Post mortem of my one game a month

Re:Post mortem of my one game a month by namuol on Tuesday December 16, 2014 @07:03AM (#8756749)

Huge props for diving in to a mostly-extinct platform!

I've always wondered what the process was for game programmers on the early PCs and consoles.

Are there any books or documentaries that go into depth about the development process of, for instance, Super Mario Bros? I've only seen stuff targeting "mainstream" audiences that glosses over anything technical.

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Re:Post mortem of my one game a month by rbl on Tuesday December 16, 2014 @10:40AM (#8757573)

Let's see...

"The birth of a Paradroid" - Paradroid development journal for the C64 by Andrew Braybrook: http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap3/para_birth01.html

"Mental Procreation" - Morpheus development journal for the C64 by Andrew Braybrook: http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap23/mental1.html

"It's behind you" - R-Type Arcade conversion for the ZX Spectrum, free e-book by Bob Pape: http://bizzley.com/

Free sample pages of the development journals for Prince of Persia and Karateka by Jordan Mechner: http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/

Prince of Persia code analysis after it got open-sourced in 2012; by Fabien Sanglard: http://fabiensanglard.net/prince_of_persia/

Analysis of Pacman; long after the fact: http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html

Any other? I'm sure there must be many nowadays...

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Re:Post mortem of my one game a month by Narishma on Tuesday December 16, 2014 @02:05PM (#8758680)

I can't seem to find it right now but there is a development journal somewhere of the reverse-engineering and porting of Prince of Persia to the C64 that was done before the game was open-sourced.

Edit: Here it is (in 10 parts): http://popc64.blogspot.fr/2011/10/part-one-why-hell-would-an...

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Re:Post mortem of my one game a month by corysama on Tuesday December 16, 2014 @03:43PM (#8759335)

Here's a fun video on how a modern 8-bit style game was ported to actually run on an NES. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvx4xXhZMrU

You would probably enjoy the book Racing the Beam http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam

For a collection of (mostly consumer-oriented) behind-the-scenes material, check out http://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/

Or, if you want to get really technical http://handmadehero.org/

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Re:Post mortem of my one game a month by gr3yh47 on Tuesday December 16, 2014 @07:12AM (#8756771)

NES development is alive and well in the Romhacking community, and although I don't know of any detailed commercial project documentation of the sort you asked about, there are tons of guides out there for NES development in general.

It's pretty intense. You don't even have proper sprites. they had to work with 8x8 pixel tiles and piece them together to create images. There were also pretty severe pallet limitations.

All in all it's very interesting.

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Re:Post mortem of my one game a month by rbl on Tuesday December 16, 2014 @05:06PM (#8759882)

Ah, I almost forgot "The Game That Time Forgot"

http://vimeo.com/97875387

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