Re: is nmi translator off limits?

["James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Langston wrote:
> 
> It's not really a cop out, IMO.  I'm a gamer myself.  I have a
> fairly decent, 80% of max speed at the time.  Game works fine,
> looks good.  Then they come out with an expansion pack.  Requires
> more video memory.  But it looks SO much better.
. . .
> The fact is, you are not going to get realistic looking 3d rendering
> in real time at a very high FPS on an 8088 no matter how you code
> it, even at the system level.
. . .

Dear Mr. Langston (et al.):

I'm afraid you seem to be missing the point.

1. Games are an inherently frivolous application. Therefore, the last
thing they should be doing is forcing people to constantly replace their
hardware with something bigger and faster. It's bad enough when
business, scientific, process control, and engineering applications do
this, but fare worse when games do it.

2. It wasn't all that long ago that games were judged by how much
intellectual stimulation they provided, and could be mega-hits without
graphics, much less 3D rendering. I suspect that even today, there may
be more people alive who've played the Zork Trilogy (or the original
mainframe Zork) than have played "Tomb Raider."

3. My own theory is that snowballing demands on processing power and
memory are the direct result of hardware manufacturers bending over
backwards to give developers the biggest, fastest new toys. That's why I
prefer to do development work on the oldest, slowest machines capable of
running the software: if something is inefficient, I know about it right away.

4. I should hope that, as an MI programmer and a member of the MI list,
you'd have some interest in efficiency, too.

-- 
James H. H. Lampert
Professional Dilettante
http://www.hb.quik.com/jamesl
Have you visited http://www.thehungersite.com today?
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