3 ms·

The 199os were a time when we tried all sorts of tricks to get the last bit of performance out of the hardware. One book which stands out is the one Michael Abr

The 199os were a time when we tried all sorts of tricks to get the last bit of performance out of the hardware. One book which stands out is the one Michael Abrash wrote: Michael Abrash's "Graphics Programming Black Book" https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book https://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/graphics-programming-black-book/184404919 https://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/graphics-programming-black-... As CPU power, the number of cores, RAM sizes, HDD sizes, graphics card capabilities have increased, the developers are no longer as careful to squeeze out the performance.

patentatt 5y ago
I may be naïve/out of the loop here, but it’s fun to imagine what would be possible with the same gusto and creativity applied to today’s hardware. I imagine that a significant amount of modern hardware, even in games, is eaten up by several layers of abstraction that make it easier for developers to crank out games faster. What would a 90’s developer do with a 16-core CPU and an RTX3080?
- musicale 5y ago
  You see a bit of this sort of optimization at the end of a game console's life cycle. I expect the PS3 still has some headroom since few games adequately exploited the Cell processor's SPUs. Since the Switch is underpowered compared to PS5/Xbox Series X/PC perhaps we'll see some aggressive optimization as developers try to fit current-gen games onto it.
- kbuck 5y ago
  You can check out some demoscene demos [0], which usually do this (albeit to save executable size instead of just to run fast). These days you don't even have to run them yourself; most have YouTube recordings. [0]: https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Windows&page=1 https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Windows&pa...
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    Well to be in the spirit with the parent it should also try and use terabytes of storage to push the storage to the limit.

patentatt 5y ago

I may be naïve/out of the loop here, but it’s fun to imagine what would be possible with the same gusto and creativity applied to today’s hardware. I imagine that a significant amount of modern hardware, even in games, is eaten up by several layers of abstraction that make it easier for developers to crank out games faster. What would a 90’s developer do with a 16-core CPU and an RTX3080?

musicale 5y ago
You see a bit of this sort of optimization at the end of a game console's life cycle. I expect the PS3 still has some headroom since few games adequately exploited the Cell processor's SPUs. Since the Switch is underpowered compared to PS5/Xbox Series X/PC perhaps we'll see some aggressive optimization as developers try to fit current-gen games onto it.
kbuck 5y ago
You can check out some demoscene demos [0], which usually do this (albeit to save executable size instead of just to run fast). These days you don't even have to run them yourself; most have YouTube recordings. [0]: https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Windows&page=1 https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Windows&pa...
- charcircuit 5y ago
  Well to be in the spirit with the parent it should also try and use terabytes of storage to push the storage to the limit.