Solaris

[mos6507]

For some reason replies aren't allowed in this forum, but regarding Solaris, the game is 16K and that allows for some things you can't normally do.

 

For one thing, when CPU time is so limited during the kernel, you can't do a lot of changes to the graphics, normally. But with more memory you can do things like storing precalculated math and pointer tables in ROM, or just unrolling conditional logic into hardcoded kernel lines. For instance, if you wanted to show a planet, and then show some other stuff, you would normally keep track of the scanline counter and have branching routines. This adds overhead. But just having 10 hardcoded lines for the planet scanlines and more hardcoded lines for the rest, you save the conditional processing which allows you to do more things, like changing more shapes and colors.

 

So it's that, plus also Doug Neubauer came up with his own single-scanline kernel routines that are about as advanced as they come.

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by Glenn Saunders:

For some reason replies aren't allowed in this forum,

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Thanks for the heads-up, this has been fixed now.