
How (and why) we ported Shenzhen Solitaire to MS-DOS - drops
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ZachBarth/20170828/304568/How_and_why_we_ported_SHENZHEN_SOLITAIRE_to_MSDOS.php
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theamk
The choice of 320x240 resolution with 256 colors on the VGA adapter is a
pretty strange one. I would think that 640x480 with 16 colors would be a much
better choice.

\- For a card game, you don't need much colors (white, black, red,
background), but resolution is critical, as there are many fine details.

\- 16 color mode has a special mode where one byte access can write a color to
up to 8 pixels. If you get this trick right, then filling large areas with
solid color or simple patterns (such as mostly-white card faces) will be even
faster than in 256-color mode.

\- Subjectively, high-resolution mode with almost square pixels is what makes
VGA special compared to EGA. How are you going to brag about you new shiny VGA
card if you cannot even show it off? :)

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b4ux1t3
Zachtronics is awesome. Not only do they make some of the best puzzle games in
the world, their write-ups are always full of juicy details.

I really liked their modern take on "retro" programming. I am not of the mind
that we need to start teaching every developer how to hack away at assembly,
but there's no denying that working on limited hardware (like what is still
found in embedded devices) benefits greatly from at least a passing
familiarity of it. I think that's kind of what their goal was and is with
games like TIS-100 and SHENZHEN I/O. Not necessarily to give seasoned assembly
hackers fun games to play, though it certainly does, but to give younger
programmers an idea of what working with low-level code can look like.

This article has made me want to re-install TIS-100 and see if I can;t finish
some of the levels I struggled with. . .

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mbroncano
I love Zachtronics games! One of the few complaints I have about them is, they
stopped maintaining (actually retired from the AppStore) SpaceChren for iOS. I
was happy enough playing the PC version but man it was a bummer. Shenzhen has
been also one of my all time favs from them.

My only request for them is please learn the lesson and don't hack a C# game
into iOS again! I understand the pain but supporting multiplatform games is
hard: do it the right way or just don't ...

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kayamon
Weird that they chose to make it harder for themselves and do it in 16-bit
code.

