

Distellamap: Visualization of Atari 2600 Code and Data - scott_s
http://benfry.com/distellamap/

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CountHackulus
While in pac-man you can see a very clear main loop, where there's a target of
a whole bunch of jumps back, it's interesting to see that Q-Bert doesn't seem
to have a main loop at all and seems to be written in an event-based style.

These are really interesting visualizations, wish I could see visualizations
of modern 4K demos like this.

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RodgerTheGreat
To visualize a modern 4k you'd probably have to strip off the UPX (or similar)
executable packing and include symbolic names for all the external libraries
they call. Otherwise, this approach could work pretty well. Having no external
dependencies to speak of certainly makes old console games look tidy.

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Semiapies
Combat code "pathetically simplistic" in this view?

Nah, it looks _well-planned_.

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m-photonic
Combat, as the launch game for the 2600, was designed simultaneously with the
hardware itself. It had some influence on the way the hardware design evolved;
in a way, the 2600 hardware is kind of optimized for playing Combat. That
might be one reason why it can fit into a 2K cartridge while a typical 2600
game uses 4K.

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shawndumas
Hat Tip: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772615>

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jonhendry
It would be interesting if the blocks of code were labeled with what they do.

