3 ms·
A lot of the later demo effects on the c64 is using so called "speedcode" which basically is code generating code on the fly to achieve things like dynamically
by JoachimS 8y ago
A lot of the later demo effects on the c64 is using so called "speedcode" which basically is code generating code on the fly to achieve things like dynamically copying data areas. In effect intelligent loop unrolling i asm.
http://codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:speedcode http://codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:speedcode
- darkmighty 8y agoFascinating! I assume this kind of technique has been obsoleted by branch prediction, or are there imaginable modern applications?
- shakna 8y agoOne of the reasons we needed extremely aggressive unrolling was the size/lack of a stack, making recursion or anything that might look like it difficult/limited/impossible, due to needing to store a location to jump back to. Anything you could do to minimise the amount of things needed to store, and their size, wasn't wasted time. And though it might very ocassionally be similarly necessary on some chips today, it's more likely you'll work in assembly on those.