Why do games call system(32) for "more" prompts?

RealNC · Post by **RealNC** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:43 pm

I recently noticed that almost every game seems to eat up CPU cycles when just waiting for a key press after showing a "more" prompt. They seem to do the following:

Code: Select all

while not key
&#123;
    system&#40;32&#41;
    key = system&#40;11&#41;
&#125;

I'm wondering what the reasoning is. I would have expected a "pause" statement instead of generating CPU load on something that should be a simple wait operation?

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:13 pm

It's used as a fancy cursor-hider during "press a key" type things. Honestly, I was unsure how much processing power such a trick would use up. If it's really drastic, I could change it so the cursor goes to the status window (which should be hidden in Hugor, right? even though it'd still show in the old official 'terp).

RealNC · Post by **RealNC** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 4:35 pm

Roody_Yogurt wrote:It's used as a fancy cursor-hider during "press a key" type things.

OK, that makes sense. I forgot about the blinking cursor hack in Hugor.

Honestly, I was unsure how much processing power such a trick would use up. If it's really drastic, I could change it so the cursor goes to the status window (which should be hidden in Hugor, right? even though it'd still show in the old official 'terp).

I assume you mean RoodyLib. No, I think keeping it as-is is a good idea. The CPU load can be reduced in Hugor itself, as right now it does some unnecessary screen repaints that I can cut down on. Since there's no output from the game during the delay/getkey loop, getting rid of the repaints should reduce the CPU load.

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:15 pm

Yeah, I meant in Roodylib, since it has a HiddenPause routine for "press a key" type stuff (although it's based on some Future Boy! code so it shows up in spots there, too).