Comments for Seth Gorden

Comment on On Constraints by Seth Gorden

Seth Gorden — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:44:11 +0000

A fine point, sir. The more I dig into the technology of the old systems, and figure out how they got decent frame rates and smooth graphics with so little processing power… it’s humbling. I feel like I’ve got a grasp of the important aspects of NES-style rendering and I’ve put some of the concepts into practical useful code, and yet… it’s the tip of the iceberg. The engineers of that era, both hardware and software, were brilliant. And I feel more connected to the evolving progression of technology by understanding what has come before.

Comment on On Constraints by Brandon Mann

Brandon Mann — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:39:11 +0000

Good stuff Seth. Reading this reminds me of working on Plug n’ Play TV games, even though nothing creatively astounding came out of it. It was a good experience working on a platform that has limitations that are similar to a SNES. It is definitely a different mind set working with these limitations and they really help you from getting you head too far in the clouds. Also I have so much more respect for the people that created games such as Super Mario World and Final Fantasy VI… they are insanely smart.

Comment on On Error Checking by Seth Gorden

Seth Gorden — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:19:23 +0000

That is definitely a good point to consider non-programmer testers. Most of the places where I’ve been asserting have to do with bounds checking on arrays or other circumstances that lead to heap corruption, or similar (which can lead to serious crashes). In this case, before I “commit changes” or make code available to any other people, it would have to be verified as never causing those assert conditions. Though, I could see that being a potentially problematic policy to maintain in a larger company or team. Definitely don’t want one of those slip through the cracks and cause false crashes for designers or other QA folks! Thanks for the feedback, Aaron.