Michael Abrash on Games Programming

An anonymous reader sent in an awesome article by Michael Abrash (If you don't know, I'm not telling). Tons of great bits in there, advice, anecdotes etc. Definitely worth a read if you are either a programmer, or a game fan.

Comments

Optimizing Conway's Life

[dmorin]

Remember this challenge? Sort of the defining moment for a code optimization metric. I spent a long, long time following in the footsteps of that series of articles. (In short, the challenge was pretty much "make Conway's Life go as fast as possible"). There's a moment in code optimization where you get to experience the true epiphany of hacking - version 1 takes 15 seconds, version 2 takes 13 seconds, version 3 takes 12 seconds....and then suddenly, as if in a dream it comes to you....and version 4 makes that leap to something like 2 seconds and you revel in it.

I have no idea if I explained that like I wanted to. But I know what I meant.

Re:Optimizing Conway's Life

[dmorin]

Ooo! OOO! There was a game contest on rec.games.programmer once to write a game in 256 bytes. I remember, like, within the first day somebody had written "You losers, that's impossible, it'll take me 220 bytes just to pull the A20 line high and get into virtual memory." (Or something very close to that, it's been a long time). Talk about missing the point.

Engineering vs. hacking

[ShadyG]

It's so refreshing to see a prominent games developer advocating such engineering principles as architecture and design. It may seem odd to some -- natural to others -- but the very brightest game programmers I have been able to find care nothing for engineering. Any hint of process or structure means restricting creativity and stifling innovation.

There's a similar sentiment in the hacker community I have witnessed in open source projects. I've participated in a few, and I inevitably get blank stares when I ask for an SRS or architecture document so my components blend well and extend the current structure elegantly. Nevermind when I ask where in the source tree to drop my UML diagrams. I just ask that for kicks nowadays :)

In the business world, no one gets paid to write code. We get paid to ship software, and I've found that regardless of their attitude coming into the project, everyone is delighted when we ship a solid product on time and within budget. It's so rare a thing in this industry that coders get simply giddy at the thought of telling their friends they actually did it.

From my experience, a realistic estimation and budgeting system and thorough engineering process is the number one most effective perk in terms of retaining happy programmers.

-- ShadyG

Heh.

[dR.fuZZo]

This paragraph made me smile.

Aim high, think big. Right now is a particularly good time for ambitious game programming, because so much more is possible now than ever before, thanks to CPU performance and 3D accelerators.

You know -- that's as opposed to five years ago when CPU performance was at its lowest in over ten years.

I mean, you know, I dig the point and all, but won't it always be a good time for ambitious game programming?