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The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

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Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#81

Post by moonshinefe »

hartpuff wrote: post #79
moonshinefe wrote: post #59

It's a cool story. I'm actually really amazed he managed to make a game that sold 1.5 million copies (@ $40 per unit that'd be $60mil) in _5 weeks_. As the sole programmer. In an era when programming was far more tricky and low level. It isn't his fault the managers were being unreasonable in the timeline, and the company grossly over-manufactured the cartridges. If I made something in just 5 weeks that sold 1.5 mill…

> As the sole programmer. In an era when programming was far more tricky and low level. In the same era, early 80s, kids across the UK were single-handedly writing games packed into 1-16k, some of which (Manic Miner being a prime example) sold in their hundreds of thousands in the UK market alone. There was some pretty amazing programming skill going on back then.

That sounds pretty interesting. Do you know if anyone has written on that history yet? It sounds like it'd make a great article in one of the tech magazines.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#83

Post by Moru »

bottled_poe wrote: post #69
VonGuard wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Howard is a brilliant programmer. In Yar's Revenge, that fuzzy barrier on the left side of the screen is the graphics code from the program literally reading the game's own code as graphical data, thus creating the crazy static pattern of chaotic colors. Talk about a cool and space saving hack! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/A2600_Yars_Re...

I accidentally produced a similar effect while working on my voxel game engine: https://twitter.com/jmhobrien/status/624133887036424193 Basically, just deferenced a pointer to OpenGL memory that I shouldn't have...

I think all lower-level programmers have done similar mistakes at one time or other. I managed to do it several times while learning assembler on the Atari ST/STE/Falcon :-)

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#84

Post by Buge »

junto wrote: post #71
coke12 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 AUD is 71 USD.

Wow. That's really expensive. Is it a 95% fun tax?

Where did you get 95% from? The normal new game price on Amazon seems to be $60. The Division and Far Cry Primal are both $60 for both systems.

It's an 18% "fun tax".

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#85

Post by NamTaf »

junto wrote: post #71
coke12 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 AUD is 71 USD.

Wow. That's really expensive. Is it a 95% fun tax?

It's a 95% Australia tax. We pay more for almost everything just because. It was originally justified by our exchange rates (which got down into the AUD$1 = USD$0.5x) but persisted at the same dollar values even when the rate went to AUD$1 = USD$1.2.

Basically, we get screwed because there's precident establishing that we can. And it permiates almost anything that is produced overseas including phones and laptops but also all kinds of software, not just games.

Here's an article from when it was a hot topic in the news: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/adobe-chief...

At the time it was literally cheaper to fly from Sydney to LA, buy the software in LA and fly home.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#86

Post by fit2rule »

Moru wrote: post #83
bottled_poe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accidentally produced a similar effect while working on my voxel game engine: https://twitter.com/jmhobrien/status/624133887036424193 Basically, just deferenced a pointer to OpenGL memory that I shouldn't have...

I think all lower-level programmers have done similar mistakes at one time or other. I managed to do it several times while learning assembler on the Atari ST/STE/Falcon :-)

I've done it countless times, and not by accident. Sometimes this is the only way to debug things.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#87

Post by fit2rule »

bottled_poe wrote: post #69
VonGuard wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Howard is a brilliant programmer. In Yar's Revenge, that fuzzy barrier on the left side of the screen is the graphics code from the program literally reading the game's own code as graphical data, thus creating the crazy static pattern of chaotic colors. Talk about a cool and space saving hack! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/A2600_Yars_Re...

I accidentally produced a similar effect while working on my voxel game engine: https://twitter.com/jmhobrien/status/624133887036424193 Basically, just deferenced a pointer to OpenGL memory that I shouldn't have...

Nice looking game! I hope you saved that code for later levels ..

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#88

Post by fit2rule »

moonshinefe wrote: post #81
hartpuff wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the sole programmer. In an era when programming was far more tricky and low level. In the same era, early 80s, kids across the UK were single-handedly writing games packed into 1-16k, some of which (Manic Miner being a prime example) sold in their hundreds of thousands in the UK market alone. There was some pretty amazing programming skill going on back then.

That sounds pretty interesting. Do you know if anyone has written on that history yet? It sounds like it'd make a great article in one of the tech magazines.

Countless books have been written on this subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_about_video_game...

:)

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#89

Post by vidarh »

moonshinefe wrote: post #81
hartpuff wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the sole programmer. In an era when programming was far more tricky and low level. In the same era, early 80s, kids across the UK were single-handedly writing games packed into 1-16k, some of which (Manic Miner being a prime example) sold in their hundreds of thousands in the UK market alone. There was some pretty amazing programming skill going on back then.

That sounds pretty interesting. Do you know if anyone has written on that history yet? It sounds like it'd make a great article in one of the tech magazines.

Lots and lots. There are and have been any number of Kickstarters for whole books covering various older game developers.. Also another source that springs to mind is the Llamasoft blog [1] - Jeff Minter behind Llamasoft fits the profile above perfectly.

There's also a number of magazines devoted entirely to retro gaming, such as retroGAMER [2] that regularly have articles and interviews with the people involved.

[1] http://minotaurproject.co.uk/

[2] http://www.retrogamer.net/

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#90

Post by kruczek »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #9

> "It's awesome to be credited with single-handedly bringing down a billion-dollar industry with eight kilobytes of code. But the truth is a little more complex." Eight kilobytes?! How do you build anything meaningful, especially a game, with just eight kilobytes?

Eight kilobytes is plenty of space. How about doing something meaningful in 128 bytes (yes, bytes!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD49RXnEGNE - it's a mouse-controlled 3d Wolfenstein-like maze. All with the code about half the size of this comment.
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