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I’ve written several games in assembly and I’ve never regretted any of them.
If you’ve written 500k lines of code you were surely pretty confident about your decision.
You sweet summer child…
I’m a developer, I don’t just continue doing things for years if it doesn’t make sense.
(If I’m the one making the decisions)
Like the classic, inherit a broken code base, and not being allowed by the owner to rewrite it from scratch. So you have to spend more time making each part work without the others working. Also before you are finished the customer says they have something else for you to do
That’s when you start introducing modules that have the least impact on the legacy code base. Messaging is a good place to start, but building a new code next to the existing one and slowly refactoring whenever you got time to spare is at least a bearable way to go about it.
I have seen Devs do things for many years that make no sense
programmers just not a uniform bunch. not all of them blockchain grifters. fancy that.
petah please what’s this mean
The game Roller Coaster Tycoon was famously hand written in raw CPU instructions (called assembly language). It’s only one step removed from writing literal ones and zeros. Normally computers are programmed using a human-friendly language which is then “compiled” into CPU instructions so that the humans don’t have to deal with the tedium and complication of writing CPU instructions.
To further emphasize this, I had an assembly course in university. During my first lab, the instructor told us to add a comment explaining what every line of assembly code did, because if we didn’t, we would forget what we wrote.
I listened to his advice, but one day I was in a rush, so I didn’t leave comments. I swear, I looked away from the computer for like 2 minutes, looked back, and had no idea what I wrote. I basically had to redo my work.
It is not that much better than reading 1s and 0s. In fact in that course, we spent a lot of time converting 1s and 0s (by hand) to assembly and back. Got pretty good at it, would never even think of writing a game. I would literally rather create my own compiler and programming language than write a game in assembly.
I’m probably completely insane and deranged, but I actually like assembly. With decent reverse engineering software like Ghidra, it’s not terribly difficult to understand the intent and operation of isolated functions.
Mnemonics for the amd64 AVX extensions can go the fuck right off a bridge, though.
VCVTTPS2UQQmight as well be my hands rolling across a keyboard, not a truncated conversation from packed single precision floats into packed unsigned quadword integers.Ah yes, there was this guy in our tech school class that used to code golf in assembly. Was a crack in math and analytics too, which might explain it somewhat. Well, everyone is different i guess.
I had a course in uni that taught us assembler on z/os. My advisor told me most students fail the course on the first try because it was so tough and my Prof for that course said if any of us managed to get at least a B in the course, he’d write us a rec letter for graduate school. That course was the most difficult and most fun I’ve ever had. I learned how to properly use registers to store my values for calculations, I learned how to use subroutines. Earned myself that B and went on to take the follow up course which was COBOL. You’re not crazy, I yearn to go back to doing low level programming, I’m mostly doing ruby for my job but I think my heart never left assembler hahaha
thanks petah
To send the point home even more, this is how in python you make a line of text display:
print("Hello World")This is the same thing, in assembly (According to a blog I found. I can’t read this. I am not build better.)
org 0x100 ; .com files always start 256 bytes into the segment ; int 21h is going to want... mov dx, msg ; the address of or message in dx mov ah, 9 ; ah=9 - "print string" sub-function int 0x21 ; call dos services mov ah, 0x4c ; "terminate program" sub-function int 0x21 ; call dos services msg db 'Hello, World!', 0x0d, 0x0a, '$' ; $-terminated messageBut python turns that cute little line up top, into that mess at the bottom.
I like python. Python is cute. Anyone can read python.
That assembly is for a DOS application. It would be more verbose for a modern Linux or Win32 application and probably require a linker script.
But python turns that cute little line up top, into that mess at the bottom.
Technically, not quite. Python is interpreted, so it’s more like “call the print function with this string parameter” gets fed into another program, which calls it’s own functions to make it happen.
Glory to you… abd your hoooouse!
Roller coaster Tycoon is one of a lifetime game.
Now everything is electron or react shit. Gone are the times of downloading fully featured software under 10mb.
I don’t think old=good is a good mentality though, lot of people seem to have it
All the old software I know and use is exceptionally good, however I’ve heard about and chosen to use it because it’s survived the test of time (also because it’s still actively maintained and has had thousands of bug fixes over the years)
Vscode and obsidian are pretty good and they’re electron, discord’s alright, pretty sure steam uses some kind of web wrapper as well.
Real issue is electron is very accessible to inexperienced developers and easy to do badly, but I imagine people back in the old Unix days got an equal amount of shit bloated software
Survivor bias is a thing and part of the reason people are nostalgic for old media.
