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Prince Of Persia Code Review

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Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#2
Just for reference, these are two books that were from the journal of Jordan Mechner written while writing Prince of Persia and Karateka. They are enjoyable reads, and I highly recommend them.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Karateka-Journals-1982-1985...

Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#3

Just for reference, these are two books that were from the journal of Jordan Mechner written while writing Prince of Persia and Karateka. They are enjoyable reads, and I highly recommend them. http://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985/dp/... http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Karateka-Journals-1982-1985...

I really enjoyed the Prince of Persia one. It's relatively lacking (though not totally) in terms of the coding side of things but there's a really good story and sense of what it took to push a complete game out of the door at the time.

Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#4

Just for reference, these are two books that were from the journal of Jordan Mechner written while writing Prince of Persia and Karateka. They are enjoyable reads, and I highly recommend them. http://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985/dp/... http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Karateka-Journals-1982-1985...

I really enjoyed the Prince of Persia one. It's relatively lacking (though not totally) in terms of the coding side of things but there's a really good story and sense of what it took to push a complete game out of the door at the time.

Karateka is different, as it's about writing a game in your spare time (really simplifying things). You realize how much time he spent writing it, how often he would be close to finishing, only to have a lot more work to do.

If you enjoyed PoP, you'll like Kareteka.

Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#5

Just for reference, these are two books that were from the journal of Jordan Mechner written while writing Prince of Persia and Karateka. They are enjoyable reads, and I highly recommend them. http://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985/dp/... http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Karateka-Journals-1982-1985...

I started reading "Making of Prince of Persia" recently and it is amazingly inspiring because it captures his real thoughts as he was making it, unlike autobiographies where hindsight distorts things, no matter how real the author wants it to be. I second the recommendation.

Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#6
I love reading Sanglard's stuff I hope he's encouraged by the comments on his site to complete this - the bulk of it so far is on details of the Apple ][ architecture. It'd be great if he decides to take apart the actual game, although even with commented assembly source, it's no trivial amount of work.

Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoyed the Prince of Persia one. It's relatively lacking (though not totally) in terms of the coding side of things but there's a really good story and sense of what it took to push a complete game out of the door at the time.

Karateka is different, as it's about writing a game in your spare time (really simplifying things). You realize how much time he spent writing it, how often he would be close to finishing, only to have a lot more work to do. If you enjoyed PoP, you'll like Kareteka.

Jordan Mechner did a great interview where he talks about Kareteka and coding for the Apple II vs iOS.

http://www.imore.com/debug-7-jordan-mechner-and-karateka

Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#8
post #6

I love reading Sanglard's stuff I hope he's encouraged by the comments on his site to complete this - the bulk of it so far is on details of the Apple ][ architecture. It'd be great if he decides to take apart the actual game, although even with commented assembly source, it's no trivial amount of work.

The C64 reverse engineering covers that a bit. At least regarding general data structures, as opposed to in-depth Apple II hackery (you get some C64 hackery instead, of course).

http://popc64.blogspot.com

Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#9
post #8
post #6

I love reading Sanglard's stuff I hope he's encouraged by the comments on his site to complete this - the bulk of it so far is on details of the Apple ][ architecture. It'd be great if he decides to take apart the actual game, although even with commented assembly source, it's no trivial amount of work.

The C64 reverse engineering covers that a bit. At least regarding general data structures, as opposed to in-depth Apple II hackery (you get some C64 hackery instead, of course). http://popc64.blogspot.com

Ok, that is the craziest (in a good way) thing I've seen in some time. I'd have thought PoP had been ported to the C64 at the time - Karateka was ported just about everything. So in 2011, starting with the Apple source, disassembly dumps, graphics from a free version, looking at the PC port and god knows what else, someone ported it to the C64. Amazing.

EDIT: Oh, and apparently the Apple ][ source hadn't been found again yet, making the thing even more bonkers. Mechner's comments here:

http://popc64.blogspot.com/2011/10/prince-of-persia-for-comm...

Re: Prince Of Persia Code Review

#10
Love how most games were mainly a one man show back in the 80s. Jordan Mechner, John Carmack could be used as aliases for the games. Btw, I read a very similar article about Doom / sometime ago about the Magical Square Root Implementation In Quake III, another interesting read[1]

[1] http://www.codemaestro.com/reviews/9

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