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I remember trying to make a C compiler for SNES almost 15 years ago. The expert on the SNES architecure who I was working with was 14 years old.
by aliswe 6y ago
I remember trying to make a C compiler for SNES almost 15 years ago. The expert on the SNES architecure who I was working with was 14 years old.
- wk_end 6y agoI'm sure you're just throwing in a personal anecdote of interest and already know this, but for readers unfamiliar with these pieces of hardware: The SNES (early 90s) and the GBA (early 2000s), despite roughly similar graphical capabilities, are vastly different machines. The SNES uses a 65816-based architecture running at ~3MHz that's extremely hard to compile C down to while still getting acceptable performance/code size - almost all games for it were coded in assembly language. By comparison, the GBA uses an ARM7-based architecture running at ~33MHz. GCC was available for it literally before it came out. Even though I'd experimented a bit with QBASIC when I was younger, plugging away on the GBA when I was around 14 was how I learned C, how computers really work at a low-level, and roughly speaking, how to "really" code. So this isn't a GBA C++ compiler - that's existed for ages. This is a "just" game engine. It's super cool that people are still working on stuff like this - the GBA is a very fun platform to develop a game on, at a nice sweet spot between straightforward enough to get started on, powerful enough to make something cool, not so powerful that you need a team of dozens to make something impressive (for the platform).
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoAny idea what became of them?
- aliswe 6y agoSorry, was confused by "them". Yeah, he is basically the creatpr of all the big programming tutorials on snes programming. But to be such a giant he was mighty uninterested. He wanted to get into making music instead.
- BearOso 6y agosnesc by lordtech?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]