Why Roller Coaster Tycoon is a Game Development Masterpiece

[@robertonome2448]

- makes 4 near technically perfect absolute bangers - quits - refuses to elaborate

[@gn6691]

Chad🗿🗿

[@Titusop26]

[phone]AURA

[@ibrahimhassan6566]

He elaborated tho.

[@KicksMedia1]

@@gn6691 Not Chad but GIGA CHAD

[@chuckdude514]

I mean, he got 10 million. At that threshold, you either retire, do something you like, or start exploring the masses until you become a billionaire.

[@JuniorDjjrMixMods]

Just a little curiosity to get an idea of the absurd level of optimization that this game has: Each trash bin in the game only uses 2 bits to calculate if the bin is already full enough. How? Simple: the first bit indicates that some litter has already been put, and the second bit has a chance of 1 in 255 (iirc) to be set every time a new person places litter there, if both are set, it is considered full. So it will be considered full, randomly, after second litter. Yes, he could have used, for example, 4 bits to count a value from 0 to 15, but he still insisted on doing all this to save 2 bits of memory.

[@jasonhildebrand1574]

And this is more realistic, since you never know what, or how much trash each person will put in the bin.

[@laszloposzmik5829]

I wish i could see this level of optimization in today's games. Many games consumes drive space enough for 100-150 CD's. A save game could be 5 - 100 MB.

[@someguyfromanotherplanet5284]

​@@laszloposzmik5829game engines and OOP madness are the culprits.

[@Horzinicla]

Can you explain in more detail. Why is 4 bits easier, and why is the number 15 so specific

[@mke344]

​@@Horzinicla4 bits can store more data, and 15 is from 2^4 -1

[@cal8338]

Put it this way if you arent familiar with programming. This madman was making a working tesla car with stick, stones and ooga booga cavemen language.

[@giangnguyendinh3524]

Great analogy. The man ooga booga'd his way into AI self-driving

[@denissinner4625]

I don't think the analogy quite fits. It more like he made Teslas with materials which are harder to process but are of higher quality as a trade-off. Assembler is harder to code but you can get more performance out of it compared to more developer friendly programming languages.

[@RSpracticalshooting]

​@denissinner4625 basically instead of buying a car he built the entire car from scratch.

[@Jerome...]

Clearly not a Tesla, since the game is bug free.

[@xuniqueebeast]

Chris sawyer was able to program this in a cave....... With a box of scraps!

[@Hardtarget87jcvd]

Over 20 years later and I'm still playing this game. It's one of the best casual games ever made.

[@Ratkill9000]

Very few games can you really say that to. It was something special.

[@shadowling77777]

@@Ratkill9000too*

[@Ratkill9000]

@@shadowling77777 Both ways works

[@rodolfoxavierneto6667]

Bruh it's casual for u, 20 years later and I can't win :/

[@lollygagger1]

​@@shadowling77777no

[@SlopedOtter]

I used to play this as a kid, and now I’m a rollercoaster engineer. You could say it had quite the effect on me

[@TonyC2328]

$6 on Steam just saying ;)

[@Phoenix-zu6on]

where do you work? :D

[@Killerbee_McTitties]

thats awesome

[@yutanarkavich]

wow, what a story

[@GeneralDante108]

I am homeless

[@Janovich]

its hard to overstate what a positive influence this game had. as a kid i took it for granted but growing older i truly appreciate its magic

[@inclinedwanderer6349]

Pog

[@MrJVisionz]

Do you care to dive into the positive influences it had? Any examples?

[@Dagestanidude]

​@@MrJVisionzwhy do you care lol

[@SHADNEXUS]

@@MrJVisionzwhat a weirdo 💀

[@MrJVisionz]

@@SHADNEXUS whats weird, I remember talking to my parents earlier in the year about the game im 35 on how it influenced me or who I am today. I was just curious to what influences he/she may have had as well. RCT was bigger than just a coaster game to me so I was legit curious.

[@LenkeDev]

This man is a legend. It was really hard to just make a basic calculator in assembly, i can’t imagine creating physics like that in asm. Creating games in Java or C++ doesn’t get anywhere near the complexity of what he did

[@raxxor18]

Even using the most advanced tools from today, making a game with the complexity of TTD or RCT as a single developer would be an astonishing accomplishment. The amount of detail and subsystems implemented just blows my mind every time. And all that in Assembler? I can't comprehend the mind and determination he must have. It's really insane.

[@sophiacristina]

@@raxxor18 Non programmers wont understand, he made windows that can move, that pops up on empty spaces. He made physics without STL. Underground view, transparent water, like, wtf?!

[@amos9274]

am I the only one who finds the physics the least impressive part of RCT? I mean creating a physics engine for a roller coaster is pretty much just basic addition of velocity vectors and gravity * slope? Instead, programming so many DIFFERENT parts and UI elements and keeping it bug free, with no abstractions except for basic constants and Sections makes it goated for me

[@atabac]

Its not really hard, its just that we are used to the convenience current technology offers. Assembly i easier and straightforward, noabstraction. its just a lot of code.

[@sophiacristina]

@@atabac Once you have a prompt of your codes, you can just copy paste. Just like he did with Transport Tycoon.

