[HN Gopher] The Making of Prince of Persia [pdf]
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The Making of Prince of Persia [pdf]
Author : gtsnexp
Score : 198 points
Date : 2022-08-21 07:08 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jordanmechner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jordanmechner.com)
| yrgulation wrote:
| A true masterpiece. Journals of this type is what we need, to
| understand the actual inner thoughts of people going from 0 to 1.
| Much better than marketing nonsense filled by survivals bias.
| jenscow wrote:
| A lot of effort had gone into the motion-capture of the
| characters. Having played the game back in the day, it was well
| worth it - the movement was so realistic.
|
| Quite funny thinking about the amount of effort required to get
| the equipment for this, when you consider I can literally just
| pull something more capable out of my pocket now.
| bschne wrote:
| I read most of the print version of this (which is very nice and
| I can recommend). One thing that really sticks out about this is
| just how much work in such a project ends up going nowhere -- you
| record something, you try using it weeks later, you realize it's
| useless, you do it again differently/better, lather, rinse,
| repeat. I'd somehow forgotten about this and started feeling kind
| of bad whenever I was working on something creative-ish (using it
| very broadly here) and didn't know exactly where each step would
| lead me. This sort of firsthand account of large projects goes a
| great way in reminding you that that's just part of the process.
| nerdface wrote:
| We often forget that if something took one hundred attempts,
| then we've learned ninety-nine ways something won't work. Those
| failed attempts do go somewhere in the progress of project,
| they're just not apparent to the observer.
| dcow wrote:
| And while this happens at the company scale (1/100 startups
| succeed) I'm wondering why it doesn't happen at the software
| scale. Why aren't product teams trying out many ways to meet
| users needs, scrapping, iterating, prototyping, and then
| finally building? Most of the time it's: I want this feature,
| build!
| Someone wrote:
| Because perfect is the enemy of good. (https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good)
|
| And it's not just that perfection takes longer to achieve;
| the estimate of how long it will take to reach it will be
| less reliable than that of multiple smaller steps.
|
| Because of that, I think one can even argue good is the
| enemy of good enough.
|
| As a simple example, a product is more likely to see the
| addition of, first, one report, than a second, a third,
| etc, than the addition of a good report builder.
|
| For the former, each step is relatively simple, and first
| value will be delivered sooner. For the latter, you'll have
| to answer questions about what the full range of to be
| supported reports would look like.
|
| Even if you, up-front, know you'll need to support tens of
| different kinds of report, it may be hard to argue that you
| need a report builder even if that seems to be the better
| choice to get to the end result.
|
| If you do end up with a report builder, it likely will be
| one designed by and written for developers. As an example,
| look at headers and footers in Excel, where, I think to
| this day, you have to type && to get a single &: https://ww
| w.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2018/sep/excel-h....
| jdvh wrote:
| I suspect this might be why most open source software
| struggles to reach the quality of commercial products. If
| it takes 10 attempts to get the major design questions
| right a company will either get there eventually or get
| outcompeted. Open source projects typically grow out of
| somebody scratching their own itch, and that doesn't
| involve the scrapping and iterating necessary to make a
| product that fits many users' needs.
