“My game engine had a bug, in that it would draw frames as fast as it could” said Plummer. At the time, the game was being coded on a MIPS R4000 processor running at a mighty 200 MHz, which resulted in the game running at 60-90 fps, a speed Plummer judged as “plenty, for a game like that.”
We used to build Java games in a class, and the “cheat code” to every game was always open a shit ton of other stuff so the game ran slower than intended and was easier.
In Dark Souls, gravity is tied to frame rate and frame rate is locked to 30fps. When it was released on PC, a very popular mod unlocked that frame rate to whatever you wanted it to be. They cleverly included a workaround (the backspace key) to re-lock it for the two spots in the game where gravity matters.
Love the creativity here. If it works, it works!
Lots of games were like this way back in the day. I remember my dad has a 286 and had a DOS game called Deathtrack. You’re in a car with guns and you shoot other cars. First person view. "3D"ish where everything was just a wireframe polygon.
Ran fine in the 286. Then we got a 386 and it was totally unplayable because the moment the race started you had already crashed. It didn’t run 2x faster, it ran like 50x faster which was impossible to adapt to. The frame rate was governed only by the speed of the CPU. Wild shit.
Ah yes, the old turbo mode button was needed to fix.
“I need my car to have a turbo”
chops off 2 cylinders
“thanks bro runs so much better now”
TURBO MODE
Even Skyrim does this to some extent. IIRC the physics are tied to the framerate, so things get extra janky when you unlock it.
I played so much Deathtrack as a kid! On a 286 too. It was of course a bootleg copy, so I didn’t have the manual and had to guess the answers for the copy protection b questions…
Pretty sure my dad has a bootleg copy too. I think the answer to the copy protection were written down on paper lol.
Yep - I loved Privateer (one of the Wing Commander games). Once I installed it well after it came out (basically made for the 386) on a Pentium or something slightly better and it was fully unplayable. Bummer.
A bug which was later fixed by Raymond Chen.
The pinball game itself was licensed from Cinematronics/Maxis Full Tilt! Pinball, which had two additional tables as well as a sequel, both of which I still have on CD somewhere because I am a gigantic nerd.
Maxis: license game which would be available on the most popular and beloved OS of all time; along with making several iconic games around that time period
also Maxis: “we should sell out to EA”
Literally everyone: ???
It was always so smooth.
Software Turbo button.
The bug was fixed by another ex-Microsoft engineer, Raymond Chen. Speaking on Plummer’s other YouTube channel, Dave’s Garage, Chen fondly remembers adding a frame rate limiter, thereby reigning the game in to a 100 fps maximum.
And now that we have monitors running at over 100 Hz, that’s too low…
now
I am pretty sure CRTs could easily get over 100Hz depending on resolution.
