Vincent Hamm

@vhamm
44 Followers
37 Following
20 Posts
Software engineer in the SF Bay area.
Ex-gamedev, worked at QuanticDream (HeavyRain), Havok (Destiny,...).
Retro gaming and reverse engineering, occasional graphic programmer.
Show threadVincent HammMar 2

@grumpygamer yeah for those cases you likely need to do an integration compute shader that will update each particles in parallel and then generate the rendering triangles for the render draw call.

Honestly, unless you go crazy with particles, you can likely just keep that on CPU for now, until it becomes a bottleneck.

Show threadVincent HammMar 2
@grumpygamer in a stateless particle system, you can figure out each particle position just from say, seed, time of start of the system and current time.
They are pretty constrained to what you can do with them.
(Also I'm unsure of the state of the art here)
Show threadVincent HammMar 2
@grumpygamer stateless here means, do you store the particle position/velocity, and integrate it each frame. If so, position/velocity is a state persistent between frame
Show threadVincent HammMar 2
@grumpygamer particles on gpu are easier if they are stateless (ie, you can infer every state from parameters + time).
If not, you need to first update all the parameters in say a compute shader pass, and then render that.
Vincent HammFeb 1
Dozer / ChristianJan 31

Reverse-engineering and documenting of the game Maniac Mansion on the C64

https://github.com/pditincho/mm-explained

This is ... mind-boggling stuff :)

I guess I should tag @grumpygamer and @DavidBFox too :)

GitHub - pditincho/mm-explained: Maniac Mansion C64 explained

Maniac Mansion C64 explained. Contribute to pditincho/mm-explained development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadVincent HammJan 31
Like, some old computer couldn't process sectors from floppy fast enough, and would interleave their order to give more processing time.
Each track could also be skewed by a few sectors.
Vincent HammJan 31

Over the past week, I've learned way too much about late 70s computers, CP/M and the various 5.25' floppy formats (hard sectored for the North Star Horizon).

I'm ready for trivia night.

It's interesting though to see how it all started, compared to what we take for granted on modern computers.

Show threadVincent HammJan 31

RE: https://mastodon.social/@vhamm/115869024135507533

@grumpygamer For anyone wondering, it went better than expected. Most were readable and a few will require a bit of help.

Show threadVincent HammJan 10
@grumpygamer no pressure 😅
Vincent HammJan 9

RE: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@grumpygamer/115861309567999248

If anyone is curious, there is actual documentation floating around for Byle:

https://tandell.com/misc/SCUMM-Tutorial-0.1.pdf#page=144