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.------<------<------<-----.
v CHAPTER 4 : MAKING LOOPS ^
'------>------>------>-----'
This chapter really is different in many ways to the last two. It is not
aimed at getting sound, music or interaction directly, but it shows you the
basics on how to make a fast and effecient loop for all of your routines.
You want to plot someting like 80 pixels on your Falcon true color screen.
You know that every pixel is one word(16-bits). You can do either this:
repeat the command that moves a word 80 times in your code (this is called
"unrolling" or "hardcoding"), OR this: You can use a loop...
Let's take a look at falcon-pixel plotting routines:
moveq #0,d0 * Prepare d0 for being a counter.
loop: move.w #$ffff,(a0)+ * Do one pixel and move to the next.
addq.w #1,d0 * Increase the counter.
cmpi.w #80,d0 * If the counter isn't 80 > again.
bne.s loop
As you can see every loop-structure consists of an initialising part,
a processing part and a part to do loop-household things.
Well, this is reasonable. At least it is smaller than repeating the command
every time in your code.. But it's slower. And if it's one thing we don't
want in assembly it's slow code!
The first step to faster code is:
moveq #80-1,d7 * initialize counter
loop: move.w #$ffff,(a0)+ * do one pixel and move to the next
dbra d7,loop * Subtract 1 from d7.w and loop
* until d7=-1
There you have it. If you're not using the counter for other purposes, you
can just as well use a dbra loop. It's simply much faster!
There are many ways to get this loop even faster, but you'll read more about
that in the next chapter.
Nested loops are a bit more complicated then this and I can hear you asking
what 'nested' actualy means. A 'nested' loop means 'a loop in a loop'! Wow!
That sounds GrOoVy! Like true industrial, man!!
A good example of a nested loop would be something like clearing the left
half of the screen. Again this situation goes for Falcon true color, but the
same can easily be adapted to the ST-low resolution.
move.l #screenaddress,a0 * Screenaddress in a0.
move.w #200-1,d7 * Initialize for bigloop.
bigloop:
move.w #160-1,d6 * Initialize for loop.
loop: clr.w (a0)+ * Clear one pixel and move to the next.
dbra d6,loop * Loop 160 times.
adda.l #160*2,a0 * Move to next line.
dbra d7,bigloop * Loop 200 times.
Note that the screen is 320 pixels wide so the half is 160 pixels wide. When
you've cleared those 160 pixels you need to adjust a0 by adding the length
in bytes of the 160 pixels. This brings you to the beginning of the next
line.
As you can see d7 is now reserved for 'bigloop' and d6 is reserved for
'loop'. This automatically means you can never have more than 7 nested loops
because you only have 8 data registers. It's ofcourse possible to backup
the registers and restore them again, but the more memory accesses.. the
slower it will get.
Ofcourse the power of loops isn't only repeating the same operations over
and over again without using up much space. They can also be used to make
code more flexible. A flexible loop can for instance allow copying/drawing
differently sized blocks or maybe show a starfield from whatever angle you
want simply by putting some different values and addresses into registers
before running them.
We're now gonna go up a level to see how you could construct very big loops.
If you have a game you need to rebuild your paying-screen every so often.
For this you need a really complicated loopstructure. If you checked out my
last book, you might know that I explained something about game-loops. I'm
gonna do more or less the same, but now in assembler.
Here's the situation:
* We want our background refreshed everytime.
* We want our enemy sprites moved accordingly to their programming and they
can react to the main-player too.
* We want the sprites displayed with animation and some FX like explosions
too.
* We want our main sprite drawn in the same way.
* We want a nice panel at the side of the screen that shows realtime
statistics.
* We want to check for joystick input and read it and check if the spacebar
is pressed (spacebar exits the game)
The loop will look somthing like this:
mainloop:
bsr HANDLE_INPUT * Read stick+keys and update variables.
bsr HANDLE_BACKGROUND * Initialize position+masks+animation.
bsr HANDLE_MAINSPRITE * Handle collision+masks+speed+weapons.
bsr HANDLE_ENEMIES * Do same for all the enemies.
bsr PLOT_BACKGROUND * Put the background in screenbuffer.
bsr PLOT_MAINSPRITE * Put the main sprite in screenbuffer.
bsr PLOT_ENEMIES * Put the enemies in screenbuffer.
bsr WAIT_VBL * Wait for the VBL (no flicker).
bsr SWAP_SCREENS * Swap screens (no flicker).
tst.b spacepress * Test for space.
beq.s mainloop * if no spacepress > again
As you can see you divide all the hard work into subroutines. The
subroutines theirselves aren't in here, because it's irrelevant and it would
be far too much work.
