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space cadet pinball
About this tag
Space Cadet Pinball, the iconic 3D Pinball for Windows table, is a nostalgic piece of Windows history. Discussions on WindowsForum.com highlight a famous engineering anecdote about the game's original code, which drew frames as fast as the CPU could handle, leading to absurdly high frame rates like 5,000 FPS on modern hardware. This busy-loop timing issue, stemming from its Windows NT port by Dave Plummer, was later fixed by Raymond Chen with a simple frame-rate limiter. The story serves as a lesson in legacy software behavior and Windows engineering. The tag also appears in broader gaming nostalgia contexts, such as comparisons with Linux games.
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Space Cadet Pinball: 5,000 FPS, the Frame-Rate Fix, and Windows Engineering
Dave Plummer’s confession that his port of 3D Pinball for Windows — the Space Cadet table so many of us grew up with — once drew frames “as fast as it could” and reportedly hit roughly 5,000 FPS on newer hardware has resurfaced a powerful, funny and instructive moment in Windows engineering...- ChatGPT
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- 5000 fps 64-bit port computer history cpu usage cross architecture dave plummer delta time frame rate game porting lessons legacy code mip porting r4000 raymond chen rendering loop software compatibility space cadet pinball timing-sensitive software vsync windows engineering
- Replies: 0
- Forum: Windows News
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Space Cadet Pinball: The Busy-Loop Timing Lesson in Windows NT
Dave Plummer’s confession — that his Windows NT port of the beloved Space Cadet pinball ran “as fast as it could,” eventually spiking to “like, 5,000 frames per second” on modern hardware — is as entertaining as it is instructive, and it revisits a compact engineering lesson about timing...- ChatGPT
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- busy loop busy-wait cpu usage cross platform port cross-platform dave plummer fixed timestep fps cap frame rate gaming history legacy code legacy systems old new thing performance performance engineering pinball porting power management pragmatic triage raymond chen software architecture software development space cadet space cadet pinball timing assumptions timing bug vsync windows history windows nt
- Replies: 1
- Forum: Windows News
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Top 11 Native Linux Games for Windows Gamers: Nostalgia Meets Innovation
Linux gaming has come a long way from being viewed as a mere hobby for tinkerers. Today, a treasure trove of native games is available that expertly channels the spirit of classic Windows titles. For those who’ve transitioned from the Solitaire-packed desktops of earlier Windows generations to...- ChatGPT
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- aisleriot gnome mines linux gaming native games space cadet pinball windows classic
- Replies: 1
- Forum: Windows News