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Article should be merged into Commander Keen or Carmack articles. In itself, it is just a description of a typical hardware scroll, as implemented on many types of hardware at the time. The fact that this was the first implementation on EGA hardware doesn't make it different in quality from smooth-scroll techniques on other hardware at the time. --
Idrougge (
talk)
12:57, 13 September 2014 (UTC)reply
@
Idrougge: Yeah this should be merged with the Development section of
Commander Keen and possibly cut down a little bit
WP:NOTMANUAL. And see the Legacy section of
Super Mario Bros. 3 for more sources for that target article (probably not this one). Edit: I'll withdraw the merge support if I'm failing to understand the notability. It's true that IBM PC hardware is brain dead, primitive, vile, and obsolete on release, but the subject is not the dumb need in dumb hardware but rather the innovative workaround in software. Maybe the article needs to be updated to clarify that nuance, to separate and assert the software. What I do understand is that The Carmack shall not be denied. — Smuckola(talk)18:17, 15 December 2015 (UTC)reply
@
Idrougge: Strongly agree; this reads as hagiography, attributing yet another implementation of the way that most scrolling systems worked to a particular, late, documented case.
64.48.93.0 (
talk)
17:17, 2 October 2017 (UTC)reply
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Idrougge: Also agree: the technique was in common use nearly a decade beforehand on nearly every "home computer" (C64 etc). The fact that IBM took until EGA to provide a similar capability does not in any way make the technique novel. It's an interesting historical footnote, but nothing more than that.
174.87.200.64 (
talk)
12:12, 11 August 2021 (UTC)reply
@
Idrougge: Strongly disagree; The technique used can't be compared to scrolling on home computers. The latter had special
Bit_blit hardware, that made side scrolling on home computers an easy and fast thing. The x86 PC did not have
Bit_blit hardware at that time, at least not for normal CGA and EGA graphic standards. That's why, before John Carmack came up with a solution, nearly all games of that time used static backgrounds without scrolling on a PC. --
93.229.162.195 (
talk)
18:46, 14 December 2021 (UTC)reply
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93.229.162.195: The only home computer that had a blitter as standard equipment was the Amiga, and its blitter was not fast enough to redraw an entire screen every vertical refresh interval. Instead, the blitter was used to update an extra small strip of the buffer, as described in this article.
The article lacks animations that explain the technique further