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jotd · 17 June 2021, 23:17

Besides learning the basics (which is A LOT) what I find difficult is making something work, then realizing that it's too darn slow because of overestimated blitter performance, poor CPU performance (for 3D games), lack of planning when designing your tasks

IMHO, if you don't use parallelism (blitter + cpu when the blitter is working) your 2D game will crawl. If you don't use the blitter, the game will be slow too (some games don't use the blitter at all, like Wicked, and a lot of ST ports. Not great)

Also using a high level language can introduce a lot of overhead because of old compilers that generate poor 68k code. Select your compiler carefully, or use assembly.... Best one around seems to be Bartman's VS Code gcc 10 plugin.

For sound, you can do a lot of things with off-the-shelf components. Like phx ptreplay. And forget about it. It's great.

Some engines developped recently look very good. Ex: Scorpion engine. I don't know about the overhead, but it looks good. Of course, people who know asm / C / C++ have another language to learn... Or AMOS....

17 June 2021, 23:17	#61
jotd This cat is no more Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: FRANCE Age: 52 Posts: 8,161	Besides learning the basics (which is A LOT) what I find difficult is making something work, then realizing that it's too darn slow because of overestimated blitter performance, poor CPU performance (for 3D games), lack of planning when designing your tasks IMHO, if you don't use parallelism (blitter + cpu when the blitter is working) your 2D game will crawl. If you don't use the blitter, the game will be slow too (some games don't use the blitter at all, like Wicked, and a lot of ST ports. Not great) Also using a high level language can introduce a lot of overhead because of old compilers that generate poor 68k code. Select your compiler carefully, or use assembly.... Best one around seems to be Bartman's VS Code gcc 10 plugin. For sound, you can do a lot of things with off-the-shelf components. Like phx ptreplay. And forget about it. It's great. Some engines developped recently look very good. Ex: Scorpion engine. I don't know about the overhead, but it looks good. Of course, people who know asm / C / C++ have another language to learn... Or AMOS....