December 1, 1988
I’ve been thinking more and more that I need some kind of major life change. I’ve never felt so restless. Maybe after POP ships I should enroll in the directing program at AFI, or USC.
December 2, 1988
Dec 88 from jordan mechner on Vimeo.
Doug wandered into my office today and I gave him the joystick to play with. He was impressed. When he left he said: “I feel like I’ve had an adventure.” I told him I’d have a version in a couple of months that would really be playable. He said: “Seems to me it’s pretty close.”
Also spent a couple of hours with Lauren E., and some good ideas came out of that.
I realized that the 50-level, Lode Runner approach is all wrong. What made Karateka so compelling is that it’s easy. You boot it up and pick up the joystick and it’s obvious what you have to do. You’re there, the guard’s there, he’s in your way. The goal – the bad guy and the princess – is somewhere off to your right, and every step brings you closer. It’s mindless, repetitive – and addictive.
Prince of Persia, with all its elaborate complexity, stretches that thread past the breaking point. The world is so big that the player is lost and confused.
So here’s the new idea: Ten levels. Easy levels. About the same difficulty and amount of game play as Karateka. You start in the dungeon; you end with the princess.
But that’s not the end. The princess gets taken away from you again and you have to go through another, more challenging castle — four castles in all, ten levels each — to win the game and get her for good. Castle four is where we’ll put the really tough levels – for fanatics only, like the last 50 levels of Lode Runner.
At the beginning of the game, story is everything. By the end, it’s practically nothing. The experience distills into pure game play.
So there it is: Slap a story frame on it. Add combat. Design ten easy levels. That’s Prince of Persia. The rest is a bonus.
I’m starting to think there’s no reason to include the level editor with the disk. In a way, it cheapens it.
The real trick will be designing those first ten levels. Finding the right balance of action, strategy, and adventure. That will make the difference between an OK game and a great one. I could slap together ten levels in a day… but it should take weeks. Weeks of watching beginners play, and revising, and finding new beginners to test it out on.
But first: Combat.
December 3, 1988
Rented a bunch of swashbuckling movies and took them to Robert’s new apartment to study the swashbuckling. Of course we ended up watching Captain Blood straight through. We were both amazed by how good it was. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a movie with such a well-constructed plot. Why don’t they write screenplays like that any more?
Then we spent a couple of hours at Broderbund, working out the logic and joystick interface for the swordfighting in POP. This must be the tenth time I’ve torn it all down and come up with a new way to do it. I hope it’ll be the last.
December 5, 1988
Doug told Tomi my game is going to be a smash hit.
Spent much of today on hands and knees, poring with Eric over three dozen snapshots spread out on the office floor, trying to deconstruct Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn’s climactic duel in Robin Hood. We really busted our brains.
As a result, my conception now is totally different from what it was yesterday, or Sunday. It’ll all be worth it. This is going to be the greatest game of all time.
I just got off the phone (at 1 a.m.) with Lawrence Payne of Compu-Tech Systems in London, who make the digitizer that so inconveniently stopped working a few months ago. It’s 9 a.m. in London. He gave me his home number so Russ and I can call him tomorrow morning and he can help us try to fix it.
But really, what I need to do is rent a video camera and find two people to re-enact the moves of Guy of Gisbourne and Robin of Locksley for digital posterity. I want to have it up on the screen now. When I’m pumped up like this, I can hardly sleep at night.
December 8, 1988
Russ and I “fixed” the digitizer (it was in the wrong slot) and changed my life. In the past week, swordfighting has gone from a vague notion of something I’d have to put in the game someday, to reality. The little guy now thrusts and lunges. Everyone who’s seen it is thrilled. The amount of painstaking work still ahead of me is too huge to contemplate, but it’s paying off more dramatically than anything I’ve done in months. This is going to be a good game.
December 15, 1988
I came up with an idea for Robert’s game. The goal is to rescue people who are trapped in the building; you disinfect the rooms and make it safe for them to escape.
Robert, for his part, came up with a good idea for me – solid blocks to fill up the empty spaces. It’s totally changed the look of the game. Now, it really feels like a dungeon.