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| Asana does (and Dropbox did) do a bunch of A/B testing all
| the time, usually with smaller features, to determine what
| works best, and will quite often evolve on the existing
| product and remove features they think they can do
| different or better. But of course one of the limiting
| factors is you can't be too disruptive to your users
| (that's why A/B testing is the slightly more gentle
| approach)
| hbn wrote:
| I also bought a print copy of this a while back from Stripe
| Press, along with a few other books. Haven't gotten around to
| reading them yet (I've been bad for reading lately) but gosh
| are they beautiful-looking books. They taunt me from the shelf
| every day.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Making of Prince of Persia (2011) [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17845937 - Aug 2018 (70
| comments)
|
| _The Story Behind the Making of Prince of Persia (2011)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406626 - Oct 2014 (1
| comment)
|
| _Making of Prince of Persia now available as an ebook_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3134411 - Oct 2011 (14
| comments)
|
| _The Making of Prince of Persia_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=952029 - Nov 2009 (9
| comments)
|
| Edit - and why not:
|
| _Prince of Persia in JavaScript_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29710538 - Dec 2021 (226
| comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia open-source port based on the DOS version
| disassembly_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29316058 -
| Nov 2021 (96 comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia has been released for the Atari XL /XE_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28983738 - Oct 2021 (17
| comments)
|
| _Fanmail from Romero (Doom) to Mechner (Prince of Persia)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972396 - April 2020 (1
| comment) (<--- this is charming ----)
|
| _How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II 's Memory Limitations
| [video]_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22650980 - March
| 2020 (57 comments)
|
| _A 30th anniversary note to Prince of Persia fans_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20293779 - June 2019 (96
| comments)
|
| _Prince Of Persia Code Review (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19478499 - March 2019 (49
| comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia Ported to the BBC Micro_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16725362 - March 2018 (17
| comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia: Sands of Time free download for Ubisoft 's
| 30th birthday_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912358 -
| June 2016 (20 comments)
|
| _Prince Of Persia Code Review_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5917888 - June 2013 (30
| comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia - HTML5_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223470 - Feb 2013 (39
| comments)
|
| _' Prince of Persia' creator Jordan Mechner on telling stories
| in 48k or less_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3901599 -
| April 2012 (5 comments)
|
| _The Geeks Who Saved Prince of Persia's Source Code From Digital
| Death_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871080 - April
| 2012 (17 comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia source code released (Apple II assembly)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3851605 - April 2012 (70
| comments)
|
| _Jordan Mechner, Creator Of Prince Of Persia, Finds Original
| Source Code_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3776280 -
| March 2012 (1 comment)
|
| _Prince of Persia creator finds lost source code 23 years later_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3772233 - March 2012 (67
| comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia C64 - Development Blog_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3286101 - Nov 2011 (2
| comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia for Commodore 64 /128 released_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3118358 - Oct 2011 (51
| comments)
|
| _Prince of Persia source code documentation [1989] [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=961713 - Nov 2009 (15
| comments)
| jope12 wrote:
| For people liking this book, this here might also be interesting:
|
| https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2001502/Book/Its_Behin...
|
| Direct link:
| https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/zxdb/sinclair/entries/200150...
| shahar2k wrote:
| I was at a friend's halloween party around 2010 (with a bunch of
| ex-USC people) and there was a guy quietly sketching in the
| corner, I walked over and immediately recognized his drawing
| style. "are you Jordan Mechner?" I followed his sketch blog at
| some point. we had a short conversation, I told him how much I
| loved The last express (he joked I might be the only one) and I
| didnt mention how young I was when I discovered prince of persia.
| Really great guy, quiet, unassuming and just nice.
|
| Interesting party that night, I met another game industry person
| I admired as well as some other fascinating folks.
| anyfoo wrote:
| The Last Express seems to have some kind of a renaissance in
| the past few years. It's about 25 years old buy now, which
| definitely fits the "retro" category, and as part of that
| people into computer gaming history rediscover it and laud it
| for what it is.
| jslakro wrote:
| That game tried to satisfy the personal aspirations of Jordan
| as a filmaker. A risky bet on narrative and realtime puzzles
| ddingus wrote:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-7-jordan-mechn...
|
| John Romero did an interview with Jordan that goes into early
| Apple 2 days. It is a good complementary listen to this PDF.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Just wondering do we have similar books for more modern games
| that more or less focuses on the technical/design details? By
| saying "modern" I mean games in the 90s and beyond.
|
| I have already read the following books:
|
| - Masters of Doom - The three Fabien books (just briefly as I'm
| not very technical)
| hbn wrote:
| Andy Gavin has a fairly extensive series of posts on his blog
| about the creation of Crash Bandicoot that I quite enjoyed.
| Goes over the process of even choosing to be on the PlayStation
| at first (over other systems), the design process, limitations
| they ran into, and some of the ingenuity put on display to pull
| off some fairly impressive technical feats.
|
| https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| There's some real superheroes in game dev for anyone out there
| looking for inspiration -- Mechner, John Carmack, Lucas Pope,
| Chris Sawyer. They seem to be not just good at programming, but
| _everything_. I absolutely love reading dev diaries from folks
| like this.
| aix1 wrote:
| I really enjoyed this video of Jordan describing the creative
| process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ozxnrs0BP4
| alpb wrote:
| Thanks for keeping the streak going.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=jordanmechner.com
| wiz21c wrote:
| FTPDF:
|
| But I said: "No advance, no salary, and a 20% royalty. That would
| be my ideal." He came right back with: "My ideal would be no
| advance, no salary, and a 15% royalty."
