Why didn't most companies bother fixing slowdown?

[Aaendi]

The SNES got a lot of bad rap for slowdown, and games like "Space Megaforce" and "Wild Guns" and "Biometal" proved that it was capable of handling a lot of sprites without slowdown, yet most companies still kept reusing slow routines until the end of the system's lifespan.

It was not like they didn't have enough time to "fine tune" their code, because when your code is that inefficient, you have loads upon loads of optimizations you can make without any negative consequences.

[TL]

I think a lot of it was just lazy/shit coding.

I mean there are some 16-bit ports that have slowdown on the Jaguar like Zool 2 and Flashback and that is just unforgivable on a machine that powerful.

[rush6432]

Most companies were there to pump out games to make profit and as long as it wasnt truely horrid and a show-stopper they kept using the same stuff because it was already written and they were looking to make profit. Not to mention they probably had deadlines and as long as it worked and wasnt too bad they just kept re-using routines...

Not all game companies were like this but... its a business much like anything else. There really wasnt an indie scene then and people didnt take their time as much as they should have.

[Aaendi]

I never understood the whole laziness = slow code argument.  Wouldn't slow code take up more lines of code than fast code, therefore making it actually take longer to write slow code?

[Mire Mare]

I never understood the whole laziness = slow code argument.  Wouldn't slow code take up more lines of code than fast code, therefore making it actually take longer to write slow code?

Lazy coding slow down is a huge factor in conversions where source code isn't optimised for the hardware.

[rush6432]

I never understood the whole laziness = slow code argument.  Wouldn't slow code take up more lines of code than fast code, therefore making it actually take longer to write slow code?

Nope, contrary to belief you can do shortcuts in code that cost you dearly in system performance that dont take many lines...

But there are many ways to skin a cat...  one persons algorithm for say a tilemap could be different from another one..

[TrekMD]

Most companies were there to pump out games to make profit and as long as it wasnt truely horrid and a show-stopper they kept using the same stuff...

I think this hits the nail on the head.

[Aaendi]

I never understood the whole laziness = slow code argument.  Wouldn't slow code take up more lines of code than fast code, therefore making it actually take longer to write slow code?

Nope, contrary to belief you can do shortcuts in code that cost you dearly in system performance that dont take many lines...

But there are many ways to skin a cat...  one persons algorithm for say a tilemap could be different from another one..

Besides looping and subroutines, what other shortcuts are there?

[Gorf]

Unrolling your loops is a good trick on the Jaguar if you are running code out in main on the GPU(only as the DSP is useless out in main RAM). Fit all you can in the loop when you can and unroll the loop when ever possible. This is how you see those really crazy Atari 8 bit 3D demos going on out there. You save a lot of cycles avoiding jumps...especially on the Jaguar running out in the main RAM on the GPU...only.