I seem to remember some chess game that was written that accounted for the memory drum hardware that used it which i would think would be the gold standard… might be this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess
Drum memory predates the Sinclair by quite a while. But there is an often repeated story involving an impossibly-optimised Blackjack program for a drum memory computer called “The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer”.
other high-level languages like C or C++
How times have changed…
Running OpenRCT2 on a Raspberry Pi is probably one of my favorite pastimes. It’s such an incredibly well-crafted game that it will run on nearly anything.
I know the OpenTTD folks have been trying to deflect any ire from being directed at Atari, but man… fuck Atari for forcing them off of Steam and GOG. I really don’t think they have any legal leg to stand on and are just saber rattling to scare the OpenTTD folks into submission.
What’s OpenTTD? How is this comment related to the article or the topic? Not being confrontational, just curious…
Edit: it’s an open source version of a transport tycoon game.
To clarify further, ‘Transport Tycoon’ and its update ‘Transport Tycoon Deluxe’ are the direct predecessors of ‘Rollercoaster Tycoon’, with the latter using largely the same engine and being close in the interface. Both games benefited tremendously from having been made in assembly, allowing them to run on mid-nineties machines while juggling hundreds of simulated units and multiple views of the area.
Both games (and the sequel ‘Rollercoaster Tycoon 2’) were programmed by one dude Chris Sawyer, with art and music by other folks (also one per task for RCT, not sure about TTD).
Yeah, I think basically the only reason why Transport Tycoon is in the news now-a-days is because they’re releasing a new edition of Transport Tycoon. And in preparation for that (basically to shut down who they see as “competition”), they’re fucking over everyone they view as potential competition.
Perhaps that’s why I don’t work in marketing, but that would buy so much goodwill and interest from the early fans if they were just embracing it. The first game is very lovable, and people loving it would probably have a look at the new one and that’s essentially free advertising. The only reason I see them doing this is because they know already that it’s bad, like, very bad.
I’ve only recently and briefly looked into the US law on reverse engineering, which is what OpenTTD were initially doing — and apparently the EULA overrides the law in that case, while a lot of software has stock statements in the EULA that forbid reverse engineering.
Btw the optimization for random walking of park guests makes for kinda shitty gameplay. Parks aren’t designed at all like real parks, and transportation rides are almost useless. It’s impressive for its time, yes, but the park simulation only visually looks good enough, it’s not really good enough.
If you play it like a model building game (not a theme park simulator) then it’s almost perfect.
