Mord's Blog

Sometimes ugly code is unavoidable. What you aim for is code that is as efficient (bytes & cycles) as possible.

 

It's also usefull to sometimes step back and take a look at the problem from a higher level and see if there are other ways of accomplishing the same thing.

 

For instance, with Leprechaun I originally copied the player sprites into a SC-RAM bitmap, but I discovered that was taking up far too many cycles. With some help a better BLIT routine reduced the time required. But the final solution was to copy the pointers instead and rework the kernel to use the pointers instead of a bitmap.

 

(I don't know how many times I've reworked the kernel for Leprechaun. More than I care to count.)

Aye, I'm more than aware that ugly code will have to be written at some point, and some point -soon-.

 

Although I'm glad I randomly poke around the forums and stella in case I stumble upon things that'll help me in the days ahead. Which will bring me to my next blog entry.