Coding speccy games in the good 'ole days
Matthew Taylor
Please could you collectively tell me how games used to be coded for the
Spectrum. Were they hand assembled on a Spectrum or was a high level
language used on an early IBM?
Thanks
Matthew
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David
Matthew Taylor wrote in message ...
>Hi,
>
>Please could you collectively tell me how games used to be coded for the
>Spectrum. Were they hand assembled on a Spectrum or was a high level
>language used on an early IBM?
Not "hand assembled" mainly, unless you mean by using an Assembler.
Nowadays of course, programmers don't use real languages like assembler...
only C deviations :(
Graham Goring
<mta...@NOSPAMchemtech.co.uk> writes
>Hi,
>
>Please could you collectively tell me how games used to be coded for the
>Spectrum. Were they hand assembled on a Spectrum or was a high level
>language used on an early IBM?
I know that some people used Tatung Einsteins to do the coding...
Graham Goring
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Regards
Michael
David wrote:
> Matthew Taylor wrote in message ...
> >Hi,
> >
> >Please could you collectively tell me how games used to be coded for the
> >Spectrum. Were they hand assembled on a Spectrum or was a high level
> >language used on an early IBM?
>
> Not "hand assembled" mainly, unless you mean by using an Assembler.
>
> Nowadays of course, programmers don't use real languages like assembler...
> only C deviations :(
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John Dow
>Is Screamer 2 written in C++ ??? Or Colin Macrae Rally?? Or Half LIfe???
Probably. Do they use DirectX?
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John Dow
Edinburgh, Scotland
Chris Pile
>Spectrum. Were they hand assembled on a Spectrum or was a high level
>language used on an early IBM?
Simon Brattel and the Crystal/Design Design team used to build their own
hardware to develop on!! For instance, 'Dark Star' was written on a homebrew
machine called 'Basil' and 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' on another
homebrew called 'Lurch'!!
Wallace
John Dow wrote in message <758o43$fi6$1...@news1.cableinet.co.uk>...
>Michael Berglund wrote in message <3677CA39...@vasteras.mpe.se>...
>>Is Screamer 2 written in C++ ??? Or Colin Macrae Rally?? Or Half LIfe???
>
>Probably. Do they use DirectX?
Not all of they don't
Screamer 2 i think is DOS
CM Rally was written for the PS first.
Never Heard of Half Life
Niall
Somewhere near Dundee
Bob Brenchley
mta...@NOSPAMchemtech.co.uk (Matthew Taylor) wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Please could you collectively tell me how games used to be coded for the
>Spectrum. Were they hand assembled on a Spectrum or was a high level
>language used on an early IBM?
>
>Thanks
>
>Matthew
Most (if not all) were written using Z80 assembler straight onto the
Spectrum. Sometimes with ideas being tested first in Basic - that is
write a Basic program as a frame, code the really hard part in machine
code, then if it works (which often it didn't) code the rest of the
game into assembler. Ah! The hours of fun we used to have in those
days :)
lo...@my.sig
: In article <MPG.10e10481d...@news.demon.co.uk>, Matthew Taylor
: <mta...@NOSPAMchemtech.co.uk> writes
:>Hi,
:>
:>Please could you collectively tell me how games used to be coded for the
:>Spectrum. Were they hand assembled on a Spectrum or was a high level
:>language used on an early IBM?
: I know that some people used Tatung Einsteins to do the coding...
I have NOOOOO idea who that could be....
:)
Or am I thinking of the TRS-80 when it came to the man himself....?
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stan
They normally used a stronger computer and then downloaded the stuff to
the spectrum target machine. It was a lot of assembler optimization done
that we of course not see today where games are produced in high level
languages and integrated with video and so one...
Unfortunatelly the pride of good programming seems to have disappeared
with the object oriented era, nowadays we need at least a PENTIUM II, 300
MHZ type of computer + a minimum of 10 MB HD space and 12 MB RAM to run a
game...
...I think that's why we still love and miss the spectrum so much... the
games and
the atmosphere around it with so little means...THE PRIDE OF A REALLY GOOD
PROGRAMMER IS DEAD !!!!
//STAN
Matthew Taylor <mta...@NOSPAMchemtech.co.uk> wrote in article
<MPG.10e10481d...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> Hi,
>
> Please could you collectively tell me how games used to be coded for the
> Spectrum. Were they hand assembled on a Spectrum or was a high level
> language used on an early IBM?
>
ke...@rjfm2.freeserve.co.uk
wrote:
>Probably. Do they use DirectX?
Half Life does..
Rob.
Michael Berglund
/ Mike
John Dow wrote:
> Michael Berglund wrote in message <3677CA39...@vasteras.mpe.se>...
