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Comment by dzeix35wc363CzC | Hacker News Reader

For anyone interested how it was developing for the original PSX (and therefore under hardware constraints)

How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o

Immensely interesting video! "Old" hardware makes me feel so humble regarding what we have now. Hardware limitations back then really pushed developers towards novel approaches and solutions.

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Thanks for the interest in our shared video gaming past. I had a lot of fun making that video. The PS1 was a fun machine as it was capable, complex enough that you felt it had secrets, but not so bizarre or byzantine that you felt learning them was a waste of time. And you were pretty much the only one in there as the libraries were just libraries, not really an OS. Still true of the PS2 although that was a complex beast, but by the PS3 there was more of a real OS presence. If you want some more, slightly different, slightly overlapping info on the PS1 or making Crash, I have a mess of articles on my blog on the topic: https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/

Oh wow, this is akin to spotting a celebrity out on the street!

I happened to already be half-way through the extended "war stories" interview on the making of Crash you had done and it is superb; you are a joy to listen to! I remember reading these blog articles of yours many years ago but will definitely be revisiting!

As an aspiring hobbiest game developer, I often feel I have missed out on this golden age of game development - where you really had to think outside the box and hack your way around the architecture to achieve your design and performance goals.

I really enjoyed your "Making Crash Bandicoot" blog posts and the "War Stories" video. I would love to read about your work on Jak & Daxter and working on the PS2.

Me too, the Jak & Daxter games have a very special place in my heart as my childhood introduction to gaming. I'd love to reach about it!

Extended version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSHj5UKSylk

Andy Gavin (in the video) was also responsible for the development of GOAL, Game Oriented Assembly Lisp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp)

Naughty dog (the studio founded by Gavin and Jason Rubin) is also home of the ICE team, a technology hub for Sony titles, I wonder if Sony saw the tech expertise culture in the studio and decided to put a team to handle psx dev tech with them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naughty_Dog#ICE_Team

awesome! thanks for sharing.

While hardware is a lot more performant now, game devs are still pushing the boundaries, I'd say even more than back then. Modern triple A games like red dead redemption 2 are a giant collection of such tricks.

>Modern triple A games like red dead redemption 2 are a giant collection of such tricks.

It's just too bad somewhere along the way they forgot games were supposed to be fun as they were slapping eachother's backs over how ingenious they were to be able to render every flea and tick on a horse's asshole while you clean it out and feed them a carrot.

Those war stories videos are very interesting and impressive. But I’m personally glad I’ve never been asked to program a video game in assembler using a trackball and no keyboard.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/first-kirby-game-was-created-with...

Agreed, on both counts. I've seen some other War Stories videos and they're pretty good. It's interesting to see some perspectives from people involved other than developers (although they can be a bit hyperbolic/dramatic at times). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ3iqq49Ew8

On the same note, I discovered this[1] yesterday. An explanation of why things looked a warped in PS1 games. The explanation actually blew my mind. I had heard the term zbuffer before but didn't really know what it did.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TO-nrUtSI

He got lots of things wrong though: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/fnl0o1/why_playstati...

That was cool, also check the comments for a neat thread by someone that worked on an early PlayStation game!

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