Re: [stella] New scrolling text cart available

Subject: Re: [stella] New scrolling text cart available
From: "woloch.kurt. :E2-RB.BRZ.BMF.GV" <kurt.woloch@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 13:31:47 +0200
OK, I couldn't resist. I disassembled your cart image from Randy's site
using Distella, and now I know why you don't make it to fit more text into
your program:

Apparently, you're storing the whole text as animations! This way, every bit
that has to go through the scrolling process requires a whole byte of the
(very limited) storage space. Of course, you could as well store whole
animations this way, but for scrolling images, I find this to be very
inefficient. As if the CPU wouldn't know how to shift images!
Sorry if this sounds like I'd offend you, I'm only a bit... disappointed of
your programming skills.
OK, this way, you use up only 5 bytes off the VCS's internal RAM, but come
on! It still has got 128 of 'em!

This way, of course, for your cart your calculations make sense, and the
scrolling engine may in fact be very small, but this causes a very
inefficient way of data storage, which in the end leaves much less text
space than a more sophisticated engine with an efficient data storage. Well,
there also have been improvements from Pac-Man to Ms. Pac-Man...

With love (and many improvements to make)

Kurt Woloch

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