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nemesis wrote:
> In order to know that the point of the article is not that one gotta read the
> previous one.
No, actually. Now that I look at it again, you just have to read the title.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp, don't take this bad. I mean not to insult you in any way - when
posting on the net things occasionally sound worse than they are meant. so
peace ;-)
I suppose you will not believe me, but a GAME back then was not what you
would consider a game. On the VIC you had exactly 3.583 BYTES of free memory
(not kilo, mega or gigabytes). Every single byte did count ;-) Hell, we even
used half-bytes, which were called nibbles. I dimly remember things like
binary coded decimals - some things are best forgotten.
The sound mentioned in the wikipedia-article did consist of three beepers, a
noise-generator and a way to control the loudness for all four:
Poke 36874, 128 : REM bass - range between 128-255
Poke 36874, 164 : REM tenor - range between 128-255
Poke 36874, 255 : REM soprano - range between 128-255
Poke 36874, 128 : REM noise - range between 128-255
Poke 36874, 15 : REM loundness, range between 0-15
Graphics were similar. What was considered a beautiful graphic was very
different from whatwe experience now.
Now, every really professional arcade game was programmed not in BASIC but
in 6502 assembler. I was talking about using BASIC to draw the graph.
Assembler was faster, of course.
However, the games were not in pixel-graphics needed to draw curves but in
ASCII-art. It is very easy to tell: on the VIC you could only display
characters. A character could be coloured in a few different colours (8, if
I remember correctly). Whenever you see a VIC-picture with colour graphics
you are looking at ASCII-art. When you wanted to use individual graphics you
had to copy 8x16 pixel characters to the memory, define these 16 bytes anew,
then put the character on the screen. You could then set the colour for the
whole 8x16 block of pixels.
I learned BASIC by typing in the listings of games and other programs. The
listings were to be found in computer magazines or books and had to be typed
in by hand. Here is an example of a more interesting game, "Hunt the
Wumpus":
http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/showpage.php?page=180
Here is another I remember:
http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/showpage.php?page=3
And this took some time to enter:
http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/showpage.php?page=144
A really spiffy graphics game I remember programming (or better: porting to
the VIC, for my own enjoyment) was a space-invaders clone. I used a ^ as
missile graphics, the UFO was a <X>, you get the picture ;-)
Later, on the C64, a way better and faster computer, when you were doing a
flood-fill with Simon's BASIC you could sit by and watch the picture to
complete. it would take quite a bit of time to do some really spiffy
graphics like the ones here:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/hobbit.html
When you think about those days, imagine feeding an arcade-machine with
half-dollars that plays the exciting game of PONG.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PONG
One of those was to be found at the municipal open-air pool...
About the original post: I really do not know anymore how long it actually
took to draw the curve. It was a very long time ago. I am absolutely sure
that I started the program, waited a bit admiring the curve drawing to
start, went to the bathroom, came back, waited a bit longer till it was
finished and showing the result to my parents. If this took 5 minutes, 10,
or 15, I really cannot say anymore.
All this brings back rather fond memories and it makes me feel REALLY OLD
for the first time...
I remember times when a phone-call to the US cost $2.50 per minute and when
this amount of money would buy you four large loafs of bread. Times when you
had to leave home and go to the public library when you wanted to do some
research for homework instead of googling or searching in wikipedia. Times
when you did a technical drawing you had to use compass, ruler and ink. And
had to do all again if you did draw a single false line (OK - if you were
lucky you might try to erase the wrong line or numer by using a razorblade,
but then you would get poits off from your instructor who would write "Fog?"
in the margin...)
Nowadays you are very lucky, more lucky than you will ever know.
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On 11/15/09 14:08, TC wrote:
> Nowadays you are very lucky, more lucky than you will ever know.
Same could be said of your generation when you were young.
--
Why is the person who invests all your money called a broker?
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TC <do-not-reply@i-do get-enough-spam-already-2498.com> wrote:
> Warp, don't take this bad. I mean not to insult you in any way - when
> posting on the net things occasionally sound worse than they are meant. so
> peace ;-)
You seem to assume that I'm some 15yo whose first computer was a PS2.
> I suppose you will not believe me, but a GAME back then was not what you
> would consider a game. On the VIC you had exactly 3.583 BYTES of free memory
> (not kilo, mega or gigabytes).
The Atari 2600 makes it better: 128 bytes of RAM. Yes, so?
And exactly what do you think I consider a game? Why wouldn't a VIC-20
or an Atari 2600 game be a game? Primitive (even by the time they still
were popular)? Definitely. Playable games? Why not?
