🚀 go-pugleaf

> When I write a program in C, I almost never care what the resulting
> assembly looks like; likewise I care *even less* about how the compiler
> does its job, *as long as the resulting exectuable works*.  I certainly
> wouldn't go and edit the GCC source to change the for loop syntax to better
> suit my liking; perhaps that's just me though.

That's you.  I have to know what the assembly looks like.

> A game system is a massive undertaking, even if it's for a fairly
> limited set of game styles.  Mike Roberts has been working on TADS
> since 1987 or so, and that's just for text adventures.  The reason that

I dunno.  My text adventure compiler handled everything (it was similar
to the ADVSYS library), and it took me a couple of weeks.  I could do
everything Infocom could do and more.  The resulting executable was 18k.

> everyone (as a previous poster mentioned) starts their own game library
> but bever finishes is the same reason most people start a *game* and
> never finish, or start a *novel* and never finish.  It's a lot of work,
> and requires *years* to complete.  As with all things in computer
> science, it's easy to talk about but much, much harder to *do*.

True.

>>	That's because I love seeing how other people do things. I've never  
>>actually used anyone else's code before - i just print out and highlight
>>things that strike me then see if I can rewrite it from memory and quite
>>often run it through several reference manuals.
> 
> In my opinion, the place for this kind of instruction is textbooks.
> There really should be some texts on writing games, even if they're
> specific to a particular platform.  The problem is that no game writers
> want to write books; they want to write games.

Since when did textbooks offer you the advanced info only professionals know?

> (BTW, does *anyone* have a copy of Abrash?  Where can you get it?  I've
> tried every big bookstore I know and no one's ever heard of it.)

Que
11711 N. College
Carmel, IN 4603{

Power Graphics Programming $24.95

Call 1-800-428-5331.

That's the info in my book!

Josh