Hello to everyone.

As the bounty failed due to the fact that the requested sum was not in definitive, reached, and also that I saw that if I accepted the sum, It will not stop some things from being, I decided, after taking the time to breathe and think abount an other way to continue the development of the game engine, to take this decision :

With my financial situation starting to become better ( my wife find a new job few days ago, and it's where she always wanted to work with her new skills/graduate she acquired 2 years ago :) , and for my case, I continue my vocational training that is not yet finished), things should become better withing the next few months for us. And it's a good news :)

So, there is no more *real* need for a financial help like it was decided during 2014 and that leaded on the idea of the community to a bounty. However, I cannot (yet) acquire a new Amiga NG configuration to continue the development and tests the changes (we are always under the official overdebt procedure with French Bank)
That's why, to those that did contribute to the original bounty (and to all those that want), I propose you to contribute in another way to the project.

It's quite simple : You can make a donation to the project directly from the official website.
Just here : http://www.amidark-engine.com/spip.php?article6
And mention in the donation comments, to which platform your donation is dedicaced between : AmigaOS4, MorphOS, AROS, AmigaOS68k
You can choose 1, 2, 3 or 4 of these platforms. Your sum will be splitted equally to all platforms you'll have choosen.
You can also choose simply that your donation is only used for the "engine development". But don't forget that to purely continue improvements, bug fixing, it's really better to have at least one Amiga NG computer on which I can test what I changed (until to see beta tester, send them files, wait for their feedback, etc... process that can be really slow and cause of time lost in the development).

And what will happen to your donation?
From now, I'll keep a diary of all donations (like it is done in a bounty), and the sum acquired.
When I'll get enough, I will acquire new Amiga NG computers to continue the development of the AmiDARK Engine (per preferency AmigaOS4 one, but MorphOS and AROS are also in the run and all will depend on you and your choices!).

Initially the donation will be used depending on which AmigaOS platform you'll set it but, if the sum acquired for a dedicaced platform is higher than the need to acquire a computer for it and OS licence for it, the remaining value will be splitted equally for the other platforms.

It's an idea that will probably takes many months to reach enough for some of the four platforms so, I decided to launch it now. It will probably leave me enough time to finish my vocational training (should be finished before august 2015 ending). That mean the project should restart before ending 2015.
Here is concerning the financial part.

For now, concerning the Engine and its progression/evolution, here is what is decided :

1. The engine will be entirely restructured.

2. If BSZili agree, I will keep some of the changes he've done to the engine for the new engine. I will personaly check and choose which changes will be kept.

3. Concerning Daytona675x bug report (and I've already saved all of them on my hard drive)
3a. During the Review, I have already fixed some of them and I will continue fix all I think that are important firstly.
3b. All that is purely "coding style" will maybe not be fixed as user will never get access to the engine source code itself, the only important thing is that the engine work perfectly. They're not a high priority as there are more important things to do before.
3c. All the "checking" that can lead to *crash* on *unstable* behaviour will be added during the integration and the development of the "Error Handler". Don't forget that more checkings = slower engine.

4. During the time I will not have a new AmigaOS NG computer, I will concentrate on fixing bugs and adding the "Error Handler" system.
When I'll have at least one new Amiga NG Computer, I will continue bug fixing but, I'll restart to add new features to the engine. I will consider these computers as "community computer". That mean I will never resell them even if I'm on the need.

5. Concerning the roadmap, the main goal is to keep a high percent of compatibility with DarkGDK (with the command set names and, I'll add #define to allow direct compatibility (to transform deXXXX functions to dbXXXX functions naming convention). And once the engine will be finished to Add an IDE to makes an AmiDARK BASIC based on AmiDARK Engine and as compatible as possible with DarkBASIC Professional.

6. Concerning the evolution of the engine itself, I will continue to work on a *secret* part of the engine that can makes it become really powerful for Demo Making. It's a *Sequential 3D Engine system*. The current structure of the engine already allow this but, I must add a new "module" that will be dedicaced to this task by adding specific command to handle *render lists* for this job.

