subject:"hi"

but surely the code can be fed into the samc compiler no - sam vision
erm it looks close?!
are you sure that as teh filled in cube rotates it wouldnt be easier
to drop to mode1 couldnt you fill 64 pixels of colour witha single
byte attribute square only need to work out how many you could get
away with seems a bit jerk how many frames does it take to draw?
 have you tried the echologia demo with the dma and mb-02+ in real
spectrum  - not sure if they are using the dma tah much some models
take 3 to 7 frames to draw
wouldnt a sam dma be a wee bit faster than the quoted 17jb per frame
velesoft reckon the dma datagear interface handles in on128k
also do you need masterdos to detect an external sam - its only
another 3mhz but what about those register hungry emulators like the
apple and oric or whatever its called oreo - isnt that a biscuit?
did you catcht eh text font its taken me a lng time
silver paint tonight pressure sensitive keyboard membrane here i come!
- didnt realise the 128keypad had a pic controller in it dont they go
up to 80mhz! theres development kits in  maplin £44 or build it your
self for £25ish grade b=£20
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12483

usb...

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12545


2009/8/7 Simon Cooke si...@popcornfilms.com:
 It's still pretty much just a quick sin/cos lookup for the euler angle
 calculation. As you say, you just store it in a form that hits 0 at 0, and
 2pi - epsilon at 65535. (Or something similar), and then just do a lookup

Re: Hi - just checking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALLAUaVoQC0feature=channel_page

dunno if youd need a dma for this in mode1 or it'd b n e easier in mode2
will try mode 3 next then if anyone knows an easy to use interlace routine
would the second interlaced screen be one pixel line below the first -
is that how it works its alternate scan lines

2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 but surely the code can be fed into the samc compiler no - sam vision
 erm it looks close?!
 are you sure that as teh filled in cube rotates it wouldnt be easier
 to drop to mode1 couldnt you fill 64 pixels of colour witha single
 byte attribute square only need to work out how many you could get
 away with seems a bit jerk how many frames does it take to draw?
  have you tried the echologia demo with the dma and mb-02+ in real
 spectrum  - not sure if they are using the dma tah much some models
 take 3 to 7 frames to draw
 wouldnt a sam dma be a wee bit faster than the quoted 17jb per frame
 velesoft reckon the dma datagear interface handles in on128k
 also do you need masterdos to detect an external sam - its only
 another 3mhz but what about those register hungry emulators like the
 apple and oric or whatever its called oreo - isnt that a biscuit?
 did you catcht eh text font its taken me a lng time
 silver paint tonight pressure sensitive keyboard membrane here i come!
 - didnt realise the 128keypad had a pic controller in it dont they go
 up to 80mhz! theres development kits in  maplin £44 or build it your
 self for £25ish grade b=£20
 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12483

 usb...

 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12545


 2009/8/7 Simon Cooke si...@popcornfilms.com:
 It's still pretty much just a quick sin/cos lookup for the euler angle
 calculation. As you say, you just store it in a form that hits 0 at 0, and
 2pi - epsilon at 65535. (Or something similar), and then just do a lookup.
 That part's fast.

 Quaternions... The biggest advantage is that you can interpolate between
 them - which is necessary for skeletal animation. There are a number of
 disadvantages though - the need to occasionally renormalize them being a big
 one. (You're not actually gaining any kind of stability there per se; all
 you're doing is trading one numerical inaccuracy for another).

 Here's a case against them:

 http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1199.asp
 http://www.somedude.net/gamemonkey/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12t=380


 http://www.sjbrown.co.uk/2002/05/01/quaternions/

 Note: it may make sense to handle your camera as a quaternion, vs. a
 rotation matrix for local-worldspace transforms, based on the cost of
 operations.

 If you decompose your matrix into all of the pieces you need to calculate
 when you build it, and keep that alongside all of the pieces you need to
 apply when you apply it, then you might find more optimization opportunities
 - especially if you're not performing more than one rotation at once.

 But ultimately, the name of the game here is to go as far as possible, so
 it's all going to come down to your use cases.




 -Original Message-
 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Thomas Harte
 Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 4:13 PM
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

 They're in some format or another that I don't recall offhand, but is
 lined up so that a full circle is a nice round binary number for the
 obvious range fixing optimisation. But it's not just a quick sin/cos
 table lookup unless you're rotating around one axis only. See, e.g.
 http://www.manpagez.com/man/3/glRotatef/ (the man page for glRotatef)
 - clearly there's a lot more going on there than table lookups.

 Of course, I am taking note of coherences. If the angles associated
 with an object do not change from one frame to the next, the source
 matrix is not recalculated. This optimisation postdates the version of
 my code that has already appeared on Sam Revival, but predates the
 next version (which is a better optimised version of the code shown in
 my video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0xN_Mi3B_I)

 As I've posted to this list in the past, I use something vaguely like
 SIMD to multiply a 2d vector by a scalar - the relevant part of the
 scalar sits in the accumulator and is shifted there to make the
 add/don't add decision in the standard binary multiplication formula,
 meanwhile the 2d vector sits with the work going in for one component
 occupying BC, DE and HL, the work for the other occupying BC', DE' and
 HL'. Hence I get a substantial saving on multiplying the two vector
 components by the scalar separately.

 Naturally, I have a classic y = f((x^2)/4) table for the limited range
 multiplications (related to the maximum size an individual object may
 be).

 I assume your point about not accumulating transformations in matrices
 effectively means that you agree that quaternions are useful beyond
 interpolation and animation

Re: Hi - just checking

!hd
also sim coupe didnt like the full screen or maybe it was camtasia i
used to record the desktop anyone got a better one?
anyone figure out how to use the tv encoder chip on the vga card - msi
mx440 vtd 8x agp /ti4200 vtd 128 / fx5900 zt vtd 128 all msi all Video
input video output - none support hi deff despite the manual claiming
the tv encoder can encode mpeg with 600mhz proces...@1024x768 - dont
seem too hi deff to me!

also ati x1950 power colour this had a component input cable with an
arrow pointing towards teh machine but guess what
also msi digital tv tuner - still only composite and s-video inputs
although kind of weirdly the virgn/ntl set top box my brother has
actually manages to get the screen to fill the pc tv tuner screen
whereas the output from the box never quite works on the tv no matter
what setting you try?!
maybe use the lan/usb/serial/scart to conenct it to a hi deff tv? need
to reflash the bios? not available from ntl/virgin
also cant use the cable feed to get hi deff on the pc or the cable
cahnnels or the internet have to have adpater for set top box and
adapter for a router - was similar in hong kong luckily i had three
fans in the card board box above the loos otherwise ida fryed!
pccw 6mbps yeah sure engineer tested it never above 300kb and that
would have been a miracle
ohh  you loose 5mbps when you are watching the digital tv service oh
yeah well in that case youd have to be giveing me 5mbps in the first
place before i could loose what you have never given me in the first
place $150 a month christ! crooks
can you use the itu t v44 320kbps modem at the same time would
increase by 2½ the upload ability at the sneakily unadvertised 256kbps
speed (fat chance!)

2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALLAUaVoQC0feature=channel_page

 dunno if youd need a dma for this in mode1 or it'd b n e easier in mode2
 will try mode 3 next then if anyone knows an easy to use interlace routine
 would the second interlaced screen be one pixel line below the first -
 is that how it works its alternate scan lines

 2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 but surely the code can be fed into the samc compiler no - sam vision
 erm it looks close?!
 are you sure that as teh filled in cube rotates it wouldnt be easier
 to drop to mode1 couldnt you fill 64 pixels of colour witha single
 byte attribute square only need to work out how many you could get
 away with seems a bit jerk how many frames does it take to draw?
  have you tried the echologia demo with the dma and mb-02+ in real
 spectrum  - not sure if they are using the dma tah much some models
 take 3 to 7 frames to draw
 wouldnt a sam dma be a wee bit faster than the quoted 17jb per frame
 velesoft reckon the dma datagear interface handles in on128k
 also do you need masterdos to detect an external sam - its only
 another 3mhz but what about those register hungry emulators like the
 apple and oric or whatever its called oreo - isnt that a biscuit?
 did you catcht eh text font its taken me a lng time
 silver paint tonight pressure sensitive keyboard membrane here i come!
 - didnt realise the 128keypad had a pic controller in it dont they go
 up to 80mhz! theres development kits in  maplin £44 or build it your
 self for £25ish grade b=£20
 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12483

 usb...

 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12545


 2009/8/7 Simon Cooke si...@popcornfilms.com:
 It's still pretty much just a quick sin/cos lookup for the euler angle
 calculation. As you say, you just store it in a form that hits 0 at 0, and
 2pi - epsilon at 65535. (Or something similar), and then just do a lookup.
 That part's fast.

 Quaternions... The biggest advantage is that you can interpolate between
 them - which is necessary for skeletal animation. There are a number of
 disadvantages though - the need to occasionally renormalize them being a big
 one. (You're not actually gaining any kind of stability there per se; all
 you're doing is trading one numerical inaccuracy for another).

 Here's a case against them:

 http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1199.asp
 http://www.somedude.net/gamemonkey/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12t=380


 http://www.sjbrown.co.uk/2002/05/01/quaternions/

 Note: it may make sense to handle your camera as a quaternion, vs. a
 rotation matrix for local-worldspace transforms, based on the cost of
 operations.

 If you decompose your matrix into all of the pieces you need to calculate
 when you build it, and keep that alongside all of the pieces you need to
 apply when you apply it, then you might find more optimization opportunities
 - especially if you're not performing more than one rotation at once.

 But ultimately, the name of the game here is to go as far as possible, so
 it's all going to come down to your use cases.




 -Original Message-
 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Thomas Harte

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-19 Thread David Sanders

Roger,
Can we not keep on-topic just slightly? I really don't see what
relevance the cost of broadband in Hong Kong has to the blue-footed
one.
Though actually it's a little like having James Joyce on the list, so
I'll try not to complain.

David


2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 !hd
 also sim coupe didnt like the full screen or maybe it was camtasia i
 used to record the desktop anyone got a better one?
 anyone figure out how to use the tv encoder chip on the vga card - msi
 mx440 vtd 8x agp /ti4200 vtd 128 / fx5900 zt vtd 128 all msi all Video
 input video output - none support hi deff despite the manual claiming
 the tv encoder can encode mpeg with 600mhz proces...@1024x768 - dont
 seem too hi deff to me!

 also ati x1950 power colour this had a component input cable with an
 arrow pointing towards teh machine but guess what
 also msi digital tv tuner - still only composite and s-video inputs
 although kind of weirdly the virgn/ntl set top box my brother has
 actually manages to get the screen to fill the pc tv tuner screen
 whereas the output from the box never quite works on the tv no matter
 what setting you try?!
 maybe use the lan/usb/serial/scart to conenct it to a hi deff tv? need
 to reflash the bios? not available from ntl/virgin
 also cant use the cable feed to get hi deff on the pc or the cable
 cahnnels or the internet have to have adpater for set top box and
 adapter for a router - was similar in hong kong luckily i had three
 fans in the card board box above the loos otherwise ida fryed!
 pccw 6mbps yeah sure engineer tested it never above 300kb and that
 would have been a miracle
 ohh  you loose 5mbps when you are watching the digital tv service oh
 yeah well in that case youd have to be giveing me 5mbps in the first
 place before i could loose what you have never given me in the first
 place $150 a month christ! crooks
 can you use the itu t v44 320kbps modem at the same time would
 increase by 2½ the upload ability at the sneakily unadvertised 256kbps
 speed (fat chance!)

 2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALLAUaVoQC0feature=channel_page

 dunno if youd need a dma for this in mode1 or it'd b n e easier in mode2
 will try mode 3 next then if anyone knows an easy to use interlace routine
 would the second interlaced screen be one pixel line below the first -
 is that how it works its alternate scan lines

 2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 but surely the code can be fed into the samc compiler no - sam vision
 erm it looks close?!
 are you sure that as teh filled in cube rotates it wouldnt be easier
 to drop to mode1 couldnt you fill 64 pixels of colour witha single
 byte attribute square only need to work out how many you could get
 away with seems a bit jerk how many frames does it take to draw?
  have you tried the echologia demo with the dma and mb-02+ in real
 spectrum  - not sure if they are using the dma tah much some models
 take 3 to 7 frames to draw
 wouldnt a sam dma be a wee bit faster than the quoted 17jb per frame
 velesoft reckon the dma datagear interface handles in on128k
 also do you need masterdos to detect an external sam - its only
 another 3mhz but what about those register hungry emulators like the
 apple and oric or whatever its called oreo - isnt that a biscuit?
 did you catcht eh text font its taken me a lng time
 silver paint tonight pressure sensitive keyboard membrane here i come!
 - didnt realise the 128keypad had a pic controller in it dont they go
 up to 80mhz! theres development kits in  maplin £44 or build it your
 self for £25ish grade b=£20
 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12483

 usb...

