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Re: Jason Jones interview
Posted By: M-ClassDate: 1/13/02 11:58 a.m.

In Response To: Re: Jason Jones interview (M-Class)

Q. For the point of view, when you finally get an image rendered, do you use CopyBits() to get it to the screen?

A. Exactly. CopyBits() is extremely fast.

Q. Did anything specific stand out when you did performance tuning or the design of the game in general?

A. I think the most important thing we did was remove the Mac operating system from the game as mush as possible. We call the MacOS to draw graphics, play sound, or get something from the keyboard. So we're not doing anything with windows. We're not calling our event loop- WaitNextEvent() rather- really often. We call it very infrequently. We're not handling mouse clicks through the operating system. Most of our graphics are bitmaps, so we're not doing a lot of line-drawing calls, rectangle-drawing calls, or other QuickDraw stuff. So really we don't use many OS calls, just Time Manager calls, CopyBits() and GetKeys().

Q. As you built the game, were there instances for which you realized the design was flawed? Flaws where you said, "Weneed to redesign this for better play," or "It's easier for somebody to navigate around if this code was changed"?

A. Marathon suffered that calamity many times. We did that with the maps. We changed the maps to make the game play different. And we did that with the game code as well. Especially the rendering engine. I forget the exact number, but it was fully rewritten at least three times. It also suffered a lot of small changes here and there. The texture-mapping routines underwent the same thing. They were fully rewritten at least twice. Other parts of the game had the same thing happen. You wrote something and it doesn't work, then you fix it. A lot of times when you do something for the first time, it doesn't work. That happened a lot.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Jason Jones interviewAndrew Nagy 1/9/02 8:31 a.m.
     Also, while playing Marathon 2 the other day...Andrew Nagy 1/9/02 9:10 a.m.
     Re: Jason Jones interviewHamish Sinclair 1/9/02 9:17 a.m.
           Re: Jason Jones interviewwhocares 1/9/02 11:31 a.m.
           Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 2:51 p.m.
                 Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 3:11 p.m.
                       Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 3:24 p.m.
                             Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 3:43 p.m.
                                   Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 3:54 p.m.
                                         Cool. Are you going to continue? *NM*Hamish Sinclair 1/9/02 9:28 p.m.
                                               HAMISH!!Khral 1/10/02 2:39 a.m.
                                                     Re: HAMISH!!Hamish Sinclair 1/10/02 3:11 a.m.
                                               yep, I got sleepy last night *NM*M-Class 1/10/02 10:58 a.m.
                                         Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/10/02 11:17 a.m.
                                               Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/10/02 11:34 a.m.
                                                     Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 9:43 a.m.
                                                           Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 10:06 a.m.
                                                                 Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 10:31 a.m.
                                                                       Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 10:44 a.m.
                                                                             Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 11:01 a.m.
                                                                                   Many thanks *NM*Hamish Sinclair 1/12/02 12:22 p.m.
                                                                                   Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/13/02 11:08 a.m.
                                                                                         Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/13/02 11:31 a.m.
                                                                                               Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/13/02 11:58 a.m.
                                                                                                     Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/13/02 12:27 p.m.
                                                                                                           Many thanks. *NM*Hamish Sinclair 1/14/02 12:14 p.m.
                 Re: Jason Jones interviewDan Aris 1/10/02 2:13 p.m.
                 I have this Book! I will sell it if anyone wants!Ernie TMBM 1/11/02 2:53 p.m.
                       Re: I have this Book! I will sell it if anyone wanHamish Sinclair 1/12/02 9:05 a.m.
                             Re: I have this Book! I will sell it if anyone wanErnie 1/15/02 12:39 p.m.
                             Re: I have this Book! I will sell it if anyone wanErnie 1/15/02 12:40 p.m.
           Re: Jason Jones interviewVid Boi 1/10/02 2:20 a.m.



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