> >Is Screamer 2 written in C++ ??? Or Colin Macrae Rally?? Or Half LIfe???
>
> Probably. Do they use DirectX?
>
> --
> John Dow
> Edinburgh, Scotland
--
Luis
>Spectrum. Sometimes with ideas being tested first in Basic - that is
>write a Basic program as a frame, code the really hard part in machine
>code, then if it works (which often it didn't) code the rest of the
>game into assembler. Ah! The hours of fun we used to have in those
>days :)
There were some systems available for coding on a PC. A company called 'PDS'
used to sell some kit for five grand IIRC, that you could use to code in
assembler. Not just for Z80, it had cross assemblers for 6502 and others as
well, under DOS. PDS was a British company (again IIRC) but there were
others available from the states. I think 'Flight Electronics' also did a
cross assembler for their kit systems which ran off a PC or the boards, not
too sure if this could be used for Speccy or C64 though.
Most of the stuff was done on the Speccy itself, there were tons of good
assemblers out there (I really rate Laser Genius that Ocean brought out) I
don't think much was done with C or Pascal because of the overheads but some
good stuff also came out with these.
It also depended on where the software came from: A lot of the games came
from individuals and small companies, so development systems were a no-no
whereas hand coding was cheap and easy (considering the simplicity of the
machine).
Don't forget BASIC compilers like 'Colt', or even BASIC itself with a few
POKES of assembler.
Ermm....better get back to work....but basically I think the spread of
coding 'styles' was pretty even from the start, though I reckon it was more
assembler as the companies grew bigger and people bought more games than
they wrote (also include the fact that as time went by more machines were
bought just to play games as the games market grew).
Luis.
Palomino
>>
>>Probably. Do they use DirectX?
>
>
>Screamer 2 i think is DOS
Christ. Are you people so mired in Spectrum BASIC that you imagine that a
C/C++ program is interpreted in real time by Windows? DOS stands for "Disk
Operating System", and loading programs into memory is about all DOS is
capable of. *All* modern commercial PC software is compiled into
x86-executable machine code, so the OS it's running under is irrelevant. A
game will only require Windows 9x if it makes calls to DirectX, which exists
as an aid to the PC programmer by saving him/her the trouble of writing
donkey-work graphics and sound routines.
'Doom', FYI, was written almost entirely in C++.
>CM Rally was written for the PS first.
The programmers' version of the Playstation (the "Yaroze", I think) uses C++
as its development language.
>Never Heard of Half Life
Ah, so you *have* been living in a cave for the last year.
Word up: games as complex as 'Half-Life' are only made possible by the
existence of high-level languages like C. Why?
1. Pre-defined classes, etc.
2. Code libraries;
3. The convenience of the visual development environment;
4. The ease with which high-level languages allow programmers to convert
ideas into code.
Writing Z80 code to fit into the 32 KB of usable RAM available in a Spectrum
is a very different prospect to what is required of the modern PC
programmer.
Nobody would attempt to create a 600+ MB game like 'Half-Life' or 'Quake II'
in assembly language, or in the barbaric development environments endured by
the Spectrum coders of fifteen years ago.
My Spectrum was once the centre of my universe, but that was then and this
is now. I don't know whether to laugh or bang my head against my monitor
when I see people insisting that simple entertainments such as 'Chuckie Egg'
are inherently superior to the immersive environments offered by
state-of-the-art achievements like 'Half-Life'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This posting was written on a Windows 95 PC, which multi-tasks all kinds of
neat stuff for me, and has only crashed twice in the two years I've been
using it.
Chris Young
>This posting was written on a Windows 95 PC, which multi-tasks all kinds of
>neat stuff for me, and has only crashed twice in the two years I've been
>using it.
The one I'm using has crashed twice TODAY, and Windoze has failed to
*ever* communicate with the modem at the highest possible speed. Even
though the QNX demo managed it with no problems.
Utter crap. Try a decent OS, and _then_ see if you can still convince
yourself that "Windows is Good".
Chris
--
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http://www.bigfoot.com/~ysac
Unsatisfactory Software - "because it is"
http://www.unsatisfactory.freeserve.co.uk
John Dow
<367a7bc4...@news.freeserve.net>...
>
Yup. Most Win95 games do (and it beats the hell out of trying to get games
to run under dos in the bad old days ;-))
Point is: (dons flameproof suit and prepares to make a bold statement)
I doubt if there are many people who can write assembler as efficient as a
*decent* optimising compiler can produce, in the same development time.
People did some spectacular things on the speccy in assembler (Rick O Neill
wrote Riptoff without even having an assembler - he stuck the ascii codes
for the opcodes in data statements and poke'ed them in from a for loop ;-)),
but then they weren't writing half life.