 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12545


 2009/8/7 Simon Cooke si...@popcornfilms.com:
 It's still pretty much just a quick sin/cos lookup for the euler angle
 calculation. As you say, you just store it in a form that hits 0 at 0, and
 2pi - epsilon at 65535. (Or something similar), and then just do a lookup.
 That part's fast.

 Quaternions... The biggest advantage is that you can interpolate between
 them - which is necessary for skeletal animation. There are a number of
 disadvantages though - the need to occasionally renormalize them being a 
 big
 one. (You're not actually gaining any kind of stability there per se; all
 you're doing is trading one numerical inaccuracy for another).

 Here's a case against them:

 http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1199.asp
 http://www.somedude.net/gamemonkey/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12t=380


 http://www.sjbrown.co.uk/2002/05/01/quaternions/

 Note: it may make sense to handle your camera as a quaternion, vs. a
 rotation matrix for local-worldspace transforms, based on the cost of
 operations.

 If you decompose your matrix into all of the pieces you need to calculate
 when you build it, and keep that alongside all of the pieces you need to
 apply when you apply it, then you might find more optimization

Re: Hi - just checking

leicester not w(y)o(r)kshire
a hazel nut in every bite isnt that what comes out of a squirrel?
2009/8/19 David Sanders dsuzukisand...@gmail.com:
 Roger,
 Can we not keep on-topic just slightly? I really don't see what
 relevance the cost of broadband in Hong Kong has to the blue-footed
 one.
 Though actually it's a little like having James Joyce on the list, so
 I'll try not to complain.

 David


 2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 !hd
 also sim coupe didnt like the full screen or maybe it was camtasia i
 used to record the desktop anyone got a better one?
 anyone figure out how to use the tv encoder chip on the vga card - msi
 mx440 vtd 8x agp /ti4200 vtd 128 / fx5900 zt vtd 128 all msi all Video
 input video output - none support hi deff despite the manual claiming
 the tv encoder can encode mpeg with 600mhz proces...@1024x768 - dont
 seem too hi deff to me!

 also ati x1950 power colour this had a component input cable with an
 arrow pointing towards teh machine but guess what
 also msi digital tv tuner - still only composite and s-video inputs
 although kind of weirdly the virgn/ntl set top box my brother has
 actually manages to get the screen to fill the pc tv tuner screen
 whereas the output from the box never quite works on the tv no matter
 what setting you try?!
 maybe use the lan/usb/serial/scart to conenct it to a hi deff tv? need
 to reflash the bios? not available from ntl/virgin
 also cant use the cable feed to get hi deff on the pc or the cable
 cahnnels or the internet have to have adpater for set top box and
 adapter for a router - was similar in hong kong luckily i had three
 fans in the card board box above the loos otherwise ida fryed!
 pccw 6mbps yeah sure engineer tested it never above 300kb and that
 would have been a miracle
 ohh  you loose 5mbps when you are watching the digital tv service oh
 yeah well in that case youd have to be giveing me 5mbps in the first
 place before i could loose what you have never given me in the first
 place $150 a month christ! crooks
 can you use the itu t v44 320kbps modem at the same time would
 increase by 2½ the upload ability at the sneakily unadvertised 256kbps
 speed (fat chance!)

 2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALLAUaVoQC0feature=channel_page

 dunno if youd need a dma for this in mode1 or it'd b n e easier in mode2
 will try mode 3 next then if anyone knows an easy to use interlace routine
 would the second interlaced screen be one pixel line below the first -
 is that how it works its alternate scan lines

 2009/8/19 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 but surely the code can be fed into the samc compiler no - sam vision
 erm it looks close?!
 are you sure that as teh filled in cube rotates it wouldnt be easier
 to drop to mode1 couldnt you fill 64 pixels of colour witha single
 byte attribute square only need to work out how many you could get
 away with seems a bit jerk how many frames does it take to draw?
  have you tried the echologia demo with the dma and mb-02+ in real
 spectrum  - not sure if they are using the dma tah much some models
 take 3 to 7 frames to draw
 wouldnt a sam dma be a wee bit faster than the quoted 17jb per frame
 velesoft reckon the dma datagear interface handles in on128k
 also do you need masterdos to detect an external sam - its only
 another 3mhz but what about those register hungry emulators like the
 apple and oric or whatever its called oreo - isnt that a biscuit?
 did you catcht eh text font its taken me a lng time
 silver paint tonight pressure sensitive keyboard membrane here i come!
 - didnt realise the 128keypad had a pic controller in it dont they go
 up to 80mhz! theres development kits in  maplin £44 or build it your
 self for £25ish grade b=£20
 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12483

 usb...

 http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12545


 2009/8/7 Simon Cooke si...@popcornfilms.com:
 It's still pretty much just a quick sin/cos lookup for the euler angle
 calculation. As you say, you just store it in a form that hits 0 at 0, and
 2pi - epsilon at 65535. (Or something similar), and then just do a lookup.
 That part's fast.

 Quaternions... The biggest advantage is that you can interpolate between
 them - which is necessary for skeletal animation. There are a number of
 disadvantages though - the need to occasionally renormalize them being a 
 big
 one. (You're not actually gaining any kind of stability there per se; all
 you're doing is trading one numerical inaccuracy for another).

 Here's a case against them:

 http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1199.asp
 http://www.somedude.net/gamemonkey/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12t=380


 http://www.sjbrown.co.uk/2002/05/01/quaternions/

 Note: it may make sense to handle your camera as a quaternion, vs. a
 rotation matrix for local-worldspace transforms, based on the cost of
 operations.

 If you decompose your matrix into all of the pieces you need to calculate

RE: Hi - just checking

2009-08-07 Thread Simon Cooke

It's still pretty much just a quick sin/cos lookup for the euler angle
calculation. As you say, you just store it in a form that hits 0 at 0, and
2pi - epsilon at 65535. (Or something similar), and then just do a lookup.
That part's fast.

Quaternions... The biggest advantage is that you can interpolate between
them - which is necessary for skeletal animation. There are a number of
disadvantages though - the need to occasionally renormalize them being a big
one. (You're not actually gaining any kind of stability there per se; all
you're doing is trading one numerical inaccuracy for another). 

Here's a case against them:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1199.asp
http://www.somedude.net/gamemonkey/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12t=380


http://www.sjbrown.co.uk/2002/05/01/quaternions/

Note: it may make sense to handle your camera as a quaternion, vs. a
rotation matrix for local-worldspace transforms, based on the cost of
operations.

If you decompose your matrix into all of the pieces you need to calculate
when you build it, and keep that alongside all of the pieces you need to
apply when you apply it, then you might find more optimization opportunities
- especially if you're not performing more than one rotation at once.

But ultimately, the name of the game here is to go as far as possible, so
it's all going to come down to your use cases.




-Original Message-
From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
Behalf Of Thomas Harte
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 4:13 PM
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

They're in some format or another that I don't recall offhand, but is
lined up so that a full circle is a nice round binary number for the
obvious range fixing optimisation. But it's not just a quick sin/cos
table lookup unless you're rotating around one axis only. See, e.g.
http://www.manpagez.com/man/3/glRotatef/ (the man page for glRotatef)
- clearly there's a lot more going on there than table lookups.

Of course, I am taking note of coherences. If the angles associated
with an object do not change from one frame to the next, the source
matrix is not recalculated. This optimisation postdates the version of
my code that has already appeared on Sam Revival, but predates the
next version (which is a better optimised version of the code shown in
my video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0xN_Mi3B_I)

As I've posted to this list in the past, I use something vaguely like
SIMD to multiply a 2d vector by a scalar - the relevant part of the
scalar sits in the accumulator and is shifted there to make the
add/don't add decision in the standard binary multiplication formula,
meanwhile the 2d vector sits with the work going in for one component
occupying BC, DE and HL, the work for the other occupying BC', DE' and
HL'. Hence I get a substantial saving on multiplying the two vector
components by the scalar separately.

Naturally, I have a classic y = f((x^2)/4) table for the limited range
multiplications (related to the maximum size an individual object may
be).

I assume your point about not accumulating transformations in matrices
effectively means that you agree that quaternions are useful beyond
interpolation and animation (which I'm interpreting quite narrowly to
be the traditional skeletal type, not broadly to be any old moving
image).

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to get myself in gear for a source
release at some point in the near future, then you can rip it apart.
It's all geared up to be trivial for other (assembler) coders to use
to produce their own programs, handling triple buffering and frame
rate compensation with very limited need for work on the part of the
programmer (which neatly means that all my code scales really well
from a normal Sam to a Mayhem or otherwise accelerated machine), etc.
I tidied most of it up for a release quite a while ago but decided to
switch to Jam rather than sticking on pyz80 because a lot of stuff
would be substantially more compact and more readable with proper
macro support. I also would much rather that the demo was seen first
on Sam Revival rather than on the internet, both as a pathetic attempt
to support the publication and because it looks much better on a real
television. Never found time to convert it though, so it'll be a pyz80
release.

Actually, the demo on the previous Sam Revival was explicitly flagged
as PD, so I'll upload a DSK of that demo somewhere once the next
edition is out. I think I mentioned every Sam program I've written in
the SR article; you can see most of them very briefly in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr_Lz98qVjEfeature=channel_page

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 10:16 PM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com wrote:
 Hmmm... what form are you using your Eulers in? If it's radians, it's not
 too bad - just a quick sin/cos table lookup. And you only need to do it
once
 per object if it's a simple rigid body.

 The trick with making matrices numerically stable is that you don't

Re: Hi - just checking

That's not entirely true. Matrices are numerically unstable, so the
cost of ensuring they remain orthonormal when applying consecutive
local transforms in a game such as Elite is substantially greater than
the cost of ensuring that a quaternion remains of unit length.

I make it 8 multiplies, 3 adds, 1 square root and 1 divide to fix up
numerical error in a quaternion. Conversely, I get 36 multiplies, 21
adds, 3 square roots and 3 divides to fix up an orthonormal matrix.

Quaternion to matrix is 10 multiplies, 6 shifts and 14 adds. So the
way I calculate it, you can fix a quaternion and convert it into a
matrix in less than you can fix up a matrix. Furthermore, quaternion
composition is 16 multiplies and 12 adds, whereas matrix composition
(with assumptions about the bottom row of a 4x4) is, ummm, at least 36
multiplies and 18 adds. And that's with the translation component not
completely factored in (I'm reading actual code off screen and have
optimised the translation out of this particular batch).

Elite is also a perfect example of when Euler's aren't fine, even if
they didn't produce Gimbal lock, as all rotation is around local axes.
And besides that, Euler angles always have to be converted to some
other form before they can be applied to arbitrary geometry. Matrices
require no further transforms.

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com wrote:
 You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or interpolation.
 If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine.

 -Original Message-
 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Thomas Harte
 Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

 Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
 opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
 substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
 ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.

 A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
 finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
 still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
 only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
 special orthogonals or quaternions.

 I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
 stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
 in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
 to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
 mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
 on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
 points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
 lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
 something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
 indexed by a three-tuple.

 I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
 visibility of the faces of a bounding box - if a face on the real
 model points away from the face on the bounding box then it definitely
 can't be visible if the box face is. Or something like that.

 I'm going to stop thinking aloud now...

 On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Steve Parry-Thomasmorriga...@aol.com
 wrote:
 I guess when the clocks go back in October SAM users will hibernate over
 the
 winter until next August!







 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Ian Spencer
 Sent: 04 August 2009 08:04

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking



 Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong with
 my subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick into
 a
 hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last few
 days on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking
 out
 there.



 Ian



 - Original Message -

 From: Ian Spencer

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no

 Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM

 Subject: Hi - just checking



 Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would
 send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to
 everyone.

 I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the
 group.





 Ian

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-05 Thread Roger Jowett

what does vu3d use?

On 05/08/2009, Thomas Harte tomh.retros...@gmail.com wrote:

 That's not entirely true. Matrices are numerically unstable, so the
 cost of ensuring they remain orthonormal when applying consecutive
 local transforms in a game such as Elite is substantially greater than
 the cost of ensuring that a quaternion remains of unit length.

 I make it 8 multiplies, 3 adds, 1 square root and 1 divide to fix up
 numerical error in a quaternion. Conversely, I get 36 multiplies, 21
 adds, 3 square roots and 3 divides to fix up an orthonormal matrix.

 Quaternion to matrix is 10 multiplies, 6 shifts and 14 adds. So the
 way I calculate it, you can fix a quaternion and convert it into a
 matrix in less than you can fix up a matrix. Furthermore, quaternion
 composition is 16 multiplies and 12 adds, whereas matrix composition
 (with assumptions about the bottom row of a 4x4) is, ummm, at least 36
 multiplies and 18 adds. And that's with the translation component not
 completely factored in (I'm reading actual code off screen and have
 optimised the translation out of this particular batch).

