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This is awesome! It really takes me back to when computers seemed amazing. (Yeah they do a million times more things now, but we are used to that.) When Amig

by z9znz 4y ago

This is awesome! It really takes me back to when computers seemed amazing. (Yeah they do a million times more things now, but we are used to that.) When Amiga was new, it offered so many incredible things that most people had never seen. PCs were horse drawn carts compared to the Amiga sportscar... 4096 colors! The SID audio which could play multiple tracks and speak far better than anything before. For programming, just a few lines of code could demonstrated pre-emptive multitasking by "racing" two graphic progress bars. Games were mindblowing. Silkworm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syk0yecayBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syk0yecayBo) with two human players on the same computer, multi-parallax background, incredible sampled explosions and music soundrack, etc. etc. Edit - I forgot Lemmings! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SgDS-16UFA&t=4372s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SgDS-16UFA&t=4372s

nikau 4y ago
I think silkworm was the game that used DMA to load graphics tiles on the fly from the floppy disk, was pretty impressive for the time.
LocalH 4y ago
SID was the C64/128 sound chip. Amiga used the bespoke Paula chip to drive audio output.
dm319 4y ago
I got an Amiga A1200 as a kid at Christmas. The first one was a dud, so slightly disappointed. But my dad came home with a replacement from Dixons a couple days later. I didn't have high hopes of it doing anything, but we put a disk in and powered it up. I distinctly remember that moment the a strange synth pitch bending sound started playing, causing mild alarm, followed by this parallel scrolling scene [1]. There were a few of us there, our collective jaws dropped. I spent many years after that dabbling with electronic painting on Deluxe Paint IV, which had a terrific balance between being fun for someone who had no clue, but also opened up so many advanced features if you dug a bit (animation, morphing, colour cycling, brushes, gradient fills), and I've struggled to find something similarly joyous for my kids. I learnt to make music on Octamed. And I have so many fond memories of all the games I played; the little worlds we created in our heads where computer characters existed. Partly as a result, I have enjoyed playing computer games with my kids. I join in with them playing Zelda BOTW, and minecraft. I know that they will look back fondly on these imaginary worlds. However, I do wish I could get them more interested in the creative side of digital art. Maybe that will come later. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdkhNi3RwUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdkhNi3RwUY

by z9znz 4y ago

nikau 4y ago

I think silkworm was the game that used DMA to load graphics tiles on the fly from the floppy disk, was pretty impressive for the time.

LocalH 4y ago

SID was the C64/128 sound chip. Amiga used the bespoke Paula chip to drive audio output.

dm319 4y ago

I got an Amiga A1200 as a kid at Christmas. The first one was a dud, so slightly disappointed. But my dad came home with a replacement from Dixons a couple days later. I didn't have high hopes of it doing anything, but we put a disk in and powered it up. I distinctly remember that moment the a strange synth pitch bending sound started playing, causing mild alarm, followed by this parallel scrolling scene [1]. There were a few of us there, our collective jaws dropped. I spent many years after that dabbling with electronic painting on Deluxe Paint IV, which had a terrific balance between being fun for someone who had no clue, but also opened up so many advanced features if you dug a bit (animation, morphing, colour cycling, brushes, gradient fills), and I've struggled to find something similarly joyous for my kids. I learnt to make music on Octamed. And I have so many fond memories of all the games I played; the little worlds we created in our heads where computer characters existed. Partly as a result, I have enjoyed playing computer games with my kids. I join in with them playing Zelda BOTW, and minecraft. I know that they will look back fondly on these imaginary worlds. However, I do wish I could get them more interested in the creative side of digital art. Maybe that will come later. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdkhNi3RwUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdkhNi3RwUY