Re: [stella] optimization : sneaky fractional bit representation

Subject: Re: [stella] optimization : sneaky fractional bit representation
From: emooney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Erik Mooney)
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 15:15:00 GMT
>A while ago I wrote on encoding using sub-bit resolution.
>It just occurred to me WHY I needed to do this on the NES - it was involved
>with creating a password for a large game, so that the player could come
>back and rejoin where he/she left off.  There were quite a large number of
>parameters that needed to be saved/restored, but it all had to fit into 6
>LETTERS and a few punctuation marks (eg: EP-NZE).  That gave very few bits
>(30, to be exact), and sub-bit encoding was therefore a great idea.
>By the way, I remembered coz I need to do it for my 2600 project :)

That makes sense.  It also explains why nobody managed to reverse-engineer
any of the passwords (except the brain-dead Mega Man 3 system).  Don't
suppose you could let us in on the password generation scheme for any of
your NES games? :)

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