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The Making of Prince of Persia (2011) [pdf]

302 points| tosh | 7 years ago |jordanmechner.com

70 comments

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[+] shahar2k|7 years ago|reply
I actually met Jordan Mechner a couple of times, around 2011. I had a coworker/common friend who would throw big parties I recognized him oddly enough based on his drawing style, as a fan of his blog. he was sitting in one of the bedrooms at the party drawing in his sketchbook. We talked a bit about the last express, (another one of my all time favorites) and the various iterations of PoP. He was very shy and quiet but really wonderful to chat with. Funny enough, at this same party I met another hero of my youth, Dave Taylor, one of the original members of ID. most likely because they were both working on the Karateka remake together at the time. (these were fancy hollywood party with a few film celebrity type people... but me being a game nerd only recognized the game folks that showed up)
[+] hx2a|7 years ago|reply
I've never met Jordan but I used to work with his brother, David, whom the motion capture is based on. He was always proud of his contribution to his brother's game. What a great experience for both of them to be involved with this in their youth.
[+] sircastor|7 years ago|reply
We had this game on a Mac in 7th grade. We'd play through the first part, then get to the copy protection scheme which was a room where you'd have to select the letter of the first sentence on page 7 or something. We'd guess constantly and occasionally get it right so we could play, but otherwise didn't have the manual.
[+] xtracto|7 years ago|reply
I loved Prince of Persia for MSDOS because it made me learn to "hack" / "crack" at computers.

I remember also being stuck on the first level and then on the copy-protection. Until one day while pressing random keyboard combinations I noted that a game was saved. At the same point, my father had this XTree Gold program in the computer (like DOSSHell but better), and it had a HEX view... when you opened the .SAV file in this view, you had only like 8 or 9 bytes. I remember my excitement when I changed that 01 to 02 and boom! after loading the game I started in level 2 .

Back in school (I was in 6th grade at that time) my friends had no clue what had I done to get past that copy protection level.

It was downhill for me and cracking at that point... I was not interested in playing but more on doing reverse engineering on different games and programs.

[+] tarboreus|7 years ago|reply
Yes! We played through the first level so many times we found a way to beat it in ~90 seconds. If you lure out the guard on the right, the first in the game who protects the entrance to level 2, you can climb up through a false ceiling and drop down behind him. You never get the sword, but on level two you're assumed to have taken it and so you have it with you. This meant we could get a playthrough in once every hour or so of playing the first level...
[+] wenc|7 years ago|reply
I remember on the PC one would type

C:\> prince megahit

to get unlimited lives and level skipping.

[+] chevas|7 years ago|reply
My first discovery of this game was also on a mac in 7th grade (in NOLA).
[+] hello_asdf|7 years ago|reply
That's really interesting, here's the link to the full book:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Jordan-Mechner-e...

I bought it immediately upon finishing the PDF, and my Kindle's battery is dead..

[+] dejv|7 years ago|reply
The book is awesome, make sure to read also Making of Karateka, about his previous game.

I read both books 4 or 5 times, basically once a year everytime I start having doubts about being indie (non-game) developer.

[+] wenc|7 years ago|reply
Prince of Persia (1990) has found its way into the Internet archive. You can play it here on your browser (DOSbox emulator):

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Prince_of_Persia_1990

[+] PunchTornado|7 years ago|reply
it doesn't work well on my mac with chrome unfortunately...

*It is actually working fine after a refresh. shift + L for next level, shift + T for more lives (you have to ctrl quit and then start with Prince.exe megahit)

Thanks!

[+] u801e|7 years ago|reply
On a somewhat related note, there's a blog[1] that details how the Commodore 64 port of that game was made:

[1] http://popc64.blogspot.com/

[+] pvg|7 years ago|reply
That's a modern recreation based (in part) on reversing the original rather than a contemporary commercial port - a much crazier story than 'C64 port' might make it sound. Readers should also stick around for the post-credits scene where the original Apple ][ source is found well after the project is completed!
[+] microdrum|7 years ago|reply
"On the one hand, if I live at home for much longer I’ll go stir-crazy. What I need is a place to go. Friends. Work. Moving to Marin and doing another game for Broderbund would give me that...the games business is drying up.

Karateka may make me as little as $75,000 all told, and it’s at the top of the charts. Tere’s no guarantee the new game will be as successful."

What. $75,000 for a 21 year old in 1985? ($180,000 today.)

Why did he seem so upset about that?