> Every single byte did count ;-) Hell, we even
> used half-bytes, which were called nibbles. I dimly remember things like
> binary coded decimals - some things are best forgotten.
I really don't understand what binary coded decimals have to do with
space optimizations (given that they actually *waste* space compared to
native binary representation of numbers).
> The sound mentioned in the wikipedia-article did consist of three beepers, a
> noise-generator and a way to control the loudness for all four:
> Poke 36874, 128 : REM bass - range between 128-255
> Poke 36874, 164 : REM tenor - range between 128-255
> Poke 36874, 255 : REM soprano - range between 128-255
> Poke 36874, 128 : REM noise - range between 128-255
> Poke 36874, 15 : REM loundness, range between 0-15
That's luxury compared to the ZX Spectrum 48, which had one single
beeper and nothing else. Games and programs had to be content with that.
(Regardless, some games achieved pretty impressive music, taking into
account the limitation.)
> Now, every really professional arcade game was programmed not in BASIC but
> in 6502 assembler. I was talking about using BASIC to draw the graph.
> Assembler was faster, of course.
I still don't buy a *sine wave* taking *10 minutes* to draw, even if you
used BASIC.
Let's put it this way: The Vic-20 had a resolution of 176 x 184 pixels,
which means that to draw a regular sine wave you would need to evaluate
it 176 times and draw 176 pixels on screen for a full-width graphic.
If that takes 10 minutes it means that evaluating the sine function once
and drawing one pixel would take 3.4 seconds, ie. about 3.75 million clock
cycles (for a 1.1 MHz 6502 CPU)
Maybe if you implemented the sine function evaluation as the evaluation
of a fourier series, in BASIC, then it *might* take that 3.75 million clock
cycles to evaluate it once. If you do a lot of extra work. And probably using
a lot more accuracy than the vertical screen resolution would need.
I don't know if the Vic-20 BASIC had internal support for evaluating the
sine function, but if it did, I would be rather surprised if evaluating it
once would take 3.4 seconds.
> I learned BASIC by typing in the listings of games and other programs. The
> listings were to be found in computer magazines or books and had to be typed
> in by hand.
At least you didn't type gigantic hex listings, like me...
> Later, on the C64, a way better and faster computer, when you were doing a
> flood-fill with Simon's BASIC you could sit by and watch the picture to
> complete.
That would tell something about the speed of the BASIC interpreter rather
than the speed of the computer itself, given that eg. the "Second Reality"
demo has been "ported" to the C64, all parts included (including all the
real-time 3D graphics). And it's not even the best demo for the C64 in
existence. (Granted, the C64 version of "Second Reality" doesn't look exactly
as good as the PC version, but it looks very impressive taking into accout
the hardware it's running on.)
> All this brings back rather fond memories and it makes me feel REALLY OLD
> for the first time...
These are some pictures I drew with my first computer, a Spectrum 128:
http://warp.povusers.org/SpectrumPics/
(I was able to salvage these pictures from an old casette where I had saved
them, by using an emulator which was able to interpret the modulated data.
The Spectrum was not as capable graphically as eg. the NES, and had some
pretty bad limitations (described in that page), but with some effort you
could get pretty decent pictures for the era.)
> Nowadays you are very lucky, more lucky than you will ever know.
Please stop assuming I'm a 15yo.
--
- Warp
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TC wrote:
> I dimly remember things like
> binary coded decimals - some things are best forgotten.
>
Do you mind! I still use BCD. It is a good weak encryption, who else
knows it? ;) I remember nibbles as well :D
>
> I learned BASIC by typing in the listings of games and other programs. The
> listings were to be found in computer magazines or books and had to be typed
> in by hand.
>
Ugg!
> When you think about those days, imagine feeding an arcade-machine with
> half-dollars that plays the exciting game of PONG.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PONG
>
> One of those was to be found at the municipal open-air pool...
>
I could play using both hands and do you remember that you could put a
spin on the ball?
>
> All this brings back rather fond memories and it makes me feel REALLY OLD
> for the first time...
>
Fractint on a supper dupper XT LOL
> Times when you did a technical drawing you had to use compass, ruler
and ink.
>And had to do all again if you did draw a single false line (OK - if
you were
> lucky you might try to erase the wrong line or numer by using a razorblade,
Did you not use an Eraser Shield?
http://www.artifolk.co.uk/catalog/products/drawing_accessories/eraser_shield.htm
Old farts never die you merely wish they did ;)
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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> Did you not use an Eraser Shield?
> http://www.artifolk.co.uk/catalog/products/drawing_accessories/eraser_shield.htm
>
I wish I had had one of those. Would have come in really handy.
