Hi Thomas,
> Hm, I have never heard that. Can anybody confirm this information?
I'm still looking for it and I can't find it. It may have been one of thos late night reads where all the words kind of run together.
> Those are not "mistakes". I am sure you can optimize nearly endlessly
> and you (or somebody else) will always find at least one more byte.
> :-)
True, I've found a couple today while fishing through the code again. Before I posted I went through commenting. As I was commenting I noticed little things and removed them as I came across them.
> 1. Why so complicated?
Doh!!!
> 2. waste time efficient:
> You are often using two or more force extensions (.w) to waste a few
> cycles. You can replace two of them with nop and save a byte.
What was I thinking? :)
> 3. interleave data
> And if you are sure both are in the same page you can save a few more
> bytes. The same trick works for several other PAL/NTSC and animation
> tables too.
Simply BEAUTIFUL!!!
> 4. superfluous code:
> ; bcc .moveClimberRight
> bcs .doneHorizontalCalculations ; same as jmp but saves a byte
>
> .moveClimberRight
Maybe I need to code with my eyes open next time :)
> 5. use eor instead of cmp:
I LOVE IT!!!
> 7. another bit trick:
I've seen that one and meant to implement it but forgot :( Thanks!
> 8. more tricks with bits:
EXCELLENT!!
> 9. if your random number generator is good and random is at least once
> initialized to != 0 this code is superfluous:
> RandomByte SUBROUTINE
> lda random
> ; bne .skipInit
> ; lda #$FF
But if it's truely random, couldn't it eventually go to zero? Now that I think about it if I does ever produce a zero value then the values wouldn't be random anymore :)
> For the PAL/NTSC speeds I would suggest using fractional numbers for
> playerMotion. This also allows much finer tuning of the speeds for
> NTSC.
I think I catch what you're saying. I really struggled with what a fractional value meant. The delays seemed fine so I just stuck with them. Fab, get ready to fire up the 2600 again :)
Thanks again Thomas! You are helping me improve my "Kung-Fu" :)
Take care,
Dennis
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