J
The Starglider
<killspam...@hotmail.com> writes
[Lots of stuff snipped]
>Writing Z80 code to fit into the 32 KB of usable RAM available in a Spectrum
>is a very different prospect to what is required of the modern PC
>programmer.
>Nobody would attempt to create a 600+ MB game like 'Half-Life' or 'Quake II'
>in assembly language, or in the barbaric development environments endured by
>the Spectrum coders of fifteen years ago.
>My Spectrum was once the centre of my universe, but that was then and this
>is now. I don't know whether to laugh or bang my head against my monitor
>when I see people insisting that simple entertainments such as 'Chuckie Egg'
>are inherently superior to the immersive environments offered by
>state-of-the-art achievements like 'Half-Life'.
I think you've totally missed the point. We play games for their
playability, not graphics and sound. Half-Life may be the most
technically superior game in the world, but is it actually a "good"
game?
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>This posting was written on a Windows 95 PC, which multi-tasks all kinds of
>neat stuff for me, and has only crashed twice in the two years I've been
>using it.
Windows multitasking? You've got a lot to learn!
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David
Palomino wrote in message <75aq3u$jpb$1...@news.indigo.ie>...
>Ah, so you *have* been living in a cave for the last year.
>Word up: games as complex as 'Half-Life' are only made possible by the
>existence of high-level languages like C. Why?
>
>1. Pre-defined classes, etc.
>2. Code libraries;
>3. The convenience of the visual development environment;
>4. The ease with which high-level languages allow programmers to convert
>ideas into code.
>
Which is precisely the reason why people are being conned into spending more
and more on system upgrades ... when if software was written PROPERLY it
wouldn't
require the same amount of power.
No compiler that I am aware of is going to produce the same results as true
assembler.
No compiler that I am aware of can produce the same results as a seasoned
assembler coder.
Bob Brenchley
<Lu...@ucea.ac.uk> wrote:
>>Most (if not all) were written using Z80 assembler straight onto the
>>Spectrum. Sometimes with ideas being tested first in Basic - that is
>>write a Basic program as a frame, code the really hard part in machine
>>code, then if it works (which often it didn't) code the rest of the
>>game into assembler. Ah! The hours of fun we used to have in those
>>days :)
>
>
>There were some systems available for coding on a PC. A company called 'PDS'
>used to sell some kit for five grand IIRC, that you could use to code in
>assembler. Not just for Z80, it had cross assemblers for 6502 and others as
>well, under DOS. PDS was a British company (again IIRC) but there were
>others available from the states. I think 'Flight Electronics' also did a
>cross assembler for their kit systems which ran off a PC or the boards, not
>too sure if this could be used for Speccy or C64 though.
>
You are correct, the PDS system was around for quite a few machines -
including the Spectrum and the SAM Coupe. However, that was rather
late in the day - long after the majority of Speccy games were
written.
>Most of the stuff was done on the Speccy itself, there were tons of good
>assemblers out there (I really rate Laser Genius that Ocean brought out) I
>don't think much was done with C or Pascal because of the overheads but some
>good stuff also came out with these.
>It also depended on where the software came from: A lot of the games came
>from individuals and small companies, so development systems were a no-no
>whereas hand coding was cheap and easy (considering the simplicity of the
>machine).
Very true, back in the 'good old days' most good software was written
by single programmers and then marketed by the software companies. The
only time software companies 'employed' programmers was for
conversions.
>Don't forget BASIC compilers like 'Colt', or even BASIC itself with a few
>POKES of assembler.
Indeed :)
>
>Ermm....better get back to work....but basically I think the spread of
>coding 'styles' was pretty even from the start, though I reckon it was more
>assembler as the companies grew bigger and people bought more games than
>they wrote (also include the fact that as time went by more machines were
>bought just to play games as the games market grew).
>
Very true.
(c)1998 R.P.Brenchley. Copyright exists in the contents of this posting. This posting, either in part or in full, may NOT be used other than as part of a reply to the newsgroup it appears on and/or in a direct email reply to the author.
--
Bob.
David
Bob Brenchley wrote in message <3678216...@news.clara.net>...
>On Tue, 15 Dec 1998 23:43:39 -0000 on this learned newsgroup
>mta...@NOSPAMchemtech.co.uk (Matthew Taylor) wrote:
Hey Bob!
You missed the Copyright message this time ;)
David
lo...@my.sig wrote in message <759896$o90$5...@cfs2.kis.keele.ac.uk>...
>
>I have NOOOOO idea who that could be....
>:)
>
>Or am I thinking of the TRS-80 when it came to the man himself....?
Yup, he did indeed!
Mind you, following from the earlier comments.... testing ideas for machine
code games in Basic?