[@dubsguy7986]

I already knew he coded it alone using assembly, but I didn't release he insisted on no microtransactions in the mobile port. He's a even bigger legend than I thought!

[@Flurofish]

The level of detail in RCT is remarkable. I mean, even the weight of guests is taken into account for coasters. Love the mobile port - so nice to play RCT in the train.

[@FreaqqShow]

And the different weight of the guests leeds to the situation where a coaster runs perfectly for hours and then out of a sudden it crashes because the weight of all the guests is too high and the wagons are too fast.

[@Minty1337]

when i first noticed that guests on paths take pictures of nearby coasters, i was immediately charmed by it

[@ptkstefano]

@@Minty1337 Some guests also stop to look at scenery or to look at stuff you're currently building, it's really, really cute.

[@someoneout-there2165]

Are you playing the original on your phone? It brings back so many good memories. I was with my first love and we'd alternate nights staying up for hours trying to build the best roller coasters for each other to check out the next day. It was and is amazing.. I wish I could play it again.

[@optiondeathstudios]

Dude even the fact that each guest has their own unique personality, so many aspects of this game are extremely impressive

[@Kertox]

Programming in assembly is like writing a cooking recipe but instead of "break two eggs" you have to describe each muscle fiber of the arms and hands that needs to be contacted in order to perform the action of breaking an egg. That's why we devs stay away from assembly and why this dude is a madman and a genius all at once.

[@digitalunity]

Chris Sawyer wrote the whole game in Assembly?! That's hardcore

[@superultrathanksmom3845]

Nah that part was just a joke.

[@r033cx]

@@superultrathanksmom3845 it’s not a joke

[@triple7marc]

@@superultrathanksmom3845 No, it was not.

[@yurisich]

What SuperUltra said here was just a joke.

[@Seskoi]

@@yurisich Andrew Yurisich is obviously joking .

[@pibbz13]

I owe this man so flippin much. His creativity and vision in game design not only shaped my childhood but also inspired my journey in life, leaving an indelible mark on who I have become.

[@Noot8888]

Damn so much respect for that guy, i have been studying assembly language currently in college and to think that RCT is built from asm still blows my mind wow

[@GdotWdot]

He was also contracted to do an enhanced port of Elite to MS-DOS in 1991. The publisher budgeted for two floppy disks but Chris fit the game on one, so they still shipped both but the second one ended up being a blank just for storing save files. Modern retro programmers of games for DOS with modern tools, like the 8-bit Guy here on KZbin, still often struggle to manage memory and space as efficiently as Sawyer did - but for what it's worth, they don't probably do 16 hour work days.

[@hotbam37]

Chris, If you ever read this. Just know that you had a tremendous impact on my life by creating RCT. My favorite game of all time. I still play it often. I can't even imagine the amount of work that you put into it. I never knew it was just one person who created such a masterpiece. That is really amazing. At some my lowest points in life, I fell back on RCT for comfort. It really helped me. Thanks.

[@Spinexus]

I don´t think people understand how deep this game goes. He made somewhat realistic g-forces for roller coasters which gave you penalties if their lateral Gs, positive or negative vertical Gs are too high. For example if you build an unbanked turn following a big drop the game somehow knows that the lateral Gs are over 6 and you get a penalty which means people are less likely to ride it. If you do too much crazy stuff the guests will say "this ride looks to dangerous" and they wont use or pay for it.

[@scotteckart1401]

To this day I could never build a roller coaster people really liked 😭

[@williamdrum9899]

As soon as I saw "lateral Gs" I could hear Marcel Vos narrating this in my mind 😂😂😂

[@williammanning5066]

@@scotteckart1401 Hills! Get some velocity, then just go up and down and up and down...

[@contactjd]

I'm sure they also used to get off and then promptly throw up on the path?

[@ReinierRuneScape]

Oh now I finally understand why the visitors did not want to go into my rollercoaster after having so enthousiastically building it lol

[@dominicanfrankster]

I can still hear the guests voices in my head. This man's creation is a core memory of mine. What a legend.

[@Par8dox]

Dora, Dora, Dora!

[@CasperLadeby]

I can hear all Marry go rounds when I see one.

[@ninjanerdstudent6937]

Remember: unoptimized software requires many updates, while perfect software requires no updates.

[@jaleger2295]

No

[@HarshilPandey-wz4vz]

​@@jaleger2295Are you sure about that?

[@jaleger2295]

@@HarshilPandey-wz4vz positive

[@HarshilPandey-wz4vz]

@@jaleger2295 what did you say no to exactly?

[@jaleger2295]

@@HarshilPandey-wz4vz to the aforementioned thought of the original poster

[@lnx0007]

I literally still have a burned disc with "rollercoaster tycoon" written on it in the sloppy handwriting of someone i don't even know. a hand-me-down of a re-gift. One of my most treasured possessions.

[@alexraney2312]

Remember your burned disc's with CD keys written on them?

[@tufab3494]

@@alexraney2312 bruh, there was indeed, although I still don't know what their purpose was 😂

[@LizZard1988]

@@alexraney2312 FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT... the only CD Key I ever knew by heart (and still mostly know)

[@billyjoe3309]

Protect that disk at all costs!