 Elite is also a perfect example of when Euler's aren't fine, even if
 they didn't produce Gimbal lock, as all rotation is around local axes.
 And besides that, Euler angles always have to be converted to some
 other form before they can be applied to arbitrary geometry. Matrices
 require no further transforms.

 On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com wrote:
  You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or
 interpolation.
  If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine.
 
  -Original Message-
  From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no]
 On
  Behalf Of Thomas Harte
  Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
  Subject: Re: Hi - just checking
 
  Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
  opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
  substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
  ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.
 
  A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
  finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
  still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
  only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
  special orthogonals or quaternions.
 
  I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
  stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
  in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
  to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
  mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
  on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
  points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
  lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
  something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
  indexed by a three-tuple.
 
  I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
  visibility of the faces of a bounding box - if a face on the real
  model points away from the face on the bounding box then it definitely
  can't be visible if the box face is. Or something like that.
 
  I'm going to stop thinking aloud now...
 
  On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Steve Parry-Thomasmorriga...@aol.com
  wrote:
  I guess when the clocks go back in October SAM users will hibernate over
  the
  winter until next August!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no]
 On
  Behalf Of Ian Spencer
  Sent: 04 August 2009 08:04
 
  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
  Subject: Re: Hi - just checking
 
 
 
  Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong
 with
  my subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick
 into
  a
  hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last few
  days on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking
  out
  there.
 
 
 
  Ian
 
 
 
  - Original Message -
 
  From: Ian Spencer
 
  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 
  Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM
 
  Subject: Hi - just checking
 
 
 
  Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I
 would
  send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to
  everyone.
 
  I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on
 the
  group.
 
 
 
 
 
  Ian

Re: Hi - just checking

Oh, I'm currently using 2.14 fixed point for matrix components (engine
goes Eulers - matrix, apply that) if that helps the discussion of the
level of nuisance caused by numerical errors.

Earlier versions of the code, including I think the version last
provided on Sam Revival, used 8.8 fixed point throughout but that
produced some visible precision issues. 2.14 isn't exactly perfect,
but it's as good as things are going to get without a major speed
tradeoff. The 2.14 is used only for matrix generation and composition
(since objects are assumed to be positioned under the influence of
exactly two matrices in my code — a camera matrix and an object
matrix), it's rendered down to 8.8 for geometry transformation.

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:14 PM, Thomas Hartetomh.retros...@gmail.com wrote:
 That's not entirely true. Matrices are numerically unstable, so the
 cost of ensuring they remain orthonormal when applying consecutive
 local transforms in a game such as Elite is substantially greater than
 the cost of ensuring that a quaternion remains of unit length.

 I make it 8 multiplies, 3 adds, 1 square root and 1 divide to fix up
 numerical error in a quaternion. Conversely, I get 36 multiplies, 21
 adds, 3 square roots and 3 divides to fix up an orthonormal matrix.

 Quaternion to matrix is 10 multiplies, 6 shifts and 14 adds. So the
 way I calculate it, you can fix a quaternion and convert it into a
 matrix in less than you can fix up a matrix. Furthermore, quaternion
 composition is 16 multiplies and 12 adds, whereas matrix composition
 (with assumptions about the bottom row of a 4x4) is, ummm, at least 36
 multiplies and 18 adds. And that's with the translation component not
 completely factored in (I'm reading actual code off screen and have
 optimised the translation out of this particular batch).

 Elite is also a perfect example of when Euler's aren't fine, even if
 they didn't produce Gimbal lock, as all rotation is around local axes.
 And besides that, Euler angles always have to be converted to some
 other form before they can be applied to arbitrary geometry. Matrices
 require no further transforms.

 On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com wrote:
 You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or interpolation.
 If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine.

 -Original Message-
 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Thomas Harte
 Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

 Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
 opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
 substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
 ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.

 A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
 finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
 still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
 only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
 special orthogonals or quaternions.

 I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
 stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
 in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
 to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
 mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
 on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
 points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
 lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
 something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
 indexed by a three-tuple.

 I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
 visibility of the faces of a bounding box - if a face on the real
 model points away from the face on the bounding box then it definitely
 can't be visible if the box face is. Or something like that.

 I'm going to stop thinking aloud now...

 On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Steve Parry-Thomasmorriga...@aol.com
 wrote:
 I guess when the clocks go back in October SAM users will hibernate over
 the
 winter until next August!







 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Ian Spencer
 Sent: 04 August 2009 08:04

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking



 Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong with
 my subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick into
 a
 hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last few
 days on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking
 out
 there.



 Ian



 - Original Message -

 From: Ian Spencer

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no

 Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM

 Subject: Hi - just checking



 Not heard anything on the group for quite

Re: Hi - just checking

You mean the Psion one? No idea, as I've never used it or explicitly
disassembled anything z80 related. I've entered the z80 assembly fold
from the direction of writing emulators. I'd guess that if it's not
intended to be particularly realtime then quite possibly they're using
the floating point formats supported natively by the Spectrum ROM?
It'd save a lot of code and solve a lot of issues, and while being far
too slow for realtime it'd probably be fast enough for a
rendering-type application.

Just guessing, of course.

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Roger Jowettrogerjow...@gmail.com wrote:
 what does vu3d use?

 On 05/08/2009, Thomas Harte tomh.retros...@gmail.com wrote:

 That's not entirely true. Matrices are numerically unstable, so the
 cost of ensuring they remain orthonormal when applying consecutive
 local transforms in a game such as Elite is substantially greater than
 the cost of ensuring that a quaternion remains of unit length.

 I make it 8 multiplies, 3 adds, 1 square root and 1 divide to fix up
 numerical error in a quaternion. Conversely, I get 36 multiplies, 21
 adds, 3 square roots and 3 divides to fix up an orthonormal matrix.

 Quaternion to matrix is 10 multiplies, 6 shifts and 14 adds. So the
 way I calculate it, you can fix a quaternion and convert it into a
 matrix in less than you can fix up a matrix. Furthermore, quaternion
 composition is 16 multiplies and 12 adds, whereas matrix composition
 (with assumptions about the bottom row of a 4x4) is, ummm, at least 36
 multiplies and 18 adds. And that's with the translation component not
 completely factored in (I'm reading actual code off screen and have
 optimised the translation out of this particular batch).

 Elite is also a perfect example of when Euler's aren't fine, even if
 they didn't produce Gimbal lock, as all rotation is around local axes.
 And besides that, Euler angles always have to be converted to some
 other form before they can be applied to arbitrary geometry. Matrices
 require no further transforms.

 On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com wrote:
  You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or
  interpolation.
  If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine.
 
  -Original Message-
  From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no]
  On
  Behalf Of Thomas Harte
  Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
  Subject: Re: Hi - just checking
 
  Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
  opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
  substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
  ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.
 
  A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
  finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
  still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
  only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
  special orthogonals or quaternions.
 
  I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
  stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
  in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
  to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
  mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
  on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
  points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
  lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
  something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
  indexed by a three-tuple.
 
  I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
  visibility of the faces of a bounding box - if a face on the real
  model points away from the face on the bounding box then it definitely
  can't be visible if the box face is. Or something like that.
 
  I'm going to stop thinking aloud now...
 
  On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Steve Parry-Thomasmorriga...@aol.com
  wrote:
  I guess when the clocks go back in October SAM users will hibernate
  over
  the
  winter until next August!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no]
  On
  Behalf Of Ian Spencer
  Sent: 04 August 2009 08:04
 
  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
  Subject: Re: Hi - just checking
 
 
 
  Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong
  with
  my subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick
  into
  a
  hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last
  few
  days on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking
  out
  there.
 
 
 
  Ian
 
 
 
  - Original Message -
 
  From: Ian Spencer
 
  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 
  Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM
 
  Subject: Hi - just checking
 
 
 
  Not heard anything on the group for quite a while

Re: Hi - just checking

Oh, sorry, I think I missed the point of your question. My guess would
be that it uses matrices internally, as they're a popular mathematical
construct in a variety of fields but quaternions having been seriously
out of fashion for at least a century. I have a degree in Maths 
Computer Science but don't recall meeting them even once during my
studies — though a joint honours degree does necessarily end up
reducing your exposure to either subject individually.

Also, my guess is that the sort of literature related to computer
graphics that is now extremely easy to access thanks to the web would
have been really quite hard to access during the 1980s. It's like a
hindsight thing. We're perched here at least two decades after
computer graphics started to break out of academia and into widescale
usage in consumer products, so we benefit from historical perspective
and the entire body of knowledge is now much more accessible.

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Thomas Hartetomh.retros...@gmail.com wrote:
 You mean the Psion one? No idea, as I've never used it or explicitly
 disassembled anything z80 related. I've entered the z80 assembly fold
 from the direction of writing emulators. I'd guess that if it's not
 intended to be particularly realtime then quite possibly they're using
 the floating point formats supported natively by the Spectrum ROM?
 It'd save a lot of code and solve a lot of issues, and while being far
 too slow for realtime it'd probably be fast enough for a
 rendering-type application.

 Just guessing, of course.

 On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Roger Jowettrogerjow...@gmail.com wrote:
 what does vu3d use?

 On 05/08/2009, Thomas Harte tomh.retros...@gmail.com wrote:

 That's not entirely true. Matrices are numerically unstable, so the
 cost of ensuring they remain orthonormal when applying consecutive
 local transforms in a game such as Elite is substantially greater than
 the cost of ensuring that a quaternion remains of unit length.

 I make it 8 multiplies, 3 adds, 1 square root and 1 divide to fix up
 numerical error in a quaternion. Conversely, I get 36 multiplies, 21
 adds, 3 square roots and 3 divides to fix up an orthonormal matrix.

 Quaternion to matrix is 10 multiplies, 6 shifts and 14 adds. So the
 way I calculate it, you can fix a quaternion and convert it into a
 matrix in less than you can fix up a matrix. Furthermore, quaternion
 composition is 16 multiplies and 12 adds, whereas matrix composition
 (with assumptions about the bottom row of a 4x4) is, ummm, at least 36
 multiplies and 18 adds. And that's with the translation component not
 completely factored in (I'm reading actual code off screen and have
 optimised the translation out of this particular batch).

 Elite is also a perfect example of when Euler's aren't fine, even if
 they didn't produce Gimbal lock, as all rotation is around local axes.
 And besides that, Euler angles always have to be converted to some
 other form before they can be applied to arbitrary geometry. Matrices
 require no further transforms.

 On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com wrote:
  You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or
  interpolation.
  If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine.
 
  -Original Message-
  From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no]
  On
  Behalf Of Thomas Harte
  Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
  Subject: Re: Hi - just checking
 
  Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
  opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
  substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
  ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.
 
  A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
  finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
  still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
  only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
  special orthogonals or quaternions.
 
  I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
  stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
  in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
  to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
  mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
  on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
  points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
  lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
  something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
  indexed by a three-tuple.
 
  I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
  visibility of the faces of a bounding box - if a face on the real
  model points away from the face on the bounding box then it definitely
  can't be visible if the box face is. Or something

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-05 Thread Roger Jowett

I thought it was BASIC!

2009/8/5 Thomas Harte tomh.retros...@gmail.com

 Oh, sorry, I think I missed the point of your question. My guess would
 be that it uses matrices internally, as they're a popular mathematical
 construct in a variety of fields but quaternions having been seriously
 out of fashion for at least a century. I have a degree in Maths 
 Computer Science but don't recall meeting them even once during my
 studies — though a joint honours degree does necessarily end up
 reducing your exposure to either subject individually.

 Also, my guess is that the sort of literature related to computer
 graphics that is now extremely easy to access thanks to the web would
 have been really quite hard to access during the 1980s. It's like a
 hindsight thing. We're perched here at least two decades after
 computer graphics started to break out of academia and into widescale
 usage in consumer products, so we benefit from historical perspective
 and the entire body of knowledge is now much more accessible.

 On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Thomas Hartetomh.retros...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  You mean the Psion one? No idea, as I've never used it or explicitly
  disassembled anything z80 related. I've entered the z80 assembly fold
  from the direction of writing emulators. I'd guess that if it's not
  intended to be particularly realtime then quite possibly they're using
  the floating point formats supported natively by the Spectrum ROM?
  It'd save a lot of code and solve a lot of issues, and while being far
  too slow for realtime it'd probably be fast enough for a
  rendering-type application.
 
  Just guessing, of course.
 
  On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Roger Jowettrogerjow...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  what does vu3d use?
 
  On 05/08/2009, Thomas Harte tomh.retros...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  That's not entirely true. Matrices are numerically unstable, so the
  cost of ensuring they remain orthonormal when applying consecutive
  local transforms in a game such as Elite is substantially greater than
  the cost of ensuring that a quaternion remains of unit length.
 
