🚀 go-pugleaf

On 29 May 90 00:05:35 GMT, mt87692@tut.fi (Mikko Tsokkinen) said:

Mikko> 1. Should game be HD-installable?
Mikko> 2. Should game multitask?
Mikko> 3. Should game detect extra memory/diskdrives/processors?
Mikko> 4. Should game be exitable?

Mikko> And I would like also to know how many of you people really
Mikko> play games while doing something else? If you do, do you really
Mikko> like those every now and then updating games with poor graphics
Mikko> (thanks to memory shortage).

The answer to every one of these questions is a resounding YES.  If
you even need to ask, something's amiss.  Of course, better you ask
than do it wrong.  Stop thinking like a C64 programmer.  You DON'T
have the entire machine at your disposal.  Taking over the machine
will keep MANY people from bothering with it.

More importantly, you're clearly only thinking about your own system
configuration.  There are many variations in configurations and
priorities, and you ignore them at your own risk.  Any HD owner will
NOT want to run your game off floppies, period.  Many people want ANY
game to multitask.  People get very irritated by a game which keeps
loading images off a floppy (slowly) when they have a hard drive and
megabytes of memory and could go MUCH faster if the game were written
correctly.  And an ever-growing number of users are getting VERY tired
of having to reboot the machine after playing a game.

In short, every point you brought up is a major reason many people
avoid poorly-written games.  Don't second-guess the user.  You might
be concerned about ultimate speed and memory efficiency, but someone
with an A3000 running under KickStart V2.0 with a 25MHz 68030/68882
and 2 Meg of chip RAM, 16 Meg of 32-bit fast RAM, and a 600 Meg 16 ms
hard drive is likely to have far different priorities than the user
with an A1000 running under KickStart V1.2 with an 8 MHz 68000, 512K
chip RAM, no fast RAM and one floppy.

Also, note that a user on a small system may well prefer to sacrifice
some speed for the ability to continue something in the background...
And don't use CPU timing loops!

Do NOT assume everyone in the world has the same type of system as you
have.  It's NOT true.  Even you will probably have a different system
in the future.  Avoid assumptions you don't need to make.  Don't steal
the system or go directly to the hardware.  If you must, then at least
cooperate with the operating system to gain ownership of the hardware
before using it.  You don't need to be unfriendly to the system in the
name of efficiency.  Just learn to do it right.

Basically, follow the rules and guidelines long since established for
developers...

[don't you just hate lectures?  *sigh*  it's justified, anyhow.]

Deven
-- 
Deven T. Corzine        Internet:  deven@rpi.edu, shadow@pawl.rpi.edu
Snail:  2214 12th St. Apt. 2, Troy, NY 12180   Phone:  (518) 271-0750
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Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.