Of course, it's a work done on my "free time". That mean I cannot confirm a precise "speed" in the development progress.

Regards,
AmiDARK

Last edited by AmiDARK on 18-Feb-2015 at 12:26 PM.

@AmiDARK

Just a thought, and please correct me if I am wrong...

If you have a decent enough desktop or laptop PC - Quad Core with at least 8gig (I would upgrade to 16gig), could you not run OS4.x via UAE so you can have a basic programmatic environment to test code or what have you?

This would allow you to "re-start" engine development without having to collect to much money, at least on the debugging front, and get it to a point whereby everything you can do without owning a Next Gen Amiga, you are able to do without delay.

Wishing you the best for this project...

Q!

"i am home"

Last edited by QuBe on 18-Feb-2015 at 12:41 PM.
Last edited by QuBe on 18-Feb-2015 at 12:41 PM.

@QuBe
Yes QuBe, your idea may be interesting ... But my computer is from 2007. Dual Core, Windows XP.
As AmigaOS4 is already slow on modern computer when running under WinUAE... I don't imagine on my old computer :(

@AmiDARK

Good to hear reallife is sorting itself out

@AmiDARK

Before, once you start to work on amidark engine, i support you. Later, when i see that you didn't fix bugs i report to you, as wel as how you talk about me on french forum, as well as how you deal with right ppls (like daytona) here (who can try to help you, but you can't go over your ego) , i only can hope no one will donate you.

And plz stop always say about your finance situations, no one care (i.e. no one give a fuck about your financical situatios). We all have our problems, so plz, stop again and again saying what do your wife, what "finance situation" you have, who is your childs, how bad or good your cat , or whatever else. You start to remind Belxander with his "material".

Where your man's balls man ? Now you will cry about how slow your old PC ? Damn, go buy new one ! Why you ask for money again, if we all see that your amidark is full of bugs, and you didn't want to fix them normally but instead protect them ?


Quote:

Of course, it's a work done on my "free time". That mean I cannot confirm a precise "speed" in the development progress.

My god .. In other words "plz give me money, but i will do nothing, or only when i will have interestin in". You suck, sorry. You wan't those wannaby users send you few buks, just because you see some of them send them to bounty. And while bounty fail (in the first place because of how you deal with ppls who help you by tips, and not because it not reach enough summ) , you want those ppls recend you money directly. Blew !

Last edited by kas1e on 18-Feb-2015 at 01:27 PM.

_________________
Join us to improve dopus5!
zerohero's mirror of os4/os3 crosscompiler suites

Where's the popcorn smiley?

_________________
Robert
--
A1XE G4, OS4.1. Peg1 G3, MOS 1.4.
Abel Soul - Check out our tunes on Spotify

@Kas1e

Have mediaplayer bug been fixed in odyssey, it crashes here often under os4.1 fe and pre versions.

@kas1e

Let me guess Amiga-ng.org.?

Kamelito

it's not that slow in fact.
issue will be slowwww 3d and lowww memory.

>f you have a decent enough desktop or laptop PC - Quad Core with at least 8gig (I would upgrade to 16gig), could you not run OS4.x via UAE

>Dual Core, Windows XP.

WTF? 8Gb dual/qual core!? I'm running OS4 here via emulation on a 1Gb single core entry level machine, works fine.

@Minuous
Warp3D OpenGL work on it?

@AmiDARK

I haven't tried. But if it works on an 8Gb host it would also work on a 1Gb host, since only 128Mb can be allocated for the guest in any case.

@AmiDARK

Wazp3D should work to some extent but OS4 can't access the hardware on your video card so there's no hardware acceleration and therefore no compositing effects either.

@AmiDARK
Quote:

I will personaly check and choose which changes will be kept.

