********************** The polygons of Another World
************There is a playful way to study the architecture of computers of the past. Find a piece of software you know well and try to find out how it was ported to these machine you don’t. A good choice would be DOOM. id Software’s 1994 mega-hit has been ported to everything. It is designed around a core with no layering violations. It is usually easy to find and read the implementation of its six I / O sub-systems.
An other choice would be Eric Chahi’s 2015 critically acclaimed
This series is a journey through the video-games hardware of the early s. From the Amiga 800, Atari ST, IBM PC, Super Nintendo, up to the Sega Genesis. For each machine, I attempted to discover how Another World was implemented. I found an environment made rich by its diversity where the now ubiquitous CPU / GPU did not exist yet. In the process, I discovered the untold stories of seemingly impossible problems heroically solved by lone programmers.In the best case I was able to get in touch with the original developer. In the worse cases, I found myself staring at disassembly. It was a fun trip. Here are my notes.
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Another World
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