Picking up an old subject
Jan. 2nd, 2006 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsFor some reason, I got it into my head over the holiday to write a video game. I haven't written a video game in nearly 20 years. But the idea was just a toy idea and it seemed harmless enough. As a toy problem, I decided to try my hand at cloning the 1980 game Ripoff, which also appeared in the Journal Entry Flying Tylia. How hard can it be? It has three dynamic classes in a containerized space: you, the bad guy tanks, and the cargo canisters they're trying to steal. Imagine my pleasure when I found an essay from the original author of the game, who described the flocking behavior of the enemy tanks and how the game's cooperative play mode evolved in great detail.
As it turns out, it's a lot harder than I thought. In 1986, everyone for whom I was writing (the Amiga audience) had exactly the same CPU: a 68020. Just getting enough performance out of the clock, even with the Agnus video card adapters, was hard stuff. Nowadays, you have to worry about the clock being too fast and the refresh rate is an independent feature. Sound is a lot more complicated under Linux than it was under the Amiga.
The most annoying thing, however, was every single book assumed that you were developing on and for Windows. One went so far as to say that you "could not expect to have a future" as a game developer if you did not understand DirectX. (Yes, I know there's a Game Development for Linux book out there; Barnes & Noble didn't have it in stock.)
Another, lesser annoyance was that every game book felt like a disorganized mess. One had a long and wonderful section on basic geometry-- with absolutely no examples or explanation as to why you would want to know that stuff. Another had a long section that proposed to teach you C++; if I wanted that, I would have bought a C++ book. Others sought to teach you business expertise at one end and artificial intelligence at the other.
Still, everything I've seen says it can be done. Hell, it was done in 1979 with a couple of IC chips Tim Skelly wired together. Just... nobody's done it since.
As it turns out, it's a lot harder than I thought. In 1986, everyone for whom I was writing (the Amiga audience) had exactly the same CPU: a 68020. Just getting enough performance out of the clock, even with the Agnus video card adapters, was hard stuff. Nowadays, you have to worry about the clock being too fast and the refresh rate is an independent feature. Sound is a lot more complicated under Linux than it was under the Amiga.
The most annoying thing, however, was every single book assumed that you were developing on and for Windows. One went so far as to say that you "could not expect to have a future" as a game developer if you did not understand DirectX. (Yes, I know there's a Game Development for Linux book out there; Barnes & Noble didn't have it in stock.)
Another, lesser annoyance was that every game book felt like a disorganized mess. One had a long and wonderful section on basic geometry-- with absolutely no examples or explanation as to why you would want to know that stuff. Another had a long section that proposed to teach you C++; if I wanted that, I would have bought a C++ book. Others sought to teach you business expertise at one end and artificial intelligence at the other.
Still, everything I've seen says it can be done. Hell, it was done in 1979 with a couple of IC chips Tim Skelly wired together. Just... nobody's done it since.
Tried pygame?
Date: 2006-01-03 09:48 am (UTC)Re: Tried pygame?
Date: 2006-01-03 05:43 pm (UTC)It's got a bunch of by example stuff, modern processors are enough faster than a 1MHz 6502 that the fact that you're working with a Lisp-ish language doesn't really matter, and it'll run on real operating systems, not just Windows.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 11:37 am (UTC)Damn you. Thank you.
heh
Date: 2006-01-18 01:30 am (UTC)um you actualy could hit this up on a different route many people have remade old amiga games for various systems by looking at the cores of some of the amiga emulators and basicly writing the program in the original style
and just wrap it in a emulator
im sure you could find a opensource amiga emulator to look at to see how they did it.