Fitting Sim City into 20k of memory - Acorn Dev Histories (1)

[@PhilDay]

I'm very grateful to Peter Scott. The Thunderstruck games on the Beeb are amongst my favourite gaming memories of all time. And how he got this into 20k is astonishing.

[@ColinHoad]

It is a marvel. I also loved Peter's games back in the day, he was (and remains) my favourite Beeb game developer!

[@chrisw1028]

love this kind of stuff! cheers :)

[@ColinHoad]

Thank you, very glad you enjoyed it! More to come, hopefully :-D

[@b0rg1010]

Amazing insight. Thank you. I remember when I bought back in the day for the Beeb. I was blown away by it. ❤

[@ColinHoad]

You're very welcome, it's still mind blowing even to this day what Peter managed to achieve here!

[@RetroBytesUK]

I absolutely loved sim city on the BBC, its an incredible port given the constraints. I don't want to know how many hours I spent playing it, it was a lot though. Really enjoyed getting to watch Peter talk about it.

[@ColinHoad]

Thank you! Yes, it's definitely a game you can spend many, many hours on - even while filming some in-game footage for this video I got sucked in 😅

[@RetroBytesUK]

@@ColinHoad Its easy to get sucked in, and you find your self think, well I need to build this here, oh but then I need roads/power, maybe I could district another area. Then you realise an hour or two has gone by.

[@ColinHoad]

This all sounds very familiar 😆

[@Colin_Ames]

I really enjoyed this. Thanks!!

[@ColinHoad]

Great! I'm pleased to hear it 😁

[@IapetusRetroStuff]

amazing video, thank you

[@ColinHoad]

You're very welcome!

[@alkenstein]

Peter is a breath of fresh air! on my way over to ABug cheers

[@ColinHoad]

Excellent! 😀

[@FrancisFjordCupola]

Great to see Peter Scott! Sim City was one of his great achievements. But also just look at the scrolling in the BBC B footage and compare that to the scrolling on the Amiga.

[@ColinHoad]

Very good point, the Amiga scrolling is definitely a bit wobbly 😅

[@JimbobSonOfRiber]

Bless Peter Scott and his red yellow and cyan world!

[@ColinHoad]

A triumphant colourscheme! 😁

[@EdgyNumber1]

Is it even possible to programme a SVGA game at low-level any more in x86 or ARM? Those really were the good old days when you could talk, or listen in, to the components on the board.

[@ColinHoad]

That depends on what your target system is; there are still people writing x86 assembly games for DOS, and it is still technically feasible to write assembly code even for x64 AMD/Intel chips. The challenge (besides the complexity) is that graphics are no longer handled by the CPU, so that makes things harder. A "pure" assembly coded game such as this one controls everything via the 6502 chip, and that era has passed, alas!

[@lrochfort]

The ZX Spectrum version is also very very good, but of course that version was able to use 16k more RAM than the BBC

[@ColinHoad]

Indeed, getting a working version on the Spectrum was a good effort, too!

[@mattdhargett]

I would love to see a deep dive on the machine code of this with Displaced Gamers or similar folks

[@ColinHoad]

Maybe when my 6502 is sufficiently more advanced I can give it a stab, although we'd need a decent disassembly first!

[@colonthree]

The Dixon System?

[@ColinHoad]

Do you mean the label on my Beeb? It's something called the Richardson System but only in name, I think the case is from another Beeb, as mine was refurbished

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

Came for the tech artistry, but was pleasantly surprised by the brief bit of astute political analysis. I wish the "no politics in my games!" herd were honest enough to applaud this version of the game.

[@ColinHoad]

Peter makes a fair argument there, doesn't he? 😀