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From: jnmoyne@lbl.gov (Jean-Noel MOYNE)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Assembler Programming - Costs versus Benefits
Message-ID: <8289@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 28 Nov 90 21:22:07 GMT
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Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
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X-Local-Date: Wed, 28 Nov 90 13:22:07 PST
References:<1990Nov25.040121.10773@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <1990Nov25.233007.19698@cs.umu.se> <7139@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1990Nov28.105607.26577@cs.utwente.nl>

In article <1990Nov28.105607.26577@cs.utwente.nl> dolfing@cs.utwente.nl 
(Hans Dolfing) writes:
> reasons. If it is unavoidable to use assembler for speed or other 
reasons, than
> write parts of your code in assembler. Otherwise, !please! don't. Nobody 
is
> interested in unreadable assembler programs that are 5% faster than a
> (hopefully better readable) C equivalent.

     Well, it really depends on the way you program in asm ! If your asm 
programs are only 5% faster than your C ones, then forget about asm. But 
if you need speed (the main reason you write part of your code in asm 
usually), and if you know about good asm programming then you can use asm 
and it will be more than 5% faster than C.

      And you can write very clear sources in asm. Presentation and 
comments will do it. I really believe that if you want to write a nice 
arcade game on the Amiga, then you have to use asm, at least for a part of 
your game (usually everything linked to the display). I would even say 
that if you want to use all the resources of the machine, then you have to 
bypass the OS and do some 'dirty' programming (by dirty, I mean accessing 
the hardware directly using _custombase).

     I would also say that you don't need to write all your code in asm. 
But you can write C/asm sources which are very readable, maintanable, and 
bug free (even if it's harder to debug asm). As for portability ... well I 
don't believe to much in portability for games (I'm speaking graphic 
intensive games). Since the Amiga is the best machine for these games, you 
should use the blitter and the copper as much as you can ... and if you're 
using them to the limit, your code won't be portable. If you want to see 
portable code, just take a look at all these games comming from the Atari 
ST, or the one made to be sold on the ST, the clones and the Amiga. They 
all look alike, and none of them takes advantage of the Amiga 
possibilities. Of course, I know that a lot of software companies want to 
be able to sell more games by having it ported to other machines ... 

    JNM

--
These are my own ideas (not LBL's)
" Just make it!", BO in 'BO knows Unix'