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Andre Lamothe Launches XGameStation
TheAdventurer writes "Andre Lamothe, author of many popular video game programming books, has released his XGameStation. The initial offering, the XGameStation Micro Edition, is a retro level hardware platform, similar to the old Atari and NES systems, designed to teach enthusiasts and students the elements of console hardware design and effective low level programming skills. The unit comes with an e-book written by Andre on how to develop on the platform using its assembly language IDE (included) and how to make your own extensions to the device. It is priced at $199."
You haven't done much PS2 programming, have you? I have, and yes they do.
word.
Game code still uses alot of assembly, unless you want it to go at 10 FPS. Letting API's handle stuff isn't always freat, theres overhead and at leasy 99% of the time bulk. (You rarely use 100% of the features of anything) Reinventing the wheel is bad, but I have code I've made myself that I reuse in games, and just play around with it a bit so it so it perfectly fits the games needs. For other stuff though, I agree with you, unless your programming for some special case (Embedded stuff, robots, games etc) then there is no need for ASM, and API's are great.
The XGS was changed beyond recognition. Before, it had a Super NES style GPU. Now it has one more similar to that of the Atari 2600, where the CPU has to output each pixel one by one.
Yeah, that's where I'm heading too. Even the $80 Linksys WRT54GS has a faster processor, right? I don't know how economical these Single-Board-Computers are, but you can get pretty fast CPUs for a reasonable amount of money, and low-power enough to still not require a fan. Are these sort of things in the realm of hobbyists, or does it become to expensive/difficult to engineer single quantities of these?
200$ is a bit expensive for a hobby video game programming system. Why not just pick up a dreamcast for cheap and use it?
There are plenty of resources for it and some good examples of homebrewed games and applications already out there.
Not to mention it's a lot more modern and you can use some nice rendering hardware.
Linkage:
Dreamcast Programming
Dreamcast Homebrew
Dreamcast Emulation
"And phone lines have send/recieve pairs"
. ht m
There are "complete and total morons," and then there is you. Phone lines do not have "send and receive pairs". There are just two wires (one pair) in most telephone systems in the world. Some European systems may carrry a high voltage ring signal on an additional wire, bur that's not necessary.
May I suggest you take a quick google before you "spew" yourself:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/telephone2
-S
An 80 MIP RISC doesn't have the power for abstraction layers.
Blup?
As someone who started out on 0.25 MIPS CISC processors, I can comfortably say that you don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about. Abstraction layers appeared shortly after the stored-program architecture. 80 MIPS is serious, serious luxury.
I have two of his books on my desk right now, since they're what the public library had available, and I've had nothing but a headache reading them. He assumes way too many concepts that a novice programmer would not be able to pick up--and this is in his "beginning X game programming" series of books, where X = type of api. They go back to the library today.
Yeah it was easier in those days, but "those days" are never going to come back, so this whole idea has missed a fundamental point - games programming has changed. Not that LaMothe would know, he's written more clueless books and pulp articles than games.
... *never*.
I've been a game programmer (PC/XBOX/NGC/PS2) for around 4 years and I have used assembly language approximately
Yes for some roles in game programming, there is a need for low-level assembly knowledge. But the biggest challenges nowdays on multi-platform, multi-million dollar projects are not shaving a few cycles off a loop. Solid software engineering skills, working as a team with various disciplines (tool design/art/QA) are far more useful to aspiring games programmers than assembly skills.
Unfortunantly even the games industry hasn't realised this yet.
"My cat's breath smells like cat food." - The Tao of Ralph Wiggum.