Magnetic Pages Article | 1993-07-22 | 9KB | 34 lines
MPARTICLE
~fg>fg>
>fg>~g?
& It would be appreciated if letters&of more than a few lines were sent on&disk as this saves re-typing. Text&files should be in the ASCII format.&Include a covering letter and put your&name and address on the disk. All&subscribers' disks will be returned&with the next issue of the magazine if¬ sooner. If possible all other&disks will be returned but as it's&impossible to know how many will be&received this can't be guaranteed -#the postage could become excessive.& Feel free to include pictures on&disk related to your letter but please&make them as small as possible. They&should be hi-res non-interlaced and of&16 colours or less. Deluxe Paint type&brushes are ideal. Other (non-AGA)&Amiga formats could be used but they&would have to be converted anyway so&if you are drawing a picture to go&with your letter please use
non-interlaced hi-res.& I reserve the right to edit or&abridge any letters or not to include&them at all. Those using nom-de-plumes&will only be used if a full name and&address is included. This will be kept
confidential.& Letters to the editor should be
sent to...
CyberCraft
PO Box 4032
Mayfair
HASTINGS 4201
NEW ZEALAND
Letters next page...& I read through your mag (APDR #3)&with interest but felt I just had to&write. You made a comment about&Odyssey which stated the programmers&couldn't program right because the&demo didn't multitask. What are you&on?! If you'd ever have used Assembler&you'll know that unless you turn off&the operating system and the very&heavy memory/processor intensive&routines which the OS has, writing&even a starfield properly is
impossible because it flickers.& `Couldn't program right' - ha! Look&at the sheer excellence of the demo,&I'm sure if they (sorry "HE" - it was&coded by one guy) can program a&computer like that, I'm sure they&could write a multi-tasking program if&that is what they wanted to do.& This isn't meant to slag your mag&off in any way, it's content is&excellent but before slagging others&off it might be worth taking a little&more time at what the coders are&trying to do - next you'll be wanting
Superfrog to multitask!& ANONYMOUS / ENGLAND
[34m And why shouldn't Superfrog&multi-task? OK, I was being a bit&facetious by suggesting Odyssey should&multi-task. (For those who don't know&what this is about, the above letter&is in response to the review of The&Jungle disk magazine where I&criticised it's lack of multi-tasking&twice as it made reviewing it such a&hassle, which is the case with most&scene productions. And just to hammer&home the point with as much lack of&subtlety as I could muster, I added&Odyssey to the list. It got a response&though, which is what I hoped it would achieve.)& I know some things will always only&be possible by taking over the whole&machine. Getting everything done in&one screen refresh while who-knows&what else could be running at the same&time will never be an easy task. I'm&surprised Spaceballs' State Of The Art&can be done at all, let alone
expecting it to multi-task.& The point I was trying to make&though was that any Amiga program that&doesn't need to grab the whole&machine, shouldn't do so. The greatest&strength of the Amiga, if you ever&need to do anything with it other than&just play games or view demos and&such-like, is it's multi-tasking&Workbench. Without it, it would be&just a slow PC with flashy graphics.&With it, it has a design base that can&be happily built on into the next
century.& It's fair enough hitting the metal&if you're at the cutting edge of&what's thought possible on the Amiga,&but how many disk mags, to take an&example, really need to be&auto-booting only? A few have the odd&special effect but most are just&displaying text and pictures and&playing a bit of music. My feeling is&that too many programmers are stuck in&a demo coding rut and when it comes to&doing something else they write it in&the same way as they do their demos.&This is then extended to everything&else they do. Who hasn't received a&disk-full of utilities with all their&icons removed but with a great&auto-booting front end? And I bet you&that out there somewhere is an&icon-editor that can't be run from the
desktop. Tell me I'm wrong!& OK, so what's the ideal? Everything&should at least be able to start from&the desktop and when it ends, return&to it. Stuff that's too demanding on&the machine to run while it's&multi-tasking should shut down the&Workbench and operating system but&have a pause option so that when it's&paused you can move between it and the&Workbench should you need to, or exit&to the Workbench for that matter. Is&there any good reason, memory&permitting, why this isn't possible?&If not, then it should become the&norm, not the exception that it is&with scene productions at the moment.&It would enhance the Amiga's value
greatly.& One other possible reason I guess&for the Workbench being forgotten is&the time it takes to load on floppy&only systems. Hopefully hard-drives&will soon become as common on the&Amiga as they are on PCs and then&there won't be any excuse for&auto-booting only software. Or will&there be? If so, I'd like to hear&them. Oh, and all you coders who are&now working out how to do&"impossible", multi-tasking and&non-flickering starfields, see the&Submissions column for where to send"them - lets see a few records!
(.txt)