3 ms·

Were they the first people who were making a platformer and had to redraw screen thast way? If not, why not start with whatever other guys did?

blt 11y ago
Because there was no Stack Overflow in the 80s, and game programmers usually enjoy the challenge of making stuff faster.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  You can just take apart other games already out there. Finding loop that takes 80% cpu should be simple enough and it can't be big. You might spend weeks making stuff faster and arrive to inferior or wrong solution. Better ship it weeks earlier and enjoy lying on a beach in the sun.
PeterisP 11y ago
1. The specific approaches required were different for each particular CPU, and that time was very heterogenous with lots of very different machines in use. For example, the article involves two people; the developed optimization is intended for one of them but would not even work on the author's own slightly older CPU. 2. Information exchange was much less efficient than now. They literally would have no way of knowing what the other guys did unless each new developer was ready do reverse engineer their code themselves, which requires a significant investment of time that most likely exceeds the time they would be investing on the actual platformer. Nowadays a single person can reverse engineer the technique and everyone else can just use it, but then it simply wouldn't be published and you're on your own. The tools available were crude; disassembly or easy finding of the 'hot' inner loops just wasn't available, and simply attaching a debugger would often result in the system not working as the game code would often rely on specific cycle timing, interrupts not happening (e.g. the article mention of any interrupts corrupting their data due to abuse of stack pointer), etc. Reverse engineering could and did happen, but it's not that feasible to two boys in the basement at the time. Furthermore, 'the pros' at the time would deploy their code in firmware (arcade machines or cartridges) where it's even less accessible to hobbyists of the time. The only actual way of spreading such knowledge was by some of those early professionals publishing books, that among basic techniques also listed the optimization tips and tricks that they knew.

blt 11y ago

Because there was no Stack Overflow in the 80s, and game programmers usually enjoy the challenge of making stuff faster.

guard-of-terra 11y ago
You can just take apart other games already out there. Finding loop that takes 80% cpu should be simple enough and it can't be big. You might spend weeks making stuff faster and arrive to inferior or wrong solution. Better ship it weeks earlier and enjoy lying on a beach in the sun.

PeterisP 11y ago

1. The specific approaches required were different for each particular CPU, and that time was very heterogenous with lots of very different machines in use. For example, the article involves two people; the developed optimization is intended for one of them but would not even work on the author's own slightly older CPU. 2. Information exchange was much less efficient than now. They literally would have no way of knowing what the other guys did unless each new developer was ready do reverse engineer their code themselves, which requires a significant investment of time that most likely exceeds the time they would be investing on the actual platformer. Nowadays a single person can reverse engineer the technique and everyone else can just use it, but then it simply wouldn't be published and you're on your own. The tools available were crude; disassembly or easy finding of the 'hot' inner loops just wasn't available, and simply attaching a debugger would often result in the system not working as the game code would often rely on specific cycle timing, interrupts not happening (e.g. the article mention of any interrupts corrupting their data due to abuse of stack pointer), etc. Reverse engineering could and did happen, but it's not that feasible to two boys in the basement at the time. Furthermore, 'the pros' at the time would deploy their code in firmware (arcade machines or cartridges) where it's even less accessible to hobbyists of the time. The only actual way of spreading such knowledge was by some of those early professionals publishing books, that among basic techniques also listed the optimization tips and tricks that they knew.