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Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

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Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#31

Post by ttoinou »

reactordev wrote: post #5

MicroProse games in the 90s were next level. So many milsim games where you got to experience a crude 90s graphics recreation of being a service member shooting bogies. I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9. However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone cr…

They made Master of Orion II : Battle at Antares which is a 4X turn by turn space game I still play in 2025, as much as fun as Heroes III

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#32

Post by goosedragons »

Lammy wrote: post #18

> Written by Sawyer in pure, ultra-efficient Intel assembly language — an anomaly by that time Not mentioned in the article, but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003, long before the game's eventual remake as RCT Classic for ARM etc in 2017. Interesting that the XBOX port is RCT1+expansions even though it came out after RCT2 did on PC, maybe due to lesser requir…

I remember FINALLY getting RCT1 from Scholastic Book Club and then a few months later got RCT2 from a cereal box. Was nuts. Easily the best cereal box thing ever.

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#33

Post by reactordev »

ttoinou wrote: post #31
reactordev wrote: post #5

MicroProse games in the 90s were next level. So many milsim games where you got to experience a crude 90s graphics recreation of being a service member shooting bogies. I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9. However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone cr…

They made Master of Orion II : Battle at Antares which is a 4X turn by turn space game I still play in 2025, as much as fun as Heroes III

Oh Masters of Orion… such a die hard fan base :D and such an amazing game. I think it’s still the OG of 4X for me.

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#34

Post by ARob109 »

ravenstine wrote: post #4

Man, I can still remember the magic I felt when first discovering that game on my cousin's laptop in 1999. Such a simple game yet allowed enough creativity for an 10 year old boy to be imaginative. There does come a point where there isn't much else to do with the game once you get good enough at it, so I started having fun doing "experiments". One of the things I did in RCT was build "prisons" where I leveraged thin…

I always used the Do Not Enter marquee signs such that once guests entered the park they could never leave. Great for helping meet the total park population scenarios.

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#35

Post by ARob109 »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #9

The author wishes there was more of a storyline to the game. Which is absolutely fine as it’s their preference. But it made me think of how Minecraft has almost no story (well, something was added later but it’s optional to follow it) and perhaps that contributed to its major success. Decent sandbox games don’t need stories if the mechanics are satisfying enough and games like Sawyer’s Tycoons and Minecraft are evide…

RCT, Railroad Tycoon 2 (which has scripted scenarios and sandbox ), SimCopter and Streets of Sim City were great

RRT2 has it scenarios like Hell or High Water where you have fill in a giant crater with cement by orchestrating trains before ocean levels rise or just sandbox play building railways buying up business and watching connected cities boom. Always loved using cheats to make all competitors trains break down then take over their bankrupt company.

SimCopter and Streets of Sim City had missions/scenarios. Or you could just go fly/drive around any SimCity2000 map.

Remember a SimCopter cheat would essentially nuke the city and set everything in fire.

And Street let you blow up buildings by adding weapons to your car.

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#36

Post by ranger207 »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #9

The author wishes there was more of a storyline to the game. Which is absolutely fine as it’s their preference. But it made me think of how Minecraft has almost no story (well, something was added later but it’s optional to follow it) and perhaps that contributed to its major success. Decent sandbox games don’t need stories if the mechanics are satisfying enough and games like Sawyer’s Tycoons and Minecraft are evide…

Minecraft doesn't have (much of) a story, but it does have progression, which is just as important in a sandbox game

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#37

Post by ranger207 »

lomlobon wrote: post #24
jvanderbot wrote: post #22

If you liked micro-prose, they are back in full form with Highfleet. Maybe not "back", but it's one of the most engaging engineering / action games I've played and it has a very microprose feel

Well, if it has a very microprose feel then it was by luck, because they picked it up late in development and it's a single russian guy's brainchild. He also made hammerfight, another excellent (if janky as hell) game. Highfleet really is a great game though.

Nu-MicroProse has been seeking out games similar in spirit to those published by old MicroProse trying to become the continuation of what it used to be. It might have been luck that there was a guy developing that kind of game at the time, or it might have been that there's a growing desire for that sort of game that MicroProse is coming along at the right time to pick up

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#38

Post by bombcar »

ranger207 wrote: post #36
jonathanlydall wrote: post #9

The author wishes there was more of a storyline to the game. Which is absolutely fine as it’s their preference. But it made me think of how Minecraft has almost no story (well, something was added later but it’s optional to follow it) and perhaps that contributed to its major success. Decent sandbox games don’t need stories if the mechanics are satisfying enough and games like Sawyer’s Tycoons and Minecraft are evide…

Minecraft doesn't have (much of) a story, but it does have progression, which is just as important in a sandbox game

Story is one of the easiest ways to add progression, but it's not the only way.

That's not to say story is bad but you can have quite good games without it, and any "long lasting/replayable" game has to have gameplay that stands alone.

People will put up with crappy gameplay for an amazing story, but they're not going to replay it much.

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#39

Post by bombcar »

ttoinou wrote: post #31
reactordev wrote: post #5

MicroProse games in the 90s were next level. So many milsim games where you got to experience a crude 90s graphics recreation of being a service member shooting bogies. I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9. However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone cr…

They made Master of Orion II : Battle at Antares which is a 4X turn by turn space game I still play in 2025, as much as fun as Heroes III

MoO2 and Heroes 3; there's a combo that sends me right back.

I think there's a serious argument somewhere in there that perfection of a game is much easier in the "2D" realm and even now we've not really gotten close in 3D space - as proof I'd offer Factorio.

Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

#40

Post by dwroberts »

pengaru wrote: post #26
dwroberts wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003 Not sure if the clock speed is just for reference or emphasis re: efficiency, but RCT1 will in fact happily run on a Pentium 90 (which is still mind blowing to me given the scope of the game)

Having cut my teeth writing asm on 386/486 in ms-dos, these comments are kind of hilarious to me because Pentium is well into "you can write most of it in C" territory. By the P2 era (97-98), especially as consoles show up, assembly's not desirable at all. Pmode/w was released in 97 which speaks to the demand for a Watcom C/C++ protected mode extender at the time...

I don’t think necessity has anything to do with it being written in assembly in the first place, it’s just Sawyer’s background was in porting others’ titles and it was just what he was used to using
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