John VanSickle wrote:

> There were games on the Apple (6502-based) which had seven versions of 
> any given sprite graphic so that they wouldn't have to be shifted in 
> order to display them on the screen.  8-bit game programmers learned 
> much about squeezing every last drop of performance out of limited speed 
> and memory.

Wouldn't having 7 copies of the same data eat more memory?

Did it actually store 7 copies, or just precompute them?

Also... Apple made a 6502-based product??

> One of the best C64 games was called Pinball Construction Set, which had 
> the pinball moving with apparently natural motion and reflecting off of 
> barriers of any angle.  I should have looked at the code to see how they 
> pulled it off.

The equations for simple 2D acceleration and reflection are fairly easy, 
and probably implementable in fixed-point arithmetic. The *hard* part 
about physical simulations is that they usually involve a huge number of 
items; *one* marble isn't too big a deal.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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