On: Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."

[bad_user]

I used to do graphic demos in Pascal, in 286 mode, using hand-coded procedures in assembler for the graphics parts, using Mode X for buffering the animations, like 320x240 resolution, 256 colors and only one virtual screen (although more were possible).

Doing 3D was pretty cool too - I couldn't do fancy stuff, but I could display and rotate 3D objects, drawing only visible polygons, draw textures and even have simple lighting.

To me it seems weird how kids work these days. I don't know what a pixel shader is for instance.

[nitrogen → bad_user]

To me it seems weird how kids work these days. I don't know what a pixel shader is for instance.

Thanks for bringing up some nostalgia. A pixel shader is roughly analogous to a hand-optimized texturing routine, except it runs on the GPU.