[@ladyselkie]

I had one of those as a kid haha

[@xy1101]

Not only did I play this nonstop when it came out, I revisit it every three or four years to beat through every scenario, because it is literally just that fun.

[@redactedaudioworks9407]

I got this game in a cereal box at age 5, and still play it once in a while today at age 28. Thank you for 23 years of fun Chris

[@ego4551]

Same. Actually own three copies.the mentioned one, the box version and on steam

[@pajeetsingh]

Same. I am 82.

[@pikachuchujelly7628]

I was about 5 years old and remember playing RCT with my older cousin. The oatmeal brand that I ate for breakfast had some special offer where if you sent in so many proofs of purchase, they would mail a copy of RollerCoaster Tycoon to you, and that's how I got the game, and I played the hell out of it all throughout grade school.

[@wild..mere..]

I miss this game. I would also play zoo and mall tycoon. :') I'm also 28. Those were the days.

[@mike.1390]

I remember playing it with my dad growing up. Good memories.

[@LaserFoxProductions]

I got this game the year it came out for christmas. Needless to say I didn't participate in christmas dinner, or new years eve, or basically even go outside for a few months. I'd get home from school and play until my parents had to pry me off the PC to go to bed, day in day out. The time just went by so fast while playing. Such a good game.

[@Gamajamas]

Chris Sawyer is a lot like Bill Watterson of 'Calvin and Hobbes' fame. Both created pieces of media that will be loved for generations to come, and both of them did so before vanishing into humble solitude.

[@fpadam]

Bill Watterson actually has a book coming out this year!

[@clyde6401]

Very random comparison but okay

[@SupersuMC]

​@@clyde6401 Your profile pic is relevant, though. ;-)

[@_Dingu]

@@fpadam what's it called?

[@fpadam]

@@_Dingu "The Mysteries" and he's collaborating with a caricature artist.

[@ultramaxpro8537]

Throughout 7 years of my childhood I have played Rollercoaster tycoon. Everything in it impressed me, from vomiting guests to breaking their balloons to their cute umbrellas. Everything about that game was soothing and calm for my childhood. Thank you sir. Thank you for making my childhood beautiful.

[@jaakko14]

This man is such a legend. Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2 and Transporter Tycoon are three of my absolute favourites from my childhood. They ran so smooth with my potato of a computer.

[@TheLittleSpoon1982]

I have an unopened copy of the game. I have it sitting on display next to my DIY mame arcade machine. I loved this game so much as a kid

[@gregorymoore2877]

You mentioned RCT had one graphic designer and one composer. Their names are Simon Foster and Alistair Brimble. I believe Simon did the graphics and Alistair did the music, but I might have that backwards. I don't know that I would say the game was completely bug free, but I do recall it was extremely rare for me to encounter any bug. RCT2 did reuse the graphics from RCT, but it felt like a little bit more than just an expansion pack. RCT2 included many things that were wished for in the first game; like extra flat rides; new types of rollercoasters; the rollercoaster designer and scenario editor; and the ability to have sloped curves with banking. Of course, RCT2 itself did have two expansion packs, Corkscrew Follies and Loopy Landscapes. Later releases of RCT2 have the expansion pack stuff included.

[@reaganharder1480]

RCT2 had more than just those 2 expansions. I know because as a child I was gifted one, Wacky Worlds. Most of the new coasters seemed to me to be basically reskins of other coasters already in the game, but the new scenarios were fun and anyway reskinned coasters isn't all in all a bad thing. And yeah, as far as RCT2 being just an expansion of the original, I can see how the argument could be made, but as an expansion it would be huge. The number of new rides with different mechanics to play with, a few new core game features like you mentioned with the rollercoaster designer and scenario editor, new scenarios... Like, in my mind, for in-game content, RCT2 more than doubled what RCT had to play with. And let's not underrate how iconic the music in that game is either.

[@JhanOjan]

and it's not lag free either. i remembered playing RCT2 on my pentium 3 450mhz PC, everything went very well until the guests are too many, it's started to run sluggish

[@reillywalker195]

RCT2's expansions were Wacky Worlds and Time Twister, which were made by Frontier. RCT1's expansions were Added Attractions (Corkscrew Follies in North America) and Loopy Landscapes.

[@m6isme]

Alistair Brimble makes such good music. He's been reuploading higher quality versions of songs on his channel, easily searched

[@alaeriia01]

Marvel Vos has catalogued almost all the bugs in the game, and put them on his KZbin channel.

[@kleberferreira7055]

Dude, as an average programmer working in mobile development I can't imagine the pain of developing a game from scratch without a framework/engine even if it's a high-level language like Java or C++. How the hell does this guy make such games with Assembly? Dude's either a genius or he sold his soul for that achievement.

[@manowartank8784]

TTD and RCT were hands down the most influential games for me. I can only speculate if they are one of the reasons for my deep interest in construction, city planning, transit, trains, planes, roller coasters and much more...

[@friedrichquecksilber770]

For me it was the reason to become a 3D Artist. started to use rct1 + 2 with mods and then build my own mods for rct3. Them my interest in 3D graphics started to skyrocket and now it's my profession. Thank you Chris Sawyer.

[@Megalodon1986]

I've played a lot of games in my 25+ years of gaming... but TTD and RCT are definately top 5 for hours spend.

