The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
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Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#2I had always heard about how RCT was built in Assembly, and thought it was very impressive.
The more I actually started digging into assembly, the more this task seems monumental and impossible.
I didn't know there was a fork and I'm excited to look into it
Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#3Fun read, thx! I'd also recommend more about RCT:
"Interview with RollerCoaster Tycoon's Creator, Chris Sawyer (2024)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46130335
"Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44758842
"RollerCoaster Tycoon at 25: 'It's mind-blowing how it inspired me'" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39792034
"RollerCoaster Tycoon was the last of its kind [video]" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42346463
"The Story of RollerCoaster Tycoon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts4BD8AqD9g
Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#4What language is this article talking where compilers don't optimize multiplication and division by powers of two? Even for division of signed integers, current compilers emit inline code that handles positive and negative values separately, still avoiding the division instruction (unless when optimizing for size, of course).
Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#5I had always heard about how RCT was built in Assembly, and thought it was very impressive. The more I actually started digging into assembly, the more this task seems monumental and impossible. I didn't know there was a fork and I'm excited to look into it
Macros. Lots of macros.
Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#6> it turns an optimization done out of technical necessity into a gameplay feature
And this folks is why an optimizing compiler can never beat sufficient quantities of human optimization.
The human can decide when the abstraction layers should be deliberately broken for performance reasons. A compiler cannot do that.
Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#7> Imagine a programmer asking a game designer if they could change their formula to use an 8 instead of a 9.5 because it is a number that the CPU prefers to calculate with. There is a very good argument to be made that a game designer should never have to worry about the runtime performance characteristics of binary arithmetic in their life, that’s a fate reserved for programmers
Numeric characteristics are absolutely still a consideration for game designers even in 2026, one that influences what numbers they use in their game designs. The good ones, anyways. There are, of course, also countless bad developers/designers who ignore these things these days, but not because it is free to do so; rather, because they don't know better, and in many cases it is one of many silent contributing factors to a noticeable decrease in the quality of their game.
Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#8> The same trick can also be used for the other direction to save a division:
> NewValue = OldValue >> 3;
You need to be careful, because this doesn't work if the value is negative. A
Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#9> Imagine a programmer asking a game designer if they could change their formula to use an 8 instead of a 9.5 because it is a number that the CPU prefers to calculate with. There is a very good argument to be made that a game designer should never have to worry about the runtime performance characteristics of binary arithmetic in their life, that’s a fate reserved for programmers Numeric characteristics are absolutel…
Examples?
Re: The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
#10What language is this article talking where compilers don't optimize multiplication and division by powers of two? Even for division of signed integers, current compilers emit inline code that handles positive and negative values separately, still avoiding the division instruction (unless when optimizing for size, of course).
It was written in assembly so goes through an assembler instead of a compiler.