racketboy.com

Incidentally, has anyone got an emulator running Deluxe Paint yet? I found a browser version that is still just at the concept level (very limited function), but would like to experiment with the full program. I think it would be interesting if we could find a program that we could all use to post screenshots of our work through the week leading up to next Sunday's chat

Added a link to a 5 part history of Amiga that folks might find interesting in the OP.

dsheinem wrote:Incidentally, has anyone got an emulator running Deluxe Paint yet? I found a browser version that is still just at the concept level (very limited function), but would like to experiment with the full program. I think it would be interesting if we could find a program that we could all use to post screenshots of our work through the week leading up to next Sunday's chat

Even though I can not participate in the book discussion per se, I can help with that. I have DPaint III running on WinUAE as I type this Brings back memories. I would really like to find the Dinosaur animation that came with it (or so I think), I had some fun tweaking it back in the day.

You guys might enjoy this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfc0Slzf-sY
I find the moustaches funny

EDIT: the Dinosaur animation came with Fantavision, not DeluxePaint. The morphing effects!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8Znjir418
I really liked watching that again.

Ivo.

So I finished the three chapter's for this weekends discussion. I'm enjoying it, the Amiga is a pretty cool computer and I'm glad this gives me a good understanding of how it really works. To me, old computers are a lot more understandable than new computers because the hardware limitations determine how everything works - you can kind of follow along. Nowadays, the limitations seem to be a lot more in how software is implemented, since hardware standards are all over the map.

The Amiga occupied a middle ground in my mind. It really seems like impressive, modern computing but this book really showed how simple a lot of it is. There's still a lot about it I don't understand, but the book is definitely guiding me towards understanding the platform.

ANYWAY, HOWS ABOUT I ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS!
1) What was the first time you remember having an experience with what you considered to be a "multimedia" system?

I would say around 1994 when my dad decided we should have a computer an "IBM compatible" Gateway 2000. I had seen computers at friends and relatives houses, but only knew them for their games. This was the first computer I could really learn with. It had a CD-ROM drive, which I thought was really cool because my family never had a CD player before. I think I bugged my parents to get a CD so I could try playing it in the computer and we ended up with music from The Nutcracker. I also played with MS-Paint, which had some cool features that were removed from the Windows 95 version (like the ability to select a color to NOT erase, when erasing).
My dad never really used the computer himself. He's always been a serious technophobe so he would say "I use a computer at work - I know so much about it, I don't need to bother with it at home" (just last week he was asking me what a web browser was). Anyway, someone told him that you can mess a computer up by working with DOS, so he only wanted me to use Windows programs. If you've never used Windows 3.1, you might not be aware: there aren't a lot of Windows programs. You're basically expected to just run DOS programs through Windows - it was much more a shell rather than an OS. (Years later I would catch up hardcore with DOS games.)
There was one Windows program I loved though, Encarta 94, which was Microsoft's encyclopedia software. I remember thinking the videos were really neat and I loved learning about all kinds of things I would otherwise be oblivious to (heck, the fact that I still remember what The Battle of Bunker Hill is probably because of Encarta). There was also a trivia game in it called 'mind maze' which I thought was really cool, but it would always crash before I could beat it (if it even could be beaten).

2) What experience do you have with the Amiga and/or Amiga emulators?

High school communications class! I took it from 2002-2004 (junior and senior years). We had a fully-functional TV studio in the school and an integral part was Video Toaster running on an Amiga ("the Toaster" as everyone called it). I remember being really impressed by the effects it could handle. It certainly didn't seem like the type of computer graphics I would have expected from a at the time roughly decade-old computer. You could add obnoxious/awesome effects like having a woman's silhouette dance across the screen to transition between cameras or adding animated text to things.

I used that thing a lot, including manning it during a long telethon the class put on. It was some cool technology and I fantasized about owning an Amiga some day, but it never happened. I doubt I ever will get one, but they're still really cool machines.

cool input Nemoide!

I am glad that people are digging the book even though (thus far) there's not a ton about games per se in the initial chapters. There's not much next month either, but the home stretch includes some great stuff about Psygnosis and gaming.

Looking forward to Sunday's chat!

That Boing demo is elegant. I loved reading the element-by-element details of how they pulled it off after watching the clip on the companion website. I can't get over how brilliant they were, and I'm surprised that the writer suggests we might actually be disappointed and consider their methods "sleight-of-hand tricks." And that "boom" noise blows my mind!

I finished the required reading a few days ago, but I've been putting off my response because I'm a little hazy on his definition of "multimedia." The book says "Multimedia is the seamless integration of data, text, images of all kinds and sound withing a single, digital information environment." Based on my vague memories of the Macintoshes we had in my elementary school in the early 90s (I don't remember which model they were, but they had color), I'm not sure why they're ruled out based on that definition alone. Can someone clarify this for me? It seems like the ability to multitask, and the ability to digitize real-world pictures and sound in a recognizable way, are more central to his argument about the Amiga being the first multimedia PC than anything else.