[@ryanninjutsu]

what is TTD ?

[@ryanninjutsu]

Transport Tycoon Deluxe ?

[@cl8733]

I've only recently revisited OpenTTD and OpenRCT and both are still great. I've played to much TT back in the day.

[@lowej004]

Really enjoyed the video, and thanks for bringing back memories of all the hours I spent playing this and Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. However, I do feel the need to point out that the photo for the software engineer Steve Baker, isn't actually a photo of the software engineer Steve Baker, but actually Steve Baker Member of Parliament for Wycombe in England. A minor issue, but did give me a chuckle.

[@joewoodhouse30]

I lol'd

[@NicklasNylander87]

RCT is one of the best games ever. I remember being sick one week and staying home from school and just grinding for hours and hours - Good times!

[@Felttipfuzzywuzzyflyguy]

I've always wondered about the story behind this iconic game. I have an immense amount of respect for Chris now, so amazing what he accomplished.

[@monhi64]

There’s few games that had enough of an impact on me as a kid that I genuinely remember the name of their creator like RTC and Chris Sawyer. But what floored me even more is that I recently saw what genre of game this is considered, construction management simulator. What degree do I have? Construction management, what’s my job title? Construction manager, apparently this had a lot more effect on my life than I realized. Not even gonna touch on the assembly aspect because everyone else has, but I have programming experience and know how insane that is

[@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx9656]

Pure cap lmao

[@jeongkim5954]

“Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!" Yup thats him

[@nngnnadas]

You can name memory locations in assembly, obviously it isn't kept after assembling to machine code. Macro assemblers like the one he was using also - suprise suprise - let you use macros

[@xeridea]

A big reason for performance difference at the time was that compilers weren't anywhere near as good at optimizations. Compilers these days are vastly improved, making it difficult, if not impossible in many cases to get any performance benefit from assembler unless you have an deep understanding of how CPUs work, and knowledge of the vast array of tricks compilers use. Generally the best you can hope for is equal performance to an optimized C or C++ program. Most all the tricks people use in ASM to get better performance are baked into compiler, and also many more that would be highly tedious for programmers to implement manually, delving deep into how they actually do math to take some very clever shortcuts, as well as being much easier to use advance features such as use of SSE and other CPU intrinsics. Compilers us them even in basic loops if it makes sense to do so. It is worth noting that the SNES supported use of C, but no one used it because compilers at the time were pretty terrible performance wise, making it realistically unfeasible.

[@superblaubeere27]

AutoVectorization does not work too well on all problems, sometimes it is the best to write the SIMD assembly code for that by hand

[@xeridea]

@@superblaubeere27 you can do the intrinsics in C. There are libraries to make it easier to work with, so you don't have to manually do all the boilerplate stuff. It is sometimes possible to beat the compiler, but it is generally not worth the effort, except for certain tight loops and performance critical apps. Back in the day, it was fairly trivial to do better than the compiler. There are still programs done in assembly, it will never go away, it is just used less.

[@dhkatz_]

Yeah a lot of people don't seem to understand this. You would be stupid to attempt this now. It's funny because if he had written the game in C/C++ it would probably perform BETTER today if it were recompiled with modern compilers. They would for sure beat his hand written assembly. Obviously for its time it performed better than the compiler could do though.

[@Chaosman88]

Thanks for clarifying that. I was thinking that writing an app in Assembly nowdays would be worth the effort because of the performance boost. But now that you mention that the compilers are so optimized, you saved me from a lot of trouble :)

[@NYKevin100]

@@dhkatz_ It hardly matters if a hypothetical C version would perform better, since the original performed fine on the consumer hardware of the 90's. On modern hardware, both versions would probably run at an unreasonably high framerate, far beyond what your monitor is physically capable of displaying, so there would be no noticeable difference in performance anyway. The real benefit of a hypothetical C RCT would be portability to non-x86 architectures (i.e. the mobile ports mentioned in the video would've been much cheaper and easier to make).

[@Juno_1]

I used to play Roller Coaster Tycoon, and now my life is a roller coaster.

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

I spent so much time with this game when I was a child. Considering how old this is, it's remarkable how much you could do here. This is one of the few old games that truly holds up the test of time for me.

[@uwillnevernoewhoiam]

This game was so fun. Me and my brothers would spend hours on it. I remember building so many dumb rollercoasters just to see how it would run. A lot of NPC died, but I was willing to make that sacrifice.

[@middle-agedclimber]

Ha ha 😂😂

[@polecat3]

7:58 Assembly is definitely human readable lol

[@ricardorocha6612]

How can you write in a language that you can't read, video quality dropped just with that sentence

[@0x0michael]

Most people can't tell but this guy was really ignorant about the things he spoke about in this video

[@tinol6090]

i remember discovering rct1 in a game collection and playing it all night with my dad. its a core memory of my life and I still love the series. I always knew it was special but it was really intresting to learn about the coding aspect now! thank you for the vid!

[@nikhilsathe5956]

In my opinion writing game code is just a lengthy process in this situation, the crazy and genius part is the way he managed those detailed animations, lots of testings, and ton of feature implementations.

