4 ms·

I've watched them -- they're great! Those developers succeeded despite the struggles inherent to their given platforms. If you watch (and pay attention to) th

I've watched them -- they're great! Those developers succeeded despite the struggles inherent to their given platforms. If you watch (and pay attention to) the videos you'd see what many of those struggles were. Hardware bugs. Missing/bad documentation. Bugs in the software toolchain. Those things don't make standout games better. They make every other game worse. (And even the standout games would have been better -- or at least developed in less time -- had the developers not been forced to heroically struggle through those problems...)

pjmlp 7y ago
They make them better, because had those obstacles not been there in first place, the game design decisions to be creative in spite of them would have not been taken. For example, the shadow character in Prince of Persia. Also, I am talking out of experience here, started coding in 1986 and was into portuguese demoscene PC/Amiga.
- JohnBooty 7y ago
  Having watched that I would agree that the memory limitations of the Apple II directly lead to the creation of that brilliant game feature. =) However, I was responding to the comment chain below this comment: "Do you want your game creators focuses on twonking around in the guts of an obscure, probably poorly documented and understood one-off architecture" This was not about hardware limitations like the RAM limits Mechner faced while writing PoP. This is about bugs and other such things. The XOR instructions used to draw the shadow-man weren't a "wonky" feature of the Apple II hardware... it was a pretty standard and well-documented feature. In fact, in the video, if I recall correctly, Mechner specifically mentioned seeing the XOR instruction in the documentation. It was not "poorly documented." The Apple II was quite well documented. Also, I am talking out of experience here, started coding in 1986 and was into portuguese demoscene PC/Amiga. I am always in awe of the demoscene... props to you. However even though I am not a demoscene or game developer I am speaking from 20+ years software development experience. Nearly as long as you. I did not start doing this yesterday.

pjmlp 7y ago

They make them better, because had those obstacles not been there in first place, the game design decisions to be creative in spite of them would have not been taken. For example, the shadow character in Prince of Persia. Also, I am talking out of experience here, started coding in 1986 and was into portuguese demoscene PC/Amiga.

JohnBooty 7y ago
Having watched that I would agree that the memory limitations of the Apple II directly lead to the creation of that brilliant game feature. =) However, I was responding to the comment chain below this comment: "Do you want your game creators focuses on twonking around in the guts of an obscure, probably poorly documented and understood one-off architecture" This was not about hardware limitations like the RAM limits Mechner faced while writing PoP. This is about bugs and other such things. The XOR instructions used to draw the shadow-man weren't a "wonky" feature of the Apple II hardware... it was a pretty standard and well-documented feature. In fact, in the video, if I recall correctly, Mechner specifically mentioned seeing the XOR instruction in the documentation. It was not "poorly documented." The Apple II was quite well documented. Also, I am talking out of experience here, started coding in 1986 and was into portuguese demoscene PC/Amiga. I am always in awe of the demoscene... props to you. However even though I am not a demoscene or game developer I am speaking from 20+ years software development experience. Nearly as long as you. I did not start doing this yesterday.