  I make it 8 multiplies, 3 adds, 1 square root and 1 divide to fix up
  numerical error in a quaternion. Conversely, I get 36 multiplies, 21
  adds, 3 square roots and 3 divides to fix up an orthonormal matrix.
 
  Quaternion to matrix is 10 multiplies, 6 shifts and 14 adds. So the
  way I calculate it, you can fix a quaternion and convert it into a
  matrix in less than you can fix up a matrix. Furthermore, quaternion
  composition is 16 multiplies and 12 adds, whereas matrix composition
  (with assumptions about the bottom row of a 4x4) is, ummm, at least 36
  multiplies and 18 adds. And that's with the translation component not
  completely factored in (I'm reading actual code off screen and have
  optimised the translation out of this particular batch).
 
  Elite is also a perfect example of when Euler's aren't fine, even if
  they didn't produce Gimbal lock, as all rotation is around local axes.
  And besides that, Euler angles always have to be converted to some
  other form before they can be applied to arbitrary geometry. Matrices
  require no further transforms.
 
  On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com
 wrote:
   You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or
   interpolation.
   If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine.
  
   -Original Message-
   From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:
 owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no]
   On
   Behalf Of Thomas Harte
   Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
   To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
   Subject: Re: Hi - just checking
  
   Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
   opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
   substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
   ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.
  
   A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
   finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though
 it
   still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
   only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting
 than
   special orthogonals or quaternions.
  
   I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
   stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise
 group-related
   in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
   to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
   mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
   on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
   points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
   lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
   something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
   indexed by a three-tuple.
  
   I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to
 the
   visibility

RE: Hi - just checking

2009-08-05 Thread Simon Cooke

Hmmm... what form are you using your Eulers in? If it's radians, it's not
too bad - just a quick sin/cos table lookup. And you only need to do it once
per object if it's a simple rigid body.

The trick with making matrices numerically stable is that you don't ever
want to do a stepwise transform on an object - you regenerate the matrix
from scratch each time. (This is one of those things you never really see in
practice; most engines split out the rotational transforms and keep them
separate, using either an axis-angle representation, quaternions, or in some
bad cases, euler angles [this is what Unreal uses btw]. That way, you keep
fidelity - or at the very least, you don't care too much about inaccuracies
as they come in - you can just ignore them if your object is rotated a
little off; it's not a culumlative error).

Assuming no scaling or shear, just rotation and translation, your
translation is the rightmost column of numbers in the matrix. If all of your
objects are pre-scaled in memory to the right size, all you have to do is
apply the rotation and translation in order to each of the points.
Screen-space projection is a little more difficult, but that one you can
precalc all the divides in.

On machines without SIMD or dedicated 3D instructions (such as the SAM),
it's nearly always best to break out the matrix into individual linear
equations, take the common pieces and only calculate them once, and then
operate on them that way. 

--
Simon Cooke
Director of Engineering / Business Developer, X-RAY KID STUDIOS -
www.x-raykid.com 
Founder, Popcorn Films - www.popcornfilms.com  
Cell: 206 250 7892 XBOX Live GamerTag: Spec Tec

-Original Message-
From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
Behalf Of Thomas Harte
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 5:14 AM
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

That's not entirely true. Matrices are numerically unstable, so the
cost of ensuring they remain orthonormal when applying consecutive
local transforms in a game such as Elite is substantially greater than
the cost of ensuring that a quaternion remains of unit length.

I make it 8 multiplies, 3 adds, 1 square root and 1 divide to fix up
numerical error in a quaternion. Conversely, I get 36 multiplies, 21
adds, 3 square roots and 3 divides to fix up an orthonormal matrix.

Quaternion to matrix is 10 multiplies, 6 shifts and 14 adds. So the
way I calculate it, you can fix a quaternion and convert it into a
matrix in less than you can fix up a matrix. Furthermore, quaternion
composition is 16 multiplies and 12 adds, whereas matrix composition
(with assumptions about the bottom row of a 4x4) is, ummm, at least 36
multiplies and 18 adds. And that's with the translation component not
completely factored in (I'm reading actual code off screen and have
optimised the translation out of this particular batch).

Elite is also a perfect example of when Euler's aren't fine, even if
they didn't produce Gimbal lock, as all rotation is around local axes.
And besides that, Euler angles always have to be converted to some
other form before they can be applied to arbitrary geometry. Matrices
require no further transforms.

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com wrote:
 You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or
interpolation.
 If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine.

 -Original Message-
 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Thomas Harte
 Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

 Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
 opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
 substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
 ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.

 A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
 finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
 still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
 only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
 special orthogonals or quaternions.

 I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
 stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
 in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
 to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
 mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
 on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
 points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
 lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
 something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
 indexed by a three-tuple.

 I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
 visibility of the faces of a bounding box - if a face on the real
 model

Re: Hi - just checking

@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

 That's not entirely true. Matrices are numerically unstable, so the
 cost of ensuring they remain orthonormal when applying consecutive
 local transforms in a game such as Elite is substantially greater than
 the cost of ensuring that a quaternion remains of unit length.

 I make it 8 multiplies, 3 adds, 1 square root and 1 divide to fix up
 numerical error in a quaternion. Conversely, I get 36 multiplies, 21
 adds, 3 square roots and 3 divides to fix up an orthonormal matrix.

 Quaternion to matrix is 10 multiplies, 6 shifts and 14 adds. So the
 way I calculate it, you can fix a quaternion and convert it into a
 matrix in less than you can fix up a matrix. Furthermore, quaternion
 composition is 16 multiplies and 12 adds, whereas matrix composition
 (with assumptions about the bottom row of a 4x4) is, ummm, at least 36
 multiplies and 18 adds. And that's with the translation component not
 completely factored in (I'm reading actual code off screen and have
 optimised the translation out of this particular batch).

 Elite is also a perfect example of when Euler's aren't fine, even if
 they didn't produce Gimbal lock, as all rotation is around local axes.
 And besides that, Euler angles always have to be converted to some
 other form before they can be applied to arbitrary geometry. Matrices
 require no further transforms.

 On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Simon Cookesi...@popcornfilms.com wrote:
 You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or
 interpolation.
 If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine.

 -Original Message-
 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Thomas Harte
 Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

 Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
 opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
 substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
 ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.

 A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
 finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
 still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
 only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
 special orthogonals or quaternions.

 I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
 stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
 in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
 to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
 mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
 on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
 points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
 lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
 something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
 indexed by a three-tuple.

 I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
 visibility of the faces of a bounding box - if a face on the real
 model points away from the face on the bounding box then it definitely
 can't be visible if the box face is. Or something like that.

 I'm going to stop thinking aloud now...

 On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Steve Parry-Thomasmorriga...@aol.com
 wrote:
 I guess when the clocks go back in October SAM users will hibernate over
 the
 winter until next August!







 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Ian Spencer
 Sent: 04 August 2009 08:04

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking



 Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong
 with
 my subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick into
 a
 hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last few
 days on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking
 out
 there.



 Ian



 - Original Message -

 From: Ian Spencer

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no

 Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM

 Subject: Hi - just checking



 Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would
 send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to
 everyone.

 I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the
 group.





 Ian

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-04 Thread Ian Spencer

Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong with my 
subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick into a 
hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last few days 
on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking out there.

Ian

  - Original Message - 
  From: Ian Spencer 
  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no 
  Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM
  Subject: Hi - just checking

  Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would 
send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to everyone.
  I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the 
group.

  Ian

RE: Hi - just checking

2009-08-04 Thread Steve Parry-Thomas

I guess when the clocks go back in October SAM users will hibernate over the
winter until next August! 

From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
Behalf Of Ian Spencer
Sent: 04 August 2009 08:04
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong with
my subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick into a
hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last few
days on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking out
there.

Ian

- Original Message - 
From: Ian Spencer mailto:ian.spen...@freenet.de  
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no 
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM
Subject: Hi - just checking

Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would
send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to
everyone.
I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the
group.

Ian

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-04 Thread Thomas Harte

Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.

A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
only — which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
special orthogonals or quaternions.

I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
indexed by a three-tuple.

I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
visibility of the faces of a bounding box — if a face on the real
model points away from the face on the bounding box then it definitely
can't be visible if the box face is. Or something like that.

I'm going to stop thinking aloud now...

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Steve Parry-Thomasmorriga...@aol.com wrote:
 I guess when the clocks go back in October SAM users will hibernate over the
 winter until next August!







 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Ian Spencer
 Sent: 04 August 2009 08:04

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking



 Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong with
 my subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick into a
 hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last few
 days on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking out
 there.



 Ian



 - Original Message -

 From: Ian Spencer

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no

 Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM

 Subject: Hi - just checking



 Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would
 send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to
 everyone.

 I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the
 group.





 Ian

RE: Hi - just checking

2009-08-04 Thread Simon Cooke

You only really need quaternions if you're doing animation or interpolation.
If you can live with the gimble lock, euler's fine. 

-Original Message-
From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
Behalf Of Thomas Harte
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:05 AM
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

Am I replying to the correct thread? I don't know. But I've had the
opposite experience to a bunch of people here, having become
substantially more busy in my work than I was even just a few months
ago, squeezing the SAM temporarily out.

A version of my vector 3d-stuff-as-a-library-for-others was all but
finished several months ago, I'll endeavour to get that out, though it
still has the awkward limitation of doing rotations with Euler angles
only - which may be less efficient and is certainly more limiting than
special orthogonals or quaternions.

I'm still thinking about smart ways to optimise the reverse face
stuff. I need to get something hierarchical or otherwise group-related
in there; checking every single face is obviously not the optimal way
to proceed. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of bin-type
mapping to the surface of the unit sphere that allows all the points
on a particular hemisphere to be isolated from the majority of the
points on the opposite hemisphere. Or, you know, something at least a
lot like a sphere. Though I'm not sure any sort of lookup into
something a lot like a sphere would help much as it'd need to be
indexed by a three-tuple.

I guess a good broad sweep would be to mark each face according to the
visibility of the faces of a bounding box - if a face on the real
model points away from the face on the bounding box then it definitely
can't be visible if the box face is. Or something like that.

I'm going to stop thinking aloud now...

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Steve Parry-Thomasmorriga...@aol.com
wrote:
 I guess when the clocks go back in October SAM users will hibernate over
the
 winter until next August!

 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Ian Spencer
 Sent: 04 August 2009 08:04

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: Hi - just checking

 Wow, I just sent the checking mail to see whether something was wrong with
 my subscription to the group and it seems it was like poking a stick into
a
 hornets nest (in a positive sort of way) - over 40 mails in the last few
 days on the group. It's just great to see everyone is alive and kicking
out
 there.

 Ian

 - Original Message -

 From: Ian Spencer

 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no

 Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 4:10 PM

 Subject: Hi - just checking

 Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would
 send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to
 everyone.

 I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the
 group.

 Ian

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-03 Thread nev young


Ian Spencer wrote:
Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I 
would send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi 
to everyone.


While looking for something else I came across this page and as a 
result have wasted most of the morning reading old sam-users posts.


http://www.atbirmingham.com/warwick/cooke_cl

Still it's good to know that Sam moves in academic circles. ;-)

Nev

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-03 Thread Andrew Collier


On 31 Jul 2009, at 18:46, LCD wrote:


maybe everyone is busy with their next SAM Mega hit game? ;-).



Actually, it's funny you should mention that

Andrew

--
http://www.intensity.org.uk/

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-02 Thread Colin Piggot


Ian wrote:
Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would 
send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to 
everyone.
I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the 
group.


I've been a bit quiet, but still been getting on with a few things.

First up is an update for B-DOS 1.5t for the Trinity Ethernet Interface 
which I've put in a few extra additions into the code for utilising the 
microcontroller on the interface more to give a 15% speedup in loading. I've 
also finished an Autoboot ROM for the Trinity so B-DOS can be loaded from 
the Trinity's EEPROM on startup, or really it loads a 1K bootblock from the 
EEPROM so you can really have it do whatever you want it to do on startup, 
but loading B-DOS seems the most obvious choice! (Video on YouTube - 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGoXsY4PBck )


I've set up twitter so I'm now getting into the swing of just popping up 
short updates as and when I'm working on things - 
http://www.twitter.com/QuazarSamCoupe.


SAM Revival 23 will be out this month (about time! Ed), a bit late, but time 
hasn't been on my side recently. Also I'm moving to a different DTP 
package - getting away from a very (very!) early version of Quarkxpress that 
I've been using for donkies years! On the coverdisk will be Simon's VIC-20 
emulator, the latest 3D Demo from Thomas Harte to go with his article in the 
magazine and a game or two depending on what space is left. Articles wise, a 
fair few bits of news, tech stuff and source for the Trinity Autoboot, the 
B-DOS loading bootblock and the short changes to the B-DOS source code to 
give the 15% speed up.