[@MemoryDealer]

x86 ASM is absolutely human readable lol

[@filiformis]

Assembly *is* human readable. That's the point. It's the human readable version of machine code. The opcode mnemonics and labels are there for our benefit, not the computer's.

[@benjaminsanglitan7927]

opooolpooll

[@Lucas-po6mn]

it is human readable, but comparing to C, it looks like alien language

[@howtoelectronicmusic4065]

It's readable but not understandable for a person that doesn't have a computer background, but when it comes modern languages- even if you don't know the syntax, you kinda get the feel of what the code might be doing.

[@veto_5762]

It is a human readable, but way less than is C, C++ or literally any other lenguage is

[@Teo97b]

machine code is also human readable if you know how the opcodes work.

[@robrick9361]

Chris Sawyer is the kid at school who not only completed the test first but also handed it in already graded.

[@McGuire40695]

This game was absolutely legendary! Every so often, I'll reinstall the game to play a few scenarios. It's still rather interesting to see how great of a game it was, especially compared to how it worked compared to other games out at the time. RCT and TS1 were some of my favorite games as a kid!

[@aa1944-k2r]

It was an amazing time play RCT as a kid on the windows 98...even some 20 years later, I actually rebought RTC2 from steam and play it, this is how legendary this game was, it is irreplacable, a timeless masterpiece. Even though today I am no longer playing the game, I still check out youtube channels that focus in RCT, still extremely fun to watch and I remember all the struggles trying to understand why my cash go negative when I was a kid (because I took out loans, and English isn't even my first language). Thankyou Chris for this amazing game and giving me a good childhood memory. :)

[@1800Supreme]

I'm so happy he remade RCT classic for mobile. Every other roller coaster game on mobile is Farmville with micro transactions. I got to the point where I bought a windows tablet just so I can play RTC on the go.

[@dougdimmadome8986]

Younger than 30? I'm 26 and rollercoaster tycoon has ruined my school career.

[@travisreid9530]

Wow! Chris certainly deserves his success. What a brilliant mind. I didn’t know RCT and RCT2 were made by one person, and seeing this brief explanation of the coding language he used means it’s all the more impressive!

[@reillywalker195]

To be fair, the games were programmed by one person but made by three. Simon Foster made the graphics of both games, while Allister Brimble composed their music. David Ellis supplied sound samples for RCT2, as well, and has a KZbin channel worth checking out.

[@travisreid9530]

@@reillywalker195 I’ll check it out, thanks!

[@koenvanderrijt5244]

Didn't he make transport tycoon deluxe aswel? That game was so cool.

[@rogerwilco2558]

Yep. Transport Tycoon is my all-time favourite game - so addictive.

[@koenvanderrijt5244]

@@rogerwilco2558 ever expanding, the opensource version is pretty cool aswel

[@DiabloGamer2000]

I'm 22 and also played RCT 1 and 2 together with my older brother and sister. It's probably the first game I ever played as a little kid and still play it sometimes to this day. Really love this game until my death🙏🏻❤️

[@ColinClavel]

Nice and deserved tribute to Chris Sawyer. Thanks again to him bettering my life when it was really needed. love

[@JVGaming123]

"RCT2 is too much the same as RCT1!" "RCT3 is too different than RCT1 and RCT2!" You can really never make people happy

[@ChaplainDMK]

Honestly this is is bullshit, RCT3 is beloved by the community. Locomotion on the other hand totally bombed and is not at all liked, hence almost everyone plays OTTD, while Locomotion only now got an open source version.

[@Saltience]

We hate Atari, for the sins they've committed. RCT1-3 are beloved by fans of rct. Devs of RCT3 went on to make planet coaster if I recall correctly.

[@AlryFireBlade]

RCT3 is trash. It has a ugly soulless artstyle. Maybe the gameplay itself is fine, but this new look makes it so hard to create something nice. In RCT1 And 2 building a prebuild wooden coaster and a few trees was enought.

[@obeseperson]

@@AlryFireBlade trash take lmao

[@three-quartersbadger2929]

One can please some of the people some of the time and none of the people all of the time.

[@Amerigo3356]

I know this video is old I just came across it. I love it. I’m 35 years old. I’ve been playing roller coaster tycoon almost every day and then I discovered RCT open and now I’m even more addicted. Thanks for the vid man.

[@SUCHMISH]

As a testament to the game, the game still plays on Windows 10 with a Intel i7, 24 gigs of ram and a GTX 1650 with 4 gigs of Vram... It's crazy to think that a game that was desinged to run on a low amount of ram will still work and operate w/out any hitches, glitches, or crashes... This game is AMAZING and I still spend time playing it even to this day!! Chris Swayer = Indie Legend!!

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

dude, of course it runs on a modern computer. Why wouldn't it. Did you think old games were designed to only run on those old computers.

[@LuaanTi]

@@maythesciencebewithyou Many games and much of other software exploited (knowingly or unknowingly) a lot of quirks and bugs of their contemporary hardware and software. It's a testament to Microsoft's backwards compatibility efforts that so much software still works after all that time. Even the recent dropped support in 16-bit applications on a 64-bit system isn't really their fault - the CPUs dropped that capability. Thankfully, you can virtualise and emulate :)

[@kricriweb]

​@@maythesciencebewithyou many many many many old games doesn't work anymore in modern computers (16 bits games/ dos games etc.) The technology allowing them to work simply doesn't exist in the hardware anymore. The only way to run them is by emulation (like DOSBox or PCem).

