1994: My book about Rolling Your Own Professional Video Game back in 1993

July. 23rd, 2006 22:09 by Stéphane de LucaPermalink | TrackBack: https://stephanedeluca.com/trackback/344 — updated on Nov. 18th, 2018 05:26 exists for 17 years & 8 months ago - .

During 1993 and 1994 I wrote a book for Addison Wesley about how to create a professionnal video game on PCs.

At that time, you had to know a lot about the underlying hardware and to be fluent in assembly language and C or C++.

Reminding the Intel 386 and its 32-bit protected memory model for instance? In that mode, you were able to address all the memory at once, avoiding to deal with EMS (Extended Memory System).

And what about the various graphics card that were on the market at that time? Each chipset had to be adressed specifically with the relevant asm code and port management. And by 1993, no much — not to say none — information was available, including on the Internet.

The sound cards? Do you remember the Gravis Ultra Sound?

And what to say of the interrupts for DOS?

Read the excerpt (in french only) to see how — in this area, Bob Dylan was true — things have dramatically changed.

Download the excerpt