For every There Will Be Blood, there exists an Alien vs Predator: Requiem
Old=good is a great mentality specifically when standing the test of time is an important factor. For the most part, the old code that’s still used today is only still used because it’s proven good, whereas it’s a grab bag with newer code. And that’s the cause of the unwarranted nostalgia thay you’re rightfully criticising.
It’s like with music. “Oh, the X’s were the best decade for music, today’s music is garbage”. No, 90% of everything is crud but unless you’re an enthusiast, once enough time has passed, you’ll only ever be exposed to the 10% that isn’t. 50 years from now nobody is going to be listening to Cardi B.
People only remember the good stuff. They don’t usually think about all the software that sucked.
I reminisce for the days when spyware was cute 😞
A fucking calculator needs megabytes to run? And I’m not talking about a full fledged graphic scientific calculator. I’m talking about a basic one.
Gnome calculator uses 103m, it’s loading style sheets for themes, UI libraries that make it look nice and modern, scientific calculator features, keyboard shortcuts, nice graphical settings menu, touch screen and screen reader support etc
I don’t think in this day and age for all the niceties people are used to that’s unreasonable.
Also other calculators are available, some are bloated but I’m sure there’s a rust or C one out there somewhere that uses a fraction of that with the bare minimum feature set
bc is 91 kilobytes and can work with seriously big numbers.
You want to know what 2^99812 is? bc will tell you. Hint: the result is so big I could not paste it in here. bc does not care, bc just delivers.
Not saying there is anything wrong with a GUI calculator using 103m of RAM and looking fancy while only working with tiny numbers, just saying.
I mean personally if I need a heavy duty calculator I’ll just use python or something
Discord is garbage software lmao. Has been from the beginning. I can’t stand using it.
And I had to stop using vscode because of its ridiculous resource usage. I got tired of it filling up my home dir and just went back to vim.
An intern was using it, but I saw that he had set it up to run locally and connect to the ETX we were using and figured he had found a way to avoid that. Nope, turns out it runs a server on the ETX that also likes to fill up the home dir and he also just uses vim now.
I’m not saying it’s phenomenal but it’s generally pretty well featured, running in a browser it’s not that heavy resource wise and the API/developer features are very good
Seconded. The only reason I have it installed is because my buddy refuses to answer his cell while we play games.
You want to… be on the phone for video game chat?
I cannot fathom this mindset.
I’d rather do a phone call on speakerphone while playing games…yes. I don’t wear headphones unless they’re wireless and I only put in one ear.
So like… do you play the game with no sound? Does your gaming partner hear everything coming through your speakers into your phone’s microphone?
I’m just struggling to understand how that could be a good experience for anyone, including you. Am I just missing something?
Edit: oh, I missed the wireless earphone on one side thing. Is that for your phone or for the game?
I’d rather do a signal VoIP call than discord
Fun quote from an interview with Chris Sawyer:
Latterly the machine code came back to haunt us when the decision was made to re-launch the original game on mobile platforms as RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic a few years ago, and it took several years and a small team of programmers to re-write the entire game in C++. It actually took a lot longer to re-write the game in C++ than it took me to write the original machine code version 20 years earlier.
Is there not a way to take assembly and automatically translate it to some higher level language?
Edit: Post-post thought: I guess that would basically be one step removed from decompilation which, as I understand it, is a tedious and still fairly manual process.
Your thought is correct. The basic problem is that higher level languages contain a lot of additional information that is lost in the compilation process.
Well worth it. The mobile version is amazing, that is to say, almost exactly the same as the original.
I guess i just found out there’s a mobile version.
Further proof C++ is a pita
It’s probably not because it’s sucks. It’s because they’re trying to perfectly replicate an existing target. They have to read the assembly, digest it, then create the identical solution in C++. If they were just creating a new game, it likely would be much faster.
int main()
{
std::cout << "C++ is simple and fun ... you cretin";
return 0;
}I had a machine language course in uni, parallel with a C++ course. Not a fun semester to be my wife, or a relative of any of my classmates. Best case our brains were in C++ mode, worst case you needed an assembler to understand us.
And yes I know my code format will piss people off, I don’t care, it’s the way I write when other less informed people don’t force me to conform to their BS “Teh oPeNiNg bracket shouwd bwee on teh sam line ass teh declawation”
std::cout << "C++ is simple and fun ... you cretin" <<std::endl;You dropped something.