[@marko_1marko]

@@maythesciencebewithyou I just love when I see someone post stupid comment like this with such confidence 😂

[@SUCHMISH]

@@maythesciencebewithyou Dude... You must know that most old games don''t run on modern hardware for a myriad of reasons. Is it a 16 bit piece of software, then it won't run on Windows 11 since it doesn't have an official 32 bit build, and if you are one of the few who has a 32 bit Windows 10, your SOL without searching online for a solution. Some games and programs freak out if the processor has more than 1 core, and more than 250 MB of ram. Not to mention Copyright protection that Windows no longer supports, which is why there are so many people who are against anti-piracy measures. There is also the use case for floppy drives, but if you are using those then you are clearly using an emulator since most computers don't even come with a floppy reader now (heck, it's rare to see a Disk Drive on one). Not to mention, with out some adapters, you can't plug in a cartridge for a Commodore 64 or an Atari 2600 in you PC now, and even then you still need a emulator for that. The point is, its rare to find a game made for some older PCs that work on modern hardware that runs on it's own with out a emulator or searching for a solution online.

[@jagdpanzer360]

Hilarious that you put in a picture of Steve Baker the British Politician... surely not the Steve Baker you intended!!! 😂

[@MilanoGoud]

Chris Sawyer, the true artist and god! Seeing Transport Tycoon Deluxe at one of my father's friends birthday parties sitting behind a Pentium, trying to blow up trains LOL, then needed to have the game and got it on a floppy disc. I was hooked. RCT even worse, sooo much hours building. Like LEGO, like you said, but online. Thanks for this honorable summary!

[@RuiVascoMonteiro]

Transport Tycoon ran perfectly well on a 486@33Mhz. That's how good it was.

[@ultimatum97]

It's amazing to know the amount of detail it has like people will be afraid of certain rides and bored of others even in case of custom designs. So basically a logic to evaluate this factor was also coded possibly in assembly.

[@evi-vw]

My neighbor had this game. It was so insanely addictive.

[@timgehrsitz3267]

For those who aren't familiar with assembly, i got a Masters degree in Computer Science, and it took me a few weeks to write a program that output the Fibonacci sequence in an assembly language for a class.

[@doingtime20]

Transport Tycoon is massively underrated, it's really one of the best games of all time.

[@cl8733]

Definitely! And the OpenTTD community is great, making the game worth while even today in 4K.

[@realmagdel]

Absolutely

[@danilolabbate]

I don't think it was underrated. It was quite famous back then and still has quite a number of players.

[@WIZARDTOWER1337]

​@@danilolabbateokay

[@worawatli8952]

I think the reason is that people just do not understand how train signal works, or logistic in general, as the game is pretty realistic in concept of how train route works. The game is too challenging and intimidating, people still ask how basic signal block signal works online. lol And OpenTTD took it to another level of depth, I am still playing it today.

[@rubenvanbelzen1217]

Man I could not agree more with this video. RCT is my childhood’s favourite game, and I still play it occasionally. One thing that I have taken away from this video is that Chris Sawyer was so humble, by not having microtransactions in his game. Even Minecraft Bedrock on the phone has these! This has only increased the respect for this man

[@niveous5392]

This game still holds up over 20 years later and I think it'll hold up for years and years to come. I can really respect him for setting out to make what he envisioned to make and then move on, but I can't say it doesn't hurt me that he didn't bless us with more games lol

[@user-tn5vm9fr9f]

This is one of the best games ever created! It gave me such an incredible feeling as a child and I still play it every once and awhile today!

[@ProDigit80]

He also made Transport tycoon // Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and now we have OpenTTD from it. Love the game!

[@Malentor]

Such amazing games. Chris Sawyer is a legend!

[@NicolasEmbleton]

I played Transport Tycoon soooo much. It was amazing. Legend!

[@hlibprishchepov322]

9:14 with such a good memory i think his mind written on assembly language

[@WackoMcGoose]

Another game dev I'd put on the Sawyer Tier, is Tarn "Toady One" Adams, formerly-sole developer of Dwarf Fortress (his brother did do some work on it, and he's brought on an additional dev for the Steam release). DF isn't written in raw ASM, but the simulation is _far_ more complex than RCT's elaborate but still ultimately numeric-abstraction-filled parks, despite being tile-based, nethack-like ascii graphics. Combat damage is simulated down to _individual layers of tissue WITHIN individual organs inside a body,_ all sentient creatures have full backstories and personalities and interests, you can watch civilizations rise and fall then spend literal days looking through the highly specific and detailed generated lore of a world... It's crazy how much the game is able to do in an executable of mere megabytes.

[@CTGrell]

my pc is really really REALLY old. and there are not that many games I can play on it. RCT has been here for me since forever. no lags ever. always a nice few hours of gaming without any issues. Chris is my hero. and so are the team of OpenRCT2 with all the updates. the community built around this game is just amazing.

