Re:Fanatics, zealotry, and dead platforms (Score 1)

Hi! Fanatics surely did the name of the Amiga much damage, but fanatics exist on other platforms too. Just have a look at the typical Linux or BeOS or MacOS guy... and if your firm would not support Linux and MacOS you surely would get a lot of fanatic-mails from users of these systems too. And yes, there are also a lot of Win32 fanatics, though they usually get what they want, as to games... I don't think Fanatism is more typical for the Amiga than for other platforms. It is just something typical for "computer nerds" in common. About Direct Register Programming... this is something the Amiga - well with the exception of a handfull of demo coders maybe) left behind since YEARS. The typical Amiga these days is a 233 MHz PowerPC System equipped with a Permedia 2 VGA Board and around 64 MB RAM. The API for Games to be used is Warp3D, a hardware-independent API similar in some ways to Glide (though Glide is not hardware-independent, of course). Games strictly use the API, no direct register accesses allowed. Games not using a 3D API use the CyberGraphX API for 2D Graphics. This is basically a OS-layer for standard Chunky-style Graphics. The authors of Warp3D though in the meanwhile set up their own firm, doing ports of famous PC-3D-Games to non-mainstream-platforms (Amiga, Mac and Linux, though they mainly support Amiga) and are using their recently finished OpenGL Implementation which is using Warp3D as Driver System for their upcoming commercial games. It is true of course that many people talk about the Amiga, but don't really know what they are talking about... if i talk about the PC I don't talk about 286 either... but about Amiga it seems to be accepted for many PC Coders to talk about the years-forgotten A500. Of course this upsets the Fanatics... I don't want to defend the fanatism, don't misunderstand me... i just want to explain :) To give only one example... at one time people from ID said Amiga could not technically run Doom. Only a few weeks after the Doom Source was released, an acceptably running port was released... Steffen Haeuser (Who has programmed a LOT on Amiga...)