About the order of subroutines.. The checking for input from hardware
decives MUST always be seperated in big loops. If you don't you're bound to
get crashes all over the place! If you simply let your program read joystick
input everywhere, you mess the code up so hard that even yourself won't know
what you did. Also note that you musn't put the call to HANDLE_INPUT
inbetween other routine-calls. If you do that you'll mess up the position
of your main-sprite.
The handling routines come in second. You should also keep these together.
They only calculate the frames, position and what FX are necesary. After
that, the plotting routines do the rest.
Then there is some waiting for the VBL. You should now what that is from
chapter 2. Also the screenbuffers are swapped, which also has to do with
flickerless animation. I'll explain that later on. It's absolutely
essential that you keep these together in the right order and do them
AFTER THE PLOTTING!
Finally a byte is tested to see if the looping can continue or not. This
byte is updated by the HANDLE_INPUT routine.
BTW for those of you that don't know how subroutines work I'd like to
explain it. It's quite important for the understanding of structures.
OK, when you use a bsr or 'branch to subroutine' the 680x0 remembers the
position of the following instruction. Then it jumps to a label and executes
all the instructions untill it reaches a 'rts' (return from subroutine).
Then it jumps back to the saved location. Just look at the picture:
Step 1: |Step 2:
=/\====-------------------+=/\====------------------
....... | .......
.... | ....
move.w #1,d0 | move.w #1,d0
-> bsr routine | bsr routine
rol.l #1,d0 | rol.l #1,d0
..... | .....
... | ...
. | .
. | .
. | .
routine: | routine:
..... | -> .....
... | ...
..... | .....
rts | rts
Step 3: |Step 4:
=/\====-------------------+=/\====------------------
....... | .......
.... | ....
move.w #1,d0 | move.w #1,d0
bsr routine | bsr routine
rol.l #1,d0 | -> rol.l #1,d0
..... | .....
... | ...
. | .
. | .
. | .
routine: | routine:
..... | .....
... | ...
..... | .....
-> rts | rts
(Yeh! Now I'm real proud of myself that I made cool ASCII art again!)
The little arrow is the current postion where the 680x0 is executing the
instructions.
Using this bsr/rts combination is very common in most programs and it is
damn handy. It has the following advantages:
* Allows repetitive use of same piece of code without having to copy it.
* Allows the code to be called from different positions in the code.
* Makes loops more readable.
Ofcourse using this technique is only handy in places where not much speed
is required. In the 'mainloop'-example this is the case! But beware when
calling from within the innermost nested loops!
A situation like the following will drasticly decrease the execution speed
of a loop structure:
movea.l screen_address,a0 * Set a0 to the first pixel on screen.
move.w #200-1,d7 * Prepare for 200 outer loops.
yloop: bsr DRAW_LINE * Call routine to draw a screenline.
adda.w #160,a0 * Set a0 to next screenline.
dbra d7,yloop
* INPUT: a0: startaddress of screenline
DRAW_LINE:
move.w #320-1,d7 * Prepare to loop 320 times.
xloop: bsr PLOT_PIXEL
* Go to next pixel here..
dbra d7,xloop
rts
* INPUT: a0: address of actual pixel
PLOT_PIXEL:
* Code goes in here..
rts
This piece of code is well readable, but sadly it lacks speed. A bsr/rts
combination everytime a pixel is drawn is a bad idea. It causes enormous
overhead. So only use them in outer loops. This makes the global structure
of the program look somewhat better and easier to modify at high level.
The innerloops should best be kept without bsr/rts, saving/restoring of
registers (d0 to a6) and other costly instructions.
So, when you start coding on loopstructures you always come across the well-
known two tradeoffs: speed and readability/adaptability. Coder's opinions on
those two differ most of the time. Some people like their code completely
readable, some optimise every byte, some make a mix of the two.
Whether you do or don't make everything optimised, you should always consider
this way of working with optimisation in loops.
1) First of all, lay out your loop-structure from the highest level. Get your
code running and please don't think about speed yet.
2) Check out where the bottleneck in the loop is. This is mostly (always :))
the loop nested deepest.