Going back to the earlier thread of SAM's birthday, I think it's fairly safe 
to say now with the work going on behind the scenes that the idea I had of a 
special glossy A4 sized edition will be going ahead thanks to the printing 
costs Adrian was able to get (Thanks Adrian!). It'll all be new material, 
with quite a few articles and some exclusives already underway in the 
drafting stages and I'll no doubt be in touch with a lot of people in the 
coming months to get some bits of info and their memories of their time with 
the SAM. I'll be aiming for it to go to print for release in December.


Colin
=
Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the SAM Coupe
1995-2009 - Celebrating 15 Years of developing for the SAM Coupe
Website: http://www.samcoupe.com/

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-01 Thread Roger Jowett

just tried to use the 80 column text editor for cpm fo rthe sam its
absolute rubbish!
the cursor keys on the pc keyboard dont even work and the screen
refresh takes ½ an hour to keep up!
dont we know anyone who managed to pull off a 128k conversion for teh sam
they wouldnt need to bother with anything too complex tasword was only
64kb for the 128 machines its just the paging that needs altered?
what do i need to do disassemble it and then go thru looking for all
the outs that correspond to the speccy 128 ram out port? how do i do
that surely the edit find thing on the pc can do most of that?
i only liked using it because you could use the original speccy 32
column mode which was legible as the 64 dolum used only 4 pixels!
utterly illegibly - shouldnt be too bad on the timex or the sams 512
mode though depends how close your nose is to the screen!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX3blkwNjLUfeature=related

sam juggler theres a few others on there too these are not quite so
related unless we ever manage to bung an r800 up the edge connector!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DfDEU_Ifrw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGH5JIPWQ2I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DfDEU_Ifrw


2009/8/1 nev young pasiphae1...@yahoo.co.uk:
 Roger,
 was this meant to come to me rather than the mailing list?

 But to answer your question; I rather doubt it as he has moved on from the
 8 bit world and now works for a medium sized ISP type of company.

 Regards

 Nev

 Roger Jowett wrote:

 would he be interested in using tascon +d to convert tasword +2 for
 the sam at all?!

 2009/7/31 nev young pasiphae1...@yahoo.co.uk:

 Ian Spencer wrote:

 Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I
 would
 send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to
 everyone.
 I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on
 the
 group.

 Dunno about the beach.
 I was searching for something in the loft this week and found four
 complete
 Sams and about 3 in bits. It made me feel a little sad.

 I'll be going to Gloucester in August and will be seeing B*b. Br*nchl*y
 as
 his daughter is getting wed.

 Nev

Re: hi found the wee git

2009-08-01 Thread Roger Jowett

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DfDEU_Ifrw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGH5JIPWQ2I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DfDEU_Ifrw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX3blkwNjLUfeature=related

2009/8/1 Roger Jowett rogerjow...@gmail.com:
 just tried the 80 column text editor in cpm on sam
 it doesnt actually refresh the screen
 the cursors dont work

 cant anyone convert tasword+2 it was much better than this!
 someone must know how to convert 128k stuff as there is loads of it
 knocking around - the program is only 64kb no audio and you wouldnt
 need to bother with sam screen modes to begin with until people wanted
 to use proportional or mode 3 fonts

 shes a plus d disc remember
 took me about a month in hong kong to get tascon +d to work found it
 on the wos site though there was no instruciotns as there are actually
 more than one file on the tap file and you need a wee pause to help
 things a long and insert the right one
 i was trying to see if it worked with
 fuse
 81
 realspectrum
 zx spin
 seemed to fail in most of them though
 cant get any of them to set up a virtual interface1disciple network
 unfortunately and no one seems to have any idea how to use the fdd3000
 co processor with sam or a speccy for that matter! pity the wee git
 didnt have a few k of video ram adn about six r800's and a dma!
 have you seen the mb-02+ interface and its dma - they reckon it can
 switch between tape and disc operation and give 48 the 128 k ram what
 a pity the similar is not available for the sam! any news on
 kaleidescope

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-08-01 Thread nev young



Hi Roger,

Could I ask that you don't sent your posts direct to me *and* the list.
I'm on the list so I'm seeing it all twice.

It all appears to be about cp/m, of which I know nothing, so I have to 
ignore it twice ;-)


Thankx

Nev

Hi - just checking

2009-07-31 Thread Ian Spencer

Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would send 
a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to everyone.
I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the group.


Ian

RE: Hi - just checking

2009-07-31 Thread Steve Parry-Thomas

Yep it's been very quite.

I'm still after any some Pro-Dos CP/M games if anyone can help?

Steve(spt)

From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
Behalf Of Ian Spencer
Sent: 31 July 2009 15:11
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Hi - just checking

Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I would
send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi to
everyone.
I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on the
group.

Ian

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-07-31 Thread LCD


Ian Spencer schrieb:
Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I 
would send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say 
hi to everyone.
I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on 
the group.
 
 
Ian
 
 

True, maybe everyone is busy with their next SAM Mega hit game? ;-).

LCD

Re: Hi - just checking

2009-07-31 Thread nev young


Ian Spencer wrote:
Not heard anything on the group for quite a while so just thought I 
would send a 'test' to check it's not me that's got a problem and say hi 
to everyone.
I know you've all taken your Sam's to the beach and so no activity on 
the group.
 

Dunno about the beach.
I was searching for something in the loft this week and found four 
complete Sams and about 3 in bits. It made me feel a little sad.


I'll be going to Gloucester in August and will be seeing B*b. Br*nchl*y 
as his daughter is getting wed.


Nev

Re: Hi Dudes *_+ Full message

2005-11-12 Thread Calvin Allett


--- Colin Piggot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Calvin Allett wrote:
  from my quick lookabout (and on pay per minute so
 very
  quick) I`d like to say nice one to Colin, jeez you
 do
  a lot for the scene, the new games are looking
 cool,
  especially Harlequin which I somehow missed out on
 on
  older systems... be great to see this on SAM...
 
 There are certainly a few great classics from the
 Gremlin lot, Harlequin is
 certainly my favourites. I've done a bit more work
 on it as well as Thing on
 a Spring.

I was getting back into ST`s and in particular under
emulation a few months ago, and I think the one game I
didn`t download was Harlequin, as I`m looking forward
to it so much(due to it being scrolling, and obviously
the first professional accelerated game)... I`ll check
the original versions after I`ve discovered it on SAM
:)

Have you had any articles in past SAM Revival`s
regarding any tools/environments you use when
developing games? 

For instance do you have a generic mapper, or do you
knock something up for each game? I`ve been putting
off doing one but recently decided to get all those
tools done which have needed doing (hence dabblings
with Flash).

also, if you have one... which route did you decide
on, is it 16*16 ala Amiga or 8*8 tiles?

Oh, and yes, Gremlin have an amazing catalogue,
Avenger would be beautiful on SAM... but that is just
a dream (like also Great Escape in colour,hehe) :)


 But I am also concentrating on the revamp
 of Conquest and some of
 the other unreleased games from Hydrasoft that I now
 own. There'll be a
 development update on both software and hardware in
 the next issue of Sam
 Revival showing how I am getting on with things.
 

lol, :) scrub questions above, I see these things are
best for inclusion in the mag...

Who was Hydrosoft? I don`t think I`ve heard their name
before?


Can I just ask if it would be a good rough estimate of
about 4.5 times original speed for the finished
version of Mayhem... I mean under emulation in
meantime for dev, I`ve spent the last four weeks
working on graphics for a new accelerated game called
`Jimf and Oobs go Whack` and not sure quite what can
be pulled from uncompiled Basic turbo`d, but some
practice and a profiler have quite astounded me with
what can be done with MasterBasic`s faster commands...
 

(p.s.) the 4.5 times comes from the fact you say
memory will be uncontended... good luck with the
project as well :)

Cal *_+





___ 
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail 
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

Re: Hi Dudes *_+ Full message

2005-11-12 Thread Colin Piggot

Calvin Allett wrote:
 Have you had any articles in past SAM Revival`s
 regarding any tools/environments you use when
 developing games? For instance do you have a generic mapper

Erm... i've mentioned briefly some of my tools in the magazine over the last
year or two, such as the mapper I used for the three Money Bags games -
which evolved slightly for each game but I always made sure it was backwards
compatible should I need to load files from the earlier games.

But I do tend to write the tools specifically for the game in hand, and
there's been a few articles about development of stuff - particularly in the
'Quazars Secret Files' articles - covering unfinished products which include
the untitled Quazar Karts game, and a clone of Shufflepuck.


 also, if you have one... which route did you decide
 on, is it 16*16 ala Amiga or 8*8 tiles?

The Money Bags games used an odd 10x10 tile (can't remember why I chose that
initially - probably as i was rushing things as the original game that
appeared on Soundbyte 15, then revamped for the coverdisk with Sam Revival 9
was written in one week while I was meant to be studying for some university
finals!), but Harlequin as it's using the Amiga/ST graphics will be using
16x16 tiles and Thing On A Spring will be is 8x8.


 Who was Hydrosoft? I don`t think I`ve heard their
 name before?

Hydrasoft were behind Conquest and Mage Fire - two games that were to have
been published by Zedd-Soft (Zodiac Magazine / Michael Stocks) in 96/7. I
know a few Conquest's were sold, but also know of a few cases of people not
getting them or experiencing big delays. Mage Fire as far as I know wasn't
actually released at all (until Sam Revival 12 last month anyway!), the
author has no idea if it was sold or not either as he never receieved any
royalties for either game. (Neither did I - I was involved with the two
games back then adding spot sound effects for the Quazar Surround
soundcard!)

He's always gone down the strategy route, and Conquest especially is very ad
dicitive and playable. More news on the revamping of that, and the other
unreleased stuff, will be in the next issue of the magazine, and will be
sometime on the website too afterwards.


 Can I just ask if it would be a good rough estimate of
 about 4.5 times original speed for the finished
 version of Mayhem...

Yeah, think along the lines of 4-5 times faster.

Colin
=
Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam Coupe
April 1995-2005 - Celebrating 10 Years of developing for the Sam Coupe
New Website now up: http://www.samcoupe.com/

Re: Hi Dudes *_+ Full message

2005-11-08 Thread Calvin Allett


--- Dan Dooré [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Calvin Allett wrote:
 
  The version I have is early but will upload it
  hopefully in next few days... also, who did the
 hack
  to allow Mouse control?
 
  It was the copy on the disc that came with the Sam
  Mouse so I think it 
  was someone within or at least for SamCo at the
time
  - Colin MacD may 
  know something about that because I think he was
  working at SamCo at the 
  time - mind you, it was a while ago so I may be
  talking complete bobbins.

Cheers for info... I`ve just realised that there`s
a bug in the mouse version whereby the text feature
no longer works, I`ll merge the Basic with old
version.. does anybody really need mouse abilites from
Flash, personally the great joy for me is to use keys
to move around pixel by pixel (keep in mind I`ve never
seen or used SAM Paint yet :) , though spent 3 hours
trying to hack it :( )


 
  also, I been checking and seem to have some
 Arcadia
  Disk Mags which are missing and some other stuff.
  
  Who would it be best to send these to?
 
 Sent them to me and I'll furtle them and push them
 up to NVG - if the 
 muchkin gives me enough time of an evening to do it
 :-)
 
 Dan.
 


Thanks very much Dan *_+ I thought there were 2 or 3
Arcadia`s  missing from archive but it seems that only
issue 6 is missing, I also have some other disks, 
though still need to make images (Simon`s NT software
has helped a lot, as even with Win98 I`d always had
disk errors with Dos progs :( ) 

Do you ever still dabble with SAM or MasterBasic ? I
realise that time is short and seem to remember you
getting into C back in the day but you know what I
mean... :)

Cal



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Re: Hi Dudes *_+

2005-11-08 Thread Calvin Allett

Sorry to hear you`ve been ill... must say that
I`m looking forward to the site, even though
the SAM scene is as much a niche as you you can get
there`s still a lot of people (lot meaning some, :),
hehe ) ask about SAM in variuous places (even in 1  or
2 obscure Amiga  forums)...

It`s such a shame... I think I`ve missed some
discussions but I hope you can make some provisions
for a proper forum, I know i`ve never been into/able
to be at the various shows but after 14 years of
owning a SAM I`d dearly like to be able to post
sh*tloads of posts without fear of anooying people
within their email accounts :)...

Cal *_+


--- david [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Just to let everyone know - i've not forgotten about
 the site, just been very ill recently - and am
 mid-moving, so havent really been able to do much.
 
 But - I haven't forgotten about the site... it will
 be
 sorted soon (perhaps not as polished as i'd like -
 but
 it'll be able to be updated by anyone who wants to
 help :))
 
 I'd like to thank those kind people who've passed me
 stuff, and others who've offered to help when its
 finally sorted. Very appreciated!
 
 BTW - while i'm at it - as i've not posted on the
 list
 for a couple of weeks... great latest issue Colin!
 
