I remember you talking of this before, and I looked at your employer's website. What kind of code are you tackling? The really nitty gritty console specific stuff? Is it strange working in a world where save games are as large as the Dungeon?

From Dan Pinal <danp--massmedia.com> on 21 Sep 2003:

> Ken and I work at the same game company in Southern Cal. Same name as
> my
> email. Both of us work on the lower level technical side of the games
> and
> do this for the 3 consoles. Matter of fact it's 8:30PM on Sunday and
> here
> I am at work trying to debug somebody else's code and waiting on a DVD
> to
> burn. No rest for the wicked, I called Ken about an hour ago and yanked
>
> him away from dinner. I ain't suffering alone, heheh <evil grin>.
>
> Dan
>
> At 08:11 PM 9/21/2003 -0700, Darryl Giors wrote:
>
> >Dan,
> >
> >I can't remember if you have discussed your current employment etc. on
> our
> >board but I for one would like to know what you have been up to of
> late.
> >It's interesting to me to know what each of the creators of AR are
> doing
> >these days. Kindly disregard this message if you would prefer to
> remain
> >private ;)
> >
> >That info about the mip-mapping is quite interesting. I like the idea
> the
> >16 bit crew had about decimating rows and columns to save memory (1
> texture
> >instead of many).
> >
> >Cheers,
> >
> >Darryl Giors
> >
> >Lance, of the City of Xebec's Demise
> >
> >Tyr, wielder of the Eater of Evil, wrought by the Dwarven Smithy of the
> >Dungeon.
> >
> >At 02:21 PM 9/21/03 -0700, you wrote:
> > >Uhhh, I forget. Ken would remember, he wrote that part. I think it
> uses a
> > >simple Z test but it may have been optimized to use a simple ray
> casting
> > >type tests at certain intervals. This is how the Dungeon was able to
> > >support arches , windowed doors and windows. We had windows in wall
> at one
> > >point which were supposed to give you a teaser view in a hard to get
> area,
> > >but we didn't like the look. Without bumpmapping or anything else
> they
> > >looked rather odd.
> > >
> > >I say simple because it had to be, getting the priority and order of
> what
> > >the viewer sees from what he is able to see is very CPU intensive or
> memory
> > >intensive for pre-generated tables of what the user can see. The
> Dungeon
> > >doesn't use the vertical wall mirroring trick the City was able to,
> arches
> > >would look funny flipped upside down.
> > >
> > >I'm not sure how easy it would be to make the 8 bit Dungeon view pan
> 360
> > >degrees, but I did see it on 16 bit Amiga and Atari ST versions.
> One
> > >thing Ken did which I still think is very cool is coming up with the
> idea
> > >of mip-maps. The 16 bit guys went a different route. They opted for
> > >single "texture" that had a table for which columns and rows would be
> > >decimated as it was scaled. To my knowledge the Dungeon is certainly
> the
> > >first game that ever used mip-maps, we didn't even have a name for
> > >it. Perhaps the first use of it ever.
> > >
> > >I'll go kick Ken's chair on Monday and see if he can shed some light
> on the
> > >raycasting issue.
> > >
> > >Dan
> > >
> >
> >
> >
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