| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 252.1 | I like C for Animation | HOW::WISNER | Paul Wisner | Mon Jan 12 1987 20:59 | 31 |
| It seems to me that C should be plenty fast for animation, since
most of the graphics operations on the Amiga are done by built-in
routines (such as moving images, creating filled or pattern filled
polygons... it's all done for you!). A graphics intensive program
would therefore spend most of it's time executing the built in routines
(or waiting for the graphics coprocessors to catch up!).
The Amiga has a tremendous amount of support for graphics, and it's
all accessable from C. Many of the graphics operations are done by the
Blitter and the Copper, allowing.the 68000 to run at full speed.
Really, all the program has to do is provide the logic. You have to
create alot of data-structures to hand to the Intuition routines, this
is easy to do in C.
A problem with C is that, while the programs can be quite fast,
they tend to be considerably larger than an assembly program would
be. I'm not yet brave enough to attempt any major program in assembly,
I'd probably get (additional) brain damage.
I'm writting a video game in C and I'd like to hear from anyone
who dissagrees with me. I use Animator or Basic to create an
prototype of the display, and see how I like it.
And of course... you can always write the speed critical parts
of your program in assembly and link them together. I have doubts
about how much that would actually help.
Does anyone know what some of the commercial video games were
written in?
|
| 252.2 | ... | CHEF::ACCIARDI | | Mon Jan 12 1987 22:36 | 4 |
| I have read that Leader Board was written in C for the Amiga, but
Assembly for the ST, but the Amiga version actually paints the screen
faster, thanks to the blitter. I believe Flight Simulator is written
in Assembly for Mac, St, and Amiga.
|
| 252.3 | The Book Names | WORDS2::BURTON | | Wed Jan 14 1987 10:59 | 14 |
|
The books I'm looking for are published by Addison Wesley.
They are from the Amiga Technical Reference Set. One is the
Hardware Reference Manual and the other is Rom Kernel
Reference Manual. Does anyone know where I can find either of
them?
Thanks,
Chris
|
| 252.4 | try Walden Books | KIRK::LONG | | Wed Jan 14 1987 11:20 | 3 |
| I got my set of manuals from a Walden book store in the Leominster
mall. They are in most standard book stores with a well stocked
computer reference section.
|
| 252.5 | Open Book | NSSG::SULLIVAN | Steven E. Sullivan | Wed Jan 14 1987 12:18 | 5 |
| Check out the Open Book in Westboro shopping center on Rt9 in
(surprise) Westboro.
Thanks,
-SES
|
| 252.6 | AMIGA Reference Manuals | PUERTO::ALVAREZ | Miguel,from sunny Puerto Rico | Thu Jan 15 1987 17:05 | 1 |
| Just this morning I saw them in the Memory Location, Rt. 16 in Wellesley
|
| 252.7 | | BAGELS::BRANNON | Dave Brannon | Thu Jan 15 1987 20:24 | 5 |
| i saw them last night at the Wiz in Westboro (next to the Open Book)
They had all 4 books (Kernel, Exec, Hardware, Intuition) and also
the AmigaDOS book.
-dave
|
| 252.8 | Thanks for the books. Now for the Speed... | WORDS2::BURTON | | Fri Jan 16 1987 11:03 | 14 |
|
Thanks for all the locations to get the books. Now does anyone
have any info on language speeds? I hear Forth is very fast. The
problem is that I don't want to write in a language that in the
end might turn out to be too slow. On the other hand, assembly
language is a bit of a pain to write in.
So I'm still looking for opinions.
Thanks again,
Chris
|
| 252.9 | Here's my vote... | BIZET::TENNY | Dave Tenny | Fri Jan 16 1987 13:01 | 15 |
|
My opinion:
As a seasoned C programmer, I've seen good results on many machines
coded nearly entirely in C. Certainly your coding conventions count,
but in my view, you should be able to receive respectable performance
in C. Critical code can be done in assembler. (special linkages, etc.)
Certainly this doesn't compare to an entirely ASM module, but do you want
your product this year, or next?
Use C. My current preference is MANX, I have both Manx and Lattice.
I have not tried the most recent versions of either however.
Dave Tenny
|
| 252.10 | One more idea | ELWOOD::PETERS | | Fri Jan 16 1987 13:34 | 11 |
|
I suggest C or Modula II. I have written code in both and both are
fast. There are many PD programs that do animation. I suggest you
run some of them and see for your self if their fast enough.
I have also written programs in C then use OMD. OMD will
dis-assemble the code and put the C code in as comments. Then you
can go in and hand optimize ( or re-write ) sections, assemble,
link and go.
