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Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

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Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#41

Post by deaddodo »

bonzini wrote: post #39
_the_inflator wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact for C64 guys: The underlying mechanics of Carmack's technique is very similar to the full screen smooth scrolling effect on C64 at any speed and distance. It is nowadays referred to as DMA delay. ELIF: You trick the CPU to display screen data at a different starting point than as designed by the hardware. This is tricky and need to be executed cycle exact. Here is the explanation in detail together with all…

To clarify, it does not need to be executed cycle exact on the IBM PC, only on the C64.

I was going to say, smooth scrolling is one place where VGA was fairly simple to work with, since it didn’t have to deal with chunky graphics/bitplanes or specific timing tricks.

In fact, Carmack specifically states that packed pixels were the impetus for id’s side scrolling experiments that led to Commander Keen and its ilk.

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#42

Post by zem »

kevindamm wrote: post #40
lazystar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ELIF: You trick the CPU to display screen data at a different starting point than as designed by the hardware. This is tricky and need to be executed cycle exact. heh, is there a new meaning for ELIF? im not sure that there are many 5 year olds who would understand that ;-)

ELI5: explain like I'm five, ELIF: explain like I'm forty.

explain like i'm fifteen, surely (:

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#43

Post by to11mtm »

bluedino wrote: post #27

Would love to hear about the other Apogee and Epic games, like Epic Pinball, Tyrain, Halloween Harry, Jill of the Jungle, Duke Nukem...

> Tyrain

... Well, we do at least have OpenTyrian... (Edited to add; And OpenTyrian2000)

> Epic Pinball

Best I can find for Epic Pinball is an old thread on Pinball Fantasies [0] but I think it almost counts cause there was shared dev work between the two...

> Halloween Harry

TBH that one would be fairly interesting, especially compared to Duke Nukem 2 (Part of me thinks they might be similar/same engine)

> Jill of the Jungle

That one honestly WOULD be a fun one to look at... Best I can find is Xargon [1] but part of me always got a vibe that Xargon was some semi-upgraded Jill engine...

> Duke Nukem

TBH Duke Nukem '1' would not be that exciting to me. AFAIR it's mostly an adapted CK1-3 engine, letter-boxed with status window to make it easier to calc the redraw.

Duke Nukem 2, is far more interesting since it's a different, more powerful engine (VGA, digital audio support, but AFAIR only required a 286).

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667945

[1] - https://github.com/dos-games/vanilla-xargon

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#44

Post by matheusmoreira »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #5

Lovely book. Skimming through it. One thing that might help contextualize it is a brief discussion of the how contemporary hardware like the SNES rendered sprites so efficiently compared to the PC hardware at the time. It's not obvious to modern readers why a PC with significantly more powerful compute capabilities would struggle to keep up with significantly slower Nintendo hardware at the time for sprite rendering.

These videos do an excellent job at explaining how the SNES works:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHQ0utQyFw5KCcj1ljIhE...

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#45

Post by kridsdale1 »

to11mtm wrote: post #43
bluedino wrote: post #27

Would love to hear about the other Apogee and Epic games, like Epic Pinball, Tyrain, Halloween Harry, Jill of the Jungle, Duke Nukem...

> Tyrain ... Well, we do at least have OpenTyrian... (Edited to add; And OpenTyrian2000) > Epic Pinball Best I can find for Epic Pinball is an old thread on Pinball Fantasies [0] but I think it almost counts cause there was shared dev work between the two... > Halloween Harry TBH that one would be fairly interesting, especially compared to Duke Nukem 2 (Part of me thinks they might be similar/same engine) > Jill of t…

IIRC (from being a kid) Harry was 256 color and DN2 wasn’t quite. Also it felt like it had much better frame rate. But I’m sure that could be engine evolution too. Interesting, I hadn’t ever thought of the connection before.

Though the “hot babes stuck in alien pods” from Harry showed up as a central plot point in DN3D.

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#46

Post by bombcar »

sasas wrote: post #29
bel8 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And his site looks like another thousand, as I'm sure he knows. We consume his site for the content, not for the minimalistic design that exist since the inception of the universe.

It appears the author is leveraging Fabien's branding by copying not only the style of post but more importantly the formatting and style of Fabien's books. Even structurally the book appears quite similar. If you didn't double check the author while skimming this Keen book, you may well be mistaken that it was written by Fabien. I took a quick skim of the content, it looks great - tempted to purchase a copy to suppo…

He responds to this thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48546779

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#47

Post by sasas »

wk_end wrote: post #20
nnnnico wrote: post #9

this looks like a copy of fabien's site, plus the topic is very related and likely trampolining on his brand :/

Yeesh, until I saw your comment I thought this was Fabien. I'm sure it's not intentional but this goes beyond "homage" and into "deceptive". The replies to this claiming to not see what the issue is are inexplicable to me. The work on the book itself looks fantastic, so it's a shame about the site design.

It's often helpful not to immediately assume bad faith without further enquiry. It appears that Fabien had reviewed the book beforehand and he has reposted John Carmack's tweet[1] linking the book.

[1] https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2066577536339923091

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#49

Post by wk_end »

sasas wrote: post #47
wk_end wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeesh, until I saw your comment I thought this was Fabien. I'm sure it's not intentional but this goes beyond "homage" and into "deceptive". The replies to this claiming to not see what the issue is are inexplicable to me. The work on the book itself looks fantastic, so it's a shame about the site design.

It's often helpful not to immediately assume bad faith without further enquiry. It appears that Fabien had reviewed the book beforehand and he has reposted John Carmack's tweet[1] linking the book. [1] https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2066577536339923091

I thought "I'm sure it's not intentional" would make it clear that I'm not assuming bad faith - actually the opposite, I'm assuming good faith.

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#50

Post by sasas »

wk_end wrote: post #49
sasas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's often helpful not to immediately assume bad faith without further enquiry. It appears that Fabien had reviewed the book beforehand and he has reposted John Carmack's tweet[1] linking the book. [1] https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2066577536339923091

I thought "I'm sure it's not intentional" would make it clear that I'm not assuming bad faith - actually the opposite, I'm assuming good faith.

Understood. It's reasonable to call out potential conflict while also being unclear on intention. Something as simple in the Keen book author acknowledging the proofreader would put to rest the ambiguity central to the discussion point in contention.
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