2 Weeks ago Jordan Mechner found the original source code for the first PoP game in a box at his dads home. He's recently put all the source code up on GitHub.
Read the full blog article here: http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2012/04/textfiles/
... or go straight to the code: https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II
Yup, that's pretty awesome!
I followed the live tweets like a giddy schoolgirl.
Then I bought the "Making of" book from amazon.
Awesome, That was one of my favorite games!
Falling in the pits of spikes, pole volting etc, fun fun!!
The new 3d stuff just doesn't compare to me :P
Wow, that's a lot of assembly!
Also I find the code surprisingly compact (after all, it's rather a rather subtle and complex gameplay)
Question is if this will make any difference from disassembling the game yourself... which it will most likely not,
except some nice commenting,
Quote from: Hinders on Sat 21/04/2012 02:12:51
Question is if this will make any difference from disassembling the game yourself... which it will most likely not,
except some nice commenting,
Well, the commenting sometimes help. Especially to separate the algorithms (specific to the game) from the OS calls (outdated floppy-disks and display devices routines and stuff).
What I really wonder about, though, is: Why would anyone want to get the PoP source code, except for its historical value?
Quote from: Monsieur OUXX on Sun 22/04/2012 22:55:09
What I really wonder about, though, is: Why would anyone want to get the PoP source code, except for its historical value?
Coupling with the design documents he released earlier, they're very valuable in Apple II stuff development, which
I am actually looking into.
They're also very valuable if you say want to port the game to other platforms, as you can make the ports' game logics essentially identical to the original version, especially when they're other 6502 based systems such as the Famicom and the PC Engine. I know there're already versions of this game on these two systems, but it doesn't hurt to have a more faithful version (the PCE version was sometimes criticised as being not animated smoothly enough).