3) Then only optimise these innerloops. Remove unneeded branches/subroutine
jumps, replace costly instructions with cheaper ones (or combinations of
cheaper ones), reduce flexibility by using simpler logic and instructions,
etc, etc.
4) If you're a perfectionist you can also optimise other pieces of code besides
the most inner loop. This often is the step where the code becomes
unreadable and it's wise to only do this when you want to release your
final product (i.e. game, program or demo).
Using this method you keep a good overall view AND get the speed where it is
needed most.
Let's conclude this chapter with a practical example. A loop that reads a table
with sprite-positions and plots sprites on screen accordingly. To begin with we
setup our initial sluggish, but readable code. Please note that the sprite-
routine is for Falcon highcolor, just to keep it simple.
*==============================================================================
* :STep _/I\_ Laying out the STructure:
******** CODE MEMORY SECTION ********
TEXT
* Routine that draws all sprites in the spritetable.
DRAW_SPRITETABLE:
lea sprite_table,a0 * Get the spritetable.
move.w number_of_sprites,d0 * Get the number of sprites.
moveq #0,d1 * Initialize loopcounter.
draw_sprite_loop:
movem.l d0-d1/a0,-(sp) * Save used registers.
move.w (a0)+,d0 * Get X center of sprite.
move.w (a0)+,d1 * Get Y center of sprite.
bsr.s DRAW_SPRITE * Jump to the spriteroutine.
movem.l (sp)+,d0-d1/a0 * Restore used registers.
addq #4,a0 * Goto next sprite.
addq.w #1,d1 * Increase the loopcounter.
cmp.w d0,d1 * If not all sprites are done:
bne.s draw_sprite_loop * then loop once again.
rts
* Routine that draws a 16*16 highcolor sprite on screen at a given position.
* INPUT: d0.w: center X coordinate of sprite
* d1.w: center Y coordinate of sprite
DRAW_SPRITE:
movea.l #screen,a0 * Get address of the screen.
movea.l #sprite,a1 * Get address of the sprite.
subq.w #16/2,d0 * Get left position of sprite.
subq.w #16/2,d1 * Get right position of sprite.
add.l d0,d0 * / Calculate sprite's
mulu.w #320*2,d1 * | offset on
add.l d0,d1 * \ the screen.
adda.l d1,a0 * Add offset to the screenaddy.
move.w #16-1,d7 * Setup Y loopcounter.
yloop: move.w #16-1,d6 * Setup X loopcounter.
xloop: move.w (a1)+,(a0)+ * Plot one pixel and goto next.
dbra d6,xloop
adda.w #(320-16)*2,a0 * Goto to next screenline.
dbra d7,yloop
rts
******** DATA MEMORY SECTION ********
DATA
number_of_sprites:
DC.W 4 * four sprites in our table
sprite_table:
DC.W 167,89 * X and Y centers of sprite 1
DC.W 23,156 * X and Y centers of sprite 2
DC.W 230,53 * X and Y centers of sprite 3
DC.W 97,170 * X and Y centers of sprite 4
sprite: INCBIN SPRITE.SPR * Include 16*16 binary sprite.
******** RESERVED MEMORY SECTION ********
BSS
screen: DS.W 320*200 * Reserve a 320*200 HC screen.
*==============================================================================
*==============================================================================
* :STep -=< II >=- Finding the bottleneck:
Well... You found the innermost loop yet? Ofcourse, it's the "xloop" inside
the "yloop" inside "DRAW_SPRITE". If you look closely you'll notice there are
4 sprites to draw and the sprites are 16*16=256 pixels to draw.
This equals a total of 4*256 = 1024 pixels to means 1024 (!) times the xloop
is executed!! (I the sound of that word "executed" :-])
If you check out the relevance on the other loops, you'll see that an equal
amount is done in "yloop" and quite alot more is done in "draw_sprite_loop".
This might be true, but "yloop" is done only 4*16 = 64 times and
"draw_sprite_loop" is done a mere 4 times.
A close study of how much the each loop costs gives the following results:
xloop: approx. 12 clockcycles on 68030 (without cachehit)
yloop: approx. 10 clockcycles
draw_sprite_loop: approx. 70 clockcycles
Then multiply this by the number of times each loop is done.
xloop: 12 * 1024 = 12288 cycles
yloop: 10 * 64 = 640 cycles
draw_sprite_loop: 70 * 4 = 280 cycles
It's very clear that xloop is the bottleneck here and hell, you needn't even
do the calculations in this case, it's all quite evident. As soon as you know
the innerloop, it's settled.