> Old farts never die you merely wish they did ;)
LOL ;-)
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Warp wrote:
> Maybe if you implemented the sine function evaluation as the evaluation
> of a fourier series, in BASIC,
OK, I LOLed.
> At least you didn't type gigantic hex listings, like me...
Remember the magazines with the machine-readable barcode down the edges of
program listings? I never got that to work.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New wrote:
> "I hate Batman's costume. It's so scary!"
http://thosearentmuskets.com/sketches/batman.php
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> You seem to assume that I'm some 15yo whose first computer was a PS2.
More a like very bright 20-ish. ;-) How should I have known you were about
my age?
> And exactly what do you think I consider a game? Why wouldn't a VIC-20
> or an Atari 2600 game be a game? Primitive (even by the time they still
> were popular)? Definitely. Playable games? Why not?
Because I assumed you to be in your twenties. Sorry. But do you really think
a teen or a young twen would consider our first computer-games fun? A game
like emperor or pharaoh? Enter number of acres to be planted, enter grain to
be spend on subjects, x subjects died, y subjects were born - you know the
kind of game? When we were young this kind of stuff was fun - at least for
me. Or the original "Bard's tale" on the C64? Mangar attacks. Hero got
blasted for 56 points of damage? I was enticed with the partially animated
graphics - the Zombies were really gross. And the 3D labyrinths, the
pictures of the streets of Skara Brae, all new and exciting. But would a
teen today say that this is an interesting game?
Later I really liked nethack. But a game that uses a yellow "i" for an imp
is not what any person less than 25 years old would consider a fun game.
> I really don't understand what binary coded decimals have to do with
> space optimizations (given that they actually *waste* space compared to
> native binary representation of numbers).
And you are right: nothing at all. I was just strolling down memory lane. I
had some problem to solve with BCD back then. And trying to solve it I
stumbled upon the word "nibble" for a half-byte. Something younger people
will probably have never heard of, neither will they need to hear about
this. And thinking you to be much younger...
> I still don't buy a *sine wave* taking *10 minutes* to draw, even if you
> used BASIC.
I think the sine-function was not the problem. The drawing of the pixels
was. Maybe my method of determining which bits were set was the culprit, I
don't remember. Maybe PEEK and POKE did take extra time. I think you had no
bit-operators in Commodore Basic (or I did not know it had - I think the
"and / or" was only logical operators), so I may have used some math and
some loops that were not optimal. Again, I don't remember the details,
except that it took a lot of time to draw this curve. It was my first
computer, the manuals were written in English (a foreign language for me),
my first programming language and my first program that did draw a graph.
Besides, to get a smooth curve you had to compute more than one pixel per
column. Knowing my younger self I assume I'll have iterated from 0 - 360
degrees and converted this to radians. Which probably took some GOSUBs, as
did the encoding and decoding of the individual bits.
> At least you didn't type gigantic hex listings, like me...
A lot was done by entering DATA - byte values which were read and then poked
into memory for small graphics or machine language code. It was pretty much
the same, only in decimal. I remember the PC magazines had checksums at the
end of each line so correcting was possible if you entered the
checksum-generator first.
My first steps into 6502 assembler were done entirely by hand since I could
not afford a proper assembler-program. Got a book on assembler, did
translate the code into machine-language by hand. So I know of the joys of
entering hex values - assembler is something else I do not miss at all. ;-)
Make a mistake and the computer did freeze - then guess what went wrong for
want of a debugger.
>> Later, on the C64, a way better and faster computer, when you were doing
>> a
>> flood-fill with Simon's BASIC you could sit by and watch the picture to
>> complete.
>
> That would tell something about the speed of the BASIC interpreter rather
Yes. And that is part of the point. The very first post did compare BASIC to
Python and from there did compare computer speeds by the example of
interpreted languages.
> These are some pictures I drew with my first computer, a Spectrum 128:
> http://warp.povusers.org/SpectrumPics/
Nice. Especially the Ninja Turtles. Fond memories here, too ;-)
The Spectrum seems to have had way better graphics than the VIC. As I
already mentioned: you could not colour individual pixels, only individual
characters.
> Please stop assuming I'm a 15yo.
Sorry about this. ;-)
To put an end to a lengthy discussion: I told what I remember. I might
remember wrong, though I doubt it. I have no way to prove I remember the
correct time.
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TC wrote:
> Later I really liked nethack. But a game that uses a yellow "i" for an imp
> is not what any person less than 25 years old would consider a fun game.
>
I dunno, I still see young CS majors playing text MUDs on rare
occasions. And Dwarf Fortress, which while being a text game, could
never have run on any of my early computers.
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