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.

[@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

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@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 .

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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 😂😂

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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).

[@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.

[@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.

[@Juno_1]

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

[@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!

[@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. :)

[@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

[@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!

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@dougdimmadome8986]

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

[@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.

[@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

[@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!

[@evi-vw]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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!

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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🙏🏻❤️

[@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.

[@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.

[@jayjaynet]

As you said, this game is a masterpiece. I didn't know that TTD and RCT were made in ASM and by a single guy. Currently I'm work as a ASM Programmer (Z Architecture) and even though I can't imagine how he managed to did it alone.

[@maxave7448]

Thats really cool imo. For me, I made a hello world program in x86 assembly and thats where I draw the line. I have a question though: why cant you use C? 99% of the time the C compiler can generate assembly faster than anything a human can write and has some pretty insane optimizations and is also a lot easier to read, so why not just use that? (unless you are working with legacy code, in which case you probably have to stick to asm)

[@jayjaynet]

There are at least 2 reasons we use ASM here. Performance and access to hardware features (at least when the system was developed, some features were exposed just for ASM programs).

[@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!

[@rayromanov]

Chris Sawyer had such an immense impact on my childhood with first Transport Tycoon and then RCT. They're still my favorite games to this day (as OpenTTD and OpenRCT2). An absolute legend in the game industry, and a madman for doing it all in assembly all on his own.

[@Randomii666]

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

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@robrick9361]

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

[@redheadsg1]

For me it is the perfect game, a perfect mix of management and creativity. None of other management games came close to RCT.

[@rrdias4742]

I really loved this game when I was a kid with a low end PC in early 2000s Brazil. And it was just a demo version. So nostalgic to see this video! I never thought about why the game was one of the few games my PC was capable of running smoothly. Thank you very much for the video!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@ColinClavel]

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

[@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

[@Anzeljaeg]

I did not knew he also coded Transport Tycoon, im totally amazed and he is indeed the god of game programing

[@hlibprishchepov322]

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

[@TheBaldOne]

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.

[@mia-blume0]

I just want to add, that assembly is rarely faster than compiled C/C++/Rust code today. A lot has happened since the 90s and compilers are usually able to produce better machine code than humans.

[@tbird-z1r]

Also the way CPUs work has changed quite a bit. Obviously there's parallelism, but also branch prediction means it's sometimes better to do the predictable, but slightly less efficient feeling thing.

[@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.

[@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?

[@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

[@raisebarhere]

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

[@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.

[@AdamSmith-gs2dv]

One great thing about RCT that set it apart from other themepark games is that all the ride were based on real world rides that you can find all over the world (yes people the Steeple Chase is a real coaster, it's at Black Pool Pleasure Beach in the UK)

[@ld6433]

That’s crazy!😮 I knew they were based on real ride but I didn’t know one was from Blackpool pleasure beach haha

[@Inatio]

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

[@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.

[@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 🐐

[@mike1hav]

Chris Sawyer is an unsung legend of the industry.

[@trevorhunt]

I was fully obsessed with RCT when it was released (and after). A work of art, to be sure.

[@langwang9130]

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

[@NicolasEmbleton]

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

[@Arzon527]

I remember playing one of the many "sequels" made by other studios, and it ran like crap. I really need to get myself a copy and play it

[@Kwioresma]

You basically get Open RCT for free.

[@ext93]

RCT Classic (the mobile port of RCT1 and 2) is excellent and easy to use on a phone or tablet. I think it's only $5

[@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!

[@nxthanj]

My dad introduced me to some of his games when i was around 5; RCT1 and 2 and Locomotion. I never really got to play TTD but I heard that it is basically the exact same as Locomotion. Regardless, i still come back to those games today and i can proudly say they will always be some of my favourites

[@cl8733]

The main difference is that TTD is much much better than Locomotion.

[@noodlechan_]

I once wrote a working win32 application in x86 Assembly, it’s size? 2 KB !!!! Then I made the same program in C Language, win32 API, it’s size? 150 MB 💀💀💀 This shows the sharp blade that is Assembly language, every instruction and every byte makes sense, no extra bullshit. The speed and size difference is so enormous. There’s no beating assembly language.

[@MCTVARG]

I recently got it on IPAD, and was thinking about it being programmed in assembly, like how would be the process of it being ported to Ipad Os. It works great.

[@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

[@RolandWolf]

"This game ran flawlessly on some very bad computers". I don't think everyone realises just how much worse computers was in 1999. This game would run butter smooth on the amount computer power that runs your current Bluetooth speaker or door cam.