[+] wbhart|7 years ago|reply
The DOS version had a CGA port, which runs extremely slow. Seems to be about 5-8 fps on a 4.77MHz machine, probably 8-12 fps on an 8MHz machine. The technical document doesn't seem to say how the sprites were done on the Apple II (I could be wrong, but I don't think the Apple II had sprite hardware either). It looks to be about 12 fps on the Apple II and a whole lot more colourful. It's amazing how smooth that looks. But I wonder if they used a sprite compiler or not. There's not a huge number of sprites on the screen, so it could potentially have been very, very smooth.
[+] wenc|7 years ago|reply
I played PoP on an IBM XT 8088 4.77 MHz with a monochrome monitor and it was ok.

It was one of the faster modern games available at the time.

The XT could run a surprising number of modern games in the late 80s e.g. Police Quest, Budokan, Monkey Island, etc.

[+] wbhart|7 years ago|reply
Looking at the description of the C64 port, it looks like each frame of the character in the DOS and Apple II versions were just drawn over the scene and the pixels affected just redrawn when he moves (including blocks that obscure his view). So, no sprite compiler.
[+] tosh|7 years ago|reply
I'd love to read more development diaries of games and software in general. Is there a list/collection of some?
[+] newscracker|7 years ago|reply
There are many books (and magazine articles) written about these.

While I don't have a directly useful list, one source I can recommend is Humble Bundle (humblebundle.com), which also runs book bundle sales (where sometimes the topic is gaming). I've seen it have some game related book bundles over the years.

Another site to keep an eye on is Story Bundle (storybundle.com), which is somewhat similar to Humble Bundle, but focuses only on books.

Unfortunately, the bundles on these sites are always available only for a limited time.

You can see past Humble Bundle books at https://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/humble-bundle

You can see past Story Bundle books at https://storybundle.com/archive

[+] chongli|7 years ago|reply
While not something to read, I really enjoy GDC classic game postmortems. One of my favourites is Populous. [1] I find it fascinating how such a successful game came out of experimentation without a real plan ahead of time.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaK6y5kdro

[+] dejv|7 years ago|reply
Check out Spelunky book (published by boss fight)
[+] ceautery|7 years ago|reply
We're all bad negotiators when we're young. Poor kid got taken to town by the jerks at Brøderbund.
[+] ak39|7 years ago|reply
Is this intimated in the linked PDF? (I haven’t read it yet).

I agree about being poor negotiators when we’re young - and young is only a function of how long you have spent in the field you’re negotiating.

[+] bookofjoe|7 years ago|reply
I suspect Steve Jobs was an exception to this rule.
[+] m3mpp|7 years ago|reply
To me it's a mystery how one can sustain an effort for so long and not losing faith along the way and throw everything through the window... I know it's tenacity that wins the race in the end, but still, it's always impressive to read those stories.
[+] osrec|7 years ago|reply
This was pretty much the only game on my computer in the 1990s when I was a little boy. I must have played and replayed it a thousand times!
[+] PunchTornado|7 years ago|reply
Same here, it was the game of my childhood.
[+] mirekrusin|7 years ago|reply
I remember it very well on my Amiga 500, together with Another World the movements felt wonderfully fluid and natural. Used it as reference when paining sprites in Deluxe Paint, my brother coding in Amos etc. good times.
[+] grawprog|7 years ago|reply
I've never played the original, but I had the Genesis version as a kid. That game was hard, so ridiculously hard and when I did finally manage to make it to the end, i didn't have enough time left to kill the boss and finish the game. You had 60 minutes or something like that to beat it. I spent a lot of time playing it though, I think I did beat it eventually but if I did it was overshadowed by that first time making it to the end with just not quite enough time. I tried from that last password over and over again and just couldn't do it.
[+] PunchTornado|7 years ago|reply
> There’s no guarantee the new game will be as successful. Or that there will even be a computer games market a couple of years from now.

One of those things that you look back at and can't believe it.

[+] lostgame|7 years ago|reply
'There’s no guarantee the new game will be as successful. Or that there will even be a computer games market a couple of years from now.'

- JULY 5, 1985

I love reading stuff like this.

[+] fastbeef|7 years ago|reply
”I restrained myself from taking all my work papers home with me yesterday... and I’m restraining myself from going to work today. There must be Balance”

I can’t help but feel that the generation before mine was a lot more well rounded as individuals.

[+] bluedino|7 years ago|reply
>> I’m getting to the point where I want to rush out and buy a video camera, a VCR and a digitizer and get to work.

What was that back in 1984 dollars? I remember my dad buying just a VCR from Fretter electronics when I was a kid and it was like $700.