You should ask yourself and answer yourself honestly: "am I really qualified to make such a decision?"
Since BSZili is without doubt a much much better coder than you, you should trust him and keep all changes he did.

Quote:

3. Concerning Daytona675x bug report (and I've already saved all of them on my hard drive)

Great and de nada But just to make sure you understand what you saved and how to use it, because I'm afraid it looks like you still don't know:

Quote:

3a. During the Review, I have already fixed some of them and I will continue fix all I think that are important firstly.

Better don't trust your own judgement on this, better trust mine, really. I mean: you made all those mistakes. No offense, but that makes you probably the worst person in the world to determine which ones are important to fix and which not... And you already proved that before when critical flaws didn't make it onto your list.
Just sit down and fix them all, even those of which you think are not important.

Quote:

3c. All the "checking" that can lead to *crash* on *unstable* behaviour will be added during the integration and the development of the "Error Handler".

Many of the crash and stability issues I reported are not fixable through an "error handler" like the one you planed. There are often bugs like array-bounds-errors, writing to invalid memory, etc. that simply happen because of arithmetic / algorithmic bugs. And you should not wait with fixing those. Instead this whole topic should be first priority on your todo list. Of course adding your "error handler" is no bad idea neither.
And you should check for more errors like those. I only scratched the surface and there's certainly much much more to be fixed. Since you were not able to spot even the most obvious bugs you should get help from a friend here with coding knowledge to continue checking it.

Quote:

Don't forget that more checkings = slower engine

Don't worry. Until you stop using OGL's immediate mode and do other slowish stuff, NULL checks or other (vital) parameter / sanity checks will certainly not slow down anything furthermore in a measurable way. Actually: even if your code would be extremely professionally optimized you would still hardly notice a difference if those checks are applied correctly.
Anyway: until your engine works stable (and I mean really stable and not what you think is stable, like with the current demos...) adding such checks (at least asserts) is probably even more important than fixing the stuff above. Yes, the stuff above should better be the second thing to do, this here should be the first. Just like the guy here told you too.

Quote:

3b. All that is purely "coding style" will maybe not be fixed as user will never get access to the engine source code itself, the only important thing is that the engine work perfectly.

Maybe I wasn't too clear before: I only commented on "style" when the code was extremely bad / potential (or already) source for problems / slow / bloat. Your engine won't be perfect without those things being adressed. It would truely help your code's quality to become more, hum, decent.
But well, it's your choice: if you like wasting hours adjusting hard-coded numerical values all over the source (or looking for such things because you have a typo somewhere that causes a crash again) because for some reason beyond reason (and me) you still refuse to use a const variable instead, that's your choice, ignore the advices. But it's certainly not the smartest choice.

Quote:

They're not a high priority as there are more important things to do before.

That's true (namely all the stuff above) - as long as you don't falsely put important stuff in your "uncritical coding style"-drawer as you already did before.

Quote:

The engine will be entirely restructured... ... And once the engine will be finished to Add an IDE... ... continue to work on a *secret* part of the engine that can makes it become really powerful...

Quite ambitious, especially considering the quality of what we've seen so far
I strongly recommend that you learn the important basics of C before again, so that you know the important language features and use them well / correctly, and also know the most important coding-style dos-and-donts.
Also, learning about what header files are, what to put into those and how to structure C code in general won't hurt.
Otherwise it will for sure end up equally broken as the last version. Or you simply won't finish it (at least not in a state were it would pass any quality checks, if you care for that).

If you understand all that and accept it as being true and being good advices and act accordingly and start learning first:
good luck It's not impossible.
However, since I learned to know something about you I still wouldn't bet on your success, of course. But it's not totally impossible that you actually deliver something decent if you change, miracles do happen sometimes. Everything is possible!