[@Mordecrox]

0:01 right away can't recall names but I'd on a limb seriously answer either the guy behind TempleOS or Rollercoaster Tycoon, I remember being enamored to the complexity and optimization it had back when computers were barely faster than banging two rocks together

[@jynnvynn7562]

I hold this man in the same regards as the Beatles, Chris Sawyer created a masterpiece that impacted my childhood as much as many other things. I thank him for his dedication and for my love of gaming.

[@ilzuab8467]

And did this in the most tedious, depressing and time intensive programming language in existence (by design). Incredible.

[@MemoryDealer]

@@ilzuab8467He didn't make it in Java

[@pajeetsingh]

Beatles?

[@ivanescalera6259]

Bro is more like Mozart than Beatles…

[@pikachuchujelly7628]

By the late 1990s, Chris Sawyer was an expert in both assembly language and isometric games. Transport Tycoon is almost like a prototype for RollerCoaster Tycoon, since a lot of elements carry over. Trains became coasters, road vehicles became guests, etc.

[@bmccorkle38]

The actual amount of detail in Rtc was just so ahead of its time. Down to the contents of guests pockets. I've spent 1000s of hours building parks...

[@GameDesignThinking]

Amazing documentary. And just... WOW, Chris Sawyer, what a legend. RCT is definitely one of the best games ever, and being #1 and #2 in such a competitive market, in which game sales were driven mostly by the real quality of the game (especially but not exclusively game design) and not because of big budget marketing, endless sequels or use of IPs is crazy.

[@jackofsometradesmasterofnone]

I don't think Chris receives as much praise as he should. As a person who dabbled in ASM, CREATING AN ENTIRE GAME in assembly goes beyond my comprehension. I cannot imagine how smart and focused he was when he did this. He's a level above programming a game with 0s and 1s, it's crazy.

[@refinedcontent5376]

I was playing this game 7 years ago when I was 13 even kids these days can still come up playing this masterpiece if it is introduced by a parent.

[@111michiel]

As a programmer this story is so wild it's even hard to believe. It's the kind of story people make up to impress times a 100. The fact this man was able to make these games in the span of two years is something that if you gave an average developer twenty years I doubt they would be able to approximate.

[@ftgodlygoose4718]

It’s really just a matter of passion. He was clearly incredibly driven to make his visions reality. Working 16 hours a day on the game? That’s insane. The time he spent away was to sleep lol.

[@Randomii666]

I never played RCT that much, but TTD is still one of my favourite games ever. Just incredible games

[@zedramer]

I didn’t realize just how special this game was and couldn’t really understand as a kid why it was the only game that could run well on my old PCs. Truly the 🐐

[@GpOs300]

I'm Brazilian and this was an extremely success early's 2000... I also love Locomotion game. This guy is a genius. Totally deserved

[@Inatio]

Can’t agree more. This is brilliant to see him recognised and remembered.

[@perprerp]

I spent so many hours playing Transport Tycoon. I admired how complex and performant that game was, without having any idea it was developed in ASM and by a sole developer. It also had a great MIDI soundtrack. Thanks for making the video!

[@jasonhildebrand1574]

9:00 There are really only 12 lines of ASM for the looped version here. Lines 1,7, and 11 are just labels ( they are not actually commands, but just references to memory locations of the code. Also, line 14 is NO Operation, which does nothing.

[@kezorrin]

I did't know this game was coded entirly on aseemby, just thinking about it sends a shiver down to my spine. I rember programming microcontrollers on assemby during college and it was a pain in the ass, it made me appreciate C more back in the day, now with C# or any other high level lenguage even going back to C feels daunting, let alone assemby. He is trully a legend

[@youdontsay2529]

Assembly is an absolute nightmare. Being able to pull this off is basically a superhuman feat.

[@raisebarhere]

This really was the sickest game ever, I remember getting it in a cereal box.

[@critical_always]

Wow, sounds like he does deserve this brief moment in the spot light. He sounds like an awesome guy. I hope he got compensated adequately for his work.

[@rawbmar1166]

When you're the one doing all the work, you get more than the average developer.

[@mike1hav]

Chris Sawyer is an unsung legend of the industry.

[@TheWorldListens]

So grateful for the time spent with Chris and the badminton club as a kid. What a legend

[@langwang9130]

As a CS major, Assembly language is the closest you can get to coding in 1s and 0s. Madness

[@arpadjszabo]

When I played this game during highschool I didn't know anything about the background but I quickly realized that it is very special. One of the most fun games ever.

[@defnlife1683]

What an absolute unit. I love assembly. It really teaches you a lot. I wonder if the C compiler would get better performance. Maybe not at the time, but today they probably would.

[@egggge4752]

The compiler still makes redundancy code because c is much more abstract.

[@Nocfairy]

The compiler transforms code in assembly, how would that be faster?

[@jamesbrown1645]

Visual C 6.0 would've optimized for the Pentium but you'd just be running twice as much code twice as fast.

[@defnlife1683]

@@Nocfairy because compilers can find extra efficiencies when converting from C that you might not think of when writing asm. Professors troll college students students on that all the time. I mean, the game is so efficient it’s probably silly to do a test or something.

[@defnlife1683]

@@egggge4752 it this always true? Specially with extra flags?

