Comment by dmbaggett
5 years ago
You probably know this, but for the benefit of others: this technique of using the vertical blank interrupt to run code was very common in the 8-bit (Atari/Apple/C64) era. In fact you really couldn't write a decent game without hooking the vertical blank interrupt (and often the per-scanline horizontal interrupt as well).
It's interesting that you were able to adapt this technique to PS1 hardware; does that game run properly under emulators or does it give them fits?
Indeed: that's where I learned it, having written both H/VBLANK ISRs on the beloved 8-bit Atari I grew up with. HBlank ISRs were needed to get more than 4 + 1 player-missile (sprites) to work.
I don't know if the game runs on emulators, but I know it runs correctly on a mid-generation PS3 and I'd expect that VBlank interrupt handling would be implemented by an emulator, so I'd expect it should work.
PS: Massive, massive respect for you and the rest of the Crash team. When that game came out, we couldn't comprehend how you were able to pull off that game on the same hardware we were using. Much respect (and thanks for the great gaming memories)!
Thank you so much for the kind words. We took huge technical risks and got really lucky.