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A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

jordanmechner.com

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Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#21

Post by daeken »

tialaramex wrote: post #17
Gravityloss wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One trick when doing music mixing is to play the mix from some really low-end speakers. In one studio they had a small radio someone could have in their kitchen. There are a lot of reasons to do this but you also get some perspective this way since you become deaf to your own work indeed very quickly.

Years ago a thing people would do is make an initial mix, dump it to ordinary cassette tape and then just drive around with the cassette playing on an ordinary car stereo, similar thinking.

Not quite a cassette anymore, but in 2013 I was in the studio with some friends and we'd do initial downmixes to MP3 and bring them to the car. World of difference, just getting the less-ideal and more realistic listening experience.

Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#22

Post by m000 »

spapas82 wrote: post #20
m000 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose the DOS version also supported Hercules (beyond CGA/EGA/VGA). IIRC, Hercules cards were more pro-oriented (monochrome graphics, but higher resolution than their contemporaries), so I doubt anyone would bother to make a game port specifically for them. If you ran the game on a Hercules, most likely it was the CGA version run on top of a CGA simulator [1]. [1] https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/cga_simulators_for…

I don't remember having such a CGA simulator. I suppose it would be a TSR program that I needed to run before prince, but definitely I wasn't doing that. From some research it seems that hercules was actually supported: https://www.dosbox-staging.org/getting-started/enhancing-pri... and from https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/Games/game_prince.php > Intel 8088/8086 CPU, 512 KB of RAM (640 KB for MCGA/VGA version) Graphics…

It seems you're right. I vaguely remember using simcga on a friend's PC (where we also played PoP) but I can't recall for which game.

Given that the PC version of PoP was launched in 1990 and CGA simulators existed since 1986, I would guess that even embedding the simulator to the game, so that it works out of the box, would have been a viable option.

Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#24

Post by pavlov »

The two-column layout is quite confusing here.

You're supposed to read the entire left-hand column first, then scroll back up where it continues with "Presage had an excellent, seasoned lead Mac programmer..."

This works in print where you can guarantee that both columns fit on the page, but on the web it's just weird.

The columns are responsive, so a quick usability to fix is to make your browser window narrow enough that the other column goes away.

Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#25

Post by bluedino »

My friends parents used to clean a business on the weekends, and as kids we got dragged along, but we had permission to play games on one of the office computers.

It was an unassuming 286 running DOS, but it had a modem and a couple bulletin boards in the phonebook.

Prince of Persia was one of the games we played the most. Paired with a Soundblaster and a small set of speakers, playing that game in a dark office was a great experience.

Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#26

Post by danwills »

Gravityloss wrote: post #13
gethly wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This perfectly captures why code reviews by someone who didn't write the original are so valuable. You can't unsee your own assumptions. It's not just that. It's anything creative, really. It can be a tech startup, it can be a book... you name it. The thing is that creators become blinded by their own perception as they lose the ability to see flaws. The longer they work on a thing, the less they are able to unders…

One trick when doing music mixing is to play the mix from some really low-end speakers. In one studio they had a small radio someone could have in their kitchen. There are a lot of reasons to do this but you also get some perspective this way since you become deaf to your own work indeed very quickly.

One suprising thing that seems to work with video/footage (a shot) once you've watched it a few hundred times and can't really 'see' it naturally any more, is to 'flip' it (horizontal mirror (or negation)) the result is usually surprising at least and can reveal things you couldn't see before! Or, if flipping has run out of juice too, even flopping (vertical mirror or negation, yes the shot is upside-down now, so not as helpful as flipping) but either/or and their combinations can definitely provide some extremely useful new perspective on the visual content one is trying to produce (VFX day job as Pipeline TD now, FX artist previously and this idea helped me numerous times!)

Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#27

Post by ct0 »

bluedino wrote: post #25

My friends parents used to clean a business on the weekends, and as kids we got dragged along, but we had permission to play games on one of the office computers. It was an unassuming 286 running DOS, but it had a modem and a couple bulletin boards in the phonebook. Prince of Persia was one of the games we played the most. Paired with a Soundblaster and a small set of speakers, playing that game in a dark office was…

Sounds way more fun than my childhood, all I had was Raisins.

Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#28

Post by qmr »

Jordan's books "The Making of Karateka" and "The Making of Prince of Persia" are delightful stream of consciousness journals of his time working on these early pioneering titles and are a fascinating look into the history of the personal computer and computer gaming revolutions.

Full of his hopes, thoughts, fears, struggles, aspirations, setbacks, and successes. Old sketches and screen captures. Just reading about his workflow for the animation on Prince of Persia is fascinating.

Jordan has a way with storytelling.

https://x.com/jmechner/status/1831585901350158436

Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#29

Post by jawilson2 »

Gravityloss wrote: post #13
gethly wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This perfectly captures why code reviews by someone who didn't write the original are so valuable. You can't unsee your own assumptions. It's not just that. It's anything creative, really. It can be a tech startup, it can be a book... you name it. The thing is that creators become blinded by their own perception as they lose the ability to see flaws. The longer they work on a thing, the less they are able to unders…

One trick when doing music mixing is to play the mix from some really low-end speakers. In one studio they had a small radio someone could have in their kitchen. There are a lot of reasons to do this but you also get some perspective this way since you become deaf to your own work indeed very quickly.

We did this when I was in a band 25+ years ago. Record the song, quickly burn it to a CD, then drive back to campus in our shitty Honda Civic or band pickup truck and listen to it. It was 90% just to listen to what we made, but hearing it outside of the studio was good as well.

At this same time, this feels like No Speaker Left Behind. Now that I am middle aged and have a nice sound system at home and in my car, I sort of want a mix optimized for THAT! Like, don't hold me back just because we're still mixing for AM radio in a 1983 Pontiac Firebird!

Re: A platform-jumping prince – History of Prince of Persia's 1990s Ports

#30

Post by close04 »

barishnamazov wrote: post #2

> "For the first time I felt what it's really like to play Prince of Persia when you're not the author and don't already know by rote what's lurking around every corner." This perfectly captures why code reviews by someone who didn't write the original are so valuable. You can't unsee your own assumptions. I remember seeing the following short but extremely interesting documentary about makings of the game as well: h…

> You can't unsee your own assumptions.

It's why you can't escape a prison of your own making (literally or figuratively).

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