Shogo: Progress Report
26-January-2001: Final progress report for Amiga Shogo by Thomas Frieden
There hasn't been much news here for some time now, and we apologize for this.
We've been very busy on Shogo Amiga for the recent weeks, and we are finally coming to the end of the road. Shogo is now officially in beta test stage, meaning everything we wanted is implemented, and the rest of the work involves fixing bugs, and getting the most speed out of our hardware.
At the moment, our main field of work is the speed of the 3D output. To achieve this, we're currently working on Warp3D again, incorporating functionality that will later on become Warp3D V4: We'll have new functions that will be able to bring more 3D data to the graphics chips faster than it's currently possible. To achieve this, we'll include a concept from OpenGL that's called vertex array. It will be possible to have a large amount of vertex data in memory, and use just one Warp3D call to get all of this to the screen. This will eliminate a lot of function calls. It will also pave the way for some future developments in Warp3D, for example support of hardware transformation and lighting engines found on modern graphics cards.
Another issue being resolved is the reduction of the dreaded context switches: Calling system functions from PPC always causes slowdown because the system function will run on the 68k. This has big impact on areas where a large amount of system interaction takes place, like disk I/O, audio output, and graphics handling. We were already very successful on the graphics side: We were able to bring down the buffer switching time by a factor of 50 (!) by using code that runs in parallel on the 68k and PPC. This can, unfortunately, not always be achieved, but with some careful planning, it is possible in some areas.
So we're making progress, and should be finished very soon.
I would like to apologize for taking so long with Shogo. Times haven't been easy for anyone involved in the Amiga the last year, and this slowed us down a lot. We had to concentrate our efforts on a lot of things outside the Amiga market. Hopefully, the new year (and millennium) will bring the much anticipated change again.
Thanks for staying with us!
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