October 31, 1986
Ed was pretty thrilled with the rough running and jumping animation, now under joystick control. So was Tomi. Lauren, Doug and Gary didn’t act all excited, but I think they were secretly impressed.
I love the quality of the just-digitized roughs, but I’m having trouble preserving that fluidity and realism when I clean it up and stylize the figures. This is going to be a problem.
I beat out Ed and Steve for the #1 spot on the Tetris high-score list.
The Mets won the World Series.
Prince of Persia Animation Test 1986 from jordan mechner on Vimeo.
November 9, 1986
God, I miss New York.
Fifth Avenue… Christmas shoppers… rich ladies in furs laden with shopping bags and kids… crisp cold autumn air… the smell of burnt pretzels… St. Peter’s… the steel drum players wearing woolen gloves with cut-off fingers, breath condensing on the air…
I’m looking out the window at the San Francisco skyline across the bay dotted with white sails. It looks unreal. Like some kind of paradise.
November 10, 1986
Called Kyle Freeman in L.A. (he’s at Electronic Arts now) and asked him what he’d charge to license his Apple music subroutine. He spent half the phone call dumping on Broderbund. I realized after I’d hung up that this was the first thing I’d done independent of Broderbund since I got here. Interestingly, it actually strengthened my confidence that Broderbund is the right place for me. It reminded me that I am independent.
November 18, 1986
Digitized the running skidding turn-around that was so amusing on videotape. It looks OK. I’ll need to redo the straight running, but I think everything else will work as it stands.
About half the animations are in now. Next step will be getting the character to interact with the environment (climbing a rope ladder, pulling a lever, etc.)
At this juncture I think I’ll redirect my attention to the game design.
Prince of Persia Cleaned-Up Animation Test 1986 from jordan mechner on Vimeo.
December 2, 1986
Spent most of the day trying to figure out the velocity of a falling human being as a function of time. Enlisted practically everyone at Broderbund at one point or another. They all seemed to find this a more interesting problem than whatever they were working on.
December 24, 1986
Home for the holidays. It’s good to be back. Not much has changed except that David has taken over my room. We played a game of go. He’s seven stones stronger.
Pizza at Mario’s with David and his friend Andy. We pumped about six bucks into a three-player game called Gauntlet, which has pretty good graphics and a great appetite for quarters.
People tend to be pretty bowled over by the animation test I’ve been showing them. “Don’t you realize what you’re looking at?” Jon Menell said. “This is the light bulb.”
