Interview with RollerCoaster Tycoon's Creator, Chris Sawyer (2024)

This game _is_ my childhood. Spent countless hours one summer doing every scenario, learning all the little easter eggs (Michael Schumacher on the Go karts anyone?).

The spirit of this game lives on now in OpenRCT2 [1] - which brings the game into the modern age and is backwards compatible with all the scenarios from the original. It even features multiplayer park building.

[1] https://openrct2.io/

▲

leokennis 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I can wholeheartedly recommend Marcel Vos' YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBlXovStrlQkVA2xJEROUNg

He is basically reverse engineering and explaining RCT's logic and design, but does it via entertaining videos.

▲

konimex 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Speaking of which, I wonder what Chris would think of OpenRCT2 and OpenTTD, which reimplemented his games with different programming languages and outright different graphics (which allowed the latter to reach its 1.0 milestone not requiring the original Transport Tycoon assets).

	▲	deanc an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The are no direct statements but one from his agency [1] > The project has no blessing or support from Chris Sawyer and our view, it is both unethical and unlawful, involving infringements that may in some territories be criminal as well as a violation of Chris Sawyer's rights and those of his licensees - all of which remain reserved. > RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, distributed by Atari, contains RCT and RCT2 rebuilt for modern operating systems under Chris's own direction. [1] https://forums.openrct2.org/topic/5646-how-is-openrct2-legal...
	▲	reddalo 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I can't recall the source so take this with a grain of salt (I think some members of the OpenTTD forum managed to contact him), but I remember him not being happy about it. He perfected the games according to his vision, so it makes sense for him not to like people rewriting his code and adding new features.
	▲	haunter 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		He doesn't like them. Basically the games were finished as in an art piece is finished (don't tell George Lucas!) and the later projects (OpenTTD/OpenRCT2) are "remixing" those.

▲

naths88 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You just made my day. Today is going to be really productive.

	▲	reddalo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Beware that you still need a copy of the original RCT2 game in order to play OpenRCT2. You can still buy it on GOG [1] though. [1] https://www.gog.com/en/game/rollercoaster_tycoon_2

▲

reddalo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Chris Sawyer is my hero. I spent countless hours on his games when I was a child, and maybe that's the reason why I've became a programmer.

I'm sad that Chris Sawyer is such a reserved person, his public appearances are super rare [1] and he has no internet presence, except for a website that hasn't been updated in ages [2].

I wish he had a blog where he shared how he made his games.

[1] One of the few: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU73g72NTHc [2] https://chrissawyergames.com/

▲

HippoBaro 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It actually took a lot longer to re-write the game in C++ than it took me to write the original machine code version 20 years earlier.

Is the most interesting quote IMO. I often feel like productivity has gone down significantly in recent years, despite tooling and computers being more numerous/sophisticated/fast.

▲

scandox 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> it took several years and a small team of programmers to re-write the entire game in C++. It actually took a lot longer to re-write the game in C++ than it took me to write the original machine code version 20 years earlier.

Expanding the quote because the word "team" is probably relevant to why it took longer to rewrite. At a certain scale there just is a huge advantage in everything being inside one head...

	▲	jillesvangurp 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Communication overhead is a big thing in teams. If you have a struggling team, halve the size. It's crazy how well that works. It's not the people but the number of them. Once your people are consumed by the day to day frustrations of having to communicate with everyone else and with all the infighting, posturing, etc. that comes with that, they'll get nothing done. Splitting teams is an easy to implement fix. Minimize the communication paths between the two (or more) teams and carve up what they work on and suddenly shit gets done. In this case, they probably were trying to not just rewrite but improve the engine at the same time. That's a much more complicated thing to achieve. Especially when the original is a heavily optimized and probably somewhat hard to reason about blob of assembly. I'm guessing that even wrapping your head around that would be a significant job. Amazingly enjoyable game btw. Killed quite a few hours with that one around 2000.

▲

dwroberts 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Found this part strange because in other interviews he seemed to imply (for RCT classic) that there was almost some kind of VM-like structure that was running the original code underneath as-is

▲

cadamsdotcom 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Expectations have gone up accordingly.

I think the real constraint must be market timing - as much work as people can do to meet the market (eg. Have the thing done by Christmas), that much will end up being done.

▲

indigoabstract 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> it just sort of grew gradually and I felt it was better spending my time working on something that was fun to work on even if at the time it looked like there was no possibility of it becoming commercially worthwhile.

The indie ethos, before it was even a thing (or in the very early stages).

▲

HelloUsername 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I also recommend about RCT reading/watching:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44758842

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39792034

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42346463

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts4BD8AqD9g

▲

stevoski 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you enjoy these types of stories from video game industry veterans, I recommend the My Perfect Console podcast.

https://www.myperfectconsole.com/