Well, that story was from 11 years ago. Even then, PS2 and XBox devkits weren't bad. Comparable to IDEs at the time, or maybe even a bit more powerful for debugging.
> The guy debugging with colored screens is a real WTF.
That's essentially the graphics equivalent of printf() debugging. It's all about quickly getting some insight into what's going on. If hacking some colors in there does it, so be it.
Note that this was a bug occurring related to handling user input while loading, so it's likely that pausing the game or stepping into a debugger would actually prevent the bug from occurring. In situations like that, you make do with what you can.
Seconding this, especially the bit about colored screens. Sometimes, you just need a simple way to get some information up on the screen at a minimal cost to runtime performance and code-complexity.
I'd find it hard to believe that anyone back in the day didn't use the "change the color of the background by manipulating the hardware color palette during different sections of the frame logic so you can 'see' how long each part is taking" trick.
I'd never heard of it until I came across it mentioned/shown[2] in the [unofficial] C-64 Prince of Persia conversion[1] linked from some HN thread the other day.
I've done the Storage Oscilloscope + pin twiddling for profiling embedded stuff though, and for a few short minutes, was convinced I'd invented something brilliant. :)
Well, that story was from 11 years ago. Even then, PS2 and XBox devkits weren't bad. Comparable to IDEs at the time, or maybe even a bit more powerful for debugging.
> The guy debugging with colored screens is a real WTF.
That's essentially the graphics equivalent of printf() debugging. It's all about quickly getting some insight into what's going on. If hacking some colors in there does it, so be it.
Note that this was a bug occurring related to handling user input while loading, so it's likely that pausing the game or stepping into a debugger would actually prevent the bug from occurring. In situations like that, you make do with what you can.