VECTORLIST - The Mailing List For The Technical Discussion of Vector-Based Arcade Games

February_2000
Re: VECTOR: RE: Space Wars


From: Zonn ( )
Date: Thu Feb 03 2000 - 13:14:36 CST


On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 00:18:25 -0500 (EST), you wrote:

>On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clay Cowgill wrote:
>
>> I tell you... It's a solution just LOOKING for a problem! (...and by
>
>Ya know, I am wondering why a co-processor is needed for Space War on Space
>Duel hardware, since SD manages to do the colision detection, AND keep all
>the other objects moving. Seems to me SW with just 2 ships would be less of
>a drain. I thought the point of these projects was the retro-hardware,
>remembering when Real Programmers wrote self-modifying code, used op-codes
>as constants, and let the index register overflow into the program counter
>to end a loop.

It makes you wonder how they did it in the Cinematronics Space Wars version of
the game?

The C-CPU could do a 12x12 bit multiply in 24 (5mhz) clock cycles (or 4.8us).

It was also scalable, for instance it could do a 8x8 bit multiply in 16 cycles
(or 3.2us).

Hmm... I guess that could have something to do with it...

-Zonn
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
** To UNSUBSCRIBE from vectorlist, send a message with "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the
** message body to vectorlist-request . Please direct other
** questions, comments, or problems to neil .


HOME