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From: buffa@flottante.inria.fr (Michel Buffa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Hardware Idiots ?
Message-ID: <11422@mirsa.inria.fr>
Date: 23 May 91 12:43:21 GMT
References: <1991May22.193016.12202@lynx.CS.ORST.EDU>
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In article <1991May22.193016.12202@lynx.CS.ORST.EDU>, rudolpe@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Eric Hans Rudolph) writes:
> I am programming the game BattleZone for the Amiga. I have the whole thing
> written in Lattice C and it is slow, even optimized. With 5 or so tanks on
> the screen and n missiles, and full 20 object rotations, it gets bogged 
> down. Now if I go in and mess around with hardware registers and blitter stuff,
> I will be pretty much machine dependant on some things. I hear tell that the
> people who do this are idiots. I don't really see a way around it. For teh
> conversion, I am using system calls like AllocMem and AllocRaster, but as
> for the blitter line drawing routines, it's all machine register "poking"
> Can someone clarify me on what people hate about hardware register software
> hacking? I don't think I can get the speed...
> 
> 
> rudolpe@jacobs.cs.orst.edu

Well, all the great games that uses 3D filled vectors are written 100% in
machine language and use directly the hardware of the machine. Starglider 2,
Carrier Command are 100% machine language. Stellar7 by Dynamix is not 100%
machine language, and has been ported from the IBM PC. It is HD installable,
but is so slooooooooooow !!! The game screen is very small. I much prefer a
game like Starglider 2, Simulcra, Carrier Command, Battle command that do not
recognize all computer configurations, are not HD installable, but give me a
lot of fun. Use the hardware at its best on your machine, then try to make it
work on the other Amiga: 3000, 500, but please don't think about a game that
could be easily ported on a PC for example. It will be slow... throw Lattice
away and try a good assembler/debugger.
-- 
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Michel Buffa:       Projet Robotvis, INRIA, France

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