Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!well!farren
From: farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: More assembly questions
Keywords: Abacus Book
Message-ID: <18345@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 5 Jun 90 04:56:38 GMT
References: <1990May17.072036.11335@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <23257@uflorida.cis.uf <265377fd-662.2comp.sys.amiga.tech-1@tronsbox.UUCP> <9074@rouge.usl.edu> <11891@cbmvax.commodore.com> <17861@ultima.cs.uts.oz>
Lines: 38

vilkas@ultima.cs.uts.oz (Iron Wolf) writes:
>If for instance, you were working on a commercial game, you would want the 
>fastest routines and such with which to work. In this case...out goes the OS,
>program the hardware! (not a good practice for application programming) 

Wrong!  In stays the OS, program the hardware.  It isn't hard - why do
you people have such a hard time comprehending this?  YOU CAN PROGRAM
THE HARDWARE IN AN OS-FRIENDLY WAY.  Really.

You don't need to kill the OS.  You don't need to kill the multitasking
(usually).  You don't need to take over anything, and you damned well don't
need to write directly to hardware locations which probably will not
exist five years from now, or will do different things.

Besides, I've seen a lot of games programmers who claimed to need
"every cycle the machine has to offer", and every one who made such a
claim was simply a less-than-competent programmer, disguising his own
inability to be truly creative by blaming it on the OS.  I haven't seen
one single game for the Amiga yet which I could not replicate, given
time, in an OS-friendly way.  Not one.  And almost every time I've
actually had the chance to see some of the "lightning fast" code that
people have actually produced, there have been eleventy-seven different
ways of improving their speed by a factor of four or more, simply by
analyzing the code and eliminating deadwood.  And I've been doing this
professionally (games, that is) since 1978, so I suggest that perhaps I
know what I'm talking about :-)

For me, I'll take the word (the work, actually) of someone like Mark
Riley, who managed to cram all of Sonix into less than 75K, complete
with OS interface and all, over the word of some whizbang kid
programmer who has been using assembler for a whole year now :-)  You
say you can't do it?  I say you don't even have a clue as to whether
you can or you can't.  Further, I say you can damn well do it - if
you think you can't, work a little harder at it, learn a little more.
You'll be amazed at what you'll be able to do that you never thought
you could.
-- 
Mike Farren 				     farren@well.sf.ca.us