regenerating, so there you go.
I have a 4160STe, upgraded from its factory 520 spec.I have a 520STM with 1MB and TOS 2.06, thanks to Marpet. When I had a TT, it had 2MB ST-RAM and 20MB TT-RAM, using standard SIMMs like my STe. The Falcon030 has to be one of the most difficult computers to upgrade the memory of since the 128K Macintosh. I'll check out the company you suggested, and thank you for that, but I ain't gonna hold my breath WRT having a 14M F030 any time soon.
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