 
 --- Calvin Allett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  Just wanted to hi to you guys (pity I can`t say
 and
  gals, hehe)
  
  Lost my internet connection few months ago so
  normally
  I`d have to say hope I ain`t missed anything, but
 in
  a
  scene as small as ours (or yours seen as I`m not a
  ragular) I hope I`ve missed loads.
  
  from my quick lookabout (and on pay per minute so
  very
  quick) I`d like to say to nice one to Colin, jeez
  you
  do a lot for the scene, the new games are looking
  cool, especially Harlequin which I somehow missed
  out
  on on older systems... be great to see this on
  SAM...
  
  -
  
  What happened to Gavin (hope I`ve the name right)
  and
  his site?
  
  David, any update on your site? would there be any
  chance of us others adding to it?
  
  --
  
  Is anyone still interested in Basic games? I`ve a
  demo
  (very early) 
  
  
  
 

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  http://uk.security.yahoo.com
  
 
 






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Re: Hi Dudes *_+

2005-11-08 Thread Colin Piggot

David wrote:
 BTW - while i'm at it - as i've not posted on the list
 for a couple of weeks... great latest issue Colin!

Glad you liked it!

Issue 13 of Sam Revival is pencilled in for release around the second week
in December, and will be featuring the full game 'Marbles Deluxe' by Steve
Pick on the coverdisk. More info as usual about everything on my webby at
www.samcoupe.com

Colin
=
Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam Coupe
April 1995-2005 - Celebrating 10 Years of developing for the Sam Coupe
New Website now up: http://www.samcoupe.com/

Re: Hi Dudes *_+ Full message

2005-11-06 Thread Dan Dooré


Calvin Allett wrote:


The version I have is early but will upload it
hopefully in next few days... also, who did the hack
to allow Mouse control?


It was the copy on the disc that came with the Sam Mouse so I think it 
was someone within or at least for SamCo at the time - Colin MacD may 
know something about that because I think he was working at SamCo at the 
time - mind you, it was a while ago so I may be talking complete bobbins.



also, I been checking and seem to have some Arcadia
Disk Mags which are missing and some other stuff.

Who would it be best to send these to?


Sent them to me and I'll furtle them and push them up to NVG - if the 
muchkin gives me enough time of an evening to do it :-)


Dan.

Re: Hi Dudes *_+

2005-11-05 Thread david

Just to let everyone know - i've not forgotten about
the site, just been very ill recently - and am
mid-moving, so havent really been able to do much.

But - I haven't forgotten about the site... it will be
sorted soon (perhaps not as polished as i'd like - but
it'll be able to be updated by anyone who wants to
help :))

I'd like to thank those kind people who've passed me
stuff, and others who've offered to help when its
finally sorted. Very appreciated!

BTW - while i'm at it - as i've not posted on the list
for a couple of weeks... great latest issue Colin!


--- Calvin Allett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Just wanted to hi to you guys (pity I can`t say and
 gals, hehe)
 
 Lost my internet connection few months ago so
 normally
 I`d have to say hope I ain`t missed anything, but in
 a
 scene as small as ours (or yours seen as I`m not a
 ragular) I hope I`ve missed loads.
 
 from my quick lookabout (and on pay per minute so
 very
 quick) I`d like to say to nice one to Colin, jeez
 you
 do a lot for the scene, the new games are looking
 cool, especially Harlequin which I somehow missed
 out
 on on older systems... be great to see this on
 SAM...
 
 -
 
 What happened to Gavin (hope I`ve the name right)
 and
 his site?
 
 David, any update on your site? would there be any
 chance of us others adding to it?
 
 --
 
 Is anyone still interested in Basic games? I`ve a
 demo
 (very early) 
 
 
   

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Hi Dudes *_+

2005-11-03 Thread Calvin Allett

Just wanted to hi to you guys (pity I can`t say and
gals, hehe)

Lost my internet connection few months ago so normally
I`d have to say hope I ain`t missed anything, but in a
scene as small as ours (or yours seen as I`m not a
ragular) I hope I`ve missed loads.

from my quick lookabout (and on pay per minute so very
quick) I`d like to say to nice one to Colin, jeez you
do a lot for the scene, the new games are looking
cool, especially Harlequin which I somehow missed out
on on older systems... be great to see this on SAM...

-

What happened to Gavin (hope I`ve the name right) and
his site?

David, any update on your site? would there be any
chance of us others adding to it?

--

Is anyone still interested in Basic games? I`ve a demo
(very early) 



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Hi Dudes *_+ Full message

2005-11-03 Thread Calvin Allett

Just wanted to say hi to you guys (pity I can`t say
and gals, hehe)

Lost my internet connection few months ago so normally
I`d have to say hope I ain`t missed anything, but in a
scene as small as ours (or yours seen as I`m not a
regular) I hope I`ve missed loads.

from my quick lookabout (and on pay per minute so very
quick) I`d like to say nice one to Colin, jeez you do
a lot for the scene, the new games are looking cool,
especially Harlequin which I somehow missed out on on
older systems... be great to see this on SAM...

-

What happened to Gavin (hope I`ve the name right) and
his site?

David, any update on your site? would there be any
chance of us others adding to it?

--

Is anyone still interested in Basic games? I`ve a demo
(very early) of Tomato Antics game on my site but
since then written a profiler (with help from that
thread on WoS) and managed to shift it from 10-12 fps
to about 35-45 still uncompiled... the game itself is
simplified and thus can cut down on code, but still
the smoothest game I seen in Basic on SAM... 

also hacked the MC of Flash to change the Erase menu
option to an Extra menu so I can run Basic code, and
added a better animation feature, sprite grabber and
saver plus ability to scroll an area one pixel to
left, which for basic is essential if it`s at an odd
pixel.

The version I have is early but will upload it
hopefully in next few days... also, who did the hack
to allow Mouse control?

I`ve called my version (as I intend to add some other
features/improvements) Flash Pro v1.0 but would like
to credit the author of the Mouse code.

Plus also, even though this name is for my personal
version, does anyone have any objections to me calling
it thus?

-

anyways, this message has already been sent whilst
halfway through (noob, hehe) so have to end here.

Hope everyone is fine.. :)

Cal *_+


--

P.S. Steve, I was pleased to see you were able to take
over on ZX Shed when I let them down, nice job, what I
had was half written..

also, I been checking and seem to have some Arcadia
Disk Mags which are missing and some other stuff.

Who would it be best to send these to?

Regards

Calvin *_+



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RE: Hi

2004-11-20 Thread Geoff Winkless

Kevin Cooper wrote:

 Just joined the list at the start of the week, been busy having a look at
what you're upto...

Hello!
 
 Am starting to get all nostalgic now, thinking about those many hours 
 I spent with Sam back in the early nineties.  I miss it...  that real 
 sort of big community feel it had to it.

I think that's what we all hanker after... coding on PCs is so much easier
but just doesn't have the same feeling.

Welcome to the list, anyway!

Geoff


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Hi

2004-11-19 Thread Kevin Cooper




Hi all,

Just joined the list at the start of the week, been 
busy having a look at what you're upto...

It's been some time since I used my Sam, probably 
eight years or so. It's sat in the attic with a load of Sam stuff in my 
parents' attic. The closest thing I got to it was running the Sam emulator 
on my PC a couple of years ago. Fantastic! Though not as good as the 
real thing.

I imagine a lot has gone on in that time - too much 
for you to put in a mail I think... Generally though, what's happening in 
the world of Sam these days?

Am starting to get all nostalgic now, thinking 
about those many hours I spent with Sam back in the early nineties. I miss 
it... that real sort of big community feel it had to it.

Kevin Cooper.

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Re: Hi all!

2003-03-21 Thread Aley Keprt

- Original Message -
From: Simon Owen [EMAIL PROTECTED]


 Marcel Vasak wrote:
  Zhani plne zdrojaky tech programu abych je mohl upravit na
  Atom HDD interface pripadne na H-DOS interface.Prominte ze
  pisu Cesky ale jsem cech a Anglictin stezi ctu nato v ni
  pisi. Taky se omlouvam za pravopis.

 Can anyone translate?  (Aley?)
 Si

Yes, I can translate :-) But I assume those two (Marcel Vasak and Marian
Krivos, the author of discussed software) will discuss this topic off the
list, because they can understand to each other (they are Czech and Slovak).

Translation:
--
I search for the source code of those programs (C, ZEUS, EDIPRO, SAM
VISION). I want to make them compatible with Atom HDD and eventually also
with H-DOS interface.
Please excuse me for writing in Czech. It's because I am Czech and I don't
speak English.
--

/--
Aley

Re[2]: Hi all!

2003-03-16 Thread Marcel Vasak

Dobrý den,
15. března 2003, 18:37:08, napsal jste:
Zhani plne zdrojaky tech programu abych je mohl upravit na Atom HDD
interface pripadne na H-DOS interface.Prominte ze pisu Cesky ale jsem
cech a Anglictin stezi ctu nato v ni pisi.
Taky se omlouvam za pravopis.
Marcel VAsak Falcen99
Prague..
MK I have upload some source files (C, ZEUS, EDIPRO, SAM VISION) at

MK www.tutok.sk/fastgl/Sam/





-- 
S pozdravem,
 Marcel
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Hi all!

2003-03-16 Thread Simon Owen

Marcel Vasak wrote:
 Zhani plne zdrojaky tech programu abych je mohl upravit na 
 Atom HDD interface pripadne na H-DOS interface.Prominte ze 
 pisu Cesky ale jsem cech a Anglictin stezi ctu nato v ni 
 pisi. Taky se omlouvam za pravopis.

Can anyone translate?  (Aley?)

Si

Re: Hi all!

2003-03-16 Thread Marian Krivos


He wrote:

I can get full sources of these progs, because I can modify one for 
Atom HDD or H-DOS ... I'm sorry but I don't know English.


Answer:

These sources are the only  one that I have. :-(((

Marian


Can anyone translate?  (Aley?)

Si

Re: Hi all!

2003-03-15 Thread Aley Keprt




Rumsoft - a name known from Kapsa. But Kapsa was 
written in Czech so I expect there aren't many people here who regularly read it 
or at least know about it.

"Some good compression software" means "some 
sleepless nights for users of emulators like me". I'd like to have decompression 
utilities for all Sam Coupe compression software which works in Windows 2000/XP. 
This message is not only for Rumsoft, I'd like to unpack software from NVG FTP, 
and lot's of old stuff there is packed with a "load and call 32000" sysytem. I 
assume it was made by someone from Poland.

And finally, I've never seen Zeus Assembler or 
Small C. Although I tried to get it, I've never been successful 
:-(.
(I teach C Language and Assembler at Technical 
University of Ostrava and Palacky University of Olomouc respectively, so I'm 
really not impressed with "power of Sam Basic". :-)

--
Aley Keprt


  - Original Message - 
  From: 
  Marian Krivos 

  To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no 
  Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 1:25 
PM
  Subject: Re: Hi all!
  Graham Goring wrote:
  

 RUMSOFT  
Rumsoft?! Name is very familiar but my memory is a 
blank this morning and I can't think 
why... 
RUMSOFT/SAPOSOFT file packer. That's where you probably 
remember it from. T'was ace. 
Graham RUMSOFT - 1. some 
  (4) ARCHIVER/PACKERs, 2. EDIPRO (full vysiwyg text editor with 
  proportional fonts, styles, etc, etc)3. ZEUS - like the COMET assembler - 
  but with macros, export/import symbols etc,etc (builtin into SMALL 'C' 
  also)4. SMALL "C" - the Z80 C language compiler with complete IDE (fred 
  publishing - ver 4.21 is latest)5. DEBUGGER - comes with ZEUS and SMALL 
  'C'6. I can't remeber :-)The problem is that I don't have my own 
  progs! I must download my C compiler from the net by example.But I 
  have all the source files (ascii format).

Re: Hi all!

2003-03-15 Thread Marian Krivos



And finally, I've never seen Zeus Assembler or Small C. Although I 
tried to get it, I've never been successful :-(.
(I teach C Language and Assembler at Technical University of Ostrava 
and Palacky University of Olomouc respectively, so I'm really not 
impressed with power of Sam Basic. :-)



C  ZEUS are both at NVG ftp site

Re: Hi all!

2003-03-15 Thread Marian Krivos


I have upload some source files (C, ZEUS, EDIPRO, SAM VISION) at

www.tutok.sk/fastgl/Sam/

Hi all!

2003-03-14 Thread Marian Krivos


First off all I'm dont know English.

I'm new to this list. I have got one piece of SamCoupe
in years 1993-1995, but my machine fired out completely.
After this drama I'm buyed the PC. But I'm remember
to my old good SAM with patience. On now I'm found
on the NET some SAM's emulators, download  try it.
Wow, I'm found that my old soft runs very well!!!

Best regards,
RUMSOFT

PS: I there anyone that have/use my SamCoupe EDIPRO  text editor???