*==============================================================================
* :STep -=> III <=- Optimising the innerloop:
How to some perform some serious clockcycle hackin' procedures on tha xloop's
ass?!?! Well.. You could always unroll the loop.
yloop:
xloop: move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
move.w (a1)+,(a0)+
adda.w (320-16)*2,a0
dbra d7,yloop
Yep... this eliminates the move.w #16-1,d6 as well as the dbra 16,xloop. This
reduces the number of cycles for a pixel from 12 to 10. Very smart, but this
code looks kinda chunky. AND... There is still a way to reduce the size of the
code and speed it up even more!
yloop:
xloop: movem.l (a1)+,d0-d6/a2 * Move 16 pixels into regs and
* goto next spriteline.
movem.l d0-d6/a2,(a0) * Move 16 pixels onto screen.
adda.w #320*2,a0
dbra d7,yloop
The movem.l instruction is specialized for moving large amount of LONGs in/out
of the registers. In this example we move 8 LONGs (d0,d1,d2,d3,d4,d5,d6 and a2)
and every LONG is two highcolor pixels. So 8 * 2 = 16 pixels.
But how fast is this really? Well, according to the literature about
cyclefucking on the Falcon, this should be about 140 cycles for the pair, so
140 / 16 = a bit less than 9 cycles for a pixel. And hey, that's just a bit
faster.
Let's check out the score so far:
Old number of cycles: 12288 + 320 + 280 = 12888
Now for the new timings.. The xloop doesn't exists anymore.. All that's left
is a pair of movem's. The total time for the yloop is something like 140+8 =
148.
New number of cycles: 148*64 + 280 = 9752
This means a ((12888/9752) - 1) * 100% = 32 % speed increase!
*==============================================================================
* :STep /|\ IV /|\ Perfection:
Yes kids, grandpa Earx sure met a few freaks in his lifetime. People who won't
give up till they killed every redundant bit of code and counted every single
cycle (Hi Defjam, Llama and mr. Ni!). =)
I know some coders that don't give a damn about excessive optimisation, but
still it might be nice to optimise this example a bit further, eventhough
there isn't more than a few percent in speed to gain.
Let's start with the most inner loop again. This now is "yloop". As you can
see you could unroll this loop also, but you've now already seen the principle
of this, so we'll focus on something else..
The adda.w #320*2,a0 is quite slow, because the immediate data in the
instruction (the number 320*2) needs to be fetched every time this instruction
is done by the CPU. A better option is to put the number in a register and add
with this register everytime. This should save maybe 3 or 4 cycles every loop
(shock, horror!).
Also, you could optimise "draw_sprite_loop" quite a bit more by keeping track
of which registers are used in "DRAW_SPRITE" so you don't use overlapping
registers and hence needn't do the register-(re)storing. Furthermore the
addq.w/cmp.w/bne.s combination can be transformed into a simple dbra which is
more efficient.
Phew.. That's it. Ok, hope you learned something from this looping bussiness.
The summary:
Clockcycle: A single tick generated by the CPU-clockcrystal. An
instruction takes up a number of these ticks. Some
instructions take less cycles than others.
Dbra instruction: Nothing to do with certain female bodyparts, but
actually an instruction often used to keep count of the
number of loops done and decide whether to reloop or
terminate the loop.
Hardcoding: A term often used to describe optimising a piece of code
completely and only to one specific situation. This
mostly leads to exceedingly speedy, but also very
unreadable and chunky code. The word is often used too
instead of "unrolling".
Loop: A piece of code that is reran by the CPU.
Mainloop: A term mostly used for the most important loop in a
program.
Nested loop: A loop within another loop.
Overhead: The time wasted when executing a certain piece of code
in a specific case. Highly adaptable code mostly suffers
from huge amounts of overhead. Highly specialised code
has minimal overhead.
Subroutine: A block of code terminated with a "rts" instruction.
Yes, basicly that's all there is to it.. :)) But you
should always jump to a subroutine with "bsr" or "jsr".
Unrolling: Write out the number of loops you want to do in your
code, by repeating the looped instructions everytime.
Mostly leads to fast code, but can get very hugy and
maybe to large to fit into the 68K cache.
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