(Topic ID: 235388)

Code - explain to me .......

By Wotto

5 years ago


Topic Heartbeat

Topic Stats

  • 35 posts
  • 23 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 5 years ago by legtod2
  • Topic is favorited by 2 Pinsiders

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#20 5 years ago

What takes the majority of the time can be divided up 2 ways:

(1) Preplanning.... flesh out what you want the code to do and how/where to store things (unless your OS does that for you or you have unlimited resources)

or, failing (1)....

(2) debugging. Lots, and lots, of debugging.

All the manufacturers had code libraries back in the day. I think Williams had it the easiest for new programmers since they could get a really basic game up and flipping pretty easily, and then some light stuff could be added (this is specifically referring to system 6, and to a lesser extent system 7. 6 was actually easier to implement if you followed the template)

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#22 5 years ago
Quoted from TheLaw:

I understand bug fixes and weird things no one can see, but they already have had it all worked out, why did it take so long?

Time, testing, tweaking.... that's assuming they had what they wanted the modes to do planned out in advance. With the rock pins it's just a bit harder because you'd probably want to synchronize light shows with the beat of the music and stuff like that. (For a comparison, the rumor always was on Monster Bash that Lyman took 8 months to code it, but over 1/2 of that time was getting the phantom flip working. That is a lot of tweaking....)

Some of the stuff only other programmers noticed - there was a lot of synch work on Twlight Zone that Ted Estes rightfully got credit from his peers for. Most people probably don't notice any of it though.

#33 5 years ago
Quoted from jwilson:

Plus it depends on your tools as well. Until recently, all light shows were coded *by hand* - ie. the programmer would write code to say "lamp 1 on for 500ms" and then "lamp 1 off, lamp 2 on for 500ms" and so on. That kind of thing takes *forever*. It was certainly my least favourite part. So much little tweaking here and there in the polishing phase. I don't know how they do it, I wanted to eat a bullet after a few hours.

I did a couple light shows on old classic stern games and I ended up using Excel to add in lamps etc. but all the timing had to be entered by hand.

I'd guess that writing a light sequencer tool might be just as quick as just doing it by hand, and you'd have to tweak stuff anyway. If they did have such a tool, I wouldn't doubt that different coders would want to 'break out' of that mold anyway to do something with their own flair.

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