Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!haven!wam!dmb
From: dmb@wam.umd.edu (David M. Baggett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Demos and Games are not the Same
Keywords: demo, graphics, german, games, programming
Message-ID: <1990Jun27.201016.27871@wam.umd.edu>
Date: 27 Jun 90 20:10:16 GMT
References: <1644@mwca.UUCP> <1990Jun26.133606.4586@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <187@hexagon.pkmab.se>
Sender: usenet@wam.umd.edu (USENET Posting)
Reply-To: dmb%wam.umd.edu@uunet.uu.net (David M. Baggett)
Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Lines: 34

In article <187@hexagon.pkmab.se> daniel@hexagon.pkmab.se (Daniel Deimert) writes:
>In article <1990Jun26.133606.4586@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Christopher M Mauritz) writes:
>] ... ]
>>spectacular.  Those guys should program professionally.  The demo is
>>better than many commercial products I have seen.
>
>But I can tell you -- it's a long way between writing a good "demo" and
>writing a good game.  You have probably never heard of their games,
>though they are technically spoken excellent.  It's more to a good game
>than that.  

It's also important to keep in mind that a demo can essentially devote
all of the machine's time and memory to its one task, while a game
requires memory and time for "mundane" tasks like keeping track of
player stats, collision checking, etc.

For example, a clever demo might employ 12 screens to accomplish
extremely smooth scrolling, but the same technique would likely be
unworkable in a game since it would require devoting 384K just to
screen RAM.

A similar case is Spectrum 512.  Sure, a demo can have static screen
images with more colors than normal, but writing a game using the
Spectrum "screen mode" would be ludicrously difficult.  (Now that I've
said that, who wants to go out and try?)

>             (Don't you like NetHack? I do, though it has quite poor
>graphics...  ;-)

Yes, NetHack is truly a great game.  I've probably spent more hours
playing NetHack than any other ST game.  (The latest port is great!)

Dave Baggett
dmb%wam.umd.edu@uunet.uu.net