Forums

Sega Master System / Mark III / Game Gear
SG-1000 / SC-3000 / SF-7000 / OMV
Home - Forums - Games - Scans - Maps - Cheats - Credits
Music - Videos - Development - Hacks - Translations - Homebrew

View topic - Messageboard Attitude

Reply to topic
Author Message
Eric
  • Guest
Reply with quote
Messageboard Attitude
Post Posted: Mon Jul 12, 1999 10:34 pm
I'm a little concerned about the direction taken by the previous thread (Z80 Flags->"I'm Pissed".)

I hope this board will be maintained as a friendly place to inquire about matters related to SMS/GG software development. I'd hate to see things turn ugly.

To Chris, I'd like to say this: a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It seems that you have been studying hard, and have been learning a great deal about programming emulators. Let me say congratulations. I understand your enthusiasm. However, you've just hit the tip of the iceberg. There's still a lot to learn. You may be wise to refrain from criticizing other peoples' work on the same message board where the readers know that you are a beginning emulator programmer.

Your earlier posts about emulator optimization has some good points, but, as some responses noted, they are very basic optimizations known by almost everyone who's programmed for any length of time. It is very likely that the people who frequent this message board have a great deal of programming expertise, you should not under-estimate their knowledge. Certainly, you should avoid criticizing their work when you are struggling to get your own emulator running at all.

Finally, I encourage you to keep reading those tutorials. Good programmers may not need to read them now, but they had to become good programmers somehow. (By the way I read and keep up with Larry Banks' Code Corner, but, again, his tutorials cover only the most basic optimizations.)

A "Thank you" goes out to Zoop for answering my question (sorry I didn't read the docs!) about Meka's Z80 emulator. Consequently, I have decided that correct operation for the IN reg, (C) instruction is to RESET the H flag. This is what Marat's Z80 emulator does, (used in Meka and MasterGear.) Keep this in mind when writing your own SMS/GG programs to be run on these emulators.

Thank you for reading my humble rantings. Now back to technical postings...

Eric
 
Chris
  • Guest
Reply with quote
I'm sorry *sniff*:o|
Post Posted: Mon Jul 12, 1999 11:55 pm
Quote
> To Chris, I'd like to say this: a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It seems that you have been studying hard, and have been learning a great deal about programming emulators. Let me say congratulations. I understand your enthusiasm. However, you've just hit the tip of the iceberg. There's still a lot to learn. You may be wise to refrain from criticizing other peoples' work on the same message board where the readers know that you are a beginning emulator programmer.

You're absolutely right and thank you for your honesty. I'm pissed because I have a slow ass PC
and I'm fustrated because I understand a lot about emulators but it's difficult for me to express what
I want my friggin program to do. I keep having all these syntax errors and such. Mainly because
this is my first time having to deal with pointers and such.

Quote
> Your earlier posts about emulator optimization has some good points, but, as some responses noted, they are very basic optimizations known by almost everyone who's programmed for any length of time. It is very likely that the people who frequent this message board have a great deal of programming expertise, you should not under-estimate their knowledge. Certainly, you should avoid criticizing their work when you are struggling to get your own emulator running at all.

Once again you're right. I've been programming for 2 years while I bet Zoop and everyone else
probably has computer science degrees and have been working with computers for years. If so, why
are the emus so damn slow!? I don't get it.

Quote
> Finally, I encourage you to keep reading those tutorials. Good programmers may not need to read them now, but they had to become good programmers somehow. (By the way I read and keep up with Larry Banks' Code Corner, but, again, his tutorials cover only the most basic optimizations.)

Yeah, they had to sit down and read a book or a tutorial just like I'm doing now. Trying to make it
as if they were just born with all this vast knowledge. Everybody has to start somewhere and this
is where I'm starting out.

Quote
> A "Thank you" goes out to Zoop for answering my question (sorry I didn't read the docs!) about Meka's Z80 emulator. Consequently, I have decided that correct operation for the IN reg, (C) instruction is to RESET the H flag. This is what Marat's Z80 emulator does, (used in Meka and MasterGear.) Keep this in mind when writing your own SMS/GG programs to be run on these emulators.

Do me a favor and explain what you learned so I'll understand and use that technique in my
Z80 emu. I know I'm going to need to know it sooner or later.

