Re: [MiNT] OT Highwire

[Mark Duckworth <mduckworth@atari-source.org>]

Rob Mahlert wrote:
> Last I heard, AltF4 has been very busy with work. Seeing He did most 
> of the work on HighWire.. things have come to a snails pace. I haven't 
> heard from him in a while, but I also just e-mailed him yesterday to 
> catch up.
>
> Same situation with Ozk with his new job. Which is a huge loss for us, 
> He had great plans in the works for MiNT. With his track record.. we 
> would have seen a huge leap for MiNT. :-(
The way I see it, the people left need to step up and learn the more 
hardcore stuff that we've lost with Altf4, ozk, etc.  I'm *attempting* 
to because I want to be the one to implement dynamic linking, vm, memory 
mapping, demand paging, etc but at the same time I don't have a lot of 
time.  At the same time to implement those things you need to know 68k 
assembler and intimately understand the machine.  For me with no demo 
coding background, it's certainly going to be an uphill battle.  Luckily 
the majority of people left never really seem to abandon the effort, 
things just take years to happen and luckily the atari machines seem 
rather well made not considering the original ST problems and seem to be 
lasting forever.  So it's just one of those things where it all *will* 
happen whenever someone has an itch to scratch but it will take a lot 
more time than it could have.

I think what we really need is ways to get our machines to be higher 
resolution (new video cards, CTPCI, with 3d support), 3d api developed 
and a modern desktop developed.  It would really make the machines feel 
a lot better.  It always made me sad that the macs had such great high 
resolution graphics while the ataris even up to the falcon really just 
didn't put forth the effort.  I know they're gaming machines but still.

Thanks,
Mark