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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"

#151

Post by kllrnohj »

jandrese wrote: post #81
underyx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It seems kind of crazy to me that people were using a GC language on a device with 128kB of memory.

Look up JavaCard which apparently is a thing that still exists. It uses the Java language without a GC - that programming environment is truly miserable to work with.

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

#152

Post by kllrnohj »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #114
zlynx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If these phones were still around, I'd imagine there'd be another option now: - Write your game in C++ and transpile it to Java using some fancy framework that dances around never using GC.

You'd have to do something like allocate a single byte[] for everything you'll ever need, and reading & writing data would just be a constant tax since you can't just in-place cast that to an int or whatever. It wouldn't be very fun.

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

#153

Post by throwaway894345 »

pjmlp wrote: post #41
meheleventyone wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My very first industry job was making J2ME games and oh my god does it still give me nightmares.

If you miss it, just try Android, contrary to Google arguments against J2ME, the fragmentation experience is kept unchanged.

Especially with respect to Bluetooth quirks. Every single phone has a different set of bugs in its bluetooth components, and none of those sets are remotely empty. In the end, we decided we could only afford to support the 5 most popular models of the day and if you don't have that phone, then too bad for you.

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

#154

Post by CodeGlitch »

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…

I wish John would move over to a proper blogging site like medium, rather than a Frankenstein string of tweets.

He has enough material to gain a good following.

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

#155

Post by IvyMike »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #154
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…

I wish John would move over to a proper blogging site like medium, rather than a Frankenstein string of tweets. He has enough material to gain a good following.

Bring back .plan files!

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

#156

Post by neurostimulant »

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.

Well, I remember the moment No Cash suddenly had some cash after making the latest version of his popular emulator paid-only.

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

#157

Post by abnercoimbre »

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #78
gmadsen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fame and fame admiration is as old as civilization. And yes, using pseudonyms has been used for 100s of years for the same reason. You are complaining about something that is deeply human in nature. I don't think the comment was fanatical at all, it was a lighthearted joke.

Just because it appeals to nature, doesn't make it good. While I agree it was likely lighthearted, that does not exempt it from criticism.

You've had several HN readers suggest your criticism is unwarranted. I agree as well. Seriously, nothing from the OP indicates anything fanatic or out of the ordinary.

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

#158

Post by twright0 »

the_lonely_road wrote: post #44
ineedasername wrote: post #32

I'm not sure that in the present day of massive teams and > $100 million budgets that there's much room for new celebrity game developers to emerge on that scale. Pretty much every gamer knows who he is. Now, even the biggest breakthrough indie game with a 5 person dev team wouldn't become a household name. These days it's the studios themselves that get most of the credit. Which may only be fair: When there's 100+ p…

I think you are right. The closest I can come to a modern example would be Darkest Dungeon (made by 2 people) and Slay the Spire/Stardew Valley (both made by single devs) however owing to your point I don’t remember their names despite reading about them at least a few times. I would recognize John Carmacks face in a crowded room not to mention obviously unlikely to ever forget his name.

I believe Megacrit, which built Slay the Spire, is two people, Casey Yano and Anthony Giovannetti. But to the broader point I knew the name of the studio off the top of my head while I needed to look up the names of the individuals.

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

#159

Post by kmeisthax »

ezoe wrote: post #105

Invoking GC on every frame has different performance characteristic on old feature phone and modern PC. Reminds me of a technical document of Doom 3 BFG edition. https://fabiensanglard.net/doom3_documentation/DOOM-3-BFG-Te... In 2004, it was a best practice to keep data on memory. in 2012, CPU and GPU performance was increased a lot but memory performance wasn't increased much so calculating the necessary data on dem…

Also reminds me of all those framerate pacing hacks people put into old Flash movies. They literally spin in a loop until the current time advances to the next frame. AFAIK Ruffle explicitly pads out the time scripts see just to defeat this particular coding antipattern.

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

#160

Post by posharma »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #154
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…

I wish John would move over to a proper blogging site like medium, rather than a Frankenstein string of tweets. He has enough material to gain a good following.

Yes, I've wondered if there's any advantage to using twitter if you've to say something more than a single tweet. Is there any blocker to using good old blogs for this? There's no rule that a blog should be at least a page long; it can be short.
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