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When I was in highschool I wrote a Tetris game for the TRS-80. My clever hack was that I could make it twice as fast by keeping the state of the falling shapes
by 13of40 4y ago
When I was in highschool I wrote a Tetris game for the TRS-80. My clever hack was that I could make it twice as fast by keeping the state of the falling shapes in video memory instead of a separate object model. In an early version of this, I failed to completely draw the "cup" the objects were falling into, and one fell straight through the bottom into system memory and crashed the machine.
- ketralnis 4y agoI did the same for a snake game for the TI-83. I didn't think of it as a clever hack so much as it was inexperience; I figured it's how games normally worked. System dialogues like "your battery is low" suddenly became parts of the playing field which was funny if nothing else. My code was slow enough that I didn't need any sleeps or busy loops, maxing out the CPU with my inefficient code just turned out to be the right playable speed which didn't occur to me as a coincidence until much later
- barbs 4y agoReminds me of a similar story of someone creating a Tron lightcycle game on an Apple IIgs. They had created a bug so that the lightcycle could travel off-screen and into memory, causing all sorts of undefined behaviour. https://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs.html https://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-...
- drewzero1 4y agoThat sounds pretty immersive into the world of Tron!