Re: A83: Platforms

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Re: A83: Platforms


On 06-Apr-99, you wrote:


> Hey!

> And: No more Zasmload.

> I am thinking of dropping all support for Zasmload, as SoS is, well,
> much better. (and sinlge-platform-development is more sensible)

> Does anyone have any complaints?

> The only advantages i can think off in favour of Zasmlaod is it can
> be used by both Ashell and SoS users (and non-shell users). But who 
> uses Ashell? And who dossent use SoS?

> And it allows for 'complete' games in one group file....As you cant 
> really distribute SoS as it keeps on changing. (always getting better;)

> I thought maybe Joe W could address this. A very-lite SoS with 
> zero interface for running asm-programs with the name in ANS.
> (like Zasmload...but with write back. And, although i dont use it,
> extra libary support) A 'this will never change' version so it can
> be included with the program.

> Anyway, are there Ashell users or Zasmload-non-shell-people 
> who want to complian?

> Thanks for any help here, 

> Bill J Ellis
> ----------------------
> Bill James Ellis

> B.J.Ellis@hw.ac.uk
> http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~ceebje/

Yes, I'd like to put my $0.02 into this discussion. I don't use sos, and I
never will. Sos contains bugs, you can't allocate memory from it, you can't
mess around with the system as much as you would normally like, and it's just
one shell among others (even though it is generally considered the best one).

Zasmload has no bugs. It may be a bit unoptimized, but it does the job. My
next game will take up nearly all the memory of the calculator, so I'm using
a custom send(9:able loader. Instead of zasmload, and instead of sos.

Pat is a better coder than Joe.

I may not be that, but if there are bugs in my loader, then the bugs affect
MY game, MY reputation and nothing more. I don't want to suffer from someone
else's bugs, and I don't want to force my bugs onto other people.

Library support, and definitely the way it is being implemented in sos,
provides little or no advantage over writing your own, custom, small routines
optimized for nothing but the actual tasks you need them for. The sprite
routines may be a good example to beginners, an easy way of not having to
write a new unlerlying basic graphics system just to try something out, _but_
I don't recommend their usage in full-version, released games. That's what's
taking up your precious memory.

That and sos. Program swapping is good, but it can be done in a system
friendly way. Sos doesn't do that. And as it goes, I can't seem to write one
single, efficient, big production without using dynamic memory allocation.
Although this would be fully possible and straight-forward to implement, sos
doesn't allow dynamic memory allocation.
And therefore, sos is not my friend.

phew

Linus
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| Linus Akesson                                | http://linusworld.cjb.net |
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