At 06:13 PM 30/06/2002 +0200, you wrote: >Maarten ter Huurne wrote: >>1. Only optimise if you need more performance. There is no point in >>spending effort to decrease CPU usage if your game already runs at full >>frame rate. Or to take 10ms off a loading routine. > >There is a point to it. Doing everything as fast as possible greatly >improves battery life of handheld devices. > >Ofcourse you are right with all your points when speaking about PC. > I really think it goes for MSX as well. BASIC+ASM/Pascal+ASM/C+ASM can be quite powerfull and much easier to debug than 100% ASM. It's much easier to program too -- and with so few people programming nowadays for MSX, I really think everyone is welcome to program anything, any way they think it's the best.
>>Development in assembly will take longer than in a higher level language. >>If it's not necessary to write a certain part of a program in assembly, >>why would you spend your time doing so when you could be doing something >>more useful or more fun? > >Sure... But look at the problems Richard is having with integrating the >moonblaster player in his TP project. Hybrid development is not as easy on >MSX as it is on PC! It is as long as you do all the coding, or people code for you. When you try to use other's work which wasnt ment to do this thing start to get complicated. I Know -- My breakfree game is almost finished, but still lacks music; but it's done in Pascal and with help of Lamassari libs, and it's coming along very nicely. >There's almost nothing in higher languages that can't be solved in assembly >with some clever macro's and ready-made routines. Unless you're talking >about object oriented stuff, but we're strictly talking MSX here. > Yeah, but that's to people who knows assembly. I know a little bit, but as they were saying "I don't know enough to write a game". I'm learning - and may some day even write some game in 100% ASM, but not right now. Should this stop me from making anything for MSX? If I stop to learn how to do everything in ASM, I'll probably loose interest when I finally get to understand everything. Meanwhile, I am doing what I can with what I have. >> > IMO, with the state of Z80 cross compilers and/or native MSX compilers and >> > given the power of the 3.58MHz Z80, it's hardly practical to program in >> > anything higher than assembly for serious projects. >> >>Much of Uzix is written in C and I would certainly call that a serious >>project. > >Heh... That's an OS, something completely different. Try programming a game >like Nemesis in BASIC or Pascal... Or even C! On MSX, it's not doable. > Why is that different? An OS need to be as fast as possible... but as Adriano once said, UZIX wouldnt be like hell to program. > >Which is what I was saying too... The games you mention are all relatively >simple. A good shooting game or platform game just can't be done in a >higher language on MSX. And even programming simple games in assembly >allows you to polish them more! > Hmmm... I don't know... Nemesis 1 is very simple (ok, just counting the scroll, and the ships shooting each other, not using loads of different weapons) - if you use MSX2+ scrolling features, I quite don't see how a game like this can't be made in C or even in Pascal. >Greetz, > Patriek > >-- >For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html BTW: This discussion is getting interesting... I didn't know there was any other way to include ASM in pascal beside using "inline" -- how exactly the use of .rel files work?? []'s SLotman MSX Files ( http://www.msxfiles.cjb.net ) Megaram Project ( http://megaram.msxfiles.cjb.net ) -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