Who on earth would do that?
Mind you of course, Stupid Demo Coders would never need to do such a
thing... ;)
Their skills are already way above this :)
*ducks down to avoid the flack starting very soon from the Gloucester
direction... if he's slipped out of the killfile again ;) *
Chris Wild
>Well,
>
>They normally used a stronger computer and then downloaded the stuff to
>the spectrum target machine. It was a lot of assembler optimization done
>that we of course not see today where games are produced in high level
>languages and integrated with video and so one...
BOLLOCKS!
Most games have their graphics routines ( were needed ) or tight
calculation loops - optimised.
With most games approx. 95% of time is spent in 5% of the code. This
code will be almost always hand optimised - towards the end of the
project. If this doesn't happen it will probably because of pressure
from publishers to release.
>
>Unfortunatelly the pride of good programming seems to have disappeared
>with the object oriented era, nowadays we need at least a PENTIUM II, 300
>MHZ type of computer + a minimum of 10 MB HD space and 12 MB RAM to run a
>game...
Most games are doing more now...
>THE PRIDE OF A REALLY GOOD
>PROGRAMMER IS DEAD !!!!
>
EVEN MORE BOLLOCKS!
Sorry about that - nothing personal. It's just that I get sick of
hearing this drivel.
--
Chris Wild
EMAIL: ch...@anam.demon.co.uk WWW: http://www.anam.demon.co.uk/
[Author Lords of Midnight & Doomdark's Revenge PC Conversions : v1.07 ]
Robosaurs Versus The Space Bastards - http://www.spacebastards.com/
Chris Wild
>'Doom', FYI, was written almost entirely in C++.
>
The PC version wasn't; almost all normal C with ASM for the texture
mapping and general final graphics output.
BUT you point is still very valid. Many a top game has been written in
C++ which has little affect on speed, but much to help development.
Darren Salt
"Palomino" <killspam...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> 'Doom', FYI, was written almost entirely in C++.
You mean C...
[snip]
>> Never Heard of Half Life
> Ah, so you *have* been living in a cave for the last year.
I must have been too, and I don't think that I've missed anything...
> Word up: games as complex as 'Half-Life' are only made possible by the
> existence of high-level languages like C. Why?
> 1. Pre-defined classes, etc.
In C? Are you *sure*?
> 2. Code libraries;
True...
> 3. The convenience of the visual development environment;
A good text editor and tools which support throwback is all that's required.
You can add a front end if you like, though it's really just bells and
whistles.
> 4. The ease with which high-level languages allow programmers to convert
> ideas into code.
Don't forget the assembler for those speed-critical bits :-)
> Writing Z80 code to fit into the 32 KB of usable RAM available in a
> Spectrum is a very different prospect to what is required of the modern PC
> programmer.
...which would appear to be bloatware. I don't doubt that some like to
produce well-optimised and compact code, though...
> Nobody would attempt to create a 600+ MB game like 'Half-Life' or 'Quake
> II' in assembly language,
How much of it is actual code, and how much graphics, sound and other
resources? (I'm not disputing you here, it's just that to me it seems that
they fill up CDs simply because they *can*...)
> or in the barbaric development environments endured by the Spectrum coders
> of fifteen years ago.
Let's just say that it compares well to M$'s offerings ;-)
> My Spectrum was once the centre of my universe, but that was then and this
> is now. I don't know whether to laugh or bang my head against my monitor
> when I see people insisting that simple entertainments such as 'Chuckie
> Egg' are inherently superior to the immersive environments offered by
> state-of-the-art achievements like 'Half-Life'.
Neither, if the "state of the art" achievements have no gameplay...
> This posting was written on a Windows 95 PC,
Defenestrate it immediately. Install Linux. :-)
> which multi-tasks all kinds of neat stuff for me, and has only crashed
> twice in the two years I've been using it.
I wouldn't run Winbloats 95 or later on any machine of mine... I'll stick
with RISC OS (and a PC card for the occasional dip into the dark side) and
possibly a Linux box to go alongside it...
--
| Darren Salt anti-UCE | Spectrum +3, | nr. Ashington,
| ds@youmustbejoking,demon | Risc PC, A3010, | Northumberland
| arcsalt@spuddy,mew,co,uk | BBC Master 128 | Toon Army
| Find a snapshot: <URL:http://drson.vse.cz/snapsearch/>
He is always right who suspects that he makes mistakes.
Chris Young
>> 4. The ease with which high-level languages allow programmers to convert
>> ideas into code.
>
>Don't forget the assembler for those speed-critical bits :-)
Eh? What? Oh, we've got some stickers with the "minimum spec" of the
latest available machine printed on them :-)
qa1
> Palomino wrote in message <75aq3u$jpb$1...@news.indigo.ie>...
