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Anon appreciates Chris Sawyer (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 weeks ago by Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works to c/greentext@sh.itjust.works
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[-] LeninOnAPrayer@lemm.ee 176 points 3 weeks ago

For those unaware. Assembly language is not something you would ever really program a game in. Which is why it's so impressive that it was programmed this way. It's also a reason why the game ran so well on the hardware of the time.

In programming we talk about "high level" and "low level" programming languages. The level does not mean difficulty, in laymen's terms you can think about it about how "close" you are to programing by typing in 1s and 0s. If you're "low" you are very close to the ground level (the hardware). Obviously, no one programs in 1s and 0s because we created languages that convert human typed code into what a computer wants which is 1s and 0s.

Assembly is a very "low level" programming language. It's essentially as "close" to programing in 1s and 0s as you would ever get. It is still an important language today but no one in their right mind would ever program a game in it unless you were running with extremely strict hardware restrictions where every single bit of memory needed to be dealt with perfectly. Which is basically what Chris did.

[-] lunarul@lemmy.world 61 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Sawyer started writing games in Z80 assembly. Assembly language was definitely something you would use to program games back in those days.

[-] notabot@lemm.ee 45 points 3 weeks ago

Assembly language is not something you would ever really program a game in.

Back then you wrote whatever you needed to be performant and/or that involved close access to the hardware in assembler. A game would definitely count. It's kind of nice to do, in many ways it's simpler than high level programming, you've just got a lot more to keep track of.

[-] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago

I used a macro assembler to create assembly programs once. It made the process much easier, at least for the tiny things I did. Can not image a full game.

[-] easily3667@lemmus.org 38 points 3 weeks ago

I love that you're "for those unaware" for assembly but not the random dude who made a video game in 1994 over 30 years ago (that I for one have never heard of).

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 26 points 3 weeks ago

The dude or the game? The game, Transport Tycoon, is phenomenal, and you should try OpenTTD, which is a FOSS recreation of it by fans (not in assembly).

[-] amon@lemmy.world 10 points 3 weeks ago

The fact that the OpenTTD devs made it compatible down to the save files and textures is nothing short of incredible. Like how much time and dedication does that take?

[-] MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago

If people these days don't know what rollercoaster tycoon is I'm going to start feeling way more old than I already do.

[-] stray@pawb.social 20 points 3 weeks ago

I know what Rollercoaster Tycoon is, I just can't identify random game developers by their vacation photos.

[-] easily3667@lemmus.org 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

That's not the first game.

Also what the other guy said.

[-] amon@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago

a video game

Not one, like 3 or 4 of them in Assembly, the Tycoon games.

Bro is a living legend.

[-] easily3667@lemmus.org 6 points 3 weeks ago

Clearly not super well known.

[-] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 10 points 3 weeks ago

Right? My first question was "Who the fuck is Chris Sawyer?"

[-] JackFrostNCola@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Tom's brother

[-] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

No lie, I almost typed Tom Sawyer when writing my previous comment.

[-] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 23 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Assembly language is not something you would ever really program a game in.

... these days. I assure you all the games my mate wrote on the HP calculator back then were in Assembly. And on the PC I would certainly use C but the core of it, the displaying of pixels and low level catching of input for example, were all in assembly. But yeah, that being said, for the time, everything in assembly was a pretty crazy approach given the tools available on PC.

[-] hildegarde 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Assembly was the language you used to write games back then. Most 8 and 16 bit console games were written in assembly. They needed low level code for the performance.

If you played sonic spinball on the genesis/mega-drive, you played a game that struggled at 20 fps because the developers chose to write in C instead of assembly to hit their deadline. That is why most games were coded in assembly in those days.

Sawyer started developing games in 1983. He would have learned assembly, and continued using the tools and techniques he was familiar with his entire career.

Assembly was pretty uncommon by 1999. RCT is uniquely made, but not because Chris Sawyer was a unique coding genius doing what no one else could, but because he was one of the few bedroom coders of the 80s who held out that long.