1. If the Macintosh doesn't count, then my first multimedia experience is similar to most people here: Windows. In my household we went from an Apple IIe to a Hewlett-Packard running Windows in 1995. I was ten. It came with all kinds of game demos, and I remember playing all of them over and over, regardless of whether or not they were way below my age range (there was a storybook-type game for toddlers that involved clicking on things and triggering cartoon song-and-dance routines of nursery rhymes), way above my age range (a choose-your-own adventure called Silent Steel, set inside a submarine with FMV -- and cussing!), or just plain frightening (The Journeyman Project Turbo!). I specifically couldn't get enough of hearing music and was an Encarta junkie too, listening to the same thirty-second clip of steel drum music over and over and over.

Something I find interesting about these demos is that, even if they didn't employ FMV, my memories were certain they did. I was shocked to watch clips of The Journeyman Project Turbo! on YouTube and discover that walking down a hallway wasn't a seamless animation. I "remember" so clearly that it was. I guess that just proves how impressed I was by the technology, even if I wasn't conscious of it at the time.

I don't remember thinking about how awesome the technology was in context of how it was evolving in the world, though. I don't think I ever thought, "This is unlike anything I've seen before!" or "The advancements in these machines are amazing!" or anything else that would imply a mature grasp of past or future. I was just stuck on "This is SO COOL!" Everything was a given, and very in-the-moment.

2. I didn't know anything about the Amiga before reading this book, aside from a song that a musician covered in a YouTube video that he stated was from the Amiga version of Lemmings. I hardly know anything about the famous C64 as it is. All Commodore products completely slipped under my radar. I'm glad to be remedying this.

Key-Glyph wrote:Based on my vague memories of the Macintoshes we had in my elementary school in the early 90s (I don't remember which model they were, but they had color), I'm not sure why they're ruled out based on that definition alone. Can someone clarify this for me? It seems like the ability to multitask, and the ability to digitize real-world pictures and sound in a recognizable way, are more central to his argument about the Amiga being the first multimedia PC than anything else.

No, I think his point is more that the first Amiga was 1985 with multitasking, lots of colours, digitizers etc. whereas those Macs with color were after that (and I think Macs only had multitasking quite late but I'm not sure when). There was a Mac before the Amiga 1000, but it was black & white only and considerably expensive. It also deserves credit, e.g. it was first with having a bundled mouse (although with only 1-button).

Ivo.

Ivo wrote:

Key-Glyph wrote:Based on my vague memories of the Macintoshes we had in my elementary school in the early 90s (I don't remember which model they were, but they had color), I'm not sure why they're ruled out based on that definition alone. Can someone clarify this for me? It seems like the ability to multitask, and the ability to digitize real-world pictures and sound in a recognizable way, are more central to his argument about the Amiga being the first multimedia PC than anything else.

No, I think his point is more that the first Amiga was 1985 with multitasking, lots of colours, digitizers etc. whereas those Macs with color were after that (and I think Macs only had multitasking quite late but I'm not sure when). There was a Mac before the Amiga 1000, but it was black & white only and considerably expensive. It also deserves credit, e.g. it was first with having a bundled mouse (although with only 1-button).

Ivo.

I think it is interesting that the book has no mention so far of NeXT, which seems to have been shooting for at least some of the same things Amiga was doing and around the same time...granted it didn't get to market until 88/89.

Ivo wrote:No, I think his point is more that the first Amiga was 1985 with multitasking, lots of colours, digitizers etc. whereas those Macs with color were after that (and I think Macs only had multitasking quite late but I'm not sure when). There was a Mac before the Amiga 1000, but it was black & white only and considerably expensive. It also deserves credit, e.g. it was first with having a bundled mouse (although with only 1-button).

Thanks Ivo. My chronology on these features is hazy. And I suppose it's a great testament to the Amiga that I keep forgetting it was made in 1985! My mind keeps shifting forward into the 90s as I read along. I appreciate the reminder.

Also, thanks for pointing out the errata on the companion site. I hadn't gone there to view the Boing demo at the time of writing that post, so I hadn't known he'd cataloged his errors. Whoops!

P.S.: Re: Master of Magic, we occasionally burst out with "OLD MAN!!!" here in this household.

dsheinem wrote:I think it is interesting that the book has no mention so far of NeXT, which seems to have been shooting for at least some of the same things Amiga was doing and around the same time...granted it didn't get to market until 88/89.

I think the main reason why NeXT is not mentioned is not the date, but rather that it was not meant as a personal computer. I don't know how many people had NeXTs at home, but I presume it was a very small number. I never knew about it back in the day. I'm guessing not many games were made for it!

Ivo.