Quote:

Yes QuBe, your idea may be interesting ... But my computer is from 2007. Dual Core, Windows XP. As AmigaOS4 is already slow on modern computer when running under WinUAE... I don't imagine on my old computer :(

AROS (in an emulator)? Porting to AROS should be easy and was planned anyway, right? And when you start that port NG amigas will of no help anyway. Therefore: make that your first goal (including all those fixes of course) and save money at the same time

Quote:

His way of speaking was too negative so, and caused troubles on AW forum, I decided to stop things and remove the source code. As someone decided to retire its donation, the bounty become failed (lower than the required price). Due to that the bounty is failed and I decided to stop everything because I known that if I accepted the lower price, the reviewer will continue to be aggressive (to my point of vies). Result : The source code remain proprietary closed source.

(source) Yes, yes, our poor AmiDark and that bad aggressive reviewer Well, reality is subjective... That reminds me that I wanted to ask kas1e something:

@kas1e
Quote:

Later, when i see that you didn't fix bugs i report to you, as wel as how you talk about me on french forum, as well as how you deal with right ppls (like daytona) here (who can try to help you, but you can't go over your ego)

Lovely! Déjà vu, yes, that kind of story sounds familiar Can you please provide a link to that french forum's discussion?

_________________
AmigaOS 4.1 FE (sam460ex Radeon 9200 / RadeonHD), MorphOS 3.8 (PowerMac G4 733MHz Radeon 9000), AROS (x86), A1200 (060 80MHz Indivision MK2), A500, A600, CDTV
Wings Remastered Development Diary

@Daytona675x


By debating with AmiDARK and others, and by doing that code review, you made things appear way better than they are.


The "engine" is not an engine:
- It's a bunch of functions thrown together with no architecture.
- Almost every single function bears no optimization.
- The OpenGL code is using immediate mode, which makes it useless in real use scenarios.
...Hence the code is beyond repair, debugging it would do nothing.


The "bounty" was not a bounty:
- The guy asked for an X amount of money to release software he already had written
- The software didn't accomplish anything that the community actively asked for
- The software wasn't even in working state
...Hence the whole thing was a yard sale of some broken stuff left unused in a closet.


And finally, there's the... lack of dignity:
- Mentioning the lost job
- Justifying stuff with the health issue
- Coming back after the failed bounty and again begging for money in new ways
...Hence it should have just been ignored altogether.

@resle

Well, Daytona675x has atleast educated the ...uneducated masses. As a coding iliterate such a review opens my eyes to the complexities of development.

AND if Amidark takes the lessons learned and applies them to his project, then Daytonas time spend reviewing isnt a waste.

@Overflow

Quote:

AND if Amidark takes the lessons learned and applies them to his project, then Daytonas time spend reviewing isnt a waste.

And those picking on Daytona all the time should have learned a lesson too,.
(not that I think they did)

_________________
AmigaOS or MorphOS on x86 would sell orders of magnitude more than the current,
hardware-intensive solutions. And they'd go faster.-- D.Haynie

@AmiDARK

Quote:

Warp3D OpenGL work on it?

No. Not with hw acceleration at last. To get w3d hw acceleration under winuae use wazp3d with genuine amiga os or aros68k. Alternatively you can use native aros x86 which alsoprovides accelarated wazp3d via mesa opengl backend.

@Daytona675x :
Quote:

You should ask yourself and answer yourself honestly: "am I really qualified to make such a decision?"

Even if the AmiDARK Engine is my First C project, it is not my first project as, in the past, I have written more complex projects that were sold by a professional company (theGameCreators). I sold them my copyright on these products :

Name : PurePLUGIN
Desc : Plugin creator for DarkBASIC Professional
Dev : developed under PureBASIC PC
Link : http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2086

Name : eXtends
Desc : Plugin adding various functionalities toDarkBASIC Professional
Dev : developed under PureBASIC PC
Link : http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2080

Name : 2DPluginKIT
Desc : Plugin adding various 2D functionalities to DarkBASIC Professional
Dev : developed under PureBASIC PC
Link : http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2076