> >Ah, so you *have* been living in a cave for the last year.
> >Word up: games as complex as 'Half-Life' are only made possible by the
> >existence of high-level languages like C. Why?
> >
<snip>
> Which is precisely the reason why people are being conned into spending more
> and more on system upgrades ... when if software was written PROPERLY it
> wouldn't
> require the same amount of power.
>
Not strictly true. A well written C core will take up not much more spacethan
the assembler equivalent these days (optimisers are pretty sophisticated).
Writing in C doesn't stop you from writing good code - however some of
the libraries that you end up using are bulky and in some cases a bit of
a compromise. I'd rather use those libraries than have to write games the
way we did in the days of DOS - attempting to second guess the infinite
variations of hardware that the player might be using.
I think some games legitimately push your system to the limit - what I
object to is having to get more RAM/CPU power etc. just to run a word
processor - that is inexcusable.
> No compiler that I am aware of is going to produce the same results as true
> assembler.
Not true these days. When processors have pre-emptive parallel pipelinesthat can
execute up to 72 instructions simultaneously, are you claiming
that you can re-order your assembler to make the best of the processor's
architecture? With branch prediction and a few other bells and whistles
thrown in, an optimiser can beat a human every time. It used to be true
when the worst you had to think about was register optimisation - now
even though optimisers may not spot all the tricks that a human would,
they'll probably make it up by getting the pipelines running at maximum
efficiency.
> No compiler that I am aware of can produce the same results as a seasoned
> assembler coder.
Name any seasoned assembler coder who will tell you he writes more than5% of his
current software in assembler. The last I knew of was Geoff Crammond,
and I think he's stopped doing it.
A.T.
Marian Maier
>Defenestrate it immediately. Install Linux. :-)
Which pops up another point in this pointless discussion. Ever seen
unix-software written in Assembler?
Efficiency and size of the resulting executable are not the only
criteria for choosing a language or development environment.
Ciao, MM
--
Marian Maier, Gamma Soft, Hainstraße 8, 53121 Bonn, Germany
Tel: +49 228 624013 Fax: +49 228 624031
http://www.gammasoft.de/maier
"Was schiefgehen kann geht schief"
Niall Tracey
>
> > Nowadays of course, programmers don't use real languages like assembler...
> > only C deviations :(
>
Couldn't say.
Colin MacRae?
Couldn't say.
Half Life?
No.
Half Life was most probably written in Quake 2 C as that is the official
language written by iD Software for the writing of the entire game Quake
2. The language (derived unsurprisingly from Quake C) has been released to
third-party developers to write 'Total Conversions', add-ons and new games
running on the Wuake 2 engine. Eg. Half-Life.
OK, so they may have written the Half-Life code in some other language,
but they would have found it _very_ difficult to deal with Quake 2's
proprietary object code.....
Niall Tracey
________________
A X o
/</ \>
/ \ /\
___/ /___\ \___
Your thoughts betray you...
Niall Tracey
> Point is: (dons flameproof suit and prepares to make a bold statement)
>
Then it's time to introduce a new email technique to the world - 'ICING'!
(Mmmm... Chocolate Fudeg Cake!)
> I doubt if there are many people who can write assembler as efficient as a
> *decent* optimising compiler can produce, in the same development time.
NovaLogic and their fans would kind-of disagree. NovaLogic (specialists in
military sims.) use pure AL (they may have stopped now because of the fact
that they have to make them compatible with 101 3D cards) they had on
average a single month over C++ programmers for development, which isn't
much these days. F22 Lightning 2 looked really good on an unaccelerated
P150 when it came out, and it ran the same on _all_ Pentia - P60 up.
The power of true coding....
Graham Goring
<starg...@thespian.d.c.u> writes
>I think you've totally missed the point. We play games for their
>playability, not graphics and sound. Half-Life may be the most
>technically superior game in the world, but is it actually a "good"
>game?
Actually, yes. It's the finest 1st person shooter I've ever had the
pleasure of playing. It has depth, it has style. It's incredibly
immersive thanks to the scripted events going on around you and the
human opponents AI is simply stunning, with proper teamwork and them
shouting instructions to each other all the while.
The level design is without fault, and you can even recruit "Barneys"
onto your side (security guards who'll follow you around and offer
assistance by opening doors and shooting enemies, all the while
acting in a very intelligent manor and chatting away as they kill
enemies - I've often had them saving my hide). And the atmosphere is
soooo good that you find yourself craning your neck to see around
corners. Since I got my PC about 14 months ago this is the single
finest game I've played.
In fact, I'd say it's the best game I've played ever (no kidding,
and believe I don't say that kinda' thing lightly) on any platform.