[-] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 79 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

If you lack true talent in your workforce, you can't make up for it by throwing more people and money at it.

Additionally, if you have true talent in your workforce, YOU LET THEM DO THEIR THING.

[-] LeninOnAPrayer@lemm.ee 61 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's also an example of when someone with passion is not alienated from the fruits of their labor.

You'll never be able to get an engineer to care about a product as much when at the end of the day the only thing they have to show for it is a paycheck.

Lack of Ownership of the production of your labor is a major problem with motivation in wage labor systems. Especially ones that depend on creativity and problem solving.

[-] v_krishna@lemmy.ml 61 points 3 weeks ago

I saw a great talk by John Romero a few years ago that really underscores how in the early days of computing a few mad geniuses really moved mountains.

[-] TheBat@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago

Here's a video about Prince of Persia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0VfmXKq54

[-] Por_que_pine@startrek.website 43 points 3 weeks ago

He loved the project, not the money.

[-] TedDallas@programming.dev 32 points 3 weeks ago

I bet he did PI planning for a week. Created 132 user stories. Decided on 2 week sprints at a velocity of 27 story points. Had daily 1 hour stand-ups. Weekly 2 hour sprint retro meetings. Per sprint a 3 hour sprint review meetings and a 6 hour grooming session with his cat. Not to forget the bi-weekly 2 hour sprint refinement meetings. And each sprint had a 4 hour backlog meeting on the potty. All by himself.

[-] HereIAm@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

Are 1 hour (or anything close to it) really a thing that happens? No wonder people hate on scrum then. It's called a stand up because no one wants to stand still for more than 10 minutes and would like to get out of there asap. 😐

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

I bet its looked something like:

  1. Developer in large company was frustrated with how much time was spent just communicating rather than doing.
  2. Comes up with a new system for effective communication and organization.
  3. Doesn't get much traction at current company because of inertia.
  4. Eventually starts his own company or joins a smaller startup where they are open minded because they haven't developed their own system for that yet.
  5. Less time spent communicating and organizing because it's a smaller company but confirmation bias gives credit to new system.
  6. Many companies adopt "proven" system.
  7. Large companies end up in same or worse boat because things still need to be communicated and disagreements still need to be resolved through discussion or orgazational power.

Though just a guess, since my only "experience" with "agile" has been seeing people complain about it. Plus experience working in a large enough team to have experienced the communication problem and to understand that a part of it is with so many meetings that are often irrelevant to the work any individual is working on, the default often ends up being tune most of it out until it's their turn to speak, so they often end up missing relevant stuff anyways and any big meeting is mostly a waste of time.

[-] HereIAm@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

So the people behind the Agile Manifesto are far more experienced than some random dissatisfied dev. What I think most teams miss is that the only required meeting in the Agile manifesto is to regularly meet up to discuss what has worked and what hasn't the past few weeks, aka retrospective. If there are meetings or processes that don't work for a team and they don't change it after the next retrospective, then they simply aren't agile.

[-] bstix@feddit.dk 22 points 3 weeks ago

I've read a lot of stories about it, because I'm a fan of the game and also used to dabble in assembly myself. His motivation isn't as crazy as it's often presented.

He used assembly because he had always programmed in assembly on a variety of hardware. He basically had every typical function documented or memorized from other projects. Just as any programmer can remember the statements in a language, he had blocks of assembly code that he could put together to do the same things. Like functions, right? If it's made right and you know what it does, then you don't even need to look at what's between the brackets.

At the time he wrote RCT, he simply couldn't be bothered to start a new collection of scripts in a different language.

[-] RadicalEagle@lemmy.world 20 points 3 weeks ago

Hard work and passion.

[-] aeternum 10 points 3 weeks ago

He must have pulled himself up by his bootstraps.

[-] lowered_lifted@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago

one POP %rax, %rdx at a time

[-] Hupf@feddit.org 4 points 3 weeks ago

太田 順也

[-] rainrain@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago

He is clearly a rivertaur.

this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
523 points (100.0% liked)

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