Re: C64 Wizardry: GPs "Formula" In New Char Creation? [message #208957 is a reply to message #208949] |
Tue, 02 August 2011 18:52 |
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Originally posted by: WinstonSmith6079
On Aug 1, 6:25 pm, "Anton Treuenfels" <teamtemp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Ross Ridge" <rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
>
> news:j14hco$1pi$1@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
>
>> Anton Treuenfels <teamtemp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> To "read the code" you'd have to start with a UCSD Pascal p-code
>>> decompiler.
>>> Got one handy?
>
>> Ah, that explains why it was so slow.
>
>> Ross Ridge
>
> Not really.
>
> There's a user-settable wait time between player moves that, at its default
> value, results in a fair amount of "busy waiting" by the p-code interpreter
> (literally - it sets one of the CIA timers and watches until it counts
> down). Set that wait time value to its minimum and the game speeds up
> considerably.
>
> The other major slow down occurs because of the slow serial links of the
> Commodore floppy drives. The p-code interpreter is capable of handling code
> overlays, and "Wizardry" uses all that UCSD Pascal provides. The two most
> commonly used overlays are cached "under" the Kernel ROM in a stock C64, but
> the rest have to be read anew each time they are used. Even with "fast
> transfer" routines providing about a 5X speed-up and custom sector
> interleave to take best advantage of that, it's still pretty annoying.
>
> The best speed-up here is to provide more memory. Run on a stock C128 and
> most of Bank One is used for caching. Stick a 1764 RAM expander in either
> and everything possible gets cached.
>
> That plus reduced move wait time makes "Proving Grounds" a very responsive
> game.
>
> After "Proving Grounds", intepreters for the others in the series know about
> all the 17xx RAM expanders. The C128 versions will also cache in 80-column
> video memory (16K or 64K) if there is no RAM expander.
>
> - Anton Treuenfels
Hey, cool! You are obviously very smart! So much so that I didn't
even understand what you said there, very much! Cool! hehehehe
So do you know what is the answer? ??? :)
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