While many won't understand the significance of this, this really is kind of a big deal. After accidentally stumbling on the source code for the original Prince of Persia, its creator, Jordan Mechner, has released it as open source. It took some magic to get the code, written in Apple II assembly, off the 23-year old disks. Prince of Persia created an entire genre and left an impression on the games industry that lasts to this very day. Having the original code out and about is huge.
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Member since:2005-07-06
You maybe should've included a few dozen smileys here and there, since that "them" might just not be enough for survival 
Anyway, events like this can make my day. It's really a nice experience to be able to go back to such old memories and look at them with a really "deeper" look, right down to these sources, it's just plain fun.
Member since:2006-01-24
Heh, yes as someone who first learned programming back on the c64 in 6502 assembly (turbo assembler FTW!) stuff like this brings me sweet nostalgia.
Also I really liked Prince of Persia (unlike Mechner's previous game Karateka). There's a recent 'reverse engineered' remake made for the C64 here together with an interesting devlog:
http://popc64.blogspot.se/2011/10/prince-of-persia-for-commodore-64...
Bet he would have loved to have had this source code and is likely having alot of fun right now comparing the way he solved certain things compared to Mechner.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-07-06
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Member since:2007-04-25
I wrote a fairly large (for the time) GA flight displays package in 6502 assembler for NASA back in 1983 (I think). We took it to the Oshkosh Air Show, running on two Atari 800s and the flight sim proper on a small minicomputer, all linked with RS-232.
While I mostly write Python now (when I have time to code at all), the one thing I miss about those halcyon days is that I controlled every single machine instruction running on each 6502. And given De Re Atari, I've never had as deep of an understanding of any machine before or since. Well, except perhaps the CPU I designed and built as my senior project - but it lacked a good display processor. :-D
Abstraction is great, but sometimes you need to understand what's happening at the bare metal.
Raspberry Pi, perhaps? ;-)
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
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Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Member since:
2008-07-14
To most of today's programmers having assembly language source code is like having no source code at all. Maybe someone should cross-compile it to JavaScript and HTML5 canvas for them. Wait, I just heard that JavaScript is the assembly language of the web and thus too low-level. So CoffeeScript it should be.
Edited 2012-04-17 09:13 UTC