±b3  HARDDRIVELOADER×


±b3  - THE FUTURE?×


±41A "where-the-hell-does-this-lead-us?"-
article by±42 RokDaZone/INFECT

±41Many  of you out there - glanzing just
know  at  your monitor - ridiculed the
PC-demos at the PARTY.III competition.
Too  much  of the broke down.  Buzzing
sound,   destroyed   gfx.   Real  fun,
wasn't it?

±43Nope.

±41What  was  that?  These guys from DUST
for   example  made  people  squeezing
tears      off.       Coders      like
SHAYERA/TRANSONIC     simply     cried
out:"Look  what  these  bad people are
doing!" An big lightsourced vectorball
running     down    the    (bitmapped)
rollercoaster  drain into an endlessly
big   vector   logo   in   an  immense
universe.   An exception?  Maybe.  But
there  was  more than just this simple
demo.   What  stunned people most were
this damned great flights through huge
landscapes...  No wonder with a 468 at
66MHz?   Not  entirely.   We  have the
68020  and  higher, don't come telling
me we can't come near to this.

What is the real difference between PC
and  AMIGA  - the hardware, of course.
But  in  one  thing  they are both the
same:   Harddrives!   But why the hell
then,  do  they  load their demos from
harddrive and we don't (really).

I  mean, of course oneparted demos are
loadable  from Harddrive on AMIGA too,
but  who  has done a demo before, that
really  needs  to  be installed on the
harddrive,  taking  7MB  or  such  and
while  the  demo  is running, multiple
MB's are pushed in and out - just like
needed.

I  ain't a coder, I can't neither tell
you  about the difficulties nor how to
do it.  Still, I am assure, there must
be a way to do such things with 2MB of
RAM and an ordinary harddrive.  And if
you  think,  2MB can't be enough:  Who
really  has 2MB only?  Especially know
that prices are falling again.
The  major problem is an AMIGA typical
one:  Our facilities are non-standard,
everything  is  too  small.   I  own a
250MB   harddrive  and  just  in  this
moment     I     can    hear    people
sigh:"250MB!?!"   Well,  yes.   That's
lousy, isn't it?

For  an  AMIGA-user  without  board it
seems  to be ridiculously much to have
250MB  -  for a PC-user this rarely is
enough to oinstall the system, WINDOWS
and   WORD  and  maybe  some  selfmade
files.  On AMIGA, people get a dry one
of  the wrist when having to spend 5MB
for  a  game  -  on  PC the intro only
takes 3MB...

I  ask  the  scene  to  take  the step
forward.  Coders, convince the people!
Do something original in 7MB.  Give us
the  huge  3D-landscapes,  give  us  2
screens  wide  raytraced objects in 32
colours.  Leeeech!

No, to be serious again...  of course,
loading  would  create stuckings here,
and  breaks  there.   It  will be less
comforting  to  do  than  diskloaded -
especially  trackloaded,  but we would
expand  our environment if things like
this could be possible.  Think of some
kind  of  interactive ODYSSEE (ah, ok:
A  better  story  would  be fitting.),
where one explore ones own space.  Not
like a game, but like a travel through
a  small  universe in which directions
are  free.   Impossible  to do on disk
(if one don't want to have everlasting
loading  time)  but  no problem with a
harddrive  with  enough capacity and a
higher   speed   than   a   typewriter
rotation.

Don't  come and say twenty disks don't
get  spread.   For  the beginning this
would be ridiculous of course.  But if
we  start  with  jsut  three disks and
later  expand.   What for spaces, what
for  speed!   Have  you  ssen the CD32
intro of ZOOL?  It takes 7MB and if we
use it on a harddrive, it is almost as
fast  in loading than from the CD.  It
in  fact  (INFECT!)  IS  possible  and
maybe it is worth giving it a try.  No
we  face  the diverging of the systems
and  if  we can't manage to learn from
other   systems,  our  days  might  be
counted.
±23             Think of it.
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