Oooh, these are my favorite kinds of stories. Coding bad-ass,
Fabien Sanglard, yanks on some latex gloves and
performs a digital autopsy on the
recently released source code to 1989′s Apple II mega-hit,
Prince of Persia.
Even though it is the Apple II version written in 6502 assembly language, it was a pleasant experience to dive in the code of that mythical game: As usual there were many fascinating sofware wizardries to discover. The Apple II apparent poor environment for game programming was actually ground to unmatched innovation and creativity: From self-modifying code, in-house bootloader, clever floppy disc format to skewing lookup tables: Prince Of Persia features engineering treasures in every modules. Reading the source allowed me not only to learn about the game development process of the 80s but it also renewed my appreciation for things that we take for granted today.
While you’re in the neighborhood, check out the rest of Fabien’s excellent
code teardowns, including
Duke 3D and
Quake 3.