Quite simply it's upped the stakes of games in general, so that
hopefully all that follows it in that genre and others will be
enriched by embracing and enhancing those things that make Half
Life so superb.
Graham Goring
--
/=====================================================================\
| If you'd like to see a game with the depth of gameplay of Elite and |
| Frontier on the PlayStation, then please sign the petition by |
| sending a mail headed "Elite/Frontier Petition", including your |
| FULL name and E-Mail address to: peti...@duketastrophy.demon.co.uk |
\===========Or do you *really* want another Wing Commander?===========/
To reply please clean the VOMIT from my return address...
John Elliott
>Hi,
>
>>Defenestrate it immediately. Install Linux. :-)
>
>Which pops up another point in this pointless discussion. Ever seen
>unix-software written in Assembler?
Yes. The kernel.
But you're broadly right. Unix software written in assembly does exist,
but it doesn't get very far compared to Unix software written in C, simply
because it is CPU-specific.
Doesn't really apply to PC games, though, because they all run on the
x86 (please feel free to correct me if, for example, there's a native
version of Half-Life for the Alpha AXP).
------------- http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/index.html --------------------
John Elliott |BLOODNOK: "But why have you got such a long face?"
|SEAGOON: "Heavy dentures, Sir!" - The Goon Show
:-------------------------------------------------------------------------)
Darren Salt
qa1 <q...@acorn.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I'd rather use those [bulky] libraries than have to write games the way we
> did in the days of DOS [...]
Interesting. Works for Acorn (or whatever Bollard ends up calling it) and
talks about the Dark Side...
> - attempting to second guess the infinite variations of hardware that the
> player might be using.
Hmm...
> I think some games legitimately push your system to the limit - what I
> object to is having to get more RAM/CPU power etc. just to run a word
> processor - that is inexcusable.
Agreed.
[snip rest]
--
| Darren Salt anti-UCE | Spectrum +3, | nr. Ashington,
| ds@youmustbejoking,demon | Risc PC, A3010, | Northumberland
| arcsalt@spuddy,mew,co,uk | BBC Master 128 | Toon Army
| Let's keep the pound sterling
"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
Darren Salt
Ma...@home.ivm.de (Marian Maier) wrote:
>> Defenestrate it immediately. Install Linux. :-)
> Which pops up another point in this pointless discussion.
It's hardly pointless, then, is it... ;-)
> Ever seen unix-software written in Assembler?
Bits of software, yes. The zip 2.2 source, for example, contains a source
file for use in i386 Linux, OS/2 and MS-DOJ, ahem, DOS. A C version is
present, though, and can be used instead.
> Efficiency and size of the resulting executable are not the only criteria
> for choosing a language or development environment.
True...
--
| Darren Salt anti-UCE | Spectrum +3, | nr. Ashington,
| ds@youmustbejoking,demon | Risc PC, A3010, | Northumberland
| arcsalt@spuddy,mew,co,uk | BBC Master 128 | Toon Army
| I don't ask for much, just untold riches...
Save often, disk crash; save at finish, power cut.
ke...@rjfm2.freeserve.co.uk
<starg...@thespian.d.c.u> wrote:
>I think you've totally missed the point. We play games for their
>playability, not graphics and sound. Half-Life may be the most
>technically superior game in the world, but is it actually a "good"
>game?
YES!
Its the only game that has hooked me this year.
Rob.
juice
>
>unix-software written in Assembler?
>
that'd sort of defeat the object of writing it to be platfom independant....
besides, for specific platforms, the programs can and do use assembler (tho
smegged if i can think o any atm: my first thought was uae, but i'm probably
mixing it up with fellow)
bin86 tools aren't there just to look pretty in linux y'know:)
>Efficiency and size of the resulting executable are not the only
>criteria for choosing a language or development environment.
hmm... taking a butchers in a few modern programming books tends to get me the
result
"programming should not be about how fast the code is, or efficient, but about
being easily understandable, reusable and maintainable"
or words to that effect.
The entire world is being geared to writing code thats maintainable and
reusable, while blithely ignoring the fact that 70-90% of their code won't get
reused, and will hopefully do the job required:)
erm... ok, so this is all opinion and randomly generated statistics:)
people do seem to be pointed at writing pretty code tho.
On the other hand, when executable sizes are reaching 4 meg+ (netscape being
4.summat meg now), then thats a lot of assembler to hand-tune. Tho maybe if
they had done it'd only be 2.5 meg:)
erm... obspeccy
how did they manage to fit "the land that time forgot" into just 128k?
:)
juice... off to try and find the solution- that was a cool game;)
>
>Ciao, MM
>
Philip Kendall
<Ma...@home.ivm.de> wrote
>
>Which pops up another point in this pointless discussion. Ever seen
>unix-software written in Assembler?