Steve Peters
|
| 252.11 | Facts - statistics and other lies | CSSE::WARD | | Fri Jan 16 1987 14:12 | 78 |
|
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Path: decwrl!decvax!ittatc!dcdwest!sdcsvax!nosc!marlin!aburto
Subject: Re: New Savage Benchmark Results
Posted: 17 Dec 86 16:18:45 GMT
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Posted: Wed Dec 17 11:18:45 1986
***************************************************************
* Savage Benchmark Results *
* 16 DEC 1986 *
* Al Aburto/Lew Wolfgang/Larry Phillips/John Gilmore/Ali Ozer *
* Glenn Miller/Mike Howard/And Others........................ *
***************************************************************
123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345
System CPU / FPP CLOCK LANGUAGE TIME ERROR
(MHz) (Sec) Abs(a-2500)
Turbo-Amiga (68020/68881) 14.32 Absoft F77 V2.2B 0.39 2.7 E-12
Sun-3/160 (68020/68881) 16.67 Sun 3.0 F77 0.4 2.0 E-12
Turbo-Amiga (68020/68881) 14.32 Lattice C/68881 Assem 0.46 9.2 E-13
HP 9000/320 (68020/68881) Fortran 77 0.7 3.2 E-09
HP 9000/320 (68020/68881) Pascal 0.7 2.8 E-07
Amiga (68020/68881) 7.16 Absoft F77 V2.2B 0.78 2.0 E-12
VAX-8600 Fortran 77 0.9 1.8 E-08
Amiga (68020/68881) 7.16 Lattice C/68881 Assem 0.92 5.9 E-12
HP 9000/320 (68020/68881) C 1.0 2.5 E-08
DEC 2060 1.6 2.0 E-12
VAX-11/750 Fortran 77 1.9 6.6 E-10
Masscomp (68010/ FPP) 2.1 3.2 E-07
VAX-11/780 UNIX 4.3BSD F77-O 2.7 1.8 E-12
Turbo-Amiga (68020/68881) 14.32 MetaComCo ABasiC V1.0 3.2 2.3 E+01
DMS ( 8086/ 8087) Turbo Pascal 3.8 1.1 E-09
Zenith Z-248 (80286/80287) 8.00 MS Fortran77 V3.20 4.5 1.2 E-09
IBM PC-AT (80286/80287) 6.00 ProFor F77 4.9 8.7 E-11
IBM PC-AT (80286/80287) 6.00 MS Fortran77 7.2 1.2 E-09
IBM PC-AT (80286/80287) 6.00 Turbo Pascal 7.4 1.2 E-09
IBM PC ( 8088/ 8087) 4.77 Microsoft C 8.0 1.2 E-09
Amiga (68020/68881) 7.16 Metacomco ABasiC V1.0 8.6 2.3 E+01
Turbo-Amiga (68020/-----) 14.32 Metacomco ABasiC V1.0 13.3 2.7 E+02
Turbo-Amiga (68020/-----) 14.32 ABasiC V1.0(Cache Off) 14.7 2.7 E+02
Sun-3/160 (68020/-----) 16.67 Sun 3.0 F77 21.5 3.1 E-07
Turbo-Amiga (68020/-----) 14.32 Absoft F77 V2.2B 21.9 1.8 E-07
Amiga (68020/-----) 7.16 Metacomco ABasiC V1.0 37.0 2.7 E+02
Amiga (68000/-----) 7.16 Metacomco ABasiC V1.0 39.7 2.7 E+02
Amiga (68020/-----) 7.16 ABasiC V1.0(Cache Off) 42.2 2.7 E+02
HP 9826 (68000/-----) 8.00 HP Basic V2.0 44.5 3.2 E-07
Turbo-Amiga (68020/-----) 14.32 Lattice C V3.03 55.4 3.2 E-07
IBM PC-XT ( 8088/ 8087) 4.77 Gauss 58.0 1.2 E-09
Amiga (68020/-----) 7.16 Absoft F77 V2.2B 59.7 1.8 E-07
HP Integral (68000/-----) Basic Interpreter 60.9 3.2 E-07
HP Integral (68000/-----) C 63.0 3.2 E-07
Amiga (68000/-----) 7.16 True Basic (Compiler) 65.2 3.0 E-03
Amiga (68020/-----) 7.16 MS AmigaBASIC V1.0 67.0 3.2 E-07
Amiga (68000/-----) 7.16 MS AmigaBASIC V1.0 73.0 3.2 E-07
Amiga (68000/-----) 7.16 Absoft F77 V2.2B 77.2 1.8 E-07
HP Integral (68000/-----) Absoft F77 100.0 1.8 E-07
Amiga (68020/-----) 7.16 Lattice C V3.03 139.0 3.2 E-07
Macintosh (68000/-----) 7.83 MAC C 221.0 (?)
Amiga (68000/-----) 7.16 Lattice C V3.03 234.0 3.2 E-07
Macintosh (68000/-----) 7.83 DeSmet C 244.0 (?)
Commodore 128( 8502/-----) 2.00 Basic Interpreter 256.0 9.0 E-04
Macintosh (68000/-----) 7.83 Manx Aztec C 353.0 (?)
IBM PC-XT ( 8088/-----) 4.77 BASICA 895.0 3.0 E-08
Tandy PC-5 Basic Interpreter 961.0 2.7 E-03
****************************************************************************
Notes:
(1) The Savage Benchmark, by Bill Savage, first appeared in Dr. Dobb's
Journal, Sept 1983, page 120.
(2) The Macintosh results are from Byte, The Small Systems Journal,
Aug 1986, page 254. There appears to be a 'typo' in the
published accuracy results. Exact result should be 2500.0 .
(3) The Savage Benchmark requires use of IEEE double precision
to obtain a reasonably small error. The error is unacceptably
large for IEEE single precision. All the above results were
obtained with double precision except for the MetaComCo ABasiC
where double precision variables were used but the math functions
were calculated only to single precision. As can be seen ABasiC
is fast but the error is too large for a meaningful result.
|
| 252.12 | strange results | SAUTER::SAUTER | John Sauter | Fri Jan 16 1987 15:56 | 4 |
| It seems strange that the 8600 and the 750 give different
errors. I wonder if they used G_floating on one and D_floating
on the other.
John Sauter
|
| 252.13 | | NINJA::HEFFEL | Bored on Board | Wed Jan 21 1987 00:02 | 8 |
| Just another vote for Modula-2. I have been enjoying learning both
it, and the Amiga environment.
As I recall, Marble Madness is written largely in C. I'm sure that
we'd be amazed at how many games have been written in a "high-level"
language. Maybe we should request that Amazing Computing do a study.
Gary
|