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From: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Demos and Games are not the Same
Keywords: demo, graphics, german, games, programming
Message-ID: <4954@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Date: 16 Jul 90 08:24:13 GMT
References: <1990Jun26.133606.4586@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <187@hexagon.pkmab.se> <1990Jun27.201016.27871@wam.umd.edu> <190@hexagon.pkmab.se>
Reply-To: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth)
Organization: Computer Science, Heriot-Watt U., Scotland
Lines: 46

In article <190@hexagon.pkmab.se> daniel@hexagon.pkmab.se (Daniel Deimert) writes:
>In article <1990Jun27.201016.27871@wam.umd.edu> dmb%wam.umd.edu@uunet.uu.net (David M. Baggett) writes:
>>
>>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.
>
>Some techniques used in demos are very usuable when programming games,
>though.  For example -- imagine all ST games were using overscan and
>4-channel sampled sound.  This is not impossible, though the music does
>consume some cpu-time (around 12%, depending on it's maximum sample
>rate).

This overscan technique is crud. It depends heavily on undocumented side
effects in the GLUE chip and thus will not work on all ST's and definately
not on an STE. We have had all sorts of problems with programs abusing
undocumented memory locations so please don't start hardware weirdness too.

>And games which have good graphics (ie large, eye-catching sprites) are
>easier to sell in a store.  Kids tends to pick a colorful game rather
>than the dull and gloomy equivalent.

Any dopey kid who buys the crap because it's in a glossy box and has pretty
pictures deserves to get ripped off. Any game player will tell you it's
playability that matters. Nethack being a fine example.

At the moment the games scene is very sick. It's poor quality and big profits
all the way and I wish it would change.

>Daniel Deimert			   "Only use unneccessary force if neccessary!"
>daniel@hexagon.pkmab.se			 ...!sunic!kullmar!pkmab!hexagon!daniel

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! Neil Forsyth                       JANET:  neil@uk.ac.hw.cs                !
! Dept. of Computer Science          ARPA:   neil@cs.hw.ac.uk                !
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! Edinburgh, Scotland, UK                                                    !
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