SpectEmu (hey! This comment's on-topic. What's going on??)
Phil
--
/ Philip Kendall (pa...@cam.ac.uk pa...@kendalls.demon.co.uk) \
| New? Read the FAQ: http://www.kendalls.demon.co.uk/cssfaq/ |
| The Threat to Spectrum Emulation: |
\ http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/threat.html /
Chris Pile
Niall Tracey wrote in message ...
>NovaLogic and their fans would kind-of disagree. NovaLogic (specialists in
>military sims.) use pure AL (they may have stopped now because of the fact
>that they have to make them compatible with 101 3D cards) they had on
>average a single month over C++ programmers for development, which isn't
>much these days. F22 Lightning 2 looked really good on an unaccelerated
>P150 when it came out, and it ran the same on _all_ Pentia - P60 up.
>
>The power of true coding....
Agreed 100% !!!!
Chris Wild
>Half Life was most probably written in Quake 2 C as that is the official
>language written by iD Software for the writing of the entire game Quake
>2. The language (derived unsurprisingly from Quake C) has been released to
>third-party developers to write 'Total Conversions', add-ons and new games
>running on the Wuake 2 engine. Eg. Half-Life.
>OK, so they may have written the Half-Life code in some other language,
>but they would have found it _very_ difficult to deal with Quake 2's
>proprietary object code.....
>
Quake 2 doesn't use the Id C compiler used in Quake 1. Just standard C
and DLL's - I seem to recall.
qa1
Darren Salt wrote:
> In message <367A3B78...@acorn.com>
> qa1 <q...@acorn.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > I'd rather use those [bulky] libraries than have to write games the way we
> > did in the days of DOS [...]
>
> Interesting. Works for Acorn (or whatever Bollard ends up calling it) and
> talks about the Dark Side...
A man of many talents perhaps? Or with a dark and sinister history?
Actually, I have worked for more than just the one company. :-)
A.T.
Simon Cooke
news:36790421...@news.ukonline.co.uk...
>"Palomino" <killspam...@hotmail.com> wrote this:
>
>>This posting was written on a Windows 95 PC, which multi-tasks all kinds
of
>>neat stuff for me, and has only crashed twice in the two years I've been
>>using it.
>
>*ever* communicate with the modem at the highest possible speed. Even
>though the QNX demo managed it with no problems.
>
>Utter crap. Try a decent OS, and _then_ see if you can still convince
>yourself that "Windows is Good".
Woah there Chris - he said that his machine has only crashed twice in the
last 2 years - you have a different experience to him. He's already
convinced Windows is Good, because for him it is.
BTW: What kind of modem is it? Did you check the MS Knowledge Base about it
to see if there were any issues? What kind of PC is it? It shouldn't crash
twice daily - what software are you running?
Si
--
Simon Cooke
(The views of this poster are his and his alone, and may or may not reflect
the views of the Microsoft Corporation).
Chris Young
> >>This posting was written on a Windows 95 PC, which multi-tasks all kinds
> of
> >>neat stuff for me, and has only crashed twice in the two years I've been
> >>using it.
> >
> >The one I'm using has crashed twice TODAY, and Windoze has failed to
> >*ever* communicate with the modem at the highest possible speed. Even
> >though the QNX demo managed it with no problems.
> >
> >Utter crap. Try a decent OS, and _then_ see if you can still convince
> >yourself that "Windows is Good".
>
> Woah there Chris - he said that his machine has only crashed twice in the
> last 2 years - you have a different experience to him. He's already
> convinced Windows is Good, because for him it is.
Oops. Should be more careful with what I type, now there's an MS
employee on here :-)
I'm still baffled at how his machine has crashed so little? Hasn't he
ever switched it on? :-)
> BTW: What kind of modem is it?
Er... a cheap one. Diamond-something-or-other K56Flex ("V.90
upgradeable", except on further investigation it appeared to already
be upgraded!)
> Did you check the MS Knowledge Base about it
> to see if there were any issues?
No. I assumed it would work, since it's a (supposedly) "plug'n'play"
one. Actually, I didn't realise MS had a knowledge base for modems.
However, the problem with the modem is probably just poor-quality
phone lines: it connects at 48000bps, 33600bps and even 14400bps, but
never 57600bps (and, yes, the ISP does support V.90 and k56). It's
also not connecting at a faster speed at the serial port than the
connection, but since finding the manual for my modem at home I've
decided this is a modem configuration problem which should be "easily"
sorted.
> What kind of PC is it?
EPIC P-II @ 300MHz with 64Mb RAM, running Win95 OSR2 (or whatever the
latest one is), but without that horrid "active desktop" thing.
