> Amiga Format gave away a coverdisk containing almost all of level 1 of 
> Flashback. After spending a week completing it, it was perfectly clear 
> that I had to own this game.

Yeh ditto here.

> Unfortunately, attempting to play the ECS version on an AGA machine 
> results in the audio and video getting out of sync. (Apparently it's timed 
> according to how fast the graphics can be drawn, so on a more powerful 
> machine, the graphics draws faster and gets ahead of the music.) Bit of a 
> pity. Oh, and it doesn't run on my Amiga with its updated ROM either...

Also ditto here, I had just got one of the new Acorns where they bumped up 
the clock to 12 MHz from 8 MHz, but everything else was the same.  I wonder 
why timing was so hard back then - I mean surely they could have had 
something a little more sophisticated to make sure that things remained 
synced.

> I don't suppose you even have the game any more, but where did you get 
> stuck?

On the last level, I don't remember how far I got through it, but I vaguely 
remember several doors that were blocking my progress and I just couldn't 
find anything to give me any clues what to do next.  I spent *days* going 
back to it and literally covering every part of the walls and floors I had 
access to, still nothing so I gave up.  IIRC somebody here (maybe you) told 
me what I was missing a while back...

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scott wrote:

> Also ditto here, I had just got one of the new Acorns where they bumped 
> up the clock to 12 MHz from 8 MHz, but everything else was the same.  I 
> wonder why timing was so hard back then - I mean surely they could have 
> had something a little more sophisticated to make sure that things 
> remained synced.

Sloppy programming.

The music stays synchronised because it uses one of the hardware timers. 
The graphcs don't because it relies on the CPU drawing them at a 
specific speed.

Flashback also made the disk drive spin continuously to detect when a 
disk was inserted - completely unecessary and probably deterimental to 
the drive mechanisms.

> On the last level, I don't remember how far I got through it, but I 
> vaguely remember several doors that were blocking my progress and I just 
> couldn't find anything to give me any clues what to do next.  I spent 
> *days* going back to it and literally covering every part of the walls 
> and floors I had access to, still nothing so I gave up.  IIRC somebody 
> here (maybe you) told me what I was missing a while back...

Heh. I wonder if I could get an emulator working and play Flashback? ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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And lo on Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:15:33 +0100, Gilles Tran  
<gil### [at] agroparistechfr> did spake, saying:

> On the version I got with Vista

As I've not had opportunity to play with WMM on Vista do you know if  
they've fixed that rotate bug whereby a full-frame 640x480 movie is  
rotated 90° into a full-frame 640x480 movie? IOW stretched.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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And lo on Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:50:07 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> The real point is more that on a PC, just switching from one window to  
>> another always seemed to take forever, whereas on an Amiga it was  
>> instantaneous unless the machine was under heavy load.
>
> Yeh, I remember my friend had a 33 MHz PC, and just closing a window it  
> took several seconds for his desktop wallpaper to repaint itself, slowly  
> scanning down the screen line-by-line.

Another obvious case of False Memory Syndrome.

> They also ported some really cool vector art package that was originally  
> written for the Acorn (I think it was called Artworks on the Acorn and  
> Xara on the PC).  At some computer show I went to they had both packages  
> running on a latest Acorn and PC at the time, and of course the Acorn  
> was something like 8x faster at drawing complex shapes with lots of  
> graduated fills and transparency.  It had fininshed drawing the entire  
> picture, while the PC was still drawing the background fills.

Ah but was the Artworks-derived Xara for the PC really comparable to  
Artworks on the Acorn or is it just another Blender to Paint comparison?

;-)

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:08:44 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Well CDs use the obscure rate of 44.1 kHz. Not 44 kHz, but 44.1 kHz.  
> Apparently this is due to some historical reasoning that I forget now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard)#Technical_details
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCM_adaptor#How_a_PCM_adaptor_works



-- 
FE

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:

> In effect, the computer doesn't boost the blue channel, it uses a damned 
> "nonlinear colourspace transformations".

My point is still that you can't reover what isn't there any more.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Well CDs use the obscure rate of 44.1 kHz. Not 44 kHz, but 44.1 kHz. 
>> Apparently this is due to some historical reasoning that I forget now.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard)#Technical_details
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCM_adaptor#How_a_PCM_adaptor_works

...so it's derived from old PAL video timings? :-D

(Kinda like the way many old 8-bit home computers have different CPU 
speed depending on whether it's PAL or NTSC...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 23-Jul-08 10:02, Invisible wrote:
> andrel wrote:
> 
>> The Amiga was the de facto standard for television quality 
>> broadcasting, as many have also mentioned.
> 
> Really? De facto? I mean, I know it was used by a few people, but I 
> didn't think it had reached the level of "standard". (But obviously, I 
> don't work in TV.)

At that time no other machine came close to broadcast quality nor was 
there hardware genlock support on another machine (at least for an 
affordable prize), so anybody who did anything with TV used one. Just as 
the Mac was the standard for DTP and (I think) the Atari for MIDI.

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> (Kinda like the way many old 8-bit home computers have different CPU 
> speed depending on whether it's PAL or NTSC...)

  Not CPU speed, screen refresh rate.

  The screen refresh rate in PAL areas is 50 FPS because the frequency
of the alternate current from the wall socket is 50 Hz. In NTSC areas
the frequency is 60 Hz, and thus the screen refresh rate is 60 FPS.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> Really? De facto? I mean, I know it was used by a few people, but I 
>> didn't think it had reached the level of "standard". (But obviously, I 
>> don't work in TV.)
> 
> At that time no other machine came close to broadcast quality nor was 
> there hardware genlock support on another machine (at least for an 
> affordable prize), so anybody who did anything with TV used one. Just as 
> the Mac was the standard for DTP and (I think) the Atari for MIDI.

Heh. Well OK. Personally my Amiga was my introduction to MIDI. ;-)

As an aside: It's amazing how music suddenly sounds "professional" when 
played using a sequencer, so that by definition it has perfect timing.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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