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Simple Optimization Trick (lemmy.zip)

submitted 2 days ago by Maven@lemmy.zip to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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[-] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago

Before Doom (1993), almost all games were assembly.

Carmack wrote Wolfenstein 3d in C. Star Control and Dune 2 were C.

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 days ago

> almost

[-] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I used those as examples but I claim that most everything was C by the early 90's. The statement that C compilers got fast which allowed it isn't true. When a new compiler came out it was always a couple of percentage points faster than the old version. Meanwhile hardware was doubling in performance every two years.

C compilers didn't need much optimization because there wasn't much performance that could be optimized into code on the simple CPUs of 1992 when Doom was being written. CPU's weren't the superscalar multi core monsters they are today. A compiler couldn't take advantage of reordering instructions to use multiple adders because there was only one.

[-] frezik 6 points 2 days ago

Those games didn't have the splash that Doom did for this sort of thing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010105180900/http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/articles/devweek_c.shtm

Mainstream application programmers switched to C in the early 80's. Game developers were slower to switch, because their small teams and focus on performance kept assembly language viable till the following decade. When id Software released DOOM, they surprised much of the industry by having no reliance on assembly code--despite excellent game performance, and by successfully cross-developing the game (in NeXTstep and DOS), then successfully porting it to an astounding variety of platforms.