|
| Those marketeers...
| wyldfire wrote:
| Today, can an indie developer command much larger royalties
| than this? I would think/hope so? What kind of a cut do stores
| like Steam take? ~30%? Does that leave the other 70% for the
| indie developer?
|
| I suppose the indie is still responsible for marketing and all
| kinds of other stuff.
| danrocks wrote:
| It's an OK book but reading it after "Masters of Doom" kind of
| ruined it for me.
| NittLion78 wrote:
| I liked his journals from Karateka better than those from PoP.
| He was much less cocky then and his innovations seemed more
| novel and exciting, plus you know he was squeezing a lot more
| out of the hardware from that time.
|
| MoD was really an amazing book, though. Highly recommend for
| anyone who played the game back when it was still new (or
| anyone interested in a case study in product management).
| tombert wrote:
| Second on Masters of Doom; my favorite part is near the
| beginning, when Carmack showed Romero the smooth scrolling on
| a PC, and Romero is running through the office trying to show
| everyone, only for most of them to be largely unimpressed. I
| thought it was telling that the only person who really
| understood what Carmack had made was Romero, and it showed
| why they (initially) made such a good team.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I echo that sentiment, the Karateka journals were awesome to
| read.
| kramerger wrote:
| I really hated that he called Another World a rip off.
| gatane wrote:
| There is a "Masters of Doom" for Diablo 1 and D2, I have not
| read them yet...
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Had a lot of fun playing this back in the day on the PC. The game
| was relatively simple as far as content goes, but it never felt
| repetitive or monotone.
|
| The making-of also reminds me of Eric Chahi and his work in
| Another World, and how pioneering it was.
| lstodd wrote:
| I think this classic
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Gosplan
|
| should have a link here.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I've got the hard cover version from Stripe. As someone that also
| moved to the Bay Area fairly young to start his career, I
| identified with the author. It's a cute book and really does a
| great job of putting you in his head.
|
| I found it funny that he wasn't sure that the video games
| industry would last.
| solardev wrote:
| I didn't know there was a hardcover. Thanks for sharing! It
| used to be one of my favorite games and this would be a great
| sometime read.
|
| For anyone else looking, it's $23 from Stripe:
| https://press.stripe.com/the-making-of-prince-of-persia (sadly
| it's only available from Amazon)
|
| You can also get the ePub version for $8:
| https://www.jordanmechner.com/books/journals/?lang=en_EN
| runevault wrote:
| For reference the physical version is REALLY high quality and
| worth owning for simply being a very nice physical object.
| criddell wrote:
| I've bought a few books from Stripe Press and they are all
| high quality. My only complaint is that some of them use a
| very small (to my old eyes) font. I bought _The Dream
| Machine_ from them and ended up _finding_ an electronic
| version for my ereader.
| [deleted]
| solardev wrote:
| If I had a penny for every time I tried to pinch-to-zoom
| a paper book...
|
| ...I'd have enough for an ebook
| runevault wrote:
| Yeah I have a few books from them including Human Puzzle
| and one other I'm blanking on just now. All have been
| things that feel nice in the hand. I can see how the font
| would not be great if your eyes struggle with their font
| size choice though.
| [deleted]
| solardev wrote:
| You convinced me to look for a used copy on eBay (found
| one). Thanks!
| criddell wrote:
| If you like it, check out other books from them. They're
| a small publisher but what they decide to print aligns
| pretty well with the interests of many HN readers.
|
| https://press.stripe.com/
| runevault wrote:
| Thanks for linking to this, it let me look at the list
| and remember Hamming's book was the other one I bought. I
| really need to finish reading it, but it is so dense it
| takes a while to get through.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| It's also much longer
| merlyn wrote:
| > I found it funny that he wasn't sure that the video games
| industry would last.
|
| At the time, video games seemed to be overly saturated, the
| marketplace was way down in sales and yes, people didn't know
| if video games were a passing fad or not. Computers were still
| more a hobbiest item rather than a thing everybody had.
| fareesh wrote:
| The documentary is on YouTube and worth the watch as well
| corysama wrote:
| If you like stuff like that, check out
| https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/
| [deleted]
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