Re: Hi all!

2003-03-14 Thread Colin Piggot

Hi, Welcome to the list :)

Colin

Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam
Website: http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/
Issue Four of Sam Revival Magazine Out Now !

Re: Hi all!

2003-03-14 Thread Gavin Smith

Marian Krivos wrote:

 First off all I'm dont know English.

Me neither!

 I'm new to this list. I have got one piece of SamCoupe

Welcome to the list!

 RUMSOFT

Rumsoft?! Name is very familiar but my memory is a blank this morning and I 
can't think why...

 PS: I there anyone that have/use my SamCoupe EDIPRO  text editor???

I haven't used it, but I've been looking for a text editor - find the newer 
ProType David? :) - can I get a copy of Edipro to try??

Cheers,
Gavin

RE: Hi all!

2003-03-14 Thread Graham Goring

Title: RE: Hi all!





 RUMSOFT

Rumsoft?! Name is very familiar but my memory is a blank this morning and I
can't think why...


RUMSOFT/SAPOSOFT file packer. That's where you probably remember it from. T'was ace.


Graham

Re: Hi all!

2003-03-14 Thread Dan . Doore


 Best regards,
 RUMSOFT

I prostrate mysef at the feet of the author of the Imploder, probably the
most useful Sam utility I have ever used.

 PS: I there anyone that have/use my SamCoupe EDIPRO  text editor???

Is it up on NVG? (ftp://ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/sam-coupe/)

Dan.

Direct Line Group Services Limited, registered in England no.3001989, 
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Re: Hi all!

2003-03-14 Thread David

- Original Message -
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: Hi all!

  Best regards,
  RUMSOFT

 I prostrate mysef at the feet of the author of the Imploder, probably the
 most useful Sam utility I have ever used.

Hear - hear

  PS: I there anyone that have/use my SamCoupe EDIPRO  text editor???

 Is it up on NVG? (ftp://ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/sam-coupe/)

I don't think so - but I seem to recall that F9 software where selling it
for about 12-15 pound a copy - and that WoMo had forwarded at least one of
the RUMSOFT programs to Malcolm Mackenzie to look into contact him for
publishing.

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-07 Thread f-k-nose


 Original Message - 
From: Geoff Winkless [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 10:47 AM
Subject: RE: Hi ho


 So how does Chris White explain the disaster that was PS1 Speedball?
 
 :)
 
 Geoff

learning curve :)

RE: Hi ho

2003-01-07 Thread Chris White

I must have missed this, and I left 6months from end, just a mixture of
things really lol

Id put it down to experience as well 

C


-- Sig On --
Ppps. I know i can't spell and all my grammer is wrong , so there's no
need to point it out :) 
-- Sig Off --


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of f-k-nose
Sent: 06 January 2003 23:03
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Re: Hi ho



 Original Message - 
From: Geoff Winkless [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 10:47 AM
Subject: RE: Hi ho


 So how does Chris White explain the disaster that was PS1 Speedball?
 
 :)
 
 Geoff

learning curve :)

RE: Hi ho

2003-01-07 Thread Geoff Winkless

Chris White wrote:
 I must have missed this, and I left 6months from end, just a 
 mixture of things really lol
 
 Id put it down to experience as well 

*chuckles*

Actually it wasn't all that bad, I was just disappointed that the
gameplay didn't seem as good as the amiga version :(

What do I know? The only games I've ever written to completion were
versions of Minesweeper and Tetris... :)

Partly because I couldn't draw for toffee, but mainly because I always
got way too caught up in the cool experimental stuff and couldn't be
bothered doing all the dull game design bits :)

Geoff



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RE: Hi ho

2003-01-07 Thread Chris White

Well game play should be identical , as it's the Amiga AI under the
skin, converted from 68000 to C, Same core was taken across to Gba if my
info is correct 

And peeps are entitled to their opionion no matter what ;)

C


-- Sig On --
Ppps. I know i can't spell and all my grammer is wrong , so there's no
need to point it out :) 
-- Sig Off --


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Geoff Winkless
Sent: 07 January 2003 09:52
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: RE: Hi ho


Chris White wrote:
 I must have missed this, and I left 6months from end, just a
 mixture of things really lol
 
 Id put it down to experience as well

*chuckles*

Actually it wasn't all that bad, I was just disappointed that the
gameplay didn't seem as good as the amiga version :(

What do I know? The only games I've ever written to completion were
versions of Minesweeper and Tetris... :)

Partly because I couldn't draw for toffee, but mainly because I always
got way too caught up in the cool experimental stuff and couldn't be
bothered doing all the dull game design bits :)

Geoff



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OffTopic: PS1 Speedball (was Re Hi ho)

2003-01-07 Thread Geoff Winkless

[ about me writing: ]
  Actually it wasn't all that bad, I was just disappointed that 
  the gameplay didn't seem as good as the amiga version :(

Chris White wrote:
 Well game play should be identical , as it's the Amiga AI 
 under the skin, converted from 68000 to C 

Ahh. I thought I might not make myself clear, oh well.

I didn't mean the play of the game, ie the computer's play, I meant
rather the gameplay as in the intuitiveness of the controls, the
learning curve etc.

Just silly things like not having the same after-touch mechanism on the
game pads (contrary to the words in the printed manual, incidentally) so
you need to use analog sticks which makes sending the ball in a straight
line nigh-on impossible.

And the goalie being computer controlled was a mistake. I understood why
the decision was taken: novices -always- send the goalie the wrong way
when control changes from a defender; but it just meant that I had less
control over the outcome of the game than I had before.

 Same core was taken across to Gba if my info is correct

That surprised me: given that it's an ARM chip, why not just use the
code from the Acorn conversion?

 And peeps are entitled to their opionion no matter what ;)

heh. Well I'm with you there.

Geoff



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RE: OffTopic: PS1 Speedball (was Re Hi ho)

2003-01-07 Thread Chris White

Well for the recorder , there was after touch N controllerable goaly in
there last I looked ;)

Time for a phone call just to see what did happen to it pmsl

And compiler for Gba is a C one as well, and code was portable (ish), so
would have been easier, but again I didn't code the gba version either ,
so I refush to take any blame lmao

C

-- Sig On --
Ppps. I know i can't spell and all my grammer is wrong , so there's no
need to point it out :) 
-- Sig Off --


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Geoff Winkless
Sent: 07 January 2003 10:26
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: OffTopic: PS1 Speedball (was Re Hi ho)


[ about me writing: ]
  Actually it wasn't all that bad, I was just disappointed that
  the gameplay didn't seem as good as the amiga version :(

Chris White wrote:
 Well game play should be identical , as it's the Amiga AI
 under the skin, converted from 68000 to C 

Ahh. I thought I might not make myself clear, oh well.

I didn't mean the play of the game, ie the computer's play, I meant
rather the gameplay as in the intuitiveness of the controls, the
learning curve etc.

Just silly things like not having the same after-touch mechanism on the
game pads (contrary to the words in the printed manual, incidentally) so
you need to use analog sticks which makes sending the ball in a straight
line nigh-on impossible.

And the goalie being computer controlled was a mistake. I understood why
the decision was taken: novices -always- send the goalie the wrong way
when control changes from a defender; but it just meant that I had less
control over the outcome of the game than I had before.

 Same core was taken across to Gba if my info is correct

That surprised me: given that it's an ARM chip, why not just use the
code from the Acorn conversion?

 And peeps are entitled to their opionion no matter what ;)

heh. Well I'm with you there.

Geoff



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RE: Hi ho

2003-01-06 Thread Geoff Winkless

Cookie wrote:
 However. Let's be clear here; there are those who had the 
 good fortune to grow up doing SAM stuff (or any earlier 
 machine), and those who didn't. The ones who did? Well, they 
 make games like Quantum Redshift, where everything runs at 
 60fps, and there's nary any slowdown or flicker. The ones who 
 didn't? They make games like Splinter Cell, which are 
 difficult to watch on an HDTV because the graphics tear all 
 over the place. You'd think they'd never heard of double 
 buffering, or waiting for the frame sync. And they've never 
 changed the border color to optimize their display in their lives!

So how does Chris White explain the disaster that was PS1 Speedball?

:)

Geoff



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RE: Hi ho

2003-01-06 Thread Graham Goring

Title: RE: Hi ho





So how does Chris White explain the disaster that was PS1 Speedball?


Zing! Hahaha!


Graham

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-05 Thread Simon Cooke

Hi hoFrom: Graham Goring
Blimey, I was looking around for old Sam Coupé sites and I suddenly
remembered the mailing list. So I just thought I'd drop in and see how/what
everyone was doing? Obviously me and James Curry are still in contact but
I've not heard hide nor hair from most ex Spam Soufflé owners in ages!
Graham


Unfortunately, someone opened the door while the Spam was cooking, and it
flopped.

:-)

Si

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-05 Thread Simon Cooke

Colin Piggot [EMAIL PROTECTED] scribbled:

 I'd rather concentrate on the game design part of it myself, for me
 that's the interesting bit about making games. :)

 Well, that has to be the main part but on the other hand, saving
 a few t-states isn't important when you have some 2GHz + monster to
 work with!

Ah yes... a whole host of other problems come to the fore though.

If you're using VC++ or Intel's compiler, their optimization algorithms are
pretty damn good. Provided you don't deliberately jerk them around or
anything (and sometimes, even if you do).

The things to worry about these days are efficiently shoving IO data around,
memory allocation, and the correct choice of algorithms.

(My SAM heritage does still show through though... the app I'm working on at
the moment is 200kb in size when compiled (including graphics), and takes up
less than 1/1 of the available CPU power of the system. Not bad for a
remote control, logging, diagnostics and analysis package for a mass
spectrometer).

*sigh*

However. Let's be clear here; there are those who had the good fortune to
grow up doing SAM stuff (or any earlier machine), and those who didn't. The
ones who did? Well, they make games like Quantum Redshift, where everything
runs at 60fps, and there's nary any slowdown or flicker. The ones who
didn't? They make games like Splinter Cell, which are difficult to watch on
an HDTV because the graphics tear all over the place. You'd think they'd
never heard of double buffering, or waiting for the frame sync. And they've
never changed the border color to optimize their display in their lives!

When I were a lad... it were all different. All green fields! And we only
programmed using 0's - we couldn't afford 1's.

Seriously though... there's something to be said for paying attention to the
small stuff. There's a large number of XBOX games which have come out
recently where I'd love to meet the developers and shake them by the neck.
Or the eyeballs -- take your pick.

Simon

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-05 Thread Simon Cooke

RE: Hi hoPart of the problem with SAM games programming was it had about 1/4
the power it really needed to do the system justice -- unless you wanted to
use Mode 2. Unfortunately, by that time, everyone wanted to have a
Spectrum/AtariST crossover (the Atari was yet another machine which didn't
have enough horsepower for its specs).

*sigh*

The XBOX, surprisingly, is the same. It has about 1/2 the power it needs to
live up to its full potential. (And 1/4 the memory). Stick a gig of memory
in that thing, and you'd have a console that no other could beat.

Simon

--
From: Graham Goring
When you don't have the power, you have to limit your options and while that
sometimes leads to better design, it mostly leads to arse games. J

I mean if you look at most of the SAM Coupé's software it was generally not
that great with only a few standout games that showed signs of ingeniousness
(such as Water Works which was brilliant - what happened to Martin Bell?).
Maybe it was down to a lot of people using stuff like SCADs (which sounded
like a disease at the best of times) which produced flawed software (and
similarly GamesMaster had some vile limitations) instead of coding their own
from scratch, but the fact remains that most SAM games weren't exactly
stellar.

However I'd argue that the problem with most PC games these days is that
they're either all me too products or they're infuriatingly over-designed
to the point that unless you're familiar with the genre, they're
impenetrable. These days games are generally far better put together and
designed than they used to be, but our expectation levels are similarly
higher so we don't really notice it.

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-05 Thread f-k-nose


- Original Message -
From: Simon Cooke [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 2:46 AM
Subject: Re: Hi ho
I mean if you look at most of the SAM Coupé's software it was generally not
that great with only a few standout games that showed signs of ingeniousness
(such as Water Works which was brilliant - what happened to Martin Bell?).
Maybe it was down to a lot of people using stuff like SCADs (which sounded
like a disease at the best of times) which produced flawed software (and
similarly GamesMaster had some vile limitations) instead of coding their own
from scratch, but the fact remains that most SAM games weren't exactly
stellar.




Although without either of these, there would have been even less software
for people to complain about - as coding a game fully from scratch was such
a task for most people

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-05 Thread f-k-nose




- Original Message -
From: Simon Cooke [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 2:46 AM
Subject: Re: Hi ho
I mean if you look at most of the SAM Coupé's software it was generally not
that great with only a few standout games that showed signs of ingeniousness
(such as Water Works which was brilliant - what happened to Martin Bell?).
Maybe it was down to a lot of people using stuff like SCADs (which sounded
like a disease at the best of times) which produced flawed software (and
similarly GamesMaster had some vile limitations) instead of coding their own
from scratch, but the fact remains that most SAM games weren't exactly
stellar.




