I could have equally argued the opposite way, and in favor of `sgm` and
`ofs`, but I've also been using `seg` and `off` more prevalently
throughout the years.
Part of P0245, funded by [Anonymous], Blue Bolt, Ember2528, and Yanga.
And explicitly define observability in terms of an infinitely fast
PC-98. That's the only reasonable assumption to make when considering
ports to faster architectures that aren't bottlenecked by disappointing
blitter chips.
Part of P0239, funded by Ember2528.
Biggest decompilation breakthrough of the year already? Completely
removes the need for the "set near pointer to far function" hack, and
solves quite a few upcoming issues.
The TASM manuals did have a few pages on the topic of segments and
groups, but there's absolutely nothing about it in the TCC ones beyond
the three-sentence description of `#pragma codeseg` and that completely
unhelpful "🤷" of an explanation for the `Fixup overflow` error…
Part of P0227, funded by nrook.
As implied in adffa1c, a single segment-switching translation unit for
both rendering functions and game logic is the most straightforward
solution for those two games. Especially once you look at TH04, and
realize that the wildly chaotic order of the *_fg_render() functions in
the first code segment exactly matches the order of the *_update()
functions in the third.
Part of P0225, funded by Enderwolf, Blue Bolt, 32th System, and Yanga.
The `_animate()` convention doesn't *really* fit for a function that
also handles input, but I'd rather continue using the same convention
for every blocking multi-frame function.
Part of P0186, funded by [Anonymous] and Blue Bolt.
The single underscore version is actually slightly more supported among
the compilers I've seen so far. Also added the exact list now.
Part of P0183, funded by Yanga and [Anonymous].
It's been like this since the beginning, I just hadn't written it down.
So yeah, sorry to everyone who likes to edit code in period correct
90's DOS terminal editors.
Part of P0141, funded by [Anonymous] and rosenrose.
Turns out that this is one of the effects of the -WX option ("Create
DPMI application")… along with generally messing up code generation.
Nothing we can't work around though, luckily! Finally getting to cross
that off the list of reasons that prevent decompilation.
Part of P0137, funded by [Anonymous].
Might look uglier, but has the advantage of not generating an empty
segment with the default name… *and* the default padding, which will
really come in handy with the following breakthrough.
Part of P0137, funded by [Anonymous].
Whoops, turns out that the build has been broken on TASM32 version 5.3
(the one in the DevKit) ever since 7897bf1. In contrast to version 5.0
(which I use for my development), 5.3 actually defines 32-bit segments
if you specify a .386 CPU before using .MODEL.
That might have been the reason for the .286 workaround all along?
Turns out there's the USE16 modifier, which makes this much more
explicit than switching CPUs.
`cPtrSize` is simply the wrong constant for calculating parameter
offsets on the stack, because it corresponds to the memory model's
default distance, not the function's distance. Luckily, ARG has a
RETURNS clause, and if you declare all parameters in there, ARG won't
emit that pesky and unnecessary `ENTER 0, 0` instruction. Big discovery
right there!
Sadly, ARG is unusable for ZUN's silly functions that keep the base
pointer in BX. TASM declares the resulting equates as `[BP+offset]`,
and it's apparently impossible to only get `offset` out of such an
equate later.
So, rather than staying with numbers, let's reimplement ARG for these
functions instead. This way, we can even abstract away the stack clear
size for the `RET` instructions.
It's a bit rough around the edges though, forcing you to explicitly
specify the function distance, and to pass the parameters in reverse
order compared to the C declaration (thankfully, all of these use the
PASCAL calling convention). It also doesn't work with more complex
types yet. But certainly better than numbers.
Part of P0134, funded by [Anonymous].
It's not necessary for assigning `__seg` pointers to `far` ones, which
might even remove the <dos.h> dependency in some translation units.
Part of P0134, funded by [Anonymous].
Yeah, why *were* we assembling them in the 16-bit part before?!
Possible reasons:
• In a time before Tup, it made no actual difference whether these
little files were assembled in the 32-bit or 16-bit part. Now it sort
of does, since we've temporarily given up on minimal rebuilds in the
16-bit part.
• Emphasizing the temporary nature of the 32-bit part by deliberately
moving everything to the 16-bit part as early as possible?
• It all started with the ZUN.COM ASM code, which doesn't include any
other files, and can therefore be perfectly tracked by a Makefile.
Which *was* superior than the exclusive dumb batch file we had in the
past. And then I've simply cargo-culted all new .ASM translation
units into the 16-bit part well.
Oh, and another positive side effect of temporarily not using 16-bit
TASM: The build process now also runs on Windows 95.
Part of P0113, funded by Lmocinemod.
This Tupfile does in fact date back to January 2017, and I've been
using it myself ever since. Time to finally deliver it on master!
Part of P0001, funded by GhostPhanom.
Which works in both Borland C++, Open Watcom, and Visual C++.
Not that we're about to port any of the games to these compilers, just
something I noticed while evaluating 32-bit compilers for ReC98's own
32-bit pipeline tools. Modders might want to look into that though,
since 100% position independence also makes it easier to change
compilers.
So even TH01 wasn't 100% C++ after all. Turns out that this function
was the only instance in all of REIIDEN.EXE where ReC98 previously had
different encodings for identical x86 instructions.
Part of P0096, funded by Ember2528.
Again, 11 necessary workarounds, vs. forcing byte aligment in at least
18 places, and that number would have significantly grown in the
future.
Part of P0085, funded by -Tom-.
And the explicit permission to also do something as seemingly trivial
as naming functions or data on separate branches, which apparently
still needed to be said somewhere.
nmlgc