4 ms·

This was done by someone on the original team who went back to fix these things. He has a fantastic youtube channel documenting lots of tricks and facts about

This was done by someone on the original team who went back to fix these things. He has a fantastic youtube channel documenting lots of tricks and facts about games he's worked on. There's a ton of old-school programming cleverness that you just don't see now a days! https://www.youtube.com/c/GameHut https://www.youtube.com/c/GameHut

tombert 5y ago
I think you see cleverness in coding still, certainly in the distributed space I'll find insanely clever stuff on occasion, but I mostly agree that the "optimizing for every single bit of memory and shifting between five different palates to spoof monochrome animation" days are mostly over. I think this is largely a good thing, as it makes programming more accessible to people who don't have the ability to figure out every bit of minutia involved with a CPU (particularly since modern CPUs are ridiculously complicated!), but I will admit that occasionally I do love seeing old-school tricks to stretch out memory and make systems do things that they have no right to be doing. My favorite "wtf how is this possible" classic game will probably always be the SNES port of DOOM. It's definitely among the worst ways of playing DOOM now, but for a port to the SNES, even with the SuperFX chip assisting it, it really does not feel like that should have been possible.
- Beldin 5y ago
  > My favorite "wtf how is this possible" Mine are from the demo scene. Second Reality, free-flying in 3D in a time where running Doom taxed machines. The 8088MHz demo: 1024 colors on CGA. 64Kb demo generating really good mountain landscape. That sort of thing.
  - tombert 5y ago
    Just looked it up...holy crap! I didn't think it was possible to get that level of color depth in CGA.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    Second Reality has always been my favourite demo of all time. I guess the CGA demo is working by very quickly overwriting the display buffer and switching the palette, using Persistence of Vision. I did the same thing on VGA in 640x480x256 color mode to get 24-bit color in the late 80s.
    - thristian 5y ago
      It's wilder than that: it hacks up the CGA text mode so instead of drawing all 8 scanlines of each character, it draws the first scanline twice then moves to the next character. Then, it carefully chooses characters, foreground and background colours that (when combined) generate an NTSC composite signal with the required colours in it: https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-illustrated/ https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-...
      - kingcharles 5y ago
        Thanks for the link. As an old INT 10h man myself, this was a great blast from the past.
  - pezezin 5y ago
    > 64Kb demo generating really good mountain landscape. Do you mean Elevated? It is actually 4 kB, even more impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938
    - Beldin 5y ago
      I absolutely did! Thanks for the link and oh man... getting that done in 4k.... I'm tempted to download the YouTube video just for a size comparison. At any rate: stunning.
      - duskwuff 5y ago
        Incidentally, source code is available for both Elevated and Second Reality: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source
  - anitil 5y ago
    I really like 'A Mind is Born' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8 The summary of it's development could be summarised with "It's LFSRs all the way down"
- vgb2k18 5y ago
  Mostly, yes indeed. Partial counter-example though, Jon on his Coding Secrets channel demonstrates how to achieve PS5 effects on lesser hardware, so maybe on PS4 for example. This [0] Ratchet and Clank example focussed on debunking marketing hype that certain effects were only possible on PS5 SSD. An obvious other counter would be 3D engine development (Unity, Unreal) where the developers of those engines will be employing some obscure seeming low level stuff to make this look good. Not to be unclear though I'm 100% in agreement that for most devs, those days are mostly over. [0] https://youtu.be/5XOV3pZj8rI https://youtu.be/5XOV3pZj8rI
- huachimingo 5y ago
  See also the PICO-8[1] or TIC-80[2] fantasy consoles: fake virtual consoles with built in editors and limited on purpose to add more fun and cleverness to development. [1]https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php [2]https://tic80.com/ https://tic80.com/ Games are distributed using custom small PNG files.
  - tombert 5y ago
    I actually have a license to Pico-8, and I absolutely love it (I actually used to volunteer at the library teaching programming, and I taught it to teenagers). It definitely keeps the C64 spirit alive.
Grazester 5y ago
He was not part of Sonic Team. He was part of Traveller's Tales. That was a British studio who was contracted to do some Sonic games. This game and Sonic R.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  > This game and Sonic R. Ouch.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  OP said "original team" not "Sonic Team" (pretty sure that's not an edit on his part either because I remember reading his post before you replied).
  - spicybright 5y ago
    Her, and yeah, never said sonic team, just one of the original devs.
    - hnlmorg 5y ago
      > Her, Opps sorry. I normally make an effort to use gender neutral addressing too.

