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Comment by treyp | Hacker News Reader

pretty awesome job. fullscreen or a larger playable area would be nice.

Very nice, I second that fullscreen or a larger playable area would be nice.

the thing is, if I make the screen larger, the game will lag (lower FPS). Below 45 fps, the game isn't that fun to play.

I do realize that old NES games can be fullscreened any time of the day. Wish I could do that in my case.

Speaking of FPS, I honestly don't understand this: why is it that 25 frames per second is okay for movies but not for games?

There is generally about a one frame deep pipeline between the user interface and the rendering so you end up with more like a 100ms delay which is two human reaction times and enough to feel unresponsive.

Story of old: in the 90's, when the radiology transcriptionists were moved too far away for RS232 to reach their computer, and they were put on LAT devices (8 serial ports to Ethernet with crazy complicated optimization to multiplex traffic from all 8 into the same packets) their duplicate key errors and general frustration went up. Working from audio, they watched the screen and if the delay was ever perceptible they would restrict a key. Allen ended up writing them an editor that worked in half duplex mode (local echo).

Also an image on film is the integration over the time the shutter was open, causing a very smooth motion blur. Games don't naturally have this motion blur, so low frame-rate movement appears choppy.

Sometimes film makers reduce the length of integration (time the shutter is open) to produce a choppier scene. This was prominently featured in action scenes of the movie Gladiator. Many people did not like the effect because, like a low frame-rate video game, it was harsh and disorienting.

Because movies show motion blur which makes things appear more smooth. Most games just show static snapshots of moments in time and it makes motion jerky as a result.

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