Well ackshually <<std::endl is not the preferred way to do it according to the C++ Core Guidelines https://isocpp.github.io/CppCoreGuidelines/CppCoreGuidelines#Rio-endl
So to be a good little lemming I’ve added a \n, but I refuse to flush!
But the modern OpenRCT, written in an actual language, is better in every way.
Probably not as optimized though.
RCT could run on a toaster from the 90’s (ok, maybe early 2000’s) and looked amazing for the time.
OpenRCT can run on a toaster from the 2010’s and looks great because of the timeless art style of the original.
It’s still an incredible feat, though!
You are very unlikely to write assembly that is more optimized than what a modern compiler could produce for anything longer than a trivial program. I don’t know if it made sense at the time of the original RCT, but OpenRCT would definitely not benefit from being written in assembly.
I feel like that’s only true if I was asked to “write the assembly for this c++ program.” If I’m actually implementing something big in assembly, I’m not going to do 90% of the craziness someone might be tempted to do in c++. Something that is super easy in c++ doesn’t mean it’s easy for the CPU. Writing assembly, I’m going to do what’s easy for the CPU (and efficient) because, now, I’m in the same domain.
The bottom line is cranking up the optimization level can get you a 2-5x win. Using memory efficiently can give you a 10-100x win.
Using memory efficiently can give you a 10-100x win.
Yes, it can. But why is this exclusive to assembly? What are you planning to do with your memory use in assembly that is not achievable in C++ or other languages? Memory optimizations are largely about data structures and access patterns. This is available to you in C++.
Also, if you don’t want 90% of the craziness of C++ then why not just code in C++ without 90% of the craziness? As far as I know what’s what a lot of performance-critical projects do. They operate with a feature whitelist/blacklist. Don’t tell me you have the discipline to work entirely in assembly and the knowledge to beat the compiler at the low level stuff that is not available to you in C++ but you can’t manage avoiding the costly abstractions.
I think it speaks volumes how rarely you hear about programs being programmed in assembly. It’s always this one game and never any meaningful way to prove that it would gain performance by not being written in C++ when using a modern compiler.
try writing it it in Assembly
Small error, game crashes and takes whole PC with it burning a hole in the ground.
It was really easy to crash an Apple II game and get into the assembler. And my goodness am I glad I didn’t destroy my computer as a kid randomly typing things in to see what would happen.
Remember old Apple, had to use them when learning to program, there were 2 types, one with the OS on a diskette, one with a small hard drive, and they randomly showed a large bomb in the middle of the screen and you had to reload the OS. Probably the compuler that broke everything.
That’s Mac era stuff. I’m talking about the Apple II series, which had no GUI.
Ha ha yeah, I’m confused and old 🤤 sorry about that.
It dis-assembled the computer!
Just don’t make any errors. Not one.
Back into the fiery pit of hell, where it belongs!
- Programming was never meant to be abstract so far from the hardware.
- 640k is enough ram for everybody.
- The come with names like rust, typescript, go, and python. Names thought up by imbeciles.
- Dev environments, environmental variables, build and make scripts, and macros, from the minds of the utter deranged.
They have played us for fools
I dabbled with making a fairly complex program for a microcontroller the other day and quickly hit the stack limit for a simple object.
It wasn’t so much that it was a large object, but to provide flexibility I was amazed how fast I filled the memory.
I’ve done heaps with memory managed languages in the past but shit as soon as I had to think about what I was doing under the hood everything got hard af.
So serious question - does anyone have any good resources for a competent programmer, but with no clue whatsoever how to manage memory in a microcontroller space and avoid fragmentation etc?
I got it to work but I’m sure I did shit job and want to be better at it.
The best book I’ve ever bought on programming, and the second best book I bought for a class in uni, was https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/1824214 it may be worth checking out on libgen and buy if it suits your needs.
Whenever I do low-level programming on the AVR architecture, I’ll make a memory map. As in I’ll map out where I’ll put what. It may not be suitable for more complex programs, but it does the job for me. And it has enabled teamwork in assembly in the past.
If you want to work in a language that doesn’t offer memory management, but manually mapping memory isn’t feasible either, how about building your own memory management? Or perhaps use an RTOS? I’ve used freeRTOS before on various arm-based micros, and it does take a bit to get started, but after that it’s easy sailing.
Sorry for the following tangent, all semi intelligent content in this comment is found above this line.
BTW I tried CoOS once, I wouldn’t recommend it… OK it was 12 years ago, I can’t remember exactly what was wrong other than the documentation was crap, but I don’t need to remember why to hold a grudge.
