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Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

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Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#81

Post by jandrese »

underyx wrote: post #23
scld wrote: post #5

Not being a programmer, I never have any idea what Carmack is talking about, but I'm always enthralled.

In case you want a simple explanation for this story: he tried to run an old pre-iPhone mobile game on a computer. The game runs very slow on computers, which is surprising considering the performance difference between these old phones and a modern computer. The reason turned out to be that the game runs a memory cleaning command to avoid bugs arising from lack of space. Since modern computers have 10000x more memor…

It seems kind of crazy to me that people were using a GC language on a device with 128kB of memory. John even mentions how he was forced to run the GC on every frame to avoid problems. I would think when you are that constrained you would be closely tracking your memory usage. It's probably a miracle that those games weren't constantly hitching and crashing due to slamming up against the memory limits.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#82

Post by tmccrary55 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #22
DistressedDrone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It surprises me the number of people who thought they could make money selling emulators, in what is and has always been almost exclusively dedicated to piracy.

I will admit to paying for Bleem! in the long long ago. I still have the CD. Frankly, it was pretty damned amazing.

The CD Key

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#83

Post by __s »

nicetryguy wrote: post #54

GC every frame? Jesus. Gamedevs jump though hoops to avoid it.

Probably added after profiling on that system found that the GC pauses would fit within frame budget, whereas not running it every frame would have a long pause eventually drop frames

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#84

Post by tmccrary55 »

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #19
fmax30 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would absolutely blow my mind, I would even merge it without multiple approves. :D And add a new contributors section in the readme with John Carmack at the top.

John Carmack is awesome, but I find this level of deification (of any individual) kinda creepy - it just feels unhealthy. Would you like to be treated that way, in Carmack's position? I realize that your comment was likely made in jest, but it still bugs me.

I think I'd have to find at least one thing to have him fix, haha.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#85

Post by tempest_ »

stefan_ wrote: post #49
delecti wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how the UI looks to other people, because "all in once place" isn't really a complaint I can understand about the Twitter UI I'm seeing. There's buttons and stuff between tweets, but with 280 characters per tweet (140 was definitely less readable) they're not significantly more difficult to read on Twitter than they are in the paragraphs you posted.

The Twitter web UI if you are not logged in is purposefully broken. Every so often, it will just show you "access denied" or "you don't have permission". It is the peak of dark patterns.

It has been like that for years too.

I basically wont read Twitter threads because of it, perhaps I am better off for it.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#86

Post by mestoslaw »

brianberns wrote: post #10
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #4

The chain all in one place, such that it's readable: > Before the iPhone existed, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones": Doom RPG 1&2, Orcs&Elves 1&2, and Wolfenstein RPG. Qualcomm's native-code BREW platform had better versions, but I haven't seen any emulators and archives for it, so they may be lost at this point. The J2ME (java mobile) versions are still floating around, and can be emulate…

Thank you. Twitter's user experience is the worst.

They are working on it

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#87

Post by zlynx »

nicetryguy wrote: post #54

GC every frame? Jesus. Gamedevs jump though hoops to avoid it.

Your other choices are:

- Never GC via using object pools. This code is nastier than C++ because Java is not intended to be used this way.

- GC whenever needed randomly. The game will just pause occasionally. Very annoying as a player.

- Write the actual game in C++. Make a few JNI calls here and there. On feature phones I only remember this being possible for some vendor apps.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#88

Post by bennysomething »

DistressedDrone wrote: post #16
intsunny wrote: post #9

John Carmack writes: > Unlike most emulator projects, Kemulator turned out to be closed source abandonware It is amazing that in the past two decades most emulators transitioned from closed source closely guarded secrets to open sourced and often under a popular license. The preservation is unparalleled.

It surprises me the number of people who thought they could make money selling emulators, in what is and has always been almost exclusively dedicated to piracy.

I pretty much only play emulators these days as having a load of consoles and cables under my TV is a pain in the ass.

I recently paid five dollars for redream Dreamcast emulator. Totally worth it. There's a free version that doesn't run hi Res and that's fine.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#89

Post by speedgoose »

wlesieutre wrote: post #57
stefan_ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitter web UI if you are not logged in is purposefully broken. Every so often, it will just show you "access denied" or "you don't have permission". It is the peak of dark patterns.

I think this is a bug rather than deliberately blocked. The on-page retry button will continuously fail, but if you go up to the address bar and keep hitting enter it will eventually work. Still embarrassing for a tech company of twitter's size. Displaying a tweet to a logged out user should be the single simplest job their service has, but it's usually broken.

Twitter has not fixed this bug for many many months. I think they are very happy to have it because I do not believe Twitter cannot fix it if they want to.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#90

Post by wtetzner »

pjmlp wrote: post #43
DistressedDrone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It surprises me the number of people who thought they could make money selling emulators, in what is and has always been almost exclusively dedicated to piracy.

Not at all, emulators are also a way to keep old games alive. Like still being able to watch that old VHS movie on BluRay HD, or listening to Swing records from 1920 in 2021.

They're also a way to help developers write new games for old platforms.
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