tombert 5y ago

I think you see cleverness in coding still, certainly in the distributed space I'll find insanely clever stuff on occasion, but I mostly agree that the "optimizing for every single bit of memory and shifting between five different palates to spoof monochrome animation" days are mostly over. I think this is largely a good thing, as it makes programming more accessible to people who don't have the ability to figure out every bit of minutia involved with a CPU (particularly since modern CPUs are ridiculously complicated!), but I will admit that occasionally I do love seeing old-school tricks to stretch out memory and make systems do things that they have no right to be doing. My favorite "wtf how is this possible" classic game will probably always be the SNES port of DOOM. It's definitely among the worst ways of playing DOOM now, but for a port to the SNES, even with the SuperFX chip assisting it, it really does not feel like that should have been possible.

Beldin 5y ago
> My favorite "wtf how is this possible" Mine are from the demo scene. Second Reality, free-flying in 3D in a time where running Doom taxed machines. The 8088MHz demo: 1024 colors on CGA. 64Kb demo generating really good mountain landscape. That sort of thing.
- tombert 5y ago
  Just looked it up...holy crap! I didn't think it was possible to get that level of color depth in CGA.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Second Reality has always been my favourite demo of all time. I guess the CGA demo is working by very quickly overwriting the display buffer and switching the palette, using Persistence of Vision. I did the same thing on VGA in 640x480x256 color mode to get 24-bit color in the late 80s.
  - thristian 5y ago
    It's wilder than that: it hacks up the CGA text mode so instead of drawing all 8 scanlines of each character, it draws the first scanline twice then moves to the next character. Then, it carefully chooses characters, foreground and background colours that (when combined) generate an NTSC composite signal with the required colours in it: https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-illustrated/ https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-...
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      Thanks for the link. As an old INT 10h man myself, this was a great blast from the past.
- pezezin 5y ago
  > 64Kb demo generating really good mountain landscape. Do you mean Elevated? It is actually 4 kB, even more impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938
  - Beldin 5y ago
    I absolutely did! Thanks for the link and oh man... getting that done in 4k.... I'm tempted to download the YouTube video just for a size comparison. At any rate: stunning.
    - duskwuff 5y ago
      Incidentally, source code is available for both Elevated and Second Reality: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source
- anitil 5y ago
  I really like 'A Mind is Born' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8 The summary of it's development could be summarised with "It's LFSRs all the way down"
vgb2k18 5y ago
Mostly, yes indeed. Partial counter-example though, Jon on his Coding Secrets channel demonstrates how to achieve PS5 effects on lesser hardware, so maybe on PS4 for example. This [0] Ratchet and Clank example focussed on debunking marketing hype that certain effects were only possible on PS5 SSD. An obvious other counter would be 3D engine development (Unity, Unreal) where the developers of those engines will be employing some obscure seeming low level stuff to make this look good. Not to be unclear though I'm 100% in agreement that for most devs, those days are mostly over. [0] https://youtu.be/5XOV3pZj8rI https://youtu.be/5XOV3pZj8rI
huachimingo 5y ago
See also the PICO-8[1] or TIC-80[2] fantasy consoles: fake virtual consoles with built in editors and limited on purpose to add more fun and cleverness to development. [1]https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php [2]https://tic80.com/ https://tic80.com/ Games are distributed using custom small PNG files.
- tombert 5y ago
  I actually have a license to Pico-8, and I absolutely love it (I actually used to volunteer at the library teaching programming, and I taught it to teenagers). It definitely keeps the C64 spirit alive.

Grazester 5y ago

He was not part of Sonic Team. He was part of Traveller's Tales. That was a British studio who was contracted to do some Sonic games. This game and Sonic R.

Pxtl 5y ago
> This game and Sonic R. Ouch.
hnlmorg 5y ago
OP said "original team" not "Sonic Team" (pretty sure that's not an edit on his part either because I remember reading his post before you replied).
- spicybright 5y ago
  Her, and yeah, never said sonic team, just one of the original devs.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    > Her, Opps sorry. I normally make an effort to use gender neutral addressing too.