Chris :o)
 
  • Joined: 24 Jun 1999
  • Posts: 1732
  • Location: Paris, France
Reply with quote
Old PC - Computer Science Degree
Post Posted: Tue Jul 13, 1999 7:27 am
Quote
> You're absolutely right and thank you for your honesty. I'm pissed because I have a slow ass PC
> and I'm fustrated because I understand a lot about emulators but it's difficult for me to express what
[..]

What kind of computer do you have ?

Quote
> Once again you're right. I've been programming for 2 years while I bet Zoop and everyone else
> probably has computer science degrees and have been working with computers for years. If so, why
> are the emus so damn slow!? I don't get it.

Because emulators are made for fun and are not a commercial product. I'm doing Meka the best as I can
but I'm simply not able to make it perfect and the way I would like. And I think that apply for most other
programmers (correct me if I'm wrong).

By the way, I do not have any "computer degrees" and actually never learned anything related to
computer at school. That's what I will in three months, but I didn't before.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Chris
  • Guest
Reply with quote
Re: Old PC - Computer Science Degree
Post Posted: Tue Jul 13, 1999 4:49 pm
Quote
> What kind of computer do you have ?

A Pentium 133 32MB Ram emulated Sound Blaster 8/16/Comp. card. Now the thing is, I think my
system is so slow because of my emulated sound card. That shit has to interpret Sound Blaster
instructions and convert them so they will make my speaker vibrate, I guess. Anything after the
genesis shows choppy graphics and under Windows it's a nightmare. Winamp can barely play
SPC files (The sound is all bubbly and broken). I really think my sound card is slowing everything
down from normal and I'm about to go buy a real Sound Blaster 16.

Oh yeah, I have a TridentGUI96xx I think. It supports Vesa 2.0 but now that I have SciTech display
doctor I have standard SVGA.

Quote
> Because emulators are made for fun and are not a commercial product. I'm doing Meka the best as I can
> but I'm simply not able to make it perfect and the way I would like. And I think that apply for most other
> programmers (correct me if I'm wrong).

It may be fun for you, but under my PC's current condition a lot of systems and games are far
from fun. Try playing Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES while your screen shows choppy animation.
You'll be dying and you didn't even see what happened :o)

Quote
> By the way, I do not have any "computer degrees" and actually never learned anything related to
> computer at school. That's what I will in three months, but I didn't before.

So you have a hardware degree, right? You have some kind of education. You didn't just decide,
"Oh, I'm going to code an emu." Or otherwise you would've been in the same mess I'm in now.

Chris :o)
 
  • Joined: 24 Jun 1999
  • Posts: 1732
  • Location: Paris, France
Reply with quote
Re: Old PC - Computer Science Degree
Post Posted: Tue Jul 13, 1999 7:04 pm
Quote
> > What kind of computer do you have ?
> A Pentium 133 32MB Ram emulated Sound Blaster 8/16/Comp. card. Now the thing is, I think my
[blabla, I'm poor and you are rich, blabla]

I have a Pentium 100 overclocked to 120 mhz, and I'm not complaining.

Quote
> Oh yeah, I have a TridentGUI96xx I think. It supports Vesa 2.0 but now that I have SciTech display
> doctor I have standard SVGA.

With my video card and screen I cannot use an higher resolution than 640x480. Actually, I can get a 800x600 interlaced resolution, but it would rapidely ruin my eyes.

[..]
Quote
> It may be fun for you, but under my PC's current condition a lot of systems and games are far
> from fun. Try playing Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES while your screen shows choppy animation.
> You'll be dying and you didn't even see what happened :o)

Then don't play Super Mario All-Stars or program a better emulator!

Quote
> > By the way, I do not have any "computer degrees" and actually never learned anything related to
> > computer at school. That's what I will in three months, but I didn't before.
> So you have a hardware degree, right? You have some kind of education. You didn't just decide,
> "Oh, I'm going to code an emu." Or otherwise you would've been in the same mess I'm in now.

I guess you are really in a big mess, as you cannot even understand what I'm saying.
I do not have *any *degrees and never studied *anything* related to computer in school.
But I *will*.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 12 Jul 1999
  • Posts: 891
Reply with quote
That's nice...
Post Posted: Wed Jul 14, 1999 9:33 am
Quote
> I do not have *any *degrees and never studied *anything* related to computer in school.
> But I *will*.

Well, that's nice... do you feel like teaching us everything you know?... From scratch? ;)

BTW, you'll probably know more than your teacher. I do, and I'm only a repeating year 12! Well, he knows more about programming than I do. But that's why I'm here, right?
  View user's profile Send private message
Reply to topic



Back to the top of this page

Back to SMS Power!