I wish more peopel had the talent to have hand coded their work ... as you
say - it would have really made the difference with some Scads games

Some people such as Jupiter did write some great games using Scads however
:)

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-05 Thread Nev Young

On Sat, 4 Jan 2003 18:43:35 -0800, Simon Cooke
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 When I were a lad... it were all different. All green fields! And we only
 programmed using 0's - we couldn't afford 1's.
 
Many true things said in jest.  :-)

There are (were) some brands of eprom/prom/rom where you did in fact
only program the 0s as all other bits were 1 by default.  

I'll get me coat.


-- 
Nev - please note that mail to nevilley@ will no longer work.

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-05 Thread f-k-nose


- Original Message -
From: Simon Cooke [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 4:39 AM
Subject: Re: Hi ho


f-k-nose [EMAIL PROTECTED] scribbled:

 - Original Message -
 From: Simon Cooke [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 2:46 AM
 Subject: Re: Hi ho
 I mean if you look at most of the SAM Coupé's software it was
 generally not that great with only a few standout games that showed
 signs of ingeniousness (such as Water Works which was brilliant -
 what happened to Martin Bell?). Maybe it was down to a lot of people
 using stuff like SCADs (which sounded like a disease at the best of
 times) which produced flawed software (and similarly GamesMaster had
 some vile limitations) instead of coding their own from scratch, but
 the fact remains that most SAM games weren't exactly stellar.


 

 Although without either of these, there would have been even less
 software for people to complain about - as coding a game fully from
 scratch was such a task for most people

Careful with those attributions there, skippy. 'Twas Graham that wrote that.

Simon

---

Sorry - my mistake!

(It was a bit late I wrote wot i did ;)

Hi ho

Title: Hi ho





Blimey, I was looking around for old Sam Coupé sites and I suddenly remembered the mailing list. So I just thought I'd drop in and see how/what everyone was doing? Obviously me and James Curry are still in contact but I've not heard hide nor hair from most ex Spam Soufflé owners in ages!

Graham

Re: Hi ho

2003-01-03 Thread Frans v. Egmond





Welcome back!
Colin has launched a new paper Sam Coupe magazine, you could check that out,
as well as several interesting new hardware bits...
Have you looked at his site yet?

Frans

Graham Goring wrote:
   
  
 
  
  Hi ho

  Blimey, I was looking around for old Sam Coup sites
and I suddenly remembered the mailing list. So I just thought I'd drop in
and see how/what everyone was doing? Obviously me and James Curry are still
in contact but I've not heard hide nor hair from most ex Spam Souffl owners
in ages!
  
  Graham

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho





I've not, but I did hear that Colin was still producing hardware for the SAM. Are there many active users still? The only time I look at SAM stuff is via emulation. I'm thinking of compiling a disc of all the best e-tunes in one lump...

What's his website addy then?


Graham


-Original Message-
From: Frans v. Egmond [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
Sent: 03 January 2003 16:25
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Re: Hi ho


Welcome back!
Colin has launched a new paper Sam Coupe magazine, you could check that out, as well as several interesting new hardware bits...

Have you looked at his site yet?


Frans

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho



His 
site can be found at 

http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/

If you 
have an actual Sam its worth digging it out and supporting it 
:)

Adrian

  -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Graham 
  GoringSent: 03 January 2003 16:23To: 
  'sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no'Subject: RE: Hi ho
  I've not, but I did hear that Colin was still producing 
  hardware for the SAM. Are there many active users still? The only time I look 
  at SAM stuff is via emulation. I'm thinking of compiling a disc of all the 
  best e-tunes in one lump...
  What's his website addy then? 
  Graham 
  -Original Message- From: Frans 
  v. Egmond [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
  Sent: 03 January 2003 16:25 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Hi 
  ho 
  Welcome back! Colin has launched a new 
  paper Sam Coupe magazine, you could check that out, as well as several 
  interesting new hardware bits...
  Have you looked at his site yet? 
  Frans

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho





Ta'. I think my actual SAM is in Stratford Upon Avon at the moment (I'm in Manchester) and I'm not even sure if it works any more. Certainly the disc drive made odd whining sounds last time I tried using it...

I'm surprised that Colin's working on a FPS game for the SAM, though, as I'd have thought it was impossible to recoup the costs on it?

Graham


-Original Message-
From: Adrian Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
Sent: 03 January 2003 16:25
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: RE: Hi ho


His site can be found at 
 
http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/
 
If you have an actual Sam its worth digging it out and supporting it :)

Re: Hi ho

 Ta'. I think my actual SAM is in Stratford Upon Avon at the moment
 (I'm in Manchester) and I'm not even sure if it works any more. Certainly
 the disc drive made odd whining sounds last time I tried using it...

Well disk drives can be easily replaced


 I'm surprised that Colin's working on a FPS game for the SAM, though,
 as I'd have thought it was impossible to recoup the costs on it?

Oh don't sound so pessemistic :)

There is still life in the Sam world! In fact, over the last 2 years I've been
busier and busier things have really been on the up. Judging by all the
correspondance i receive more and more people are coming back to the Sam scene ,
and there is certainly still demand for software and hardware - if there wasn't
I could hardly see myself working on more and more new stuff - especially a
magazine and new hardware (of which there are one or two new bits of hardware to
be released later this month..!)

Although, on the otherhand,  I was described as being quite insane in an email
to the list a few days ago - to quote: The man's quite clearly insane! I think
his SAM in a can project is really fantastic and is clearly the work of a
madman. It's well worth getting this issue to read the article

Colin

Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam
Website: http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/
Issue Three of Sam Revival Magazine Out Now !

RE: Hi ho

And remember, not every one is doing stuff for Sam for a financial gain.

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Behalf Of Colin Piggot
Sent: 03 January 2003 16:50
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Re: Hi ho

 Ta'. I think my actual SAM is in Stratford Upon Avon at the moment
 (I'm in Manchester) and I'm not even sure if it works any more. Certainly
 the disc drive made odd whining sounds last time I tried using it...

Well disk drives can be easily replaced

 I'm surprised that Colin's working on a FPS game for the SAM, though,
 as I'd have thought it was impossible to recoup the costs on it?

Oh don't sound so pessemistic :)

There is still life in the Sam world! In fact, over the last 2 years I've
been
busier and busier things have really been on the up. Judging by all the
correspondance i receive more and more people are coming back to the Sam
scene ,
and there is certainly still demand for software and hardware - if there
wasn't
I could hardly see myself working on more and more new stuff - especially a
magazine and new hardware (of which there are one or two new bits of
hardware to
be released later this month..!)

Although, on the otherhand,  I was described as being quite insane in an
email
to the list a few days ago - to quote: The man's quite clearly insane! I
think
his SAM in a can project is really fantastic and is clearly the work of a
madman. It's well worth getting this issue to read the article

Colin

Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam
Website: http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/
Issue Three of Sam Revival Magazine Out Now !

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho





Well disk drives can be easily replaced


I'll stick with my PC for now I think... Far more fun writing games on the PC than the SAM (I don't have to worry about optimising ;) ).

Oh don't sound so pessemistic :)

There is still life in the Sam world! In fact, over the last 2 years I've
been
busier and busier things have really been on the up. Judging by all the
correspondance i receive more and more people are coming back to the Sam
scene ,
and there is certainly still demand for software and hardware - if there
wasn't
I could hardly see myself working on more and more new stuff - especially a
magazine and new hardware (of which there are one or two new bits of
hardware to
be released later this month..!)


I must admit I'm surprised, the last Quedgely show I went to (are they still going?) seemed to be populated by about 30 people with the remainder of the space filled by tumbleweeds rolling forlornly in the desert breeze. ;)

Although, on the otherhand, I was described as being quite insane in an
email
to the list a few days ago - to quote: The man's quite clearly insane! I
think
his SAM in a can project is really fantastic and is clearly the work of a
madman. It's well worth getting this issue to read the article


Nowt wrong with being made. The idea of a SAM in a nice case is a good one. It's one of those things that will always seem like a great idea, like a portable Speccy with games on FlashRAM.

Graham

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho





And remember, not every one is doing stuff for Sam for a financial gain.


Well, I never did anything for FRED for money, it was all for the love of the machine on the SAM. Same thing with PC games, I only write 'em for fun and to remake Speccy classics.

Graham

Re: Hi ho

 I'll stick with my PC for now I think... Far more fun writing games on the
 PC than the SAM (I don't have to worry about optimising ;) ).

Optimisation is the fun part! Getting down to the nitty gritty in assembler is a
great way to spend the night ;)

Colin

Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam
Website: http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/
Issue Three of Sam Revival Magazine Out Now !

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho





Optimisation is the fun part! Getting down to the nitty gritty in assembler
is a
great way to spend the night ;)


I'd rather concentrate on the game design part of it myself, for me that's the interesting bit about making games. :)


Graham

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho

Dont
have to worry about optimising... Now where is the fun in not optimising, the
best bit of programming is watching little coloured timer bars flicker on the
screen, and counting t states :D

-Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Graham
GoringSent: 03 January 2003 16:57To:
'sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no'Subject: RE: Hi ho
Well disk drives can be easily replaced
I'll stick with my PC for now I think... Far more fun writing
games on the PC than the SAM (I don't have to worry about optimising ;)
).
Oh don't sound so pessemistic :) There is still life in the Sam world!
In fact, over the last 2 years I've been
busier and busier things have really been on the up.
Judging by all the correspondance i receive more
and more people are coming back to the Sam scene
, and there is certainly still demand for software
and hardware - if there wasn't I could hardly see myself working on more and more new stuff -
especially a magazine and new hardware (of which
there are one or two new bits of hardware
to be released later this month..!)

I must admit I'm surprised, the last Quedgely show I went to
(are they still going?) seemed to be populated by about 30 people with the
remainder of the space filled by tumbleweeds rolling forlornly in the desert
breeze. ;)
Although, on the otherhand, I was described as being
quite insane in an email to the list a few days ago - to quote: "The man's quite clearly
insane! I think his
SAM in a can project is really fantastic and is clearly the work of a
madman. It's well worth getting this issue to read the
article"
Nowt wrong with being made. The idea of a SAM in a nice case
is a good one. It's one of those things that will always seem like a great
idea, like a portable Speccy with games on FlashRAM.
Graham

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho



Thats 
the problem with PC games these days though- most dont have any design :) 
when you dont have the power you have to have better design to 
compensate.

*Start 
Flame War*

  -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Graham 
  GoringSent: 03 January 2003 17:02To: 
  'sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no'Subject: RE: Hi ho
  Optimisation is the fun part! Getting down to the nitty 
  gritty in assembler is a great way to spend the night ;) 
  I'd rather concentrate on the game design part of it myself, 
  for me that's the interesting bit about making games. :) 
  Graham

RE: Hi ho

Title: RE: Hi ho



But 
lets not get into the PC game war on the sam mailing list :D - 


I 
stillspend a good few hours playing stratosphere, bugs me that i cant get 
very far, it just keeps calling me back, to try and get a little further 
:D

A.

  -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Adrian 
  BrownSent: 03 January 2003 17:04To: 
  sam-users@nvg.ntnu.noSubject: RE: Hi ho
  Thats the problem with PC games these days though- most dont have 
  any design :) when you dont have the power you have to have better design to 
  compensate.
  
  *Start Flame War*
  
-Original Message-From: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf 
Of Graham GoringSent: 03 January 2003 17:02To: 
'sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no'Subject: RE: Hi ho
Optimisation is the fun part! Getting down to the nitty 
gritty in assembler is a great way to spend the night ;) 
I'd rather concentrate on the game design part of it myself, 
for me that's the interesting bit about making games. :) 
Graham

Re: Hi ho

 I'd rather concentrate on the game design part of it myself, for me that's
 the interesting bit about making games. :)

Well, that has to be the main part but on the other hand, saving a few
t-states isn't important when you have some 2GHz + monster to work with!

Colin

Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam
Website: http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/
Issue Three of Sam Revival Magazine Out Now !

Re: Hi ho

 Right, you're clearly ALL mad. ;)

Ah, is it really that obvious? :)

Colin

Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam
Website: http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/
Issue Three of Sam Revival Magazine Out Now !

Re: Hi ho

 RE: Hi hoDont have to worry about optimising... Now where is the fun in not
 optimising, the best bit of programming is watching little coloured timer
 bars flicker on the screen, and counting t states :D

Ah yes... changing the palette to see how many lines the routines use very
psychadelic... I do it myself all the time too!

Colin

Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam
Website: http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/
Issue Three of Sam Revival Magazine Out Now !

RE: Hi ho