68k POTY Voting Opens
Posted by Michael on 16 December 2006, 19:21 GMT
Voting for the 2006 68k POTY is now open. Go vote for your favorite 68k program!
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The comments below are written by ticalc.org visitors. Their views are not necessarily those of ticalc.org, and ticalc.org takes no responsibility for their content.
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Re: 68k POTY Voting Opens
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Brian Clymer
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Just saying, F-Zero all the way people! For those of you that have played it on the Gameboy advanced, you know it's amazing and the replication is great!
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16 December 2006, 19:58 GMT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: 68k POTY Voting Opens
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Kevin Kofler
(Web Page)
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<< F-Zero is designed with speed in mind, that's why he had to use his tile format and that's why it's memory hungry. >>
He could have used a more compact format, but he wasn't willing to due to his speed optimization obsession.
<< You criticize the program's structure, but when he asked you if there were other ways to avoid wasting cpu power with a waiting loop and still have a constant game speed, you gave no solutions. I am led to conclude that having a big interrupt handler is the only way to do what he does. >>
He could have both achieved synchronization in a clean way and saved a lot of battery power by simply putting the calculator into low-power mode until an interrupt happens (which can be detected with a simple flag or counter, i.e. minimal code within the interrupt handler). (And I told him that multiple times.) But instead, he designed for speed at all costs, not caring about not eating all the memory nor about not consuming batteries needlessly.
And again, this structure is also why he couldn't get USB linking to work, so it's not just a theoretical problem.
As for the crappy way to input letters, there is no excuse and in fact you gave none.
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17 December 2006, 17:52 GMT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 68k POTY Voting Opens
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Lionel Anton
(Web Page)
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>>As usual, you are bashing this program because it goes against your size optimization obsession.
>>F-Zero is designed with speed in mind, that's why he had to use his tile format and that's why it's memory hungry.
that is exactly true :)
>>You criticize the program's structure, but when he asked you if there were other ways to avoid wasting cpu power with a waiting loop and still have a constant game speed, you gave no solutions. I am led to conclude that having a big interrupt handler is the only way to do what he does.
I did have the same conclusion ;)
>>Also, F-Zero is not only a big technical achievement, it's also on of the most complete game there is for the 68k.
Thank you very much JF
>>He could have used a more compact format, but he wasn't willing to due to his speed optimization obsession.
It is not an obsession, it was necessary (Hey, it's F-zero, not backgammon ! It is a game that requires speed)
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18 December 2006, 09:59 GMT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 68k POTY Voting Opens
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Lionel Anton
(Web Page)
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>>He could have both achieved synchronization in a clean way and saved a lot of battery power by simply putting the calculator into low-power mode until an interrupt happens (which can be detected with a simple flag or counter, i.e. minimal code within the interrupt handler). (And I told him that multiple times.) But instead, he designed for speed at all costs, not caring about not eating all the memory nor about not consuming batteries needlessly.
>>PS: The reason his code structure is wasting batteries for nothing is simple: it's pointless to compute more frames than you're ever going to display or the other way round.
There is absolutely no CPU time wasting, all the mode7 frames are displayed and there is no time for idling. The only thing which is calculated and not displayed is the race environment and this is for having a fast response to the command input, I couldn't sacrifice the gameplay. Furthermore the interrupt handlers are used to get the same game speed on all calculators (10Mhz, 12MHz and even HW4 16MHz's) the only difference you can notice on these different calcs is the amount of fps.
>>And again, this structure is also why he couldn't get USB linking to work, so it's not just a theoretical problem.
Are you sure that it is true? when I started to think about the USB linking there was not enough info on it and even you didn't know if it wasn't able to work my way.. I sort of gave up the USB problem to concentrate on the game itself.
>>As for the crappy way to input letters, there is no excuse and in fact you gave none.
see above for the excuse :p
>>Yes, the input method is indeed bad.
^^
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18 December 2006, 10:00 GMT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 68k POTY Voting Opens
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CajunLuke
(Web Page)
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>> My point was that nothing gives you the right to put down other's work the way you do.
Maybe not in general, but when it comes to programming in general and specifically heavy optimization, I'd say Kevin has every right. He's one of the best programmers I know of ... especially on the 68k series calcs.
He also has very specific ideas and beliefs (the Free Software/Open Source movement, etc.), and everything he says and does comes from that. Nobody is any different in that respect - I am a Mac user (and an Applescript programmer), so if I were telling people how to write programs, I would emphasize a Mac version, Applescriptablilty, and Recordabilty. It's what's important to me. You have other ideas, beliefs, and agendas. They're what are important to you and they're where you come from.
I don't really find his comments to be unreasonable. They represent how he would have programmed the program, had he been the programmer. In that note, go read Wil Shipley's blog (linked). He is one of the longest-programming-Cocoa Mac OS X programmers. Sometimes, people will send him code for him to tear apart and criticize. Go read the linked page, then say that Kevin was harsh. The biggest difference is that Kevin's advice was unsolicited (though I'd say that if you release the source, you're soliciting code criticism).
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20 December 2006, 22:33 GMT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 68k POTY Voting Opens
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Kevin Kofler
(Web Page)
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A lot of Wil's comments are very subjective, by the way.
In particular, don't EVER put an underscore as the first character of ANY identifier you write in a TIGCC program, these identifiers are reserved for use in TIGCCLIB. (Yes, the C standard allows some uses of identifiers starting with a single underscore followed by a lowercase letter (they're only reserved for file-scope or global identifiers), but if you don't know what you're doing, better leave your hands off identifiers starting with an underscore altogether. Also, despite what the C standard says, TIGCCLIB uses some of these identifiers for internal macros too, so being pedantic won't help you in the real world.)
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23 December 2006, 17:02 GMT
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