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Oh man, this is still my favorite game 27 years later. Chris Sawyer (the original developer) is one of those OG 10x developer. Built an entire game + AI + wind

by didip 6y ago

Oh man, this is still my favorite game 27 years later. Chris Sawyer (the original developer) is one of those OG 10x developer. Built an entire game + AI + windowed GUI in Assembly in 1992! Even before Windows 3.11 came out. I still remembered my first impression back in 1994 distinctly. I can open 20 different windows in Transport Tycoon and each window follows its own respective vehicle like a drone cam. The GUI windows themselves can be resized smoothly and piled on top of each other. Something that older version of Windows couldn't do. Also, the game was fairly small in size and incredibly stable. I thought to myself, this developer was a mega genius!

mromanuk 6y ago
Thank you for writing this, I always was amazed by the smoothness of the GUI. You expressed all my thoughts!
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
I'm assuming he is calling DirectX or something through Assembly, right? Or did he write a graphics library in Assembly as well???
- exmadscientist 6y ago
  If I remember right, the Windows versions of RCT, which descends from TT/TTD, use DirectX to allocate their framebuffer. Then they just operate directly on it, because the engine literally is older than DirectX.
- wtallis 6y ago
  The original Transport Tycoon predated DirectX and ran on DOS. Later games like RollerCoaster Tycoon had basically the same UI and were also almost entirely written in assembly (despite now running on Windows rather than DOS), so it's clear that Sawyer pretty much did write a graphics library in assembly.
- texodus 6y ago
  Transport Tycoon (Jun 1994) was published over a year before the first version of DirectX (Sep 1995).
- rini17 6y ago
  No it has talked directly to SVGA cards with help of BIOS VESA calls.
rini17 6y ago
I have overclocked my ISA bus, then I could pan and zoom over the map incredibly smoothly on TTD. The IDE controller did not survive that, had to reformat the HDD too :(

by didip 6y ago

mromanuk 6y ago

Thank you for writing this, I always was amazed by the smoothness of the GUI. You expressed all my thoughts!

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

I'm assuming he is calling DirectX or something through Assembly, right? Or did he write a graphics library in Assembly as well???

exmadscientist 6y ago
If I remember right, the Windows versions of RCT, which descends from TT/TTD, use DirectX to allocate their framebuffer. Then they just operate directly on it, because the engine literally is older than DirectX.
wtallis 6y ago
The original Transport Tycoon predated DirectX and ran on DOS. Later games like RollerCoaster Tycoon had basically the same UI and were also almost entirely written in assembly (despite now running on Windows rather than DOS), so it's clear that Sawyer pretty much did write a graphics library in assembly.
texodus 6y ago
Transport Tycoon (Jun 1994) was published over a year before the first version of DirectX (Sep 1995).
rini17 6y ago
No it has talked directly to SVGA cards with help of BIOS VESA calls.

rini17 6y ago

I have overclocked my ISA bus, then I could pan and zoom over the map incredibly smoothly on TTD. The IDE controller did not survive that, had to reformat the HDD too :(