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.
> "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: https://youtu.be/sw0VfmXKq54?feature=shared - Essential viewing for anyone interested in game development history.
> 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 understand that other people might not understand a lot of things. I experienced it myself few times with my coding projects. It's actually quite bad as you just cannot fix a problem as you do not see it. Even if someone points it out to you, it takes quite some time to admit it is a problem.
This is why having teams of people is useful. Single startup founders, game designers, writers... have inherent blind spots in their entire work.
I've actually had the same experience the author describes -- me and a friend worked on a web game for 6 years together, and then later my friend made a steam port and extended the game. The experience was pretty awesome playing it for the first time; the connection to code review feels pretty trite in comparison.
The experience is more like discovering there was an extra book in a series you've read 20 times over. Except you were the original author!
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.
I remember that I was playing the DOS version of PoP on a computer with Hercules Graphics Card (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Graphics_Card) so I suppose the DOS version also supported Hercules (beyond CGA/EGA/VGA).
Finally, after all these years I still remember running it with "prince megahit" to enable cheat mode so I'd be able to pass the levels using ctrl+l...
> 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].
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.
qmr|5 months ago
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
barishnamazov|5 months ago
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: https://youtu.be/sw0VfmXKq54?feature=shared - Essential viewing for anyone interested in game development history.
gethly|5 months ago
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 understand that other people might not understand a lot of things. I experienced it myself few times with my coding projects. It's actually quite bad as you just cannot fix a problem as you do not see it. Even if someone points it out to you, it takes quite some time to admit it is a problem.
This is why having teams of people is useful. Single startup founders, game designers, writers... have inherent blind spots in their entire work.
jezzamon|5 months ago
The experience is more like discovering there was an extra book in a series you've read 20 times over. Except you were the original author!
close04|5 months ago
It's why you can't escape a prison of your own making (literally or figuratively).
Cosi1125|5 months ago
[1] https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-prince-o...
karmakaze|5 months ago
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sMaY9BRHG8
andrepd|5 months ago
I found someone briefly showing on yt :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQW4M5azj_0?t=60
qingcharles|5 months ago
bluedino|5 months ago
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.
ct0|5 months ago
dunewalker547|5 months ago
document.querySelectorAll('.col-50').forEach(d=>d.classList.replace('col-50','col-100'));
smig0|5 months ago
bapak|5 months ago
spapas82|5 months ago
The music, even though was playing from the PC beep speaker haunts me to this day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcI8lQvX8Ng
Finally, after all these years I still remember running it with "prince megahit" to enable cheat mode so I'd be able to pass the levels using ctrl+l...
m000|5 months ago
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_hercules.php
wowczarek|5 months ago
spankibalt|5 months ago
animal531|5 months ago
They really upped the level and detailing on the art and the audio/music is quite good as well.
Design-wise they added a button to perform a forward jump which is really welcome.
msephton|5 months ago
sph|5 months ago
To be fair, he probably has better to do today than keep up with web technologies. I know I would.
Waraqa|5 months ago
I saved the page as mhtml and it was only 24.4 MB
pavlov|5 months ago
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.
unknown|5 months ago
[deleted]
cubefox|5 months ago
For those who wondered:
https://www.therage.ie/products/prince-of-persia-snes-japane...
https://x.com/Danny8bit/status/1196862172174811136/photo/1
revanwjy|5 months ago
[deleted]
gwbas1c|5 months ago