obiternihili:

cungadero:

it’s not really, rpgs are relatively straightforward to program and manage, it’s basically japan’s specialty genre, the problem with red and blue is that they cut corners while also letting both easily fixable mistakes and large oversights pile up so they could make release date. they were also severely inexperienced. you have to remember what we think is a crazy feat now was just the baseline limitations of the time that everyone had to work with, not just them

Tables are easy to make and program. Like, even then.

Link’s Awakening seems like a greater feat to me now, considering they made 3 maps with two completely different sets of physics (side scrolling 2d and top down), enemies work inside the movement/update routines instead of just responding to the player, item physics are a lot more diverse, etc.

I had a moment in college freshman year where I was majoring in computer science but I thought (like half of everyone, it was 2001) that meant “making cool games, like Final Fantasy VI!”

only the second class (I tested out of the first with AP CompSci, after testing into AP CompSci by learning object-oriented programming on the Lycaeum [it was the classier Erowid]’s MOO) was like “this program is about advanced recursive abstract math as a way to get algorithms to run in cheaper Big O notation, meanwhile teach yourself Java”

And then later I learned about the struggle to compress into a SNES cartridge and the tricks they played with multiple transparent layers and Mode 7 and realized that WAS what programming FF6 was about

And I maybe abandoned that altogether too easy, if I waited for the early Isaac-era indie scene I could’ve eventually released the American frontier epic(s) I later reworked as a TV pilot and gave up on

The people who followed that CompSci program through ended up doing postgrad grant-funded work on incomprehensibly abstract digital signal processing algorithms across such absurdly large arrays they knew they had to be building ECHELON for the NSA