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Having watched that I would agree that the memory limitations of the Apple II directly lead to the creation of that brilliant game feature. =) However, I was r
by JohnBooty 7y ago
Having watched that I would agree that the memory limitations of the Apple II directly lead to the creation of that brilliant game feature. =)
However, I was responding to the comment chain below this comment:
"Do you want your game creators focuses on
twonking around in the guts of an obscure,
probably poorly documented and understood
one-off architecture"
This was not about hardware limitations like the RAM limits Mechner faced while writing PoP. This is about bugs and other such things.
The XOR instructions used to draw the shadow-man weren't a "wonky" feature of the Apple II hardware... it was a pretty standard and well-documented feature.
In fact, in the video, if I recall correctly, Mechner specifically mentioned seeing the XOR instruction in the documentation. It was not "poorly documented." The Apple II was quite well documented.
Also, I am talking out of experience here, started coding in 1986
and was into portuguese demoscene PC/Amiga.
I am always in awe of the demoscene... props to you.
However even though I am not a demoscene or game developer I am speaking from 20+ years software development experience. Nearly as long as you. I did not start doing this yesterday.