The indie ethos, before it was even a thing (or in the very early stages).
It's a masterpiece and Chris Sawyer is a genius.
Is the most interesting quote IMO. I often feel like productivity has gone down significantly in recent years, despite tooling and computers being more numerous/sophisticated/fast.
I'm sad that Chris Sawyer is such a reserved person, his public appearances are super rare [1] and he has no internet presence, except for a website that hasn't been updated in ages [2].
I wish he had a blog where he shared how he made his games.
[1] One of the few: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU73g72NTHc [2] https://chrissawyergames.com/
The spirit of this game lives on now in OpenRCT2 [1] - which brings the game into the modern age and is backwards compatible with all the scenarios from the original. It even features multiplayer park building.
I'm pretty sure most programmers who are comfortable in both C++ and assembly language can add working functionality to a program faster in C++ than in assembly. Of course, certain C++ libraries will eliminate that advantage, but choosing to use those libraries isn't essentially different from many other bad decisions you might make about how to write a large program.
I think the real constraint must be market timing - as much work as people can do to meet the market (eg. Have the thing done by Christmas), that much will end up being done.
Expanding the quote because the word "team" is probably relevant to why it took longer to rewrite. At a certain scale there just is a huge advantage in everything being inside one head...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBlXovStrlQkVA2xJEROUNg
He is basically reverse engineering and explaining RCT's logic and design, but does it via entertaining videos.
Sometimes you get the impression that you have to be on social media to have an impact on the world, or that if you don't share your development tips on a blog you aren't as good as someone who does. And it's not right, but it's a really easy trap to fall into.
But for me Sawyer proves that this is not needed at all. He's enjoying his relatively anonymous life (compared to what it could have been) yet have accomplished games that will probably always been remembered as long as there is humans alive.
When I see his name I reflexively start hearing that iconic Transport Tycoon intro music play in my head.
In this case, they probably were trying to not just rewrite but improve the engine at the same time. That's a much more complicated thing to achieve. Especially when the original is a heavily optimized and probably somewhat hard to reason about blob of assembly. I'm guessing that even wrapping your head around that would be a significant job.
Amazingly enjoyable game btw. Killed quite a few hours with that one around 2000.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
> The project has no blessing or support from Chris Sawyer and our view, it is both unethical and unlawful, involving infringements that may in some territories be criminal as well as a violation of Chris Sawyer's rights and those of his licensees - all of which remain reserved.
> RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, distributed by Atari, contains RCT and RCT2 rebuilt for modern operating systems under Chris's own direction.
[1] https://forums.openrct2.org/topic/5646-how-is-openrct2-legal...
He perfected the games according to his vision, so it makes sense for him not to like people rewriting his code and adding new features.
I wish my managers would get this. Currently our product shit the fan due to us being understaffed and badly managed due to clueless managers, and what they did was add two more managers to the team to create more meetings and micromanage everrying.
See e.g: https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/commit/643db7ae017e04d1...