Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Piggyback CPU boards
Message-ID: <476@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 25 Dec 87 19:04:23 GMT
References: <2118@crash.cts.com> <486@.UUCP>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: Sci-Fido - Unix in Oakland
Lines: 27

In article <486@.UUCP> alex@.UUCP (Alex Laney) writes:
>Most games are written in assembler, (should be:-)

This is rather an outmoded statement.  While many games, especially
those written for the 6502 processors, were written in assembler,
this was mostly a response to the fact that higher-level languages
on 8-bit processors generally require such a performance hit that 
they just weren't suitable, especially for typical arcade games,
with their requirements for fast graphics.

Even there, though, the rule was not hard and fast.  In my five
years doing games, I wrote games in BASIC, both interpreted and
compiled, games in C, and games in assembler, depending on which
was required to do the job.  When you have a computer with the
processing power of the Amiga, especially when the graphics power
the co-processors give you is considered, the necessity for programming
in assembler becomes much smaller.  This isn't to say that assembler
has no place - any time you want to squeeze the last possible ounce
of performance in the minimum amount of memory, assembler is the way
to go - but it does mean that assembler is quite often a choice among
several choices, rather than the only way to go.

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.arpa |     Tom Reingold, from alt.flame