Mobile Development News

DevX has a new J2ME article on fixed point math.

Once upon a time, game programmers had to write code in assembler and make many other optimizations to deliver games that ran well even with the slow processors and small memory address spaces available then. Today, processors running at gigahertz speed and hundreds of megabytes of RAM help programmers climb out of the Black Programming Art Tower—a place where only a few could survive.

In fact, the power unleashed by modern PCs is so huge, even compared to computers only ten years ago, that programmers began ignoring the optimizations and creating high-quality games that require increasing amounts of processor power, memory, and disk space. These less-optimized games have proven at least as addictive as the earlier games. In other words, the massive increase in computing power simplified game programming by removing the need for the very knowledge and optimizations that once made game programming an arcane art. For a while it seemed as if the Black Programming Art Tower was closed for good. Only a small number of game companies still push our desktop computers to the edge.

But history repeats itself. The handhelds and mobile devices gaining devotees today have characteristics very similar to the less-powerful desktop computers of the past. Small-footprint devices are back—but if you want great games-to-go, they bring with them the need to master obscure optimization techniques. One such optimization involves fixed-point math.

Read more here at DevX.