Not Assembly, but HROT was written in Pascal by one person and runs buttery smooth.
Oooh! Know what I’m playing this weeeknd! Thanks!
I love Roller Coaster Tycoon. It’s absolutely crazy how he managed to write a game in a way many wouldn’t even attempt even in those days, but it’s not just a technical feat, it’s a creative masterpiece that’s still an absolute blast to play.
It still blows my mind how smoothly it gives the illusion of 3D and physics, yet it can run on almost anything.
OpenRCT brings a lot of quality of life and is often the recommended way to play today, but the original RCT will always deserve a spot on any “Best Games of All Time” list.
It was even ported to the original Xbox. I remember the total games file size being incredibly small - compared to most other titles on that system.
you need all of that when writing a game in assembly. wtf do you think assembly is?
I want to get off Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride
I was looking for this comment. Brings back so many good memories of the early internet.
The ride never ends!
They call me the Programmer and I speak to the metal,
Now check out this app, that really shows off my mettle!
where’s your furry cracktro then??
Don’t Want to be that Guy but you can actually use library’s in Assembly and probably want to, as otherwise you have no good way of interacting with the os.
In fact Chris Sawyer did use C for the purposes of linking the OS libraries necessary for windowing, rendering, sound etc.
You can actually pluralize library and probably want to.
This game ran so smooth.
Your game will actually likely be more efficient if written in C. The gcc compiler has become ridiculously optimized and probably knows more tricks than you do.
Write it in Rust, and it’ll never even leak memory.
Yep but not if you write sloppy C code. Gotta keep those nuts and bolts tight!
If you’re writing sloppy C code your assembly code probably won’t work either
Except everyone writing C is writing sloppy C. It’s like driving a car, there’s always a non-zero chance of an accident.
Even worse, in C the compiler is just waiting for you to trip up so it can do something weird. Think the risk of UB is overblown? I found this article from Raymond Chen enlightening: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140627-00/?p=633
I recently came across a rust book on how pointers aren’t just ints, because of UB.
fn main() { a = &1 b = &2 a++ if a == b { *a = 3 print(b) } }This may either: not print anything, print 3 or print 2.
Depending on the compiler, since b isn’t changed at all, it might optimize the print for
print(2)instead ofprint(b). Even though everyone can agree that it should either not print anything or 3, but never 2.A compiler making assumptions like that about undefined behaviour sounds just like a bug. Maybe the bug is in the spec rather than the compiler, but I can’t think of any time it would be better to optimize that code out entirely because UB is detected rather than just throwing an error or warning and otherwise ignoring the edge cases where the behaviour might break. It sounds like the worst possible option exactly for the reasons listed in that blog.
Especially these days. Current-gen x86 architecture has all kinds of insane optimizations and special instruction sets that the Pentium I never had (e.g. SSE). You really do need a higher-level compiler at your back to make the most of it these days. And even then, there are cases where you have to resort to inline ASM or processor-specific intrinsics to optimize to the level that Roller Coaster Tycoon is/was. (original system specs)
I might be wrong, but doesn’t SSE require you to explicitly use it in C/C++? Laying out your data as arrays and specifically calling the SIMD operations on them?
There’s absolutely nothing you can do in C that you can’t also do in assembly. Because assembly is just the bunch of bits that the compiler generates.
That said, you’d have to be insane to write a game featuring SIMD instructions these days in assembly.
Technically assembly is a human-readable, paper-thin abstraction of the machine code. It really only implements one additional feature over raw machine code and that’s labels, which prevents you from having to rewrite jump and goto instructions EVERY TIME you refactor upstream code to have a different number of instructions.
So not strictly the bunch of bits. But very close to it.
I think they meant the other way around, that if you wanted to use it in C/C++, you’d have to either use assembly or some specific SSE construct otherwise the compiler wouldn’t bother.
That probably was the case at one point, but I’d be surprised if it’s still the case. Though maybe that’s part of the reason why the Intel compiler can generate faster code. But I suspect it’s more of a case of better optimization by people who have a better understanding of how it works under the hood, and maybe better utilization of newer instruction set extensions.
SSE has been around for a long time and is present in most (all?) x86 chips these days and I’d be very surprised if gcc and other popular compilers don’t use it effectively today. Some of the other extensions might be different though.
Chris Sawyer is a madman.
I believe you meant to write genius.
Chris Genius is a madman.
Who the hell even is Madam Chris Genius?