> It shouldn't crash
> twice daily - what software are you running?
Usually it's actually Netscape (Communicator 4.5, fact fans) which
goes wrong (the links stop working for no apparent reason, or the old
"illegal operation" error appears). Other than that, I have problems
with "Explorer32" causing illegal operation errors when attempting to
shut down.
Even the other people in the office (who don't even know there are
other OSses available) are starting to realise that Windows is...
er... (very buggy - Ed)
Chris
--
+-------------------------------------------+
| Your Sinclair: A Celebration |
| http://www.bigfoot.com/~ysac |
| Unsatisfactory Software - "because it is" |
| http://www.unsatisfactory.freeserve.co.uk |
+-------------------------------------------+
lo...@my.sig
: I'm still baffled at how his machine has crashed so little? Hasn't he
: ever switched it on? :-)
Maybe he just used it as a fish-tank and didn't actually activate any
programs on it (apart from the fish-tank screensaver)....
:> BTW: What kind of modem is it?
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|u5...@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk| Windows95 (noun): 32 bit extensions and a |
| | graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit |
| Andrew Halliwell | operating system originally coded for a 4 bit |
| Finalist in:- |microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that|
| Computer Science | can't stand 1 bit of competition. |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|GCv3.1 GCS/EL>$ d---(dpu) s+/- a- C++ U N++ o+ K- w-- M+/++ PS+++ PE- Y t+ |
|5++ X+/++ R+ tv+ b+ D G e>PhD h/h+ !r! !y-|I can't say F**K either now! :( |
John Garner
<368979D9.MD-0.25...@bigfoot.com>...
>On Fri, 25 Dec 1998 18:28:43 -0800, Simon Cooke wibbled on for an age:
>However, the problem with the modem is probably just poor-quality
>phone lines: it connects at 48000bps, 33600bps and even 14400bps, but
>never 57600bps (and, yes, the ISP does support V.90 and k56). It's
>also not connecting at a faster speed at the serial port than the
>connection, but since finding the manual for my modem at home I've
>decided this is a modem configuration problem which should be "easily"
>sorted.
Er.... You would be somewhat pushed to get 57600bps actual data transfer
speed out of the modem, considering it's only a 56000kbps standard... With
compression on you can get about twice that with nicely compressible data
(like newsgroups when you first download the list of them). Probably even
more if it would let the serial line go faster than 115200.
>
>> What kind of PC is it?
>
>EPIC P-II @ 300MHz with 64Mb RAM, running Win95 OSR2 (or whatever the
>latest one is), but without that horrid "active desktop" thing.
Oooh, yeah.. Yuck. Best thing I know for screwing up your screen and apps,
that active desktop thing. Especially when switching to/from DirectX modes.
>> It shouldn't crash
>> twice daily - what software are you running?
Anything by Microsoft (apart from the OS)??? ;-)
>Usually it's actually Netscape (Communicator 4.5, fact fans) which
>goes wrong (the links stop working for no apparent reason, or the old
>"illegal operation" error appears). Other than that, I have problems
>with "Explorer32" causing illegal operation errors when attempting to
>shut down.
It's unfortunate that both IE and Netscape are a bit buggy, the best way to
crash them is open lots of windows at once like I do when I'm searching
(open in new window and carry on looking at the returned list of sites).
>Even the other people in the office (who don't even know there are
>other OSses available) are starting to realise that Windows is...
>er... (very buggy - Ed)
How long did it take them?....
John G. / Breezer
--
|>Speccy U/Groups,PD,Techy,Sounds=http://www.breezer.demon.co.uk/ (spec/)
|-->Computer Science Graduate, Speccy Webring master, C/C++/Z80/VB coder.
|------->Intel P166MMX, Quake/Q2, Spectrum & MB02 - all I need ;-)
|- ICQ: 18816609. "Pray we never meet, Mr. Destiny
John Garner
<368979D9.MD-0.25...@bigfoot.com>...
>On Fri, 25 Dec 1998 18:28:43 -0800, Simon Cooke wibbled on for an age:
[...]
>However, the problem with the modem is probably just poor-quality
>phone lines: it connects at 48000bps, 33600bps and even 14400bps, but
>never 57600bps (and, yes, the ISP does support V.90 and k56). It's
>also not connecting at a faster speed at the serial port than the
>connection, but since finding the manual for my modem at home I've
>decided this is a modem configuration problem which should be "easily"
>sorted.
Er.... You would be somewhat pushed to get 57600bps actual data transfer
speed out of the modem, considering it's only 56000kbps standard... With
compression on you can get about twice what with nicely compressible data
(like newsgroups when you first download the list of them),