Re: Tools

[Pierre Phaneuf <pp@ludusdesign.com>]

Steve Baker wrote:

> > ...Voodoo3 hardware seems to be the biggest bang for the buck, mostly
> > lacking in the visual departments (only 16 bit and picture always
> > look too dark with the 3Dfx chipset, dunno why).
> 
> It looks dark because you don't have the gamma set up right.

Yes, but I didn't properly word that... The colors seems "dull". It's
cool when you're just coming from software rendering, but if you compare
nVidia output and 3Dfx output, you'll see the difference immediately.

> > Yes, knowing assembler is important, and even with todays compilers,
> > sometimes you have to use assembler. For example, we have a sound mixer
> > for Quadra (no threads, no sound server process, doesn't skip or lag!)
> > that adds the samples together and then uses if's and whatever to
> > properly clip it.
> 
> That's exactly what I have in PLIB - and use on my Tux game.

You mean synchronous sound?

> > This is a good case that could be replaced with
> > assembler.
> 
> But is it?  My code is in C++ and consumes less than 1% or the CPU on my
> 266MHz PC - and only 7% on my ancient 66MHz 486. (That's playing three
> 22KHz samples - each with pitch and volume modified on-the-fly and then
> mixed together)
> 
> There is no way I'd rewrite that in machine code to save just a half
> percent of the CPU...especially since I'd then have to make it work
> for Alphas, Mac's, MIPS, PPC's, etc.

No, at the quality you're mixing, no way that would be useful! But
Quadra mixes up to 8 samples at an output rate of 44.1 KHz, at 16 bit,
in stereo. The input samples are of various rate and it also supports
pitch, volume and panning effects. It uses very little load as is (below
1% for my 225 MHz Pentium, for the game itself, except when doing fades
(goes over 30% for game and X server combined CPU), since I am in 16 bit
TrueColor, a lot of color conversion is going on (could use Hermes here,
but we don't, a simple C++ loop and a table).

> Machine code is pretty much dead.

Yep!

-- 
Pierre Phaneuf
Ludus Design, http://ludusdesign.com/
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. Then you win." -- Gandhi