[@Autotrope]

The big disadvantage of assembly is it's written for only one platform. To port it to another platform you need to rewrite it. Not so with C. Modern C compilers today can usually optimise code as well as or better than a good assembly programmer, with only an occasional reason to switch to assembly. BUT that was very far from true in the 90s. So, at the time, assembly gave you an enormous advantage - performance - at enormous cost - programmer time, especially if porting to other platforms.

[@acf2802]

3:40 Assembly isn't a language, it's a class of languages.

[@insidiousmaximus]

Nobody cares

[@acf2802]

@@insidiousmaximus You cared enough to reply to me. Quite pathetic.

[@lookouthill11]

I love this game still! I played it when it game out thanks to an older brother who gave me the disk. I managed to get an old laptop running in 2018 and played it on a whim and ended up playing it on and off for several years with enthusiasm.

[@perodactyl490]

My favorite type of assembly is 6502 (or 65c02, they're practically the same) Some things listed involving many lines of assembly for one line of C annoyed me because, for example, a loop needs a condition which needs to be determined every iteration, you need to store the index, and you need to repeat. Or a function. All it does it push some data to the stack to remember what it was doing before the function, and then it runs the function, and then it pops the data. It's helpful because you know exactly what you are telling the machine to do. No strings attached.

[@gauravgosain8709]

Brought up so many cool memories. Used to play RCT 1 for hours as a kid. The amount of customization offered on rides, paths, terrain, artifacts was just something that could keep a 10 years old engaged for months and years.

[@anthonyC9199]

Makes me a little sad in a good way to know he wanted to keep pricing as it was when I was young. I have slowly fallen out of gaming over the past decade. But recently I was looking for something simple I could pick up and put down when ever. Found this RCT Classic on the app store. Then looking at a few tips and tricks on youtube I saw a short about this guy, Chris Sawyer, probably your short. And that made me watch this vid, because of the YT SHORT intro. I get sad thinking of the benefits of the past. Games had cheats and exploits. You could play for years and get better with weapons, really learn the game. Unlike warzone, they keep switching stats. I personally feel it's messed up, constantly tweakinga game for profit like warzone. But if you grew up in that world of the games constantly being altered, would you also develop better adaptability skills? Anyone born past 2010 have any thoughts on this? Would anyone that age even be watching a video like this. I'm interested in young culture and their world view. Just like how I wonder how older people view me in society. Are we really having the same experience as they did. And if not, how has this affected me differently.

[@superultrathanksmom3845]

It looks like in two months no young person has stumbled across your comment. I'm in my late twenties and I grew up with this game so I can't answer your question. What I can say is that even though there's horrible triple A cashgrabs now there's still plenty of mindblowing gems being made and there are lots of kids playing very good games, and they can access all of the old classics easily as well! Though it has certainly become more of a grim and exploitative world, which could be said about civilization as a whole I feel like. Games like Roblox and many mobile games are often terrifyingly designed to get kids hooked on microtransactions and gambling mechanics. I wonder if the claws of capitalism will ever lose its grip on humanity...

[@dophie3292]

I'm 25, Roller coaster tycoon 2 was one of my childhood games but not really this. In high school our big game was league of legends which was constantly updating.For us it was cool it just means you have to playing consistently to keep up with other players but it also means that the game has a long lifespan and always feels fresh. League the main game me and my friends played all through high school so about 6 years of playing consistently every week Now that im a bit older i tend to look for games that dont take so much of a comittment but I defintely look back on those years of playinge League with my friends and family fondly...

[@Gameprojordan]

If you're interested in playing off a PC look up "OpenRCT2" it's an open source version of the original RCT2 with a lot of extra content, and the ability to easily download and install mods into the game.

[@fusrosandvich3738]

I'm a 2000's lad, but i've found that Triple AAA games are basically complete garbage and should be disregarded. Anything made by AAA developers is almost universally terrible with very very few exceptions. Capcom seems to be the only one left who's focus is "make fun video games". You should always go indie when buying games nowadays.

[@LordSaliss]

holy crap. I didn't realize the game was made in Assembly. Thats impressive. Ive written industrial machine code that was effectively assembly, and it was extremely cumbersome. I cant even imagine doing that for a full game with physics, graphics, etc.

[@BRoyce69]

-Be child -After elementary school -Go to friends, home office with single core pentium PC -Boot up RCT2 and mess around having a great time What a legendary game though. Nostalgia blast from the past

[@BeachLookingGuy]

BRO! the first computer i had was a hand-me-down office PC in 2000. IBM with windows 95 (yea i was helllla late) but i was in 5th grade and all i cared about was playing RCT. this PC was outdated AF with a 233mzh processor and something like a 4mb graphics processor. RCT played flawlessly and handled massive parks with dozens of huge roller coasters. literally every "scenario" had been completed and fully build to max size. I would love so much to be able to boot up the save file on that PC and look at the work i had put into maps like Evergreen gardens and diamond heights. I would wake up before school and play, sit in school alll day, dreaming about how i was going to design my paths, gardens and roller coasters. I would spend hours fine tuning various roller coasters for different types of guests. I loved making "dueling" coasters. I would build 3 HUGE coasters (over 1 minute ride) that would duel, give them all cool custom color schemes or just make them all the same color and it looks like 1 MEGA ride. it's amazing how well all this stuff worked and how well it was designed.