CompuServe Messages

That may be true for some older ports. However, I think the Amiga will not make it unless there is more new software released. And to get more of the latest software you need machines sold that have AGA+ graphics, more RAM, more storage, a CDROM, etc.). How many Amigas have a CD-ROM? How many Amigas have a lot of RAM? How many Amigas have large hard drives (or any hard drives)? How many Amigas have AGA or better? Most of the software we see on the PC or Mac is now on CD-ROM. Just about all the software requires a Hard Drive. Just about all of it is 256 colors or better. Take for instance the game "Under a Killing Moon" (4 CD-ROMS, at least 256 colors, and a fast machine). If they ported this, how many could they sell? It would take a lot of effort and low level code to do a game like this. Not an easy port. How about simple stuff like Microsoft Encarta. Should be an easy port! But how many Amigas are out there that have a CD and can play AVI or QT? The OS needs to take advantage of the hardware, not the programmer. Simple apps like Encarta should be easy to create. To play a video/audio sequence on the Amiga should be just as simple as playing QuickTime or AVI. I don't think 30 fps is important for something like Encarta. If someone at Commodore were to write QT & AVI libs for the Amiga, it would be an easy task to do the port. The fact is on the PC or Mac you don't need to know much of anything low level to use QT or AVI in an application. There are tools (and things like MFC) that make it easy. You don't even need to know how the compression is done! Hell I can fire up Visual Basic and get an AVI playing in 2 minutes without writing any code, and knowing nothing about Windows. Of course I would not use VB to write real code, but at least I can get a quick prototype up and running 🙂 Why don't the Amiga have a file format and support libs that would allow a programmer to play synced video/audio sequences in an application? And supply tools to convert QT and AVI to this format? The Amiga can outperform the Mac and PC with graphics no problem. You would think C= would have done this long ago! Nope! No tools! Each programmer must figure out Anim-7 (Anim-8 or whatever), the Amigas audio, the Amigas timing ability, Palette control, etc. Then develop a "in-house" file format. After you figure this out, you need to deal with the old non AGA machines! How many shops are going to put forth such an effort in the limited Amiga market? The ultimate MultiMedia machine don't even have a standard audio/video format! CEI ( or whoever gets the Amiga ) needs to help in this area. They need to kiss ass and help as many developers as possible with the right tools, and the right tech documentation and support. Then they need to advertise and sell more Amigas to make it worth the effort. When people walk down the isle at a large software store, they need to *SEE* Amiga titles just like the thousands of PC and Mac titles or they wont buy the machine. We can talk about the power of the Amiga all day long, it won't do any good, C= thought it would and learned the hard way! -Troy PS: I know I'll be getting flamed for this message 🙂 But it's the way I feel. Without a lot of Amigas out there, it's hard enough to get developers. Anything they can do to help developers will make things a whole lot better! It's sad, but the Amiga has to prove itself all over again.