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jotd · 07 June 2020, 23:47

okay, other main problem of C/C++ is executable size. Asm guarantees the shortest exe. But nowadays it's not really a big deal.

What must be done (and I didn't do) is to use interleaved bitplanes to do blits of all planes in one go. That way, if you wait BEFORE the next blit, then the rest of the code just runs in parallel while the blitter is working.

Also using sprites saves a lot of CPU/blit, but it's not as easy as the blitter. I suppose old games written in asm were done that way because of the size, and also the coder that knew asm better than C. As alpine9000 said, the blitter waits dwarf the CPU anyway. But old arcade games could squeeze amiga power by using super-optimized asm/blitter at the same time.

I read that programmers of Shadow Of the Beast III tried to save every cycle to get a smooth game on 68000. That's not something you can do in C (or AMOS!!), even if nowadays compilers are smarter than old SAS-C.

Anyway using C or C++ for your game is much better for your sanity (McGeezer can confirm that)

07 June 2020, 23:47	#12
jotd This cat is no more Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: FRANCE Age: 52 Posts: 8,318	okay, other main problem of C/C++ is executable size. Asm guarantees the shortest exe. But nowadays it's not really a big deal. What must be done (and I didn't do) is to use interleaved bitplanes to do blits of all planes in one go. That way, if you wait BEFORE the next blit, then the rest of the code just runs in parallel while the blitter is working. Also using sprites saves a lot of CPU/blit, but it's not as easy as the blitter. I suppose old games written in asm were done that way because of the size, and also the coder that knew asm better than C. As alpine9000 said, the blitter waits dwarf the CPU anyway. But old arcade games could squeeze amiga power by using super-optimized asm/blitter at the same time. I read that programmers of Shadow Of the Beast III tried to save every cycle to get a smooth game on 68000. That's not something you can do in C (or AMOS!!), even if nowadays compilers are smarter than old SAS-C. Anyway using C or C++ for your game is much better for your sanity (McGeezer can confirm that) Last edited by jotd; 07 June 2020 at 23:52.