--- In gbadev@yahoogroups.com, Groepaz <groepaz@g...> wrote:
> many games can work by just rewriting the actual graphics part.
> imagine anything along the lines of point-and-click adventures
> for example.

Likewise, the core gameplay code (tetanus.c) of Tetanus On Drugs
changed much less from PC to GBA than the I/O code did. Even on
a 16 MHz machine, I/O abstraction can be affordable.

> On Friday 08 August 2003 14:56, Colin Brown wrote:
>
> > * making changes during program execution would require
> > either an interpreted language(too slow)
>
> who tells you that its to slow? maniac mansion uses interpreted
> scripts on the c64 (1mhz,8bit cpu) and it obviously works ok.

Likewise, many e-reader games are written in bytecode that
resembles the machine language of the 6502 processor,
accessing I/O similar to that of the old Famicom game console.

> > or compilation on the fly (on a gba?)
>
> self modifying code?

Dynamic recompilation is relatively common in emulators.

> and unless you are writing an action-filled
> hi-tech shooter/arcade/whatever you can live with that.

Do Gradius and its ilk run at full speed in PocketNES?

> bugs in scripts can be located more easily (the script interpreter
> can help with finding them by itself, printing ill-conditions to
> console, whatever).

In debug builds of my GBA projects, I usually print ill-conditions
to an unused part of the layer I'm using for the status bar.

What is the fundamental difference between scripts and C anyway?

--
Damian