Anatoly Shashkin💾
Golden Axe for MS-DOS featured smooth horizontal screen scrolling in EGA mode about a month before Commander Keen.
#DOSGaming
Apr 20, 2023 at 5:22pmWeb
Show threadnopefish Apr 20, 2023
@dosnostalgic i played both. Classics. These games are my childhood.
Show threadrainwarriorApr 20, 2023
@dosnostalgic Baal's DOS port was another one that I thought did surprisingly well at EGA with scrolling, though it's not using the full-screen wrapping method of Keen. It's just kinda efficient, and has a somewhat reduced viewport.
Show threadAnatoly Shashkin💾Apr 20, 2023
@rainwarrior Oh yeah, that's right! I just played it last week.
Show threadSHODAN Apr 20, 2023
@dosnostalgic For someone not in the know, what was the issue with scrolling on IBM PCs and clones at the time?
Show threadAnatoly Shashkin💾Apr 20, 2023
@SHODAN Mostly just bus speed bottleneck. You couldn't read/write the 4 separate planes of video buffer fast enough to move an entire screen's worth.
Show threadSHODAN Apr 20, 2023
@dosnostalgic That's interesting as someone who's always been fascinated by how the IBM PC platform became the video game powerhouse from what was basically an office machine at first.
Show threadAnatoly Shashkin💾Apr 20, 2023
@SHODAN I recommend reading Fabien Sanglard's Wolfenstein 3D book. It's not too technical (at least not as much as the Doom one,) and it highlights a lot of optimization challenges right upfront.
And the PDF is free:
https://fabiensanglard.net/three_books_update/index.html
Books update