Name : X-Quad Editor
Desc : Game Creator
Dev : developed under PureBASIC PC & DarkBASIC Professional
Link : http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2129

More of this, another project I build entirely myself :

Name : X-Truder
Desc : Video Game for a compatition, reached the 4th place from 60 games submitten
Dev : developed under DarkBASIC Professional
Link : http://www.thegamecreators.com/pages/newsletters/newsletter_issue_13.html

So, I know how to build a project from the beginning to its end. Of course, I'm not the best coder on C, But I learn contrary to what you said ... But I never learn from hammering, I learn from "sharing informations with respect" ... something you don't know...
But more to this, what you've forgotten : as a profesisonal coder, you must respect some structures, some priorities ... As I am a creative/hobby coder, I am not liable to these rules. And I can build the projects how I want, the only important objective is to reach the goal whatever the method used is. It's true that my way of *creating* can appear chaotic, but it always finish per working correctly ! The finished projects mentioned upper prove that.

More of this, the truth is that the bugs you mentioned are bugs that would be found when the functions will be tested. Nothing "exceptionnal" even if you're a good coder ... You commented yourselves like if you were "the saver of the project" ... The truth is that the project never needed your help as my previous projects show.

You can say everything you want, you can corrupt anyone you want with your "false positive words", I know my value and no one will override my thouth. I'm not "formattable".

Contrary to what many people say, what I argue about you was your way of speaking and not really the bug report ... And what things prove that ?
If you looked at the project, when I opened the source code "for review", the submission/commit showned I started fixing bug you mentionned. More to this, I keep a track to what was done :
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=39807&forum=15&108
Just updated this night with few changes more.

2. What makes me really laugh is that regarding the current capabilities of the engine (and what the technical demonstration show as a potential for creativity), you put your efforts only to destroy the projects by giving only the negative feedback ... not the positives ones ...
You've never said 1 positive word, in any way, about the projects... That truly show that your only objective was to kill the project (or get the control over it)... Yes .. I know ... You will say "but ... there are no positive points in your projects" ... bla bla ...

Did you take a look at the sequencial "render method" ? that is a good idea for plugin integration to have their own render? no ... Of course ... It's impossible for you to say something positive on the project.

Did you take a look at the plugin system ? no ... Of course ... It's impossible for you to say something positive on the project.

Did you take a look at the FX2D plugin to simulate some sort of rasters ? no ... Of course ... It's impossible for you to say something positive on the project.

Did you say something about the folder structure that is well organised ? no ... Of course ... It's impossible for you to say something positive on the project.

Did you say something about the method used for module to call another one ? no ... Of course ... It's impossible for you to say something positive on the project.

But we can be sure that you will find negative arguments about these of course ... Why ? Because with your ego, you can simply not say anything positive on my project... Even if there are! It really show your true though hidden in your words.

Regards,
AmiDARK

@AmiDARK

Some of the conflicts between you and Daytona I do belive is due to language barrier and misunderstandings that you get from forum communications in general.
I remember the "noob" comment. The way I personally read Daytonas comment was that AmiDark Engine should be easily used by even novices like me aka a coder "noob".
I do not belive that particular comment was directed at you.
My impression was that he considered the flaws to the engine, with crashes, would be impossible for a novice to analyze/work around. Only people with indepth knowledge of the engine, or advanced developers in general would be able to use the engine fully.

Daytona might be very blunt, but from where Im sitting, he spending alot of time reviewing and writing up what he finds to be flaws. Maybe consider that sort of a compliment, or atleast a postive influence?

There were quite a few people being quite positive towards your project, myself included. You even raised 1600 EUROs. All I could offer was EUROs and a positive comment.
Daytona offered something else; suggestions for improvements, that would save you time in debugging. Id say that contribution is ALOT more valuable than a few EUROS and a pat on the back.

Last edited by Overflow on 19-Feb-2015 at 10:58 AM.