Re: c/c++: a new adventure

["Tim Elder" <TIM@tekotago.ac.nz>]

Here's an idea. Let's go back to side scrolling games in 320x200 with 16 colours. Sure, they might not look as nice, they might not be as in depth, you'd have to write all the drivers for all the hardware that you want it to run on. But hey, at least you would have built the whole thing yourself from scratch! AND you would have done it the hard way, that's always best isn't it?

But seriously folks, not having to worry about writting 10h, function 0h from scratch is fantastic. It gives us a chance to program the game, not the low level functions. Sure, microprocessor programmming is an artform in itself, and a very respectable one (I've done a little myself) but when it comes to enjoyable and playable games with development times under 2-3 years then modularity (ie DirectX or OOP) gets quite valuable.

I wouldn't want to play with BIOS routines whether I was programming in DOS or Windows, OS/2, MacOS or even Solaris. Quite frankly, I'd rather leave all that low level coding to the people who really know about it and concentrate on the workings of the game instead.

So that's my point of view, and as Ben K said, many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view...

May the Force be with you.

Tim
Open Access Suite Supervisor

Phone: 8396 (internal) 479-3757 (direct)
Email: tim@tekotago.ac.nz


>>> lionelp@worldonline.co.za 3/01/80 00:49:48 >>>
Besides, what can Windows do that Dos/Linux can't? It might be harder, but
that's our job :-). Think of the guys who programmed the IBM BIOS, or SCP's
QDOS, they did everything on their own, the guys on the BIOS didn't even
have interrupt calls to help them (they had to write them first :-) ). They
couldn't just call Int 10h, function 0h, to set the video mode, no way!
They had to program the <what was the name of that graphics controller chip
again? 6425 or something> registers directly (back then CGA was a luxury).
Try tracing through some BIOS interrupts and you'll see what I mean.
Anyways, if you tried anything like that under Windows, you would most
likely get a fatal exception or something, but with Dos, no problem


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